Musk damaged Tesla’s brand in just a few months. Fixing it will likely take longer

US President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk speak to the press as they stand next to a Tesla Cybertruck on the South Portico of the White House on March 11, 2025 in Washington, DC. (AFP)
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Updated 24 April 2025
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Musk damaged Tesla’s brand in just a few months. Fixing it will likely take longer

  • Sales have plunged for Tesla amid protests and boycotts over Musk’s embrace of far right-wing views
  • Profits have been sliced by two-thirds so far this year, and rivals from China, Europe and the US are pouncing

 

NEW YORK: Elon Musk has been called a Moonshot Master, the Edison of Our Age and the Architect of the Future, but he’s got a big problem at his car company and it’s not clear he can fix it: damage to its brand.
Sales have plunged for Tesla amid protests and boycotts over Musk’s embrace of far right-wing views. Profits have been sliced by two-thirds so far this year, and rivals from China, Europe and the US are pouncing.
On Tuesday came some relief as Musk announced in an earnings call with investors that he would be scaling back his government cost-cutting job in Washington to a “day or two per week” to focus more on his old job as Tesla’s boss.
Investors pushed up Tesla’s stock 5 percent Wednesday, though there are plenty of challenges ahead.
Who wants a Tesla?
Musk seemed to downplay the role that brand damage played in the drop in first-quarter sales on the investor call. Instead, he emphasized something more fleeting — an upgrade to Tesla’s best-selling Model Y that forced a shutdown of factories and pinched both supply and demand.
While financial analysts following the company have noted that potential buyers probably held back while waiting for the upgrade, hurting results, even the most bullish among them say the brand damage is real, and more worrisome.
“This is a full blown crisis,” said Wedbush Securities’ normally upbeat Dan Ives earlier this month. In a note to its clients, JP Morgan warned of “unprecedented brand damage.”
Musk’s take on the protests
Musk dismissed the protests against Tesla on the call as the work of people angry at his leadership of the Department of Government Efficiency because “those who are receiving the waste and fraud wish it to continue.”
But the protests in Europe, thousands of miles from Washington, came after Musk supported far-right politicians there. Angry Europeans hung Musk in effigy in Milan, projected an image of him doing a straight-arm salute on a Tesla factory in Berlin and put up posters in London urging people not to buy “Swasticars” from him.
Sales in Europe have gone into a free fall in the first three months of this year — down 39 percent. In Germany, sales plunged 62 percent.
Another worrying sign: On Tuesday, Tesla backed off its earlier promise that sales would recover this year after dropping in 2024 for the first time a dozen years. Tesla said the global trade situation was too uncertain and declined to repeat the forecast.
Here come the rivals
Meanwhile, Tesla’s competition is stealing its customers.
Among its fiercest rivals now is Chinese giant BYD. Earlier this year, the EV maker announced it had developed an electric battery that can charge within minutes. And Tesla’s European rivals have begun offering new models with advanced technology that is making them real Tesla alternatives just as popular opinion has turned against Musk.
Tesla’s share of the EV market in the US has dropped from two-thirds to less than half, according to Cox Automotive.
Pinning hopes on cybercabs
Another rival, Google parent Alphabet, is already ahead of Tesla in an area that Musk has promised will help remake his company: Cybercabs.
One of the highlights of Tesla’s call Tuesday was Musk sticking with his previous prediction that it will l aunch driverless cabs without steering wheels and pedals in Austin, Texas, in June, and in other cities soon after.
But Google’s service, called Waymo, already has logged millions of driverless cybercab trips in San Francisco, Phoenix, Los Angeles, and Austin as part of a partnership with ride-hailing leader Uber.
A driverless future for Tesla owners?
Musk also told analysts that this driverless capability will be available on the Tesla vehicles already on the road through software updates over the air, and put a timeline on it: “There will be millions of Teslas operating autonomously in the second half of the year.”
But he has made similar promises before, only to miss his deadlines, such as in April 2019 when he vowed full automation by the end of the next year. He repeated the prediction, moving up the date, several more times, in following years.
A big problem is federal investigators have not given the all-clear that Tesla vehicles can drive completely on their own safely. Among other probes, safety regulators are looking into Tesla’s so-called Full Self-Driving, which is only partial self-driving, for its tie to accidents in low-visibility conditions like when there is sun glare.
On the positive side
In competition with rivals in the US, Tesla currently has one clear advantage: It will get hurt by less by tariffs because most of its vehicles are built in the countries where they are sold, including those in its biggest market, the US
“Tariffs are still tough on a company where margins are still low, but we do have localized supply chains,” Musk said Tuesday. “That puts us in a strong position.”
The company also reconfirmed that a cheaper version of its best-selling vehicle, the Model Y sport utility vehicle, will be ready for customers in the first half of this year. That could help boost sales.
Another plus: The company had a blow out first quarter in its energy storage business. And Musk has promised to be producing 5,000 Optimus robots, another Tesla business, by the end of the year.
Pricey stock
Even after falling nearly 50 percent from its December highs, Tesla’s stock is still very richly valued based on the one yardstick that really matters in the long run: its earnings.
At 110 times its expected per share earnings this year, the stock is valued more than 25 times higher than General Motors. The average stock on in the S&P 500 index trades at less than 20 times earnings.
That leaves Tesla little margin for error if something goes wrong.


NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander

Updated 5 sec ago
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NASA spacecraft around the moon photographs the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander

  • The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace

CAPE CANAVERAL, Florida: A NASA spacecraft around the moon has photographed the crash site of a Japanese company’s lunar lander.
NASA released the pictures Friday, two weeks after ispace’s lander slammed into the moon.
The images show a dark smudge where the lander, named Resilience, and its mini rover crashed into Mare Frigoris or Sea of Cold, a volcanic region in the moon’s far north. A faint halo around the area was formed by the lunar dirt kicked up by the impact.
NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter captured the scene last week.
The crash was the second failure in two years for Tokyo-based ispace. Company officials plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what doomed the latest mission, launched from Cape Canaveral in January.


Democrats are at odds over the Israel-Iran war as Trump considers intervening

Updated 32 min 22 sec ago
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Democrats are at odds over the Israel-Iran war as Trump considers intervening

  • Many prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations are staying silent, so far, on the Israel-Iran war

After nearly two years of stark divisions over the war in Gaza and support for Israel, Democrats are now finding themselves at odds over US policy toward Iran as progressives demand unified opposition to President Donald Trump’s consideration of a strike against Tehran’s nuclear program while party leaders tread more cautiously.
US leaders of all stripes have found common ground for two decades on the position that Iran cannot be allowed to obtain a nuclear weapon. The longtime US foe has supported groups that have killed Americans across the Mideast and threatens to destroy Israel. But Trump’s public flirtation with joining Israel’s offensive against Iran may become the Democratic Party’s latest schism, just as it is sharply dividing Trump’s isolationist “Make America Great Again” base from more hawkish conservatives.
While progressives have staked out clear opposition to Trump’s potential actions, the party leadership is playing the safer ground of demanding a role for Congress before Trump could use force against Iran. Many prominent Democrats with 2028 presidential aspirations are staying silent, so far, on the Israel-Iran war.
“They are sort of hedging their bets,” said Joel Rubin, a former deputy assistant secretary of state who served under Democratic President Barack Obama and is now a strategist on foreign policy. “The beasts of the Democratic Party’s constituencies right now are so hostile to Israel’s war in Gaza that it’s really difficult to come out looking like one would corroborate an unauthorized war that supports Israel without blowback.”
Progressive Democrats use Trump’s ideas and words
Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., has called Trump’s consideration of an attack “a defining moment for our party” and has introduced legislation with Rep. Thomas Massie, R-Kentucky, that calls on the Republican president to “terminate” the use of US armed forces against Iran unless “explicitly authorized” by a declaration of war from Congress.
Khanna used Trump’s own campaign arguments of putting American interests first when the congressman spoke to Theo Von, a comedian who has been supportive of the president and is popular in the “manosphere.”
“That’s going to cost this country a lot of money that should be being spent here at home,” said Khanna, who is said to be among the many Democrats eyeing the party’s 2028 primary.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, an independent who twice sought the Democratic presidential nomination, pointed to Trump’s stated goal during his inaugural speech of being known as “a peacemaker and a unifier.”
“Very fine words. Trump should remember them today. Supporting Netanyahu’s war against Iran would be a catastrophic mistake,” Sanders said about Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Sanders has reintroduced legislation prohibiting the use of federal money for force against Iran, insisted that US military intervention would be unwise and illegal and accused Israel of striking unprovoked. Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York signed on to a similar bill from Sanders in 2020, but he is so far holding off this time.
Some believe the party should stake out a clear anti-war stance as Trump weighs whether to launch a military offensive that is seemingly counter to the anti-interventionism he promised during his 2024 campaign.
“The leaders of the Democratic Party need to step up and loudly oppose war with Iran and demand a vote in Congress,” said Tommy Vietor, a former Obama aide, on X.
Mainstream Democrats are cautious, while critical
The staunch support from the Democratic administration of President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for Israel’s war against Hamas loomed over the party’s White House ticket in 2024, even with the criticism of Israel’s handling of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Trump exploited the divisions to make inroads with Arab American voters and Orthodox Jews on his way back to the White House.
Today, the Israel-Iran war is the latest test for a party struggling to repair its coalition before next year’s midterm elections and the quick-to-follow kickoff to the 2028 presidential race. Bridging the divide between an activist base that is skeptical of foreign interventions and already critical of US support for Israel and more traditional Democrats and independents who make up a sizable, if not always vocal, voting bloc.
In a statement after Israel’s first strikes, Schumer said Israel has a right to defend itself and “the United States’ commitment to Israel’s security and defense must be ironclad as they prepare for Iran’s response.”
Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nevada, was also cautious in responding to the Israeli action and said “the US must continue to stand with Israel, as it has for decades, at this dangerous moment.”
“It really seems like the Trump and Iran war track is kind of going along like a Formula 1 racetrack, and then the Democrats are in some sort of tricycle or something trying to keep up,” said Ryan Costello, a policy director for the Washington-based National Iranian American Council, which advocates for diplomatic engagement between US and Iran.
Other Democrats have condemned Israel’s strikes and accused Netanyahu of sabotaging nuclear talks with Iran. They are reminding the public that Trump withdrew in 2018 from a nuclear agreement that limited Tehran’s enrichment of uranium in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions negotiated during the Obama administration.
“Trump created the problem,” said Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Connecticut, on X. “The single reason Iran was so close to obtaining a nuclear weapon is that Trump destroyed the diplomatic agreement that put major, verifiable constraints on their nuclear program.”
The progressives’ pushback
A Pearson Institute/Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll from September 2024 found that about half of Democrats said the US was being “too supportive” of Israel and about 4 in 10 said their level support was “about right.” Democrats were more likely than independents and Republicans to say the Israeli government had “a lot” of responsibility for the continuation of the war between Israel and Hamas.
About 6 in 10 Democrats and half of Republicans felt Iran was an adversary with whom the US was in conflict.
Democratic Rep. Yassamin Ansari, an Iranian American from Arizona, said Iranians are unwitting victims in the conflict because there aren’t shelters or infrastructure to protect civilians from targeted missiles as there are in Israel.
“The Iranian people are not the regime, and they should not be punished for its actions,” Ansari posted on X, while criticizing Trump for fomenting fear among the Iranian population. “The Iranian people deserve freedom from the barbaric regime, and Israelis deserve security.”


Pro-Palestinian protest leader defiant despite US deportation threat

Updated 22 June 2025
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Pro-Palestinian protest leader defiant despite US deportation threat

  • Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential deportation

NEWARK, United States: Mahmoud Khalil, one of the most prominent leaders of US pro-Palestinian campus protests, pledged Saturday to keep campaigning after he was released from a federal detention center.
“Even if they would kill me, I would still speak for Palestine,” Khalil said as he was greeted by cheering supporters at Newark airport, just outside New York City.
Khalil, a legal permanent resident in the United States who is married to a US citizen and has a US-born son, had been in custody since March facing potential deportation.
He was freed from a federal immigration detention center in Louisiana on Friday, hours after a judge ordered his release on bail.
The Columbia University graduate was a figurehead of student protests against US ally Israel’s war in Gaza, and the Trump administration labeled him a national security threat.
“Just the fact I am here sends a message — the fact that all these attempts to suppress pro-Palestine voices have failed now,” said Khalil, who is still fighting his potential expulsion from the United States.
He spoke alongside his wife Noor Abdalla, who gave birth to the couple’s first child while Khalil was in detention, as well as Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
“Mahmoud Khalil was imprisoned for 104 days by this administration, by the Trump administration, with no grounds and for political reasons, because Mahmoud Khalil is an advocate for Palestinian human rights,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
“This is not over, and we will have to continue to support this case,” she added.
Khalil, who was born in Syria to Palestinian parents, is not allowed to leave the United States except for “self-deportation” under the terms of his release.
He also faces restrictions on where he can travel within the country.
President Donald Trump’s government has justified pushing for Khalil’s deportation by saying his continued presence in the United States could carry “potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”
Beyond his legal case, Khalil’s team fears he could face threats out of detention.
“We are very mindful about his security, and the irony is that he is the one being persecuted,” Baher Azmy, one of his lawyers, told AFP.
“But he is committed to peace and because he is rejecting US government policy he is under threat,” Azmy added, without elaborating on any security measures in place for Khalil and his family.
 

 


Tens of thousands join pro-Palestinian marches across Europe

People attend a pro-Palestinians demonstration in Berlin, Saturday, June 21, 2025. (AP)
Updated 22 June 2025
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Tens of thousands join pro-Palestinian marches across Europe

  • Saturday’s marches comes amid heightened global tensions as the United States mulls joining Israel’s strikes against Iran

LONDON: Tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian protesters marched in European cities Saturday calling for an end to the war in Gaza, amid concerns the Iran-Israel conflict could spark wider regional devastation.
In London, AFP journalists saw tens of thousands of protesters, who waved Palestinian flags as they marched through the British capital clad in keffiyeh scarves.
In Berlin, more than 10,000 people gathered in the center of the city in support of Gaza, according to police figures.
And in the Swiss capital Bern, march organizers estimated that 20,000 people rallied in front of the national parliament, urging the government to back a ceasefire.
There have been monthly protests in the British capital since the start of the 20-month-long war between Israel and Hamas, which has ravaged Gaza.
This Saturday, protesters there carried signs including “Stop arming Israel” and “No war on Iran” as they marched in the sweltering heat.
“It’s important to remember that people are suffering in Gaza. I fear all the focus will be on Iran now,” said 34-year-old Harry Baker.
“I don’t have great love for the Iranian regime, but we are now in a dangerous situation.” This was his third pro-Palestinian protest, he added.

Saturday’s marches comes amid heightened global tensions as the United States mulls joining Israel’s strikes against Iran.
Tehran said Saturday that more than 400 people had been killed in Iran since Israel launched strikes last week claiming its arch-foe was close to acquiring a nuclear weapon, which Iran denies.
Some 25 people have been killed in Israel, according to official figures.
One marcher in London, a 31-year-old Iranian student who did not want to share her name, told AFP she had family in Iran and was “scared.”
“I’m worried about my country. I know the regime is not good but it’s still my country. I’m scared,” she said.
Gaza is suffering from famine-like conditions according to UN agencies in the region following an Israeli aid blockade.
Gaza’s civil defense agency has reported that hundreds have been killed by Israeli forces while trying to reach the US- and Israeli-backed aid distribution sites.
“People need to keep their eyes on Gaza. That’s where the genocide is happening,” said 60-year-old protester Nicky Marcus.

In Berlin, demonstrators gathered mid-afternoon close to the parliament, some chanting “Germany finances, Israel bombs.”
“You can’t sit on the sofa and be silent. Now is the time when we all need to speak up,” said protester Gundula, who did not want to give her second name.
For Marwan Radwan, the point of the protest was to bring attention to the “genocide currently taking place” and the “dirty work” being done by the German government.
In Bern, demonstrators carried banners calling on the federal government to intervene in the war in Gaza, expressing solidarity with Palestinians.
The rally there was called by organizations including Amnesty International, the Social Democratic Party, the Greens and the Swiss Trade Union Federation.
Slogans included “Stop the occupation,” “Stop the starvation, stop the violence,” and “Right to self-determination.”
Some marchers chanted: “We are all the children of Gaza.”
The overall death toll in Gaza since the war broke out has reached at least 55,637 people, according to the health ministry.
Israel has denied it is carrying out a genocide and says it aims to wipe out Hamas after the Islamist group’s October 7, 2023 attack on Israel resulted in the deaths of 1,219 people.

 


Belarus opposition leader freed from jail after US mediation

Updated 21 June 2025
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Belarus opposition leader freed from jail after US mediation

  • His wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya said the US helped broker the deal and thanked US President Donald Trump
  • Tikhanovsky, 46, had been imprisoned for more than five years

WARSAW: Belarus’s top jailed opposition leader Sergei Tikhanovsky was freed alongside over a dozen other political prisoners on Saturday in a surprise release hailed as a “symbol of hope.”

His wife Svetlana Tikhanovskaya, who took the mantle of the opposition after his jailing, said the United States helped broker the deal and thanked US President Donald Trump.

Tikhanovsky, 46, had been imprisoned for more than five years.

He planned to run against incumbent Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko in the August 2020 presidential election, but was arrested and detained weeks before the vote.

Svetlana — a political novice at the time of his arrest — took his place in the polls.

She posted a video on Saturday of her embracing Tikhanovsky after his release with the caption: “FREE.”

“It’s hard to describe the joy in my heart,” she said in a post on X.

Thirteen others were released, including Radio Liberty journalist Igor Karnei, who was arrested in 2023 and jailed for participating in an “extremist” organization.

They have now been transferred from Belarus to Lithuania, where they are receiving “proper care,” Lithuanian foreign minister Kestutis Budrys said.

The announcement came just hours after Lukashenko met US special envoy Keith Kellogg in Minsk, the highest profile visit of a US official to the authoritarian state in years.

Belarus, ruled by Lukashenko since 1994, has outlawed all genuine opposition parties and is the only European country to retain the death penalty as a punishment.

The eastern European country still holds over 1,000 political prisoners in its jails, according to Viasna.

Swedish-Belarusian citizen Galina Krasnyanskaya, arrested in 2023 for allegedly supporting Ukraine, was also freed, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said.

The release comes amid a broader warming of relations between the United States and Belarus’s chief ally Russia under Trump.

Since taking office, the Republican has engaged in direct talks with Vladimir Putin, ending his predecessor’s policy of isolating the Russian president.

Tikhanovsky was for years held incommunicado, and in 2023 his wife was told that he had “died.”

In a video published by Viasna on Saturday, he appeared almost unrecognizable, his head shaven and face emaciated.

Tikhanovsky was sentenced in 2021 to 18 years in prison for “organizing riots” and “inciting hatred” and then to 18 months extra for “insubordination.”

A charismatic activist, Tikhanovsky drew the ire of authorities for describing Lukashenko as a “cockroach” and his campaign slogan was “Stop the cockroach.”

Lukashenko claimed a landslide victory in the 2020 election, a result that sparked massive opposition protests which authorities violently suppressed.

The Belarusian autocrat claimed a record seventh term in elections earlier this year that observers blasted as a farce.

Fellow Belarusian political activists and foreign politicians welcomed the release.

Poland’s foreign minister Radoslaw Sikorski said the “free world” needed Tikhanovsky.

“My sincerest joy goes out to you, Tikhanovskaya and your entire family,” he wrote on X.

Former Belarusian culture minister Pavel Latushko, who supported the 2020 protests against Lukashenko, said all those released had been jailed illegally and hailed Tikhanovsky’s release as an “important moment.”

European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen hailed Tikhanovsky’s release and called for Belarus to free its other political prisoners.

“This is fantastic news and a powerful symbol of hope for all the political prisoners suffering under the brutal Lukashenka regime,” she said on X.

Germany’s Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul said Tikhanovsky’s release was “fantastically good news.”

“At the same time, we must not forget the many other prisoners in Belarus. Lukashenko must finally release them,” he said on X.