Comment by paxy
1 day ago
- Federal EV tax credits are over.
- The emissions credit market (where Tesla made most of its money) is dead due to lowered standards.
- Manufacturing costs haven't come down.
- EV sales share in the US is down to 6% (and falling every quarter).
- Chinese EVs are dominating every market outside the US.
- All the overhyped moonshots (sub-$30K car, unsupervised autopilot, autonomous robots) are nowhere to be seen.
It's hard to see where Tesla goes from here as a company. The stock is still surviving on Elon hype but has been stagnant for 5 years. The day he gets bored and decides to resign to focus on SpaceX full time the company is basically done.
> EV sales share in the US is down to 6% (and falling every quarter).
It's not every quarter, but it's steady and that spells absolute disaster for US car manufacturers:
https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights/q3-2026-ev-sales-report-...
US car companies have been protected and bailed out too many times and are now not only completely uncompetitive on the global market, but set up to be completely demolished as EVs take over.
Their bad leadership and overall inefficiency mean that either investors are going to pay a massive price, or US consumers are going to pay a massive price. If we keep on pushing up consumer costs by propping up bad manufacturers with protectionism and bail outs, the US's entire economy is drug down by that.
There needs to be some creative destruction, ruthless culling of the least efficient manufacturers, so that their best workers can go to the better manufacturers, if the US is ever going to be a top tier car manufacturer again.
I hadn't followed just how bad US manufacturers were failing at EVs the past two years, what with all the other disasters unfolding, thanks for the wake up call. Two years of wasted time, of the US falling even farther behind... such a massive fail and yet not the most massive.
It isn't just US manufacturers.
I'd say Koreans are probably the closest to the Chinese, but Japanese manufacturers have fallen behind. Toyota spent too much time with hydrogen. Nissan? Honda? Mazda? None of them have a solid lineup of electric vehicles.
I appreciate Toyota's hybrids, but that is not the future and every model year that they try to delay, they are missing out on developing the technology, experience, internal expertise, and platform refinement.
Toyota is the leader by profit, has been selling cars with batteries and electric motors for 3 decades and simply doesn't want to pile into a crowded space where you effectively have to be dumping your product at cost to have a chance of success.
While most others are wasting money on failed forays into the EV market, Toyota has quietly made their entire fleet (modulo trucks) hybrid.
At this point anyone can design a chassis to accommodate a skateboard battery and some drive motors. The only thing Toyota would need to wholeheartedly jump into EV is the supply chain and production capability for big battery packs. Admittedly this is a biggie, but don't discount the possibility that batteries are not at the end of their evolution and early entrants might get burned by some new chemistry or form factor.
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Toyota didn't just spend (past tense) too much time with hydrogen, they're still going with it trying to take a "multi-path strategy" that includes hydrogen engine development.
I'm not sure where they think the market for this exists in sustainable numbers.
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It's a shame Nissan didn't lean harder into EVs since the Leaf is a great little car, and they were releasing them since 2012.
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That does beg the question though, if none of the major non-Chinese manufacturers are focused on EVs did they all entirely miss the boat or do they know something the Chinese don't?
Its absolutely possible that they did all miss the boat, but even the stats just in this thread point to a drop in EV sales and economic challenges with regards to price and demand. The Chinese keep prices low with very low labor costs and subsidies from a totalitarian government, our goal isn't and shouldn't be to compete with that on price.
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I hate to see it and I hate to say it, but the last time I was in Europe there were A LOT more giant american vehicles, at least outside of city centers. I really hope this SUV plague doesn't go global.
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Are you a time traveller from 2010? SUVs are already the most popular kind of car all over the world. That ship has sailed.
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One state makes up over a third of all EV sold in the country EV’s have a way to go in the United States. Hybrids seem to be doing a lot better in recent times.
California accounts for roughly 35% of all U.S. EV sales, though some estimates put its share near 40%.
That's certainly a way to view the data, but it's a way that ignores the trajectory of the technology and sets up The Big Three for complete failure.
The Big Three have not figured out how to make compelling EVs, without a doubt, but it's not the technology that's the problem, it's the leadership's product choices and failure of implementation.
Meaning that the entire industry will be pushed farther and farther behind in the race, only to be completely disrupted.
This will happen far slower than the transition from Palm to iOS-style phones, because the lifetime of cars is far longer than phones and are far larger investments, but the trend is inevitable. EVs are superior on so many different fronts that there's ~0 chance that gas and diesel engines persist except for a tiny fraction of future market share.
US manufacturers are trying to delay the transition as long as possible, which only ensures their own doom.
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California is the world’s fourth largest economy, so this tracks. Whether or not flyover country gets EVs is immaterial to the overall US situation. They can pay forward curve petrol prices if they so choose (“freedom!”), or find a suitable EV if that is a more suitable choice for their needs, unless federal policy returns to assist with purchasing. I am hopeful, concerning recent regime change, that federal EV incentives come back to enable folks to buy affordable EVs (because we should be optimizing for affordable zero emission mobility for all, imho), but only time will tell.
Wyoming‘s population of 600k people is less than one percent of total US population, for example. Californians buy about half that number of EVs per year (~300k-400k).
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> Two years of wasted time
Try two generations. I think it was obvious since the oil shocks that fossil fuels were not a good bedrock of the economy.
It's interesting to try to work out what the civ-style "dependency tree" of viable electric cars has been. It requires at the bare minimum high energy density light batteries, which were a spinoff of the cellphone revolution. As well as high efficiency digital power control, which while not impossible in 1970 would have been larger and heavier without modern SiC semiconductors.
Solar panels are an even more remarkable example of compounding a thousand different 1% improvements.
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Well, perhaps, but the time for the followers in the field to push on EV manufacturing capability has been the past 5-10 years. And the US majors are all followers, not leaders. About two years ago they all put out press releases saying "we are not seeing EV sales so we are pulling back on manufacturing" meaning "we couldn't figure it out and are scared so we are abandoning our future."
With the strangle hold that these industries have on getting the government to bail them out, we are in a really bad position on the national level. We have let bad politics and weak management override good economic decision making.
Full disclosure: I have been driving an EV for almost a decade. I use an e-bike too. Electric commuting is brilliant. I'm glad for the sake of air quality that EVs and e-bikes exist and are increasingly popular.
That said — let's be realistic and dispassionate.
> There needs to be some creative destruction, ruthless culling of the least efficient manufacturers, so that their best workers can go to the better manufacturers, if the US is ever going to be a top tier car manufacturer again.
Inflicting job losses at that scale is not going to happen. US protectionism (a euphemism for ahem current federal initiatives) is alive and well. The legacy US auto makers have a huge domestic market and their survival is a primary motive for the US trade/tariff war. (Does the thoroughly corrupt administration face any comeuppance? That is a different discussion.)
The lack of EVs has not been a pivotal concern of voters. US voters want cheap fuel. Affordability was a fundamental concern for voters. The mid-term election result is not about loftier environmental goals.
> Their bad leadership and overall inefficiency
Yes, "an American vehicle" is known for grotesque size and high cost of maintenance. And now after two years of a despicable administration, "an American vehicle" is also a Trump-Miller-Hegseth-Bessent-Lutnick-Musk-*.arsehole symbol.
Even so, Tesla sales success is real, domestic and abroad. People who can afford them buy them.
> - Chinese EVs are dominating every market outside the US.
Not so in Europe, where the top 10 EVs sold in 2025 [1] has not a single Chinese car.
[1] https://autorai.nl/tesla-van-de-troon-gestoten-als-populairs...
Chinese EV have heavy import taxes in the EU. Also in France, (I don’t know in other countries), you get more subvention when buying an EU-made EV. This heavily distorts the market to try to save VW and friends.
I see sources saying BYD sold 187,657 vehicles in Europe in 2025, and MG sold 307,812. Interesting.
Your source only says: “Top 5 best-selling EV brands in Europe in 2025 Volkswagen – 274.417 (+56%) Tesla – 238.765 (-27%) BMW – 193.186 (+15%) Skoda – 172.100 (+117%) Audi – 153.848 (+51%)”
BYD sells a lot of hybrids rather than BEVs fyi. I believe its the majority of their sales maybe?
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How long until they are devoured by the Chinese? Geely already owns Volvo.
Things have changed a lot since 2025. In fact in October BYD sold a ton of cars in Europe.
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I think they have a future as a "normal" car company, but in order to do that they'd have to manage to deliver a new "normal car" model at some point, and accept normal stock prices.
That EV market share direction in the US, though .. really bad compared to non-petrostates (except Norway)
They’ve never been a normal car company. And that’s the problem.
They don’t do a good job at the car company part. They make nice cars, but the company part has issues. Quick example… I was very happy to drive a model 3 for many years. But the constant changes in price of their new cars destroyed any resale value mine had. Every time Tesla was having a bad quarter, the value of my car dropped. That’s not the way to get me to buy another one.
There are certainly other areas where they could improve too. But my point being - they’ve never been all that good at (or interested in) what it takes to drive long term success in selling cars. It’s just too long of a time horizon for them.
I never understood why people care about "resale value" of a car. I buy a car to drive it until it's done. I don't buy a gaming PC and worry about resale value, or a polo, or sneakers, or a nice mop. I buy stuff to use it.
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pretty sure they average out to holding their value better or at worst in line with other brands
The problem is that transition would require a ~95% drop in stock price, and the company isn't going to survive that.
GM - $74.5B market cap (6.2M cars sold annually)
Ford - $50.2B (4.6M)
Volkswagen - $40B (9M)
BYD - $100B (4.6M)
Toyota - $256B (11.3M)
Hyundai - $57B (7.3M)
Tesla - $1.4T (1.6M)
The numbers simply don't add up.
A stock drop does not in and of itself kill a company which has positive cashflow, although it may give the executives heart attacks and leave it vulnerable to takeover.
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1. compare debt, tesla is cash rich while old OEMs are saddled with debt
2. compare growth opportunities, ie https://www.tesla.com/robotaxi - rollout is going well, and every cybercab produced nets what ? $25k/year? $75k/year? vs $5-8k once per car sold?
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Telsa/Musk is a cult of personality. SpaceX's valuation makes no sense either.
On that basis if Musk overdoses on ketamine or something then 95% devaluation may well happen.
Musk has said Tesla's future is cybercabs and robots, not a normal car company.
Yeah, by basically ignoring regulation. That's going to be a lot tougher since the midterm results. The government will no longer be giving him any easy passes.
Oooh, normal cars. Now there's a concept. Can we get a real EV minivan? Not a gimmick like the Buzz. I've got kids and go on long road trips to visit family. Seats, cargo capacity, range, and 800V charging speed.
Closest thing is like the Ioniq 9 but the cargo space really sucks.
For a polished product that ticks all the boxes, I would pay a premium for this.
You might need to move to China for that.
XPeng X9 - Seven seats, 800V charging, and a third row that folds into the floor. The long-range version has 382 miles WLTP range and charges 10–80% in approximately 12 minutes under ideal conditions.
Li Auto MEGA - Seven seats, 800V architecture, 441 miles CLTC range, and manufacturer-claimed charging that adds 311 miles of CLTC range in 10 minutes. Li Auto says its trunk holds four 28-inch suitcases with all seven seats occupied.
Zeekr 009 - Seven-seat versions, up to 460 miles CLTC range, and 10–80% charging in as little as 10 minutes on the upgraded 900V model. Very luxurious, though some versions offer less rear cargo space.
Denza D9 EV - Seven seats, 115-kWh battery, up to 497 miles CLTC range, and BYD Flash Charging claims of 10–70% in five minutes using compatible ultra-high-power chargers.
China is years ahead of the West (EU/US) in terms of EVs.
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Lucid Gravity. We just picked one up after cross shopping an R1S. Its been solid so far the interior packaging is impressive. I was sold after driving it. Although it is more of a wagon than anything.
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A Mercedes VLE maybe? It ticks all the boxes incl premium price.
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Wikipedia maintains a list.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
I live in SE Asia and travel regularly for work in this region. Chinese EV's are everywhere and completely dominate the market, except perhaps a few fans in Singapore, it's living driving in the future (Denza D9 anyone?) compared to Western countries (tech-wise, not the questionable production and market flooding)
> unsupervised autopilot
They are running a fleet of taxis around the Bay Area. It's kind of scary because they aren't that safe, given the lack of LIDAR. But they are doing it anyway.
They all have someone behind the wheel. Tesla doesn't have a driverless permit in the Bay Area.
Yes, they have safety drivers for now, but they are still running them as an autonomous fleet.
And also, they are driving fully autonomous in Texas and Florida.
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In the Bay Area they have human supervisors but in Austin they are autonomous.
Is there data to suggest they are unsafe in Austin - as in less safe than a human?
They're working hard to not release any of their safety data, unlike all the other autonomous car companies.
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What makes you say they aren't safe? The numbers say they are about 4-6x safer than a car with a human driver.
What numbers?
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Photogrammetry + AI has developed to the degree, that there are 3D scanning apps on iPhone that don't even use the Lidar when available, so you can certainly make do without and get comparable results.
https://www.tesla.com/robotaxi/safety
Biased source.
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A fleet of hundreds of cars, right? Maybe even thousands including Austin? All with no LIDAR, and operating perhaps up to 18 hours a day?
So then where are all the horrible accidents if they're not safe?
Why do you assume lidar is must for safety. So far the Tesla auto pilot record is better than human drivers
Because less then ideal conditions for vision exist? Heavy snow/rain/fog, sun shining into cameras at dawn and dusk etc
It’s not hard to be better then an average human generally, the issue is liability as when a driverless taxi hits or hurts someone you can’t just go “but we are safer then human drivers!”
I don’t see why it’s scary. Most cars on the road have a driver and no LIDAR. The cybercab is no different.
They intend to take the driver out, and they are already running them without a driver in Texas and Florida.
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For now, their goal is to have no driver and no lidar. That is what said the commenter is scared of.
It's more likely he'll merge Tesla with SpaceX.
I get all my news from Matt Levine and this is what he keeps saying.
> - EV sales share in the US is down to 6% (and falling every quarter).
Wow. Compare with 41% in France (in October), 37% in Germany, 60% in China.
The incentive to switch is a little lower with actually affordable gasoline. In Europe, gas prices are incredibly high right now and will probably never go down again, so it’s natural for the market to drift towards electronic.
From what I've heard, the autopilot is very good and getting better. It is hard to distinguish the haters from the hype.
I rented one for a road trip. It was nothing short of magical. Scary to give it control. And I can believe there are edge cases … but it’s real.
I’d guess that it’s going to take a while to catch up because the real world data is the moat. Maybe if someone partners with Waymo but the price point will be higher.
The thing that gives me pause about buying one is: what happens if the company loses interest? Is it like “owning” a game after the company shuts down the servers?
I’ve heard the same but I think the question is “is autopilot worth basing your entire car purchase around it?” and “will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”.
If autopilot is basically the only thing Tesla has going for it then they’ve got a risky path ahead of them.
From personal experience: "yes, no question", and "maybe though it'll take a long time and a lot of compute and training data". The day level 3 automation (basically what Tesla's FSD is, even though it's classified as level 2) comes to some other car, I'll strongly consider switching.
Maybe a stock crash and total failure of Tesla will be the best thing that happens. The US government (assuming us citizens can somehow continue to claw it back) or some benevolent entity can buy the ML models for cheap and open source them. It's really their only truly valuable, resilient asset, IMO.
> “is autopilot worth basing your entire car purchase around it?”
Unsupervised FSD is, yes.
> and “will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”.
I wouldn't bet on a big auto-maker, personally. But maybe they can outsource it. And...well, AI. Things are moving fast. But I think the moat can hold for a while.
For me, even now it's worth basing the entire purchase around it. Competitor auto-makers, if they executed perfectly, would need 4-5 years to get to catch up to where Tesla is now in autonomous driving; so probably a lot longer in reality.
I loved how the Cybertruck looked but when I test-drove it, I realized it wasn't for me. Tesla can now do a Rivian R1 or Hyundai Palissade type design and do well. But they will prioritize the cab since they got it to the current scale pretty quickly and it will be a money printer for them.
> *”will competitors be able to replicate Tesla’s success?”
Tech first companies like Waymo: yes, clearly.
OEM US automakers? Not a chance, not ever. They can’t do a simple infotainment system to save themselves. If they want to “auto” driving, they’re going to license it from some other company.
It's actually easy. The media would love to print stories about robotaxis having chaotic accidents, so you can trust that you will hear about it if that starts happening.
You might be waiting a while, though... If it's not happening now, it's unlikely to ever happen.
I have it. It is shockingly good but not as good as a person. And anything below 100% is dangerous.
For instance, how it detects pedestrians. Ive had instances where someone is looking to cross, the FSD either ignores them completely or it slows down a little, baits them into going forward, then resumes running them over. It detects car to car problems very well but doesn’t try to interpret pedestrian’s intent outside of the actual road.
I, and many others, could never go back to a vehicle that doesn't have this level of self-driving. It really is such an improvement it's crazy how little people who haven't experienced it understand.
>The stock is still surviving on Elon hype
I wish people would stop saying stood things like this and consider the structural and technical reasons why TSLA share values might be disconnected from the company's performance. (No one wants to do that because it might point to misbehavior by market participants.)
Hundreds of billions of dollars do not move because of "hype"; someone, somewhere is making a calculated decision.
> unsupervised autopilot
Robotaxi is live in some markets. I've used it twice here in Houston. Works quite well.
I was under the impression there were teleoperators for their taxi fleet: https://electrek.co/2025/05/16/tesla-robotaxi-fleet-powered-...
This article just says that teleoperators had remote access to the first 20 cars when they were rolled out ~17 months ago. It doesn't support a claim that the fleet is currently using teleoperators, let alone relying on them more broadly as you seem to imply.
> Recently, Jonas met with Tesla with some clients and released a new note that he hinted to be based on what he learned from Tesla during the meeting. He claims that the planned “robotaxi” rollout in Austin next month [June '25] is going to use “plenty of tele ops to ensure safety levels”: Austin’s a ‘go’ but fleet size will be low. Think 10 to 20 cars. Public roads. Invite only. Plenty of tele ops to ensure safety levels (“we can’t screw up”). Still waiting for a date. ‘Tele ops’ stands for teleoperations, meaning that Tesla employees will be able to remotely access Tesla’s vehicles and operate them in some capacity.
> Manufacturing costs haven't come down
That’s not true in general but the Cybertruck in particular is stupid expensive to manufacture. And then there’s the 4680 fiasco. I think it’s more of a personal political design than a realistic product.
I’d say Tesla’s charging network remains a very strong suit for them. Problem is it’s nowhere near strong enough to justify their current valuation. But we’ve been saying this for years and the stock price still stays irrationally high.
Do you ever see any legacy American car companies getting close to what Tesla can do, even with a 10yr timeline?
Well it depends on what you are saying "can do". Ford and GM already outsell Tesla on volume by 4-5x each. There is some portion of the population that will spend more for an EV but that is a tapped and declining market. Chinese manufacturers are selling attractive EVs at a cost lower than their ICE counterpart - not higher. But they are cut out of the USA market. Now we can say that Tesla is leading in autopilot and other things like that but apparently that is not translating to growing sales. They have a stagnant lineup of models that people would actually buy.
It’s slightly amazing how persistent the Elon hype is. Quite a few of those problems are at least partially due to own goals that Musk himself has been scoring.
I realize that some of it is just a cult of personality, and that part will be unusually sticky because of things like cognitive dissonance. But that can’t be all of it. My next best guess is a bunch of it is a whole bunch of institutional investors are privately thinking these companies are way too risky, but keep it to themselves because it’s not their money they’re putting on the line and taking a contrarian position would risk angering a presumably vocal subset of clients of unknown size. Which isn’t a great way to make yourself popular with your boss.
If he had delivered Neuralink alone, the hype would be valid. Doing that...plus SpaceX, Tesla, Boring, etc.
The biggest knock on him is that he says something will happen at a certain time and then it comes later. Even the sub-$30k EV. Cybercabs cost < $30k.
What "hype" has been delivered by the Boring Company?
No, the biggest knock against him is how he caused hundreds of thousands of people in the third world to die from sudden cutoff of food and medicine. This will never be forgiven or forgotten.
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Most people don't even pay attention to what he announces, myself included. It happens if/when it happens. I got on a plane and had fast internet for the first time thanks to Starlink, that's great. But when someone at work is telling me about his "FSD" car, sure, show me it going around the block while we sit in the back.
All of those are debatable at best from a business perspective.
Neuralink is still in clinical trials. So it hasn’t actually been delivered yet, and there’s no actual guarantee that it will be.
From a certain perspective, SpaceX’s launch business was an effort to create an airline in space. And that’s exactly what they did, profit margins and all.
Starlink is looking good right now, but its profits seem to be heavily propped up by crony capitalism, a system that the US electorate arguably voted against in a big way earlier this week. Plus, their up-and-coming competition was recently handed a gift beyond their wildest dreams, courtesy of Elon Musk, in the form of a clear demonstration that dependence on SpaceX is a major strategic liability.
The AI bit, well… yeah.
Tesla has had some past greatness, but, as I mentioned above, all of their recent misfortune is wholly or partially the fault of its own CEO. Worse, many of the minds more directly behind past successes have left the company. Investment is about future prospects, not past glory.
Boring Company’s greatest commercial success thus far is the Las Vegas loop. That’s all that needs to be said about that.
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> and then it comes later
Ignoring dozens if not hundreds of promises that never came. You can't wait forever.
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What did useful thing has Boring done?
> a whole bunch of institutional investors are privately thinking these companies are way too risky
What's that saying? "In any great organization it is far, far safer to be wrong with the majority than to be right alone"?
There’s a severe lack of focus and the only endgame that still makes sense to me for Tesla is basically turning into a cab service like Waymo. Perhaps you own the car perhaps not.
> Federal EV tax credits are over.
It's crazy that Democrats were the pro EV party because of the environment, and half the reason liberals bought Teslas, but Elon's white supremacy overrode his business interests and he went all in with the fossil fuel party. And Tesla shareholders rewarded him with an insane pay package for this genius move.
Democrats abandoned the environment in lieu of this weird obsession with socialism- starting with the unions. First, Tesla was repeatedly snubbed when the Biden administration poured billions into every other car company to make them produce EVs- gleefully declaring GMC of all companies to be the Leader of EVs. Then, the COVID situation where the local staff member in government made it illegal for Tesla, and only Tesla, to continue operating. That's when Elon finally got the message that the Democratic party had abandoned him, and cared more about raising money than any kind of environment or progress. He then went on twitter, called it out, and then the entire democratic party reformed under the banner of Anti-Elon (since the whole trans and immigrant stuff was settling down a bit too much to encourage passion).
I think he had his feelings hurt by these snubs, but to align with the anti-immigrant side was odd. I think that, plus he understood the Republican "money in my pocket over all" values rather than a more complex "be a decent person" valueset. The former was more clear than the latter, and clarity beats morality any day.
Oh yeah, he also made what - $500 billion dollars? - by aligning with corruption and cronyism.
edit - also, as I've become older, I find myself saying more and more that my dad was right. I guess he may have realized the same thing after he alienated his family. It turns out maybe there was some wisdom in the old emerald mine magnate papa (</s>) and any criticism of how workers are treated, or markets manipulated, or harm caused to millions - it is just woke haters.
It's hilarious to me when Democrats crash out over Elon's reliance on EV credits, as though acting on the incentives they created was a moral failure on his part.
The proliferation of over-the-top EVs around 2019-21, not just from Tesla, did make me think something was wack with the subsidies. Gas was insanely cheap for part of that too.
They already pivoted to AI.
He'll just fold Tesla into SpaceX to cover up the ashes.
This is the most realistic scenario. Hide the stock losses by folding it into SpaceX. Dare the US government to nationalize it. Walk away a “business martyr”.
Lol what ashes? Tesla has the best selling vehicle in America, only faces real competition from Google and China.
There is a world outside the US.
> It's hard to see where Tesla goes from here as a company.
Probably will get acquired by SpaceX to hide the poor financials
Federal EV tax credits are over partly by Elon's hand. Masterclass level foot-gunning.
And subsidies in California, which he hates, are responsible for an outsized part of sales.
He seems to suggest that the future is Cybercabs and Optimus.
But if Optimus ends up with a HW3 problem (current manufactured Optimus bots aren't autonomus yet because the software isn't finished) he'll have a pile of Cybertrucks and early-model Optimus units rotting in a field.
Personally, I just don't see it. If he merges Tesla and SpaceX it won't really be about cars or vehicle autonomy.
Their current stock valuation can't ride this uncertainty forever. At some point he has to have new products that work, no caveats.
He's also looking at an incoming congress that is going to give him a colonoscopy that he didn't ask for.
The only people I've seen driving cybertrucks tend to be asian or older white guys that likely think Elon is great. Yes, this is a generalization, but an observation over thousands of miles between the Bay Area and Vancouver, BC.
I think Tesla is in for more hurt over the coming years, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing in my opinion on how Musk has handled himself in the public arena with Tesla and Starlink.
Elon leaves the company, maybe they focus more on quality, good UX, and a lot of people not currently buying Teslas because they are owned by a nazi and have bad UX and quality issues might start.
He'll trigger the sale of Tesla to SpaceX so he can get his tranche before that happens.
Don't forget, they built a truck that's near impossible to sell outside the US due to the fact it's way too big and deadly for other road users.
Elon made this into something cool, but creating a whole model line for a single country is risky. Especially if that model is already in a small niche and has an incredibly controversial design.
Not sure why you didn't mention Elon Musk zeig heiling at the inauguration he helped buy which led to a mass boycott.
Also, the truck was ugly, awkward, and not good at being a truck.
Elon resigning from Tesla and just letting it run as a reasonable car company making just regular incremental quality and price and new model improvements on normal vehicles people want to drive could be the best thing for the company. The Model 3 is a huge success. That they didn't follow that up with just a regular pickup truck in a similar niche, and instead got distracted by this cybertruck nonsense is an indictment of Musk's poor leadership at this point.
They should just be the Toyota of EVs -- mass produce quality vehicles people want to drive -- instead he's trying to be Tony Stark and keep pumping it as a meme stock.
Tesla remains excellent at engineering and manufacturing. They need not seek the exotic.
He's a liability to that company, not an asset, at this point. And his name has become a brand liability.
The weird contradiction of musk is that his name is what’s propping up most of his companies/projects but his proximity to his companies is also a threat to them.
Only because the "product" has become the stock, not the cars.
If Musk left, the stock would crash. But the company would be profitable.
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My wife took an overhyped Moonshot for a ride when she was on holiday in Texas last month and sent us all a video - just saying
Did it fly?
>The stock is still surviving on Elon hype but has been stagnant for 5 years.
People may actually start buying Teslas again if they're no longer associated with a fascist trillionaire. The number of "I bought this before Elon went crazy" bumper stickers is very high. The people who would buy an electric car are turned off by his association with the brand. He's more of an albatross on the brand than a hype machine.
Throwing his first-mover advantage into the dumpster to get in bed with the political party who despises not only his core customer base but the very premise of his business is forever baffling.
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Hundreds of Cybercabs are driving around cities right now with no steering wheel or pedal making money and growing 20% a week, Model Y is the best selling car (of any type) in the planet. European sales are going through the roof, they are doubling production.
Cybertruck was a mistake but rest of the business is printing cash hand over fist.
> European sales are going through the roof
A side effect of Trump's war with Iran is that every country which doesn't have sufficient domestic oil production, which is most countries especially in Europe, has accelerated their EV transition. Buyers are grabbing every EV they can get their hands on, and yes Tesla are the leader there.
https://www.reuters.com/world/uk/uk-electric-car-registratio...
"Tesla (TSLA.O), led the UK BEV market year-to-date, with registrations up 25.4% from a year earlier and a 9.53% market share South Korea's Kia (000270.KS), and China's BYD (002594.SZ), continued to compete for second place, with market shares of 6.9% and 6.8%, respectively"
The Kia model breakdown: https://www.kiapressoffice.com/releases/1975 (mostly Niro, now withdrawn, then EV6)
Maybe in the UK, but in the EU+UK Teslas (which are made in China and the EU) are falling behind GEELY, BYD, SAIC, and even Chery
https://www.reuters.com/business/tesla-registrations-surge-a...
That ain’t a good thing. Europe continues to deindustrialize themselves. How is that a good thing?
Do you know that Europe is not just the UK? How odd to present that quote to support your claim that Tesla leads in Europe.
It's actually 4th in ev sales in Europe.... https://cleantechnica.com/2026/10/03/europe-ev-sales-report-...
And that's when ranked by manufacturer, which is only slightly less arbitrary than by model as auto groups just use it for market segmentation. If you rank them as groups (e.g. VW group), then Tesla isn't even in the top 5.
If something is growing 20% a week, it should see more than 1,000,000% growth after 1 year. I call bullshit on this one.
https://robotaxitracker.com/cameras?kind=cybercab&metric=veh...
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> Model Y is the best selling car (of any type) in the planet.
Depends on the year. It and the RAV4 switch places now and then.
It's also a meaningless metric because most manufacturers sell multiple models of the same type. Toyota has Corolla, Prius, Camry, Crown, Mirai, Ativ, Century, Belta - all small-mid sized sedans. Add them up and they outsell every Tesla model put together.
BYD has 61 different models in its lineup compared to Tesla's 2.
Yes for example in 1955 it wasn't, the OP was suggesting Tesla is doing badly now.
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> European sales are going through the roof, they are doubling production.
Only when compared to their recent record lows... the broader trend is still downwards. This is disingenuous. They are losing ground to other manufacturers in Europe
Also the Teslas that Europe is buying are made in China not the US.
The countries where EVs are increasing the most are those that have access to Chinese EVs.
> Also the Teslas that Europe is buying are made in China not the US.
They are primarily from Germany. There are some imports from China but they are subject to tariffs.
> Hundreds of Cybercabs are driving around cities right now with no steering wheel or pedal making money and growing 20% a week
Huh? The cybercab with no steering wheel is only operating in Austin, in tiny premapped areas. There are 45 registered in Texas, and they have only been operating since September.
This isn’t Twitter, you’re generally expected to at least attempt to provide factual information here.
https://www.fox7austin.com/news/tesla-launches-cybercab-aust...
“Printing money hand over fist” is an interesting way to frame the dramatic drop in their margin on every vehicle sold.
Incorrect
About as many cybercabs driving around as Waymo, and this doesn't count the Model Y Robotaxis:
https://robotaxitracker.com/cameras?kind=cybercab&metric=veh...
~300 cybercabs in service in TX
I've seen the golden Cybercabs rolling around in DFW. Not sure if they're actually accepting fares or not. I know they offer services with a Model Y operating "autonomously", I know in the past they had chaser cars monitoring but I've heard they've stopped that these days.
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Not sure what numbers you are looking at but Tesla vehicle sales peaked in 2023 and have been falling every year since then. The "sales going through the roof" narrative exists on Twitter, not their balance sheet.
Poe's Law is still in effect. You have to add an /s at the end.
- When it released, people were lighting Tesla stores and charging stations on fire, flipping off drivers, spitting on the cars even when kids were inside, and defacing them. This was generally supported, and for some reason a lot of people sided with the vandals in an effort to still be considered a Democrat and show hatred of The Other Side.
It's still week 1 and we're already in full on persecuted mode?
Never stopped.
I’m glad to see you don’t dispute any of the facts he presented. The usual playbook is, “that never happened!”
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Elon's honestly their biggest problem. Can't focus on finishing one thing to save his life and alienated the shit out of the European market with his fascist beliefs.
https://bestsellingcarsblog.com/2026/10/finland-september-20...
Seems like your conclusions are wrong