Europeans are increasingly shunning the brand due to Musk’s worsening reputation
The stock price of Lucid Group (NASDAQ:LCID) soared by more than 10% in after-hours trading on Tuesday as the electric vehicle maker revealed fresh forecasts that production will more than double in 2025.
Posting its 2024 financial results, Lucid forecasted that it will produce 20,000 vehicles this year, compared with 9,000 in 2024.
The firm also announced on Tuesday that its CEO, Peter Rawlinson, is stepping down after a 12-year tenure on Lucid’s executive team. “It’s finally the right time for me to step aside from my roles at Ludid,” Rawlinson said in a company statement.
But traders appeared to be encouraged by the firm’s promising forecasts regardless, with Lucid Group’s stock price spiking dramatically to around 2.90 in extended trading after hovering around 2.60 at the closing bell.
However, fortunes have been mixed for Lucid stock overall, having ended Tuesday’s session close to 9% down from its early morning price of 2.86.
The stock is also nearly 14% down since the beginning of 2025.
Woes deepen for Tesla
Still, Lucid’s production forecasts are encouraging amid a clear period of uncertainty for EV makers in the United States, with many consumers opting for cheaper hybrids instead of fully electric cars.
While 2024 saw U.S. EV sales increase 7.3% to 1.3 million, this actually represents somewhat of a slowdown. In 2023, for instance, sales increased by 49% year-on-year.
Market leader Tesla has felt the full force of this swing in momentum, with 2024 marking the automaker’s first year-on-year decline in vehicle deliveries in over a decade.
However, Tesla’s troubles currently run deeper than the temperature of the broader market. European consumers are increasingly turning their back on the brand in response to the controversial political antics of the firm’s founder and CEO, Elon Musk.
Indeed, Tesla sold less than 10,000 vehicles across Europe last month, marking a 45% slowdown on the year before. Moreover, in European Union territories, the firm’s EV market share has almost halved, now down to 1%.
While this trend could partly be attributed to the reduction in demand for electric vehicles, Musk’s worsening reputation is a far more likely culprit. YouGov polls conducted in the UK and Germany in mid-January, for instance, found that 71 of respondents in both nations take a negative view of the controversial figure.
And to make matters worse for Tesla, the broader market appears to be enjoying strong momentum, with sales of electric vehicles surging by 37% across Europe in the same period.
Traders have responded to this accordingly, with Tesla shares slumping by more than 9% since the beginning of the week.
The dip in share price saw Tesla’s valuation fall back below $1 trillion for the first time since November 2024.
