Tesla Stock Down 24% In Past Month — And Why? – CleanTechnica

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Tesla stock [NASDAQ:TSLA] has always been a wild roller coaster. Whether you want to call it a meme stock, a “growth” stock, or a volatile stock, it has had an extreme evolution over the past 5–10 years. Following Donald Trump’s election — with Elon Musk by his side almost constantly (including over holidays, despite having more than a dozen kids) — Tesla stock shot up. Even now, over the past 6 months, the stock is up almost 42%. So, it’s important to acknowledge that despite a recent sharp drop, the stock price is considerably higher than it was before the election.

However, the focus of this article is on the company’s recent stock collapse. Tesla’s stock price has dropped by almost 24% in the past month, when the stock price was $397.15. Also, compared to its peak on December 17 ($479.86), the stock price is down even much more (by 37%).

So, what has changed? Donald Trump has more power, Elon Musk has more power — shouldn’t that help Tesla?

Well, we all know some of the things that have happened. Musk has gone chainsaw massacre on the US federal government, has made a lot of false statements about things his “DOGE” team has found and done. He’s been involved in ending numerous beneficial government programs and even whole agencies, like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which had “returned more than $21 billion to consumers who were victims of fraud or scams” (but was investigating one of Musk’s companies). He’s also been involved in far right-wing parties associated with neo-Nazism in Germany and Italy. I don’t want to spend 5,000 words going through more actions, but the result is that millions of people have sworn off ever buying a Tesla (or ever buying one while Musk is associated with the company) and Tesla sales have dropped sharply in Europe, and possibly also the US.

Many investors are getting spooked. At the same time, it should be noted that an updated Model Y is coming very soon, and perhaps Model Y sales have dropped considerably in all of these markets from buyers waiting on the new version. It’s possible there’s less of a hit to Tesla consumer demand than we assume when you take that into account. (Or not.)

Beyond all of this, there was BYD’s big announcement about rolling advanced driver-assist systems into all of its cars, the fact that BYD has 110,000+ R&D engineers, and the expectation that Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” could be less far along than previously thought and could have much more competition by the time robotaxi capability is here. Elon Musk has said for a long time that no one should be invested in Tesla if they don’t believe in the company’s AI and robotics vision and plans, because it’s clear the market valuation is well beyond what basic car sales can justify. Maybe people are just losing faith in Musk’s decade of missed promises on this matter.

It’s also possible that it has just taken time for the market to consider and digest that Tesla sales declined in 2024 compared to 2023, and there isn’t a very strong case to make sales will be better in 2025. Maybe it’s all just starting to sink in that the Tesla growth story ended, and maybe it will return, but maybe it won’t — and maybe that’s partly why Elon Musk is now almost fully focused on wild and wacky US government work.

Perhaps there are even a lot of Elon fans who see him spending so much of his time and attention on non-Tesla stuff and they are concerned he’s abandoning Tesla — or at least his Tesla duties. As one CleanTechnica commenter said the Tesla board should ask of Musk: “Elon, what did you accomplish this week? In five bullet points, please. We will take failure to respond as your resignation.”

Related article and survey: “How Many Vehicles Will Tesla Sell in Europe in 2025?“

Disclosure: I do not currently own any Tesla stock, and I have no intention to buy any in the foreseeable future.