Tesla ranks under UnitedHealth, Temu, BP in brand reputation poll due to Musk

The 2025 version of the Axios Harris poll of brand reputation is out, and it shows a sharp decline in the reputation of Tesla and other Elon Musk-related brands, putting them among the lowest-ranked brands in America, largely due to the toxicity of Musk himself.

The Axios Harris Poll 100 ranks brand reputation of America’s 100 most visible companies, and asks a sample of thousands of Americans how they feel about each brand.

The survey is a collaboration between Axios and Harris that has been going on since 2019, though is based on 20 years of similar Harris Poll research before then, starting in 1999. It has developed its own reputation as a reliable way to take temperature of the American public’s opinion on various high profile brands.

It’s conducted through multiple samples of thousands of Americans, asking them what the most high-profile brands are, how familiar they are with those brands, and their opinions of those brands.

Tesla has been ranked in the survey many times over the years, with varying results. In the first poll in 2019, it ranked 42nd, with a brand score of 75.4 out of 100.

But Tesla rose from there, ranking 18th in 2020 and reaching a high-water mark as the 8th most trusted brand in America in 2021, with a reputation score of 80.2 out of 100.

Since then, the company’s shine has started to tarnish, and it has been dropping in the rankings. 2022 saw a slight dip to #12 and a score of 79.5, but in 2023 Tesla took a huge hit, dropping a whopping 50 places in the rankings. Axios titled the poll the “year of the tarnished titans” partially due to Tesla’s huge drop.

But the drop didn’t stop there, as Tesla dropped another position in 2024, down to #63, but with a brand score that would still at least be a barely-passing grade (for a lenient teacher), at 72.5 out of 100.

But this year’s poll shows that things just continue to get worse, and in fact, the reputation damage is accelerating.

In 2025, Tesla dropped another 32 places into 95th place, and down to a brand score of 61.3, a huge numerical drop in both position and brand score.

The only companies ranked worse are:

• #96 Wells Fargo – which defrauded its customers and was fined ~$3 billion for it. Incidentally, the fraud was uncovered by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, a government organization which Elon Musk is trying to dismantle.
• #97 Meta (Facebook) – This feels self-explanatory, but just about everyone is unhappy with Facebook, for reasons with varying levels of rationality behind them.
• #98 Twitter – Also run by Elon Musk, which has been flooded with Nazi rhetoric and disinformation after he wasted $44 billion and most of his time on it (though it consistently ranked poorly even before Musk’s takeover0.
• #99 The Trump Organization – I mean, it has the name of the highest-profile traitor to America right there in the name.
• #100 Spirit Airlines – The “most hated airline in America,” butt of innumerable jokes, with generally low levels of service.

SpaceX, the third company run by Musk on the list, also earned a low reputation score, ranking 86th with a score of 66.4.

Notably, there are several companies with bad reputations ranked above Tesla, many of which have had high-profile scandals either recently or that still loom large in the public consciousness.

For example, those in the title of this article: BP, which presided over the Deepwater Horizon oil spill; UnitedHealth, which is currently imploding and whose former CEO was recently murdered in broad daylight and lots of people kind of didn’t seem to mind it; and Temu, which has faced data privacy lawsuits and is the butt of many jokes for selling low quality products, on top of general anti-China sentiment.

For a few other names, another Chinese app, TikTok, is also ranked above Tesla. As is Fox Corporation, one of the largest purveyors of misinformation and causes of the political division we see in America today. And finally, Boeing, which spent last year wracked by scandals, yet is 7 places above Tesla on this year’s list.

Meanwhile, every other automaker on the list ranked higher than Tesla by at least 35 places (Ford, #60).

Electrek’s Take

So, the news is quite bad for Tesla. But why is Tesla ranked so low?

Well, as you may have divined from our repeated mention of a certain name, the primary reason is Tesla CEO Elon Musk.

As we’ve been warning people about for quite some time now, Tesla CEO Elon Musk is doing his best to completely destroy Tesla’s brand.

Musk has presided over an incredible amount of brand damage to Tesla, with the company ranking the lowest of any US EV brand in a recent survey. This negative perception seems to apply to pretty much any question asked about the brand, including its standout Supercharger network, which suggests that the reason isn’t anything to do with Tesla’s products.

As an EV publication, we have the same mission as Tesla – to advance sustainable transport. In order for that to happen, we obviously want the (formerly) largest EV company in the world to do its job the best it can.

The problem is, Musk doesn’t have that mission, and has been doing his best over the last year(s) to ruin Tesla’s brand perception with increasingly idiotic decisions, both in terms of his public advocacy and his work within Tesla.

Musk’s high-profile political advocacy, which has included support for German neo-Nazis and agreeing with a defense of Hitler’s actions in the Holocaust, among many other white supremacist statements, has driven protests against the company, embarrassed owners and pushed many customers away. The first round of the poll started on Jan 22, which means it captured the period after Musk did two back-to-back Nazi salutes in public.

Beyond politics, Musk’s leadership (or lack thereof) has also resulted in Tesla putting all of its effort into products that either don’t work or don’t sell, instead of focusing on Tesla’s strengths like its cost advantages and Supercharger network.

So, once again, this report shows the effect of the constant drumbeat of bad Tesla business moves and horrendous public behavior by the company’s CEO.

Indeed, it seems like the legend of the “Tesla killer” finally came true – and it’s Elon Musk.

The company’s employees, for the most part, are still working to succesfully to make good electric vehicles. But Musk is spending the money he made from selling EVs to try to ruin EVs – something that the company itself had to call him out on in its quarterly report (and which the formerly-more-lucid Musk would have opposed just a few years ago before he forgot how climate change works).

Unfortunately, Tesla’s board seems content to destroy the company, and its shareholders do too, as they voted again last year to give Musk $55 billion in exchange for his bad leadership, an award that is greater than the total amount of profits Tesla has made over its entire lifetime.

That pay package was stopped by a court for violating corporate law, but Musk has spent his political influence getting Texas to rewrite its business laws to disadvantage shareholders and benefit Musk personally – even as Texas continues to block Tesla from selling cars in the state Musk unwisely moved its headquarters to.

We’re not sure what’s going to make Tesla’s board (which have been dumping TSLA stock like mad) or shareholders wake up to Musk’s destruction of the company, but this report is just one more data point showing how severe the situation has gotten.

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