It comes after first-quarter profits at Tesla sank as the company grapples with falling sales, partly due to President Trump’s tariffs.Tesla said on Tuesday that quarterly profits fell by 71% to $409m (£306.77m) from $1.39bn (£1.04bn) in the first quarter of 2024. Revenues were also well below forecasts, dropping 9% to $19.3bn (£14.5bn) between January and March.
The company’s share price has plummeted by more than 50% since reaching a record high in mid-December. Starting probably next month, May, my time obligation to DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk said, referring to his Department of Government Efficiency.
“I think I’ll continue to spend a day or two per week on government matters for as long as the president would like me to do so, and for as long as it is useful, but starting next month, I’ll be allocating far more of my time to Tesla, now that the major work of establishing the Department of Government Efficiency is done,” he said.
Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has faced a swell of opposition for his work with President Donald Trump, which has made Tesla a growing target for protests and even vandalism. Musk has acknowledged that his move into politics has hit the company’s stock price.
Tesla — which is increasingly trying to diversify into high-tech products like robots — said profits fell 71% to $409 million, compared with $1.39 billion during the same quarter one year ago.
Shares of Tesla were up about 4% in after-hours trading, though the company has lost 50% of its value from its mid-December peak.
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Musk’s announcement.
Musk reiterated on the call that he intends to pivot Tesla from its established electric car business into two new products: robotaxis and humanoid robots, two ideas that investors have been skeptical about.
Musk said that Tesla was still on track to begin selling robotaxi rides in Austin, Texas, in June, putting Tesla into head-to-head competition with Google spinoff Waymo, which launched robotaxi rides there in March via the Uber app.
Tesla, in its written earnings report, said that “uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets” associated with “rapidly evolving trade policy,” along with “changing political sentiment,” could have “a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term.”
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