Comment by foxyv
6 days ago
Tesla's only chance at this point is government money. Consumers just aren't buying. It doesn't help that Elon was heavily involved with Epstein and is constantly spouting white nationalist propaganda on X. This is on top of his gaffe with "My Heart Goes Out to You". Only a certain type of consumer is going to buy from a company like that.
What form would those funds take? I would agree that the government could pull one lever that would cause Tesla's sales to spike and that would be reintroducing the ev credit. To really juice them they'd have to reintroduce and increase it. I don't think there's another lever they have at their disposal that would do anything material. The government buying a bunch of vehicles for a single or multiple departments wouldn't move the needle. Basically you have to incentivize the masses to purchase. Of course none of that would happen with the current admin and congress. EV's are anathema to the platform.
As an aside, the situation at Tesla sure is getting stranger. I don't know if it was yesterday or earlier in the week, but Elon saying that at least one Cybercab will be sold to a "consumer" before the end of '26 for under $30k makes no sense (yeah yeah promises promises). But wasn't the idea that Tesla would control the fleet? Why would they sell a person a Cybercab to operate as a taxi? That would mean that there's profit to be had by that buyer and so why the heck wouldn't Tesla just keep that profit for itself and run the entire operation? Some kind of balance sheet gimmick? Offloading the insurance risk to someone else?
Maybe someone reading this long-ass reply will clue me in. And I get it the majority of the folks these days think it's all vaporware, but doesn't the vaporware at least have to make some sense?
There are a couple different schemes that are used to distribute taxpayer money to cronies. The most common are defense contracts for stuff like the proverbial $1000 hammers and such. There are also infrastructure deals, energy deals, subsidies, and bailouts. I know Musk was pushing for defense contracts earlier but they mostly fell through.
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5305269/tesla-state-dep...
> That would mean that there's profit to be had by that buyer and so why the heck wouldn't Tesla just keep that profit for itself and run the entire operation?
I suspect this is because they have less confidence in the ability of the cab to pay for itself and would rather offload that financial risk on the buyer.