What Benefits Will Tesla Now Get with Trump–Musk Fallout?

Last Updated on: 6th June 2025, 02:02 am

There were a few ways of viewing Elon Musk throwing his hat in with Donald Trump. Here are a few common but different takes:

This is a disaster, horrible, and vile. There’s so much wrong with this. Where do we even start?
This is great! Musk and Trump will modernize government, make it efficient, and promote all the right stuff. They are super pro democracy and pro The Constitution. (Note: I think this is the worst take and blatantly false, but it was, unfortunately, a very common take.)
This is weird, and I don’t feel great about it, but, hey, maybe it will bring a lot more people into the EV fold. Heck, maybe it will even get a lot of Republicans who never cared about EVs or supported them to buy EVs and promote them. Maybe it will even lead to Trump and Republicans magically ignoring their Big Oil overlords and strong EV policies will prevail.

Well, now that Trump and Musk are throwing huge barbs at each other on social media, dramatically falling out with each other, there are some points to make and some questions to ask.

Let’s start with that first group. Many of those people used to be big Tesla fans, and big Elon Musk fans. Tesla was built on the purchases of people in that group (as well as some in other groups, of course). After the various things Elon Musk said or did politically in the past year or so, most of this group decided they’d never buy a Tesla (or another Tesla, as the case often was) as long as Elon Musk is leading the company or even benefiting from its success. Now that Trump and Musk hate each other, is that going to change? No. The damage has been done.

Some of the people in group #2 are superfans of Musk more than they are superfans of Trump, and many are superfans of Trump more than they are superfans of Musk. If this continues, the former could become quite anti-Trump or even anti-GOP. (Many of them were before they followed Musk off the GOP cliff.) However, the latter could easily become anti-Musk and anti-Tesla. The Trump cult, as we’ve seen, is thoroughly drunk on Kool-Aid, and many members probably only became superficial fans of Musk and Tesla. It’s questionable how many even went as far as to think about buying a Tesla.

As far as group #3, I think it’s clear the GOP is not going to support EVs. They are all in on oil, and that’s not changing. It’s very likely they will remove consumer incentives for electric cars (which, of course, Biden and Democrats revived for Tesla and GM). They may even slap an annual fee on EVs, and they will certainly lower fuel economy standards and try to remove California’s right to maintain higher ones. EVs are going to lose government support, and many Republicans are going to go back to hating EVs and hating on Tesla.

So, where, in the end, does Tesla benefit from this year-long affair with Trump and the GOP? Tesla has certainly lost a lot of sales to Democrats and Independents, and there’s no indication it gain the same number from Republicans. Even when Trump and Musk were super buddy-buddy, Tesla didn’t get a surge of interest or purchases from MAGA faithful. With the fallout, though, the company will lose some portion of the gains, and it’s highly unlikely they get more than a tiny fraction of the lost sales back.

In other words, it’s likely this is a big net loss for Tesla in the end. And that’s without even considering the harm that is likely to come to Tesla sales if the EV tax credit and various EV, EV battery pack, EV battery cell, and lithium production tax credits are removed.

Was it worth it, Elon?