Today, in metrics that Elon Musk’s enterprises are fully eating dirt: A new Axios Harris Poll of the US’s 100 most visible companies showing Tesla and SpaceX, collapsing in reputation. The poll seeks to divine positive consumer sentiment and trust among large companies — and Musk’s are crashing, due in no small part to widespread disapproval of Musk’s role in the Trump administration, a sentiment that continues to grow across all political affiliations.
This isn’t a shocking development, but even so, the numbers paint an astonishingly swift fall from grace. In the 2021 poll, Tesla was eighth place in reputation ranking, putting it ahead of brands like Costco, Apple, and Toyota.
But along the way, the automaker has since tripped on the staircase up, and come crashing backwards. Last year, Tesla fell all the way down to 63rd place — and now, in 2025, it’s plunged to rock-bottom-95th, where it’s keeping company with the likes of Meta, Wells Fargo, and UnitedHealth Group.
Toyota, it’s worth mentioning, has leapfrogged Tesla to 4th place, with five other car companies ahead of the EV automaker. Per Axios, Tesla also placed dead last in “character,” and ranked nearly as poorly in areas like “ethics” and “citizenship.”
SpaceX is hardly better off. In 2021, Musk’s aerospace company was sitting pretty at 5th place, but this year it tumbled to 86th. That puts it right alongside a scandal-plagued Boeing, at 88th.
SpaceX isn’t a consumer facing company like Tesla, so the reputation hit theoretically isn’t so material to their future. But the polling data showed a worrying 28.7 percent difference between Republican and Democrat respondents, the outlet reported, which could certainly be a liability down the line if political fortunes swing out of their favor.
X (formerly Twitter) also features here — embarrassingly — with a 98th place finish — but it’s always done poorly, even before Musk’s takeover.
Again, this astonishing fall from consumers’ good graces can be laid at the feet of Musk, who has alienated consumers on both sides of the aisle with his role in the Trump administration. Through his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, Musk has laid waste to the federal government by firing tens of thousands of government employees, cutting off hundreds of billions of dollars in spending, and tampering with American’s Social Security. His personal conduct was likely no less repulsive to those same consumers, including his willingness to engage in (ostensibly) performative Nazism, and his regular sharing of racist conspiracy theories.
Beyond poor polling numbers, these actions have had material consequences for his businesses. Musk’s actions catalyzed a global “Tesla Takedown” protest movement, with Tesla dealerships and cars regularly targeted with vandalism. The automaker’s annual sales declined for the first time in 2024, and have fallen in the first quarter of 2025 by 37 percent in Europe and 9 percent in the US. Its net income during this period, meanwhile, has slid by 71 percent.
In a rare moment of self-reflection, Musk himself has admitted that his time in DOGE has incurred some pretty nasty blowback on his businesses. And if this new poll is anything to go by, their reputations are going to need feats of veritable necromancy to recover.
More on Musk’s business acumen: A Longtime Tesla Bull Dumped His Stock, Predicting a Total Collapse
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