A fire at a Tesla dealership in Plaisance-du-Touch. Twelve cars were reportedly destroyed. Police are investigating whether the fire was started intentionally. Photo: La Dépêche, via X
A fire at a Tesla dealership in Plaisance-du-Touch. Twelve cars were reportedly destroyed. Police are investigating whether the fire was started intentionally. Photo: La Dépêche, via X
Elon Musk's word-of-mouth value to Tesla has flipped from a huge positive years ago to the loudest negative anyone could ever imagine.
With Tesla’s (TSLA) stock value dropping like a parachute-less skydiver one has to wonder what the company’s board is thinking right now. The board should be considering the massive problem they are faced with. That problem is that their brand is married to, joined at the hip with and generally epoxied to a Ketamine junky who is spending most of his time tearing down the American government.
What drove Tesla’s marketing for many years was essentially a social media personality who garnered millions of fans who would hang on his every word. Musk refused to do any advertising, just Tweets. It worked and he managed to generate one of the most impressive word-of-mouth campaigns anyone ever heard of.
Time marched on and so did his ambitions, and he decided to buy the platform he dominated. There’s not much point in rehashing his destruction of Twitter. But many people didn’t read the tea leaves that his shtick of “free speech absolutism” would lead to opening the platform back up to Nazis and his no-holds-barred support of Trump.
After using substantial sums from his personal fortune to help get Trump elected, his daily focus is not on his other companies, like Tesla, but rather on his current obsession of operating as some sort of a defacto co-president to Trump. Elon Musk is an employee of Tesla. He may be the CEO, but he is still an employee who owes a responsibility of care to his employer, regardless of his “exalted” status—exhausting is a better word now.
This is where the board at Tesla should be chiming in. A board has specific duties to the corporation and its shareholders.
According to Nolo.com:
In a corporate environment, both officers and directors are expected to use appropriate care and diligence when acting on behalf of their corporation. They should exercise reasonable prudence in carrying out their duties to achieve the best interests of the corporation. An officer or director may be held personally liable for failing to exercise reasonable or ordinary care under the circumstances.
Musk’s actions are currently tanking the Tesla brand internationally. Sales last month in Germany dropped 76 percent.
According to Mashable:
According to the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA), Tesla vehicle registrations across the EU, including the UK, Iceland, Norway, Switzerland, and Liechtenstein, fell by 45 percent from January 2024 to January 2025. It’s not just Europe, either.
Tesla sales in Australia fell by nearly 72 percent in February. The company only sold 1,592 vehicles last month compared to the 5,665 it sold the previous year.
The brand connection between Elon Musk, Trump and Tesla is causing untold havoc on sales and have resulted in acts of vandalism. In the UK people have been putting “Swasticar” stickers on Teslas on the street. In the US, people have been spray painting phallic symbols and “Elon sucks” on an entire lot of Cybertrucks. In France, a dozen Teslas were set on fire in a dealership parking lot.
With Elon’s open support of the far-right AfD party in Germany, he has melded his image with those wannabe resurgent Nazis. Calling his views and actions with DOGE unpopular is a vast understatement.
Musk used to be a seen as a maverick visionary and is now acting as an advocate of world-dominating fascism. Why and how he got this way should be pretty obvious. He is a druggy and regularly uses Ketamine and other substances. The damage that drugs like this do to a personality are impossible to overstate.
This is who the Tesla board is still retaining as the CEO of the company. Elon Musk is clearly in breach of his fiduciary duty to the company. Since he only holds 13 percent of the company stock the board should be able to fire him. It would be wise for them to do so, or face potential shareholder lawsuits for their own violations of their fiduciary duties. Once fired, Tesla would also be wise to sue Musk for damages to the company’s revenues and reputation. Frankly, just cutting ties with him would immediately improve their image.
Face it folks, a guy staring at drug induced hallucinations is not a visionary. He’s just another drug addict in need of a clean up. Elon’s word-of-mouth value to Tesla has flipped from a positive years ago to the loudest negative anyone could ever imagine. With Elon Musk as CEO, Tesla has now become a symbol of encroaching fascism and discrimination. These are hardly the values the Tesla board should be endorsing. But this will be the company’s insurmountable problem as long as Musk is connected to it.
Marty Kassowitz is co-founder of Factkeepers. As founder of Interest Factory and View360, he brings more than 30 years experience in effective online communications, social media management, and platform development to the site. He is a writer, designer, editor and long time observer of the ill-logic demonstrated by too many members of the species known as Mankind. After a long history of somewhat private commentary on a subject he totally hates: politics, Marty was encouraged to build this site and put up his own analyses as well as curate relevant content from other sources.
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