As Tesla's stock price plummets, Musk may finally be facing a reality check.

Elon Musk's power play in Washington has not become the boost to Tesla's stock price that investors had expected.

Since January this year, Tesla's stock price has fallen by more than 40%, erasing all the gains brought by the "Trump effect." After election day, Tesla's stock price briefly rose by more than 90%. Musk's wealth is closely tied to his holdings in Tesla, and in the past three months, his personal net worth has shrunk by $121 billion.

So, what exactly happened? Why did Musk's rapid rise to the ranks of the oligarchs fail to save his "baby" (as President Trump referred to Tesla at that strange, infomercial-like press conference on the South Lawn of the White House last week)?

There are mainly two reasons:

Tesla's sales worldwide are declining significantly, and...

Its CEO is indifferent to this.

When Musk was hiding in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building (EEOB), pondering how to weaken the federal government, Tesla's core business was in crisis.

The company reported its first-ever decline in global sales last year, and the situation this year doesn't look much better. Wall Street analysts from RBC, UBS, Goldman Sachs, Mizuho, and JPMorgan have all lowered their delivery forecasts for the company.

Especially in China, Tesla is struggling in its competition with domestic car manufacturers. Last month, Tesla's shipments in China fell by 49% year-over-year. Sales in the European market are also declining, particularly in Germany, where consumers are outraged by Musk's support for a far-right nationalist party with ties to the Nazis. Last month, Tesla's sales in Germany plummeted by 76% year-over-year.

For Tesla, the bad news keeps coming. On Monday, two pieces of bad news from China added to the pressure on Tesla's stock price.

Tesla's top competitor in ChinaBYD(BYD) has launched a new charging system that can provide 250 miles of range for its latest model vehicles in just five minutes, with a charging speed twice as fast as Tesla's.

On the same day, Tesla also launched a one-month free trial of its "Full Self-Driving" (Full Self-Driving) software in China, indicating that the company is desperately trying to reverse its declining market share.

On Monday, Tesla's stock price in the US fell by 5%, and on Tuesday it dropped another 5% after RBC cut its target price due to intensifying domestic competition in China.

Even if Tesla had a normal CEO, all these headaches would cause serious trouble for the company. But Tesla is run by Musk, an advocate of the "Make America Great Again" (MAGA) ideology, whose personal image has shifted from "okay, he's a bit eccentric" a few years ago to "okay, he's posting racist and anti-Semitic conspiracy theories" in 2025.

Tesla did not respond to requests for comment.

A CNN poll last week found that 53% of Americans have a negative view of Musk, and about 60% said he lacks the appropriate experience and sound judgment to carry out the kind of large-scale layoffs his "department" is undertaking.

Although Tesla remains the best-selling electric vehicle brand in the United States, competition is intensifying, and Musk's shift towards far-right authoritarian tendencies seems to be causing real damage.

According to research by the car information website CarGurus, the price of used Tesla cars is falling more than twice as fast as the average decline for regular cars. The overall price of used cars fell 2.7% year over year, while the price of used Tesla cars dropped by 7.3%. The resale value of the used Cybertruck - Tesla's perplexing attempt at vehicle design that seems to have been created in response to a dare - has plummeted by 58%.

Another report from the car website Cars.com found that last month, searches for non-Tesla electric vehicles increased by 12% year-over-year, while searches for Tesla cars decreased by 7%.

JPMorgan's analysts wrote in a report to clients last week: "We struggle to think of any comparable situation in the history of the auto industry where a brand's value has declined so rapidly."

The "Topple Tesla" campaign, initiated by activists and spread on social media, has further intensified the boycott against Tesla. The campaign calls for people to sell their Tesla cars, dump its stocks, and protest in front of Tesla showrooms.

"I want to sell this car because I feel ashamed driving it," Joe Romer, a Tesla owner from California, told CNN's Julia Vargas Jones, "I've had enough of Elon Musk and all the mess he's created."

Even Dan Ives, the tech analyst from Wedbush Securities who has historically been one of Tesla's staunchest supporters, seems to have lost patience with Musk.

Last week, Ives wrote in a report to clients that although he maintained an "outperform" rating on Tesla's stock, investors' patience was "wearing thin."

In the final analysis: Wall Street has long tolerated Musk because Tesla is a cutting-edge company whose products are favored by many. If investors can get a good return on their investment, they can turn a blind eye to all sorts of absurd behavior.

But what happens when Tesla is no longer the dominant player in the electric vehicle sector? What if Musk is too busy trying to fire federal employees to address the company's issues? These are the very concerns that are unsettling investors, who are already worried about Trump's economic agenda.

Musk has made his name synonymous with Tesla — it benefited both when Tesla seemed unstoppable and Musk became the world's richest person.

But now Tesla seems no longer unstoppable, and Musk also seems no longer reliable. It may turn out to be a toxic combination.