Elon Reeve Musk (54) is the founder and shareholder of Tesla, SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink and X (Twitter) and previously co-founded PayPal. He personally oversaw the entire product design, engineering and manufacturing within the Tesla group, but he was also an advisor to US President Donald Trump for a short time. The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) is an initiative led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, aimed at abolishing bureaucracy within the government and eliminating waste. The US Supreme Court even gave DOGE access to personal data of individuals registered with the Social Security Administration (SSA). Musk quit DOGE and focused more on Tesla and his other companies.
His cooperation with Trump was not appreciated by the outside world. A police escort was needed at the presentation of a Tesla Cybertruck in New Orleans and there were arson attacks at Tesla plants in Massachusetts and at a French showroom. In a fire at a Tesla dealership in Rome, which is suspected of having been started, seventeen Teslas were damaged on March 30, 2025. Justice has prosecuted an arsonist who attacked a Tesla dealership in Colorado on March 7 with a 20-year sentence. The FBI tracked down the perpetrator in Texas.
Dozens of unsold Tesla Cybertruck pickup trucks sit in the parking lot of an abandoned shopping mall in Michigan, United States. The location, near a Tesla service center, was reportedly being used as a storage yard, in violation of local zoning laws. The situation highlights Tesla’s sales struggles with the Cybertruck. Despite optimistic predictions from Elon Musk, the brand has delivered fewer than 50,000 Cybertrucks since its launch, and about 10,000 Cybertrucks have yet to find a buyer. Due to low demand, Tesla has slowed production and shifted workers to other lines, such as the Model Y.
Musk’s net worth dropped by $121 billion after a massive stock market crash. On March 6, 2025, he lost a whopping $8.8 billion, bringing his total net worth to $342 billion. This is a significant drop from the $464 billion he was worth on December 17. The stock price went from $489 in December 2024 to $235 in April 2025. Tesla was banned from the Vancouver International Auto Show, which opened on March 19, 2025, due to the risk of attacks. There has since been a wave of vandalism against Tesla vehicles worldwide, including an incident on March 18, 2025 in Las Vegas in which five Tesla cars were set on fire and shot at. This has led to a glut of Teslas on the used market. In the U.S., there are more than 14,000 used Teslas for sale, with an average listing price of $30,000, down from $40,000 since 2022. A survey in the Netherlands found that 30% of Tesla owners are considering selling their car, largely due to Musk’s reputation. All of this is driving down resale prices and reinforcing the trend of overselling. In the European Union, Tesla sales were again much lower than a year earlier, at just under 12,000, almost half of sales in February 2024, according to the European auto industry association ACEA. This is in line with previous trends, such as the 45% decline in January 2025 and an even sharper decline in Germany of 59% in January. For the full first quarter of 2025, Tesla reported a 13% decline in global deliveries (336,681 vehicles in Q1 2025 vs. 386,810 in Q1 2024). In Europe, the decline was therefore much sharper, with a 37% decline in Q1 2025 compared to Q1 2024. Globally, the decline in sales over the first quarter of 2025 is therefore a 13% decline. In specific countries such as Germany (59% decline in January) and other markets such as Sweden (-81% in April) or the Netherlands (-74% in April), the declines were much greater.
Doge
In late February 2025, Elon Musk sat at the first Cabinet meeting of Trump’s second term. At that meeting, he had the opportunity to share his vision for restructuring the government—a mission that Trump endorsed with a direct presidential decree. Under the acronym DOGE—the Department of Government Efficiency—a campaign was announced to tackle government waste, fraud, and abuse. Although Musk was the face of this new reform push, he was not formally at the helm of DOGE. That role had been entrusted to Amy Gleason, a seasoned official who had worked in government during Trump’s first term. Nevertheless, Musk remained in the public’s perception the driving force behind the initiative. His name carried weight, his status gave credibility, and his Platform X provided the communication. His involvement was tangible, but not always formal. His words carried weight, but were increasingly viewed with suspicion—by political opponents and former allies alike.
There were already rumors in April and there were already hints from Trump that Elon would stop his DOGE work because of all the commotion, although Elon himself initially labeled this as fake news. During a meeting with Tesla investors, Musk eventually revealed that his advisory role within DOGE would be significantly scaled back from May. “I will still spend a day or two a week on government business, as long as the president wants me to and as long as it is useful. But starting next month, I will spend much more of my time on Tesla ,” he said.
Tesla saw sales fall 13 percent in the first quarter of 2025. Analysts pointed to more than just competition in the increasingly crowded electric vehicle market. There were also concerns about reputational damage, especially among progressive consumers alienated by Musk’s polarizing public statements. In some U.S. states, Tesla charging stations were even vandalized, a tangible consequence of a CEO who has placed himself at the center of the political battlefield.
At the same time, Elon left the door open and did not rule out a return to the political arena. As he often did, he kept his options open. But for now, the center of gravity seems to have shifted from Washington to Wall Street. Musk called himself politically “half-democrat, half-republican”. On X, he described his ideology as a mix of social liberalism and fiscal conservatism. But that “middle” has become increasingly difficult to pin down. When he called the German far-right party Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) “the savior of Germany” in the spring of 2025, he immediately struck a nerve. His remark led to fierce reactions, not only in Germany but also in other European countries. When he gave a greeting that looked a bit like a Sieg Heil, all hell broke loose. In Poland, Minister Sławomir Nitras even called for a boycott of Tesla after Musk stated in a separate post that “there is too much focus on guilt from the past” and that children should not be held responsible for the actions of their (great) grandparents. Many critics saw this as an attempt to minimize German responsibility for the crimes of World War II.
Hundreds of people are unhappy with these and other political actions of Elon Musk and protested at a Tesla dealership near New York. Nine activists were arrested. In addition to this protest, there are other demonstrations at Tesla showrooms in the United States, including in Jacksonville, Florida, Tucson, Arizona, and other cities in the country. These protests are called the ‘Tesla Takedown’. Tesla owners are warned in writing and threatened to give up their Tesla.
Elon left the Trump administration after leading a tumultuous efficiency campaign that saw him turn several federal agencies upside down but ultimately fail to deliver the savings he sought. His “offboarding” began May 29, 2025. Musk thanked President Donald Trump the day before on X.
While the exact circumstances of his departure were not immediately clear, he left a day after criticizing Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill, calling it too expensive and a measure that would undermine his work with the U.S. DOGE agency. During the campaign, Musk had said DOGE could cut at least $2 trillion in federal spending, but his efforts have so far saved only $175 billion.
Trump and Elon had a falling out, causing Tesla’s stock price to drop another 14 percent. The drop in price was equivalent to more than $100 billion (87 billion euros) in market value. Elon called Trump’s bill, also known as the ‘Big Beautiful Bill’, a monstrosity. The two continued to snipe at each other with tweets. For example, Elon stated that Trump would have lost the election without him. Trump then threatened to stop government subsidies and contracts with Elon’s companies, which would save him “billions” and that this could have major consequences for Tesla and Elon’s space company SpaceX, for example. Elon threatened to stop using SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsules. These capsules transport astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station (ISS). Although Elon later withdrew his threat, such a decision could have major consequences.
The future of the now-ageing ISS would become even more uncertain. SpaceX also needs to push the ISS station into the atmosphere in a controlled manner around 2030, so that the station can be safely destroyed over the Pacific Ocean. That plan would also be jeopardized, as would the plans to put American astronauts on the moon. SpaceX is building a modified version of the Starship rocket that is supposed to land two astronauts on the lunar surface during the third mission of the Artemis program. If the American government were to indeed terminate the contracts and subsidies with SpaceX, many important satellites would remain unused on Earth. SpaceX not only launches commercial satellites, but also provides missions for NASA such as Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered drone for Saturn’s moon Titan. In addition, it provides launches for military and intelligence satellites in orbit around the Earth.
Elon eventually deleted his angry tweets. Including the one in which he said that President Donald Trump appears in the files of sex offender Jeffrey Epstein . “Donald Trump is in the Epstein files,” Elon wrote. “That’s the real reason they haven’t been made public.” In May 2025, Elon unexpectedly resigned and withdrew from the party. Elon announced this on his own platform X, briefly and to the point: “I see no reason to continue this at this time.” The message hit like a bombshell. Musk had for years, sometimes hesitantly, sometimes outspokenly, presented himself as an ally of the American right, and his departure meant that the party lost one of its most influential and wealthy pillars. The US Senate is currently considering a new tax law. Despite opposition from Elon Musk and some American politicians, the law was passed by the Senate and the House of Representatives. Trump signed the law on July 4 during the celebration of Independence Day. A day later, on July 5, Elon Musk founded “The America Party”. According to Elon, the country needs an alternative universal Democratic-Republican party in which the people have a voice.
Tesla less popular
Sales figures across Europe have shown a significant decline in Tesla’s market share recently. Germany saw a 71 percent decline, while Norway, France and Spain saw declines of 45, 44 and 44 percent respectively.
Sales of new Teslas in the European Union fell sharply again in May 2025. The European automotive industry association ACEA reports that Tesla sales have plummeted by more than 40 percent compared to the same period in 2024. A total of 8,729 new Teslas were registered in the EU last month, compared to 14,682 in May last year. Over the first five months of this year, this represents a decline of more than 45 percent to 50,413 Teslas. Tesla’s market share was 0.9 percent last month, compared to 1.6 percent in May last year.
Sales of the Model S and Model X cars in China were halted in early April. The two models were hit with import duties imposed by Chinese President Xi Jinping in response to the US tariffs. The Model S sedan and Model X SUV were also available to Chinese customers until recently, but that option disappeared a few days after the Chinese counter-tariffs were imposed. It was also decided that the cheap $25,000 Model 2 would not be coming. The plan was initially to build the Model 2 on the same car platform as the new self-driving Cybercab. Instead, Musk wants to slightly modify the Model Y and Model 3 and remove some features, making those cars slightly cheaper. Only the Robotaxi would be built on the new platform. Tesla booked a turnover of $19.3 billion in the first quarter of 2025. Nine percent less than in the first quarter of 2024. Net profit fell 71 percent to 409 million dollars. Tesla appeared to have sold 13 percent fewer cars worldwide. 336,681 cars were delivered, the lowest number since the second quarter of 2022.
Figures from the European automotive industry association ACEA showed that the number of Teslas sold since Trump appointed Elon has almost halved compared to a year earlier. Tesla’s market value fell below 1 trillion dollars in February 2025, after Tesla shares fell by more than 8 percent. In total, Tesla shares have already lost 25 percent this year, costing Elon personally around 100 billion. Several large companies are turning against Tesla. For example, home builder Viebrockhaus announced that they would no longer purchase new Teslas. The company recently decided to purchase a Tesla battery for energy storage in a showroom, but that was also abandoned. Energy suppliers Baden-Württemberg Badenova and Lichtblick also announced that they would no longer purchase Teslas in the future. Lease contracts have been terminated since the turn of the year. Approximately half of the company’s lease fleet consisted of Teslas. A Badenova board member said that “Elon Musk’s actions have shaken them up, which is why they decided to stop using Teslas.” He also pointed out that Musk’s work is endangering Germany’s economic attractiveness. The company still owns eleven leased Teslas, but those contracts will not be extended. The company, like many others, has also stopped using the social platform X. Drugstore chain Rossmann already announced in 2024 that it would not purchase Tesla vehicles because of Elon’s support for Trump. “This decision is based on the incompatibility between the statements of Tesla CEO Elon Musk and the values that Tesla represents with its products,” the company said in the summer of 2024. Many other X users also left the platform and moved to “Bluesky”. In the Netherlands, there is now a ‘Tesla and X shame’. Three out of ten Tesla drivers are considering giving up their car or have already done so. Tesla suddenly lost 15 percent of its value on the stock exchange on March 10, 2025, losing 130 billion dollars in value. Elon Musk has fired Omead Afshar, Tesla’s head of operations in North America and Europe, due to declining sales figures in both regions. Milan Kovac also left. He led the team responsible for Tesla’s humanoid robot, better known as Optimus. According to Kovac, he did not leave because of dissatisfaction, but because he wanted to spend more time with his family abroad.
History
Elon Reeve Musk was born on June 28, 1971 in Pretoria South Africa and is the autistic (stuttering) son of a Canadian model and a South African electromechanical engineer, pilot, sailor, consultant, project developer and half owner of a Zambian emerald mine near Lake Tanganyika. His paternal grandmother was British, but he also has Pennsylvania German roots. After his parents divorced in 1980, Elon Musk lived mainly with his father.
At the age of ten, Elon discovered the Commodore VIC-20. He taught himself programming and sold a BASIC video game called Blastar to PC and Office Technology magazine for about $500 at the age of twelve. He initially attended the private Waterkloof House Preparatory School. He graduated from Pretoria Boys High School and moved to Canada in June 1989, just before his eighteenth birthday, after receiving Canadian citizenship through his mother.
In 1989, he was admitted to Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. In 1992, after two years at Queen’s, he transferred to the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned a Bachelor of Science in Physics from Penn’s College of Arts and Sciences and a Bachelor of Arts in Economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania at the age of 24. He stayed on for a year to earn a second bachelor’s degree. While at the University of Pennsylvania, he and fellow student Adeo Ressi purchased a dormitory and turned it into a nightclub.
At age 24, Elon Musk moved to California in 1995 to pursue a PhD in physics at Stanford University, but he dropped out after two days to start his own companies in the fields of internet, renewable energy and space. He became a U.S. citizen in 2002.
Elon met his first wife, Canadian writer Jennifer Justine Wilson, while attending Queen’s University in Ontario together. They married in 2000 and separated in 2008. They had six children together. Their first child, Nevada, died of sudden infant death syndrome at 10 weeks old. They went on to have five more children through IVF, twins (Griffin and Vivian Jenna) and triplets (Damien, Kai, and Saxon). In 2022, the eldest of the twins, Xavier, changed his name to Vivian Jenna Wilson to reflect her identity as a trans woman. She adopted the name Wilson as her surname to no longer be associated with Musk. Court documents state that in addition to the name and surname change, the records will reflect Xavier Musk’s gender transition and that a new birth certificate will be issued. Musk has blamed his daughter’s estrangement on “ the takeover of elite schools and universities by neo-Marxists.” In a 2024 interview with Jordan Peterson and later via X, he even stated that she was “ dead, murdered by the woke virus . ”
In 2010, Musk married British actress Talulah Riley . In 2012, Musk indicated that he had ended the relationship with Riley, but in July 2013, Musk and Riley remarried, only to divorce again in December 2014. From 2017 to 2018, he was in a relationship with actress Amber Heard .
In his relationship with Canadian singer Grimes, Elon Musk became the father of a son and a daughter. The couple split in the fall of 2021 after three years. After their divorce, Grimes revealed that she and Musk had another child, born via a surrogate in the summer of 2022. Their three children are named: X Æ A-Xii, Exa Dark Sideræl and Techno Mechanicus. One of the three children has medical problems. In 2022, the two ended their relationship. Singer Grimes (36) says she ‘fought for a year’ for a good visitation arrangement with the children she has with Elon Musk (53). Grimes (36) sued Elon in October last year because she was not allowed to see one of her sons. She is now in a new relationship with DJ Anyma.
In 2021, Musk had twins (Strider and Azure) with his current wife Shivon Zilis , a top executive at Neuralink, a company owned by Musk. In 2024, they had another child together, whose name and gender are still unknown. The then 52-year-old Elon Musk became a father for the twelfth time in 2024. The 39-year-old Zilis was born in Canada and received a bachelor’s degree in economics and philosophy from Yale University in 2008. Zilis was listed in Forbes’ ’30 Under 30′ in the venture capital category in 2015. She met Musk in 2015. In 2025, he had his fourteenth child with her, a son named Seldon Lycurgus. The news came via Shivon two weeks after conservative influencer Ashley St. Clair reported that she had recently had a child with Musk. He gave all of his children separate names: X AE Xii, Exa Dark Siderael, Strider, Azure, Techno Mechanicus, Griffin, Damian, Saxon, Kai, Vivian, Nevada and Seldon. Ashley St. Clair, now 26, began an affair with then 51-year-old Elon when she was 24 and sold her $100,000 Tesla, which was a gift from Elon, over an alleged reduction in child support for her 6-month-old son, who she says is fathered by Musk. She publicly attacked Elon, citing Tesla’s declining stock. Elon allegedly gave her $2.5 million plus $500,000 a year.
Drug use
According to a report in the New York Times, Elon Musk has been using excessive amounts of drugs in recent months while acting as one of President Donald Trump’s top advisors. He is said to have used ketamine, ecstasy (xtc) and magic mushrooms, among other things. The American newspaper cites former friends as sources and has seen messages from people close to Elon. According to unnamed witnesses and other insiders, Elon is said to use LSD, cocaine and xtc, among other things, but says he himself limits himself to prescription ketamine. One of the people who came forward with this was Linda Johnson Rice, who became a board member at Tesla in 2017, but later decided not to run for another term because she was concerned about his drug use. In 2018, he is said to have used LSD at a party he organized in Los Angeles and in 2019 he is said to have used magic mushrooms at an event in Mexico. In 2021, he used ketamine with his brother in Miami at a house party. He previously stated that he has a doctor’s prescription for it as a treatment for depression. In the past, Musk publicly smoked weed in a podcast with comedian Joe Rogan. That was then reason for American authorities to reconsider Musk’s ‘security clearance’ as CEO of space company SpaceX. The drugs could be a reason for the sometimes incomprehensible decisions that he makes with some regularity. According to his lawyer Alex Spiro, Musk would regularly test negative for drugs at SpaceX. Musk himself responded to the allegations that after that one puff of weed, he had agreed at the request of NASA to take random drug tests for three years, during which no traces of drugs or alcohol were found. Musk only admits to using ketamine. Many pointed to ketamine when the Tesla CEO stood on stage at the annual meeting of American conservatives, armed with a chainsaw. He had also made incoherent statements and mispronounced some words.
Alleged sexual harassment
Eight former SpaceX employees filed a lawsuit against Elon Musk in June 2024 in California, accusing him of sexual harassment. Musk allegedly “knowingly and intentionally” created an “unwanted hostile work environment” at the company and posted despicable sexual images, memes and comments that demeaned women and/or the LGBTQ+ community. According to the plaintiffs, some of them were also subjected to insulting comments from other coworkers who “mimicked Musk’s posts” on Twitter. The now-ex-employees believe they were wrongfully fired in 2022 after posting an open letter raising concerns about Musk’s behavior, and that the businessman made the decision “in retaliation” against them. When HR initially suggested an investigation, the businessman responded, “I don’t care, fire them,” the lawsuit says. SpaceX executives, including Elon, also allegedly participated in a video that “mocking and emphasizing sexual harassment and jokes.” The video reportedly included a scene in which an employee demonstrated “the proper way to ‘hit’ a coworker.” SpaceX has denied the allegations, saying the fired employees violated company policy and that Elon Musk was not involved in the firing process.
The Musk Foundation
Elon Musk is the chairman of the Musk Foundation, which focuses on philanthropic efforts related to solar panels in disaster areas. In 2010, the Musk Foundation partnered with SolarCity to donate a 25 kW solar array to the South Bay Community Alliance (SBCA) hurricane response center in Coden, Alabama. In July 2011, the Musk Foundation donated $250,000 to a solar technology project in Soma, Fukushima, a Japanese city that was devastated by a tsunami.
In July 2014, Elon Musk was asked by Matthew Inman, a cartoonist and distant cousin of Nikola Tesla, to donate $8 million to build the Tesla Science Center. He eventually donated $1 million and promised to install a Tesla fast-charging station in the museum’s parking lot.
In January 2015, Elon Musk donated $10 million to the Future of Life Institute to launch a global research effort focused on AI.
In October 2018, Musk transferred half a million dollars to install water treatment plants in Flint schools to filter lead from the toxic tap water.
In October 2019, he donated $1 million to Teamtrees to plant trees.
Since 2015, Musk has been part of the X Prize Foundation. On January 21, 2021, Musk promised a prize of $100 million to the person who comes up with the best design for technology for large-scale carbon capture.This competition was named X Prize Carbon Removal.
Elon became the richest man in the world and is worth $417 billion.
Elon Reeve Musk is also the founder of the former X.com. This company later merged with Confinity Inc. to form PayPal. He is the CEO and CDO of SpaceX, The Boring Company, Grok, Neuralink, and Tesla. In 2022, he bought Twitter and renamed it (𝕏).
Origin of Tesla
Tesla was named after electrical engineer and physicist Nikola Tesla, who is best known as the inventor of the alternating current motor. The company unveiled an all- electric pickup truck in California on November 21, 2019 , which will eventually hit the market in November 2023. Tesla Motors was founded in July 2003 by Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning, who played an active role in the company’s early development. Elon Musk led the company’s first round of financing in February 2004, when he became chairman of the board. Elon Musk played an active role in the company and was closely involved in the design of the Tesla Roadster, but less involved in the day-to-day operations. Directors Brad Buss and Linda Johnson Rice did not seek re-election for a new term. Their current terms expired at the company’s annual shareholders meeting on June 11, 2019. Director Stephen Jurvetson left the company in 2020 and sold his 17,223 shares in December. Antonio Garcias’ term also expired one year later and he was not eligible for re-election. Tesla wanted to remove the supermajority amendment, which means that a simple majority is sufficient to vote on amendments. During the 2008 financial crisis, Musk felt compelled to take over Tesla’s leadership as CEO and Chief Designer. Problems with delivery and the loss of tax benefits in the US put pressure on expected sales. Significantly fewer cars were sold after the tax benefit for buyers of electric cars in the US was halved as of January 1. Deliveries of the Model 3 outside the US also did not go very well at first and had to be postponed until the second quarter. A loss of $702 million was still incurred in the first quarter of 2019 and the second quarter resulted in a loss of $408 million despite $6.35 billion in sales. Liquidity was increased by $2.4 billion through loans and the issuance of shares, which ultimately resulted in $5.5 billion in cash. In the third quarter of 2019, a profit of $143 million was made, or $0.80 per share, causing the share price to rise by 20% to over $306 and the previous share price loss was recovered. Tesla cut approximately 7% of the number of permanent jobs in 2019. 3,150 jobs of the approximately 45,000 disappeared. In March 2019, a large bond loan of 920 million dollars had to be repaid. In 2014, Tesla suffered a net loss of 294 million dollars and in 2017 the net loss had increased to over 675 million dollars. In total, the debt had increased to 11.5 billion dollars. That is why in December 2020 a maximum of 5 billion dollars was again sought by selling new shares. It was already the third share issue in 2020.
During the corona pandemic, Musk reopened his factory in the state of California on May 12, 2020, without permission from the local authorities. In a defiant tweet he wrote that he would stand on the production line himself, together with everyone else. If someone gets arrested, I ask them to only take me, he proclaimed. Alameda County still considered the health risks too great. On March 23, the factory in Fremont had to close. Elon called the corona lockdown ‘fascist’ and said on Twitter that he would sue Alameda County. He also announced that he would move the headquarters from California to the state of Texas or Nevada. The factory in Fremont has more than 10,000 employees and Tesla has 20,000 in the entire state. In total, the automotive sector in the United States provides work for more than 835,000 people. The industry accounts for 6 percent of the gross domestic product and that is why the governor did not dare to intervene. There was already an appointment, but Elon decided to ignore it and simply started up the factory against the lockdown rules.
Nissan reportedly sees Tesla as a strategic investor, which has already expressed interest in acquiring Nissan factories in the United States. Those plants could help boost domestic production in response to Donald Trump’s plans to impose tariffs on the auto industry. Nissan has struggled with weak sales, an outdated model lineup and a lack of stable leadership since the infamous 2018 departure of former CEO Carlos Ghosn. CEO Makoto Uchida says Nissan can barely survive without a strong partner.
Musk made international headlines with a hyperloop and a VTOL supersonic electric aircraft and with Robotaxi.
Tesla sold fewer cars than last year. Elon Musk previously promised a small growth. The value of Tesla’s share fell by 3 percent at the end of 2024. In the last quarter of 2024, Tesla managed to sell a record number of 495,570 cars, but that is less than the 500,000 that analysts expected. In 2023, Tesla had a turnover of 96.8 billion dollars. The results of Tesla’s long-awaited upgrade of its partially automated driving systems turned out to be disappointing. Tesla’s city navigation function in China did not live up to Musk’s promises for self-driving technology.
In 2024, Tesla sold 1.79 million cars, which is 1.1 percent less than in 2023. Tesla is still the best-selling electric car brand worldwide. Tesla is only just the leader with 1,789,226 units, but competitor BYD is quickly closing in. In total, BYD managed to sell 1,764,992 electric cars in 2024 .
In 2024, profits were sharply lower, after it was previously reported that the company’s electric car sales had fallen for the first time in more than a decade in 2024. Sales are under pressure from competition in the Chinese market, in addition to a sharp drop in demand for fully electric cars. There is a rivalry with Volkswagen, whose Skoda Enyaq SUV dethroned the Model Y as the best-selling electric car. Net profit came in at more than $7 billion, a 53 percent drop compared to 2023.
Tesla’s sales are based on two models, the 3 and the Y. These models are still doing very well. Tesla delivered fewer than 100,000 units of the other models, the S and the X, in 2024. Used Teslas are not only traded extensively among Dutch car dealers, but also among consumers. A total of 8,545 used Teslas changed owners in January. This number of sales is a fivefold increase compared to the same month last year, when only 1,707 changed owners. This involves all kinds of different sales, from dealers to dealers, from dealers to consumers, but also from one consumer to another. According to Bovag, there are several reasons behind the enormous spurt in second-hand Tesla sales. For example, dealers are trading cars en masse among themselves, because many leasing companies are selling their Teslas due to expiring lease contracts and depreciation. These Teslas then end up on the sales market. In the first month of this year, 3,649 Teslas changed hands between car companies. A year earlier, this number was only 734. According to Bovag, it can also be seen that the demand for Teslas has increased compared to a year ago. However, it can be seen that the interest from buyers has decreased somewhat in the past period. Whether this is due to the behavior of Elon Musk, which is causing ‘Tesla shame’ among motorists, is impossible to say. It could also be due to the ‘growing persistent uncertainty’ surrounding electric cars. Due to the influx of Teslas on the second-hand car market, it has also become a lot cheaper to buy a Tesla. Last year, the average price of a used Tesla was still around 33,000 euros, now it is around 21,000 euros. Although there are also many Tesla Model 3s for sale for around 16,000 euros, the odometer of these is also quite high and they do not pass the MOT. The Model 3 of that year of manufacture also had to comply with this last year and in no less than a quarter of the cases (23%) this resulted in a failure. The problems occur particularly when it comes to brakes, steering, lighting and suspension/damping. On the market for new cars, it can be seen that Tesla is doing quite badly. Earlier this month, sales figures were released showing that sales of new Teslas have collapsed throughout Europe. For example, sales in the United Kingdom collapsed by 18.2 percent in January compared to a year earlier, in France by 63 percent and in the Netherlands by more than 42 percent. Spain takes the crown. There, sales collapsed by no less than 75 percent.
The European Commission has set the import duty for Teslas made in China at 9 percent. Tesla disagrees with these import duties and has therefore filed a complaint with the European Court of Justice. Last year, the European Commission decided to impose import duties on electric cars made in China and sold in the European Union. In some cases, the duties amount to tens of percent. This makes the cars much more expensive for European motorists. The measure does not only apply to Chinese manufacturers. Western car manufacturers that have vehicles made in China and then sold in Europe have also been imposed such a duty. Both BMW and Tesla have factories in China. Elon Musk is entering a new battle with the European Commission. They previously had a disagreement about X’s policy. Brussels decided earlier this month to further investigate the moderation policy on the platform.
After the earlier mass layoff, Tesla had to hire hundreds more people. That number rose from 387,000 to 444,000. The number of cars built did fall, from 433,000 to 411,000. due to the arson at the car factory near Berlin, which caused production delays. About 1.8 million Teslas in the United States have a software glitch that can cause the hood to fully open, blocking the driver’s view. The flaw affects certain Model 3, Model S and Model X vehicles built between 2021 and 2024 and Model Y vehicles built between 2020 and 2024. Tesla has released a free software update to fix the problems. In the third quarter of 2023, Tesla produced 430,488 vehicles and delivered 435,059 units. And in the second quarter of this year, Tesla delivered 443,956 cars and produced 410,831 units. In the third quarter of 2024, 6.9 Gwh of energy storage products were deployed. That is well down from 9.4 Gwh a quarter earlier. Tesla is recalling more than 27,000 $100,000 Cybertrucks because they have problems with the rear-view camera. When the driver puts the car in reverse, it can take up to eight seconds for the image from the rear-view camera to appear. This increases the risk of collisions, Tesla fears. A software update should solve the problem. Panels that appear to be simply glued on are also coming loose. The parts can come loose while driving, with serious consequences for other traffic.
Tesla workers in Sweden have been on strike for almost a year. What started with blocking Tesla cars at the port, moved on to halting the delivery of parts, and is expanding this month. Another union is set to join the strike from October 10, meaning Tesla’s charging network will no longer be serviced. Although Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling new car in Sweden through August this year, sales of the model fell by 8.8 percent. Photo: Prometheus.
Although Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling new car in Sweden through August this year, sales of the model fell by 8.8 percent. In October 2023, things got out of hand when Tesla refused to approach the Swedish trade unions, a household name in the country. The American car manufacturer is fundamentally opposed to organizing employees into a union. CEO Elon Musk is also known as a fervent opponent of unionization. In the US, for example, he has repeatedly attempted to stop employees from organizing. By not joining a union, employees could receive Tesla shares in return. However, these shares could only be sold after four years. In Sweden, unions are a household name; two out of three employees are members of a union and 90 percent of companies are covered by a collective labor agreement. That was also the wish of the employees who are paid by Tesla. But Tesla’s technicians, themselves members of the IF Metall union, were turned down by Musk, who refused to sign an agreement. Since then, the technicians have been on strike, but other Tesla-related companies and employees have been taking mass sympathetic actions. For example, cleaners no longer come to clean Tesla garages, the garbage service does not collect waste, Teslas are sometimes refused license plate registration and the strike has now spread to neighboring countries such as Denmark, Finland and Norway. Since December, Tesla has had to transport its cars from mainland Europe to Sweden by truck. Although Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling new car in Sweden up to and including August this year, sales of the model fell by 8.8 percent, according to data from Mobility Sweden. Following the Danish and Norwegian unions, the Finnish transport union AKT has now also announced that it will take action against Tesla. The reason is the deadlock in negotiations on a new collective labor agreement for car mechanics in Sweden. Employees at all ports in Finland will block the transit of Tesla cars from December 20.
Musk personally oversaw the entire product design, engineering and manufacturing within the Tesla group for many years. In 2020, Tesla had a turnover of 20 billion dollars and the company was worth more than 100 billion dollars on the stock exchange. On August 28, 2020, the price of one share dropped from 1,500 to 300 dollars after the split into five times as many shares. The price then climbed to 407 dollars. In the course of 2022, the price fell again and in the fall an additional blow came when Elon took over Twitter in a rather chaotic manner. Many investors feared that the entrepreneur would pay less attention to Tesla. On April 20, 2023, the price was again hit hard due to poor quarterly figures. The profit margin fell sharply due to the price cuts that Tesla implemented in order to be able to continue to compete with Chinese manufacturers. Elon also announced that he was not yet finished with lowering the prices, after which the share price fell again by 10 percent to 123 dollars. In 2022, Musk lost an estimated 173 billion euros on the stock market. The current average price is 163 dollars. The average price target of 49 analysts is $178.95, but should reasonably be valued at $100. The shares are trading at around 64 times forward earnings. Elon Musk’s value on December 31, 2023 is around 221.3 billion dollars. After good news about the second quarter of 2024, Tesla’s share price has risen by more than 20 percent. Musk increased his stake in artificial intelligence startup xAI by 14.4 billion dollars. He also has a 75 billion dollar stake in SpaceX and 7 billion dollars in X.
Rowe Price, once Tesla’s largest institutional backer, dumped the vast majority of his Tesla stock in the first quarter of 2019. He sold more than 80 percent of his shares and now holds less than 5.2 percent of Tesla’s outstanding shares. Several other institutional investors have actually added to their Tesla holdings. The largest institutional shareholder is now Baillie Gifford, with 13 million shares, or 7.5 percent of the outstanding shares. The Scottish investment firm bought just over 10,000 shares in the first quarter. Capital Group Companies and Fidelity Investments are Tesla’s third and fourth largest shareholders, respectively. Capital Group bought almost 860,000 shares in the first quarter of 2019.
Gabelli Funds sold the 65,900 shares it bought in early 2022. Graham Tanaka liquidated the entire Tesla position in his $21.5 million Tanaka Growth Fund. The fund had owned the shares since around 2011, when they traded at $2. Gerber Kawasaki Wealth & Investment Management bought 500,000 shares more than a decade ago but sold most of them this year, trimming the position to about 300,000 shares. Cathie Wood, the founder of Ark Invest, who has held Tesla in her ARK Innovation Fund since 2014, increased her stake by 10% in the first quarter of 2024. Ark estimated in April 2022 that Tesla would be worth $2,000 per share by 2027, largely due to the rollout of robotaxi operations. Wood stuck to that price target, buying about $100 million of new shares in April 2024. ARK Innovation holds nearly 12% of the fund’s assets, which have fallen nearly 18% this year, compared with a gain of more than 10% for the S&P 500.
Tesla remains the world’s most valuable automaker, with a market cap of over $560 billion. Toyota, on the other hand, is the world’s largest automaker by volume, with a market cap of $333.7 billion. Musk recently announced on social media platform X that a “robotaxi reveal” would take place on “8/8,” likely in August 2024. In April, Musk said Tesla “should be viewed as an AI robotics company,” not a carmaker. The launch of the robotaxi was then delayed by two months. Tesla shareholders were not happy about the delay, with shares plunging 6% following the news. The energy division saw a 100% increase in revenue, with total revenues rising to $25.5 billion in the months of April through June. Musk has been working on a self-driving taxi in recent months. The Cybercab, is set to go into volume production in 2026. Elon Musk still has to take over the brand names Robotaxi and Cubercab from the current owners because he does not get permission from the American trademark office to register the name ‘Robotaxi’ as a trademark. The same probably applies to Cybercab. Cybercab was already claimed.
Elon felt uncomfortable growing Tesla into a leader in artificial intelligence and robotics without 25 percent voting control. “If I have 25 percent, it means I have influence, but I can be overruled if twice as many shareholders vote against me. At 15 percent or lower, it’s too easy for dubious interests to push me aside.
Elon Musk was subpoenaed by the US Virgin Islands in a case involving sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The US Virgin Islands authorities wanted to know more about the role that the American banking group JPMorgan played in Epstein’s abusive practices. The authorities want to see all mutual communications between JPMorgan and Musk regarding Epstein. They also wanted to read his correspondence with Epstein. According to the authorities, JPMorgan would have missed important warning signs about Epstein’s abusive practices. Epstein would have tried to get Musk as a client of the banking group, but as early as 2019, Musk and Tesla denied that they had received financial advice from Epstein. Epstein was suspected of sexually abusing underage girls in 2019 and committed suicide.
Tesla has cut shifts at its Texas factory where the Cybertruck is made, laying off 10 percent of the workforce in April 2024. Some of the 500 workers laid off in Tesla’s ‘Supercharging’ department were reinstated within a month. The figures for the 1st quarter were downright bad and in terms of sales even one of the worst quarters in years. Some 387,000 cars were delivered and 433,000 rolled off the production line. In the same quarter a year earlier, these were 422,000 and 440,000 respectively. Quarterly revenue fell by $2 million to $21.3 billion. Net profit more than halved to $1.1 billion. The 2nd quarter of 2024 also saw less revenue from car sales and prices have also fallen. The net profit was almost $1.5 billion. 45 percent less than a year earlier. While profits in the automotive division are under pressure, the energy division is booking 100 percent more turnover. Total turnover rose to 25.5 billion dollars in the months April to June. Almost 20 billion dollars were in cars, but the revenues fell by 7 percent on an annual basis. There is an improvement compared to turnover in the first quarter. At that time, turnover was 17.4 billion dollars. Tesla reported earlier this month in an interim update that it had already delivered considerably more cars. After the earlier mass layoffs, Tesla had to hire hundreds of people again. That number rose from 387,000 to 444,000. The number of cars built did fall, from 433,000 to 411,000. due to the arson attack at the car factory near Berlin, which delayed production. Andrew Baglino (vice president of powertrain and energy engineering, 18 years at Tesla) and Rohan Patel (director of public policy and corporate development, 8 years at Tesla) resigned and there are technical problems with the accelerator pedal of the Cybertruck. Elon has postponed his planned trip to India. He was supposed to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi on April 22, 2024 and discuss his plans to enter the South Asian market. On April 21, 2024, Tesla lowered prices in China and the United States to counteract disappointing sales. The software needed to make Tesla cars drive independently is now also offered at a lower price in the US. The price of this so-called FSD (Full Self-Driving) software has been reduced from $12,000 to $8,000, which is about 7,500 euros. American customers who purchase a new Tesla will also be given the opportunity to try the software for thirty days. Furthermore, almost all Tesla models have been discounted in China. The cheapest model, the Model 3, now costs the equivalent of just over 30,000 euros there. In the US, the Model Y and Model X have never been so cheap.
2023 was a record year with over 1.8 million electric cars sold. 38% more cars were delivered than in 2022, 1.8 million units in total
Tesla Inc. is not only a manufacturer of electric cars, but also of trucks, solar panels and battery packs for home and industrial use, surfboards and even spaceships. The financing of a new Tesla storage system for green energy in the North Sea port has been completed. Tesla’s mega batteries can charge and discharge several times a day. This makes it possible to store the green energy from the Borssele I and II wind farms and use it at a later time. It is a solution for the unpredictability of wind and solar energy, one of the major pain points in the energy transition. Companies in particular often need a constant supply of energy for their production systems.
The project of the Dutch Lion Storage, part of Return, will be located on the site of a former coal-fired power station in Vlissingen. This will connect it to the sixty-kilometre-long port area of Vlissingen and Ghent. The Australian investment fund Macquarie Group and the Belgian infrastructure investor Tinc. are investing in the project together with various banks and existing investors of Return. Together, the parties are investing 350 million euros in the project, which is expected to be completed in the second quarter of 2027.
Despite a shortage on the power grid, the energy storage system can be connected to Tennet’s high-voltage substation, because it takes over the connection from the old coal-fired power station. The capacity of the project, called Mufasa, corresponds to the power consumption of more than 200,000 households. Mufasa is not the first project from Lion Storage. In 2020, it delivered a storage system in the Lelystad area. The batteries there can supply five thousand households with electricity. Several of the company’s batteries are also already in Vlissingen. In 2023, Lion Storage merged with Return, a financial holding company. More than 60 million euros of the total investment in Mufasa comes from Tinc, which supports the investment with a revolving credit facility of 200 million euros.
Tesla acquired the loss-making SolarCity for 2.6 billion dollars. The German machine builder Grohmann was also recently acquired and continued as Tesla Grohmann Automation from 2017. The acquisition was supposed to ensure production to increase to 500,000 cars per year in 2018. Employees demanded and received a wage increase of about 30%.
Tesla made record profits for a while because the competition suffered from the global shortage of computer chips, while Tesla itself had plenty of them in stock. In 2021, the company earned almost 4.9 billion euros. In 2020, net income already amounted to 3.47 billion dollars. In the third quarter of 2021, a record number of 241,300 new Teslas were delivered. About 96 percent were the Model 3 and Model Y types. Of the Model S and Model X, 8,941 were made and 9,275 were delivered to customers. A new generation of superchargers was launched in mid-March 2023. The V4 charging stations were the first to arrive in Harderwijk. The new chargers had a different look and a longer charging cable. The amperage of the new chargers has increased from 425 amps to 651 amps. In 2022, profits even amounted to 12.8 billion dollars. The company is working on a production volume of 2 million vehicles per year. The Model Y is usually high in the top five of best-selling cars. In October 2023, the Tesla will also be in the top five. The Model Y can travel 455 kilometers on a full 60 kWh battery. The power of 347 hp goes from 0 to 100 km / h in 6.9 seconds and the top speed is 217 km / h. The torque is 420 Nm.
Tesla had awarded Elon Musk the largest bonus in US corporate history, worth $56 billion at the time. Shareholders voted in favor of Elon’s record-breaking salary, which was already set in 2018. The deal was rejected earlier in January by an American judge. Elon had to wait for the ruling on appeal. A judge in Delaware confirmed her earlier decision on December 2, 2024, despite the shareholders’ second approval in June. However, the judge upheld her earlier ruling from January, in which she ruled that Tesla’s board was too much under Musk’s influence when it adopted the compensation plan in 2018. The package of stock options was initially worth $2.6 billion. But that value had risen to $56 billion by the time the judge blocked it earlier this year. Based on Monday’s closing price, the package is now worth more than $101 billion. Even without the mega bonus, Musk is already the richest man in the world, with a fortune of more than $364 billion.
The legal team that voided the bonus is only earning a small portion of the $5.6 billion they sought. The team is only entitled to $13.6 million, as their lawsuit has yielded little benefit to the company. Shareholder Richard Tornetta filed the lawsuit that led to Musk’s $55 billion pay package being voided. The voiding occurred in 2018, but earlier this year a judge ruled that the bonus could not be paid out. Tesla Chairman Robyn Denholm successfully pushed the company’s shareholders to approve the bonus, or Musk could be forced out. Musk was promised the stock option package in 2018 if he could achieve certain goals with Tesla. Since then, Tesla’s stock price has increased more than tenfold, and the company was briefly worth more than $1 trillion. The controversial package allows him to buy 1 percent of Tesla’s shares at a steep discount every time certain goals are met. Musk added another $95.4 billion to his fortune in 2023, mainly due to the success of car company Tesla and space company SpaceX. In 2022, he had to take a loss of 138 billion. Richard Tornetta, a small investor in Tesla, thought the bonus was excessive and filed a lawsuit in 2018. At that time, there was immediately a lot of speculation that Tesla’s stock price could rise to great heights. Tornetta, who is also a thrash metal drummer and runs an audio equipment company, also thinks it is unfair that Musk was awarded the reward by a board that is actually completely under his control. For example, one of the directors involved was Kimbal Musk, the brother of the richest man in the world. The bonus would have allowed Musk to be more focused on improving Tesla. And that is supposedly the reason why the stock price has risen so much, which is in the interest of all shareholders. A Delaware judge ruled in late January 2024 that Tesla should not have given Elon Musk a $55 billion compensation package. Musk plans to gain more control over Tesla by taking a 25% stake in order to achieve his goals of developing artificial intelligence and self-driving cars. At X, he even threatened to spin Tesla’s AI work off into a separate company if his demands were not met. For the first quarter of 2024, Tesla reported a total of 386,810 deliveries instead of the planned 457,000 deliveries. Production stood at 433,371 vehicles, with the majority being Model 3/Y cars: 412,376 produced and 369,783 delivered. Tesla’s other models saw production of 20,995 and 17,027 deliveries. In the fourth quarter of 2023, there were 484,507 deliveries and over 494,989 vehicles produced.
Tesla faced:
- Attacks by Houthi militias on ships in the Red Sea, disrupting the supply of components and leading to a production stop at the German factory;
- Environmental activists who set fire to infrastructure at the German factory, temporarily halting production;
- Fierce competition in China from domestic EV makers such as BYD and Xiaomi, which forced Tesla to cut production of the Model 3 and Model Y at its Shanghai factory;
- Mixed reviews for the Cybertruck and less effective sales incentives in the US;
- Tesla was the largest manufacturer of electric cars, but BYD managed to overtake it at the end of 2023 by delivering 526,409 EVs in the 4th quarter;
Tesla is developing new batteries that are more powerful, last longer and cost half as much as current batteries. The new larger cylindrical batteries, called the 4680, will deliver five times the energy, six times the power and 16 percent more range in a few years. The new batteries will be produced in a new factory near the company’s Fremont, California factory in 2024. An investigation has shown that Tesla cars are not getting the promised range from their batteries, even when the car leaves the factory brand new. Tesla is having a record year for battery sales. After three quarters, the company has sold 38 percent more batteries than it did in the entire last year. This calendar year, the company has sold 20,353 megawatt hours of batteries. Last year, which was also a record year, it sold 14,724 megawatt hours. Tesla’s “non-automotive” business continues to grow in profitability. In the third quarter, battery rollout grew by 73 percent to 6,900 megawatt hours, compared to 3,980 megawatt hours in the same quarter a year earlier.
Many Tesla drivers in New York City sometimes have to wait more than an hour to access charging stations. Cold winters make more frequent charging necessary, further exacerbating the problem. The lack of charging infrastructure is also exacerbated by Tesla’s “congestion pricing” to regulate charging station usage during peak hours.
Elon Musk thought he could produce an affordable $25,000 electric car in three years, which would also be fully self-driving. In 2020, 499,550 new Teslas were delivered and 25,000 fast charging stations have now been installed worldwide, of which about thirty fast charging locations are in the Netherlands, with multiple stations. Tesla has more than 10,000 Supercharger charging points in Europe. The charging points are spread over 900 stations in thirty European countries. About a fifth of the Supercharger charging points will have been built in 2022. To get the factory up and running, engineers and production workers are being brought in from the factory in Shanghai. About two hundred Chinese had to help ramp up production in the American factory. The employees are going to the country for at least three months. The factory in Shanghai was recently expanded, allowing one million vehicles to be produced locally. The Chinese staff now going to the US worked on that expansion and thus already gained experience for the expansion in Fremont. Tesla has a policy of continuously increasing its production significantly. Elon Musk wants to make 50 percent more cars each year than the year before.
It turns out that the largest Tesla Supercharger location is (partly) powered by diesel generators. The Harris Ranch Supercharger location is located between Los Angeles and San Francisco. Not only is it one of the first Supercharger locations in the world, it is also the largest in the world. The grid could not provide enough energy to power all 98 Superchargers.
Tesla put $1.5 billion worth of Bitcoin on its balance sheet, causing the price to shoot up 10 percent. The digital currency was also temporarily accepted as a means of payment for a Tesla from March 24, 2021. A payment button was added to Tesla’s website for American customers to pay with Bitcoin. There has been a lot of commotion lately about unrealized profits (profits on paper) that are a means of tax avoidance, which is why Elon Musk sold Tesla shares worth the purchase price of $44 billion. On Twitter, he asked his followers for support for his plan. As a result, Tesla shares lost significantly on the stock exchange. The first sale order for his shares was given in September 2021.
Tax payments also avoided via the Netherlands
Tesla Motors Nederland (TMN) is located in Amsterdam-Zuidoost, one of the companies that the car company owns in that area. In addition to the large franchise of the multinational, there are six other offices affiliated with the EV manufacturer. Six Tesla companies in Amsterdam were initially cooperatives. In December 2024, these were converted into a Tesla Holding BV, of which all shares were transferred to Tesla Motors Stichting a year later. At the end of the month, Tesla also established a new company in the tax-attractive town of Zug in Switzerland: VESPB Global GmbH. Tesla has thus set up a complex network of subsidiaries and contract partners. Of the seven companies in Amsterdam-Zuidoost that fall under Tesla, Tesla Motors Nederland has a production contract with the Gigafactory in Brandenburg in Berlin. Tesla has a global turnover of 85 billion euros. In Amsterdam-Zuidoost, Tesla Motors Nederland (TMN), one of the seven Tesla subsidiaries in the area, plays a key role in a complex tax structure to minimize tax. While Tesla generated global revenues of €85 billion, TMN generated revenues of €26 billion in 2023 – almost a third of its total revenues – from an administrative office. TMN has a manufacturing contract with Tesla’s Gigafactory in Brandenburg, Germany. The German factory produces cars on behalf of TMN, but only receives a small profit margin per car, keeping profits in Germany low (€26.2 million in taxes on €7.8 billion in revenues). The remaining profits are booked via TMN in the Netherlands, where high internal costs – such as royalties for brand use – are recorded. As a result, TMN reports little taxable profit and paid only around €100 million in corporate income tax.
Tax experts have found that Tesla shifts profits to low-tax jurisdictions, possibly through a tax ruling with the Dutch tax authorities. Since 2024, TMN has been part of a Swiss parent company in Zug, a region known for low taxes, further reducing transparency. This structure, supported by a network of subsidiaries and contractual partners, ensures that Tesla achieves significant tax benefits worldwide, while the Netherlands and Germany receive minimal tax revenues.
Tesla gave Chinese Tesla buyers almost 5,000 euros upon purchase. Buyers of a Telsa Model Y or Model 3 had the amount deposited into their account if they could show that they are the owner. Tesla continues to lower its prices in an attempt to settle the competition with the innovative and relatively cheap Chinese car brands in its favor. The Model Y was presented in March 2019 and was supposed to cost at least 64,000 euros, but has been lowered in price to 44,990 euros, which is why no less than 603,664 were sold in China alone.
The first European Tesla factory will be built near Berlin (Grünheide) in 2022. In addition to 1,000 cars per day, batteries will eventually also be produced there by the more than 12,500 employees. It is to become the largest battery production location in the world. The construction of the factory was delayed somewhat because an endangered bat species was found to be living on the construction site. In addition, the court initially ordered a stop to the large-scale felling of trees in the area. However, the clearing of 92 hectares of trees had already begun in preparation for the construction work. Around 500,000 trees were felled for the Tesla factory near Berlin. 329 hectares of forest were felled for the factory. The trees that were felled together removed around 13,000 tons of CO2 per year from the air. That is as much as the annual emissions of several thousand cars that run on fossil fuels. Environmental organizations found the felling harmful to the flora and fauna and the water supply in the area. Moreover, there would be no building permit at all. Demonstrators have therefore occupied a piece of forest next to the factory for two months. The factory was built on the Grünheide site. A striking number of industrial accidents occur in the factory. Last year, an ambulance or trauma helicopter was called 247 times because of an injured employee. Between June and November 2022 alone, there were 190 ‘reportable’ industrial incidents. These also involved serious cases such as burns or the loss of fingers. In one case, an employee was hit by a box that fell from a great height. If everything goes according to plan, the number of employees at this factory should grow to 22,500 people. Production would then increase to one million cars per year. In the Oder-Spree region in the state of Brandenburg, the left-wing extremist ‘Vulkangruppe’, or Volcano Group, set fire to an electricity pylon again on March 5, 2024, affecting the entire Tesla factory. A similar attack was also carried out in 2021. Production came to a complete standstill for a week and the staff had to be evacuated. The factory was sabotaged because it was said to be ungreen, ecological and social. In the morning there was an explosion at the electricity pylon and it was on fire due to thrown up car tires. The wide area was affected by the outage, which also caused problems for hospitals. It took a while for residents in the affected area to have power again, but it took a week for the factory. Production was at a standstill until March 12. For some time now, around 80 to 100 environmental activists have been occupying part of the state forest near the factory, because Elon Musk wants to expand. The factory expansion was stopped by 70% of the residents with protests and objections. Musk will expand the site by 170 hectares for a train station,warehouses and a daycare center for employees’ children. Tesla eventually received permission from the Grünheide city council to expand. The factory site is 300 hectares in size, and 170 hectares must be added. A SPD city council member pointed out that the new train station will “free the area from around 1,900 truck trips per day.” The activists have announced new protests. Tesla plans to increase production to around two million cars per year in the future. More than 17 percent of the employees at Tesla’s German factory in Grünheide are sick at home. That is three times more than the average in the automotive industry. The management of the factory has had enough. With ‘random and unexpected’ home visits, the management hopes to reduce absenteeism. According to HR manager Erik Demmler, thirty employees were selected for the visits. According to him, they were conspicuously absent and had been sick for quite some time. Demmler said that the employees were not really happy with the unexpected visits. Some slammed the doors and others threatened to call the police.
Tesla already has factories in Nevada and New York, and a new factory in Shanghai was built in ten months. The Shanghai factory produces cars for the Chinese market and is also an export hub to Germany and Japan. In February 2022, the factory delivered 56,515 vehicles, including 33,315 for export. That amounts to an average of around 2,018 vehicles per day. A second factory is being built in Shanghai for the production of large energy storage systems: Megapacks. The factory, which is scheduled to open in the second half of 2024, will produce ten thousand Megapacks per year. They can store around 40 gigawatt hours of electricity.
Tesla previously asked suppliers to return part of previous payments dating back to 2016. A purchasing manager asked in a memo for a “significant amount” from suppliers. They should see that money as an investment in the growth of the car manufacturer, which ultimately benefits them. Partly because of these measures, Tesla’s transporter Lucia Autotransport went bankrupt. American customers waiting for the ordered Tesla Model 3 also had to make an additional down payment of 2500 dollars.
On August 7, 2018, Elon Musk suddenly announced via Twitter that he wanted to take his company off the stock exchange. He would be willing to pay 420 dollars (approximately 360 euros) per share for this. With the current number of issued shares, this would amount to more than 70 billion dollars. Several investors filed a complaint because of the tweet. The tweet led to considerable commotion on the New York stock exchange, where the price of Tesla shares temporarily shot up sharply. The investors suspect that the tweet was intended to put a spanner in the works of short sellers. Tesla quickly lost 4.8 percent after this.
The US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has subpoenaed Tesla and Musk over the tweet. The SEC stated that Musk deliberately misled investors because he knew at the time that he had not discussed his intention with a potential financier. Musk himself denies this and is said to have been in talks with a Saudi sovereign wealth fund about financing and to have hired Goldman Sachs and Silver Lake to delist Tesla. Advisors Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Munger, Tolles & Olson are said to have advised Musk on this. Musk is said to have hired Morgan Stanley as an advisor for a possible delisting. At the insistence of shareholders and the Board of Directors, Musk retracted his statement to leave the stock exchange. Musk already owns around 32% of Tesla’s shares.
While Musk received an annual salary of 78.2 million US dollars in 2012, his salary has been only one dollar since 2014. The rest comes from shares and performance-related bonuses. Elon Musk also announced via Twitter that he also wants to start a candy company to prove American businessman Warren Buffet wrong. At the insistence of the shareholders, Musk’s social media communication was limited. Musk eventually decided to settle with the SEC on 29 September 2018. Musk resigned and was replaced by Robyn Denholm. Elon himself is not allowed to fulfill that position for three years. In addition, Musk and Tesla must both pay a fine of 20 million dollars. Musk will remain as CEO, but his chairman role will be taken over, supplemented by two new board members. Denholm comes from the Australian telecom company Telstra, where she was financial and strategy director. She will immediately be employed full-time by Tesla. Denholm has been a member of the board of Tesla since 2014. Todd Maron, Musk’s lawyer and right-hand man, also left suddenly in early December 2018. He was succeeded by Dane Butswinkas, who previously helped Musk with the SEC problems.
Dave Arnold was appointed as the new head of communications. At the same time, Justin McAnear, vice president of global financial operations, left the company on October 7, 2018. Rumors have it that around 46 other employees left Apple for a higher salary because of the recent developments. Doug Fieg, who is responsible for the development of new models, is also said to have left Apple and on September 7, 2018, Dave Morton, who had only been employed as chief accountant since August 6, also left the company.
Also leaving after three and a half years is VP of global supply management Liam O’Connor, who joined from Apple in March 2015. CFO Deepak Ahuja is leaving after two years, but will stay on for a while to train his 34-year-old successor Zach Kirkhorn. Peter Hochholdinger, the man responsible for the production of all cars at Tesla’s Fremont factory, left in June 2019. Hochholdinger had worked for Tesla since 2016 and was previously employed by Audi. Jan Oehmicke, the man responsible for Tesla’s European sales, left. There are also reports that vice president of interior and exterior design Steve MacManus is leaving.
Tesla’s first product was the Roadster, a sports car that debuted in 2008, followed by the Model S, a sedan that was introduced in 2012, and then by the Model X, an SUV that was launched in 2015. In 2017, Tesla began delivering the Model 3, an electric volume model with a range of over 350 kilometers. The price was reduced by 10 percent to 46,494 dollars in China in January 2020 due to heavy competition. In the Netherlands it was 49,000 euros. (standard range) The Tesla Model 3 RWD is now available from 42,990 euros after the price reductions and the Long Range AWD version for 50,990 euros.
Tesla also makes energy storage products, including a Powerwall battery for home use and one for industrial use. In 2016, Tesla became the world’s first vertically integrated renewable energy company with the acquisition of SolarCity, the leading provider of solar energy systems in the United States, and in 2017 it launched Solar Roof for energy generation. SpaceX, Tesla and SolarCity have collectively received an estimated $4.9 billion in subsidies. Tesla and SolarCity now rely on subsidies to survive.
Tencent Holding in China has acquired a stake of almost five percent in Tesla for a total of almost 1.8 billion dollars. This makes Tencent the fifth largest shareholder of Tesla. Tesla raised 1.8 billion euros for the production of Model 3, SolarCity and the battery factory in Nevada but stopped investing in the factory in 2019. Tesla has now invested almost five billion dollars in the factory, the construction of which started in 2014, together with Panasonic. The production facility was supposed to produce lithium-ion batteries for electric cars and batteries for stationary energy storage devices. The partners were supposed to increase capacity by 50 percent next year, but recent setbacks forced Tesla and Panasonic to backtrack on their initial plan. On the other side of the US, however, there is another Gigafactory, which is much less successful. Until now, solar panels and batteries were manufactured in the factory in Nevada. The factory was built because the government came up with a subsidy of $ 750 million to increase employment in the region. Solar panel production is at a low ebb and Tesla is struggling to fill jobs. The company is contractually obliged to have 1,460 people working by April 2020 due to the subsidy (currently 329, while partner Panasonic has another 400 people working). That is why the ailing factory is being given a different purpose: superchargers will be produced there, together with “other energy storage products”. Despite the billion-dollar takeover of SolarCity in 2016, the solar panels are not going at their best, and the revolutionary roof tiles with integrated solar panels are also not really taking off. The factory in the desert of the American state of Nevada is two years old and one of the most important locations for the company. The components are transported to California where they are installed in the cars. The building has a surface area of 455,000 square meters.
German machine builder Grohmann was also recently acquired and will continue as Tesla Grohmann Automation from 2017. In the spring of 2018, Tesla acquired the loss-making SolarCity for 2.6 billion dollars. Employees demanded and received a pay rise of around 30%. Over the next two years, around a thousand jobs are expected to be added at the new Tesla location in Germany. More than 17 percent of the employees at Tesla’s German factory in Grünheide are sick at home. That is three times more than the average in the automotive industry. The factory’s management has had enough. With ‘random and unexpected’ home visits, the management hopes to reduce absenteeism. According to HR manager Erik Demmler, thirty employees were selected for the visits. According to him, they were conspicuously absent and had been sick for quite some time. Demmler said that the employees were not really happy with the unexpected visits. For example, some slammed the doors and others threatened to call the police.
Data breach
A data leak of around 100 gigabytes has occurred via a former employee in Germany. The German state of Brandenburg has called in the Dutch Data Protection Authority (AP), because Tesla’s European headquarters are in Amsterdam. The data contains details and citizen service numbers, private email addresses, telephone numbers and salaries of employees, even that of Elon Musk. The bank details of customers have also been leaked. The data also contains secret data about the production of the cars and complaints about this. In these complaints, approximately 4,000 reports are made about the sudden acceleration or braking of the car. Employees were instructed to keep information about the incidents behind closed doors to avoid charges. The data is said to have been stolen by a disgruntled former service technician.
Strike
Swedish car mechanics went on strike in late October 2023 after Musk refused to negotiate a collective agreement with union IF Metall. The strike spread to other sectors, with dockworkers stopping to unload Teslas, postal workers refusing to deliver packages, and even cleaners at Tesla’s Stockholm office showing solidarity. The strikes spread to other Scandinavian countries, with ports in Denmark being blocked. The union claimed that Tesla’s working conditions were worse than those of other carmakers. Wages were lower and essential benefits were lacking. Tesla claims to offer good working conditions and categorically refused to sign a collective agreement. Elon Musk has “nothing to do” with unions or collective agreements. Many sectors joined the strike out of fear that giving in to Tesla would set a precedent for other companies to bypass unions, and the unrest could then spread to Germany, home of Tesla’s largest factory. Despite a war chest of over a billion euros, union IF Metall showed no intention of quitting, but Musk stood firm. Meanwhile, in Germany, employee discontent is also growing. A lobbyist with experience in influencing regulations in Scandinavian countries is even being sought. Tesla does not make cars in Sweden, but they are sold and serviced there by more than 120 mechanics. According to the union, Tesla still refuses to negotiate collectively. According to another union involved, the company is trying to circumvent the blockade by, for example, bringing cars to Sweden on trucks or by train. “The strike in Sweden is still going strong after a year, although Tesla wants to give the impression that everything is normal. Where it started with stopping Tesla cars in the port, it turned into a halt to the delivery of parts, the strike will be expanded even further this month. From October 10, another union will join the strike, which means that Tesla’s charging network can no longer expect maintenance. Although Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling new car in Sweden this year through August, sales of the model fell by 8.8 percent. Although Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling new car in Sweden this year through August, sales of the model fell by 8.8 percent. Elon Musk is fundamentally opposed to organizing employees into a union. In the US, for example, he has repeatedly tried to stop employees from organizing. By not joining a union, employees could receive Tesla shares in return. However, these shares could only be sold after four years. In Sweden, unions are a concept; two out of the three employees are members of a union and 90 percent of the companies fall under a collective labor agreement. That was also the wish of the employees who are paid by Tesla. But the engineers of Tesla,themselves members of the IF Metall union, were turned down by Musk, who refused to sign an agreement. Since then, the technicians have been on strike, but other Tesla-related companies and employees have been carrying out sympathetic actions en masse. For example, cleaners no longer come to clean Tesla garages, the garbage service does not collect waste, sometimes the registration of Teslas is refused and the strike has now spread to neighboring countries such as Denmark, Finland and Norway. Since December, Tesla has had to transport its cars from the European mainland to Sweden by truck. Although Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling new car in Sweden through August this year, sales of the model fell by 8.8 percent, according to data from Mobility Sweden.
Complaints, Defects, Recalls, Fatalities and Lawsuits
Tesla has been plagued by a series of technical issues, recalls and growing customer discontent for years, which have undermined the brand’s premium image. Thousands of complaints have been filed about faulty power steering in Tesla Model 3s and Model Ys, with the system sometimes shutting down while driving at high speeds, leading to one crash and 50 towing cases. A preliminary investigation into the issues has been scaled up, which could result in a recall of more than 300,000 Teslas sold in the U.S. by 2023. According to sources, Tesla had been aware of the defect for some time, but Tesla withheld documents and blamed drivers.
Tesla accused customers of “abusing” its cars when they had defective parts. The company knew that some parts, especially suspension, were faulty, but charged high fees for repairs, saying it was the users’ fault. This was true even for new cars, such as a Tesla Model Y that broke after just one day. Tesla was inconsistent in recalling cars with problems, only doing so in China under pressure from the government, but not in Europe or the US. An internal memo from 2019 encouraged this behavior, citing vague warranty terms. Tesla did this most notably in 2018, when the company was struggling due to the Model 3’s production problems. It lost more money on repairs than it made. Reuters cited as an example a buyer who suffered damage to both the steering and control arms of a brand-new Tesla Model Y this year while the car was being driven leisurely through a residential area. Tesla ruled that he could pay the $14,000 repair bill himself, stating that the car (with only 185 kilometers on the odometer) had already suffered the damage earlier due to rough driving. Reuters claims to have access to Tesla reports on tens of thousands of such cases. It would concern chronic problems over the past 7 years in all Tesla models.
Another recent common problem is a sour smell from the cabin air filtration system, especially on humid days. This is due to a buildup of dust, moisture and dirt in the filters, which often start to smell before their recommended replacement interval. Tesla promotes a DIY approach with how-to videos for filter replacement, but this is difficult for inexperienced owners due to the difficult-to-reach location of the filters.
Teslas are fully self-driving. Provided you are in a specific area of Austin, Texas. Outside of that, you still have to be behind the wheel yourself. However, Tesla has been misleadingly using the term ‘Full-Self Driving’ for years. The French government is therefore going to tackle Tesla. They are quite late with that: in Germany, Tesla was already found guilty of misleading in 2020.
The problem is that Full-Self Driving is not really autonomous, but that is not the only issue. Customers pay €7,500 for Full-Self Driving, while this does not work at all in Europe. The only difference between Enhanced Autopilot is traffic light and stop sign recognition. Furthermore, you pay purely for the promise of autonomous driving. This is stated, but it is not clear what you get for your money and when.
According to the French, Tesla is not only misleading customers with FSD, but there are also many things wrong with the purchasing process. For example, the sales contracts do not state where and when the car will be delivered and money is not refunded within the deadline in case of cancellation. France has now ordered Tesla to solve these problems within 4 months. If they do not do so, they will be fined €50,000 per day.
Other complaints are about:
Battery Degradation: In discussions on platforms like X and in previous reporting, some Tesla owners have complained of faster-than-expected battery capacity degradation, especially under heavy use (e.g., taxis or in extreme climates). This results in shorter-than-advertised driving range, though Tesla maintains that this is within normal wear and tear.
Software bugs in Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (FSD): While the article mentions Autopilot issues like harsh braking, there are broader complaints about FSD beta, such as unpredictable behavior in complex traffic situations, ignoring traffic signs, or not recognizing obstacles. These issues have been investigated in the US by the NHTSA, but specific new incidents after October 2023 are not documented in my available data.
Quality issues with new models: Customers have reported inconsistent build quality in the past, such as uneven seams, misaligned panels, or loose parts upon delivery, particularly with new models like the Cybertruck (though not mentioned in the article). This isn’t unique to Tesla, but it remains a recurring point of criticism.
Charging Network and Compatibility: Some users have reported issues with Tesla’s Supercharger network, such as broken chargers or long wait times in busy locations. Additionally, there have been complaints about compatibility issues with non-Tesla charging stations, especially after other manufacturers adopted the NACS standard.
4,000 incidents of sudden acceleration or braking, squeaking and creaking noises, leaking roofs, breaking wheels and failing on-board computers in Model S.
Taxi drivers reported problems shortly after they started using the car, including windshield wipers hitting the hood, turn signals coming loose, self-adjusting side mirrors, faulty tire pressure sensors, creaking suspension, loud wind and moisture in the backup lights. Within a year, more serious problems arose, including engines failing, brake failure, brake rust, charging problems and even a door flying open on a turn. One taxi had 175 repair points in three years and a driver had to return for maintenance 33 times, including a new drive unit at 33,000 kilometers.
Tesla has fixed many of the complaints for the taxi drivers free of charge, including stuck seatbacks, Bluetooth interference, discolored touchscreens, rattling doors and loose trim.
Other complaints include faulty drive shafts, doors that won’t open, abrupt braking due to Autopilot, creaking noises, vibrations, water leaks, peeling paint and a disappointing range. There is also dissatisfaction with customer service: complaints can only be filed via an app, appointments often take a month and repairs under warranty are sometimes not carried out or charged for.
Recalls are not a new phenomenon for Tesla. In March 2017, 53,000 Model S and X vehicles were recalled due to faulty parking brakes, 31,000 of which were in the US. In another case, 11,000 Model X cars had to be returned due to problems with the rear seats. Battery production issues have also led to supply disruptions. One serious incident involved a Swiss Tesla S 90D driver who suffered a broken control arm at 200 km/h, causing the car to become uncontrollable and producing a huge cloud of smoke after a loud bang when braking.
The Smart Summon feature, which allows a Tesla to drive itself to the driver, also doesn’t work properly. Users report bumper damage or collisions with walls in parking garages, despite the requirement that the driver must be in line of sight of the car.
There are also complaints worldwide about long waiting times for parts (e.g. windshields or tires) and limited availability of service centers, especially in less densely populated areas.
The Tesla Claim Foundation, which launched a mass claim with much fanfare and now has more than 1,000 participants, has disappeared without a trace.
Tesla Model Y owner Nyree Hinton from California says his Tesla is counting thousands of miles too many. Tesla uses an algorithm that looks at how you drive and how much power you use. Based on that, the on-board computer calculates how many miles you have driven. However, if the mileage increases faster, the warranty will expire sooner. Hinton bought a used Model Y with about 59,000 miles on the clock at the end of 2022. In the first few months, he drove an average of 90 miles per day. But suddenly, just before the warranty expired, that went up to more than 115 miles per day. All while the route remained the same. The deviation can be more than 100 percent. Tesla also has a patent stating that the odometer is indeed based on “miles-to-electrical energy conversion”. In other words: calculations instead of actual measurements with mechanical equipment. If the judge does indeed rule in favor of the plaintiff, the American car manufacturer will have a big problem.
The electric pickup has been plagued by problems from the start. There are poorly bonded metal panels on the front and strips that come loose. Customers complain on X that delivery has been delayed. The Cybertruck has been in production since early 2023. Tesla has since carried out at least six recalls. The software has also been problematic. For example, there were reports that the accelerator pedal could get stuck in the interior trim, possibly causing unintended acceleration. Because sales have not really taken off, the price has gone down. The factory can build 125,000 a year, but last year the counter stopped at 39,000. What also did not help is that Musk promised a starting price of $40,000, while now only versions starting at $82,000 are for sale. Analysts said earlier this year that the eccentric vehicle is a flop.
Tesla had to recall more than 376,000 vehicles in the US due to issues with its power steering system. This can require more steering force than is available, potentially leading to crashes. No physical repairs are needed; the issue can be fixed with a software update. The NHTSA spent a year investigating after Tesla owners reported the steering issues. Tesla itself is not aware of any accidents caused by the issue. The issue affects the 2023 Model 3 and Model Y models that are running outdated software versions. This is the third major recall Tesla has had to issue in a short period of time. In January, the electric carmaker had to recall about 239,000 vehicles due to an issue with the rear-view camera, which could increase the risk of crashes. That recall followed a December recall of nearly 700,000 vehicles due to issues with a warning light. In July last year, Tesla recalled about 1.85 million vehicles due to a risk that software may not be able to detect an unlocked hood.
The parents of a 34-year-old motorcyclist are suing Tesla. The motorcyclist was killed in the 2022 crash in the US state of Utah while the car was in Autopilot. The Tesla was traveling at a speed of 120 to 130 kilometers per hour (75 to 80 mph) into the back of the Harley Davidson. The victim’s family members claim that the Tesla driver was too tired to drive safely. According to them, the Tesla’s sensors and cameras should have noticed the motorcyclist, but they did not. This is not the first time that Tesla has come under fire for Autopilot and its self-driving cars. In April of this year, another motorcyclist was killed near Seattle in a collision with a Tesla Model S
More than 125,000 of certain S, X, 3 and Y models in the United States are being recalled to fix a fault in the seat belt reminder system. The warning light and chime sometimes do not work if the driver is not wearing a seat belt. According to the U.S. regulator NHTSA, the cars do not meet safety standards. A software update is available to fix the problem. In January 2024, 200,000 cars were also recalled due to a software fault that could obstruct drivers’ vision when backing up. The company recalled almost 4,000 Cybertrucks in April 2024 to fix an accelerator pedal.
An American motorist drove his Tesla straight into a train in early May 2024. The car was in self-driving mode and did not see that a train was thundering over the railway crossing.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration has announced it is investigating the adequacy of Tesla’s December recall, which was intended to prevent drivers from misusing Autopilot. The NHTSA has questioned the changes Tesla made at the time.
Tesla in early April 2024 settled a wrongful death lawsuit brought by the family of former Apple engineer Walter Huang, who died after his Tesla Model X crashed while Autopilot was engaged. The man was killed when his Tesla struck a concrete median barrier in Silicon Valley on March 23, 2018. The National Transportation Safety Board’s investigation found that Autopilot had been engaged nearly 19 minutes before the fatal crash, when the car veered off the highway at 70 mph (110 km/h). In a March 30, 2018, blog post, Tesla said that Huang’s hands were not detected on the steering wheel of his car for six seconds before the crash. The company said it believes Huang was responsible for the crash because investigators found he was playing a video game on his phone while Autopilot was engaged. Huang did not brake or attempt to steer his car away from the concrete barrier before it crashed. While Huang’s family acknowledges he was distracted while the car was moving, they argue Tesla is at fault because Autopilot was falsely marketed as self-driving software. They alleged Tesla knew Autopilot wasn’t ready for prime time and had flaws that could make it unsafe to use. “Ms. Huang lost her husband and two of her children lost their father because Tesla beta-tested its Autopilot software on live drivers,” B. Mark Fong, the attorney who filed the suit in California state court, said in a May 2019 complaint.
After a two-year investigation that analyzed 1,000 Tesla crashes while Autopilot was engaged, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said the Autopilot system can give drivers a false sense of security. It can be easily abused in certain dangerous situations where Autopilot may not be able to navigate the road safely, NHTSA found in December 2023. NHTSA and the National Transportation Safety Board also investigated crashes involving Tesla vehicles that used its various driver-assist features, including a series of collisions with emergency vehicles at the scenes of other crashes. Immediately following NHTSA’s December report, Tesla recalled all 2 million of its cars in the United States, giving drivers more warnings when Autopilot is engaged and they’re not paying attention to the road or putting their hands on the wheel.
Tesla was again ordered by the SAMR regulator in China to recall more than 1.6 million vehicles due to software issues that could pose safety risks while driving. Tesla has fixed the issues with a remote software upgrade. The issues affect imported Model S, Model X and Model 3 vehicles, as well as Tesla’s China-made Model 3 and Model Y vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) will investigate the recall of more than 2 million vehicles in December 2023. The NHTSA is now looking into whether the software updates for Autopilot are sufficient to address those concerns.
In May of last year, Tesla also recalled almost all cars sold in China. The company had to repair about 1.1 million cars because of a problem with the acceleration systems of the vehicles. Tesla knew about the bad parts, but customers still had to pay for them. Sometimes a whole new car or battery pack had to be bought at their own expense. In the United States, more than two million Tesla models Y, S, 3 and X, which were produced since October 2012, received a software update after a regulator concluded that the driving assistance Autopilot was not safe enough. Drivers were not motivated enough to pay attention themselves.
Incidentally, a Dutch Tesla promoter had two problems: the SSD chip that made the entire screen black after 100k km and one at 5 years with the Model S (out of warranty) https://lnkd.in/enX_9i2q that resulted in €3,400 in repair costs and led to a mandatory recall. In addition, a leak in the front doors of the Model X after 5 years that broke the sensor and caused the doors to open very hard https://lnkd.in/eFb8-v7E The construction error of the Model X! led to 2,000 euros in repairs! Tesla did not reimburse anything! Model X doors ram into cars and people! According to drivers, the service is further substandard and terribly expensive. The promoter in question received a virtually new Tesla with a buyout deal after his complaints appeared on YouTube and elsewhere online and were viewed a lot. The man is now extremely satisfied online with the brand and the quality of Teslas.
In the space of a month, two new fatal accidents involving self-driving Teslas have occurred in the United States. In China, police are investigating whether a fatal accident involving a Tesla was caused by a technical defect. A Tesla Model Y ran away and eventually came to a standstill after a heavy crash. The accident previously occurred in early November 2022 in the Guangdong province. The 55-year-old driver wanted to park the car when it drove away on its own at high speed. Camera footage shows that the driver can only steer the car, but cannot get the Tesla under control. The Tesla eventually collided with several vehicles. Two people were killed, including a child. Three people were injured. In China, Tesla’s second-largest sales market, (false) claims have been made more often that the car’s braking system would be defective. Whether this accident was caused by human error or an actual technical problem, an investigation must determine. There were also many complaints about running wild, squeaking and creaking, leaking roofs, breaking wheels and the Model S’s on-board computer malfunctioning.
Tesla owner Briggs Matsko has filed a class action lawsuit accusing Tesla of “misleading the public” with false claims about its Autopilot and Full Self-Driving driver assistance features. The lawsuit alleges that since 2016, Tesla and CEO Elon Musk have “deceptively” touted the functionality of Tesla’s driver assistance features as full self-driving or that a fully autonomous feature was “nearly ready,” when they knew it was not. According to the plaintiff, Tesla did this to “generate excitement” about its cars, attract investment, boost sales, avoid bankruptcy, boost its stock price and become a “dominant player” in the electric car market. “Tesla has not yet produced anything even close to a fully self-driving car,” Matsko claims. He says users of Tesla’s driver assistance features have experienced numerous problems using the features, such as steering into oncoming traffic and running red lights. He is seeking damages for all consumers who have purchased or leased Teslas with Autopilot and Full Self-Driving since 2016. The new lawsuit was filed in San Francisco, California. In the same state, the DMV also filed a complaint against Tesla at the end of July for exaggerating the effectiveness of its driver assistance systems. According to the DMV, the car manufacturer gives the impression that the cars can be much more autonomous than is actually possible. With the “false or misleading” statements, Tesla would have violated the law. For 9 years, Musk has promised Tesla customers that all vehicles will be able to enjoy it. But without warning, he suddenly admitted in January of this year that it will not happen. In early 2025, during a conference call, Elon Musk declared to Tesla’s major shareholders: the company’s vehicles, equipped with hardware 3, will have to be upgraded to support the autonomous driving software that is currently in development, reports the site Presse-citron. “I think the most honest answer is that we will have to upgrade the Hardware 3 computer of people who bought the Full Self-Driving. It will be painful and difficult, but we will do it,” he stressed. The announcement was received as a kind of “running gag”. As a reminder, in 2019, all drivers with a car running on Hardware 2.0 and Hardware 2.5 had to upgrade to Hardware 3, in order to benefit from automated driving. At the time, legal action was also taken for “misleading advertising”. All this suggests that the Tesla company is in the middle of a crisis management. In order to meet its obligations, it may have to spend millions. In order to avoid further delays, most of the officials at the regulator were fired via DOGE.
Since 2018, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has recorded 11 crashes in which Teslas were on Autopilot. The electric cars crashed into emergency vehicles with their hazard lights on, an arrow truck or traffic cones in the roadway. A total of 17 people have been injured and one person has died in the crashes. A total of 765,000 vehicles are under investigation, nearly every one Tesla has sold in the U.S. since 2014.
The NTSB is investigating why several crashed Teslas have caught fire again, sometimes days after a crash. A whistleblower previously reported that fire-hazardous battery packs with manufacturing defects were installed in new cars. Automaker Tesla is puzzled after a Tesla spontaneously exploded in Shanghai, China on Sunday. Several workers suffered second-degree burns when liquid metal gushed from an aluminum press on the production line. During the same period, three Tesla Model S cars also caught fire and in San Francisco, a Model S 6 spontaneously ignited at the right rear wheel in a garage. The car was not being charged at the time of the fire. A software update was sent for this in May 2019.
In late April 2022, a Tesla Model S burned out in a parking garage in Shanghai, followed by a Tesla in Hong Kong. The software update changes the charging system and temperature management. Tesla fires are not uncommon: in April 2019, a Model S went up in flames in Oss and in 2018, a Model S burned out in Hollywood. The problem with current electric cars with lithium-ion batteries is that an incipient fire is virtually impossible to extinguish. As soon as the chemicals in batteries come into contact with oxygen, you get a dangerous reaction. So far, there have been no fire incidents with the Model 3.
For the fourth time in two weeks, Tesla had to update thousands of cars in the United States in February 2022 for the Boombox function on various models. It could not only play the sound of a moving car, but also the bleating of a goat or the sound of a fart. And that can be dangerous for pedestrians, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. For example, pedestrians may not be able to hear that a car is approaching. Electric cars in the US are required to play sound when they are moving slowly, so that pedestrians can hear when a vehicle is approaching. Tesla has therefore been building speakers into the outside of the car since 2019. Not only for sound in park mode, but also while driving. That is now being restricted,
In the US, more than 817,000 cars have been recalled as of February 2022 because a safety alert does not activate when a driver starts the car but is not wearing a seat belt. According to the US regulator National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), the recall concerns Teslas of various types and years. According to the authority, the cars that do not trigger the alarm do not meet the federal motor vehicle safety standard. Tesla is implementing a software update for the cars in question to fix the problems. Tesla says it has not yet received any reports of accidents or injuries related to the problem. The seat belt reminder is also said to go off if a car is driving faster than 22 kilometers per hour and the seat belt is not fastened.
The U.S. Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) has ordered a recall of 158,000 Model S and Model X vehicles due to defects in their on-board computers that could lead to unsafe situations if the touchscreens do not work. Following complaints in November 2020, it was discovered that Model S (built between 2012 and 2018) and Model X (built between 2016 and 2018) vehicles had defects related to motor safety. The rear-view camera could not work and the autopilot system and turn signals could not function properly. The systems that prevent the windshield from fogging up or icing up are also affected by the defect. This is said to be related to the limited memory capacity of the on-board computers in the Models S and X.
The California civil rights agency DFEH sued Tesla for racial discrimination and harassment at a factory in the city of Fremont. Hundreds of complaints from Tesla employees and a three-year investigation into the company’s practices resulted in a complaint. Black workers were subjected to racist slurs and were discriminated against in assignments, discipline, pay and promotion. Areas in the factory where many black or African-American workers were stationed were allegedly called “plantations” by non-black workers. Non-black workers were also often given preferential treatment at the factory, including easier jobs. Non-black workers with racist tattoos of the Confederate flag, seen as a symbol of slavery, are also said to have shown them to black employees in order to intimidate them. Many of the previous complaints did not go to court because Tesla employees were required to sign agreements that workplace disputes would be handled behind closed doors. In 2021, Tesla lost a discrimination lawsuit in the US. A US jury in San Francisco then ruled that former employee Owen Diaz, who is black, should receive $137 million (€118 million), but in April 2023, a judge on appeal found that amount too high and reduced the damages to €2.9 million. Six female employees sued Tesla in December 2021 for sexual harassment, including unwanted touching, comments and retaliation against those who complained. Five of the women who sued worked at the company’s Fremont factory. The sixth woman to file a lawsuit worked in service centres in Southern California. More workplace racism lawsuits are pending in the US, including a case on behalf of 6,000 employees. Tesla denies the allegations.
The superchargers are too often used by people who only use their car for short city trips, while the stations are mainly intended to charge cars for a long trip. Tesla is going to place charging stations in California at 30 large Airbnb apartments and preferably at houses with more than five reviews and at least 4 stars. In the future, Tesla buyers will no longer have free access to the supercharger network. Buyers of a new Tesla can still benefit from a 100 dollar discount scheme if they have been recommended by another Tesla driver through a referral program. Tesla now has twenty thousand superchargers worldwide, 29 of which are in the Netherlands
Tesla Model S P85D added the horsepower of the front electric motor to that of the rear in its advertising, but the European Union no longer allows this. Model S P85D actually has 469 hp instead of 772 hp (or 539 hp in the fast Ludicrous Mode). The batteries do not have enough power to run two electric motors at full power at the same time, so the horsepower is there but cannot be used.
There are many complaints about the Telsa S running wild, squeaking and creaking, leaking roofs, breaking wheels and trip computer failure. Research shows that in the first 90 days of ownership, Tesla owners experience more problems than other brands. On average, 166 problems are reported per 100 vehicles, but Tesla has 250 problems per 100 vehicles. For comparison, the top scorers on the list (Dodge and Kia) had 136 problems per 100 vehicles. Tesla’s problems mainly have to do with manufacturing defects and imperfections in the paint. Body panels also often do not fit together properly, trunks can be difficult to open, there is a lot of wind noise and ‘squeaks and rattles’.
Tesla’s previous models also suffer from teething problems: the cars rattle and squeak, handles, sunroofs, batteries and electric motors often break, and the touchscreens often give problems. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is investigating a possible problem with the suspension, and Tesla also has to recall all 90,000 Model S Teslas produced to date because of poorly anchored seat belts that can spontaneously release.
Teslas are difficult to repair, so the company plans to repair the damage itself. Damage repairers sometimes take weeks to months to repair the damage. Because repairs to Teslas are disproportionately expensive and take a very long time, customers in the US have sued the company. The class action was filed in the Federal Court in San Francisco.
Despite all its shortcomings, Tesla was the best-selling car brand in the Netherlands in March 2022. The Model Y was particularly popular. 3,160 Teslas were sold, including 2,362 Model Ys. Tesla implemented price reductions worldwide, partly due to increased competition from other car manufacturers. As a result, a record number of 422,875 cars were delivered worldwide in the first quarter of 2023, but this was at the expense of profits.
In the United States, Hertz has again thrown its plans to drastically electrify overboard. Hertz already has 50,000 electric cars there, of which 38,000 are Tesla branded, and was planning to buy 150,000 Teslas for rental worldwide. They are now abandoning that. The costs and residual value are rather disappointing. Instead of Teslas, Hertz wants to buy cheaper General Motors cars.
Tesla Model 3 batteries were launched in a crash in the US. Battery cells became loose and were launched from the Tesla while still on fire, flying through a bedroom window and into someone’s lap in another home. The cells in the bedroom caused a fire in the bed of the affected home. The driver was drunk and drove into a pole at 100 mph. A wheel also came loose and ruptured the water pipes of a nearby apartment building, flooding the area
The Chinese market authority SAMR wants Tesla to recall 48,442 S- and X-series vehicles due to potentially unsafe design flaws in the front and rear suspension. The cars in question were made between September 17, 2013 and October 15, 2018 in Fremont, California. Tesla denies the defects and blames the cars on improper use, such as driving into sidewalks. However, Tesla has agreed to the recall because otherwise the company will have to “go through the burdensome Chinese administrative process.
Researchers from KU Leuven have successfully hacked keys to Tesla cars from manufacturer Pektron. They were able to clone a key using equipment costing less than a thousand euros, allowing them to steal the car within seconds.
Tesla Motors has sued Hoerbiger Automotive Comfort Systems for failing to meet agreements to produce hydraulic door mechanisms. In February 2014, the gullwing doors for the Model X were supposed to be made, but Hoerbiger was unable to get it done. Prototypes had many teething problems, such as overheating and oil leaks. Tesla canceled the order, after which Hoerbiger demanded more than three million dollars in compensation. Tesla then filed a counterclaim, claiming that Hoerbiger had delayed the development of the Model X. The fully automatic rear doors of the Model X hinge into the roof and move a maximum of 30 cm laterally. Sensors are intended to prevent anything from being hit when opening and closing.
Tesla was sued on June 23, 2025, by the families of three people who were killed last September when their 2024 Model S, equipped with Autopilot and full self-driving features, crashed on the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey. The wrongful death lawsuit, filed in federal court in Camden, New Jersey, blames the deaths of David Dryerman, 54; his wife, Michele, 54; and their daughter Brooke, 17, on the car’s “defective and unreasonably dangerous design.” Brooke’s older brother, Max Dryerman, who was not in the car, is also a plaintiff. The plaintiff is seeking unspecified damages, including punitive damages. The Dryermans were returning from a music festival on September 14, 2024, when their Model S veered off the road in Woodbridge Township, New Jersey, striking a traffic sign, a guardrail and a concrete bridge pillar. According to the lawsuit, the car’s defective design caused it to drive out of its lane and fail to automatically brake in time, leading to the crash.
Tesla problems in Amsterdam taxi world
In 2014, Schipholtaxi won the concession to provide priority taxi transportfrom Schiphol, by promising to drive new white Teslas, but these had to go to the garage very regularly due to all kinds of defects. Reports about this are part of a lawsuit that four drivers have filed against Tesla in vain. They want the purchase price of more than 86,000 euros from Tesla back. Bios bought 72 Model S cars for 5.7 million euros, of which 720,000 was subsidized by RVO and the municipality of Amsterdam. An important part of the deal was the range. Schiphol demanded that taxis had to be able to travel at least 400 km with a full battery. In retrospect, the quality of the cars turned out to be abominable and the reliability left much to be desired and the range was never achieved. Bios Groep branch manager Tofik Ohoudi had never seen so many problems as with Tesla. Bios is going to court and is claiming damages for damages relating to the 70 Teslas that were used as taxis at Schiphol and is claiming 1.3 million euros for the damage suffered by the Teslas. Tesla states that cars that are used “very intensively” logically also wear out faster. Tesla also offered free maintenance well beyond the warranty period. Tesla sold approximately 165 cars in one deal: 95 to the drivers of Schipholtaxi and 70 to the BIOS Group. A large, more expensive, 85 kWh battery was supposed to give the car a theoretical range of 502 kilometers. A large number of drivers paid five thousand euros in cash to front men of Schipholtaxi and were also required to purchase a Tesla. In September 2014, the drivers received their Tesla, depending on the options, for 86,000 euros with a four-year lease contract. Complaints arose soon after the car was put into use. The windshield wiper hit the hood, side turn signals came loose, a side mirror adjusted itself to its own discretion, a tire pressure sensor broke, clicking sounds were heard when steering and braking, the suspension creaked, the wind was loud, there was moisture in the reversing light, etc. etc. Within a year, more serious defects arose. Brakes that did not work, brakes that rusted, an engine that stalled on the highway, charging problems, a door that flew open in a bend, One car had no less than 175 repair points in three years. One of the drivers had to return with his car 33 times in three years for both defects and maintenance. A new drive unit had to be installed at 33,000 kilometers. Tesla repaired what was under warranty free of charge and offered replacement transportation, but without an on-board computer, so that operational damage was also suffered. Some repairs took several days. Another driver had to have the engine replaced several times in three years, in addition to many other defects. In May 2015, drivers stopped by Tesla’s office to protest. At 50,000 miles, the warranty expired and they had to pay for repairs themselves.After a conversation, the drivers were given an extension of the warranty, until Tesla came up with a kind of maintenance contract, including the proposal to buy back the car on the condition that they do not buy a Tesla for five years after that. Then, two years after purchase, the manufacturer performs a software update for the battery. The drivers say that they suddenly see their range decrease from 350 to 200, 250 kilometers. And they have to charge more often. Charging takes time and therefore money. Tesla denies ’throttling’ the battery but states that batteries wear out when the drivers fully charge them every time. First, the drivers hear that the update closes “the already degraded parts of the battery” for a longer lifespan. Later, Tesla also writes that due to the update, the worn part is no longer included in the calculation of the range, which therefore becomes more accurate. And this also happened with cars that were purchased later, where after an update, the range and charging speed decreased considerably. Tesla refused to roll back the update, but promised in early 2017 that there would be an extended service agreement, but that did not apply to cars with more than 210,000 kilometers on the odometer. The drivers also suddenly received charging invoices from Schipholtaxi. On September 29, 2016, all Schipholtaxi drivers received an email from director Gamis el Bouakili. It was about access to the superchargers, Tesla’s super-fast chargers. They received these for free and unlimited when they purchased their car – no fuel costs, which made the deal extra attractive. Now they read that they were no longer allowed to charge at the Tesla Service Center, under penalty of a few days’ suspension by Schipholtaxi. The parking lot there has become a kind of ’taxi hangout’, and Tesla finds it unsafe for others because of the crowds. But there is a solution, writes the director. A few days later, a new charging location will open at Schiphol-Noord, at McDonald’s, exclusively for them. The drivers assumed that charging would be free there too, but instead received an invoice of hundreds of euros from Schipholtaxi, for half a year of charging, 18 cents per kWh, for which Tesla had apparently supplied the data. Tesla charges a cost price of 16 cents per kWh from Schipholtaxi. Schipholtaxi added another 2 cents in administration costs. Regarding the defects, Tesla says that it has offered a generous goodwill arrangement and that cars that are used “very intensively” wear out faster. “If these cars were that bad, the question arises why the taxi drivers did not suspend their monthly lease payments.” A business buyer may be expected to “study the products that he wants to purchase for business use”. Regarding the battery, Tesla says that Tesla drivers have received charging training and have signed “that they understand that an electric vehicle functions differently than a car that runs on fossil fuels”.The irritation about charging reached boiling point on December 6, 2017. More than twenty taxis gathered at the Tesla office. The drivers demanded an explanation. After hours of waiting, they managed to speak to someone from the company. Last year, another driver with a Tesla filed a summary proceeding about the software update and access to the charging stations at the Tesla office. He also wanted an extension of the warranty. The judge only ruled in his favor about charging at Tesla. However, that update also turned out to be a problem for American Tesla drivers. In August, the car manufacturer received a class action in California because of the reduced range after the update. The initiator suspects Tesla of having throttled the battery of his 2014 Model S to prevent it from catching fire. Drivers who protested were reportedly threatened. A lawsuit against Tesla was in vain because Tesla always remedied all complaints free of charge, including a stuck backrest, malfunctions in a Bluetooth telephone connection, a discoloured touchscreen, a rattling door and loose trim strips, etc. The complaints were also not due to the car, but to the driving behaviour of the drivers. To the extent that the defects fall outside the warranty (4 years or 80,000 km), the complainants invoke the principle of conformity, but the judge also rejected that. Only private buyers enjoy that protection and these cars were sold to ING via a lease construction, which means that the complainants are not consumers according to the letter of the law.Only private buyers enjoy this protection and these cars were sold to ING via a leasing arrangement, which means that the complainants are not consumers according to the letter of the law.Only private buyers enjoy this protection and these cars were sold to ING via a leasing arrangement, which means that the complainants are not consumers according to the letter of the law.
A number of drivers of taxi company BBF are dissatisfied and feel cheated, threatened and intimidated by director Gamis el Bouakili of SchipholTaxi, who was recently elected The Other Businessman 2018. According to the drivers, the things that were promised to them in 2014, when SchipholTaxi won the tender for airport transport, have not come true. In 2014, Schipholtaxi won the concession to provide priority taxi transport from Schiphol by promising to drive new white Teslas, but these have to go to the garage very regularly due to all kinds of defects. Reports about this are part of a lawsuit that four drivers have filed against Tesla.
They want the purchase price of over 86,000 euros back from Tesla. Tesla states that cars that are used “very intensively” logically also wear out faster. Tesla also offered free maintenance well after the warranty period. Tesla sold about 165 cars in one deal: one hundred to the drivers of Schipholtaxi and the rest to the BIOS Group. A large, more expensive, 85 kWh battery was supposed to give the car a theoretical range of 502 kilometers. A large number of drivers paid five thousand euros in cash to front men of Schipholtaxi and in addition, purchasing a Tesla was a condition for everyone. In September, the drivers received their Tesla, depending on the options, for as much as 86,000 euros with a four-year lease contract.
Complaints started coming soon after it was put into use. The windshield wiper hits the hood, side indicators come loose, a side mirror adjusts itself to its own discretion, a tire pressure sensor breaks off, clicking sounds are heard when steering and braking, the suspension creaks, the wind is loud, there is moisture in the reversing light, etc. More serious defects arose within a year. Brakes that don’t work, brakes that rust, an engine that cuts out on the highway, charging problems, a door that flies open in a bend, One car had no less than 175 repair points in three years. One of the drivers had to return with his car 33 times in three years for both defects and maintenance. A new drive unit had to be installed at 33,000 kilometers. Tesla repaired what was under warranty free of charge and offered replacement transportation, but without an on-board computer, so that operational damage was also suffered. Some repairs took several days. Another driver had to have the engine replaced a few times in three years, along with many other problems. In May 2015, the drivers visit the Tesla office. At 80,000 kilometers, the warranty expired and they had to pay for the repairs themselves.
After a conversation, the drivers were given an extension of the warranty, until Tesla came up with a kind of maintenance contract, including the proposal to buy back the car on the condition that they do not buy a Tesla for five years after that. Then, two years after purchase, the manufacturer performs a software update for the battery. The drivers say that they suddenly see their range decrease from 350 to 200, 250 kilometers. And they have to charge more often. Charging takes time and therefore money. Tesla denies ’throttling’ the battery but states that batteries wear out when the drivers fully charge them every time. First, the drivers hear that the update closes “the already degraded parts of the battery” for a longer lifespan. Later, Tesla also writes that due to the update, the worn part is no longer included in the calculation of the range, which therefore becomes more accurate. This also happened with cars that were purchased later, where after an update, the range and charging speed decreased considerably. Tesla refused to roll back the update, but promised in early 2017 that there was an extended service agreement, but that did not apply to cars with more than 210,000 kilometers on the odometer. Drivers also suddenly received charging invoices from Schipholtaxi.
On September 29, 2016, all Schipholtaxi drivers received an email from director Gamis el Bouakili. It was about access to the superchargers, Tesla’s super-fast chargers. They received them for free and unlimited when they purchased their car – no fuel costs, which made the deal extra attractive. Now they read that they are no longer allowed to charge at the Tesla Service Center, under penalty of a few days’ suspension by Schipholtaxi. The parking lot there has become a kind of ’taxi hangout’, and Tesla finds it unsafe for others because of the crowds. But there is a solution, writes the director. A few days later, a new charging location opens at Schiphol-Noord, at McDonald’s, exclusively for them. The drivers assumed that charging would also be free there, but instead they received an invoice for hundreds of euros from Schipholtaxi, for half a year of charging, 18 cents per kWh. for which Tesla had apparently supplied the data. Tesla asked Schipholtaxi for a cost price of 16 cents per kWh.
Schipholtaxi added 2 cents in administration costs on top of that. Tesla says about the defects that it has offered a generous goodwill arrangement and that cars that are used “very intensively” wear out faster. “If these cars were that bad, the question arises why the taxi drivers did not suspend their monthly lease payments.” A business buyer can be expected to “study the products that he wants to purchase for business use”. Tesla says about the battery that Tesla drivers have received charging training and have signed “that they understand that an electric vehicle functions differently than a car that runs on fossil fuels”.
The irritation about charging reached boiling point on December 6, 2017. More than twenty taxis gathered at the Tesla office. After hours of waiting, they were able to speak to someone from the company. Last year, another driver with a Tesla filed a summary proceeding about the software update and access to the charging stations at the Tesla office. He also wanted an extension of the warranty. The judge only ruled in his favor about charging at Tesla. However, that update also turned out to be a problem for American Tesla drivers. In August, the car manufacturer received a mass claim in California because of the reduced range after the update. The initiator suspects Tesla of having cut off the battery of his 2014 Model S to prevent it from catching fire. Drivers who protested are reportedly threatened. About ten drivers have made statements to the tax authorities and/or the police and dozens more drivers are said to be planning to follow suit. Taxi drivers would be forced to charge at a location designated by BBF Personenvervoer, while they can do so for free at Tesla.
If they do decide to charge for free at Tesla, they will be suspended by BBF Personenvervoer. Since 1 June 2014, Schipholtaxi has been allowed to offer transport from Schiphol using the staging lane. The transport is carried out by approximately 140 affiliated taxi drivers who all have a connection agreement with SchipholTaxi and are obliged to provide their rides with a Tesla. They paid 3,600 to 5,000 euros in goodwill to the company per driver and another 700 euros per month for the use of the staging lane. The connection agreement contains provisions on the circumstances under which the agreement can be terminated. In April 2015, the Court of Appeal in Amsterdam decided that taxi transport may be provided on all public roads at Schiphol. After the number of taxis at Schiphol increased and the income of the affiliated drivers decreased, they demanded a reduction in the monthly fee and compensation for damages suffered. SchipholTaxi considered the press coverage of three affiliated drivers to be damaging, and denied them access to the staging lane by switching off their transponders. The agreements remained intact, but in fact the drivers could no longer do their work from the official taxi rank at Schiphol.
If the drivers wanted to terminate the connection agreements based on this development, SchipholTaxi could do so without adhering to the contractual notice period. The three drivers demanded that SchipholTaxi comply with the connection agreement by giving them access to the staging lane again and giving them rides. During the court case, SchipholTaxi stated that the measure was unavoidable. Ever since the Court of Appeal’s ruling in 2015, the three drivers had allegedly behaved in an impossible manner, had denigrated SchipholTaxi and had incited others against the company. SchipholTaxi denies that they have to pay 5,000 euros per person to be allowed to participate and the drivers could not prove that this had happened either. SchipholTaxi also denies the other allegations. Exclusivity was never offered and the user fee was therefore not linked to it. This was reduced to around 50 euros per month in view of the suspension. Moreover, suspension from the siding did not make it impossible for them to earn money, as they could continue to offer their services everywhere.
The drivers denied in court that they were behind the newspaper articles. According to them, there are multiple dissatisfied and intimidated drivers and, in addition, a battle is raging among former certificate holders. It was therefore not implausible that other dissatisfied people sought publicity. According to the judge, the denial of access to the staging lane was unjustified and had to be reversed until the affiliation agreement was legally terminated. Each day that they were not allowed on the staging lane was subject to a penalty of 5,000 euros with a maximum of 50,000 euros per driver. SchipholTaxi also considered its letter of 21 December, in which the drivers were denied access to the staging lane, as a termination of those agreements as of 1 April 2017. However, the term ’termination of affiliation agreement’ was only in the subject line of the email, and was not further mentioned or explained in the email itself. No date was mentioned, so the email in question did not have to be considered a formal termination of the agreement. NRC is working on an article about the situation that has arisen at Schiphol.
Models
In November 2017, Tesla came up with a prototype of the Tesla Semi truck that could go into production in 2019 and that would have a range of 800 kilometers with a maximum load. Charging could be done in thirty minutes for a distance of more than 600 kilometers. and fully loaded (37,000 kg) consume less than 1.25 kWh. The truck will have a semi-autonomous driving system, whereby the truck automatically stays in its lane and can change lanes. The truck can accelerate to 100 kilometers in 5 seconds and the drive can last 1.5 million kilometers. The parent company of Pepsi, Lay’s and Lipton have already ordered 100 of the Semi. Retail chain Wal-Mart and food distributor Sysco also ordered the Semi.
Tesla sold 35,000 cars in 2014 and had a net loss of $294 million that year. In 2015, it sold 50,658 cars. In 2017, more than 103,000 were produced. In the second quarter of 2018, 53,339 units of all models were delivered. More than 22,000 units of the Model S and Model X and more than 18,000 of the Model 3 were delivered. In the first three months of 2019, 63,000 vehicles rolled off the production line and a total of approximately 145,036 units came off the production line through September 2020.
Cybertruck
In two months, Tesla was able to record a quarter of a million reservations for the Cybertruck. The total reservation counter currently stands at 1,260,051. Tesla has received many millions in down payments. Since a down payment of $100 must be made, $126,005,100 in down payments has already been made. The first one was supposed to be delivered to Pepsi Cola on December 1, after 5 years. Tesla is also still not working on a promised smaller version with a range of 480 km. of 25,000 dollars. In the meantime, several owners of the Cybertruck are already complaining that their vehicles had quickly developed corrosion after rides in the rain, but the panels of the Cybertruck are made of stainless steel, so the rust is caused by external causes such as metal shavings from outside, for example from the track. In 2024, all Cybertrucks were recalled due to problems with the accelerator pedal. The British police have seized a Cybertruck. In the United Kingdom, the vehicle is not allowed on the road, as in almost all other European countries: the enormous, angular Tesla Cybertrucks. There are concerns about safety, partly because of the unusual construction. The body of the Cybertruck is made of hard stainless steel, the same material that Tesla developed for its rockets. And the truck has bulletproof glass. The Cybertruck is fully electric and offers an acceleration from 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in just 2.9 seconds, which according to Tesla would make it one of the fastest pick-ups in the world. In addition, the pick-up-like vehicle is 5.7 meters long and 1.80 meters high. The sharp edges are also not allowed according to European and British regulations in connection with the safety of cyclists and pedestrians. The 3100 kilo vehicle has therefore still not received approval in the European Union and therefore also not in the United Kingdom. Tesla CEO Elon Musk recently said during Tesla’s annual general meeting that the car has been developed to meet the requirements that apply in North America. He said international demands would likely impose restrictions.
Model 2
The long-awaited low-cost Model 2 of 25,000 dollars will not be on the market for the time being, because the Robotaxi that will be presented on August 8 is next. The self-driving taxi and the low-cost EV use the same platform. Elon Musk already promised in 2018 that an affordable model would be coming that would cost a maximum of 25,000 euros. At the end of 2023, the production plan of the Model 2 was announced internally, with which Tesla would compete with low-cost EVs from Chinese and European brands.
Model 3
The Model 3 is the best-selling type. The Model 3 is currently the cheapest Tesla and is available in the Netherlands from 43,990 euros. The model is a lot smaller than the other models. The total proceeds from the first day on which the new Model 3 Tesla could be reserved earned Tesla 6.6 billion euros. Within 24 hours, 180,000 units were already “reserved” for 1,000 euros. Tesla originally wanted to produce 100,000 in 2017 and 400,000 units in 2018. Instead, 1,770 were ultimately made, of which 220 units in the 3rd quarter and 1,550 units in the 4th quarter of 2018. In the last week of 2017, 793 were made. In the 2nd quarter of 2018, 18,449 units were delivered. (more than 1,500 per week) At that rate, the total of this model will amount to around 78,000 per year, which means that in 2019 the target of 2017 will not even be reached. Tesla expected to be able to increase the number to 50,000-55,000 in the 3rd quarter. Tesla had to issue 2 billion dollars (1.78 billion euros) in new shares to even be able to produce the new model. The sales promotion did not mention that the model is not allowed to use free electricity at the Tesla supercharger charging stations. A separate subscription must be taken out for that. Tesla initially wanted to use a second location in Tilburg and a new hall of 43,000 m2 to be able to increase production, but has now decided against that. The current location in Tilburg currently employs 180 people and at least 90 cars are assembled there every day. The assembly hall that was opened in 2015 in the presence of then Minister of Economic Affairs Henk Kamp and was still busy in 2018 will be closed in the very short term. The assembly of the Model S and Model X by some 96 employees is becoming too technical. There is also a spray shop, a parts warehouse and a remanufacturing center, where old or used parts are brought to the quality level of new parts. Of the 1,510 people who work at Tesla in the Netherlands, 540 work in Tilburg.
All Tesla models, including Model 3, have the necessary hardware for fully automatic driving
Model 3 has a design flaw, the trunk lid is designed in such a way that when you open the lid when it rains, water runs from the rear window into the trunk. The first thirty Tesla of Model 3 were delivered at the end of July 2017. According to Musk, Tesla would immediately start producing six thousand units per week, but that did not work out. The last known stagnation was due to spraying problems with mother of pearl. Tesla had a large tent set up next to the factory with a manual production line, in order to be able to meet the promised production numbers and even regularly slept on a couch or under desks and tables in the factory in order to be able to keep a close eye on the process and the problems. Setbacks with robots, the paint shop and the production of the batteries led to the planned numbers not being met again and again. So far, however, only copies of Model 3 with extra luxury, a larger battery or more powerful engines are being delivered, the prices of which are many thousands of dollars higher than those of the promised entry-level version of 35 thousand dollars. 86 percent of production does not pass the final quality control and must be manually repaired. Karl Hansen, another whistleblower and former security guard at Tesla, claims that the Tesla factory in Nevada would be the playground of the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel and that Tesla did not want to report this. It is also said that 37 million dollars worth of copper and other materials were stolen between January and June 2018. Tesla denies these claims and declares the former employee insane. The Tesla Model 3 is a lot smaller than the other Tesla models. The available space is disappointing, especially in the back seat and in the trunk. The paintwork is not nice and the rims scratch easily. However, the infotainment system and speakers are of excellent quality. Model 3 is available in the Netherlands from 47,800 euros. The renewed Model 3 of 2021 has different headlights, black frame surrounds, black door handles and an electric trunk lid as standard. The new model also has a new center tunnel with two places to charge your phone via induction. The piano lacquer has disappeared and there is better sound insulation. A new heat pump ensures better efficiency, including when (pre)heating the car.
Paris’ largest taxi company pulled all Model 3 taxis in late 2021 after a major crash that left one person dead and 20 injured. The taxi driver tried to brake but accelerated instead. The driver had taken his family to a restaurant in the Tesla after work on Saturday night. According to French media, the car hit a cyclist and three pedestrians before crashing into a van. It is not yet clear whether the Tesla was using AutoPilot, the system that makes the car largely self-driving. Of the 20 injured, three suffered serious injuries.
An initial investigation showed that it is indeed possible that the car’s accelerator pedal was sticking. The French Minister of Transport has stated that an initial investigation did not find any technical defect in the car. There is no recall for the Model 3 in question. Taxi company G7 has 37 Tesla Model 3 taxis in service. G7 employs 9,000 taxi drivers. The taxis they drive are their property. The company has promised to compensate for the loss of income that has arisen now that the 37 Teslas are no longer allowed on the road. In the Netherlands, the Model 3 was the third best-selling car in the first six months of 2019: 6,063 Model 3s were registered.
The Model 3 is most often rejected at the German MOT, which is mandatory after three years. The sticking point is mainly the suspension and the brakes, according to the data from the TÜV. These simply have to endure a bit more with an electric car. The high weight is the cause of the problems with the chassis and the rejection of the brake discs, and that is because the Model 3 – like other electric cars – recovers braking energy with the engine. In the long term, the irregular use of the brakes leads to the discs rusting.
MisterGreen and NLE decided to form a purchasing combination to reserve the Tesla Model 3. The figures for the 1st quarter of 2024 were downright bad and in terms of sales even one of the worst quarters in years. Some 387,000 cars were delivered and 433,000 rolled off the production line. In the same quarter a year earlier, there were 422,000 and 440,000 respectively. The quarterly turnover fell by 2 million dollars to 21.3 billion dollars. Net profit more than halved to 1.1 billion dollars. At Tesla, global sales fell by more than 20% in the first quarter of 2024 and 10% of the staff is being laid off. Things didn’t go much better at the Chinese Byd. In the first quarter of 2024, they sold just 300,114 BEVs, compared to the 525,409 they sold in the last three months of last year. Tesla shares are down 29% so far this year, while BYD shares are down almost 6%. The price of used electric cars is falling rapidly, as leasing companies scramble to find buyers for a growing number of company cars whose contracts are expiring. Finally, Tesla is also in a slump, having sold fewer than 387,000 cars in the first quarter of 2024, significantly lower than in the first quarter of last year. In May 2024, Tesla sold 10,582 units of the Model Y in Europe, a whopping 49% lower than in the same month in 2023. So their popularity has waned considerably. In 2024, the Model Y was still the fearless number one of the European sales charts, but this year it does not look good so far. The Tesla Model Y ‘Juniper’ is coming in 2025. Juniper is to the Model Y what Highland is to the Model 3.
Model Y
The latest product is Model Y, a small electric SUV made in the US, Germany and China and was delivered from February 2020. In a rear-end collision with this model in the US state of Arizona, the passenger seat of the car folded over like a rickety garden chair. During tests, the seats were not exposed to dynamic loads such as during an accident. The onboard cameras keep a close eye on the driver and after 5 corrections the system punishes the driver and denies the driver the self-driving functions. The price for Model Y will increase by around 2,000 euros ($2,177) in a number of European countries on March 22. The increase was announced via platform X. The prices of Model Y rear-wheel drive cars and cars with long range were also increased by $1,000 on March 1 to $43,990 and $48,990 respectively. The updated version has a new front and rear. The interior has also been improved. The renewed Tesla Model Y can be recognized at the front by new headlights and a light bar. There are also new light units at the back. These are also optically connected here by a light bar. This now distinguishes the Model Y from the Model 3, which was previously renewed. Before the upgrade rounds, both models still had the same front and rear lights. In addition, the Model Y has a new interior. The layout is still the same, so with a large screen in the middle. But the design and materials used are slightly different. The rear passengers have access to a screen between the front seats. New wheels and paint colors are also available, although this may vary per market. In China, the car will be available in light blue for the first time. Deliveries have started with a stunt. The first Model Y SUV was driven independently, i.e. without a driver, from the factory near Austin to the buyer’s home on June 27, 2025. This is to demonstrate the progress in the field of autonomous driving.
Model S
The Model S comes standard with Dual Motor All-Wheel Drive. With two motors, one in the front and one in the rear, the Model S digitally and independently controls the coupling of the front and rear wheels. The Model S P100D combines the High Performance rear motor with the efficient front motor to achieve Ludicrous acceleration from zero to 100 km/h in 2.7 seconds. The Model S costs between 85 and 130,000 euros depending on the version. This model initially cost 69,000 euros, but now costs 84,100 euros. This means that the price has increased by about 15,000 euros in a year and a half. More than 100,000 of this model, which was launched on the market in 2012, have now been sold in the US. The Model S was hacked by researchers and could be braked remotely, but had to first give access via the entertainment system via a cable and a laptop. When the car was driving slower than 8 kilometers per hour, it could be stopped abruptly, but at higher speeds the car slowly came to a standstill. A software update was implemented directly via the internet, which means that the hack is now impossible. The new S and X models have a 10 kWh larger battery pack. The range was increased to a maximum of 613 kilometers. These models do cost approximately 10,000 euros extra. The S 100D then costs just under 114,000 euros and the Model X 100D over 121,000 euros. Model S and X account for 10% of total sales. Additional shifts and personnel are needed to meet deliveries. In addition to new rims, the model also has a special steering wheel.
In Belgium, the fourth Belgian ‘Tesla Store’ was opened in Sint-Martens-Latem. Previously, branches were opened in Brussels, Antwerp and Zaventem and another store is planned in Luxembourg. Worldwide, there are now 213 Tesla stores and service points. There is also a real Tesla store in the PC Hooftstraat in Amsterdam where the Tesla is on display.
Model X
Tesla presented the new Model X, announced in 2012, on September 29 at the Tesla factory in Fremont, California. A few special Model X Signature Series were produced in a limited edition and reserved for the earliest orderers. The model with almost all possible options cost between 132,000 and 143,750 dollars, but the SUV is now available without a chassis starting at 80,000 dollars.
In October, approval was given to implement the Autopilot software for self-driving cars in Europe. With the new technology, a Tesla can change lanes on the highway and can park fully automatically. Tesla also released the software in the United States.
A Tesla that collided with the back of a truck in the left lane on the A1 near Bathmen on 11 April 2017 had the fully automatic cruise control on at the time. There was only material damage. The truck of transport company Van Opijnen from Deventer had to swerve for a carelessly merging Eastern European colleague. He had seen the Tesla Model S but concluded that the driver still had enough time to reduce his speed. The Tesla owner was driving 130/140 kilometres per hour and the truck eighty. Neither the car nor the driver braked. The Autopilot system should have prevented this collision.
From 2021, the emission rules for new cars sold in the EU will become much stricter. The entire ‘fleet’ of new cars from a manufacturer will then be allowed to emit an average of 95 grams of CO2 per kilometer. Tesla and Fiat Chrysler will immediately form a pool and can therefore add the fleets together, after which the average emissions of this pool will be calculated. Because Tesla cars are completely emission-free, it significantly reduces Fiat Chrysler’s average. Thanks to Tesla, Fiat Chrysler can continue to make cars with very high fuel consumption without being fined. And thanks to Fiat Chrysler, Tesla can maintain its liquidity for a while. Until now, CO2 trading has been an important source of income for Tesla. In 2024, Tesla earned 2.76 billion dollars in revenue from the sale of emission rights, an increase of 54% compared to the 1.79 billion dollars in 2023. In 2020, this already amounted to 1 billion. Trump’s new “Big Beautiful Bill” seeks to limit or eliminate programs such as the California Air Resources Board (CARB) Zero-Emission Vehicle (ZEV) program and also eliminates federal EV tax credits ($7,500 for new EVs and $4,000 for used EVs) effective September 30, 2025, which could reduce demand for electric vehicles and indirectly impact the value of emissions credits, as fewer automakers will need the credits as the EV market shrinks, threatening Tesla’s revenue. This could have a significant impact, as emissions trading has generated approximately $11 billion for Tesla since 2015.
Tesla will merge its fleet of electric vehicles (EVs) it sells this year with at least five other automakers. According to a published EU document, these include Toyota Motor Corp, Stellantis NV and Ford Motor Co. The companies want to create a pool with Tesla to avoid the fines they would otherwise face if they did not meet strict European emissions standards. By joining that pool with Tesla, their average emissions figure will drop. Another pool appears to be emerging around electric carmaker Polestar with Volvo and Mercedes, among others. The proceeds from this trading system could be used to make these sectors more sustainable. For example, a government could introduce purchase subsidies for electric cars or invest in better charging infrastructure.
Model Q
Tesla has been working on the ‘Redwood’ project for a few years, which should deliver the Q. Tesla has informed investors that this model will be on the market in the first half of 2025. The Q will be four meters long, 70 centimeters shorter than the Model 3. The buyer will be able to choose between a battery of 53 or 75 kilowatts. Because the car is smaller, the car is 30% lighter and the (unknown) range is greater. Investors were promised 500 kilometers on a full battery, but it is unclear for which variant. In America, a price of around 25,000 dollars should apply. But Travis Axelrod of Tesla said that this is the bottom price. At the kick-off, 30,000 dollars is still assumed. The hope is that the company can save even more on all kinds of technologies/batteries. The new Tesla Q is said to be built in China. It is not clear whether this will continue now that increasingly higher import duties are being imposed due to the trade war between America, Europe and China.
The Boring Company
The Federal Railroad Administration has approached Elon’s The Boring Company (TBC) to help think about a multibillion-dollar project for the railroad company Amtrak. This is not the first time that Musk has become involved in large-scale government projects. The Department of Transportation, which oversees the national railroad company, has spoken to employees of Elon who are being brought in to see if they can help with a multibillion-dollar railroad project. Within the so-called Amtrak route, the Frederick Douglass Tunnel is being built, connecting Baltimore to Washington and Virginia. The development was initially supposed to cost $6 billion, but Amtrak now expects it could cost up to $8.5 billion.
Elon Musk founded The Boring Company in December 2016. In February 2017, work began on digging a test trench at the Hawthorne offices of his own SpaceX, since no construction permits were required there. The Boring Company was incorporated as a subsidiary of SpaceX The TBM was named Godot in May 2017, after the Beckett play Waiting for Godot. Future TBMs have also been named after poems and plays. Musk said the initial route would run from LAX to Culver City, then to Santa Monica, ending in Westwood. Musk claimed the tunnel journey would take five minutes, compared to driving above ground, which takes 45 minutes in normal traffic (LAX to Westwood). These trips were planned to be accomplished by placing a car on an electric sled and driving through tunnels at 120 miles per hour (200 km/h). At the same time as the Los Angeles tunnel system was announced, another project was announced involving a Hyperloop (an enclosed tube) running underground from New York City to Washington, D.C. [22] Musk claimed that it would take 29 minutes to travel from one city center to the other. In July 2017, Musk uploaded a video showing a successful test of a prototype car elevator. In October, Musk revealed that the second TBM would be named Line Storm, after the Robert Frost poem “A Line-Storm Song”. In March 2018, Elon Musk announced that the company would adjust its plan to give priority to pedestrians and cyclists. In early 2018, the Boring Company was spun off from SpaceX. Just under 10% of the equity was given to early employees, with Musk keeping 90%. Subsequent concerns from SpaceX shareholders resulted in a reallocation of 6% of the Boring Company’s equity to SpaceX in December 2018. TBC provided an update on the state of their technology and product line in December 2018 when they opened their first 1-mile (1.6 km) test tunnel to the public in Hawthorne, California. In July 2019, The Boring Company sold $120 million worth of stock to venture capital firms after raising approximately $113 million in non-external capital in 2018. In November 2019, Steve Davis became company president after serving as president since 2016. Davis was one of the first employees at SpaceX (in 2003) and holds dual master’s degrees in particle physics and aerospace engineering. In November 2020, TBC announced hiring for positions in Austin, Texas, and by December 2020 had leased two buildings in a 14-acre (5.7 ha) industrial complex northeast of Austin, about 16 miles (26 km) north of Texas. Gigafabriek On April 20, 2022, the company announced an additional $675 million round of financing, valuing the company at approximately $5.675 billion. Real estate companies including Brookfield, Lennar, Tishman Spey, and Dacra also participated.The company said the funds from the round would be used to “significantly increase engineering, operations and manufacturing workforces to build and scale Loop projects, including Vegas Loop and others, as well as accelerate research and development of Prufrock and future products.” Mattar Al Tayer, the Director General and Chairman of the Roads and Transport Authority in Dubai, and John Hering, an advisor to The Boring Company, signed a letter of intent for an underground tunnel in the city that aims to solve major mobility challenges. The tunnel, which is expected to be 17 kilometers long and have 11 stations, would allow around 20,000 people per hour to travel underground on electric vehicles capable of speeds of up to 160 kilometers. In preparation for the tunnel’s development, a study will be conducted to identify advanced tunneling technologies, safety measures and cost-effective construction methods that could make the Dubai Loop a reality. The tunnel shares similarities with the Vegas Loop, which has been carrying electric vehicles through Las Vegas since 2021. That tunnel currently has only five stations, but The Boring Company wants to expand the network to as many as a hundred stations.
Grok
Grok is the generative artificial intelligence chatbot developed by xAI. It is based on a large language model (LLM). Elon co-founded the AI research organization OpenAI with Sam Altman in 2015, but left the company’s board in 2018. In April 2023, Elon Musk announced an AI chatbot called “TruthGPT,” which he described as “a maximal truth-seeking AI that seeks to understand the nature of the universe.” TruthGPT later became “Grok,” a verb coined by Robert A. Heinlein in his 1961 science fiction novel Stranger in a Strange Land to describe a form of understanding. In November 2023, xAI began previewing Grok as a chatbot for select people, with participation limited to paying X Premium users.
On March 11, 2024, Musk posted on X that the language model would be open sourced within a week and six days later.
On March 17, 2024, Grok-1 was open sourced under the Apache 2.0 license.
On March 26, 2024, Musk announced that Grok would be available to all premium subscribers, not just those on the more expensive tier, Premium+.
On March 29, 2024, Grok-1.5 was announced, featuring “improved reasoning capabilities” and a context length of 128,000 tokens.
On April 4, 2024, an update to X’s “Explore” page included summaries of the latest news stories written by Grok
On April 12, 2024, Grok-1.5 Vision (Grok-1.5V) was announced. Grok-1.5V which can process a wide variety of visual information
On May 4, 2024, Grok became available in the United Kingdom
On May 16, 2024, Grok was approved.
Designed to answer questions with a bit of humor, Grok has a rebellious streak and has been characterized by the press as ‘anti-woke’.
Since April 2024, Grok has been used to generate summaries of the latest news stories on X. A box has recently been checked in X’s settings. This gives users permission to the company to process their messages for the further development of Grok.
Neuralink
Neuralink, founded in 2017 in Delaware by Elon Musk, is a company focused on the development of brain implants. This technology, often referred to as a “mind reader,” allows the brain to communicate directly with a computer. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has given Neuralink permission to test this chip, which has previously been tested on animals, on humans. The goal is ambitious: paralyzed people should be able to move their muscles again, and blind people – even those born blind – could regain their sight.
In recent years, Neuralink has extensively tested its brain implant on animals. One notable experiment involved a monkey that could play the game Pong with its thoughts. The brain chip registered the monkey’s brain activity and translated it into the movement of the board to bounce the ball. Despite this success, the company came under fire for its animal testing. Due to high work pressure within Neuralink, many experiments allegedly failed, leading to the death of 1,500 animals, including more than 280 sheep, pigs and monkeys. The company also conducted research with rats and mice.
In 2023, the FDA gave the green light for human testing. On January 28, 2024, the first implant was placed in Noland Arbaugh, a 29-year-old man with a high spinal cord injury. Arbaugh recovered well and has since been able to operate a computer with his thoughts. Neuralink published an online video about this, in which he can be seen moving the cursor on a screen. He demonstrated this by playing chess and playing the computer game Civilization VI for eight hours, among other things. He only stopped because the implant had to be charged. Although the first implantation was successful, complications arose: a large part of the electrodes withdrew from the brain tissue. Neuralink adjusted the design, which led to more stable results in the second and third patients – successfully implanted since January 2024.
In the long term, Neuralink wants to use this technology not only to help paralyzed people use their muscles again, but also to give blind people their sight back, even if they have been blind since birth. In addition, the company aims to support patients with conditions such as ALS, Parkinson’s or the consequences of a stroke in communicating. Elon Musk goes one step further: he sees possibilities to use the implants to improve human capacities, such as memory and cognitive functions. This vision raises ethical questions about the limits of human enhancement and the accessibility of the technology.
The FDA has granted Neuralink’s device “breakthrough” designation, which accelerates the approval process. In November 2024, the company also received clearance from Health Canada to begin clinical trials in Canada. This marks a significant step in the global rollout of the technology.
In May 2025, Neuralink raised approximately $600 million in new funding. Prior to this capital injection, the company was valued at $9 billion, up significantly from $5 billion in 2023. For tax reasons, Neuralink recently relocated to the state of Nevada, where Musk’s other companies, X and xAI, are also based.
Neuralink is on the cusp of potentially revolutionary breakthroughs. Despite controversy surrounding animal testing and technical challenges with the first human implants, the company is demonstrating that its brain implants can achieve both medical and broader applications. With support from regulators and significant investment, the path seems clear for further development of this groundbreaking technology.
Robotaxi
On August 8, 2024, the ‘Tesla Robotaxi’ was introduced. The long-awaited low-cost Model 2 of 25,000 dollars will therefore not be on the market for the time being. The self-driving taxi and the low-cost EV use the same platform. The Robotaxi would have no pedals or steering wheel and drive completely autonomously. Elon Musk promised in 2018 that an affordable Tesla was coming. The car was to cost 25,000 euros and be produced in the German factory. Tesla has already given a preview of the upcoming function of its app that allows you to order a ride in the company’s self-driving taxi. With a large ‘Summon’ button you can request a Tesla Robotaxi, where you see the estimated waiting time. You can set the interior temperature of the Robotaxi in the app and choose the music you want to hear. You can follow the location of the car live on a map. You can also see how many passengers are in the car and how many seats there are. The feature is very similar to that of Uber and other taxi apps, but designed in Tesla style.
On August 8, 2024, Tesla already revealed what the self-driving taxi would look like
SpaceX
Elon Musk is the co-founder, CEO, and chief designer of Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), based in Hawthorne, California. SpaceX focuses on developing advanced, reusable rockets and spacecraft, with the ultimate goal of creating a self-sustaining city on Mars. Musk owns 54% of the company’s shares. SpaceX is active in launching satellites, space probes, and supplying and manning space stations, such as the International Space Station (ISS). SpaceX also develops technologies such as the Hyperloop and faster tunnel boring techniques through The Boring Company.
1998-2000: Establishment of ISS
The International Space Station (ISS), a collaboration between the United States, Europe, Russia, Canada and Japan, is launched. The first stage is launched in 1998, and the station has been permanently occupied since 2000. The ISS is the size of a football field and is expected to last until about 2030.
2014: NASA contracts
September 2014: SpaceX signs a Commercial Crew contract with NASA to fly crews to the ISS using the Dragon 2 spacecraft starting in 2020. SpaceX also has a contract for at least 12 resupply missions to the ISS.
2016: Last failed launch before 2024
SpaceX suffers its last failed launch before 2024 in 2016, a rare setback for the company.
2016: Last failed launch before 2024
In 2016, SpaceX suffered its last failed launch before 2024, a rare setback for the company.
2018:
In 2018, a red Tesla Roadster was launched into orbit around Earth. Astronomers at the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Massachusetts recently mistook the Tesla for a new asteroid. A day after their “discovery,” they admitted they were wrong. Six months later, the Roadster was 298,547,393 kilometers from Earth. Now, the Tesla is less than 240,000 kilometers away. Say, 298,307,393 closer than it was 5.5 years ago.
2020: Start of manned missions
SpaceX begins manned missions to the ISS with the Crew Dragon, a reusable space capsule. NASA and SpaceX launched four astronauts to the International Space Station on November 16, 2020, ending nine years of reliance on Russia to send astronauts into space. It was the first operational six-month mission to the ISS. A successful demonstration mission with two astronauts had already been carried out earlier. However, on December 10, 2020, a precious prototype of the Starship rocket exploded upon landing minutes after a test launch near the American city of Boca Chica, Texas, when the rocket hit the landing pad after a controlled descent.
2021: Rocket Explodes
On February 3, 2021, things went wrong again and the rocket exploded during landing. The rocket did not rotate vertically during landing, but crashed to the ground at an angle of about 45 degrees, after which it went up in flames.
2023: Milestones and setbacks
2023: Record number of launches
March 2023: The Crew Dragon returns to Earth on March 12, landing in the Gulf of Mexico. The four astronauts (two Americans, one Russian, and one Japanese) spent 157 days in space. The return trip was postponed several times due to bad weather.
April 2023: SpaceX receives approval for a test flight of the Starship, a 120-meter-tall, fully reusable rocket intended for missions to the Moon and Mars. The test flight, launched from Texas, fails: the rocket explodes shortly after liftoff instead of landing in the Atlantic Ocean. In 2023, SpaceX carried out 93 successful launches, mainly with the Falcon 9, which has given the company a strong reputation for reliable space missions.
2024: Successes and challenges
July 11, 2024: A Falcon 9 launch fails due to a liquid oxygen leak in the rocket’s oxygen system. A crack in a pressure sensor line, caused by vibrations that loosened a clamp, led to excessive cooling of engine components. As a result, the rocket’s second stage failed to ignite, and the 20 Starlink satellites aboard were likely lost. SpaceX analyzed the problem and removed the failed sensor line and sensor, as they were not critical to the flight safety system. Other sensors were allowed to take over the function. In addition, clamps were checked, cleaned, and tested at the SpaceX factory.
July 27, 2024: SpaceX bounces back with a successful launch of 23 Starlink satellites from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In 2024, SpaceX achieved a total of 70 successful launches, making the July 11 incident an anomaly.
June 2024: SpaceX achieves a milestone with the successful return of Starship, the largest rocket ever, landing in the Indian Ocean as planned. This marks a major step toward reusable space travel.
July 2024:
July 11: A Falcon 9 launch fails due to a liquid oxygen leak, preventing the rocket’s second stage from igniting. Twenty Starlink satellites are likely lost. SpaceX identifies a faulty sensor line as the cause and removes it, as other sensors can take over.
July 27: SpaceX successfully launches 23 Starlink satellites from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX has completed 70 successful launches in 2024, compared to 93 in all of 2023.
September 2024:
September 10, 11:30 a.m.: The Polaris Dawn mission, the first commercial spaceflight with four people, lifts off. American billionaire Jared Isaacman, who funded the mission, will take a two-hour spacewalk on the third day with Sarah Gillis, a 30-year-old SpaceX employee. The crew also includes a retired US Air Force pilot and another SpaceX employee. SpaceX designed special spacesuits for the walk.
2025: Recent Developments and Setbacks
Before March 6, 2025: An unmanned Starship test flight, about seven weeks earlier, fails. The rocket explodes eight minutes into the flight over the Atlantic Ocean. Debris falls near the Turks and Caicos Islands, forcing dozens of flights to be diverted. The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) launches an investigation but gives SpaceX permission to retest.
March 6, 2025: Another unmanned Starship launch from Boca Chica, Texas, goes wrong again. Minutes after liftoff, SpaceX loses contact with the rocket’s second stage, which then explodes in space. The first stage, the Super Heavy launch vehicle, successfully returns to Earth and is captured by a SpaceX crane. Flaming debris flies through the air near South Florida and the Bahamas, causing temporary flight disruptions:
Flights from Miami, Fort Lauderdale, Orlando and Palm Beach airports in Florida are delayed by up to 45 minutes.
An earlier Starship launch from Boca Chica also fails. The rocket separates from the Super Heavy launch vehicle as planned after almost four minutes, but SpaceX loses contact with the spacecraft shortly after. A SpaceX engineer tells CNN that the spacecraft was deliberately blown up to prevent it from going off course. The Super Heavy successfully returns to Earth after more than seven minutes.
March 2025: Elon Musk announces that SpaceX will retrieve the two stranded astronauts, who have been stuck in space for months due to a Boeing failure, in late March.
May 27, 2025: An unmanned test flight of the Starship fails. The rocket, launched at 6:36 p.m. local time from Texas, loses control after half an hour. The door for deploying satellites does not open fully, causing the rocket to spin and break apart.
June 18, 2025: 06:00 CET: A Starship explodes during a static fire test at the Starbase in Boca Chica, Texas. All six Raptor engines were supposed to be tested simultaneously, but the upper part of the rocket (52 meters high) goes up in flames. No one is injured thanks to a safety zone. This is the fourth consecutive failure for Starship’s upper stage, following failed test flights earlier in 2025. The FAA is investigating the causes, and a date for the tenth test flight has not yet been set.
2026: Future plans
2026: SpaceX plans a manned mission to the Moon with the Starship in September 2026.
2030: NASA contracts SpaceX to develop a recovery vehicle for the controlled abort of the ISS, which will burn up in the atmosphere. NASA pays $843 million for this project.
Satellites
Starshield, the satellite division of SpaceX, is going to build a network of hundreds of spy satellites for the NRO, an American intelligence service. SpaceX already signed a contract worth 1.8 billion dollars with the NRO for this in 2021. NRO is the service in the US that is responsible for collecting information from space, including for the Pentagon. The satellites in the new system describe a relatively low orbit around the Earth. Once the network is ready and functions as desired, the American government and military leadership will be able to map possible targets almost anywhere in the world much better and faster. Starlink ended the current financial year with a turnover of approximately 6.6 billion dollars. SpaceX intends to build a new factory in Texas. Musk shared the news about the application in a message on his social media platform X. He wants to move his companies out of Delaware after a decision by a judge in that state to block his mega bonus. He was supposed to receive a compensation package worth around 55 billion dollars, but a shareholder found the compensation excessive and won his case in court. The company will provide internet to remote areas with the satellite network Starlink and will also start building a GSM network in space.
Starlink is lowering its subscription price to 50 euros per month, making it competitive with Dutch internet providers. Dutch users now pay fifteen euros less than before. On April 23, 2021, four astronauts were launched to the International Space Station (ISS). Some 3,000 research projects have been carried out on board the space station over the past 20 years. Starlink was founded in 2015 and in 2017 the name was registered and a satellite factory opened in Redmond (Washington). On February 22, 2018, two test satellites named Tintin-A and Tintin-B were launched into a polar orbit around the Earth as secondary payload. However, the final network will orbit the Earth in an easterly direction. The network was initially to consist of 4,250 satellites that would orbit the Earth at an altitude of approximately 1,110 to 1,325 kilometers.
The intended number has now been expanded to 7,518 that will orbit the Earth at an altitude of 335 to 346 kilometers. Also, 1,600 of the originally planned 4,250 satellites will be brought into a lower orbit at 550 kilometers. Ultimately, it was decided to have all satellites at an altitude of 550 km. The main reason for this is that a defective satellite at that altitude falls back into the atmosphere within a few years, while at 1,100 kilometers it would take centuries and would cause a lot of long-lasting space debris. Starlink will be available on most of the Earth. The North and South Poles are an exception. In April 2019, SpaceX received a (first) license from the FCC to connect up to two million users to the network. Starlink recently lost 40 of its 49 launched Starlink satellites to atmospheric burn-up due to a geomagnetic storm The 49 Starlink satellites aboard a Falcon 9 rocket were hit by a geomagnetic storm after just one day of launch.
According to Starlink, this caused the density of the atmosphere to change, which would have caused the satellites to deviate from their orbit. Forty of the satellites would have lost enough altitude to burn up in the atmosphere. Although it is not the first time that the company has lost satellites, this is the largest single loss to date. Starlink’s satellites are first launched into an orbit around the Earth to an altitude of 210 kilometers, after which they are checked to see if the satellite is working properly. If that is the case, they then climb to their final orbit at an altitude of about 550 kilometers. However, if the satellites do not work properly, they are returned to the atmosphere.
This is possible because they are initially in a low orbit around the Earth. Once they are back in the atmosphere, the satellites burn up, which prevents them from forming dangerous space debris. A geomagnetic storm is a disturbance of the Earth’s magnetosphere caused by the solar wind, charged particles that are continuously fired by the sun. This solar wind can sometimes be stronger than usual. The storm caused the atmosphere at the height of the satellites to become warmer and thicker. As a result, the satellites experienced more atmospheric resistance, causing them to enter a so-called safe mode. This was supposed to protect them from the storm. However, due to the turbulence, 40 of the satellites could no longer get out of safe mode. As a result, the climb to 550 kilometers could not begin. Since the first launch in 2019, more than 2,000 satellites have been put into orbit around the Earth. SpaceX eventually plans to scale that up to at least 12,000 and perhaps even 42,000. The Starlink service is also available in the Netherlands for a price of 99 euros per month, and 499 euros one-time fee.
Starlink’s plans are also being criticized. Critics fear that the satellites will pose a threat to other spacecraft. Musk is using Starlink in the war in Ukraine and in the looming civil war in Iran. Unlike cable internet, Iranian authorities cannot simply block or censor Starlink. The Starlink connection runs from a ground station, via a satellite to a dish on the ground. In large parts of Ukraine, the normal internet connection via cable has been disrupted as a result of shelling. Civilians and military personnel depend on Musk’s system to send and receive information at home or on the battlefield. Musk ultimately wants to use the revenue from Starlink to finance a trip to Mars.
Musk was opposed to the satellites being used by Ukraine to attack Russia with drones and left them off, causing a failed attack on Crimea. His biography states that his decision was motivated by his “acute fear” that Russia would respond to the attack with nuclear weapons. Musk even called it a “mini Pearl Harbor” and wondered how he got into the war. He never intended for the Starlink network to be used for warfare. His intention was to enable Netflix and chill, to ensure that people could go to school and do good, peaceful things. Not carry out drone attacks.
The operating result is then around 3.8 billion dollars. The company started in 2019 in a domain in which several parties were already active. However, they did not focus on the consumer market and charged higher rates. Starlink has an estimated 2.7 million customers in 75 countries. A subscription costs fifty euros per month. That brings residents of remote areas, from mountain tops to deserts to border areas, straight into the digitally inhabited world and has a network of six thousand satellites in low orbit around the earth. They beam internet down, which subscribers with a separate box can receive and use immediately. There is no provider or extra hardware in between. Europe wants to build a broadband constellation in space (IRIS2), but Germany is now trying to get out of that. China is not delaying and recently launched its first satellite for what is also to become a large network.
Elon Musk traveled to Bali, Indonesia, in mid-May 2024 to launch Starlink’s satellite internet service alongside Indonesian ministers. He also signed an agreement to improve connectivity in the country’s healthcare and education sectors. Launching the service at a health clinic aligns with Starlink’s broader mission to provide affordable access to high-speed internet services, especially in underserved and remote regions, said Coordinating Minister of Maritime and Investment Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan.
Communications and Informatics Minister Budi Arie Setiadi said earlier that local internet providers, which rely on base transceiver stations to broadcast signals, cannot reach the outer islands because they have limited coverage. Starlink satellites, which remain in low-Earth orbit, will help them deliver faster internet with nationwide coverage. Health Minister Budi Gunadi Sadikin said that of the more than 10,000 clinics across the country, about 2,700 still do not have internet access. During his visit, Musk also attended the 10th World Water Forum, which aims to address global water and sanitation challenges.
Musk spoke at the 2022 B-20 business forum ahead of a summit of the Group of 20 leading economies held in Bali. Musk’s visit comes just weeks after Apple CEO Tim Cook met Widodo on April 17 and said the company would “look at” manufacturing in Indonesia. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella visited on April 30 and said the company would invest $1.7 billion over the next four years in new cloud and artificial intelligence infrastructure in Indonesia. Indonesia has been pushing the development of its digital technology and information sectors under Widodo, with the aim of realizing the government’s Golden Indonesia 2045 vision. The country hopes to become one of the world’s five largest economies with a GDP of up to $9 trillion, exactly a century after gaining independence from Dutch colonists.
Twitter/X
Elon Musk has merged his platform X with his AI company xAI. To realize the merger, X was acquired by xAI. Musk owns the majority of both companies. xAI has developed a chatbot, called Grok, among other things. Grok already uses data provided by X. With xAI, Musk wants to compete with other AI companies such as ChatGPT developer OpenAI. Musk has announced that after the acquisition, the companies will combine data, computer infrastructure and employees. According to him, X currently has 600 million active users. According to Musk, xAI was valued at 80 billion dollars and X at 33 billion dollars at the time of the transaction. In 2024, X was actually worth only 19 billion euros.
In the fall of 2022, he paid about $44 billion for Twitter, which he has rebranded as X. In return, he took out loans worth about $12 billion. Musk bought Twitter in October 2022 for $44 billion, borrowing $13 billion from seven major banks. He put up $27 billion himself. Musk agreed to pay $54.20 per share for Twitter in April. That was just before the financial markets crashed. He then spent months trying to get out of the deal. Twitter then filed a lawsuit to force Musk to honor his promise.
To cut costs, Musk laid off 80% of Twitter’s staff. He also fired Twitter’s entire board to become interim CEO himself. He had to bring back some of the staff shortly after it became apparent that fundamental work was no longer being done. Since Musk took over, several major companies have suspended their advertising on the platform. Elon Musk paid around $44 billion to take Twitter private, which he paid for with Tesla shares. Twitter had 217 million daily active users and employed around 7,500 people. The acquisition of Twitter was completed on October 28, 2022. Musk has been working on the purchase since April, but later wanted to back out of the deal.
Twitter then filed a lawsuit to have the sale go through. Eventually, Elon changed his mind and decided to play it safe. The judge had paused the lawsuit until October 28, because Musk expected to be able to buy Twitter on that day. For that, he would still have to get 13 billion in credit from a group of banks, led by Morgan Stanley. Banks have drawn up the final agreement on this loan in recent days and other investors also invested billions of dollars in the takeover, such as Oracle founder Larry Ellison and crypto company Binance. One of the current shareholders, Prince Al Waleed Bin Talal Al Saud from Saudi Arabia, wants to keep his stake in Twitter of almost 4 percent. By buying Twitter, Elon Musk wanted to accelerate the creation of “X”, the everything app. ‘X’ should resemble the Chinese WeChat, where users can not only chat and video call, but also shop and play games. In addition, they can order meals and taxis and do all kinds of banking with their own payment system. It will soon no longer be possible for accounts to block others on X.
Only private messages will soon be stopped. Elon Musk is trying to create more revenue. However, since he bought the Twitter platform, he has lost about half of his advertising revenue. Elon Musk wants to make all users of X, formerly Twitter, pay a small monthly fee because a payment system is the only way to combat bots. Since 2022, Musk has been trying to make users pay for an improved service, now called X Premium. In the US, X Premium currently costs $8 per month. The price varies depending on the country a subscriber is in.
Dustin Moskovitz, co-founder of Facebook, believes that Elon Musk should resign because X regularly contains anti-Semitic messages. For example, multinational IBM is withdrawing as an advertiser on X because of these types of messages. KRO-NCRV also immediately stopped using X as a communication channel because of the persistent, often anonymous, hateful and downright racist statements that are made on X. According to Moskovitz, currently CEO of software supplier Asana, X CEO Linda Yaccarino is faced with a dilemma: “Does she distance herself from anti-Semitism or does she want to risk losing even more advertisers. The commotion follows the publication of screenshots of advertisements for major American brands such as Apple, Oracle and IBM that were shown next to messages that praised the ideas of Adolf Hitler or the Third Reich. Musk himself is said to have recently endorsed a message that stated that ‘Jews incite hatred against whites’ with the comment: “You are telling the truth.”
Advertisers who no longer wanted to advertise with X received the message “Fuck you” from Musk
The European Commission is taking legal action against X. According to Brussels, the company is doing too little to combat the spread of disinformation and hate. The Commission suspects the social network of violating the obligation to combat the spread of illegal content and disinformation and that X is not transparent about the number of people using its platform. The social network is also suspected of using misleading design on its website or app. Brussels is taking action against X on the basis of the new Digital Services Act (DSA). The European Commission can impose fines of up to 6 percent of the company’s global annual turnover. The fine will possibly be announced in the summer of 2025 and could amount to more than 1 billion dollars (over 900 million euros).
To force large internet companies to comply with the rules, Europe can also work with fines. These can amount to up to 5 percent of the company’s daily turnover. Elon therefore decided to open an extra office with about 100 moderators. However, the focus will be on combating child sexual exploitation, trust and safety. Elon is at loggerheads with the Supreme Court in Brazil. He was ordered to pay a fine if he would put fake news accounts about Bolsonaro back online. Last year, Judge Moraes also ordered an investigation into executives of the social messaging platform Telegram and Alphabet’s Google. If X does not comply with the court order to block certain accounts, he will be fined 100,000 reais ($19,740) per day. Elon Musk has won a lawsuit brought against him to dismiss thousands of employees at X. The employees claimed that they were still owed money by Musk, but a judge in San Francisco has dismissed their claims. According to the lawsuit, X and Musk still owe at least half a billion dollars in severance to the roughly 6,000 employees who were laid off after the billionaire acquired the messaging service for $44 billion in October 2022.
Brazilian Supreme Court Justice de Moraes has unblocked Starlink’s finances after it was previously banned from conducting financial transactions in the country. This was based on a finding that Starlink was held responsible for the previously imposed fines, which Musk claimed were unconstitutional against X. The blockade was issued in secret and without giving Starlink the opportunity to appeal. Starlink serves a quarter of a million customers in Brazil, including small businesses, schools and emergency services. The dispute continued, after which the judge also blocked X. The platform was forced to appoint a new legal representative in the country. Residents who still use X could be fined between 10 and 50,000 real. The 20,000 internet providers in the country were ordered to make X inaccessible. By 5:00 a.m. on Saturday morning, X was already inaccessible in the first parts of the country. Google and Apple were also forced to remove the X application from their respective app stores.
The controversy arose when De Moraes gave X.Corp a court order to censor and block a list of public opponents of Lula and other critics. After Musk refused on the grounds of freedom of speech, De Moraes threatened to arrest X.Corp’s staff, after which Musk moved his staff to safety and closed the local branch. De Moraes then imposed a fine of 200 million dollars and seized all Starlink assets that had nothing to do with the incident. De Moares forced Trump to reinstate the local branch and station a local representative. But because this would risk arrest, Musk rightly refused. Both De Moares and Lula violated the constitution by doing so. Musk lost many customers who switched en masse to Bluesky. On September 10, X still transferred more than 28 million reais (more than 4.5 million euros) to the Brazilian government account, after which X was allowed to operate again on October 8, 2024. X still had to X blocked nine accounts that, according to the Supreme Court, were spreading fake news and the company appointed a legal representative in Brazil.
Elon Musk’s X is suing Mars, Unilever, CVS Health, Orsted, and the World Federation of Advertisers (WFA) for unlawfully boycotting the site X, depriving it of “billions of dollars” in advertising revenue. Musk tweeted on X: “We tried being nice for 2 years and got nothing but empty words. Now it’s war.” The lawsuit covers the period in 2022, shortly after Musk bought X, then Twitter, and ad revenue plummeted. Some companies were wary of advertising on the platform because they feared the new owner wasn’t taking removing harmful online content seriously enough.
X’s advertising revenue fell by more than half in the year after Musk bought the company. X alleges in his lawsuit that the defendant companies improperly withheld spending by following safety standards set by a WFA initiative called the Global Alliance for Responsible Media (Garm). Garm’s goal is to “help the industry address the challenge of illegal or harmful content on digital media platforms and advertising monetization.” Musk alleges that the companies acted against their own economic interests in conspiring against the platform and thereby violated U.S. antitrust and competition laws. Even if Musk wins the case, he cannot force companies to buy advertising space on the platform. Musk is therefore seeking unspecified damages and an injunction against all continued attempts to withhold advertising spending.
X’s revenue is now in a ‘very dire situation’, write The Wall Street Journal and The Verge based on internal emails from Elon Musk. According to the internal email, the platform is struggling to make a profit. Musk denies having sent the email on X. “Our user numbers are not growing, revenue is not impressive and we are barely breaking even,” says Elon Musk. X has lost many advertisers since the takeover because advertisements from major parties were allegedly shown next to pro-Nazi posts. In the meantime, ‘some brands’ are said to be advertising on the platform again, which is causing X’s revenue to grow again. Musk expects that things will improve for X in the future, because of the power the platform is said to have in ‘guiding national discussions’. “We are also seeing other platforms adopt our commitment to freedom of expression and unbiased truth,” Musk writes.
He is referring to Meta’s plans to stop fact-checking and switch to community notes. Banks are reportedly planning to sell the billions in loans they made to Musk to acquire X. This week, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Barclays are reportedly planning to sell loans of around 3 billion dollars to investors. The banks hope to get back around 90 to 95 percent of the money invested. The newspaper notes that banks normally want to sell such loans more quickly, but were unable to do so because X has become less valuable since Musk took over the company. X’s value is said to be increasing in the meantime, partly due to Musk’s connection to Trump and his current role in the US government.
Six days before Trump’s inauguration on January 20, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) filed a lawsuit against Musk for allegedly waiting too long to disclose that he had acquired a large stake in Twitter in 2022. The SEC alleged that Musk violated federal securities laws by waiting 11 days too long to disclose his initial purchase of 5% of Twitter common stock. An SEC rule requires investors to disclose within 10 calendar days when they exceed a 5% ownership threshold.
According to the SEC, Musk bought more than $500 million worth of Twitter shares at artificially low prices, at the expense of unsuspecting investors. He finally disclosed his purchases on April 4, 2022, at which point he already owned a 9.2% stake. According to the SEC, Twitter’s stock price rose by more than 27% following the announcement. Musk has also been sued in federal court in Manhattan by former Twitter shareholders over the late disclosure. Musk claims his delay was a mistake.
Musk has long had a beef with the SEC, including after the SEC sued him in 2018 over his Twitter posts about potentially privatizing Tesla and obtaining financing to do so. He settled the lawsuit by paying a $20 million fine, agreeing to have some of Tesla’s Twitter posts reviewed by lawyers beforehand, and resigning from his role as Tesla’s chairman. The SEC also sought sanctions from Musk after he missed court-ordered testimony before the Twitter investigation last September so he could attend the launch of SpaceX’s Polaris Dawn mission from Cape Canaveral in Florida. A federal judge in San Francisco denied that request after Musk testified later and agreed to pay the SEC’s travel expenses.
X Money
Musk is going to enable payment transactions, “ X Money ” is about to launch. Recently, a piece of computer code from X Money leaked, which shows that the payment platform was launched. The computer code stated: “X Money is not available in your state.” Up until now, X Money has been licensed as a payment processor in 39 states. And in combination with that text, it was concluded that Elon Musk does not want to wait for permission in all 50 states of the United States. Elon Musk is therefore also having Visa organize new payment options on X. Visa is the first partner for ‘X Money’, as the payment service will be called. Users of X will soon be able to upload their money to a digital wallet via Visa, in addition to UTK. Visa will link customers’ debit cards to each other so that they can transfer money to each other via a peer-to-peer payment system. It should also be possible to transfer money via X Money to ’traditional’ bank accounts. With this, X is competing with other payment services such as PayPal’s Venmo and the Apple Wallet. Subsidiary X Payments has been working on regulatory approval for payments via the platform for some time now. According to Musk, the company has already received this approval in 41 US states. X Money also uses Utrust ( UTK ), a decentralized platform that allows merchants to accept crypto payments for goods and services. The network’s app offers instant crypto-to-cash settlements and supports more than 35 cryptocurrencies.
Crypto
Donald Trump appointed Elon Musk to head a new ministry called the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). Together with multi-billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, who himself previously attempted to become the Republican presidential candidate, Musk was to lead the new ministry aimed at reducing government spending. It was therefore no coincidence that Dogecoin also became the name of a cryptocurrency. The so-called memecoin, named after the meme in the crypto world surrounding the Shiba Inu dog breed, is a common thread in the crypto influences surrounding Musk. For example, Musk previously changed the logo of his platform X – then still Twitter – to the logo of dogecoin. Musk himself previously admitted to having invested heavily in the cryptocurrency . For his car company Tesla, he also accepted online purchases for merchandise in the cryptocurrency dogecoin. Earlier, investors also filed a lawsuit against Musk for possibly manipulating the price of the cryptocurrency. On February 13, 2025, Musk causes a stir in the crypto market by changing his name on X to Harry Bōlz. The name, a play on “hairy” and “balls,” is the same as a cryptocurrency meme that was launched a few hours later. Shortly after changing his name on the social network to Harry Bōlz, the cryptocurrency in question was launched on the platform PumpFun. In less than 30 minutes, the value of the memecoin surprisingly increased by 17,000%. The market cap of the memecoin is said to have reached more than $11 million. The price of Dogecoin dropped significantly in early June 2025, from $0.19 to $0.17 following the public feud between Elon Musk and President Donald Trump.
xAI
Elon previously wanted to raise up to 1 billion dollars (around 930 million euros) for xAI through a share issue with a financing round. xAI eventually raised 6 billion dollars from major investors. The company also says it has entered into a “binding agreement” with unspecified parties for the sale of the remaining shares. In early November, he introduced his own AI product, called Grok. That creation has access to information from X, of which he holds a majority of the shares. Elon Musk is now in talks for even more investments worth 6 billion dollars. Grok uses data from X. Users of X with a subscription to the platform can use Grok. Contact has also been made with sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East. Morgan Stanley is said to be coordinating the fundraising. The total amount is now considerably higher. Sources reported that around 500 million dollars of this has already been pledged by investors. xAI is starting with Grok, an AI search assistant that can be used on the X platform by paying users. Elon Musk asked on X whether Tesla should invest $5 billion in his xAI, writing that he was “testing the waters” for a potential funding deal.
The biography ‘Elon Musk’ (publisher Simon & Schuster) was published on September 12, 2023 and was written by Walter Isaacson.
Musk is described in it as a maniacal and impulsively driven person
MisterGreen
MisterGreen auctions Teslas without informing bondholders, uses the proceeds for other obligations and has not paid interest since December 2024. The financial base has been hit by residual value losses, and there is uncertainty about the repayment of the bonds. No significant improvements have been reported through February 2025, and as of April 10, 2025, the situation appears unchanged, with continued concerns for investors. The situation surrounding MisterGreen, a Dutch leasing company that focuses exclusively on Teslas, has led to concerns among private investors, especially bondholders, in recent years.
A net loss of 5.8 million euros was recorded in 2023. This loss is partly attributable to the sharp decline in the residual values of used Teslas. Founded in 2007, the leasing company grew rapidly and focused exclusively on electric vehicles, with a fleet of 4,801 cars as of July 1, 2024. Their equity in 2022 was still €14.4 million, intended as a buffer against residual value losses, but this turned out to be insufficient to mitigate the current crisis. The exclusive focus on Teslas, although a strategic choice in the past, turned out to be risky. In 2019, MisterGreen was the fastest growing leasing company in the Netherlands, but the market for used Teslas was hit by a “perfect storm” in 2024: an oversupply due to expiring lease contracts, price reductions for new Teslas and consumer hesitation due to the abolition of incentive schemes and the introduction of road tax from 2025.
Since December 2024, MisterGreen has stopped paying interest to bondholders, which has a direct impact on private investors who have invested more than 20 million euros in subordinated bonds through DuurzaamInvesteren since 2019. Bondholder Isaac Huijink expressed his frustration in December 2024, when he indicated that the proceeds from auctioned Teslas, such as a 2019 Model 3 Long Range for 12,000 euros (excluding VAT and auction costs), are used for other obligations, such as banks, instead of to investors ‘MisterGreen stops paying interest to bondholders’. This sense of injustice is reinforced by the lack of transparency: MisterGreen’s last communication was dated February 28, 2024, and investors are left in the dark about the financial situation. The interests of bondholders are represented by a foundation, but controversially, it is partly managed by MisterGreen itself, which, according to Errol Keyner of the Vereniging van Effectenbezitters (VEB), creates a conflict of interest. Subordinated bonds, such as those of MisterGreen, have a low priority for repayment, and in the event of bankruptcy, there is a good chance that investors will be left empty-handed, as bankruptcy lawyer Jeroen Fleers emphasized in December 2024.
To generate liquidity, MisterGreen auctions dozens of Teslas every week via platforms such as Troostwijk Auctions, BCA and Autorola, without informing bondholders. The auctions, which according to Wilbert Philippo of LeaseVergelijker generate liquidity faster and save storage space, raised between 10,000 and 14,000 euros per Tesla in 2024. Not all cars are auctioned; some are re-leased via the ReDrive program, which promotes sustainability, but the proceeds are used for “business operations”, including financial obligations to banks such as ABN AMRO and Rabobank, which have first liens on the vehicles, according to co-founder Mark Schreurs.
In December 2024, MisterGreen was in talks with potential acquisition parties, and in February 2025 they were still in negotiations with financiers after violating loan conditions. The COO, Mark Schreurs, stressed in December 2024 that there was “no specific reason” for the auctions, but rather standard practice in the market, which contrasts with the concerns of investors. The company is working on a restructuring, but the consequences for bondholders are uncertain. An unexpected detail is that, despite the financial problems, MisterGreen can still meet operational obligations, which suggests that liquidity is sufficient for daily operations for the time being, but not for bondholders.
No information was found about updates after February 2025, which means that the situation seems unchanged on April 10, 2025. It is likely that the uncertainty for bondholders will continue, given the complex negotiations and the low priority of subordinated loans in the event of insolvency.
The problems at MisterGreen are not isolated.
The used Tesla market is facing an oversupply due to expiring lease contracts, while Tesla has lowered new prices, which reduces the attractiveness of second-hand models. In addition, the behavior of Tesla CEO Elon Musk plays a role, with controversial public appearances that damage confidence in the brand, which is depressing sales worldwide. Other leasing companies, with a spread across multiple brands, can better absorb the drop in value, but MisterGreen’s focus on one brand turned out to be a major risk, as Wilbert Philippo of LeaseVergelijker emphasized in December 2024. Reports about ongoing financial problems and unapproved annual accounts appeared on X-berichten. The financial state of affairs of MisterGreen, a Dutch company specialized in electric car leasing, is currently worrying, but there is no official confirmation of suspension of payments in the available information. According to recent reports, MisterGreen is facing significant financial problems, mainly due to a conflict with leasing company Terberg Leasing, which has undermined its operational and financial stability. This conflict led to a lawsuit in which MisterGreen was found to be in the wrong, with an order to pay €5.6 million in damages to Terberg Leasing. This has put further pressure on the cash flow.
In addition, MisterGreen reported a loss of €2.5 million in 2023, while equity was negative (€-1.2 million). The company attempted to raise capital through a €10 million bond issue, but this issue largely failed, with only a fraction of the intended amount raised. This has led to an acute liquidity crisis. Reports on platforms such as X suggest that MisterGreen is struggling to meet payment obligations, including to suppliers and staff, but these claims have not been independently verified.
There have been no official announcements of suspension of payments or bankruptcy as of June 2025, but the situation appears precarious. The company has indicated that it is working on a restructuring plan, possibly with new investors, to ensure continuity. Without concrete improvements or new financing, the risk of suspension of payments or bankruptcy is real this year.