Elon Musk’s politics cost Tesla over 1 million sales in US alone, new study claims
We’ve been talking about the impact of Elon Musk’s venture into politics on the Tesla brand for years, but now a new study from the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) is putting some staggering numbers to it.
According to a new working paper, Musk’s “polarizing and partisan actions” have directly cost Tesla over a million vehicle sales in the US alone.
The study, titled “The Musk Partisan Effect on Tesla Sales,” argues that without this effect, Tesla’s sales would have been 67% to 83% higher between October 2022 and April 2025. That’s an absolutely massive number, and it suggests Tesla’s recent sales slump isn’t just about “increased competition” or “pent-up demand” being satisfied.
It’s about the brand.
The researchers from Yale and NBER didn’t just run a poll. They dug into county-level, monthly new vehicle registration data for all EVs and hybrids from March 2020 to April 2025.
They used a “difference-in-differences” analysis. In simple terms, they tracked how sales trends changed in heavily Democratic-leaning counties versus heavily Republican-leaning counties. The “treatment” event that broke the trend? Elon Musk’s acquisition of Twitter in October 2022.
Here’s what the data shows:
- Before Oct. 2022: Counties with more Democrats showed an increasing preference for Teslas compared to Republican counties. This makes sense, as we know EV adoption has historically been higher among liberal-leaning buyers.
- After Oct. 2022: The trend dramatically reverses. As Musk’s political activities—including “relaxed content moderating of far-right and extremist voices” and massive campaign contributions—ramped up, Democratic-leaning counties began “shifting away from Tesla purchases”.
The study is blunt, noting Musk’s actions “antagonized his most loyal customer base”.
The paper runs two different models to quantify the damage, and the results are “remarkably similar”.
Aggregated from October 2022 through April 2025, the “Musk partisan effect” cost Tesla between 1.0 and 1.26 million vehicle sales.
Again, that’s in the US alone. Tesla’s sales in Europe have also been crashing over the last 2 years. Some of that has been attributed to Musk’s political activism, but Tesla is also facing tougher competition in Europe, where more EV models are available due to fewer protectionist rules.
To put the US numbers in perspective, that’s 67% to 83% of the actual number of Teslas sold during that same period.
By the first quarter of 2025, the study estimates Tesla’s monthly sales would have been about 150% higher if not for this effect.
Fewer Tesla sales, but no fewer EV sales
This is the other side of the coin. Those ~1 million buyers didn’t just give up on EVs. They bought from competitors.
The study finds a “nearly one-for-one substitution” from Teslas to other EVs and hybrids.
According to the study, Musk’s actions increased the sales of other electric and hybrid vehicles by 17% to 22%. So, while Tesla’s growth stalled and reversed, competitors like Ford, GM, Rivian, Hyundai, and Kia got a massive, unexpected boost, directly attributable to Tesla’s CEO.
And what about the other side? Did Musk’s shift to the right win over new Republican buyers?
The study says no.
They cite survey data showing that Musk’s public persona “significantly reduces liberal and Democratic support for Tesla without increasing conservative and Republican support”. Ouch.
Earlier this year, after President Trump held what amounted to a Tesla infomercial with Musk at the White House, we did note that Musk’s shift to the right isn’t likely to result in a significant boost in sales from conservatives.
That’s not just because electric vehicles are harder to sell to conservative people, but mainly because Tesla isn’t equipped to sell in rural areas and conservative states.
Electrek’s Take
We’ve been covering this anecdotally for ages, but the study puts actual numbers on what we have been saying for years: Elon Musk is destroying Tesla’s brand.
People who live on Twitter don’t see it like that, but X is not the real world.
These guys at Yale and NBER have actual data to prove it. To see it quantified like this is something else. A loss of over 1 million vehicles is not a rounding error. It is a self-inflicted disaster for the brand.
Because Tesla’s sales have been only marginally down globally over the last two years, Tesla fans don’t think the impact is significant, but that’s not the right way to look at it.
During the last 2 years, EV sales have continued to surge, and yet, the EV leader, Tesla, saw its sales go down. That’s a problem. Tesla was planning to grow heavily during that period. It was looking to build new factories.
Instead, it canceled new factory plans, such as Gigafactory Mexico, and it reduced utilization at its current factories to about 60%.
The craziest part is that this is just the brand damage. Now, the actual policy damage is starting to happen.
Musk wasn’t successful in doing much in politics, but he did get Trump elected, and he has now filled the tax credit in the US and removed regulatory credits for EVs.
Both of these moves are greatly negatively affecting Tesla, and the impact of those is only starting this quarter.
Musk’s move into politics was one of the all-time worst business moves.
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President and CEO of Saudi’s Aramco, Amin H. Nasser, speaks during the Future Investment Initiative (FII) in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia October 29, 2024.
Hamad I Mohammed | Reuters
Think of Saudi Arabia and the first thing that comes to mind might be its massive, oil-derived wealth.
While oil continues to drive Saudi Arabia’s economy, the kingdom is now expanding into areas such as artificial intelligence, tourism and sports to diversify its growth avenues.
According to Saudi Arabia’s Minister for Investment Khalid Al Falih, more than half — 50.6% — of the Saudi economy is now “completely decoupled” from oil.
“This percentage is growing,” Al Failh told CNBC’s Dan Murphy, adding that government revenue used to be almost completely derived from oil money, but now, 40% of its revenue comes from sectors and sources that “have nothing to do with oil.”
“We’re seeing great results, but we’re not satisfied. We want to do more. We want to accelerate the kingdom’s diversification and growth story,” he said.
Saudi Arabia is doubling down on fast-growing sectors such as artificial intelligence, naming it one of its new growth areas, with Al Failh saying the kingdom will be a “key investor” in developing AI applications and large language models. Saudi Arabia would also build data centers “at a scale and at a competitive cost not achieved anywhere else.”
“AI has emerged [in] the last three, four years, and it’s definitely going to define how the future economy of every nation. Those who invest will lead, and those who lag behind, unfortunately, will lose,” he pointed out.
On Monday, AI chip company Groq’s CEO, Jonathan Ross, told CNBC that for AI infrastructure thanks to its energy surplus. The country could see more than $135 billion in gains by 2030 thanks to AI, according to PwC.
Saudi Arabia’s quarterly budget performance report revealed that total government revenue for the first half of 2025 came in at 565.21 billion Saudi riyals ($150.73 billion), with oil making up 53.4% of the country’s overall revenue, down from 67.97% in the same period in 2019.
In 2024, the country reported a 1.3% rise in full-year GDP, mainly driven by a 4.3% increase in non-oil segments. Oil activity, on the other hand, fell 4.5% year on year.
The country’s sovereign wealth fund — the Public Investment Fund — has acquired stakes in tech giants, video game publishers and football clubs as it uses oil revenues to diversify into other sectors.
PIF has acquired stakes in video-game heavyweight Electronic Arts, establishing the SoftBank Vision Fund with Masayoshi Son’s SoftBank Group Corp in 2017, and a takeover of English Premier League club Newcastle United in 2021.
When asked if declining oil prices were piling pressure on Saudi Arabia’s economy and government revenue, Al Falih said that the country was not scaling back budgets and there were no cuts to public spending.
Oil prices have fallen in 2025, with Brent crude spot prices down 13.4% so far this year, according to FactSet. Saudi Arabia’s oil revenue slid 24% in the first half of 2025 from a year earlier.
The government will continue to address all activities that require government spending, Al Falih said, noting that the PIF has grown sixfold since its creation and that the country was approaching nearly $1 trillion in capital deployed across sectors of strategic interest.
Tourism has also been a key growth area for Saudi Arabia. Ahmed Al-Khateeb, the country’s tourism minister, told CNBC that the sector’s share in GDP had grown to 5% in 2024 from 3% in 2019.
“We are [opening] resorts, new airlines, new airports, and the numbers are growing, and we are focusing on countries and visitors that are coming from outside to experience our great culture,” Al-Khateeb highlighted.
The tourism minister also expressed confidence that the sector could contribute 10% of GDP by 2030, aiming to raise it to 20% eventually.
“This 20% will help Saudi Arabia to diversify the economy and make it more sustainable,” he added.
Meta just signed more power purchase agreements (PPAs) with ENGIE North America, expanding their partnership to more than 1.3 gigawatts (GW) of solar across four projects in Texas. It’s just a shame the social media giant is also going big on gas plants in Louisiana to power its data centers at the same time.
The latest PPAs include ENGIE’s new 600-megawatt (MW) Swenson Ranch Solar project in Stonewall County, southeast of Lubbock. When it comes online in 2027, Swenson will become ENGIE’s largest solar farm within its 11 GW North American portfolio of solar, wind, and battery storage projects. Meta will buy 100% of Swenson’s power to run its US data centers.
ENGIE says the $900 million project will create over 350 construction jobs and generate over $158 million in tax revenue for Stonewall County and the local hospital district over its lifetime.
“Our objective is to bring reliable, cost-competitive power to the grid as rapidly as possible, and projects like Swenson demonstrate the importance of solar to meet the timely needs of our customers,” said Dave Carroll, ENGIE North America’s CEO and chief renewables officer.
Meta’s head of global energy, Urvi Parekh, said the expanded deal with ENGIE “enables us to continue matching 100% of our electricity use with clean and renewable energy to support our data center operations,” Parekh said.
Electrek’s Take
Meta isn’t exactly putting its money where its mouth is when it comes to matching 100% of its electricity use with clean energy. The social media giant is also building a $10 billion data center – one of the world’s largest – in Richland Parish, Louisiana, that’s going to be powered by three gas-powered plants, which utility Entergy will build especially for Meta, which is paying 50% of the costs. Those three plants will produce 2,262 MW of dirty fossil fuel power. For perspective, that’s nearly 10% of Entergy’s current energy capacity across four states.
So while the 1.3 GW of clean energy that ENGIE will produce in Texas for Meta is great, it doesn’t make up for the CO2 emissions it’s about to create with this dirty project it’s building in a lower-income farming community in Louisiana. It certainly isn’t for speed, because solar is the fastest to put up. Limited state oversight – and a 2024 state law that lets the company skip paying sales tax – likely helped Meta make that destructive decision.
Read more: Texas just became No 1 in the US for most utility-scale solar
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![Genesis is building a new luxury off-road SUV, and all signs point to an EV [Images]](https://i0.wp.com/electrek.co/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2025/10/Genesis-off-road-SUV-EV.jpeg?resize=1200,628&quality=82&strip=all&ssl=1)
That rugged new Genesis SUV we’ve been waiting for might be electric after all. A Genesis EV was spotted in South Korea with a new off-road style and EV powertrain.
Is the Genesis off-road luxury SUV an EV?
Genesis is turning ten this year, and to celebrate, it’s giving the people what they want. The luxury brand has a slate of new vehicles set to launch over the next few years, including a flagship full-size electric SUV, high-performance cars, and a luxury off-roader.
Hyundai confirmed during last month’s CEO Investor Day that Genesis will offer vehicles across all powertrains, rather than electric only, as initially planned.
Although we knew the “ultra-luxe” GV90 would be electric when it arrives in 2026, Genesis has kept most details of its luxury off-road SUV a secret.
We got our first look at it in April after Genesis unveiled the X Gran Equator Concept. The rugged-looking SUV is the brand’s “first adventure vehicle concept,” but that’s about all we know.
Genesis said the off-road SUV “marries on-road sophistication with off-road resilience,” offering adventure and refinement, but didn’t provide any specifics.
After a modified Genesis test car was spotted in South Korea with off-road upgrades, it’s looking more likely that the off-road SUV may actually be an EV.
The images posted by user hscarstory on an online forum are among the first to emerge. The vehicle, a modified Genesis Electrified GV70, was being tested by the “Chassis Test Team.” You can see a few added off-road elements like a fine-tuned suspension and bigger tires.
It also has a large tow hook or wrench on the front, a staple of Hyundai XRT test cars. The test vehicle is expected to be the first of a new Genesis off-road brand or trim, similar to Hyundai’s XRT.
Genesis said the X Gran Equator Concept wasn’t confirmed for production. Still, certain design elements and features, such as the integrated roof rails and split-opening tailgate, “showcase the brand’s future design potential.”
The brand has yet to say when the luxury off-roader will arrive. We do know Genesis is launching its first hybrid, the GV80, next year.
It will introduce its first extended-range electric vehicle (EREV) based on the GV70 in late 2026 or early 2027. We got our first look at the Genesis GV70 EREV and hybrid models earlier this month, out for testing.
The GV90 is expected to arrive in mid-2026 as the first vehicle built on Hyundai’s new eM platform. Genesis has yet to reveal when it will launch the luxury off-roader, but it’s expected to arrive as a 2027 model. Since it’s introducing new powertrains, we can’t rule out an EREV or a hybrid variation of the off-roader.
Can Genesis compete with the Rivian R1S? Or the upcoming Range Rover Electric? We should learn more soon. Check back for the latest updates.
Source: HSscarstory
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