Tesla’s terrible ride in 5 charts
From stock price declines to S&P ranking, a look at Tesla’s performance this year.
2025 hasn’t been a good year for Tesla, whose CEO, despite rubbing shoulders with the president of the United States, has been running his businesses “with great difficulty.”
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle company has erased all of the epic gains it made since President Donald Trump’s election — at one point the stock was up more than 90% — and the Trump bump has turned into a Trump slump.
Yesterday’s 15% decline represented the biggest daily drop in Tesla’s stock price since 2020, back when there was a global pandemic, supply chain chaos, and the S&P failed to induct the car company onto its titular list of 500 blue-chip companies.
Indeed, Tesla, which has since made it onto the S&P 500, is the worst-performing stock on the list in 2025. It’s down 45% since the start of the year.
One reason? Tesla sales have mostly been declining around the world. In February, sales dropped in China and across Europe. While sales in the US appeared to buck the trend last month, they rose about as much as they had declined the month before, pretty much canceling out sales growth so far this year.
Forward-looking estimates don’t look much brighter, as analysts’ sales forecasts keep dropping. FactSet consensus estimates peg Tesla’s 2025 deliveries at just shy of 2 million, but individual firms lately have been even less flattering. Yesterday UBS said it expects Tesla’s sales to drop to 1.7 million this year, a 5% decline year over year and certainly not the “return to growth” Tesla has predicted.
And things could certainly get worse if, say, Trump finally decides to revoke the $7,500 federal EV tax credit. A recent survey by insurance comparison website Insurify found that more than a third of Tesla owners wouldn’t have purchased their vehicles without it.
