Opinion | Americans Are Realizing Tesla Isn’t the Only Electric Car

Then, inexplicably, Musk turned to Twitter and pushed Tesla off a cliff. This year, as he sold tens of billions of dollars of Tesla shares to finance the Twitter deal and seemed to stake his reputation on taming the squabbles roiling one of the most divisive places online, Tesla’s shares plummeted by more than 60 percent. Its slump is deeper than that of most of its rivals and far more than that of the S&P 500, which is down about 19 percent for the year.

Not all of Tesla’s problems are of Musk’s making. Like other global manufacturers, the company has faced Covid-related production delays in China. It has struggled to ramp up production at its new facilities in Austin, Texas, and Berlin. The Federal Reserve’s steady increases in interest rates and the looming prospect of a recession have also dampened Tesla’s fortunes. On Twitter, Musk has repeatedly blamed the Fed for Tesla’s stock swoon.

But analysts and investors I talked to said these were side issues. “Tesla is Musk and Musk is Tesla,” said Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities who follows Tesla. Unlike just about every other carmaker, Tesla spends almost nothing on advertising. Musk is and has long been the company’s sole marketer and chief evangelist, the main force driving the world’s desire to buy Teslas. And so any alteration in Musk’s cultural standing will affect the company’s standing, too. Musk’s time running Twitter has been “a massive brand destruction for Musk and for Tesla,” Ives said.

It’s not impossible for Tesla to shake off these problems. Musk has pledged to step down as Twitter’s chief executive as soon as he finds a replacement; Ives and Gerber told me that if this happens relatively quickly and Musk somehow becomes newly disciplined at keeping away from polarizing stances online, Tesla could quickly recapture its former glory.

Tesla still enjoys some advantages over rivals, especially its network of over 40,000 chargers around the world, making Teslas easier to juice up than other E.V.s. But the federal government plans to spend billions installing chargers across the country, most likely eroding Tesla’s lead. (Tesla has opened up its chargers in Europe to cars made by other automakers; it has said it plans to do so in North America, too.)

Colin Rusch, an analyst at the investment firm Oppenheimer & Co., pointed out that Tesla also enjoys a multiyear lead in certain E.V. technologies. It has invested deeply in advanced battery design and more efficient manufacturing processes, areas in which its rivals are only just getting started. Still, Rusch recently downgraded his expectations for Tesla’s stock price, citing increasingly negative sentiment toward Musk.