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Business students around the world will be studying the brand reputation journey of the US startup Tesla for many years to come. They will have plenty of material to work with. While investors are still sweet on the diversified company overall, CEO Elon Musk seems more determined than ever to discourage prospective car buyers from putting up their own money to buy a Tesla EV.
Brand Reputation & Tesla
The latest hit to Tesla’s brand reputation surfaced over the weekend, when word dropped that dozens of the leading, self-proclaimed MAGA influencers and US patriots who populate Musk’s personal social media site X (formerly Twitter) are not US patriots at all, or at least not the kind of patriots who are actually citizens of the US.
“Elon Musk’s social media site X has rolled out a new feature in an effort to increase transparency—and unwittingly revealed that many of the site’s top MAGA influencers are actually foreign actors,” Jack Revell of The Daily Beast reported on November 23.
The anonymity curtain was pulled back by the launch of X’s new “About This Account” feature on Friday, November 21, which included the location of origin for user accounts. “Upon rollout, rival factions began to inspect just where their online adversaries were really based on the combative social platform—with dozens of major MAGA and right-wing influencer accounts revealed to be based overseas,” Revell observed.
“Dozens of major accounts masquerading as ‘America First’ or ‘MAGA’ proponents have been identified as originating in places such as Russia, India, and Nigeria,” he elaborated.
Tesla At The Crossroads
The Russia connection is no surprise, considering reports of the relationship Musk has formed with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Besides that, the broad influence of foreign actors on social media conversations in the US is well documented. Their effectiveness in changing the outcome of an election is less well documented, but the impact has been documented enough to prompt the FBI and CISA (the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency) to issue a four-part PSA in the run-up to Election Day 2024.
“Foreign adversaries are using a variety of sophisticated disinformation campaigns, often leveraging new tools, such as generative artificial intelligence (AI), to craft and spread misleading content,” the agencies summarized in the fourth part of the PSA program.
Don’t just take their word for it. “The US’s three main strategic adversaries — Russia, China and Iran — were all involved in efforts to influence the 2024 election,” the European Institute for Security Studies noted in a briefing paper posted in December of 2024.
“This was not their first attempt: Russia interfered in the 2016 election, while China and Iran were active in the 2022 midterms,” EISS added.
In terms of a ripple effect on Tesla’s brand reputation and declining sales trajectory, the new revelations about foreign actors on X come at a particularly awkward period. Musk has been counting on the launch of new “affordable” EVs at around $40,000 to boost the automaker’s flagging sales, and blowback from the X debacle will not help.
The awkward timing of the revelations is even more awkwarder at a time when the mainstream media is beginning to sharpen its attention on Musk and his social media habits. “In recent weeks, the world’s wealthiest person used X to post about immigrants to Britain, saying they will cause the country’s collapse. He posted about examples of violent crime in Minnesota and South Carolina — where he does not live — and about judges in California and New York he believes are too lenient,” NBC News noted on November 22, in an analysis of Musk’s musings on X between September 17 and October 17.
By NBC’s count, during that one-month period, Musk racked up 1,716 posts, replies, and shares for an average of about 55 interactions per day, partly in promotion of his business and partly to engage with “issues that are typically the focus of the far right,” as described by NBC.
“Some of his messages invoke extreme ideas, like the antisemitic ‘great replacement’ conspiracy theory, which says there is a top-down plot organized by Jewish people to replace the white populations of the United States and Europe with nonwhite people,” NBC observed.
“Musk also smeared trans people, complained about Black-on-white crime, stoked fear about the end of civilization and shared his thoughts about the race of child actors,” NBC added.
Meanwhile, on November 23, the news-reading public got a fresh reminder of the hell that Musk unleashed upon federal agencies as the head of Trump’s “DOGE” office. According to exclusive reporting by Reuters, the office has been quietly disbanded, even though its charter was good through July of 2026.
So much for going quietly. The Reuters scoop has been humming around social media and broadcast throughout mainstream media, from People magazine to the San Francisco Chronicle, reminding everyone that Tesla CEO Elon Musk played an instrumental role in the mass firings of federal employees and the destruction of valuable taxpayer resources, a task he gleefully carried out with the help of a literal chainsaw.
What Else Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Despite the fresh torrent of negative publicity for Musk and Tesla, investors continue to hold the torch. That could be about to change. On November 20, Reuters drew attention to the ongoing legal battle over Musk’s unusually generous 2018 compensation of up to $55.8 billion. A lower court invalidated the package, but on appeal the case made its way to the Delaware Supreme Court, which heard arguments in October.
If the Supreme Court nixes the appeal, things will get … interesting! “If Tesla’s appeal fails, it could trigger a $26 billion hit to profits over two years to account for the replacement stock-compensation package it has promised Musk — at today’s much higher stock price,” Reuters reporter Chris Kirkham explained.
Another potential hit is coming in the form of rising competition from other EV makers with CEOs whose names rarely, if ever, circulate far outside of automotive circles. Here in the US, for example, the new 2026 Nissan LEAF has garnered enthusiastic reviews from the automotive press while hitting a starting MSRP of around $29,990. At that price point, Nissan has undercut Tesla’s new “affordable” EV by a good $10,000.
Globally, other automakers have begun to challenge Tesla’s long-held position as the #1 EV seller in the world. The Chinese firm BYD has been grabbing much of the media spotlight, but others are jockeying for a piece of the action. Last week, for example, Xiaomi announced that it has ramped up its full-year delivery goal by another 50,000 vehicles, to reach a target of 400,000 vehicles per year.
If you can think of any other likely up-and-comers, drop a note in the comment thread.
Photo: Yet another fresh wave of bad publicity has hit the Tesla brand, as CEO Elon Musk continues to cement himself into position as a thought leader in right wing extremist circles (credit: Carolyn Fortuna via CleanTechnica archive).
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