Elon Musk said on Tuesday, the 22nd of April, that he plans to focus more on running his electric vehicle company Tesla, which reported a significant drop in sales and revenue in the first quarter of the year amid growing concerns about the impact of tariffs and Musk’s own role in the US government shake-up, according to Politico.
Tesla’s total revenue from car sales in the first quarter of 2025 fell by 20% and net income by an astonishing 71%, the company said on Tuesday.
IN AN EARNINGS CALL WITH INVESTORS, MUSK SAID THAT “STARTING NEXT MONTH, I’M GOING TO SPEND MORE TIME ON TESLA”.
“The great work it took to build the Government Efficiency department (DOGE) team and work with the government to clean up the financial system is largely done,” Musk told analysts in a conference call. But he said he still plans to devote about 40% of his time to DOGE.
Tesla shares, which had risen 4% in the afternoon just before the earnings conference call began, were up 5.5% after Musk’s comments.
Musk did not directly answer whether the major job cuts he led in the federal government or the dispatching of DOGE teams to government offices affected his company’s sales or his choice to step back a bit from DOGE. However, Musk acknowledged that the company had received a blow but dismissed concerns about damage to the brand.
Tesla’s total revenue fell to 19.3 billion US dollars in the first quarter of 2025, down 9%. This big drop was partly because the company delivered fewer cars and sold them at lower prices, according to data released ahead of Tuesday’s earnings call.
Tesla’s operating income (cash earned after costs) also fell by 66% to 0.4 billion US dollars.
It should be noted that Musk has been a vocal opponent of many of the tariffs that Trump has decided to impose, but in the earnings release he said that Tesla is “the automaker least affected by the tariffs, at least in most cases” because its supply chains are the least affected.
“I have said repeatedly that I believe lower tariffs generally go hand in hand with prosperity, but this decision is essentially up to the people’s elected representative, which is the President of the United States. So, you know, I will continue to argue for lower tariffs, not higher tariffs, but that is all I can do.”
And he defended his work, saying that DOGE has “done a lot to address the problems of waste and fraud”, which he said must be tackled to “try to get the country back on the right track”.
“And working with President Trump and his team – because if things get worse and America goes down, we all suffer, including Tesla and everyone else.”