Elon Musk has sold more than 20 million more Tesla shares worth about $3.5 billion (about R60bn) and did not provide any reason for selling more stock in the electric car company.

Since November 2021, Musk has sold more than $39bn of Tesla shares.

After the fresh share sale, according to a form filed with the US Securities and Exchange Commission, Musk owns about $66bn worth of Tesla stock.

In April this year, the new Twitter CEO sold $8.5bn worth of Tesla stock and, in August, he offloaded another $7bn shares.

The share sale comes at a time when Tesla investors have raised concerns over Musk's $44bn Twitter acquisition, saying his 24/7 involvement with the micro-blogging platform was "detrimental to Tesla", reports TechCrunch.

Tesla stock has nosedived 60.8% since January this year, and traded at $156.80 after hours on Wednesday.

"The fresh stock sell is Musk's answer to some of the high interest debt he's paying on his $44 billion Twitter deal," Industry analysts say.

Twitter took on $13bn in debt as part of the deal, including about $3bn of unsecured debt on which Twitter pays an interest rate of 11.75%, said the report.

Musk, who saw his net worth tumble by more than $100bn in 2022, has been replaced by Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury brand Louis Vuitton's parent company LVMH, as the world's richest man.

China's BYD Auto is now the global market leader, shipping more than 537 000 EV units – an increase of 197% (on-year) – in the third quarter this year, leaving Musk-run Tesla far behind globally.

IANS