Electric vehicle registrations rose 2% in California for the three months that ended Sept. 30 compared with the year-earlier period, but top-selling EV maker Tesla saw a 3.5% decline, according to the latest report from car dealers.

Tesla moved 57,587 vehicles for the third quarter — which still accounts for more than half of the 102,044 EVs sold or leased in the state for the period, according to the California New Car Dealers Assn. The third-quarter sales decline for Tesla follows drops of 7.8% in the first quarter and 17% in the second. Year to date, Tesla’s California sales and leases have declined 12.6%. Globally, for the third quarter, Tesla sales rose 6.4% as the new Cybertruck made up for sagging sales of the Model 3 and Model Y.

Tesla’s dip in sales comes amid increasing competition from other automakers rolling out new EVs, especially at lower price points. It could also be a reflection of Tesla owner Elon Musk’s prominent support of GOP presidential candidate Donald Trump in left-leaning California. “I Bought This Before Elon Went Crazy” is the slogan on one bumper sticker that can be found on many Teslas these days.

“Unfortunately for Elon, a certain amount of his consumer base is not a fan of what’s given him a high profile over the past year,” said Karl Brauer, auto market analyst at iSeeCars.com.

Alexis Tjian of Berkeley sold her Tesla Model Y several months ago and bought a Rivian. She and her husband were unhappy with the Model Y’s quality and Tesla’s service, she said, but Musk’s politics and increasingly bizarre behavior were the last straw: “We said we’re done. He doesn’t align with our values anymore.”

Other EV makers saw high percentage gains but on a much smaller base. Year to date, Kia jumped 64%, to 10,584 vehicles, while Hyundai posted a 30.5% increase with 16,433 vehicles. Both South Korean carmakers occupy the more-affordable segment of the EV market, and also offer what Brauer calls attractive leasing options.

Ford posted a 17.3% jump in California EV sales and leases, to 12,828 vehicles for the quarter. BMW rose 36%, on 14,610.

Sales and leases of General Motors’ Chevrolet EVs plummeted 48% to 8,817 vehicles. The automaker’s fortunes might improve in the months ahead, however, with the recent launch of two new crossovers, the Equinox EV and the Blazer EV. Trade journal Automotive News reports those vehicles are already among the ten top-selling EVs nationally.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has mandated that 35% of California car sales and leases be for EVs and plug-in hybrids by 2026, rising to 100% by 2035.

But the pace of EV sales has slowed dramatically after several years of torrid growth. New car market share for battery electric and plug-in hybrid vehicles rocketed from 7.6% of new registrations in 2020 to 12.2% in 2021, 19.1% in 2022 and 24.9% in 2023.

For the first nine months of this year, however, the market share has inched up to 25.6%, amid continuing concerns among some consumers over the higher cost for EVs and so-called range anxiety.

Josh Boone, executive director of Veloz, a nonprofit consumer resource for electric vehicles, said he remains optimistic. “From our perspective, we’re continuing to see remarkable sales momentum across California,” he said. “EV market share is still increasing.”

Acknowledging that growth needs to pick up to reach state goals, he said that “we also understand that any high-tech market has ebbs and flows.”

He also put a positive spin on Tesla’s loss in popularity among many Californians, and their move to competing makes and models: “More competition is good.”

Yet, impediments to growth remain. Brauer believes California’s botched rollout of public EV charging stations is a major hurdle. Tesla has earned a strong reputation for reliable charging stations, while public chargers built to serve other brands continue to suffer from overcrowding and poor performance.

Brauer says a recent journey in a rented Hyundai Ioniq 5 became “a nightmare,” a “hugely stressful and time wasting Friday evening” when he spent four hours searching for a working charger and then waiting in a long line to fill up for the 50 miles to get him to his destination.

“That was not a fun four hours,” he said, and unless public charging improves, “I will never buy an electric car.”

Beverly Hills-based Endeavor announced Monday it will sell sports betting firm OpenBet, in a management buyout backed by Chief Executive Ari Emanuel.

Endeavor said it will sell OpenBet, along with sports data provider IMG Arena, to OB Global Holdings LLC for $450 million in cash and debt, an amount much less than what Endeavor paid for OpenBet two years ago.

The move comes as Endeavor is taking steps to be taken private by its largest investor, private equity firm Silver Lake, about three years after it began trading on the public market.

Endeavor executives in the past have expressed frustration about the company’s stock price not reflecting the value of its assets — a mixture of entertainment- and sports-related businesses that the company believes add value to each other.

Endeavor had purchased OpenBet from Light & Wonder Inc. in 2022 in a deal worth around $800 million. At the time, Emanuel said the acquisition would “enable us to further capitalize on the massive tailwinds in the fast-evolving sports betting ecosystem and lead the way in defining the future of sports betting entertainment.”

Endeavor said it will “continue to market IMG ARENA for sale to a third-party purchaser.”

“This management buyout allows us to continue executing our vision for increased market expansion and product innovation,” said OpenBet CEO Jordan Levin in a statement. “Our group is extremely confident in OpenBet’s future considering the premium product offering, superior talent, and solid foundation we already have in place following a strong period of business growth.”

Levin will continue to lead OpenBet after the deal closes, Endeavor said.

Last month, Endeavor said it would sell three of its businesses — Professional Bull Riders, hospitality business On Location and global sports marketing agency IMG — to WWE and UFC owner TKO Group Holdings in an all-equity deal valued at $3.25 billion.

Endeavor also said it is exploring the potential sale of Miami Open and Madrid Open, the ATP Masters 1000 and WTA 1000 tennis tournaments and art organization Frieze.

Endeavor stock closed at $28.90, down 0.17% on Monday.

President-elect Donald Trump’s full-throated support for oil and gas drilling might be expected to send a chill through the electric vehicle industry were it not for a wild card in his fledgling administration: Tesla Chief Executive Elon Musk.

Trump has long railed against EV mandates and subsidies. Then came August, when Musk endorsed Trump and began pouring millions of dollars into the Trump campaign. Not long after, Trump said he was now in favor of some market share for EVs.

“I have to be, you know, because Elon endorsed me very strongly,” Trump said at a rally in Atlanta.

Clean transportation advocates are hopeful that Musk will continue to influence Trump’s position on EVs.

“If there’s a silver lining” to Trump’s victory, said Ramses Madou, chair of the Open Mobility Foundation, “it’s that Elon Musk can dial back on Trump’s anti-EV-ness.”

Here are some of the issues facing supporters of electric cars and trucks, and how Musk might influence them.

BUYER INCENTIVES

Reuters and other news organizations reported Friday that Trump plans to end the $7,500 consumer tax credit for EVs — a move that Musk supports.

After building his company on the back of federally financed buyer incentives, Musk believes Tesla no longer needs them — and that taking away the subsidies will mainly hurt his competitors.

“Take away the subsidies,” Musk wrote on X in July. “It will only help Tesla.”

Why would a company turn away such free money? Because Tesla is profitable, and the EV business at the traditional automakers as yet is not. Taking away buyer credits would hurt them more than it would hurt Tesla, whose EV market share has begun to drop in the face of new competition.

But there’s more to the story: So far this year, Tesla has posted $4.79 billion in profit. Of that, $2.07 billion came from government-required credits bought from Tesla by other automakers. That’s 43% of net income.

The EV federal credit system is simple in concept: Sell too many gasoline-powered cars, you accumulate deficits. If most of the vehicles you sell are EVs, you earn credits. To avoid government penalties, deficit holders must buy credits from companies like Tesla.

In other words, Tesla’s competitors are directly and dramatically boosting Tesla’s profits with rich flows of cash that they otherwise might have used in their own EV development.

How do EV buyer incentives fit in, and why might Musk want to see them gone? The fewer EVs other carmakers sell, the more credit money Tesla takes in as pure profit, boosting its own stock price and putting pressure on the shares of competitors. Since the election, Tesla stock is up 28%, closing at $320.72 on Friday. Most other automakers’ shares are stuck in neutral.

FEDERAL GRANTS

Tesla doesn’t just build passenger vehicles, it builds commercial trucks too. At least it’s trying to. To great fanfare, Musk introduced the Tesla Semi all-electric big rig in 2017. To date, the company has sold very few. It plans to begin mass production in 2026. Meanwhile, traditional truck builders are selling their own electric big rigs, and can’t keep up with demand.

The demand is high because of government mandates in California, sweetened with generous state and federal grants worth billions. Few would buy an electric truck today without government help. A new diesel truck typically costs $150,000 to $200,000. An all-electric version costs two to three times that amount.

Cutting off those federal grants could help Tesla against the competition. It would hurt major truck makers and could destroy electric truck startup companies, while giving the long-delayed Tesla Semi time to catch up.

The federal grant money is available to buyers of hydrogen fuel-cell trucks too. Musk has long belittled fuel-cell vehicles and Trump has often talked about hydrogen cars blowing up like an “atomic bomb.” That’s a gross exaggeration, as gasoline, battery and hydrogen vehicles all are subject to fire and explosion, albeit in different ways. Nonetheless, if Trump asks Musk’s opinion on dropping support for hydrogen vehicles, Musk is sure to egg him on.

TARIFFS

Musk’s conversations with Trump on tariffs could be tricky. Tesla runs a huge assembly plant in Shanghai, subject to Chinese government control. While showing little self-regulation on issuing blistering attacks on politicians he does not like, Musk has only kind words for Chinese leaders including President Xi Jinping.

Early this year, Musk seemed to support trade barriers against a potential influx of Chinese electric vehicles to the United States, saying Chinese companies could “demolish” other EV makers around the world. Within months, though, he changed his tune, opposing tariffs on EVs because “things that inhibit freedom of exchange or distort the market are not good.”

One of the main pillars of Trump’s economic policy is “beautiful tariffs” of 60% or more on Chinese goods. Business leaders, economists and even members of his own party have warned that such a policy could boost inflation and hurt economic growth.

“Much of the goods America imports are intermediate goods used in the production of other things,” thus lifting costs across the board for products manufactured in the U.S. and causing economywide “self-harm,” according to Jonathan Humphrey, senior economist at Benchmark Mineral Intelligence. He’s talking mainly about all the intermediary products that go into making cars, batteries and their enabling parts, even for goods made in America.

Trump is getting advice from all sides on the matter, and it remains to be seen whether decisions on tariffs go Musk’s way — or Xi’s.

CHARGING

Musk doesn’t talk much about federal funding for public EV charging stations, but it’s hard to see why he’d fight against it.

Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill devoted $5 billion to build public charging stations for cars and trucks every 50 miles along interstate highways. Tesla has built a widespread and dependable network of charging stations, and is now inviting owners of non-Tesla EVs to pay Tesla to use them, but more EV stations in more places will make things easier for owners of Teslas — and ease the need for Tesla to spend capital on building more of them.

Trump is unlikely to ax a program that will produce economic benefits across the country, in congressional districts red and blue. In any case, the money is already allocated, and “it would take an act of Congress to change that,” Debs Schrimmer of the U.S. Joint Office of Energy and Transportation said at the CoMotion LA mobility conference in Little Tokyo last week.

CERTAINTY

Musk has never been considered one to inject certainty into any situation. That adds to the tension around Trump’s economic plans.

Alex Gold, chief executive of BWD Strategic North America, is optimistic about the future for EVs, even under Trump.

“Rather than pulling back on clean energy, maybe he’ll just relax on the dirty [energy] so people can do both,” Gold said. “If Trump is pro-business, what business wants is certainty, and to make a U-turn right now would be surprising.”