The electric automaker severely underperformed projections in the first quarter.
Elon Musk is finally ready to say when he will step back from the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) and return to his floundering business empire.
Tesla’s profits fell 71 percent in the first three months of 2025, it was revealed Tuesday—an indictment of the job of its chief executive, who spent much of that period tearing up Washington.
The electric vehicle manufacturer revealed after the closing bell Tuesday that it earned $409 million in the first quarter, down from $1.4 billion in the same period of 2024.
Speculation has raged for weeks about when the billionaire would return to Tesla full-time, given that he is classified as a “special government employee” and is not supposed to exceed 130 total days of government work this year.
He told investors Tuesday on an earnings call that he would limit his work for DOGE to only a day or two a week starting next month.
“Starting next month, May, my time allocation to DOGE will drop significantly,” Musk said, according to CNN.
Still, he defended the job DOGE has done cutting government spending, which he characterized as “waste and fraud.”
“There’s been some blowback for the time that I’ve been spending in government with DOGE. I think the work that we’re doing there is actually very important for trying to bring in the insane deficit that is being a country, United States to destruction,” he added.
Tesla is still the world’s most valuable automaker when measured by stock price, but its sales have lagged in 2025 as Musk, the face of the company, has become one of the most divisive figures in American politics—spending his days lashing out on X and resorting to using slurs to attack critics.
The Washington Post reported that if Tesla did not include $595 million it received in automotive regulatory credits, which other manufacturers buy from Tesla to comply with emissions requirements, Tesla would have posted a loss in the quarter.
Tesla sales peaked at 1.8 million vehicles sold in 2023. Last year, sales dipped to 1.7 million, and its global sales fell another 13 percent in the first quarter of 2025 from a year earlier.
Among Tesla’s most significant losers is Musk’s crown jewel, the Cybertruck. The New York Times said the vehicle, introduced in November 2023, has been a “flop” to start the year, with sales down 50 percent from the final quarter of 2024. It retails at $70,000 and ate up much of the manufacturer’s resources while being developed.
There were some early signs that sales were lagging before Tuesday’s earnings report, as Tesla has recently offered discounts as high as $8,500 on its website.
Tesla previously said it planned to introduce an affordable electric vehicle this summer to widen its customer base and bolster its sales figures. The Times reports that such a rollout now appears “increasingly unlikely,” however.
Tesla stock has also suffered this month. It was down nearly 15 percent Tuesday compared to a month prior, and down 12 percent in the last five days.
Musk, a prolific online poster, did not immediately address the Tesla earnings call beyond retweeting a post that said the manufacturer had doubled its energy storage products in the last year.
