Elon Musk delusionally believes Trump support is not affecting Tesla, claims sales are at ‘all-time highs’
Elon Musk has repeatedly denied that the fact that he went “all-in on Donald Trump,” the controversial former president, is negatively affecting his businesses. Now, he went as far as claiming that Tesla’s sales are at ‘all-time highs.’
During an X Space yesterday, the Tesla CEO was asked what he thinks of the claims that his support of Trump is affecting Tesla negatively.
Musk responded:
Tesla’s sales are actually doing great. We’re hitting all-time highs. I think people really care about the quality of the product as opposed to whether they agree or disagree with the CEO’s views. The CEO of any given company is going to have political views. At the end of the day what matters is if Tesla makes a great product, and people like buying great products.
There are a few interesting things here.
First off, “sales are hitting all-time highs.” There are many ways to interpret this, but only one can make Musk right: Tesla had its best Q3 for vehicle deliveries last quarter:
With 463,000 vehicle deliveries last quarter, Tesla technically beat its last Q3 record, but the reason has more to do with Q3 2023 than 2024.
Tesla claimed that “a sequential decline in volumes was caused by planned downtimes for factory upgrades.” Without that, Tesla would have likely been flat on deliveries in Q3 2024 versus last year.
This delayed some shipments into Q4 2023 – resulting in Tesla’s all-time delivery high.
But Musk can’t deny that Tesla’s performance in 2024 has been less than stellar.
Tesla’s total deliveries in 2024 (1,293,656) are still down more than 30,000 units compared to the first three quarters in 2023 (1,324,074).
That’s despite Tesla adding the Cybertruck to the lineup, which started to contribute meaningfully last quarter. It’s hard to swallow for a company that is all about growth. The chart above shows that the growth between 2020 and 2023 was awe-inspiring, but it stopped in 2024.
Tesla’s stock performance is also closely tracking its growth in deliveries and then the stagnation:
In 2023, Tesla started cutting prices, which negatively affected its gross margins and profits, and it countered the growth in deliveries in terms of stock performance.
As for the impact of Musk’s very active and public support of Trump on Tesla’s sales, that’s indeed more nuanced.
There have been many polls about the issue showing that car buyers are less interested in buying Tesla vehicles due to Elon Musk, but it’s hard to tell how the polls translate into the reality of car purchases, which are important decisions for most households.
However, there have been direct examples of Tesla losing out on sales because of Musk’s support of Trump. For example, Rossmann, one of the largest pharmacy chains in Europe and a long-time Tesla client, said that it would stop converting its fleet to Tesla vehicles because of Musk’s support of Trump and the former president’s anti-environmentalist policies.
Electrek’s Take
It’s not really encouraging that Elon is oblivious to Tesla’s current situation. I feel like it’s a bit misleading to say that Tesla’s sales are “hitting all-time highs” when Tesla is on track to have its first down year in deliveries in its existence despite adding a vehicle to its lineup for the first time since 2020.
It’s almost like he is just repeating what his biggest fans on X tweet him all the time. He lives in a different reality because of the echo chamber he built for himself and his fans on X.
I know Tesla fans love to say that it’s about macroeconomics and interest rates, which undoubtedly have an impact, but Tesla also greatly reduced its prices over the last year and offered subsidized interest rates.
At this point, it’s a bit ridiculous to act as if Tesla doesn’t have a broader issue. As for the impact of Elon’s support, it’s admittedly impossible to quantify, but I feel like it’s safe to say that it has, at the very least, some impact.
Finally, it’s also unfair for Elon to say that “every CEO has political views” as if he is sharing his like everyone else. Not every CEO calls the other party, “the party of hate”, and gives millions of dollars to elect a candidate with a long track record that goes against Tesla’s mission to accelerate the advent of sustainable energy.
CEOs also don’t all go on the campaign trail and get photographed jumping up and down like high school cheerleaders behind Trump.
Whatever happens next month, I doubt Elon’s decision will age well. Even if Trump wins, I would be shocked if he doesn’t turn on Elon within a year.
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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies during a remote video hearing held by subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee on “Social Media’s Role in Promoting Extremism and Misinformation” in Washington, U.S., March 25, 2021.
Handout | Via Reuters
Block jumped more than 5% on Monday, leading a rally in shares of fintech companies as analysts downplayed the threat of JPMorgan Chase’s reported plan to charge data aggregators for access to customer financial information.
The recovery followed steep declines on Friday, after Bloomberg reported that JPMorgan had circulated pricing sheets outlining potential fees for aggregators like Plaid and Yodlee, which connect fintech platforms to users’ bank data.
In a note to clients on Monday, Evercore ISI analysts said the potential new expenses were “far from a ‘business model-breaking’ cost increase.”
In addition to Block’s rise, PayPal climbed 3.5% on Monday after sliding Friday. Robinhood and Shift4 recorded modest gains.
Broader market momentum helped fuel some of the rebound. The Nasdaq closed at a record, and crypto rallied, with bitcoin climbing past $123,000. Ether, solana, and other altcoins also gained.
Evercore ISI’s analysts said that even if JPMorgan’s changes were implemented, the most immediate effect would be a slight bump in the cost of one-time account setups — perhaps 50 to 60 cents.
Morgan Stanley echoed that view, writing that any impact would be “negligible,” especially for large fintechs that rely more on debit, credit, or stored balances than bank account pulls for transactions.
PayPal doesn’t anticipate much short-term impact, according to a person with knowledge of the issue. The person, who asked not to be named in order to speak about private financial matters, noted that PayPal relies on aggregators primarily for account verification and already has long-term pricing contracts in place.
While smaller fintechs that depend heavily on automated clearing house (ACH) rails or Open Banking frameworks for onboarding and compliance may face real pressure if the fees take effect, analysts said the larger platforms are largely insulated.
WATCH: Congress moves to redraw $3.7 trillion crypto market rules, opening door to Wall Street
The global EV market is still charging ahead. According to new numbers from global research firm Rho Motion, 9.1 million EVs were sold worldwide in the first half of 2025, up 28% compared to the same period last year. But not every region is accelerating at the same pace.
China and Europe are doing the heavy lifting
More than half of the world’s EVs this year have been bought in China. That market hit 5.5 million sales in the first six months of 2025 – a 32% jump year-over-year. Around half of new cars bought in China are now electric.
While some Chinese cities’ subsidies have dried up, Rho Motion expects momentum to pick back up later in the year as more funding is released.
In Europe, 2 million EVs were sold in the first half of the year, up 26%. Battery electric vehicle (BEV) sales also rose 26%, thanks in part to affordable models like the Renault 4 (pictured) and 5 entering the market. Plug-in hybrids (PHEVs) weren’t far behind, growing 27% year-to-date. Chinese automakers are leaning into PHEVs as a way to work around the EU’s new tariffs on BEVs.
Spain is leading the pack with EV sales soaring 85% so far this year. Its generous MOVES III incentive program was extended in April and has kept sales strong. The UK and Germany are also seeing solid growth – 32% and 40%, respectively. France, however, is slumping. With subsidies cut, EV sales there have dropped 13%.
North America is stuck in the slow lane
Things aren’t looking quite as bright in North America. EV sales in the US, Canada, and Mexico are up just 3% so far this year.
Mexico is the one bright spot, with a 20% boost. The US is up 6%. But Canada is down a whopping 23%.
And things could get bumpier. On July 4, Trump signed Congress’s big bill into law, which axes all the Inflation Reduction Act EV tax credits. Those consumer credits for EVs now officially end on September 30.
Just over half of the EVs sold in the US this year qualified for those credits. Rho Motion predicts a rush in Q3 before the subsidies disappear – and a decline in sales after that.
Rho Motion data manager Charles Lester said, “With Trump’s latest cuts in his ‘Big Beautiful Bill,’ the US could struggle to see any growth in the EV market overall in 2025.”
Global EV sales snapshot, H1 2025 vs H1 2024
- Global: 9.1 million (+28%)
- China: 5.5 million (+32%)
- Europe: 2.0 million (+26%)
- North America: 0.9 million (+3%)
- Rest of world: 0.7 million (+40%)
Read more: China breaks records as global EV sales hit 7.2 million in 2025
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Lucid’s electric sedan can drive further, charge faster, and packs more advanced tech than most of the competition. That might explain why it’s leading the segment. The Lucid Air remained the best-selling luxury EV sedan in the US after widening its lead in the Q2.
The Lucid Air is America’s best-selling luxury EV sedan
The 2025 Lucid Air Pure arrived as the “World’s most efficient car” with an EPA-estimated range of 420 miles and a record 146 MPGe.
It just set a new Guinness World Record last week for the longest journey by an electric car after travelling 749 miles (1,205 km) on a single charge.
That record was set in the range-topping Lucid Air Grand Touring model, which is rated for up to 512 miles of EPA-estimated range. On the WLTP scale, it’s rated at 597 miles (960 km). Either way, it still crushed the estimates.
According to second-quarter sales data, released by Kelley Blue Book on Monday, the Lucid Air is still America’s best-selling luxury EV.
Lucid sold 2,630 Air models in Q2, up 10% from the previous year. Through the first half of 2025, Lucid Air sales are up 17% with 5,094 units sold.
Tesla, on the other hand, only sold 1,435 Model Ss during the quarter, 71% fewer than it did in Q2 2024. Tesla Model S sales in the US are down 70% through the first half of the year at 2,715.
Although Porsche Taycan sales were up 32% with 1,064 models sold, the significantly upgraded 2025 model year was expected to see even more demand. Porsche has 2,083 Taycans in the US this year, up just 1% from 2024.
Other luxury EV sedans, such as the BMW i5 (1,434), i7 (820), and the Mercedes EQS (498), experienced steep double-digit sales declines year-over-year.
And it’s not just electric luxury sedans. The Lucid Air is currently outselling many gas-powered vehicles in its segment.
Lucid’s first electric SUV, the Gravity, is also rolling out. Although only five were sold in the second quarter, Lucid is quickly scaling production. Lucid aims to produce 20,000 vehicles this year, more than double the roughly 9,000 it built in 2024.
Earlier today, Lucid’s interim CEO, Marc Winterhoff, confirmed during an interview with Bloomberg that the company expects higher Gravity output in the second half of the year.
The interview was at the grand opening of Panasonic’s new battery cell plant in De Soto, Kansas. Winterhoff said Lucid will start using new cells from the facility, but not until next year.
Lucid’s CEO stressed the importance of establishing a local supply chain, as policy changes under the Trump Administration are taking effect. Lucid and Panasonic are collaborating to localize EV materials, such as graphite. Last month, Lucid secured a multi-year supply agreement with Graphite One for US-sourced Graphite.
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