Tesla’s supporters and investors are urging embattled CEO Elon Musk to take immediate action to save the once-highflying electric car company that’s faced a series of significant challenges over the past two months.
The company’s stock price has plummeted by nearly 40% since the start of the year as Musk’s controversial work inside the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency, known as DOGE, along with other public comments, have slashed demand, sparked protests and vandalism and provoked worldwide outrage. Additionally, sales of Tesla vehicles fell 10% since January, Cox Automotive, which follows data and trends, reported Thursday.
“It’s a moment of truth for Musk and Tesla, and the future depends on how he navigates this next few months,” said Dan Ives, a leading Tesla analyst.
Musk needs to make a formal statement that he will better balance his work at DOGE with his Tesla leadership to send a signal that he will “navigate Tesla through this brand crisis,” Ives said.
Tesla, founded in San Carlos in 2003, and Musk did not respond to requests for comment.
Prominent Bay Area crisis-management consultant Sam Singer said Musk’s politics and behavior are turning off would-be Tesla buyers and stock market investors. Singer noted that this week, popular late-night TV host Jimmy Kimmel mocked Musk over his response to protests targeting him and his company.
“It’s rarely a good thing for a CEO or a brand to become the butt of jokes,” Singer said.
Prominent Tesla investor and booster Ross Gerber told British TV channel Sky News on Wednesday that Musk’s social media posts — which have included far-right comments, conspiracy theories and disinformation — along with his work at DOGE under President Donald Trump, have “destroyed” Tesla’s reputation.
Musk “is not running Tesla” and should either give up DOGE or find another CEO for the car maker, Gerber said.
While the behavior of other U.S. CEOs has tanked their company’s stock price — as with former Starbucks chief Howard Schultz’s aborted bid for the presidency leading up to 2020 — it is the “extreme injection of the CEO into the government” that sets Musk’s situation apart, said Olaf Groth, a specialist in strategy, policy, technology and futures at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business.
“It’s sort of an outright meddling in government business and saying a lot of really horrendous things,” Groth said.
Long a darling of progressives for its development of world-leading electric vehicles that became hugely popular in the liberal Bay Area, Tesla has seen some past eruptions in criticism over alleged racism in its Fremont car factory and Musk’s increasingly provocative embrace of right-wing politics.
But nothing has compared to the explosive, global response to Musk’s inflammatory statements and his chaos-sowing work in DOGE that ostensibly seeks to weed out wasteful spending and anything that smacks of promoting diversity.
Vandals have set Teslas afire, shot them with guns, hurled Molotov cocktails at dealerships and targeted the cars of everyday owners, including in San Jose, where police chief Paul Joseph said Monday that officers arrested a man allegedly caught on video keying a Tesla.

This month in Wales, a group raked sand on a beach to create a 250-yard message saying, “DON’T BUY A TESLA,” with an image of Musk’s straight-armed salute in January that recalled a Nazi gesture.
Drivers around the Bay Area told this news organization they are selling their Teslas because of Musk. Last month, hundreds of protesters gathered outside Bay Area Tesla dealerships, part of a global anger against Musk, and his foes are organizing what they tout as the largest protest yet, targeting hundreds of Tesla showrooms world-wide on March 29.
In attempts to boost the company’s fast-falling fortunes, Trump this month turned the White House lawn into a personalized Tesla showroom with several vehicles lined up and said he had bought a Model S sedan. On Wednesday, U.S. Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick on Fox News urged Americans to buy Teslas, saying, “Who wouldn’t invest in Elon Musk?”

Experts in politics said Lutnick’s comments posed a conflict of interest. “If a Democratic Commerce Secretary did that, that person would be hauled before a series of Congressional committees before the ink was dry on the comments,” said Larry Gerston, San Jose State University emeritus professor of political science.
Groth said Lutnick’s touting of Tesla’s stock appeared deliberately aligned with Trump’s Tesla shopping.
“They’re strengthening each others’ backs as they come under fire,” Groth said. “They’re circling the electric wagons.”
Amid the turmoil, new troubles continue to arise for Tesla. The company on Thursday recalled nearly all of its eye-catching Cybertrucks over reported failures of a glued-on steel panel that Tesla said could fly off and hurt other motorists.
This week, the Financial Times reported that its investigation into Tesla’s financial statements found that $1.4 billion appeared to have disappeared from the company.
In Canada, where Trump’s threats to make the nation the “51st state” and Musk’s since-deleted social media post describing it as “not a real country” have enraged the citizenry, the company was kicked out of the annual Vancouver Auto Show this week.
“The Vancouver Auto Show’s primary concern is the safety of attendees, exhibitors, and staff,” the show’s executive director Eric Nicholl said in a statement Thursday.
Also in Canada, British Columbia’s provincial government cut Tesla out of an electric vehicle charger incentive program, with Premier David Eby saying earlier this month, “It’s just for Tesla, and it’s because of Elon Musk.”
Canada’s federal transportation authority is reportedly investigating claims that Tesla gamed a rebate program to improperly haul in tens of millions of dollars, according to the Toronto Star newspaper.
Much closer to home, Silicon Valley U.S. Rep. Ro Khanna, a vocal critic of Musk’s incursions into the federal government, who earlier this month condemned vandalism of Teslas and dealerships, came out Wednesday in defense of Tesla.
“I’m not gonna root against Tesla,” Khanna told CNN. “There are 20,000 people who work in my district who make a living off this. They’re building electric vehicles that ultimately are good for the climate.”
Khanna did not object to protests and criticism of Musk but said, “Don’t take it out on a company where you have workers, where you have engineers, where you have scientists which are creating wealth for the country.”
