Tesla electric vehicles are parked in a parking lot at the Tesla Gigafactory plant in Berlin-Brandenburg.
Patrick Pleul | Picture Alliance | Getty Images
Tesla Shares continued to fall on Friday, making it appear as if investors were taking profits from the electric car maker's rapid rally after the US election.
Shares fell nearly 5% as of 10:20 a.m. ET, extending declines from earlier in the week but paring losses from the previous day. At times, Tesla lost up to 6% in pre-market trading in the USA.
On Wednesday, Tesla shares fell 8%, marking their worst day since Donald Trump won the presidential election in November. For the week, Tesla shares fell about 1.6%.
Trump's victory sparked a sharp rise in Tesla shares as investors increased bets that the electric vehicle maker would benefit thanks to its CEO Elon Musk's close ties to the president-elect.
The stock is still up around 72% since the market closed on November 5th – the evening of the US presidential election.
Musk was appointed by Trump to co-head the newly created Department of Government Efficiency, also known as “DOGE”. The acronym of the proposed Presidential Advisory Commission shares the same name as the internet meme that inspired the so-called “memecoin” cryptocurrency, Dogecoin.
After the body was created, the price of Dogecoin briefly skyrocketed.
According to Federal Election Commission filings, Musk was one of Trump's top supporters in the Republican's campaign, investing $277 million primarily in his campaign. According to Forbes data, Musk is the richest person in the world with a net worth of $439.4 billion.
Last month, Bloomberg News reported that Trump's transition team plans to create a federal framework to regulate self-driving vehicles.
Tesla and Trump's transition team did not immediately respond to a CNBC request for comment on the report.
If true, the move would provide a major boost to Musk's EV company. Tesla is betting its future on the idea of rolling out mass fleets of autonomous vehicles, so-called “robotaxi” services. At the company's “We Robot” event in October, Musk unveiled the company's Cybercab self-driving concept car.
Tesla has not yet delivered on Musk's promise to offer truly autonomous vehicles. Autopilot and Tesla's paid “Full Self-Driving” services still require a human behind the wheel to monitor the system's actions and take over if necessary.
In other Tesla-related news, data released Thursday by the European Automobile Manufacturers Association showed that Tesla car sales fell 40.9% in November, extending the region's overall decline in battery electric car (BEV) sales by 9, 5% exceeded.
Separately, Tesla also said Friday that it was recalling nearly 700,000 vehicles in the U.S. due to a problem with its tire pressure monitoring system. However, software-related recalls typically aren't a big problem for Tesla because the company can issue “over-the-air” updates to fix these issues.
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