Tesla Lost $15 Billion In Brand Value In 2024, Report Says: Did Elon Musk's Political Push Hurt EV Giant?

Tesla Inc TSLA stock soared after Donald Trump won the 2024 presidential election, helping CEO Elon Musk become the first person worth more than $400 billion.

While Musk's political push and Trump friendship might have been good for the stock, a new report showed it could have hurt Tesla's brand value.

What Happened: Musk continued to support Trump and his policies, which included trying to end tax credits for electric vehicles.

The support for Trump could be hurting Tesla's brand value, according to the 2025 global brand rankings from Brand Finance.

Tesla fell to 36^th place in the 2025 rankings, down from 18^th place in 2024. The electric vehicle company had a brand value of $43 billion in the 2025 rankings, down 26% from $58.27 billion in 2024.

This marked the second straight year Tesla's brand value fell in the annual rankings, as reported by CNBC. Reasons for the fall could be related to a lack of new vehicles from Tesla and Musk's "antagonism," the report said.

"There are people who think he's wonderful, but many that don't," Brand Finance CEO David Haigh told CNBC of Musk. "If you are buying electric vehicles, his persona is highly likely to impact your view of whether or not you want to buy one of his company's cars, but that's only one of many factors."

Tesla’s scores in categories such as "reputation," "recommendation" and "consideration" all fell from the prior year.

The results of the brand survey included comments and rankings from more than 16,000 people who shared their views on Tesla. The EV company saw large drops in rankings from consumers in Europe. In the U.S., Tesla still had a high loyalty score of 90%, which meant Tesla owners would likely keep their vehicles for the next 12 months.

While the loyalty score was positive, Tesla’s recommendation score fell from 8.2 out of 10 to 4.3 in the U.S., which suggested Tesla owners were not recommending the products to other potential customers.

"Tesla won't be able to sell so many products, and it won't be able to sell at such high prices as it did before," Haigh suggested.

Haigh said Tesla releasing new products that get new customers excited could help offset some of the brand weakness witnessed related to Musk.

Other Musk-related companies had calculated brand values in the Brand Finance report. The brand value of social media platform X declined 26% from $673 million to $498 million. The brand value of X declined in recent years for the survey due to the name change from Twitter to X and concerns about advertisers and lost users.

SpaceX‘s brand value rose 11% to $3.8 billion in 2025 in its second year in the annual survey. Starlink, which is owned by SpaceX, was also calculated separately and received a brand value of $2.4 billion for its first time in the annual survey.

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Other Brand Winners and Losers: Technology giant Apple Inc AAPL ranked first in the Brand Finance report for a second straight year. Apple's brand value increased 11% from $516.58 billion to $574.51 billion in 2025. Over 80% of consumers in the survey were familiar with Apple and 45% of consumers consider or do use Apple brand products and services.

Following Apple in the top five were Microsoft, Google (part of Alphabet), Amazon and Walmart. One of the biggest gainers was NVIDIA Corp NVDA, which moved from 30th place to ninth place and saw its brand value up 98% year-over-year to $87.8 billion. Nvidia was included in the top 500 list for the first time in 2014, when it was ranked 424. This year marked the semiconductor's first time in the top 10.

Brand Finance said TikTok, DraftKings and FanDuel were among the fastest-growing companies for brand value.

Among automotive companies, Toyota (18), Mercedes-Benz (23), and Hyundai (29) ranked ahead of Tesla in the annual rankings.

Why It's Important: Benzinga previously reported some angry Tesla customers who don't agree with Musk's political push are buying bumper stickers with phrases such as "I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy."

Rival EV company Polestar Automotive Holding PSNY was trying to lure customers who might be upset with Musk's political commentary.

Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller told Bloomberg News people have "very, very negative sentiment" about Musk's political commentary.

"For Germany, somebody outside of Germany endorsing right-wing political parties is a big thing," Lohscheller said.

A survey of Tesla owners in the Netherlands showed around one-third were considering selling their car, with Musk one of the main reasons.

The survey conducted by Dutch news outlet EenVandaag and shared by InsideEVs showed Tesla owners who thought Musk's actions were making them reconsider their brand loyalty.

"If I had known what he is like now, I would have never bought a Tesla," one Tesla owner said in the survey.

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