Tesla investors are preparing for evidence of the decline in global demand this week while the electric car manufacturer fights against winds, including a consumer reaction against its general manager, Elon Musk.
On April 2, the American company will publish data for deliveries in the first quarter – a proxy for sales – which should show a drop over the same period last year. The figures follow the global events on Saturday against Musk and Tesla, targeting the exhibition halls of the automaker.
Analysts have reduced their forecasts in the midst of evidence that Musk’s main role in the Trump administration damaged the Tesla brand.
Dan Ives, Director General of the American financial firm Wedbush Securities and a Tesla “Bull”, which precedes between 355,000 and 360,000, a drop of 7% over the same period last year and falling initial Wall Street forecasts by 400,000.
Ives, who recently warned investors that Tesla faces a “moment of brand tornado crisis”, said that 30% of the planned decline was due to the brand’s damage associated with Musk and its involvement in the so-called Ministry of Government Effectiveness (DOGE). The advisory body has targeted federal agencies with cost reduction and layoff policies.
Other problems affecting Tesla figures in the first three months of the year include consumers waiting for an update of the best-selling Y model. The United States is the largest Tesla market.
In a note to investors last week, Ives said that “a large part of this sweetness is linked to customers waiting for the model to refresh it with a new model at a lower cost that will be launched by summer … The anti-MUSC and brand problems are clearly at stake”.
Matthias Schmidt, an electric car analyst based in Berlin, said that Musk “struck his liberal consumer demography exactly where it hurt”.
“It has become the central toxic question behind the brand’s disintegration and should move on to the fact that it explodes as one of its rockets,” added Schmidt, who expects deliveries in the first quarter to Western Europe just under 70,000 for the first time since the end of 2022.
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Among the owners of Tesla, the group of Democratic owners rose from 40% during the Biden administration to 29% now, the republican group with an average of around 30% since 2021, according to the Strategic Vision market company.
Last week, Donald Trump announced a 25% rate on cars abroad, Tesla also expecting to be assigned despite its cars for the American market in America. The company imports certain parts for its cars made in the United States. Last week, Musk wrote on X, his social media platform, that Tesla is “not unscathed” by the prices. He added: “The price impact on Tesla is always significant.”
Prices threaten to plunge the world automotive industry into “pure chaos”, according to Ives. “Each automaker in the world will have to increase prices in a form of sale in the United States and the logistics of the supply chain of this tariff announcement heard in the world is difficult to put our arms right now,” he told investors last week.
However, on Saturday, Trump said that he “didn’t care” if the manufacturers increased prices in response to prices on foreign manufacturing vehicles. Indeed, the American president told NBC News that he hoped that foreign car manufacturers will increase prices because it means that “people will buy American manufacturing cars. We have a lot. ”
