Tesla Board Asks Elon Musk to Step Down

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It’s broadly repeated that Winston Churchill as soon as stated, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.” Though it’s not clear if Churchill ever did really say that, it has turn out to be a preferred quote and has offered numerous laughs. However it’s not solely Individuals who wrestle to do the correct factor the primary time, and it’s mainly a part of human nature that it could take us a very long time to simply accept onerous truths and cope with issues and challenges realistically — much more so when one thing important has really modified and gone from useful to dangerous.

It’s no secret that Tesla gross sales have been half a world off of the place they had been purported to be. Just a few years in the past, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stated that Tesla gross sales would develop at about 50% a 12 months by way of the 2020s — not essentially yearly, however on common. That was taking place for a bit, however issues haven’t precisely been going in keeping with plan for greater than a 12 months now. Removed from seeing 50% gross sales progress in 2024, Tesla gross sales really declined final 12 months. That is within the context of the broader EV market rising. Development was maybe not as excessive as many anticipated, however EV gross sales had been rising — simply not Tesla’s.

Previously 12 months, Musk has gone from pretty politically impartial and indifferent to extraordinarily politically concerned — and sometimes to a stunning diploma. His extremist tendencies have dramatically upset thousands and thousands of individuals within the US, the UK, Germany, France, and lots of, many different locations. This has all led to important gross sales hits, in addition to protests at Tesla shops, Tesla homeowners placing bumper stickers on their automobiles to disassociate themselves from Elon Musk, and even unlawful vandalism and violence that almost all of us would by no means help or condone. Whenever you’re attending to the purpose of protests and bumper stickers, you already know that there’s additionally acquired to be a point of market response. In actual fact, Tesla gross sales are down far more in 2025 than they even had been in 2024.

After all, the refreshed Tesla Mannequin Y shook issues up a bit — manufacturing traces needed to be shut down and reworked, some consumers have been ready on the brand new Mannequin Y, and so on., and so on. However it appears extremely unlikely that has triggered as a lot of a dip in gross sales as we’ve seen, particularly given every kind of different proof that Musk’s life on the White Home, in DOGE places of work, and sometimes proper beside or behind Donald Trump is hurting Tesla gross sales.

Then there’s the just about fixed tweeting (displaying clear indicators of sleep deprivation), preoccupation with different corporations (Elon Musk’s X merging with Elon Musk’s xAI … SpaceX rockets exploding whereas others carry astronauts house), drama with the mama of his eleventh (or twelfth?) child, quite a few lawsuits, and the distracts simply go on and on and on. Any cheap and unbiased board of administrators of a Fortune 500 firm would have pulled the CEO into the board room a very long time in the past and stated, “hey, you need to get focused on our company and improving these numbers or you’ve got to go.” (By the best way, we simply skipped previous nearly a decade of missed self-driving targets.)

Properly, the Tesla board of administrators isn’t precisely cheap and unbiased. Musk has been allowed to tarnish the Tesla model (that he as soon as was vital in increase) and drive gross sales down, down, down because the board has remained silent and seemingly ineffective. Till immediately….

Information has damaged that the Tesla board of administrators has requested Elon Musk to step down from his position as CEO. He would nonetheless have a job within the firm, however not working it and never being the principle face of the corporate. It’s not clear but who will step in as the brand new CEO, although. Keep tuned — we must always have extra data quickly. That stated, when the clock strikes midnight, the fairytale may very well be over, and we may very well be again the place we began — exhausting all different choices earlier than going with the apparent one.