Tesla on Wednesday reported a double-digit drop in first-quarter deliveries amid growing backlash to chief executive Elon Musk’s involvement in the Trump administration.

The company delivered about 336,700 vehicles in the first three months of 2025, a 13 percent decline from the same quarter last year and the fewest number of deliveries for Tesla since 2022. It’s also the sharpest year-over-year decline for Tesla deliveries since the introduction of the Model Y crossover in 2020.

Tesla’s dismal sales announcement comes the day after many of its auto industry competitors reported significant increases in first-quarter sales. General Motors and Hyundai notched double-digit sales increases in the first three months of 2025, while Honda and Nissan saw more than 5 percent growth. Those strong performances came ahead of Trump’s promised tariffs on auto imports.

GM’s first-quarter sales of EVs nearly doubled year-over-year. Strong first-quarter performances by Tesla’s EV competitors indicate that the decline seen by Musk’s company “is a Tesla-specific issue,” Deepwater Asset Management analyst Gene Munster wrote.

Musk’s political controversies, including his work in the Trump administration’s U.S. DOGE Service, have led to a “brand crisis” at Tesla, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a Wednesday note that called Tesla’s first-quarter sales a “disaster on every metric.”

“This quarter was an example of the damage Musk is causing Tesla,” Ives wrote. “The more political he gets with DOGE, the more the brand suffers. There is no debate.”

In a Wednesday post on X, Munster said he believes Tesla’s current problems will recede. But he estimated that Tesla lost about 80,000 potential deliveries because of “brand damage.” He attributed 90 percent of the company’s first-quarter shortfall to brand issues, and 10 percent Tesla’s update of the Model Y design.

Tesla did not acknowledge backlash to Musk or dealership protests in its sales statement Wednesday but pointed to the changeover of Model Y lines at its factories, which halted production for several weeks in the first quarter.

Beyond the United States, Tesla has been hit with strong competition from BYD in China and a backlash to Musk in Europe. “Europe — which accounts for about a third of Tesla’s sales — has effectively gone on strike,” Munster wrote.

As public sentiment toward Musk has soured, activists have transformed Tesla into a symbol of the anti-Trump movement. The number of Tesla owners trading in their cars surged to a record high in March, with vehicles from the company representing 1.4 percent of all vehicles traded in at dealerships for new or used cars through March 16, according to Edmunds.

Some owners have expressed buyer’s remorse as Tesla’s vehicles, once synonymous with environmental consciousness, became a symbol of far-right politics. Others participated in protests outside at least 90 Tesla shops and charging stations last month under the “Tesla Takedown” tagline, which called on shareholders, vehicle owners and others to blunt Musk’s government actions with public pressure.

As of early March, more than a dozen violent or destructive acts had been directed at Tesla facilities since Trump’s election. Protesters have thrown molotov cocktails at vehicles and through store windows, set fire to charging stations and opened fire on Tesla lots.

After a post-election surge, Tesla’s stock has stumbled since Trump took office, shedding more than 30 percent of its value this year. In January, Tesla reported its first annual drop in electric vehicle deliveries in more than a decade.