Tesla has been losing money hand over fist — and the culprit is clear: Elon Musk, the company’s CEO, needs to take a long, hard look in the mirror.
In the wake of his latest Robotaxi gambits, which involve a dick-shaped service area map and a fare price rise from $4.20 to $6.90, it becomes clearer every day that the 54-year-old billionaire is a deeply unserious individual whose attempts at humor only drive home how annoying he is.
Obviously, this is neither the first nor the last time Musk’s massive dearth of likability has been pointed out. Considering all the other self-inflicted wounds he’s sustained lately, it’s impossible to ignore how inextricably his irritating public persona is linked to Tesla’s nosediving sales — which have gotten so bad that a wave of its executives have either jumped ship or been fired.
Though he was no saint prior to reigniting his on-off bromance with Donald Trump last year on the presidential campaign trail, the multi-hyphenate business owner’s toxic politicking since then has hemorrhaged a staggering amount of goodwill he gleaned back when he was an environmentalist who wanted to save humanity by taking us to Mars. (In 2016, public polling showed that Musk’s net popularity stood at a balmy +29 percent; now the figure stands at negative 23.)
Nowhere is that Trump slump more evident than in Tesla’s stock value, which is down a full 20 percent from the beginning of 2025.
As the electric vehicle company’s value has plummeted, its CEO was busy showing his derriere in as many ways as possible: by doing two Sieg Heil salutes on stage at the inauguration, establishing his stupidly-named Department of Governmental Efficiency (DOGE) wrecker agency, and generally being a bigoted jerk on X, the social network he has transformed into a far-right haven under his ownership.
And of course, the addendum to all that political self-sabotage might be the most incredible detail yet: Musk inevitably flamed out with Trump in spectacular style, meaning he now holds none of the influence that could help his business interests — and has managed to alienate huge swathes of potential buyers on both the right and the left.
Aside from all that, Musk also seems to have been asleep behind the wheel of Tesla. The EV company has suffered tremendously under the billionaire’s leadership over the past 18 months as he oversaw the disastrous launch of the ugly and crappily-made Cybertruck, became the repeated subject of government investigation over its incorrectly-named “Full Self-Driving” feature, and unleashed its uber-glitchy Robotaxi service onto the unsuspecting streets of Austin.
When a regular person makes jokes about dicks and weed, it’s generally cringe in an innocuous way. When the world’s richest man does it — especially while hamstringing the federal government, being virulently bigoted, providing a safe space for literal Nazis, and operating “assisted driving” features that keep maiming and killing people — it’s not at all cute. And the markets, obviously, have responded in kind.
More on Tesla: A Clear Sign Just Emerged That Tesla Is Panicking