The board of directors at EV maker Tesla has responded to a report that suggested that members were seeking a replacement for CEO Elon Musk.
The Wall Street Journal, which cited ‘sources familiar with the discussions’, reported that Tesla’s board had opened a search to succeed Elon Musk.
Indeed, it reported that Tesla’s board members had reached out to several executive search firms (aka headhunters) a month ago to work on a formal process for finding the company’s next CEO.
But Tesla chair Robyn Denholm tweeted on X (formerly Twitter) that the report was “absolutely false.”
Tesla tensions?
“Earlier today, there was a media report erroneously claiming that the Tesla Board had contacted recruitment firms to initiate a CEO search at the company,” she tweeted.
“This is absolutely false (and this was communicated to the media before the report was published). The CEO of Tesla is Elon Musk and the Board is highly confident in his ability to continue executing on the exciting growth plan ahead.”
The report that board members had approached headhunters came as tensions grew at Tesla, after Q1 profits crashed 71 percent, as sales also declined, prompting Elon Musk on an earning call to confirm that going forward he will prioritise Tesla over his White House role at Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency (Doge).
With profits and stock price sinking (Tesla’s share price has declined 30 percent so far this year), the WSJ reported that Tesla board members had told Musk that he needed to spend more time at the company.
At the time of writing, the report was unclear whether the board members reportedly seeking a Musk replacement were acting on behalf of the board as a collective, or if it was only some of them taking steps to find a new chief executive.
The Tesla board is only made up of eight people, which includes chair Robyn Denholm, Elon Musk, Kimbal Musk (his brother), Ira Ehrenpreis, Joe Gebbia, JB Straubel, Kathleen Wilson-Thompson, and James Murdoch (son of media mogul Rupert Murdoch).
Musk lashes out
Elon Musk also took the opportunity to lash out at the WSJ report when he tweeted on X that that the publication had published a “DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE.”
It is an EXTREMELY BAD BREACH OF ETHICS that the @WSJ would publish a DELIBERATELY FALSE ARTICLE and fail to include an unequivocal denial beforehand by the Tesla board of directors! https://t.co/9xdypLGg3c
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) May 1, 2025
There is no doubt that Elon Musk is experiencing a widespread backlash to his role at Trump’s Doge, his support for the far right, and his political interventions.
There have been reports that some Tesla investors have openly called for Musk’s removal.
During the recent Q1 earnings call, Musk had blamed the “blowback” on people who would “try to attack me and the Doge team”.
Tesla sales of its EVs have dropped in some of its biggest markets and there have been political protests at some of its showrooms, as well as a growing consumer boycott of Tesla EVs that has seen owners returning their Teslas at “record levels” as consumers reacted to Musk’s activities within the Trump administration.
In March for example Electrek reported that Tesla as a brand could be finished in Germany, after T-Online conducted a survey of over 100,000 Germans which revealed that 94 percent of respondents won’t buy a Tesla vehicle ever again.
Musk also enraged many when he made twice made a straight arm gesture at a rally that his estranged daughter labelled as “definitely a nazi salute”.