Elon Musk saw around £7.5billion wiped off his fortune as a slump in profits at the electric car maker sent shares tumbling.
In New York, the stock fell as much as 9 per cent, shaving £57billion off the company’s value, reducing the value of Musk’s stake – though his holding is still worth £75billion and he remains the world’s richest person.
Investors dumped Tesla shares after it posted profits of just £1.5billion for the three months to the end of September, down 44 per cent on a year earlier.
Losses: Tesla boss Elon said high interest rates were making electric cars unaffordable for many people
Revenues rose 9 per cent to £19.2billion but this was the slowest pace of growth since early 2020.
The fall in profits came amid mounting concern that Musk’s decision to cut the price of Tesla cars to boost sales is hitting the bottom line.
Musk, who is chief executive of Tesla and now owns X, which used to be called Twitter, was downbeat, saying high interest rates were making electric cars unaffordable for many people.
‘I am worried about the high interest rate environment we’re in,’ he said in a conference call with analysts on Wednesday.
There was little to cheer ahead of next month’s launch of Tesla’s electric pick-up, known as Cybertruck.
Warning that it will take ‘immense work’ to get production levels to where they need to be due to its angular design and stainless steel body, Musk said: ‘We dug our own grave with Cybertruck.’
The gloomy tone contrasted with his claim last year that Tesla was ‘recession-resilient’.
