Tesla shareholders have approved a package that could make Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. A new working paper, The Musk Partisan Effect on Tesla Sales, calculates that between October 2022 (when Musk acquired Twitter) and April 2025, Tesla sales in the US would have been 67 to 83 per cent higher without Musk’s “partisan effect” – equivalent to up to 1.26 million additional vehicles. His political interventions also boosted rival electric and hybrid vehicle sales by 17 to 22 per cent, the authors add, while potentially putting California’s zero-emissions vehicle targets at risk. The study finds that by the first quarter of 2025, monthly sales figures for Tesla would have been about 150 per cent higher were it not for Musk. The study looks only at US data, but the European picture is much bleaker for Tesla.
