President Trump’s $100 million publicity stunt for Tesla hasn’t helped the automaker’s struggling sales yet, based on an inventory check and new order delivery timelines in the US.
On Tuesday, President Trump held a press conference in front of the White House that basically amounted to an infomercial for Tesla.
It came a day after Tesla’s stock, which constitutes most of the fortune held by Elon Musk, Trump’s top political financial backer, crashed by 15%.
A day after the ad, reports stated that Musk plans to give Trump another $100 million political donation, raising questions about a potential quid pro quo.
Considering it’s just day 4 after the ad, it might be too early to say if it helped Tesla, but we can get a good idea of the impact thanks to an inventory check and new order deliver timelines.
Unlike most automakers, which use third-party franchise dealerships, Tesla owns its entire service and distribution network. It takes new orders online and tries to match them with vehicles in inventory, especially at the end of the quarter.
Tesla tries to end every quarter with as low inventory as possible to improve the look of its financial results.
This was Tesla’s inventory in the US on March 11th, the day of Trump’s Tesla ad (via Troy Teslike):
- 1,136 Model 3 listings
- 2,332 Model Y listings
- 1,010 Cybertruck listings
Now, here’s Tesla’s inventory in the US as of today, March 14th:
- 1,435 Model 3 listings
- 1,500 Model Y listings
- 1,006 Cybertruck listings
As you can see, Model 3 inventory went up a bit as it mainly remained stable throughout the month. No real impact here.
Tesla’s difficult-to-move Cybertruck inventory has virtually remained unchanged. Although, we suspect that a recent containment hold might be responsible.
The only meaningful positive change was with the Model Y inventory, which went down by about 800 units.
However, it’s hard to attribute any of that to Trump because Tesla’s current Model Y inventory in the US consists of the old generation that Tesla has been heavily discounting to get rid of it as it transitions to the new generation.
As you can see in the chart below, it has been going down rapidly before Trump’s Tesla ad (via Tesla Info):
It’s possible that Trump’s ad helped a bit, but it mostly likely just helped Tesla get rid of some old Model Y, which Tesla is now selling as low as $35,000.
The only real hope for Tesla is that Trump helped boost new orders for the new Model Y, but that’s also extremely unlikely.
It’s more difficult to verify, but the best metric is the delivery timeline on new orders on Tesla’s configurator.
After a couple of checks with both California and Texas zip codes, Tesla says that it can still deliver new Model Y Launch Editions by the end of the month:
This would point to soft demand for the new vehicle. To be fair, Tesla is still only taking orders for the more expensive “Launch Edition” of the new version of the Model Y.
Electrek’s Take
It might be too early to say, but I’m not impressed by the Trump bump right now.
I guess it takes more than a quick infomercial for Trump to convince his fans to buy an electric vehicle after he pushed EV misinformation for them for years.
The truth is that most people, including MAGA, can see through this and understand that it is transactional and not a real endorsement of Trump, like most products that he pushes.
I appreciate Musk putting $100 million toward Tesla advertising for a change, but like most of his moves these days, it looks like it’s not working.
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