Tesla electric vehicles parked in the parking lot of Tesla’s Berlin-Brandenburg Gigafactory.
Patrick Puller | Image Alliance | Getty Images
Tesla shares continued to fall on Friday as investors appeared to take profits from the electric car maker’s strong post-election rally.
The company’s shares were down more than 5% in U.S. premarket trading as of about 6:30 a.m. ET, extending losses earlier in the week. Tesla shares fell 8% on Wednesday, marking their worst day since before Donald Trump’s presidential election victory in November.
Trump’s victory sent Tesla shares surging as investors increased bets that the electric car company would benefit from Chief Executive Musk’s close relationship with the president-elect. The stock is still up about 65% since closing on the night of the U.S. presidential vote on November 5.
Musk was appointed by Trump to co-lead the newly created Department of Government Effectiveness, also known as “DOGE.” The abbreviation of the proposed Presidential Advisory Council shares its name with the internet meme that inspired the so-called “memecoin” cryptocurrency Dogecoin.
The price of Dogecoin briefly increased after the birth of the body.
According to Federal Election Commission documents, Musk was a major supporter of Trump during the Republican campaign, investing $277 million primarily in his campaign. Musk is The world’s richest manAccording to Forbes, its net worth is $439.4 billion.
Last month, Bloomberg News reported that Trump’s transition team was planning to pursue a federal framework to regulate self-driving cars.
Tesla and Trump’s transition team did not immediately respond to CNBC’s request for comment on the report.
If true, the move would give Musk’s electric car company a major boost. Tesla is betting its future on the idea of launching a massive fleet of self-driving cars, a “robo-taxi” service. At the company’s “We Robot” event in October, Musk unveiled the company’s Cybercab self-driving concept car.
Tesla has yet to deliver on Musk’s promise to deliver truly self-driving cars. Tesla’s Autopilot and paid “Full Self-Driving” services still require someone behind the wheel to oversee the system’s behavior and take over if needed.
In other Tesla-related news, data released by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association on Thursday showed that Tesla vehicle sales fell by 40.9% in November, exceeding the overall 9.5% decline in EU pure electric vehicle (BEV) sales.
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