Tesla has been losing ground for a while. They were one of the first mass produced EVs with charging infrastructure, but now what makes them special? They have positioned themselves as a software/ai company but it was just a way to boost stock price. They don’t have full self driving (fsd) that’s been promised as next year for the past 10 years. On top of it they only rely on cameras for fsd and no lidar systems so I don’t think they’ll ever get full clearance outside the US.
So even if they ditch Elon I’m not sure if the sentiment can be brought back. Sure they may not go bankrupt but the stock should fall in line with other auto manufacturing companies.
There have been multiple companies who have gone through public image issues that have survived, but never regained their original status in the market.
The thing that it has been with Tesla is the company value never made sense and it was driven by hype for Elon and his “genius vision”. With that facade going away the stock should continue to adjust to closer to other comparable car companies. Even recently they had a trailing P/E ratio of 121. That’s crazy with only so few things in their product pipeline that we know about.
So the question now is how does the new public perception impact any new products they launch in the near term and how do they recover the confidence of the consumers? Not saying that it can’t be done.