Elon Musk’s reputation is falling — and it’s taking Tesla with it

By Jess Weatherbed , a news writer focused on creative industries, computing, and internet culture. Jess started her career at TechRadar, covering news and hardware reviews.

Elon Musk’s controversial behavior in recent years is “very likely” to be a contributing factor in Tesla’s declining sales, according to corporate reputation tracking firm Caliber.

Survey data reported by Reuters found that Tesla’s “consideration score” — a metric used by Caliber to track consumer interest in brands, based on how they respond to the prompt “I would buy, or continue buying, products and services from Tesla, if given the chance” — has fallen to 31 percent from its 70 percent high in November 2021, tumbling by 8 percent alone this January. Caliber’s consideration scores for rival EV-producing manufacturers Audi, BMW, and Mercedes, meanwhile, increased slightly during the same period, reaching between 44–47 percent.

A separate study from analytics firm CivicScience tracking Musk’s approval among US consumers found that 42 percent of respondents viewed him unfavorably, compared to 34 percent when his stake in Twitter was announced in April 2022. The Tesla CEO’s conduct has been repeatedly scrutinized since that point, with mounting controversies ranging from changing operations at X — the site formerly known as Twitter — to his frequent promotion of conspiracy theories and other harmful rhetoric.

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