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Groups that once were biggest fans of EVs like Tesla show steepest decline in wanting to own one now

Over the past two years, the only demographic group surveyed that saw an increase in their interest in EVs was Republicans, and that growth was negligible.

Rani Molla

4/8/25 3:30AM

Tesla is responsible for creating the electric vehicle market and in many ways is synonymous with EVs. It’s also possible Tesla played a role in shooting itself in the foot.

Back in March 2023, some 59% of US adults said they owned, were strongly considering purchasing, or might consider purchasing an electric vehicle. Now that number is 51%, according to new data from Gallup, which surveyed more than a thousand adults each time.

Over the past two years, American interest in EV ownership has declined among pretty much every demographic group. The largest declines were among moderates, those who live out West, Democrats, college grads, and young people. Only among Republicans did that number seemingly rise, but, given the survey’s overall plus or minus 4 percentage point margin of error, it’s not statistically significant growth.

The thing is, many groups who saw the biggest decline in EV interest are those who historically have been — and currently are — most interested in EVs to begin with. In other words, EVs’ most likely customers are the most likely to have fallen out of love with the idea of owning one.

What’s going on? It could be a lot of things, from EV range anxiety to concern about Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s role in the government. Gallup didn’t ask direct questions about Tesla.

While Musk didn’t publicly endorse President Trump until July of 2024, he said he had been steadily moving to the right politically. He announced that he would no longer support Democrats back in May 2022, soon after he began his acquisition of Twitter.

The Gallup surveys were taken in March of 2023, 2024, and 2025.

Survey data from YouGov shows that Tesla has faced declining popularity among moderates, liberals, and the general population that kicked into high gear around 2022. Amid rising competition and declining popularity, Tesla’s market share in the US fell below 50% for the first time last summer.

Notably, EV sales in the US hit a record earlier this year and despite declines in Tesla sales, they are still the top-selling EV brand in the country.

Jon Keegan2h

Google’s AI chip business could be a $900 billion boon for the company

Google may be sitting on a massive new business that it has yet to fully exploit.

Google’s custom tensor processing unit (TPU) AI chips have been getting a lot of attention recently, making the tech world wonder if there are other ways to power its AI dreams rather than just by using Nvidia’s GPUs.

Bloomberg spoke with analysts who estimate that, if it does decide to sell its chips to others, Google could capture 20% of the AI market, making it a $900 billion business. For comparison, Google Cloud pulled in $43.2 billion of revenue last year.

Even if Google just sticks with renting access to its TPUs, it will continue to drive down costs and increase margins as it ekes out performance improvements, such as the 30x improvement in power efficiency that the latest generation of TPUs has delivered for the company.

Alphabet’s AI Chips Are a Potential $900 Billion ‘Secret Sauce’

Rani Molla3h

OpenAI’s Sam Altman has explored bringing his feud with Tesla’s Elon Musk to space

Billionaires, they’re just like us: they want to bring their terrestrial beefs to outer space.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has explored buying or partnering with a rocket company to compete with Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s SpaceX, The Wall Street Journal reports. The two billionaires have had numerous public feuds over the years that have played out in the courts and on social media. They also both lead AI companies that have insatiable needs for data centers and have publicly discussed building data centers in space.

Altman seems like he thinks this could be more than science fiction. He reportedly reached out to rocket maker Stoke Space to potentially make equity investments in the company to get a controlling stake, though the talks are no longer active, WSJ reports.

Or perhaps he just wanted a Sherwood bobblehead of himself.

Jon Keegan3h

Report: Meta to slash metaverse, VR spending by up to 30%

Four years after changing its name to reflect its focus on the loosely defined “metaverse,” Meta is planning deep cuts to the company’s money-losing virtual reality efforts, according to a report from Bloomberg.

Meta’s Reality Labs division, home to the teams working on metaverse products — which include Quest VR headsets, Horizon Worlds, and its Ray-Ban Meta glasses — has lost about $70 billion since the company started breaking out the unit in 2020.

The company has struggled to get consumers to buy into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of working and playing in virtual reality worlds, like the company’s Horizon Worlds platform.

Investors seem to love the news of the pivot, as shares shot up as much as 5% in early trading.

Meta’s recent hiring spree of AI superstars from competitors for its Meta Superintelligence Labs shows that the company’s attention is now all in on AI.

Meta’s Zuckerberg Plans Deep Cuts for Metaverse Efforts

The company has struggled to get consumers to buy into CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of working and playing in virtual reality worlds, like the company’s Horizon Worlds platform.

Investors seem to love the news of the pivot, as shares shot up as much as 5% in early trading.

Meta’s recent hiring spree of AI superstars from competitors for its Meta Superintelligence Labs shows that the company’s attention is now all in on AI.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Kicks Off Dreamforce With Keynote Presentation

The best quotes from Salesforce’s earnings call

CEO Marc Benioff doesn’t disappoint.

Rani Molla3h

Rani Molla21h

Salesforce jumps as Q3 earnings top expectations

Salesforce jumped after-hours Wednesday as it posted earnings and guidance that beat analysts’ expectations. Its adjusted earnings per share came in at $3.25 for the third quarter of fiscal 2026, above the FactSet analyst consensus estimate of $2.86. Its revenue rose 9% to $10.3 billion, in line with expectations.

The software-as-a-service company issued fourth-quarter revenue guidance of $11.13 billion to $11.23 billion, well above the $10.9 billion analysts had predicted. It also forecast adjusted earnings of $3.02 to $3.04 per share, compared with analysts’ expectations of $3.04.

Shares were up 4.3% in recent trading.

“Our Agentforce and Data 360 products are the momentum drivers,” CEO Marc Benioff said in the press release.

Last quarter, Salesforce shares fell after the company issued disappointing third-quarter guidance. Coming into today’s report, the stock was down about 30% year to date.

Investors will be watching the earnings call closely for updates on the company’s AI strategy — particularly progress on Agentforce and broader adoption of its AI-driven cloud offerings.