Overview
- The Yale/NBER working paper estimates Tesla would have sold 1.0–1.26 million more U.S. vehicles from October 2022 to April 2025, and it says the partisan effect also slowed California’s progress toward its 2026 zero-emissions targets.
- Authors analyze county-level monthly registration data using a difference-in-differences approach that treats the October 2022 Twitter acquisition as the shock separating Democratic- and Republican-leaning markets.
- Most forgone Tesla purchases were substituted to rivals, lifting other automakers’ electric and hybrid sales by roughly 17%–22% during the period.
- Polling cited in the paper shows Democrats’ views of Musk turned sharply negative while Republican favorability rose, which the authors conclude reduced liberal demand without a compensating surge from conservatives.
- The findings prompted renewed investor calls for stronger board guardrails on CEO political activity as outlets and the study itself noted other headwinds, including an aging lineup, intensifying competition, and shifting U.S. EV tax-credit and regulatory-credit dynamics.