Insiders at Tesla Concerned That Musk's Madness Is Damaging Company, Saying It Would Be Better If He Just Resigned

Elon Musk's antics have gotten so out of control that even his flunkies at Tesla are starting to get worried.

According to new reporting from The Washington Post, there's growing sentiment among employees that Musk — already involved in multiple enterprises before his foray into politics — has become "disengaged" from the automaker as he serves as President Donald Trump's right-hand man, leading the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.

The employees range from rank and file to senior managers. At a recent staff meeting, some of these managers expressed that the company would be better off if Musk resigned, per WaPo.

"He seems to have ghosted his own company," Nell Minow, vice chair of ValueEdge Advisors, and who donated the majority of her Tesla stock last year, told the newspaper. "He has inflicted a massive amount of damage on the perception of that company."

What's more, many employees fear that Musk may be permanently damaging Tesla's reputation by his association with Trump — and of course, his personal conduct, like performing Nazi salutes.

"While Musk might get away with a [Nazi-like] salute in some parts of the world, European markets reject such behavior," Tim Kraaijvanger, founder of the Dutch Tesla blog Tesla360.nl, told Wired. "World War Two still casts a long shadow."

These concerns come after a lackluster year for Tesla, with faltering sales, plunging profits, and stagnating revenue.

Automotive sales have been particularly bad in Europe, Wired notes, with a 13 percent drop in the European Union. But nowhere are the numbers more damning than in Norway, a country where 88.9 percent of all new cars sold are electric vehicles. Strikingly, Tesla sales fell in the Nordic country by 37.9 percent in 2024.

How much of the slump is attributable to Musk's self-immolation is up for debate, but it's undeniably a factor. In the US but especially Europe, various forms of protest have sprung up against Musk and Tesla, including public demonstrations and, more pervasively, vandalism of Tesla cars and locations, which typically involves spray-painting anti-Nazi imagery.

Not that Tesla's competitors will be complaining. "We have seen an increase in people writing to us and switching to Polestar in recent months," Michael Lohscheller, CEO of the Swedish EV company Polestar, told Wired.

In short, Tesla employees' fears that Musk could tank the company are more than justified.

And what threatens to get lost in all the bedlam is that even if Tesla keeps its position as a leading automaker, it's sacrificing its identity.

Per WaPo, employees are now beginning to doubt whether Musk still supports the company's mission to accelerate "the world's transition to sustainable energy." For one, Musk continues to support Trump even though the president intends to eliminate federal EV tax credits, which are nominally intended to incentivize a transition away from gas guzzling cars. Trump has also issued executive orders to reverse various climate change policies, while declaring a "national emergency" as a ploy to ramp up the production of fossil fuels.

None of this jibes with whatever's left intact of Tesla's original green image.

"We invested into this vision of what he stood for, and the old mission was for Tesla to build the sustainable future," Kevin Smith, a longtime shareholder who recently sold all his stock, told WaPo. "I bought into the scam and that’s on me — but now he’s doing the same thing to the country."

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