Tesla's brand value saw a 26% YoY decline, partly due to Musk: study

01/22/2025 10:04 AM

London-based research and consulting firm Brand Finance has released its 2025 Brand Finance report, which ranks the value of the world’s most prominent companies.

As per Brand Finance’s report, the world’s most valuable brand in the automotive sector is Toyota, and electric vehicle maker Tesla has fallen to fourth place.

The process: 

• To come up with its rankings, Brand Finance considered not just a company’s stock performance or sales figures, but customer feedback and several other factors as well, as noted in a CNBC report.
• In this year’s rankings, Brand Finance’s study had about 175,000 respondents.
• Around 16,000 of the firm’s respondents shared their views on Tesla.

Brand Finance’s take:

• The research and consulting firm estimated Tesla’s total brand value at $43 billion in early 2025, down from $58.3 billion in early 2024.
• This translates to a year-over-year decline of over 26%.
• This decline has allowed both Mercedes-Benz and the Hyundai Group’s brands to surpass Tesla.
• Toyota was the top automaker in Brand Finance’s 2025 report, with the Japanese carmaker’s brand estimated to be worth $64.7 billion.
• As per Brand Finance, the decline of Tesla’s brand value was likely due to a number of factors, such as CEO Elon Musk’s political leanings.

What they are saying: 

• Brand Finance CEO David Haigh highlighted that while Elon Musk still sees a lot of support, he is also disliked by many. 
• “There are people who think he’s wonderful, but many that don’t. If you are buying electric vehicles, his persona is highly likely to impact your view of whether or not you want to buy one of his company’s cars, but that’s only one of many factors,” Haigh noted.
• The Brand Finance CEO also noted that there is a risk Tesla will not be able to “sell so many products, and it won’t be able to sell at such high prices as it did before.”
• Thus, the best way for Tesla to thrive once more would be to excite customers with new products.
• “Unless Tesla can come up with a whole range of new products that will really excite consumers, and unless they can mitigate some of the antagonism caused by their leader, they will be seen as past their peak and will begin to go down,” Haigh noted.

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