How the wheels came off Musk's green dream: Elon's fortune shrinks by $66billion as cheap Chinese rivals gobble up Tesla sales, one in ten staff are sacked... and even preening celebrities no longer want to be seen posing in his cars!

It was the exciting new company that promised to save the planet, wean us off the internal combustion engine and end our terrible addiction to oil.

Tesla proved that electric vehicles didn’t have to look like milk floats, they could be sleek, speedy sports cars.

Hollywood stars such as George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio and Matt Damon — keen to burnish their eco-credentials — queued up to buy the first Tesla model in 2008, a limited edition $96,000 Roadster, based on the Lotus Elise, a classic British two-seater. It could accelerate to 60mph in under four seconds and drive 250 miles without needing a charge.

The eco lobby drooled over Tesla’s claims for its debut model that could be charged in three to four hours and would produce only a tenth of the pollution of the most eco-friendly petrol-driven sports cars.

George Clooney once proudly posed in his 2008 limited-edition Tesla Roadster, but he later sold the electric car after it kept breaking down

A Tesla model S is burnt beyond recognition in Pennsylvania, in the US, after a fire was sparked by debris that got stuck in its undercarriage

No wonder the Guardian listed Tesla’s mercurial boss, Elon Musk, among its ‘ultimate green heroes’ in the year of its release.

And where Clooney and DiCaprio led, hundreds of thousands followed (perhaps unaware that Clooney soon flogged his Roadster in despair as it kept breaking down).

Tesla became the envy of mainstream car-makers and Musk became the world’s richest person.

Last month, Tesla celebrated reaching the milestone of 200,000 vehicles delivered to UK customers just a decade after it launched here with the Model S. With one in five fully electric vehicles (EVs) on our roads now made by Tesla, the company never misses an opportunity to trumpet its contribution to Britain’s transition to sustainable energy.

But there are signs that the wheels are fast coming off Musk’s green car dream. Earlier this month, Tesla revealed that sales of its cars had fallen for the first time in four years despite Tesla slashing its prices to meet growing competition from cheaper Chinese EV rivals.

And last week, it announced it is sacking more than 10 per cent of Tesla’s global staff, some 14,000 people.

The billionaire, who had reportedly relished sacking Twitter staff by the score when he took over the social media platform (now renamed X), sounded far sadder to let go of people at Tesla. ‘There is nothing I hate more, but it must be done,’ he told staff. ‘This will enable us to be lean, innovative and hungry for the next growth phase cycle.’

Musk has good reason to be upset. Although it rebounded slightly this week when the company announced it was hoping to accelerate the production of lower-priced EVs, Tesla's share price has plunged nearly 35 per cent since the beginning of the year. Over the same period, estimates Forbes, Musk — who, as Tesla’s chief executive and biggest shareholder depends on its value for most of his astonishing wealth — has personally become $66billion poorer.

A company that was valued at $1.2trillion in late 2021 is now worth less than half that and, at this rate, risks losing its title as the world’s most valuable car company, with Toyota closing up fast.

Even eco-warriors have drastically fallen out of love with the company and its boss, judging by the tree house-dwelling protesters currently occupying the site of a planned extension to Tesla’s mega-factory outside Berlin.

‘Go Vegan! Eat Elon Musk instead!’ say placards brandished by the protesters, who claim that by building cars that are super-fast and (thanks to their huge batteries) super-heavy, Musk is hardly saving the planet.

As for being the world’s coolest car company, it appears it lost that crown long ago. Any lingering street cred has withered as celebrities who were once lauded for posting pictures of their pricey Teslas online are now greeted by howls of derision.

Meanwhile, hedge funds have been frenziedly betting on the demise of the company, with one expert last week questioning whether Tesla investors will soon ‘throw in the towel’.

So where did it all go so wrong?

Some argue that the growing antipathy to Tesla can be attributed not so much to actual failings in its cars as to the widespread unpopularity of a deeply polarising tech tycoon whose increasingly Right-wing views and revolutionary changes at X horrify many natural EV buyers.

However, there are plenty of other reasons why, after the initial rush by EV ‘early adopters’, the Tesla battery has gone flat.

In the UK, sales of EVs to ordinary drivers have fallen by almost a fifth this year, prompting calls for tax cuts to fuel demand.

Elon Musk's electric car firm has faced falling sales over the past four years

Tesla fans may rhapsodise about their cars’ incredible acceleration and low fuel costs but critics list myriad drawbacks. These include insufficient charging points (especially in towns and cities where people have to park on the street), short range, car heaviness (huge Tesla batteries put extra stress on roads and multi-storey car parks), as well as quality control and maintenance issues.

And Teslas are still not cheap — and some believe they never will be. This month, Reuters reported the company had scrapped its long-promised affordable family car for the masses. (Musk disputed the report but this week he was vague on exactly what is planned.) The car would have reportedly cost around £20,000 but China is producing EVs for less than £8,000. In the UK, Teslas cost from just under £40,000 to £131,000.

To the dismay of politicians who’ve made ambitious pledges about the speed of switchover to electric cars, ordinary motorists aren’t just cooling on Teslas but on EVs in general.

Corporate buyers such as car fleets and rental companies were responsible for the bulk of EV purchases but even they are losing interest and car dealer forecourts are filling up with unsold cars.

It doesn’t help that Tesla is no longer seen as anything like as technologically innovative as it once was. It is Musk’s Chinese rivals that are coming up with whizzy new ideas, such as one called Nio whose EV cars allow drivers to swap their flat battery for a fully charged one at a 'power-swap' station in just five minutes.

Tesla, on the other hand, has relied on the same basic line-up of models for years. And when it finally brought out a new vehicle with something of the old ‘wow’ factor — the £61,000 unpainted, stainless steel pickup called the ‘CyberTruck’ which went on sale last November — disaster ensued.

Apart from delivery delays, new buyers have complained variously of it breaking down after being driven only a mile and developing rust issues within weeks.

The key area in which Musk has long insisted Tesla will get ahead of the pack is in self-driving technology. For about a decade, he’s annually assured investors that Teslas are only a year or so away from becoming fully autonomous.

Not only has he repeatedly failed to deliver — some experts say fully self-driving cars remain a distant dream after problematic trials in the US — but Musk’s tendency to exaggerate what existing Teslas can already do in this area has resulted in a string of damaging lawsuits.

It’s alleged various motorists died in horrific crashes after Tesla drivers believed that their cars’ assisted-driving systems, called Autopilot and Full-Self Driving, allowed them to stop concentrating on the road.

Since Autopilot was introduced in 2014, it has reportedly been involved in more than 730 US crashes, at least 19 of them fatal. (Tesla insists drivers control the vehicle and must pay attention.)

Last week, in a transparent bid to restore some of the sparkle to his company, Musk announced the arrival of a long-awaited self-driving ‘robotaxi’ — to be known as Cybercab — in August.

That should be exciting news but, back in 2019, Musk said Tesla would have one million robotaxi-ready vehicles on the road in 2020. Five years later, we’re still waiting.