Tesla stock has soared 58% after CEO Elon Musk announced plans to leave DOGE. Can he restore the company’s brand value? If not, company shares are too high.

Tesla stock trade 29% below their peak last December. However, the company’s share price bottomed out in early April — around the time of reports CEO Elon Musk would leave the Department of Government Efficiency, noted Newsweek. Since April 8, Tesla stock has risen 58%, according to GoogleFinance.

Does this represent a buying opportunity? The most likely explanation for the rise is investor enthusiasm for Musk’s ‘24/7’ return to Tesla coupled with a temporary reprieve on 50% tariffs on European Union exports to the U.S., according to TipRanks.

Here’s why Musk’s return could be bad for Tesla’s stock:

To be fair, in Tesla’s April 22 earnings call, the company doubled down “on its robotaxi launch in Austin this June, giving investors a near-term growth lever to latch onto,” noted TipRanks.

It is unclear whether Musk is more part of the problem than part of the solution for Tesla investors.

I have requested comment from Tesla and will update this post if I receive a reply.

While Republicans expressed more favorable opinions than did Democrats, Tesla’s brand reputation has fallen over the last five years. Tesla has fallen from was eighth place in the 2021 reputation ranking of America's 100 most visible companies, according to Axios.

In 2024,Tesla fell to sixty-third place and in 2025 is at ninety-fifth — placing “dead last in ‘character,’ while placing near the bottom in ‘ethics’ and ‘citizenship,’ “ noted Axios.

After reporting a first-time sales and profit decline, the bad news for Tesla appears to coincide with Musk’s decision to “go all-in for President Donald Trump,” noted Daily Kos.

Musk’s $288 million donations to Trump’s campaign, according to the Washington Post, his “Nazi salute on Trump’s Inauguration Day in January,” and his actions slashing jobs as leader of DOGE, likely eroded Tesla’s brand for many drivers, Daily Kos reported.

Tesla’s second largest market is China where 2025 sales and registrations are inauspicious. “Although first quarter sales were flat versus 2024, the first seven weeks of the second quarter witnessed a 25% slump in new registrations in China,” according to a report from Citi analyst Jeff Chung featured by MarketWatch.

Tesla’s China woes seem due more to competition than concerns about Musk. For example, Xiaomi’s newly launched YU7 model electric SUV is priced in Tesla’s Model Y $35,000 to $45,000 price range while boasting 100 miles better driving range, noted MarketWatch. The YU7 will “significantly erode Tesla's Model Y market share," Chung added.

In Europe, things look worse for Tesla. In April, Tesla sold 7,261 cars in Europe — 49% fewer than the year before according to a European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA) report featured by CNBC.

While Tesla’s brand in Europe has been damaged, competition and a lack of hybrid EVs — running with traditional fuel and small batteries — in Tesla’s lineup are also costing the company market share.

Last week, a report said China’s BYD sold more pure EVs in Europe than Tesla for the first time, noted CNBC. What’s more 35% of European consumers prefer hybrid EVs , according to ACEA data.

European Union new car registrations data revealed more bad news for Tesla. The company’s “market share for the first four months of 2025 almost halved to just 1.1%, and its April figures were even worse with just 0.7%,” MarketWatch reported.

Tesla’s cybertruck is not a significant part of the company’s revenue — but it symbolizes the challenges facing Musk. In December 2023, Cybertruck sales appeared poised to sell far fewer — 75,000 — than the two million reserved, according to my December 2023 Forbes post.

The Cybertruck was designed to appeal to small segment of the population and would be difficult to manufacture at scale. The design was an “Apocalypse-bunker-on-wheels,” wrote Streetsblog. Social media compared the Cybertruck’s design to “a roided-out Blade Runner jalopy and an industrial refrigerator,” noted by 2023 post.

Meanwhile, the Cybertruck’s outer shell was hard to bend and manipulate. Tesla has been challenged to “shape the material into body panels that line up correctly and don’t result in large gaps when installed” reported the Wall Street Journal. “On top of that, it is so hard and strong that it can be difficult to flatten, these people said,” added the Journal.

After numerous technical problems and recalls, Cybertruck sales fell short of my predictions.”Only about 40,000 people ended up converting their reservations into orders,” noted Electrek.

And after avoiding consumer requests for trade-ins, Tesla is now offering buyers $65,400 for Cybertrucks with only 6,000 miles on the odometer — 34.6% depreciation in just a year which compares unfavorably to the 20% depreciation of pickup trucks, Electrek reported. Pickup trucks generally lose about 20% of their value after a year

Tesla trades above its price target. According to 37 Wall Street analysts, Tesla’s average price target of $282.70 means the company’s stock is 23% over-valued as of this writing, noted TipRanks.