Is doing everything you can to alienate your core potential consumer base a good idea?

Oddly enough, perhaps not:

Tesla has lost its status as the world’s biggest seller of electric vehicles after Congress and President Trump eliminated the federal tax credits that had encouraged Americans to buy those cars.

The company’s car sales declined 16 percent in the last three months of 2025, Tesla said on Friday. And its sales for the full year declined 9 percent even as other automakers notched gains. In 2025, for the first year ever, the company sold fewer electric cars than China’s leading automaker, BYD.

The sales figures released on Friday highlighted how far Tesla has turned away from its onetime goal of becoming the largest carmaker in the world. It once set a target of selling 20 million cars a year by 2030 — or about twice as much as what Toyota does now. Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive, has instead bet the company’s future on self-driving cars and humanoid robots, developing technologies that do not yet generate much revenue and where there is significant competition.

Tesla remains the largest American maker of electric vehicles, but its slumping sales suggest that a wider slowdown is in store in the United States for a technology seen as an important tool against climate change and urban air pollution.

This could get even worse for Tesla if some of the countries Musk is alienating with his frequently reiterated white supremacy and opposition to democracy respond to Trump’s trade war by easing trade sanctions on Chinese EVs. But even without that the odds are strong that Tesla has already passed its peak market share.