After a dramatic decline in profits in the past quarter, Elon Musk wants to concentrate more on his work as CEO of the electric car manufacturer Tesla from the coming month-and use significantly less time than before on his advisory role for US President Donald Trump. He announced this in a conference call after the presentation of business results. Musk has a leading role in Trump’s government with the working group “Department of Government Efficiency” or “Doge”, which has caused radical cuts in American authorities. With his political positioning, Musk has become a controversial figure, which is also reflected in the Tesla business. In the past few weeks there has been a wave of demonstrations in front of Tesla shops that had to do with Musk’s government work. Under the catchphrase “Tesla Takedown”, the organizers of the protests Tesla shareholders are calling on selling their shares. Tesla drivers are encouraged to part with their cars. The demonstrations have so far focused on the USA, but also extended to Germany and other countries in which his political engagement ensures controversy. Musk supported the AfD in Germany. The protest movement describes itself as peaceful, but there were also a few cases of willful property damage in Tesla business. Musk: Tesla feels “some headwind” analyst Dan Ives from Wedbush Securities said a few days ago, the call damage for the Tesla brand, which was set up by Musk’s government work, could go to “permanent destruction” of 15 to 20 percent of the demand for Tesla vehicles lead. Tesla Finance board member Vaibhav Taneja now admitted that an “unjustified hostility” to the Tesla brand had affected the business. On the question of any damage to the brand, Musk himself claimed that he does not see any weakening of demand beyond a more difficult economic environment. With a view to the protest movement, he also said Tesla felt “some headwinds”. External content activate repeated earlier claims that the demonstrators are “paid” and he defended Doge’s work. He said that an essential part of the work to establish Doge was complete, which would allow him to reorganize his priorities. In the future, he wanted to “use much more” of his time on Tesla and another one to two days a week on government work as long as Trump wishes and it is useful. A few weeks ago, the publication “Politico” had already written about an early partial withdrawal from Musk from Trump’s government. The white house and musk had the report at the time.teslas quarterly report was another disappointment. The car manufacturer reported a decline in profits by 71 percent for the past three months and announced that he wanted to revise his forecast for the sales figures this year. Tesla’s share price, immediately after the publication of the figures, hardly changed to spend more time with Tesla according to Musk’s announcement, but on Wednesday he rose by more than seven percent on Wednesday. The share has lost significantly in value in the past few months, it currently only costs around half as much as in December when it had reached a maximum. The bar was not too high, because it was already known that Tesla looks back on a difficult quarter. At the beginning of April, the company already reported a decline in the number of vehicles delivered by 13 percent for this period. The quarterly report now provided a more comprehensive picture and underlined that Tesla’s profitability is also suffering. The net win in the first quarter was $ 409 million, a year ago it was $ 1.4 billion. The operational profit margin was only 2.1 percent – in recent years Tesla had often shown double -digit margins. The situation would be much worse if the company did not have its highly profitable business with emission points. This time it brought in $ 595 million, i.e. an amount that exceeds the entire net profit. Tesla gets the emission certificates of governments for the production of electric cars and then sells them to competitors who helps to meet legal emission requirements. Sales in the auto business fell 20 percent, i.e. even more than the sales quantities. The total group turnover of $ 19.3 billion was almost $ 1.8 billion lower than analysts. In addition to Musk’s political positioning, analysts see other reasons for Tesla’s difficulties. The company’s product range is considered outdated, especially in China there are strong local competition such as BYD. The last important new vehicle for the mass market, the Model Y, came out five years ago. The pick-up transporter cybertruck, which was introduced around a year ago and a half ago, is only a niche model and sells badly. In the first quarter, according to the market research group COX Automotive on the American home market, Tesla delivered only around half as many copies of the cyberruck as in the three final months 2024. The model was also the subject of several callbacks, and Tesla recently advertised with considerable discounts by buyer: “I am not the president” of the car manufacturers now repeated that Remain to bring out “more affordable models” in the first half of the year. In the telephone conference, however, it was indicated that this is not completely new vehicle types, but rather modified variants of previous models. A few days ago, the Reuters news agency reported that the start of production for a cheaper new model would be delayed. In the past year, Tesla had to accept a decline in his sales for the first time in its history. For 2025, the company has so far promised growth that Musk even promised a plus of 20 to 30 percent. From this goal, Tesla is now refraining from this goal, although there should be more specific details about the overview of the overall year in the next quarter report in three months. Tesla said that the current trade conflicts and a “changing political mood” could significantly burden the demand for his vehicles in the near future. The reference to the political mood might be understood as an allusion to the anti-tesla demonstrations. The trade conflicts fired by Trump with the imposition of import tariffs do not meet Tesla as strongly as some other manufacturers, Musk even said that his company was least touched. Tesla produces all of its cars sold in the USA in its American works in California and Texas. However, the manufacturer is not completely isolated from the trade policy, among other things because it also obtains components from abroad in its American production, for which tariffs should also apply. The retaliation tariffs imposed by China also meet the company. So far, it imported the Model S and Model X, its more expensive vehicles, from the USA. It was recently announced that Tesla for these cars in China will not be accepting orders for the time being. Muse of Muse has already made it clear in recent weeks that he is not in line with Trump with a view to customs policy. He also underlined that on Tuesday. He said he was for lower tariffs and will also speak out for it, “but that’s all I can do”. The decision is fully with the president. “I am one of many advisors of the President, but I am not the president.” Despite the current difficulties, Musk said that he was “extremely optimistic” with a view to Tesla’s future. However, he did not based this confidence on the previous core business with ordinary electric cars, but on Tesla’s activities around autonomous driving and humanoid robots. Musk said Tesla would continue to be on the plan to start a test with fully autonomously driving robotaxis in Austin in June. In the second half of 2026, “millions” of such vehicles in the United States would be traveling. Musk is of course known to regularly miss such temporal guidelines. The multimilliarist also repeated earlier statements that one day Tesla could be “by far” the most valuable company in the world – possibly more valuable than the following five companies.
Musk decided: more Tesla, less Trump
