Tesla Board Asks Elon Musk to Step Down

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It is widely repeated that Winston Churchill once said, “You can always count on Americans to do the right thing — after they’ve tried everything else.” Although it’s not clear if Churchill ever did actually say that, it has become a popular quote and has provided countless laughs. But it’s not only Americans who struggle to do the right thing the first time, and it’s basically part of human nature that it can take us a long time to accept hard truths and deal with problems and challenges realistically — even more so when something significant has actually changed and gone from helpful to harmful.

It’s no secret that Tesla sales have been half a world off of where they were supposed to be. A few years ago, Tesla CEO Elon Musk said that Tesla sales would grow at about 50% a year through the 2020s — not necessarily every year, but on average. That was happening for a bit, but things have not exactly been going according to plan for more than a year now. Far from seeing 50% sales growth in 2024, Tesla sales actually declined last year. This is in the context of the broader EV market growing. Growth was perhaps not as high as many expected, but EV sales were growing — just not Tesla’s.

In the past year, Musk has gone from fairly politically neutral and detached to extremely politically involved — and often to a shocking degree. His extremist tendencies have dramatically upset millions of people in the US, the UK, Germany, France, and many, many other places. This has all led to significant sales hits, as well as protests at Tesla stores, Tesla owners putting bumper stickers on their cars to disassociate themselves from Elon Musk, and even illegal vandalism and violence that most of us would never support or condone. When you’re getting to the point of protests and bumper stickers, you know that there’s also got to be some degree of market response. In fact, Tesla sales are down much more in 2025 than they even were in 2024.

Of course, the refreshed Tesla Model Y shook things up a bit — production lines had to be shut down and reworked, some buyers have been waiting on the new Model Y, etc., etc. But it seems highly unlikely that has caused as much of a dip in sales as we’ve seen, especially given all kinds of other evidence that Musk’s life at the White House, in DOGE offices, and often right beside or behind Donald Trump is hurting Tesla sales.

Then there’s the almost constant tweeting (showing clear signs of sleep deprivation), preoccupation with other companies (Elon Musk’s X merging with Elon Musk’s xAI … SpaceX rockets exploding while others bring astronauts home), drama with the mama of his 11th (or 12th?) baby, numerous lawsuits, and the distracts just go on and on and on. Any reasonable and independent board of directors of a Fortune 500 company would have pulled the CEO into the board room a long time ago and said, “hey, you need to get focused on our company and improving these numbers or you’ve got to go.” (By the way, we just skipped past almost a decade of missed self-driving targets.)

Well, the Tesla board of directors isn’t exactly reasonable and independent. Musk has been allowed to tarnish the Tesla brand (that he once was critical in building up) and drive sales down, down, down as the board has remained silent and seemingly useless. Until today….

News has broken that the Tesla board of directors has asked Elon Musk to step down from his role as CEO. He would still have a role in the company, but not running it and not being the main face of the company. It’s not clear yet who will step in as the new CEO, though. Stay tuned — we should have more info soon. That said, when the clock strikes midnight, the fairytale could be over, and we could be back where we started — exhausting all other options before going with the obvious one.