The Tesla Brain Drain
The future of the struggling car company rests on Elon Musk more than ever before.
Before DOGE, there was Twitter. In 2023, Elon Musk seemed too distracted by his latest venture to run the world’s most valuable car company. Tesla was faltering as he focused on remaking (and renaming) the social-media network. So at Tesla’s investor-day event in Austin that March, Musk responded with a rare show of force. He was joined onstage by a cadre of more than a dozen of the company’s top executives, all to signal that even if he was extremely busy, Tesla was run by a world-class team: “We’ve obviously got significant bench strength here,” Musk said. Sure enough, Tesla closed out 2023 with the best sales it’s ever had.
Musk is in bad need of a similar comeback right now as he returns from Washington to focus on his struggling car company. In recent months, Tesla sales have plummeted as the chain-saw-wielding, far-right centibillionaire has turned off traditionally liberal electric-car buyers. The MAGA faithful never stepped up to take their place, and they’re less likely to do so now that the Trump-Musk bromance is over. Musk has other problems: Tesla created the modern electric car as we know it, but now the automaker is falling behind the competition while Musk is more focused on AI and robots than selling cars. And on top of everything else, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act working its way through Congress could cost Tesla billions each year.
This time around, however, Musk can’t lean on that aforementioned bench even if he wants to. Something similar to DOGE’s steep staffing cuts has been playing out at Tesla. About a third of the executives who stood onstage with him two years ago have left Tesla or been ousted. Many other high-profile company leaders have resigned. Just since April, Tesla has lost its head of software engineering, head of battery technology, and head of humanoid robotics. Tens of thousands of rank-and-file employees left last year amid waves of mass layoffs. At the end of the day, Tesla is the Musk show: The company is the biggest source of his wealth, and is core to his reputation as a tech genius. Now, after all of the pivots and attrition, the future of Tesla rests singularly on Musk more than it ever has.