Tesla's stock tumbled by almost 16 percent on Monday, driven by widespread pessimism over the EV maker's plummeting sales numbers worldwide.

Wall Street analysts lowered their price targets significantly, expecting the stock to slide even further. Tesla's losses have been so staggering over the last couple of weeks, the company has wiped out all of its gains since president Donald Trump was elected in November. Its stocks are currently down over 55 percent since hitting a record high in mid-December.

The carmaker's CEO Elon Musk has felt the hurt too, wiping out over $120 billion of his net worth since reaching an all-time high late last year. Today alone, Tesla's sliding stock has cost the entrepreneur a whopping $12 billion.

And the prognosis is grim. Sales are down 45 percent in Europe, a whopping 49.2 percent month in China, and even a catastrophic 70 percent in Australia in February. In the US, Tesla's core market, sales are already down two percent in the first few months of 2025, indicating troubling days ahead.

Meanwhile, Musk has taken to his social media platform X-formerly-Twitter in a desperate attempt to drum up excitement for his embattled carmaker.

While Tesla's stock was getting hammered, Musk was retweeting posts that gushed over Tesla being the "best car" and tales of the company's plagued driver assistance feature saving them from a crash.

Anger over his endorsement of far-right extremism and two Nazi salutes during Trump's inauguration celebration has begun to spill over, with waves of protests and vandalism hitting Tesla dealerships across the country.

The man to blame for the outpouring of negative sentiment has since tried to play the victim card, while senselessly blaming other billionaires for Tesla's disastrous stock performance.

"Heartfelt thanks to everyone supporting Tesla," Musk wrote, "despite many attacks against our stores and offices."

Tesla's massive slide was accompanied by a widespread and extended outage of Musk's social media platform X-formerly-Twitter.

Without offering any evidence, the billionaire blamed a "massive cyberattack."

"We get attacked every day, but this was done with a lot of resources," Musk tweeted. "Either a large, co-ordinated group and/or a country is involved."

Considering the sheer number of enemies Musk has made, it's not exactly a stretch to imagine somebody had it out for the platform.

"What we've been seeing is consistent with what we've seen in past denial of service attacks, rather than a configuration or coding error in the platform," Netblocks director Alp Toker told the BBC, referring to a type of attack that takes down websites by overwhelming them with traffic.

Other social media users suggested Musk may have orchestrated the outage to distract from the company's woes.

It's not just Tesla and Musk feeling the hurt. US stocks plunged today overall, the worst day for the Nasdaq and Dow since 2022, as Yahoo Finance reports.

Trump's trade war has sparked widespread uncertainty and market pessimism. Over the weekend, the president refused to rule out the possibility of a recession, describing the economy as going through a "period of transition."

And Musk is happily doing his bidding, leading mass layoffs of federal government workers. The billionaire has been accused of stuffing his pockets and using his newfound influence in the White House to secure plush government contracts for his businesses.

But Tesla investors aren't impressed with his performance, accusing Musk of being far too distracted by his government rampage. A poll by retail stock-trading platform StockTwits conducted earlier this month revealed that 60 percent of respondent investors said that "Musk's White House focus" is "hurting Tesla," as Business Insider reports.

"We think shareholders have legitimate concerns about Elon Musk being spread too thin and it's become clear he's now spending more time on DOGE than anything else," CFRA Research senior equity analyst Garrett Nelson told BI.

"The truth of the matter is the company should be run by somebody who isn't so political and can bring the brand back, if that's possible," Tesla investor Ross Gerber told the outlet last month.

Tesla's disastrous day leaves plenty of questions unanswered. Is this just a temporary blip, or are investors looking for a more permanent readjustment?

Musk has bet big on the carmaker's plans for rolling out a robotaxi service. But given the company's financials, Tesla appears to have far bigger fires to put out before it can deliver on that promise.

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