Polestar CEO: Musk’s politics may benefit rivals

The CEO of Sino-Swedish EV carmaker Polestar has told Bloomberg that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s support for controversial political movements could cost Tesla sales.

Taking a swipe at Musk’s increasingly right-wing political leanings, the new Polestar boss says the potential exodus caused by resentment toward Tesla and Elon Musk will benefit Polestar and other EV brands.

Polestar CEO Michael Lohscheller said he admired Musk for having achieved “incredible things with Tesla” and being “very successful” with the Tesla business but cautioned that Musk’s increasingly dogmatic political commentary is putting off potential buyers.

“We get a lot of people writing [to us, saying] that they don’t like all this,” Lohscheller said of Musk’s widely communicated political views.

“For Germany, somebody outside of Germany endorsing right-wing political parties is a big thing,” said the Polestar boss, emphasising the societal taboo in post-war Germany surrounding support for far-right political parties.

Musk is also the CEO of SpaceX and X (formerly Twitter) and is the world’s richest man and now heads up a government department in the Trump administration.

He has used the X social media platform – where he has 215 million followers – to question European politicians and policies and support those he approves of, including hard-right German political party Alternative fuer Deutschland (AfD).

“You want to know what I think about it? I think it’s totally unacceptable. Totally unacceptable,” Lohscheller said, who was born in Germany and formerly worked for German brands Opel and Volkswagen.

“You just don’t do that. This is pure arrogance, and these things will not work.”

He revealed that a new directive within Polestar would see the EV brand appeal to disappointed Tesla customers.

Originally a high-performance Volvo sub-brand, Polestar split from its parent company and now exclusively builds EVs – like Tesla.

In terms of global sales, however, Polestar is a minnow compared to Tesla. But since Lohscheller was installed as CEO in 2024, he has talked up a model range expansion, with the Polestar 7 the next model in development.

Tesla is still the world’s largest EV brand, with only BYD coming close in terms of sales and global coverage, selling 1.76 million EVs versus Tesla’s 1.79 million in 2024.

In 2024, Polestar delivered just under 45,000 vehicles globally, a 15 percent drop from the previous year. However, Lohscheller’s combative comments directed at Elon Musk could be due to a surge in customer interest in the fourth quarter of 2024, with an almost 40 percent increase in orders placed.

Whether that momentum will continue into 2025 remains to be seen, but the brand is clearly not averse to questioning the political motivations of its rivals.