Tesla’s first quarterly report of 2025 is its gloomiest since 2022, when the company was battling with COVID supply constraints and its CEO was dumping stock to finance his acquisition of Twitter. The company’s net income is down 71 percent, missing analysts’ already lowered expectations. It’s selling fewer cars and making less money on each one. Customers are starting to see its most popular vehicles as stale, while its last fully new vehicle, the Cybertruck, is the biggest automotive flop in decades. The company is making long-term investments in AI and autonomous vehicles (its risky plan for the future), meanwhile demand for EVs in general is softening (Tesla’s financial reality for now). It’s still dependent on carbon credits sold to other automakers to remain profitable, which it is, narrowly. Plus there’s a trade war going on.

Some of these issues are important, as Tesla was eager to tell shareholders this week. But one additional factor outweighs all of the rest combined, and its name is Elon Musk. As The Wall Street Journal reported:

Musk said on Tesla’s first-quarter earnings call on Tuesday that he would be allocating more time to Tesla starting next month “now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done …”

The timing........

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