New Tesla cars are displayed at a Tesla dealership on December 20, 2024 in Corte Madera, California.
Justin Sullivan | Getty Images
The value of Tesla’s brand fell by 26% in 2024, a second straight annual decline, with factors including an aging lineup of vehicles, and CEO Elon Musk’s “antagonism,” according to research and consulting firm Brand Finance.
Tesla’s brand value now stands at an estimated $43 billion, down from $58.3 billion at the beginning of 2024 and $66.2 billion at the start of 2023, the firm said in its annual ranking. Toyota is the most valuable brand in autos at $64.7 billion, with Mercedes close behind at $53 billion, the researchers found.
Brand Finance, based in London, conducts comprehensive consumer surveys and analyzes thousands of companies’ financials, looking at revenue, licensing agreements, margins and more, to estimate the monetary value of brands. The assessments include corporate brands and the sub-brands associated with individual product lines.
As part of the firm’s ranking this year, Brand Finance analyzed answers from about 175,000 survey respondents worldwide, including about 16,000 people who shared their views on Tesla.
The results show that the way consumers view Tesla is very different from Wall Street’s assessment.
Tesla’s stock price soared 63% last year, reaching a record in December, after investors snapped up the shares following Donald Trump’s election victory the prior month. Musk contributed $277 million to help propel Trump and other Republican candidates to victory, and is poised to wield influence in the administration to the benefit of his companies.
When it comes to the broader public, Brand Finance CEO David Haigh says that Musk’s political rhetoric and public persona has its downsides.
“There are people who think he’s wonderful, but many that don’t,” Haigh said. “If you are buying electric vehicles, his persona is highly likely to impact your view of whether or not you want to buy one of his company’s cars, but that’s only one of many factors.”
On key measures like “consideration,” “reputation” and “recommendation,” Tesla’s scores declined across the board in major markets where it operates factories and sells its cars — the U.S., Europe and Asia, Brand Finance found.
Elon Musk walks on Capitol Hill on the day of a meeting with Senate Republican Leader-elect John Thune (R-SD), in Washington, U.S. December 5, 2024.
Benoit Tessier | Reuters
A consideration score shows whether people would consider buying from a brand. A reputation score shows how highly respondents regard a brand on average on a scale from 1 to 10. And a recommendation score indicates whether or not people are likely to speak favorably about a brand.
Tesla saw significant declines in its scores in Europe, where its consideration score dropped from 21% to 16% on average from 2024 to 2025.
Competitors Mercedes and BYD beat Tesla especially on consideration and recommendation scores outside the U.S.
Tesla maintained a high loyalty score of 90% in the U.S., however. That means customers who already owned a Tesla vehicle were likely to keep driving it over the next 12 months. But Tesla’s recommendation score in the U.S. dropped from 8.2 out of 10 to 4.3.
Haigh said Tesla’s declining scores and brand value are a sign that the company’s “pulling power is weakening.” There’s a risk, he said, that “Tesla won’t be able to sell so many products, and it won’t be able to sell at such high prices as it did before.”
There were troubling signs already. Tesla’s deliveries for 2024 declined by about 1% to 1.79 million, even though demand for battery electric vehicles increased worldwide. In the U.S. Tesla’s, market share in EVs dropped to 49% from 55% a year earlier, according to data from Cox Automotive.
Tesla’s brand strength index score, according to Brand Finance, has also dipped from just over 80 to just under 65. The score indicates how well a brand is doing compared to competitors on intangible measures.
“Unless Tesla can come up with a whole range of new products that will really excite consumers, and unless they can mitigate some of the antagonism caused by their leader, they will be seen as past their peak and will begin to go down,” Haigh said.
Measuring Musk
Musk hasn’t limited his political activity to the U.S. He has reportedly been in regular contact with with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, has praised and worked with Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and Argentina’s Javier Milei and made public appearances with Israel’s Benjamin Netanyahu.
He recently endorsed Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party, and pressured British officials to release anti-immigrant Tommy Robinson, a convicted fraudster with a violent criminal record, from prison.
On Monday, during his public remarks after Trump’s inauguration, Musk repeatedly used a gesture that historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat, whose work focuses on fascism, described as “a Nazi salute and a very belligerent one.” Musk didn’t respond to requests for comment.
When it comes to consumer attitudes, “There’ll be a small number that say, I really don’t care what they do. I just want their product,” said Haigh. “There are other gradations of people who care, right through to those who say, I’m not touching that product on principle.”
Tesla is unique in the tight association between the company’s brand and its leader.
With Tesla, “It is very clear who the CEO is, that this person is in charge and their behavior will impact the company’s reputation,” Haigh said.
Brand Finance also evaluated other Musk-led brands, including X, aerospace and defense contractor SpaceX and, for the first time, SpaceX’s Starlink satellite internet business.
The overall brand value of X dropped 26% to $498 million from $673 million, the firm estimated. Simple awareness of the X brand dropped from 2022, when the company was still known as Twitter, from 94% to 78% today on an international level. Before Musk took over and renamed it, Twitter had a brand value of $5.7 billion in 2022.
The name change drove part of the overall decline, according to Brand Finance, but so did the loss of users, advertisers and ad revenue.
“Twitter was very well known, very well-liked and attracted a lot of advertising,” Haigh said. “Overnight, when he changed it to X, according to our data, that reduced the value by about 75%. It went right down and has continued to go down.”
For SpaceX, which Brand Finance began to assess at the start of 2024, the company’s brand value has increased 11% to $3.8 billion. About 45% of people in the U.S. who responded to the survey were familiar with SpaceX, a high ranking for an aerospace and defense company.
The Starlink brand, calculated separately from SpaceX, is valued at $2.4 billion, the firm found. That number is expected to increase as the company continues to add new users and show consistently higher revenue from monthly subscribers.
Brand Finance will publish its Global 500 2025 study of the world’s most valuable brands on Tuesday at Davos.
WATCH: Why Bank of America downgraded Tesla
