As Tesla slowly rotted from the inside over the past year or so, big name investors and higher-ups publicly signaled their frustration with their absentee CEO, leaving many wondering when — or if — he was coming back.
The electric vehicle giant has been slumping hard lately, thanks to worldwide disgust with Elon Musk's extreme behavior, Donald Trump's wide-ranging tariffs, massive Tesla recalls, and the rising star of Chinese EV giant BYD.
Though Tesla stock once made up the majority of Musk's fortune, the world's richest man has watch as his Tesla shares plummet in value, erasing $130 billion from his total net worth.
As such, it's no surprise that Tesla has shot to the top of Musk's priority list following his "retirement" from DOGE, after an alleged altercation with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent led Donald Trump to send him packing. (Though that unconfirmed reporting comes from the notoriously jealous Steve Bannon, who held Musk's seat as Buddy in Chief during Trump's first term.)
But in the shadow of Musk's bizarre antisocial behavior and ketamine use, some Tesla employees are concerned about their CEO's state of mind as he makes his uninspiring return.
The worries began ahead of Tesla's first quarter earnings call in late April, when Musk made an unusual appearance at the EV firm's office in Palo Alto, California — one of only a handful of personal visits to a company site since DOGE kicked off in January.
During the visit, according to the New York Times, the tech baron asked for a briefing on the impacts of Trump's tariffs on Tesla production — a wild question to ask two months after Trump announced the tariffs. Given the odd timing and Musk's proximity to Trump, this raised red flags around his competence, two people involved in the call told the NYT.
Just a few days later, Tesla reported its profits had dipped 71 percent to their lowest point in four years, prompting Musk to declare he would begin splitting time between his DC digs and his other ventures.
Musk also promised executives — as he has before — that Tesla's robotaxi service would save the company, blazing a trail for future revenue. "There will be millions of Teslas operating fully autonomously in the second half of next year," he said.
But Tesla faces some lofty competition in that arena, and Musk is playing catchup as the company nears its self-imposed deadline for live-service robotaxis in Austin later this month. That rollout is primed for disaster according to insiders — a fact Musk conveniently overlooked while he was holed up in his DOGE office.
The billionaire's previous behavior within his companies is well documented. He's been sued by SpaceX employees for sexual harassment, caught lambasting a wheelchair-using employee at X for his disability, and found to be performatively sleeping under his desk so Tesla employees would see.
Fresh off an ego-crushing defeat and a heightened appetite for mind-altering drugs, what workplace debauchery he gets into next is anyone's guess.
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