Odds are, Ford CEO Jim Farley and General Motors CEO Mary Barra have either already voted in the election or will on Tuesday. Thankfully, though, we have absolutely no idea who which candidate they actually support. Your guess is about as good as mine. Tesla CEO Elon Musk, on the other hand, has made it abundantly clear that he’s all-in for Trump. And he doesn’t just want Trump to win — he’s spending millions and actively campaigning on his behalf. If Trump wins, Musk and his companies will absolutely benefit, but what happens if the convicted felon loses?
It certainly isn’t illegal or unprecedented for a billionaire CEO to use their money and influence in an attempt to sway the election in favor of their preferred candidate, and yet, Musk may still find himself in legal trouble over his political action committee’s possible violation of human trafficking laws, the possible lying on his immigration paperwork and his buddy-buddy relationship with enemy dictator Vladimir Putin. That’s not even the complete list, just a handful of the most immediate issues that deserve investigating.
Still, we don’t know how aggressively the Harris administration would go after Musk, especially in the months immediately following her inauguration. After all, there’s a chance that post-election and post-inauguration right-wing violence will cause more than its fair share of distractions. They’re already burning ballot boxes, so there’s no reason to believe they’ll take a Trump loss peacefully. Regardless of what any investigation concludes, though, the wheels of justice turn slowly, and he probably won’t face any actual consequences for a while, if he ever does.
You also can’t forget about that whole two-tiered justice system we have that seems specifically geared toward keeping the rich out of prison. If his cozy little nighttime chats with Putin weren’t enough to prevent the Pentagon from using SpaceX to launch a network of spy satellites, it’s hard to have much faith that the Harris administration won’t continue her predecessor’s policy of simply letting him get away with everything.
Whether it’s for show or something he actually believes, Musk’s behavior on Twitter lately certainly suggests he isn’t confident his status as the richest person in the world will keep him safe. In addition to all his other garbage tweets, Musk is also spreading the idea that Democrats plan to destroy him, and in his interview with TV dinner trust fund baby Tucker Carlson, said he’s fucked if Trump loses. Why he’s threatening me with a good time, I don’t know, but it probably has something to do with all the ketamine.
If Musk does go down, though, that would likely be bad news for every company he runs but especially Tesla since it’s publicly traded. Its value has been completely divorced from its products and profits for years now, and with Musk no longer at the helm, it’s hard to imagine investors wouldn’t flee. Tesla is Elon, and Elon is Tesla, after all.
What’s much more interesting to consider is what will happen to Tesla if we assume the status quo is mostly here to stay. In a situation where Trump loses, and Musk tries to go back to being his pre-Twitter-takeover self, it’s still easy to see a lot of potential customers deciding they don’t want to give their money to someone so unapologetically right-wing. I mean, he’s already telling people he plans to crash the economy when he guts the federal government like a private equity CEO who just acquired a media company from Univision. Regular people don’t tend to like guys like that.
For pretty much any other electric automaker, a Harris win would be good news. She will likely continue to offer tax credits for EV purchases and wants to grow the EV industry in the U.S. She’ll invest in clean energy and will presumably continue the carbon credit program that benefits electric automakers, including Tesla. The bar isn’t high, but you can expect Harris to be the most pro-EV president in history. On paper, Tesla’s CEO should be all about that, especially with its U.S. factories giving it an advantage over automakers that build their EVs overseas.
The downside for Tesla is that Harris’s policies will help the EV industry as a whole, not Tesla specifically. If other automakers’ EV sales improve, that’s only going to hurt Tesla’s market share and will likely impact its sales, as well. What Tesla does have is its Supercharger network, which would still be a valuable asset that generates revenue even if every Tesla factory magically disappeared overnight.
By the end of the second Harris administration, other networks may have caught up, but at least in the near future, you can’t overlook how important the Supercharger network is as the company faces an uphill battle against competition that only gets every time a new EV goes on sale. The fact that Tesla’s lineup is either ancient or the Cybertruck certainly doesn’t help things, either.
Of course, Musk defenders will tell you car sales don’t matter because Tesla is now an AI/robotics company, but it’s also easy to see investors getting spooked and trying to put their money somewhere safer than Tesla as they adjust their strategy based on the direction they believe Harris will take the country. It’s also no secret that Tesla is a meme stock and has been for a long time. There may be a few credulous rubes who stick around and really believe Tesla is about to “solve autonomy,” but come late January, how many of those will still be around?
If investors get spooked, things could very quickly go from bad to worse for Musk and Tesla. SpaceX is valuable in terms of government contracts, but it isn’t a publicly traded company he can use to fund his lifestyle. He needs Tesla to remain overvalued to keep this whole thing going, and a few big investors exiting could be the falling domino that eventually brings it all down. If the stock price is based on vibes anyway, bad vibes could easily snowball into a situation where everyone’s desperate to jump ship before the price falls even further.
It’s also not like the wealthy don’t have valid reasons to be worried about an incoming Harris administration. She plans to raise taxes on the rich, regulate corporations and continue Biden’s policy of going after wealthy tax cheats. (And miss me with that, “Woe is me, I can barely get by on $400,000 in San Francisco,” bullshit. Learn how to budget like the rest of us, Richy Rich.) The country and the people will be better off under the Harris administration, but even before she has the chance to do any of that, it wouldn’t be surprising to see millionaires and billionaires act like the sky is falling because they might not be able to afford to outfit a new private jet or bust unions and abuse workers without consequences.
As a result, it’s easy to imagine a scenario where investors want to distance themselves from Musk and put their money into safer investments that are less likely to be subject to increased regulation. And yet, once you get to that point, it really becomes hard to guess what happens next. Maybe it’s possible that the board kicks Elon to the curb, goes back to being a regular electric automaker and gives up on pretending humanoid robots will actually be useful. Given the makeup of the current board, though, that seems about as likely as Musk getting actual prison time.
So what do you think? Will the stock crash? Will it be more of a slow burn? Will anything happen to Musk? Does another automaker swoop in and buy Tesla? Will the company still exist in four years? Will Musk solve autonomy and turn his robotaxis into a multi-trillion-dollar goldmine? Pretty much any answer is just as valid as any other because there’s no way to predict the future. At this point, whether Harris or Trump wins may as well be a coin-flip, so if you haven’t voted already, make double damn sure you do that. The last thing this country needs is Elon in a position of power in a second Trump administration.
