Tesla reported a 13 per cent drop in first-quarter auto sales on Wednesday amid lower production during factory upgrades and blowback over CEO Elon Musk\u2019s work for President Donald Trump\u2019s administration. Musk\u2019s electric vehicle company delivered 336,681 autos in the quarter ending March 31, missing analyst expectations, as it pointed to the \u201closs of several weeks of production\u201d while it ramps up upgrades for its Model Y output. Tesla shares fell more than 6pc in early trading but later partially rebounded. The weak car sales add to questions about Musk\u2019s continued stewardship at the automaker, which has been targeted for consumer boycotts and vandalism as the billionaire has helped engineer thousands of job cuts across the US government. Wedbush\u2019s Dan Ives, a prominent technology analyst who has been a longtime believer in Tesla\u2019s growth potential, called the figures \u201ca disaster on every metric\u201d, according to a note. \u201cIt\u2019s a fork in the road moment,\u201d said Ives, who has called for Musk to publicly outline how he is balancing his Tesla commitments with his work for Trump. \u201cThe more political he gets \u2026 the more the brand suffers, there is no debate. This quarter was an example of the damage Musk is causing Tesla. \u201cThis continues to be a moment of truth for Musk to navigate this brand tornado crisis moment and get onto the other side of this dark chapter for Tesla.\u201d Ives and other long-term Tesla bulls have viewed the company as poised for potentially massive growth, viewing Musk as a guru in state-of-the-art autonomous driving and artificial intelligence technology expected to play a growing role for the foreseeable future. While Tesla\u2019s release on Wednesday did not break out sales for the Cybertruck, the figures suggest anaemic sales for the futuristic vehicle, which Musk has passionately embraced. In March, Tesla announced it was recalling essentially all of the Cybertrucks because of a defect that can lead an exterior panel to detach, posing a crash risk. Tesla also did not specify deliveries by country, but figures from national auto authorities have shown big drops across Europe, where Musk\u2019s association with Trump has sparked criticism. In March alone, Tesla sales fell by more than one-third in France and almost two-thirds in Sweden. Sales fell 56pc in Denmark in the first quarter. Tesla shareholder Ross Gerber of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management, who has previously called for the board to remove Musk as CEO, slammed the figure on X, the former Twitter platform now owned by Musk. \u201cThese numbers suck,\u201d Gerber posted. \u201cThe Cybertruck is basically not selling. The brand is broken and may not be fixable. The board of directors is 100pc responsible.\u201d Near 1440 GMT, Tesla shares were down 2.7pc.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Tesla reported a 13 per cent drop in first-quarter auto sales on Wednesday amid lower production during factory upgrades and blowback over CEO Elon Musk\u2019s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":23834,"comment_status":"registered_only","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-technology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=23833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23833\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/23834"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=23833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=23833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.diplomacypakistan.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=23833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}