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Comment by fsh

21 hours ago

Tesla is probably the only EV maker with declining sales for the last two years. Quite a feat in a booming market, and remarkable considering that the stock already has a few orders of magnitude of growth priced in.

28 comments

fsh

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zdragnar  20 hours ago

This is an interesting take, considering several EVs from traditional manufacturers have been canned entirely.

  • cyberax  18 hours ago

    EVs are in the Cambrian Explosion state in China right now. There are dozens of companies fiercely competing on price and features.

    The two most popular EVs in China are the Wuling Mini and the Geely Xingyuan. The first one costs $4500 for the base model, and the second one is $9800. And you can get a very decent EV for $15k with plenty of options.

    In 2-3 years, these $5k and $10k cars will only get better, and they'll just slaughter all the competition in markets outside the US and Europe. Especially once used cars start appearing at a fraction of the cost.

    Traditional auto manufacturers are dead. Full stop. They just haven't realized it yet. Tesla had a chance to compete in this market with Model 2 but Musk decided to blow their lead on a completely stillborn and gimmick-filled robotaxi.

    • andsoitis  14 hours ago

      > Traditional auto manufacturers are dead. Full stop. They just haven't realized it yet. Tesla had a chance to compete in this market with Model 2 but Musk decided to blow their lead on a completely stillborn and gimmick-filled robotaxi.

      Not sure whether you know, but Geely entered the automotive business in 1997 (founded in 1986).

      The company has subsidiaries / joint ventures with automakers like Volvo, Polestar, Proton, Smart, Lotus, Renault, etc.

      Lin Shufu, Geely’s founder and chairman bought just shy of 10% of Mercedes Benz in 2018, making him the second biggest individual shareholder in the German carmaker. The #1 spot is occupied by The Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. (BAIC), via its state-owned parent.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geely

      1 reply →

epistasis  20 hours ago

Ah, but you missed the pivot, Tesla is no longer an EV maker, it's now a robotics company.

This fully explains the market valuation, of course! Never mind a swarm of retail investors driven by a news media that covered Musk as if he were Tony Stark for years, this market cap is fully based on solid fundamental analysis of expected future revenue.

renewiltord  20 hours ago

The declining sales is a concern. Was curious though so I looked it up and Tesla is currently selling more than Volkswagen, Ford, Rivian, Mercedes, and Toyota combined. Interesting.

The big dog is BYD though. Twice as many as 2nd place Tesla.

  • foobarian  20 hours ago

    Figured that metric is for EV only, which is not that surprising. But even for overall sales it's #11 on the list for first 3 quarters of 2025, which is not too shabby: https://www.carpro.com/blog/2025-year-to-date-u.s-auto-sales...

    • riffraff  10 hours ago

      The problem is Tesla's valuation is overpriced even if they owned 100% of the car market, their P/E ratio is > 300.

      "But it's high margin", sure it is, but so is Ferrari, and their P/E is 30-40.

  • andsoitis  20 hours ago

    > Was curious though so I looked it up and Tesla is currently selling more than Volkswagen, Ford, Rivian, Mercedes, and Toyota combined. Interesting.

    Indeed. Global 2024 data shows Tesla selling about 1.8M. EV's only by that group of automakers comes to around 1.5M. Toyota and Ford are hybrid-first, not EV. VW is the only legacy automaker that comes near Tesla's EV scale. Mercedes prioritizes margin over volume. Rivian is capacity-limited.