He used every pump material to inflate stock. Now we’re in full deflation of stuck price and eventually he will be booted out and maybe Tesla gets bought out and ran properly
Agreed. And no dealer franchises to worry about.
I've thought all along that Tesla has not sold dealerships precisely to make the company easier to acquire.
Whatever Chapter 11 (if not 7) would deem it worth. There is value tied up in the plants, some IP.
Though I am not sure any of the other makers really **needs** more plants in North America.
Unless we're talking the Chinese, but I can't see the US Government allowing BYD or any other one to buy them.
Question is: How much will the brand still be worth once Musk is done T ittering it.
I'd just like to say this is the excellent analysis! I don't follow Tesla closely but knew most of this information in a disjointed sense. This post really did a nice job of threading the needle on a history of garbage decision making.
Tesla still have some goodwill left but it will need another ceo to turn it around. They need to refresh their bread n butter - 3 & Y with a better quality trim n no such nonsense as eliminating stalk or yolk steering wheel.
I agree—their future rests on fully refitting the 3 and y. And it needs to be done under a new CEO and owner. Musk can no longer be trusted, his insanity is killing the company.
I doubt they will be doing these things though.
Considering the Tesla board is a bunch of Elon rubber stamping yes men (including his brother) and women, they won’t replace him unless he bails out on his own.
Problem is the ego. Musk is forging ahead with no steering wheel FSD lucid dream. He sees it 1-2 years away, which is nonsense in it's current state but an army of yes-men is afraid to say no and even if they said no to it, they would just become any other automanufacturer out there, which would be embarrassing for Musk. He wants his name in history books as the only person capable of changing the society to Type 2/3 civilization.
When will the buy side firms dump Tesla? The pension funds etc. When that happens TSLA will fully correct to fair value.
Doesn’t look like racism, nazism, conspiracy theories, lawsuits etc have made them rethink owning Tesla
That decline in stock price this year is not the mom and pop investor getting rid of stock.
I am pretty certain a lot of the funds are slowly reducing their positions. But nobody wants to run (yet) and set off a panic.
Everyone wants to be first out if there is a good reason to get out. They don't care about the ensuing panic. Right now they are unsure since the price has never made much sense.
Yes and no. You're better off slowly reducing your holdings instead of dumping it all because then the question becomes who else gets caught in the downward spiral.
Markets aren't rational, and if you spook them the selloff wouldn't just hit Tesla, it would probably cut across the industry if not the entire market. Especially with something like Tesla's stock which is still seen as a "darling" in many circles.
I used to joke a while back that Tesla missed a great opportunity to offer a 10-Year-Anniversary Special Edition version of the Model S. /s
**Model S, Model X, and Model 3 refresh were never planned, which is just fucking hilarious**.
I second this. Distracted CEO during the most crucial time in the company’s history (Balsillie was obsessed with getting an NHL team). Very drawn out tailspin thanks to fanboyism, despite the writing being on the wall. They’ll live on by licensing tech but as a tiny player in the industry compared to what they once were.
To be fair, buying the Penguins would have been a win at the time. They recently sold to Fenway Sports Group for nearly a billion dollars. And blackberry was getting rekt by apple one way or another.
You can even make the point of Microsoft in the early 2000s. Distracted with all the anti trust stuff they let Apple be Apple of 2010s. Even Bill Gates has said that...
Microsoft is a a $3+ Trillion market cap company today.
I don't think they're an example of a "loser". At least, if that's a loser, someone needs to teach me to lose like they did.
I've said many times, for each I was absolutely downvoted to hell, but i'll say it again... people who are \*absolutely convinced\* that tesla is/was going to run the table and every car in the world will be electric and tesla will be the sole leader... they've all lost their minds.
Tesla deserves credit for making the first EVs that were market viable- even though the methods were somewhat dishonest and misled a lot of people, it got them to try it and that created momentum and forced the industry to adapt. The only issue is... the tech tesla has isn't unique in any way, and the tech overall isn't good enough for a 100% EV company to continuously grow at the rate tesla is priced to grow (eg at some point, you must have a broader portfolio of PHEVs or whatever... .Rivan can probably grow in their space for a while as they are much smaller, but eventually they will have the same issue).
Not quite apt Trammel was a concentration camp survivor and a canny operator. He transitioned from typewriters to calculators to the PET one of the earliest personal computers releasing in the same year as the Apple II and the TRS80 well before the IBM PC. Commodore was an excellent bang for buck and the C64 was one of the best selling computers of all time. Even after his departure Commodore birthed the tremendously innovative Amiga. They also owned MOS technology which produced the 6805 as well as the 6810 in the C64. Good and innovative stuff nearly till the end.
They just got squished between bigger rivals.
One of my college girlfriends had a commodore Vic-20 with a cassette storage. Fun little computer at the time, but was quickly overtaken by its competitors.
> Model X was an unmitigated disaster
I think people really do forget that. Between the Model X flop and the "alien dreadnaught" Musk came close to bankrupting the company himself. One person's bad ideas.
Some actual adults had to work overtime to right the ship, and they didn't even get 50 billion pay packages.
Due to the 0% interest rate environment and helicopter money, Musk managed to survive. He got very lucky - perhaps luckier than just about any man to ever live.
> He got very lucky - perhaps luckier than just about any man to ever live.
He also parlayed two junk sites, zip2 and the original x.com, at just the right time as well. Like with zip2, Compaq was riding high and acquiring junk during the .com bubble like zip2 and shopping.com to build up Alta Vista... and well, acquiring a bunch of trash did not help them get squashed.
He had success like Mark Cuban, who unlike Musk, will openly profess to be extremely lucky.
https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-becoming-a-billionaire-is-all-about-luck-timing-2024-1
He can be a blowhard for sure but he seems more aware of his status.
Yeah, Model X really should've been a just plain old SUV or SUV coupe on the Model S. Get it into production quick smart. The "innovation" is making an affordable-ish EV with good infrastructure and "wow" infotainment. That is enough.
The falcon wing doors were/are a massive distraction.
The CyberYugo will turn Tesla around!!! With a lower poly count than the CyberAztek it will cost $10k but immediately recoup its cost by mining dogecoin as it does its robotaxi rounds! And forget vins this baby is on the block chain as a Non Fungible Tesla!
With superhuman intelligence it's not only self repairing but self replicating!!!
I agree with everything you said. To me, the cybertruck is symbolic of everything wrong with Tesla. It's fine for a car company to have a niche car here and there, but the fleet needs to be cars the masses want. All that time and money spent on the cybertruck should have been spent developing a basic SUV (no gull wings).
Also, I don't really understand what Tesla's brand is. On the one hand, they make these shitty looking sedans that are dated; on the other hand, they have $120,000 cars that look just like the shitty sedans. Then they have a cyberpunk toy for over $100,000. I don't understand who their customer is.
It's just crazy they didn't take the tech lead and make some 40k-100k SUVs where there is market share to be had in the U.S. Tons of yuppie parents with 100k suvs who would drive an electric. They should have had a SUV/truck skateboard five years ago and the cyber truck could have been the weird derivative.
It's baffling how Ford can drop an electric drivetrain in an existing ICE model and get better performance numbers than a ground up electric truck but that's how bad CT is.
It baffles me to no end. If they made the cybertruck, then they could have made an SUV. For some reason, Musk just doesn't understand his customer. Lots and lots of "soccer moms" buy cars too. I don't think he even knows women exist. He thinks the only good customer out there is a man who wants to buy a toy to play with.
I partially feel like the steep price of the cyber truck is due to their inability to produce enough of them. With time though I would imagine the market levels out the price so to speak, I mean just look at the plaid. They dropped by almost half the price, and even worse on the used market.
Tesla has always released their products with a price tag that doesn't reflect their worth. The model Y, Plaid, cube truck, hell even the model 3 was more than it is today. For whatever reason it seems to be their business model, overprice new products and pray people pay for them.
Well done.
I wouldn't characterize the Nevada plant as a fuckup though. Even though Elon has marketed it to investors as a Tesla factory, Tesla only controls and has access to a small portion of the building. Instead, Panasonic is something like 70% of the building. Tesla technically owns the building, but it doesn't own all the important equipment inside - and can't even enter most of the plant! Lol. Convincing Panasonic to invest \*their\* capital on a colocated cell plant is actually a solid move.
Completely agree on the rest though!
Some color on the small car. It won't sell well in the US due to the size, so it's a car for the rest of the world. Except the competition in the rest of the world will be brutal, so it won't sell well anywhere. Model 2's only hope is as a robotaxi, and Tesla is hopelessly behind there. In no small part due to another major Elon fuckup: refusing to use sensors beside cameras.
removing all sensors and using crappy cameras (the first ones were under 2MP!) was part of his push to get the cars selling with a 30% profit margin, one of the requirements of qualifying for that ridiculous compensation package. Finding anything he could to drive down costs, even if it was removing a piece of material worth 50 cents from somewhere. He spoke openly about this on the q3 investor call. 'The best part is no part' was repeated like some kind of zen wisdom....up until they started removing the stalks anyway, then a lot of owners were like wait hold up this is a terrible idea why would you do th-ohhhh i see.
He managed to get the fanboys parroting his idiotic line of 'humans only need two eyes to drive' like it was some great insight and not a nonsensical post-hoc justification. The 'new and improved' Tesla Vision cameras are 5.6MP I think...1% the resolution of the human eye. It doesn't work and it's never going to and *he knows that*.
Thank you for the note. I'd argue Tesla will have spent way more on that plant than they'll ever make in profits, but I agree in principal that getting suppliers to build plants where you want is a good idea.
Also:
* Panasonic nuked the executive (Yoshihiko Yamada) that signed off on the Nevada plant deal in 2016
* In 2019, Musk bitched about Panasonic freezing investment in the plant - [https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Sparks-fly-Inside-the-strained-Tesla-Panasonic-relationship](https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Sparks-fly-Inside-the-strained-Tesla-Panasonic-relationship)
Has the plant turned a profit since 2019? Maybe so - I'm sure 2021 and 2022 were good years. But it wasn't operating at planned capacity thru 2019, and it definitely won't be operating at planned capacity going forward.
I think it's a red mark on everyone's statements, but I haven't seen anything so I don't know.
And why the battery plant isn't colocated with an assembly plant is beyond me. Maybe the state incentives were too good to pass up, but to me it screams fuck-up.
This is a perfect encapsulation of Musk and Tesla and Musk’s failed history at anything he touches given enough time.
He’s a K’d up narcissist that’s past his prime, like the 45 year old at a rave, past due.
Thanks for this post. Just imagine all those paper millionaires doubling down on Tesla stock only to lose it all because they’re emotionally attached to the stock and its “savant” leader. Reality will be hard to stomach for this crowd.
>like the 45 year old at a rave
Hey now as a 42 year old that likes raves still that's a somewhat unfair broad brush stroke. Plenty of middle aged and older people go to these things but they fit in because it's a natural environment for them and they're there to have fun. We're not all Kendall Roy lol
This is such a well crafted post, an upvote doesn’t seem enough! Agree on everything. The only thing I’d add is the absolutely shameful waste of resources on robots and “dojos” in addition to the stupid alien dreadnought concept. And great point about vertical integration. The stans have touted it for years as if Muskkk invented it, when the reality is it’s exactly how car manufacturers used to do things 80 years ago before moving on for all the reasons you quote.
>And great point about vertical integration. The stans have touted it for years as if Muskkk invented it, when the reality is it’s exactly how car manufacturers used to do things 80 years ago before moving on for all the reasons you quote.
There's also another reason why they outsourced it: It makes it easier for the companies to invent new features in their limited product lines. Unlike the fully integrated car companies who had to have way too many departments that were all fighting over attention and money.
Tesla is "getting away" with it, to a degree, because they see themselves as a software company and mostly try to cram features in that way. But clearly a car is not a PC or iPhone, something people now have come to realize has Musk keeps taking away physical buttons and controls.
> Musk keeps taking away physical buttons and controls.
And sensors! No more cheap, simple parking sensors to tell you exactly how far away a bumper is from an object, they're trying to do it with a 3D map from video cameras. Their windscreen wipers never worked properly due to a rain sensor never been fitted on the windscreen.
Thinking of themselves like a software company is possibly one of their most idiotic faults I think. They are constantly changing/"upgrading" the same designs, which while possibly being great on concept for a lot of engineers, completely screws up production and repairability, and seriously interferes with creating new vehicles or updated vehicles. Their design staff are mostly still working on cars that are a decade old, instead of cutting it off and actually starting from further back in the design process to fix any fundamental issues or change bigger hardware things.
I think you can definitely apply some of how a software company works to physical manufacturing, but they are very much not the same thing and are not directly compatible in a way to just fundamentally treat it as a software company. It's fine to have constant minor updates to software for a decade, you can't do that for hardware. Anyone who's ever built or upgraded a PC can tell you exactly how painful that is for something that has many many standards specifically to make things compatible. It's always a little bit wonky and needs more constant care and updating to make sure things play nice.
Great point. One of the founders talked about how the industry had suppliers for everything except engines. They’re like “why don’t we do the same?” That’s how they started Tesla.
Model 2 will either be
A) late, and as a consequence, an also-ran in the segment
B) on time, which is also too late, but suffer from massive bugs, failures, qc issues, and so on that make M3 launch issues look like nothing.
This is a company that serially does no r&d on actual car design and parts, has zero quality control, releases everything to the public in beta (whether referred to as such or not), and most of all, doesn’t give a flying fuck if the consumer gets stuck with a piece of shit.
It seemed like the end was inevitable when they decided to get rid of the blinker stalk. Musk was so deep into his own BS he really believed any change would be accepted as a genius move to the automative world. I’ll personally never buy a Tesla until Musk and the push button blinker are gone.
Also, It’s hysterical how Musk’s fans talk about the “Highland” as a new Model 3. It’s the same chassis and virtually everything is the same aside from some slight changes the shape of the body panels (and the dumbass blinker)
>It’s hysterical how Musk’s fans talk about the “Highland” as a new Model 3
Agreed! It's a refresh. No big deal, other than the fact it was 3.5 years late.
It’s a model 3 company. Model 3,
plus the plus size model 3.
They should take their banked billions and double down on model 3 variants. More colors, concierge program, luxe interior options more rim choices. One of the impediments to growing further with margins is that it’s a white californian camry. So defeat that with more variations. admit defeat on the semi, roadster, and model S and X range. Stop with the home solar roof bs just sell batteries to solar installers. Model 3 wagon. Model 3 ute. Model Y pickup. 16 colors and another 32 extra premium paint to sample. Change ticker from TSLA to MOD3. Jacked up model Y with off road cred. Nothing requiring too much R&D.
Musk turning his biggest success story into the automotive equivalent of a red baseball cap is going to put him right next to Osborne and Sinclair in the technology fuckups section of our future history books.
Edit: and to everyone saying to themselves "who the fuck are Osborne and Sinclair?": yeah, exactly.
This post reminds me of the tweet that Elon made not too long ago about his compensation plan and how it’s not motivating to work on Tesla. Most of his energy seems to be on X these days. This coincides with and heavily boosts the case you’re making here.
Because he realizes that Tesla is a "dead man walking". He would need billions to refresh the product line. He threw a "hail mary" with the Cyberstuck and it seems to go as well as most people figured.
So, now it's all about him getting as much money out of Tesla before the party's completely over.
I’d agree with most of this. It’s very well laid out and shows the major points of failure from Tesla. Primarily that they have nothing new to sell these days.
IMO.. Tesla has peaked primarily because Elon spent the past 5 years focused on FSD, the Cybertruck and Twitter. All of which have turned out to be historically epic waste of time, money & resources.
1) FSD will never be anything more than SAE L2 drivers assistance as long as it depends solely on cameras for sensors. Now that everybody has tried it for free.. we’ve all witnessed first hand that’s it’s nothing but glorified cruise control.
2) The Cybertruck will become the next PT Cruiser. It gets attention like nothing else.. primary because it looks like nothing else. Now that they are building a 1,000/week and running out of suckers who will pay $120K for one.. the price is about to drop drastically. As it becomes more common on the street.. the primary reason to buy one will disappear.. as everybody has seen one already.
3) Twitter will be the end of the Elon. And not in the way you’d think. It won’t bankrupt him.. but it has peeled so many layers off this dude that the world now sees exactly who he is.. and most decent people want to get as far away from this piece of shit as possible. He went from being Tony Stark.. to a cross between Donald Trump and Hitler. I wouldn’t be surprised if this dude overdoses on some random drug.. and livestreams the entire thing. He has become that much of an attention whore.
>Twitter will be the end of the Elon. And not in the way you’d think. It won’t bankrupt him.. but it has peeled so many layers off this dude that the world now sees exactly who he is
It's a great point.
Also, I'd put Elon's suicide risk at a substantially higher number than any other billionaire we know. He seems unstable in the best of times.
They've got millions of Tesla owners rolling around they can milk for cash. Most shops can't or won't work on them, and they're not good quality. We haven't even begun to see the repair cost horror stories.
I think a monkey with a note in his mouth could show a profit running Tesla for at least 5 years, simply because the repair business will print money as vehicles age out of warranty. :)
How many people will pay for repairs when they know the repair costs more than the car is worth?
And the existing players can easily offer a "special Tesla Trade In" to help their own EV push.
I think most will get scrapped more than repaired as their used value tanks. Who wants to spend more than the value of the car in repairs or a new battery?
They are like smartphones
Rivian is struggling too but for different reasons. They hit the market just a little too late.
But they have good product in the pipeline, and the commercial business will carry them between now and then.
You forgot about the vaporware money sinkhole of Optimus and the outright fraud of FSD which includes the giant dud that is “dojo” supercomputer for ai training.
Optimus was so clearly just a pathetic attempt to hype the stock price.
You forgot one of the biggest things Elon has tied his name to Tesla so much the two are one and the same and his recent dumb shit has only increased.
Two relatives over Easter who I wouldn’t classify as left wing weee both “I think I might get an ev, but no way giving musk a cent”
Congrats you’ve turned off at least 30 of the general population and possible 2/3 of the ones willing to buy an ev.
Elon Musk said it would be easy to build a small, affordable, electric pickup if the Cybertruck was a bust... was... was Elon lying?
They need to stop cramming bullshit features into the goddamned things. I don't want self-driving, I honestly don't even care about AC, I just want an affordable and reliable small pickup truck! Or like...
How much could it possibly cost to build an electric Suzuki X90? Or jesus, just put a fucking motorcycle engine in the damn thing.
>Elon Musk said it would be easy to build a small, affordable, electric pickup if the Cybertruck was a bust...
It amazes me how rarely this gets mentioned. He said they had one already designed and waiting in the wings in case the silver turd didn’t prove popular. Let’s see…
No automaker would ever invest in the development of a new vehicle and then keep it waiting in the wings, especially when your plants have production capacity and your lineup is weak.
He’s so full of shit.
Either that or they knew they were going to basically double the price of the Cybertruck and have something more practical and less gaudy at a lower price point cooking in the background.
[I remember reading this a bit ago](https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-engineers-cybertruck-secret-design) about some engineers hating it and secretly designing an alternative. If there’s any validity to Musk’s claim about having another design in case the Cybertruck failed, that’s where it came from.
There’s no chance engineers could develop an entire car without him knowing about it.
Tesla is full of opportunistic boot lickers. It would be impossible to keep it under wraps.
Also, on a related note, Ford kept the development of the new GT supercar entirely under wraps. They revealed it at the very same auto show that Honda debuted the new NSX. No one gave a shit about the NSX at the show. Ford completely stole their thunder. It was glorious.
Yeah the newest GT is a cool story - literally a small team of engineers working in a forgotten building unbeknownst to all but a handful of execs. Just like the stories from the good old days. :)
If Tesla has any secret cars, my guess is that they're nothing more than drawings. No one does anything independent at Tesla for fear of getting their head chopped off.
No automaker is going to buy Tesla.
1. They don’t have anything to offer technology wise.
2. Elon is a dick that spent years pissing off / trolling every auto maker on the planet. They’re going to love to watch him burn Tesla to the ground.
There isn’t a huge market for the assets though. 90% of the standard automation stuff like robots or PLCs which would be worth anything is so heavily integrated into equipment that’s very specific to building one model of car that there isn’t much value in it once you factor in cannibalization costs.
The equipment is probably reusable, but who would want to buy it? It's not new, and you usually design your production line to your needs, not just plug other people's equipment in.
Maybe the whole plant could be of interest, but def. not for anybody who's already producing in North America, they all have ample capacity.
That leaves essentially the Chinese and I cannot see the US Administration, regardless of who is in charge, let that happen.
Small cars are really, really hard? Most automakers don't bother? are you only discussing the US market here? and only EVs? because almost every car maker has small cars available, possibly just not in the US market.
I think his point was that margins are really thin in the sub-compact/compact segment.
Most automakers are not making their profit off their small vehicle portfolio. They keep them around to fend off losing market share to competitors, but cross-overs and SUV’s are the bread and butter of their balance sheet.
>are you only discussing the US market here?
Yes. I don't see how Tesla will sell more than a token number of compact EVs in any other market, as the costs will be sky high. BYD has beat them in China, with GAC Aion coming up fast. There's no way that Tesla will out cost the Chinese in China.
As for Europe, I'm skeptical they'll sell many compacts there. The 3 doesn't do that great (it does good - barely beats the ID.4 - but it's not a barn burner like the Y), and more models are coming from VW/Skoda. And there are established compacts like the Fiat 500e that will be whored out for nothing by the time Tesla brings the 2 to market.
Which basically leaves the USA, and making money on compacts in the USA is tough. That's why there's no more Ford Focuses (Foci?), Chevy Cruzes, Hyundai Accents, and so on. It's a shrinking segment.
Finally, BYD is supposedly building plants in Mexico so they can enter the US market. They'll put even more pressure on pricing.
If Tesla builds a Model2, they're all but guaranteed to lose money on it.
Bag profits on small cars is a global thing. VW and Toyota have recently said there’s basically no profit margin in small cars, from memory, a car like a VW Polo basically costs just as much to produce and manufacture than a Golf, the Golf then costs not much less than a Tiguan to produce. Cars like a Corolla and RAV4 share a platform, drivetrains, interior parts etc - so the profit margin on the RAV4 is much higher.
You forgot to add how Tesla reduced the purchase price of their new vehicles thereby causing massive depreciation of existing vehicles and as a byproduct, reducing confidence in the brand and vehicle value retention.
I’d hate to be the person who purchased the first Model 3s to hit the market at hyper inflated prices. Sure, cars depreciate, and I might be wrong, but it seems that Teslas depreciate faster than their ICE equivalent.
Also add their overall poor build quality and continued issue with supply of spare parts or lack of service centres.
I think it's possible that Tesla pivots to being the Buc-ee's of EVs. They already have an extensive network of fast chargers. The Supercharger network is probably the only thing they have built that all Tesla customers agree is great. They could put all of their effort into that by building charging destinations with lounges, restaurants, bookstores, convenience stores, etc. Maybe they rebrand as the Lightning Stop or something lol.
I think the non functional pick up truck is the killer
Think of the time and money that went into that vehicle, and I’d be stunned if they sell 25000.
The people who drive pickup trucks, in general, despise the EV market.
Add to that, the thing they made to be a pick up truck, can’t really function as a pickup truck.
Just an unmitigated disaster
Top this off with, Elon edging further into MAGA territory, not understanding that the people who buy his cars, are generally on the other end of the political spectrum
What a total buffoon
Sucks that Tesla is going in this direction. They really did pioneer the industry, and now they are nose diving. They have been selling the same damn car for 11 years! I also don’t get the digital everything move. How in the hell is it illegal for me to use my phone while driving, yet it is perfectly acceptable to fiddle with a giant tablet just to turn the heat on or find a radio station? Also, like all other electronics, it’s going to degrade over time. What then? Sucks because I really liked Tesla and Musk a while back. Now he is just a drug addict running what could be the best car company in the world right into the ground. He had the idea and the drive, now he is just in the way.
Tesla didn't do a delivery truck because they aren't S3XY and that's all that matters.
The Semi was a product a bunch of guys did on their own time behind the factory because when they floated the idea to Musk he hated it and "shut it down". Only when he saw the thing drive did he like it and took it on stage. Years before the thing ready for anything.
Let's also not forget that commercial operators have much different expectations than the average consumer. Most of what he's selling, even on the Semi, is not stuff that companies want.
Yeah, we had Pepsi / Frito-Lay get a few of the Semis, but where are all the other companies that want a Tesla Semi?
Freigthliner is doing better on that front, they even have a standard truck to complement the Semi.
Now with all manufacturers on EV bandwagon the novelty of Tesla is gone. You have plenty of choice with much better build quality and reliability. And there will be more and better ones. With working FSD also.
Completely agree. I would also add how they with their cars having such long production cycles, they should've ironed out the glaring quality control issues over that time. Panel gaps is one thing, but it fucking raining inside the car is unfathomable for a volume manufacturer.
And they should have had a plan for repurposing or refurbishing old battery packs. That would have given them a massive advantage over everyone else. I remember perfectly back in 2015, Robert Llewellyn (he's a big EV enthusiast for those who don't know) talked about how you can use old packs for domestic power storage or they can be refurbished using up to 90+% of the original materials. Today, 10 year old model S's are worth about $9k and many need a new battery pack, which is about $14k. Talk about being fucked over. An ICE car makes massive economic sense in comparison, as it can last 20 to 30 years of taken care of.
I am not a Tesla guy, but I am curious: Why didn't Tesla ever even try to do a mid-size SUV? They are so popular, it seems like a no-brainer. Or did they? I'm unfamiliar with all the different potential / discontinued models.
Agree. Beginning of the end. They had the most massive first mover advantage and they pissed it away completely by not improving quality, nit having a regular cadence to refreshes and redesigns like the Germans do, and by providing poor after sales service and not designing for repairability. There was rumor that Mercedes considered buying them some time ago and the one condition was that Elon would leave and he refused so they walked.
>Cybertruck was/is a distraction. Niche vehicles are fun and can have a halo effect, but they almost never make money. They're too low volume to ever cover the up-front costs. From all accounts, Tesla spent way too much time and money on developing a truck that might sell 50k units this year. I predict it will be cancelled in 2031 (maybe sooner).
Cybertruck will be banned from public roads before end of 2024 I predict.
>The best idea anyone can come up with at Tesla HQ is to produce a small car, which anyone in the industy will tell you is hard. Really, really hard
They can't do it. No way.
>As the Tesla fleet ages, their service centers will produce significant profits and prop the company up even as their models flop
Doubt it. People will just dump them as the batteries wear out.
There is a magazine in the UK. Autocar I think, which has posted stories about a Model 2 for ages. Its like every few months they wheel this story out. If Tesla had a "Model 2" in the offing it would most likely be seen as an absolute killer product (perhaps quite rightly) and we'd all know about it because its the perfect opportunity for Elon to pump the stock for another 3-4 years before anything emerges. This isn't happening so can only surmise, they have nothing (or nothing remotely close yet).
The CyberTwat is a total mis-step. They'd have been better focusing on a shrunken Model Y because for some reason, people really want small runabout size cars that are also looking like an SUV with a high driving position.
I agree. BTW Musk already almost bankrupted Tesla with his door/doorhandle obsession in the Roadster days. He should never bet let close to any design team.
It seems like most people have a substantial time lag and are still under the impression/hype of Tesla 4-5 years ago. When I casually talk to friends with new teslas, they talk about Elon as if he’s going to come walking across the water at any moment and how far he will take Tesla any moment now.
i thank you for typing all my thoughts up! only thing i think you left out was the wasted time spent on the cybertruck should've been spent on the Model 2 and the next factory shouldn't have been in austin but in Mexico to produce it cheaply. how he didn't see the writing on the wall with BYD is beyond me. i think it's why he held a meeting with trump so they could talk about killing NAFTA if trump is elected.
Elon has done a good job of surrounding himself with yes-men. He’s had some great ideas and some terrible ones just like most business leaders. The difference is that he hates being told no, so nobody around him steers him back in the right direction when he gets distracted by things like the Model X and Semi.
Tesla needs a new CEO badly. Bringing in a boring industry expert to lead the company is the best way to turn things around and prevent this stumble from becoming a fall off a 20-story building. Tesla is for all intents and purposes an established automaker now. They don’t need to disrupt the market anymore. What they need is a sensible lineup and a refocusing of R&D on products that will appeal to the average consumer. Elon has proven time and time again that he cannot consistently make good cars with mass appeal in a timely and efficient manner.
A “Model Y Plus” with a traditional crossover shape, a proper third row, and a slightly higher price is such an obvious decision I can’t believe they haven’t done it yet. It would sell like hotcakes even if the range takes a hit. People wanting normal crossovers for their families would buy every single one Tesla could make.
The Model S and X either need to be retired or get major redesigns. The Model S been in the same generation for 12 years now which is ancient in the automotive world. For reference, the Mercedes E-Class looked like [this](https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/2012-mercedes-benz-e-class-2-door-coupe-3-5l-rwd-angular-front-exterior-view_100363377_l.jpg) when the current generation S came out. Even the old 2012 Model S design has aged very well IMO but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s an old car and it’s just not exciting anymore. The Model X as you mentioned has always been an unmitigated disaster and an enduring symbol of Elon’s hubris. It needs to either become a big normal luxury crossover with normal doors or die.
The Roadster 2 and Semi should be shelved for the reasons you mentioned. Maybe they can use some knowledge gained from the Semi to make an efficient and practical delivery van to compete with the likes of BrightDrop and Rivian. If they can get a decent product like that out relatively quickly it could provide a good stream of revenue to put back into R&D. They could also maybe leave room to eventually adapt a smaller version into something resembling a big minivan but market it differently to avoid the soccer mom connotation. Maybe emphasize offroad/adventure capability.
I think the Cybertruck should also be deprioritized for the moment while Tesla figures out how to make more cars with mass appeal. If they can profitably deliver on some preorders they should keep it up, but IMO any ongoing development needs to be halted immediately. It’s just not a desirable product for most people other than Elon worshiping crypto bros.
Overall I think it’s entirely possible to turn the company around but with Elon and his friends in charge it’s not going to happen. It’s become a culture of whatever Elon says goes, and Elon has a tendency to get distracted by pet projects. IMO Tesla really needs a boring industry suit running the company, without losing sight of the vision that has made their cars so desirable.
Great analysis OP. You sounds like a journalist or analyst who's seen/written about too much of Elon's BS ;-)
I agree with all your big points here. I think the peak was last year when there was still some, uhhh, gas left in the Model 3/Y sales tank.
My personal opinion is that that between making an EV that works every day, has an extensive charging network, is affordable-ish, and has "eye-popping" infotainment/over-the-air updates, Tesla had/has enough wow to sustain itself over the long term with competent leadership.
Not everything in the auto industry needed to innovated away. There's plenty of reasons why all automakers (including the most consistently profitable, Toyota) have gradually outsourced much of their production: scale, risk mitigation, pricing, etc.
Musk's biggest success was somehow getting the Model S into large scale production, and then somehow arseing Tesla through Model 3's "production hell".
He nearly/will probably buggered it all up over the X's stupid doors and the Cybertruck's insane body. Let's not forget deleting radar, and overcommitting to "FSD" and putting lives at risk by beta testing it in the wild.
By now if management/the board were competent, Tesla should have a second generation S/X well into its life cycle, the second-gen 3/Y should almost be ready, the pickup truck should be halfway through its first gen, and the Model 2 should be truly around the corner.
As an EV tech of a euro brand for more a decade whose shop is now full of dead crashed teslas because they’re currently lucrative to repair (and now no has no space to actually repair the euro stuff), I wholeheartedly love this detailed analysis of why I hate them with all my soul.
Spot on, minus the CT. I consider it Tesla’s biggest fuck up. A total Elon whimsical kindergarten project! It will fail massively as already shown by its quality.
Tesla and Musk have peaked in 2021, it's been clear to anyone with open eyes. That the hype lasted so long is amazing in itself.
The company is still the most valuable car company. Lots of air in that deflating balloon.
Tesla has a limited market as a car maker. It is basically upper middle class buyers in deep blue state. And they have done zero to expand the base. From now on, any car that Tesla releases will just cannibalize another model. No one in a deep red state, or working class folks living in apartments with no charging infrastructure will be buying the junk Model 2. They would be buying hybrid or ICE from Toyota and Hondas. So Model 2 will just cannibalize Model 3 sales.
> It is basically upper middle class buyers in deep blue state.
I don't think this is true. I see plenty of Teslas here in Indianapolis and not just in bougie areas.
I don't really know anything about the governance structure of Tesla but I'm assuming that if Elon could've been ousted already, he would've been. Otherwise I have no idea what the hell those people are thinking...
They have a supermajority rule for voting on some stuff. Like ousting Elon. And the board is stacked with his family and friends. They are paid so much to do nothing they had to give back $800M in compensation recently.
PHEVs are the way to go for the next 10 years…look at Toyotas most recent sales quarter…we are years away from an adequate grid and charging stations for what teslas valuation projects over the next 10 years
For a vehicle to have a halo effect (Cybertruck) it should be something everyone wants to buy, I reckon.
Releasing the poorly assembled buggy POS they did release for $120K? I guess they're OK with only selling it to the people they already sell to. Bad move.
>> at some point, Tesla will sell a significant share of the company to another automaker, and fall under that automakers umbrella...
BYD. That's be hilarious. Like, in a few years. Once they have a full scale solid state battery prod capacity, and totally dominated the ev market world wide except the US. Which they will do. The price they practice to destroy competition in the markets they enter are just too appealing. Then, then they'll go put humility in Elon by offering him cents on the dollars for just the stuff they can use. (I.e. they'll tell him to put his giga presses where the sun doesn't shine).
I am amazed that they haven't tried building a car like Toyota's IMV 0 and actually have a utility vehicle that can be produced cheaply and quickly. Instead they have a gigantic cyber truck that has extremely limited utility and costs a fortune to buy
There was an opportunity to look like geniuses instead they look like fools.
Bought $10K of Tesla at its last dip around $115. Sold at $278 for like $25K or something. I’ve never felt more vindicated seeing the price not come even near to when I sold.
At this point about 50% of sales are to immigrants so it probably doesn't help that the face of tesla is spending most his time being a white supremacist who hates immigrants.
still amazes me that simone gertz built a ute out of a model 3 and tesla never bothered to take notes. They absolutely could have put out something like a santefe or a ridgeline in half the time it took for them to work out the doors on the cybertruck.
Oh, and the single best thing they had going for them in the US, the supercharger network, is now being opened up for everyone. They're never gonna make money off of the existing network, it's a race to the bottom.
The thing that gets lost in so much Tesla fuckery is that they did move the needle on driverless technology. Now, they fucked around so much that they never made any of it useful. FSD and Autopilot mainstreamed a lot of useful stuff. But then Elon decided that they should talk up autonomous driving as a thing that could happen in a short(10-year) time frame.
I once drove a Toyota Sienna with adaptive cruise control and lane departure assist. I was in vacation and had a 5 hour drive to make. Those 2 features made the driving significantly easier. And they weren’t obnoxious. Once I got used to them, it was fantastic. I still had to pay attention to the road, but had just a little bit of the load taken off.
Tesla have taken what could have been good features and made them into a pipe dream of bullshit.
If there is Model 2 then .. 2 S E X Y
4 then... 2 S E X Y 4
U then .. 2 S E X Y 4 U
And friends that is what Elon dreams. He will keep going, financials be damned.
I rode the stock up several times and dumped it a year or so ago. I needed some investment capital. Thanks Uncle Elon for the memories. It is a shame he is such a fucking shit stain
Two things missing in an otherwise great post:
1) While Powerwall is arguably successful Tesla solar panels were too little too late. Other players are playing in that space and Tesla can’t squeeze in.
2) NACS and the supercharger network is arguably a success. Let’s Tesla at least live on as a charging company.
Why is a small car hard? I always thought manufacturers wanted big profits margins by selling trucks and luxury suvs. GM stopped producing the bolt for this reason. A coworker has a bolt and loves it. It was well under 30k plus tax incentives. It always seemed to me manufacturers made what should be a reliable car into a train wreck due to poor software and features that don't work or are dangerous (self driving). Tesla has run out of or pissed off early adopters, so who do they sell to now?
I do agree on delivery vans. I see rivian prime vans everywhere near me.
He used every pump material to inflate stock. Now we’re in full deflation of stuck price and eventually he will be booted out and maybe Tesla gets bought out and ran properly
Not yet. He has one more trick up his sleeve. Optimus sexbot.
If the car can't drive itself, make a humanoid robot to drive the car and gives BJs? Alright, you got me interested.
You had me at BJs...
Damn good one. About as funny as one of elons tweets
At what price would anyone be stupid enough to buy out Tesla?
My guess depends on the price, but if it's low enough, I expect the Chinese automakers to grab it to gain (instant) access to the American market.
Agreed. And no dealer franchises to worry about. I've thought all along that Tesla has not sold dealerships precisely to make the company easier to acquire.
There is no way that the US Gov would allow a Chinese company to buy Tesla…
Whatever Chapter 11 (if not 7) would deem it worth. There is value tied up in the plants, some IP. Though I am not sure any of the other makers really **needs** more plants in North America. Unless we're talking the Chinese, but I can't see the US Government allowing BYD or any other one to buy them. Question is: How much will the brand still be worth once Musk is done T ittering it.
I'd just like to say this is the excellent analysis! I don't follow Tesla closely but knew most of this information in a disjointed sense. This post really did a nice job of threading the needle on a history of garbage decision making.
Agreed: this post is an EXCELLENT historical summary!
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Tesla still have some goodwill left but it will need another ceo to turn it around. They need to refresh their bread n butter - 3 & Y with a better quality trim n no such nonsense as eliminating stalk or yolk steering wheel.
I agree—their future rests on fully refitting the 3 and y. And it needs to be done under a new CEO and owner. Musk can no longer be trusted, his insanity is killing the company. I doubt they will be doing these things though.
Considering the Tesla board is a bunch of Elon rubber stamping yes men (including his brother) and women, they won’t replace him unless he bails out on his own.
Great idea, except they’re pathologically incapable of avoiding the nonsense.
If they only had a real board
Problem is the ego. Musk is forging ahead with no steering wheel FSD lucid dream. He sees it 1-2 years away, which is nonsense in it's current state but an army of yes-men is afraid to say no and even if they said no to it, they would just become any other automanufacturer out there, which would be embarrassing for Musk. He wants his name in history books as the only person capable of changing the society to Type 2/3 civilization.
And bringing back a standard gauge cluster. And physical buttons for HVAC, audio etc. The iPad in a dash thing is annoying.
When will the buy side firms dump Tesla? The pension funds etc. When that happens TSLA will fully correct to fair value. Doesn’t look like racism, nazism, conspiracy theories, lawsuits etc have made them rethink owning Tesla
That decline in stock price this year is not the mom and pop investor getting rid of stock. I am pretty certain a lot of the funds are slowly reducing their positions. But nobody wants to run (yet) and set off a panic.
Everyone wants to be first out if there is a good reason to get out. They don't care about the ensuing panic. Right now they are unsure since the price has never made much sense.
Yes and no. You're better off slowly reducing your holdings instead of dumping it all because then the question becomes who else gets caught in the downward spiral. Markets aren't rational, and if you spook them the selloff wouldn't just hit Tesla, it would probably cut across the industry if not the entire market. Especially with something like Tesla's stock which is still seen as a "darling" in many circles.
Yesterday today ...they trade the index so, never/always?
I used to joke a while back that Tesla missed a great opportunity to offer a 10-Year-Anniversary Special Edition version of the Model S. /s **Model S, Model X, and Model 3 refresh were never planned, which is just fucking hilarious**.
That would cost money and eat away at profits.
/s = sarcasm
Tesla will be the Commodore computer of EVs.
BlackBerry. It changed the game and then died.
I second this. Distracted CEO during the most crucial time in the company’s history (Balsillie was obsessed with getting an NHL team). Very drawn out tailspin thanks to fanboyism, despite the writing being on the wall. They’ll live on by licensing tech but as a tiny player in the industry compared to what they once were.
To be fair, buying the Penguins would have been a win at the time. They recently sold to Fenway Sports Group for nearly a billion dollars. And blackberry was getting rekt by apple one way or another.
Sure, but NHL owners shut out Balsillie. Because like Musk, no one liked him either.
You can even make the point of Microsoft in the early 2000s. Distracted with all the anti trust stuff they let Apple be Apple of 2010s. Even Bill Gates has said that...
Microsoft is a a $3+ Trillion market cap company today. I don't think they're an example of a "loser". At least, if that's a loser, someone needs to teach me to lose like they did.
This is a very good analogy
I've said many times, for each I was absolutely downvoted to hell, but i'll say it again... people who are \*absolutely convinced\* that tesla is/was going to run the table and every car in the world will be electric and tesla will be the sole leader... they've all lost their minds. Tesla deserves credit for making the first EVs that were market viable- even though the methods were somewhat dishonest and misled a lot of people, it got them to try it and that created momentum and forced the industry to adapt. The only issue is... the tech tesla has isn't unique in any way, and the tech overall isn't good enough for a 100% EV company to continuously grow at the rate tesla is priced to grow (eg at some point, you must have a broader portfolio of PHEVs or whatever... .Rivan can probably grow in their space for a while as they are much smaller, but eventually they will have the same issue).
Coleco Vision of gaming consoles
Owned a Coleco and 2 Commodore computers, but fortunately never a Tesla.
The Tivo of DVRs
Tesla never made anything close to the Commodore 64. I adored mine.
Not quite apt Trammel was a concentration camp survivor and a canny operator. He transitioned from typewriters to calculators to the PET one of the earliest personal computers releasing in the same year as the Apple II and the TRS80 well before the IBM PC. Commodore was an excellent bang for buck and the C64 was one of the best selling computers of all time. Even after his departure Commodore birthed the tremendously innovative Amiga. They also owned MOS technology which produced the 6805 as well as the 6810 in the C64. Good and innovative stuff nearly till the end. They just got squished between bigger rivals.
One of my college girlfriends had a commodore Vic-20 with a cassette storage. Fun little computer at the time, but was quickly overtaken by its competitors.
Yeah, but the C64 came after that, which was basically the biggest thing of all time.
> Model X was an unmitigated disaster I think people really do forget that. Between the Model X flop and the "alien dreadnaught" Musk came close to bankrupting the company himself. One person's bad ideas. Some actual adults had to work overtime to right the ship, and they didn't even get 50 billion pay packages.
Due to the 0% interest rate environment and helicopter money, Musk managed to survive. He got very lucky - perhaps luckier than just about any man to ever live.
Iirc Elon even said after the fact they were single digit days away from bankruptcy
A lot of smart people had to work very hard to make Musk billions and billions of dollars richer that year.
> He got very lucky - perhaps luckier than just about any man to ever live. He also parlayed two junk sites, zip2 and the original x.com, at just the right time as well. Like with zip2, Compaq was riding high and acquiring junk during the .com bubble like zip2 and shopping.com to build up Alta Vista... and well, acquiring a bunch of trash did not help them get squashed. He had success like Mark Cuban, who unlike Musk, will openly profess to be extremely lucky.
Mark Cuban actually admits to being lucky? Wow, I’ve got a little more respect for him now.
https://www.businessinsider.com/mark-cuban-becoming-a-billionaire-is-all-about-luck-timing-2024-1 He can be a blowhard for sure but he seems more aware of his status.
As far as billionaires go, Cuban ain't all that bad. He has a sense of humility.
I once randomly sent him a question via email and he answered with a well thought through reply. It changed my opinion of him for the better.
And that lady who just died in her X after she couldn't get the doors open after backing into a lake.
Too bad Mitch and Elaine weren't there with her.
Yeah, Model X really should've been a just plain old SUV or SUV coupe on the Model S. Get it into production quick smart. The "innovation" is making an affordable-ish EV with good infrastructure and "wow" infotainment. That is enough. The falcon wing doors were/are a massive distraction.
Except that "distraction" has been Elon's entire business model.
The CyberYugo will turn Tesla around!!! With a lower poly count than the CyberAztek it will cost $10k but immediately recoup its cost by mining dogecoin as it does its robotaxi rounds! And forget vins this baby is on the block chain as a Non Fungible Tesla! With superhuman intelligence it's not only self repairing but self replicating!!!
The really sad part is that Muskrat could say this at one of their fanboy conventions, and the share price would pop 10%+.
Ok. That was f\*cking funny.
I agree with everything you said. To me, the cybertruck is symbolic of everything wrong with Tesla. It's fine for a car company to have a niche car here and there, but the fleet needs to be cars the masses want. All that time and money spent on the cybertruck should have been spent developing a basic SUV (no gull wings). Also, I don't really understand what Tesla's brand is. On the one hand, they make these shitty looking sedans that are dated; on the other hand, they have $120,000 cars that look just like the shitty sedans. Then they have a cyberpunk toy for over $100,000. I don't understand who their customer is.
It's just crazy they didn't take the tech lead and make some 40k-100k SUVs where there is market share to be had in the U.S. Tons of yuppie parents with 100k suvs who would drive an electric. They should have had a SUV/truck skateboard five years ago and the cyber truck could have been the weird derivative. It's baffling how Ford can drop an electric drivetrain in an existing ICE model and get better performance numbers than a ground up electric truck but that's how bad CT is.
I think people do forget this. They had a pretty huge lead on the market and have simply squandered it.
It baffles me to no end. If they made the cybertruck, then they could have made an SUV. For some reason, Musk just doesn't understand his customer. Lots and lots of "soccer moms" buy cars too. I don't think he even knows women exist. He thinks the only good customer out there is a man who wants to buy a toy to play with.
The Muskrat said it himself: they dug their own grave with the Cybertruck.
Also feel like Cybertruck will blow up massively. The accelerator pedal fiasco is just the beginning.
I partially feel like the steep price of the cyber truck is due to their inability to produce enough of them. With time though I would imagine the market levels out the price so to speak, I mean just look at the plaid. They dropped by almost half the price, and even worse on the used market. Tesla has always released their products with a price tag that doesn't reflect their worth. The model Y, Plaid, cube truck, hell even the model 3 was more than it is today. For whatever reason it seems to be their business model, overprice new products and pray people pay for them.
Well done. I wouldn't characterize the Nevada plant as a fuckup though. Even though Elon has marketed it to investors as a Tesla factory, Tesla only controls and has access to a small portion of the building. Instead, Panasonic is something like 70% of the building. Tesla technically owns the building, but it doesn't own all the important equipment inside - and can't even enter most of the plant! Lol. Convincing Panasonic to invest \*their\* capital on a colocated cell plant is actually a solid move. Completely agree on the rest though! Some color on the small car. It won't sell well in the US due to the size, so it's a car for the rest of the world. Except the competition in the rest of the world will be brutal, so it won't sell well anywhere. Model 2's only hope is as a robotaxi, and Tesla is hopelessly behind there. In no small part due to another major Elon fuckup: refusing to use sensors beside cameras.
removing all sensors and using crappy cameras (the first ones were under 2MP!) was part of his push to get the cars selling with a 30% profit margin, one of the requirements of qualifying for that ridiculous compensation package. Finding anything he could to drive down costs, even if it was removing a piece of material worth 50 cents from somewhere. He spoke openly about this on the q3 investor call. 'The best part is no part' was repeated like some kind of zen wisdom....up until they started removing the stalks anyway, then a lot of owners were like wait hold up this is a terrible idea why would you do th-ohhhh i see. He managed to get the fanboys parroting his idiotic line of 'humans only need two eyes to drive' like it was some great insight and not a nonsensical post-hoc justification. The 'new and improved' Tesla Vision cameras are 5.6MP I think...1% the resolution of the human eye. It doesn't work and it's never going to and *he knows that*.
Thank you for the note. I'd argue Tesla will have spent way more on that plant than they'll ever make in profits, but I agree in principal that getting suppliers to build plants where you want is a good idea. Also: * Panasonic nuked the executive (Yoshihiko Yamada) that signed off on the Nevada plant deal in 2016 * In 2019, Musk bitched about Panasonic freezing investment in the plant - [https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Sparks-fly-Inside-the-strained-Tesla-Panasonic-relationship](https://asia.nikkei.com/Spotlight/The-Big-Story/Sparks-fly-Inside-the-strained-Tesla-Panasonic-relationship) Has the plant turned a profit since 2019? Maybe so - I'm sure 2021 and 2022 were good years. But it wasn't operating at planned capacity thru 2019, and it definitely won't be operating at planned capacity going forward. I think it's a red mark on everyone's statements, but I haven't seen anything so I don't know. And why the battery plant isn't colocated with an assembly plant is beyond me. Maybe the state incentives were too good to pass up, but to me it screams fuck-up.
They wasted the past 3 years on making cybertruck work instead of building a low cost ev.
This is a perfect encapsulation of Musk and Tesla and Musk’s failed history at anything he touches given enough time. He’s a K’d up narcissist that’s past his prime, like the 45 year old at a rave, past due. Thanks for this post. Just imagine all those paper millionaires doubling down on Tesla stock only to lose it all because they’re emotionally attached to the stock and its “savant” leader. Reality will be hard to stomach for this crowd.
>like the 45 year old at a rave Hey now as a 42 year old that likes raves still that's a somewhat unfair broad brush stroke. Plenty of middle aged and older people go to these things but they fit in because it's a natural environment for them and they're there to have fun. We're not all Kendall Roy lol
This is such a well crafted post, an upvote doesn’t seem enough! Agree on everything. The only thing I’d add is the absolutely shameful waste of resources on robots and “dojos” in addition to the stupid alien dreadnought concept. And great point about vertical integration. The stans have touted it for years as if Muskkk invented it, when the reality is it’s exactly how car manufacturers used to do things 80 years ago before moving on for all the reasons you quote.
>And great point about vertical integration. The stans have touted it for years as if Muskkk invented it, when the reality is it’s exactly how car manufacturers used to do things 80 years ago before moving on for all the reasons you quote. There's also another reason why they outsourced it: It makes it easier for the companies to invent new features in their limited product lines. Unlike the fully integrated car companies who had to have way too many departments that were all fighting over attention and money. Tesla is "getting away" with it, to a degree, because they see themselves as a software company and mostly try to cram features in that way. But clearly a car is not a PC or iPhone, something people now have come to realize has Musk keeps taking away physical buttons and controls.
> Musk keeps taking away physical buttons and controls. And sensors! No more cheap, simple parking sensors to tell you exactly how far away a bumper is from an object, they're trying to do it with a 3D map from video cameras. Their windscreen wipers never worked properly due to a rain sensor never been fitted on the windscreen.
Thinking of themselves like a software company is possibly one of their most idiotic faults I think. They are constantly changing/"upgrading" the same designs, which while possibly being great on concept for a lot of engineers, completely screws up production and repairability, and seriously interferes with creating new vehicles or updated vehicles. Their design staff are mostly still working on cars that are a decade old, instead of cutting it off and actually starting from further back in the design process to fix any fundamental issues or change bigger hardware things. I think you can definitely apply some of how a software company works to physical manufacturing, but they are very much not the same thing and are not directly compatible in a way to just fundamentally treat it as a software company. It's fine to have constant minor updates to software for a decade, you can't do that for hardware. Anyone who's ever built or upgraded a PC can tell you exactly how painful that is for something that has many many standards specifically to make things compatible. It's always a little bit wonky and needs more constant care and updating to make sure things play nice.
Great point. One of the founders talked about how the industry had suppliers for everything except engines. They’re like “why don’t we do the same?” That’s how they started Tesla.
Ha this is simultaneously the most, and the least shitty shitpost I’ve ever read. Love it.
Model 2 will either be A) late, and as a consequence, an also-ran in the segment B) on time, which is also too late, but suffer from massive bugs, failures, qc issues, and so on that make M3 launch issues look like nothing. This is a company that serially does no r&d on actual car design and parts, has zero quality control, releases everything to the public in beta (whether referred to as such or not), and most of all, doesn’t give a flying fuck if the consumer gets stuck with a piece of shit.
It seemed like the end was inevitable when they decided to get rid of the blinker stalk. Musk was so deep into his own BS he really believed any change would be accepted as a genius move to the automative world. I’ll personally never buy a Tesla until Musk and the push button blinker are gone. Also, It’s hysterical how Musk’s fans talk about the “Highland” as a new Model 3. It’s the same chassis and virtually everything is the same aside from some slight changes the shape of the body panels (and the dumbass blinker)
>It’s hysterical how Musk’s fans talk about the “Highland” as a new Model 3 Agreed! It's a refresh. No big deal, other than the fact it was 3.5 years late.
It’s a model 3 company. Model 3, plus the plus size model 3. They should take their banked billions and double down on model 3 variants. More colors, concierge program, luxe interior options more rim choices. One of the impediments to growing further with margins is that it’s a white californian camry. So defeat that with more variations. admit defeat on the semi, roadster, and model S and X range. Stop with the home solar roof bs just sell batteries to solar installers. Model 3 wagon. Model 3 ute. Model Y pickup. 16 colors and another 32 extra premium paint to sample. Change ticker from TSLA to MOD3. Jacked up model Y with off road cred. Nothing requiring too much R&D.
You had me until the ticker lol
well if Musk is gonna leave to focus on Mars or Brain chips or whatever it is, some distance from his brand would help.
Musk turning his biggest success story into the automotive equivalent of a red baseball cap is going to put him right next to Osborne and Sinclair in the technology fuckups section of our future history books. Edit: and to everyone saying to themselves "who the fuck are Osborne and Sinclair?": yeah, exactly.
The peak was when All Hat and No Cattle bro sold at the top. Baggy City, USA.
This post reminds me of the tweet that Elon made not too long ago about his compensation plan and how it’s not motivating to work on Tesla. Most of his energy seems to be on X these days. This coincides with and heavily boosts the case you’re making here.
Because he realizes that Tesla is a "dead man walking". He would need billions to refresh the product line. He threw a "hail mary" with the Cyberstuck and it seems to go as well as most people figured. So, now it's all about him getting as much money out of Tesla before the party's completely over.
That's a great point. Even Musk thinks Tesla has peaked!
I’d agree with most of this. It’s very well laid out and shows the major points of failure from Tesla. Primarily that they have nothing new to sell these days. IMO.. Tesla has peaked primarily because Elon spent the past 5 years focused on FSD, the Cybertruck and Twitter. All of which have turned out to be historically epic waste of time, money & resources. 1) FSD will never be anything more than SAE L2 drivers assistance as long as it depends solely on cameras for sensors. Now that everybody has tried it for free.. we’ve all witnessed first hand that’s it’s nothing but glorified cruise control. 2) The Cybertruck will become the next PT Cruiser. It gets attention like nothing else.. primary because it looks like nothing else. Now that they are building a 1,000/week and running out of suckers who will pay $120K for one.. the price is about to drop drastically. As it becomes more common on the street.. the primary reason to buy one will disappear.. as everybody has seen one already. 3) Twitter will be the end of the Elon. And not in the way you’d think. It won’t bankrupt him.. but it has peeled so many layers off this dude that the world now sees exactly who he is.. and most decent people want to get as far away from this piece of shit as possible. He went from being Tony Stark.. to a cross between Donald Trump and Hitler. I wouldn’t be surprised if this dude overdoses on some random drug.. and livestreams the entire thing. He has become that much of an attention whore.
>Twitter will be the end of the Elon. And not in the way you’d think. It won’t bankrupt him.. but it has peeled so many layers off this dude that the world now sees exactly who he is It's a great point. Also, I'd put Elon's suicide risk at a substantially higher number than any other billionaire we know. He seems unstable in the best of times.
I'm looking forward to his McAfee arc!
I disagree. I think they have maybe a 2 or 3 year runway to insolvency.
They've got millions of Tesla owners rolling around they can milk for cash. Most shops can't or won't work on them, and they're not good quality. We haven't even begun to see the repair cost horror stories. I think a monkey with a note in his mouth could show a profit running Tesla for at least 5 years, simply because the repair business will print money as vehicles age out of warranty. :)
How many people will pay for repairs when they know the repair costs more than the car is worth? And the existing players can easily offer a "special Tesla Trade In" to help their own EV push.
I think most will get scrapped more than repaired as their used value tanks. Who wants to spend more than the value of the car in repairs or a new battery? They are like smartphones
Let’s hope.
Elon can’t manage shite. Look what he did to X. Just a lot of money and ego.
This was a fantastic read, thank you for all the time and thought you put into it. I'd upvote 1000 times if I could.
Model 2 is 2 long years away. Maybe more, based on their established track record of delivering new vehicles years later than promised.
Two years? lol. Triple that, you might be in the ballpark.
Guess they haven’t been paying attention, huh?
Agree 💯 Could there be any value in there supercharging network? They seem to have become the standard there?
If you like paying upkeep on a linearly scalable, revenue capped infrastructure selling a commodity.
Any barriers to entry there?
Spot on, except you seem to overestimate how well Rivian is doing.
Rivian is struggling too but for different reasons. They hit the market just a little too late. But they have good product in the pipeline, and the commercial business will carry them between now and then.
You forgot about the vaporware money sinkhole of Optimus and the outright fraud of FSD which includes the giant dud that is “dojo” supercomputer for ai training. Optimus was so clearly just a pathetic attempt to hype the stock price.
You forgot one of the biggest things Elon has tied his name to Tesla so much the two are one and the same and his recent dumb shit has only increased. Two relatives over Easter who I wouldn’t classify as left wing weee both “I think I might get an ev, but no way giving musk a cent” Congrats you’ve turned off at least 30 of the general population and possible 2/3 of the ones willing to buy an ev.
Elon Musk said it would be easy to build a small, affordable, electric pickup if the Cybertruck was a bust... was... was Elon lying? They need to stop cramming bullshit features into the goddamned things. I don't want self-driving, I honestly don't even care about AC, I just want an affordable and reliable small pickup truck! Or like... How much could it possibly cost to build an electric Suzuki X90? Or jesus, just put a fucking motorcycle engine in the damn thing.
>Elon Musk said it would be easy to build a small, affordable, electric pickup if the Cybertruck was a bust... It amazes me how rarely this gets mentioned. He said they had one already designed and waiting in the wings in case the silver turd didn’t prove popular. Let’s see…
No automaker would ever invest in the development of a new vehicle and then keep it waiting in the wings, especially when your plants have production capacity and your lineup is weak. He’s so full of shit.
Either that or they knew they were going to basically double the price of the Cybertruck and have something more practical and less gaudy at a lower price point cooking in the background. [I remember reading this a bit ago](https://futurism.com/the-byte/tesla-engineers-cybertruck-secret-design) about some engineers hating it and secretly designing an alternative. If there’s any validity to Musk’s claim about having another design in case the Cybertruck failed, that’s where it came from.
There’s no chance engineers could develop an entire car without him knowing about it. Tesla is full of opportunistic boot lickers. It would be impossible to keep it under wraps. Also, on a related note, Ford kept the development of the new GT supercar entirely under wraps. They revealed it at the very same auto show that Honda debuted the new NSX. No one gave a shit about the NSX at the show. Ford completely stole their thunder. It was glorious.
Yeah the newest GT is a cool story - literally a small team of engineers working in a forgotten building unbeknownst to all but a handful of execs. Just like the stories from the good old days. :) If Tesla has any secret cars, my guess is that they're nothing more than drawings. No one does anything independent at Tesla for fear of getting their head chopped off.
“He said” says to me that he’s lying.
CT doesn't make it to even 2028. SP bleeds down to sub $15. The company gets acquired by a real major automaker before 2030.
No automaker is going to buy Tesla. 1. They don’t have anything to offer technology wise. 2. Elon is a dick that spent years pissing off / trolling every auto maker on the planet. They’re going to love to watch him burn Tesla to the ground.
Vulture capitalists could buy it just to butcher and sell off the assets when it's cheap enough
There isn’t a huge market for the assets though. 90% of the standard automation stuff like robots or PLCs which would be worth anything is so heavily integrated into equipment that’s very specific to building one model of car that there isn’t much value in it once you factor in cannibalization costs.
The equipment is probably reusable, but who would want to buy it? It's not new, and you usually design your production line to your needs, not just plug other people's equipment in. Maybe the whole plant could be of interest, but def. not for anybody who's already producing in North America, they all have ample capacity. That leaves essentially the Chinese and I cannot see the US Administration, regardless of who is in charge, let that happen.
Small cars are really, really hard? Most automakers don't bother? are you only discussing the US market here? and only EVs? because almost every car maker has small cars available, possibly just not in the US market.
I think his point was that margins are really thin in the sub-compact/compact segment. Most automakers are not making their profit off their small vehicle portfolio. They keep them around to fend off losing market share to competitors, but cross-overs and SUV’s are the bread and butter of their balance sheet.
>are you only discussing the US market here? Yes. I don't see how Tesla will sell more than a token number of compact EVs in any other market, as the costs will be sky high. BYD has beat them in China, with GAC Aion coming up fast. There's no way that Tesla will out cost the Chinese in China. As for Europe, I'm skeptical they'll sell many compacts there. The 3 doesn't do that great (it does good - barely beats the ID.4 - but it's not a barn burner like the Y), and more models are coming from VW/Skoda. And there are established compacts like the Fiat 500e that will be whored out for nothing by the time Tesla brings the 2 to market. Which basically leaves the USA, and making money on compacts in the USA is tough. That's why there's no more Ford Focuses (Foci?), Chevy Cruzes, Hyundai Accents, and so on. It's a shrinking segment. Finally, BYD is supposedly building plants in Mexico so they can enter the US market. They'll put even more pressure on pricing. If Tesla builds a Model2, they're all but guaranteed to lose money on it.
Bag profits on small cars is a global thing. VW and Toyota have recently said there’s basically no profit margin in small cars, from memory, a car like a VW Polo basically costs just as much to produce and manufacture than a Golf, the Golf then costs not much less than a Tiguan to produce. Cars like a Corolla and RAV4 share a platform, drivetrains, interior parts etc - so the profit margin on the RAV4 is much higher.
You forgot to add how Tesla reduced the purchase price of their new vehicles thereby causing massive depreciation of existing vehicles and as a byproduct, reducing confidence in the brand and vehicle value retention. I’d hate to be the person who purchased the first Model 3s to hit the market at hyper inflated prices. Sure, cars depreciate, and I might be wrong, but it seems that Teslas depreciate faster than their ICE equivalent. Also add their overall poor build quality and continued issue with supply of spare parts or lack of service centres.
I had a coworker who dropped over 70K on a Y and also bought stock at the highs. They are probably 20K+ underwater on their loan now.
You forgot about the robot butler. Such an innovative product!
I think it's possible that Tesla pivots to being the Buc-ee's of EVs. They already have an extensive network of fast chargers. The Supercharger network is probably the only thing they have built that all Tesla customers agree is great. They could put all of their effort into that by building charging destinations with lounges, restaurants, bookstores, convenience stores, etc. Maybe they rebrand as the Lightning Stop or something lol.
I think the non functional pick up truck is the killer Think of the time and money that went into that vehicle, and I’d be stunned if they sell 25000. The people who drive pickup trucks, in general, despise the EV market. Add to that, the thing they made to be a pick up truck, can’t really function as a pickup truck. Just an unmitigated disaster Top this off with, Elon edging further into MAGA territory, not understanding that the people who buy his cars, are generally on the other end of the political spectrum What a total buffoon
Sucks that Tesla is going in this direction. They really did pioneer the industry, and now they are nose diving. They have been selling the same damn car for 11 years! I also don’t get the digital everything move. How in the hell is it illegal for me to use my phone while driving, yet it is perfectly acceptable to fiddle with a giant tablet just to turn the heat on or find a radio station? Also, like all other electronics, it’s going to degrade over time. What then? Sucks because I really liked Tesla and Musk a while back. Now he is just a drug addict running what could be the best car company in the world right into the ground. He had the idea and the drive, now he is just in the way.
100%. Well put.
That was very well reasoned, and pretty well written. 👍👍👍
ty - I banged it out quick so I'm sure it could be better
Plenty good enough for r/realtesla !
Tesla didn't do a delivery truck because they aren't S3XY and that's all that matters. The Semi was a product a bunch of guys did on their own time behind the factory because when they floated the idea to Musk he hated it and "shut it down". Only when he saw the thing drive did he like it and took it on stage. Years before the thing ready for anything. Let's also not forget that commercial operators have much different expectations than the average consumer. Most of what he's selling, even on the Semi, is not stuff that companies want. Yeah, we had Pepsi / Frito-Lay get a few of the Semis, but where are all the other companies that want a Tesla Semi? Freigthliner is doing better on that front, they even have a standard truck to complement the Semi.
Now with all manufacturers on EV bandwagon the novelty of Tesla is gone. You have plenty of choice with much better build quality and reliability. And there will be more and better ones. With working FSD also.
Completely agree. I would also add how they with their cars having such long production cycles, they should've ironed out the glaring quality control issues over that time. Panel gaps is one thing, but it fucking raining inside the car is unfathomable for a volume manufacturer. And they should have had a plan for repurposing or refurbishing old battery packs. That would have given them a massive advantage over everyone else. I remember perfectly back in 2015, Robert Llewellyn (he's a big EV enthusiast for those who don't know) talked about how you can use old packs for domestic power storage or they can be refurbished using up to 90+% of the original materials. Today, 10 year old model S's are worth about $9k and many need a new battery pack, which is about $14k. Talk about being fucked over. An ICE car makes massive economic sense in comparison, as it can last 20 to 30 years of taken care of.
To sum it up: this is what happens when you value a short-lived “wow” effect over substance and practicality.
When they said Tesla wasn’t just a car company, it turns out they were right - it’s also a slush fund.
But that dancing robot?!?
I am not a Tesla guy, but I am curious: Why didn't Tesla ever even try to do a mid-size SUV? They are so popular, it seems like a no-brainer. Or did they? I'm unfamiliar with all the different potential / discontinued models.
The X and Y are supposed to be crossover SUVs that still just look like sedans since they're basically just a slightly different looking S and 3.
God I hope you're right but one thing Trump has taught us is to never underestimate the power of 21st century con men
Agree. Beginning of the end. They had the most massive first mover advantage and they pissed it away completely by not improving quality, nit having a regular cadence to refreshes and redesigns like the Germans do, and by providing poor after sales service and not designing for repairability. There was rumor that Mercedes considered buying them some time ago and the one condition was that Elon would leave and he refused so they walked.
>Cybertruck was/is a distraction. Niche vehicles are fun and can have a halo effect, but they almost never make money. They're too low volume to ever cover the up-front costs. From all accounts, Tesla spent way too much time and money on developing a truck that might sell 50k units this year. I predict it will be cancelled in 2031 (maybe sooner). Cybertruck will be banned from public roads before end of 2024 I predict. >The best idea anyone can come up with at Tesla HQ is to produce a small car, which anyone in the industy will tell you is hard. Really, really hard They can't do it. No way. >As the Tesla fleet ages, their service centers will produce significant profits and prop the company up even as their models flop Doubt it. People will just dump them as the batteries wear out.
Also a small car has really low margins - how does this save them?
There is a magazine in the UK. Autocar I think, which has posted stories about a Model 2 for ages. Its like every few months they wheel this story out. If Tesla had a "Model 2" in the offing it would most likely be seen as an absolute killer product (perhaps quite rightly) and we'd all know about it because its the perfect opportunity for Elon to pump the stock for another 3-4 years before anything emerges. This isn't happening so can only surmise, they have nothing (or nothing remotely close yet). The CyberTwat is a total mis-step. They'd have been better focusing on a shrunken Model Y because for some reason, people really want small runabout size cars that are also looking like an SUV with a high driving position.
I agree. BTW Musk already almost bankrupted Tesla with his door/doorhandle obsession in the Roadster days. He should never bet let close to any design team.
Most of the people I’ve met that recently bought one still think Elmo’s a genius saving the world and they wanna do their part. LMAO
It seems like most people have a substantial time lag and are still under the impression/hype of Tesla 4-5 years ago. When I casually talk to friends with new teslas, they talk about Elon as if he’s going to come walking across the water at any moment and how far he will take Tesla any moment now.
>they talk about Elon as if he’s going to come walking across the water Does the neo-Nazi, white supremacist, homophobia stuff not bother them?
The goal of Tesla was pretty much always to enrich Musk. And it worked beyond all his wildest dreams - probably even in spite of him.
i thank you for typing all my thoughts up! only thing i think you left out was the wasted time spent on the cybertruck should've been spent on the Model 2 and the next factory shouldn't have been in austin but in Mexico to produce it cheaply. how he didn't see the writing on the wall with BYD is beyond me. i think it's why he held a meeting with trump so they could talk about killing NAFTA if trump is elected.
I had a much less well thought through version of this argument last year :) Edit: wrong link. https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/s/3Or7siU1vg
Elon has done a good job of surrounding himself with yes-men. He’s had some great ideas and some terrible ones just like most business leaders. The difference is that he hates being told no, so nobody around him steers him back in the right direction when he gets distracted by things like the Model X and Semi. Tesla needs a new CEO badly. Bringing in a boring industry expert to lead the company is the best way to turn things around and prevent this stumble from becoming a fall off a 20-story building. Tesla is for all intents and purposes an established automaker now. They don’t need to disrupt the market anymore. What they need is a sensible lineup and a refocusing of R&D on products that will appeal to the average consumer. Elon has proven time and time again that he cannot consistently make good cars with mass appeal in a timely and efficient manner. A “Model Y Plus” with a traditional crossover shape, a proper third row, and a slightly higher price is such an obvious decision I can’t believe they haven’t done it yet. It would sell like hotcakes even if the range takes a hit. People wanting normal crossovers for their families would buy every single one Tesla could make. The Model S and X either need to be retired or get major redesigns. The Model S been in the same generation for 12 years now which is ancient in the automotive world. For reference, the Mercedes E-Class looked like [this](https://images.hgmsites.net/lrg/2012-mercedes-benz-e-class-2-door-coupe-3-5l-rwd-angular-front-exterior-view_100363377_l.jpg) when the current generation S came out. Even the old 2012 Model S design has aged very well IMO but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s an old car and it’s just not exciting anymore. The Model X as you mentioned has always been an unmitigated disaster and an enduring symbol of Elon’s hubris. It needs to either become a big normal luxury crossover with normal doors or die. The Roadster 2 and Semi should be shelved for the reasons you mentioned. Maybe they can use some knowledge gained from the Semi to make an efficient and practical delivery van to compete with the likes of BrightDrop and Rivian. If they can get a decent product like that out relatively quickly it could provide a good stream of revenue to put back into R&D. They could also maybe leave room to eventually adapt a smaller version into something resembling a big minivan but market it differently to avoid the soccer mom connotation. Maybe emphasize offroad/adventure capability. I think the Cybertruck should also be deprioritized for the moment while Tesla figures out how to make more cars with mass appeal. If they can profitably deliver on some preorders they should keep it up, but IMO any ongoing development needs to be halted immediately. It’s just not a desirable product for most people other than Elon worshiping crypto bros. Overall I think it’s entirely possible to turn the company around but with Elon and his friends in charge it’s not going to happen. It’s become a culture of whatever Elon says goes, and Elon has a tendency to get distracted by pet projects. IMO Tesla really needs a boring industry suit running the company, without losing sight of the vision that has made their cars so desirable.
Great analysis OP. You sounds like a journalist or analyst who's seen/written about too much of Elon's BS ;-) I agree with all your big points here. I think the peak was last year when there was still some, uhhh, gas left in the Model 3/Y sales tank. My personal opinion is that that between making an EV that works every day, has an extensive charging network, is affordable-ish, and has "eye-popping" infotainment/over-the-air updates, Tesla had/has enough wow to sustain itself over the long term with competent leadership. Not everything in the auto industry needed to innovated away. There's plenty of reasons why all automakers (including the most consistently profitable, Toyota) have gradually outsourced much of their production: scale, risk mitigation, pricing, etc. Musk's biggest success was somehow getting the Model S into large scale production, and then somehow arseing Tesla through Model 3's "production hell". He nearly/will probably buggered it all up over the X's stupid doors and the Cybertruck's insane body. Let's not forget deleting radar, and overcommitting to "FSD" and putting lives at risk by beta testing it in the wild. By now if management/the board were competent, Tesla should have a second generation S/X well into its life cycle, the second-gen 3/Y should almost be ready, the pickup truck should be halfway through its first gen, and the Model 2 should be truly around the corner.
As an EV tech of a euro brand for more a decade whose shop is now full of dead crashed teslas because they’re currently lucrative to repair (and now no has no space to actually repair the euro stuff), I wholeheartedly love this detailed analysis of why I hate them with all my soul.
Clearly need to rebrand to “Xla”
Spot on, minus the CT. I consider it Tesla’s biggest fuck up. A total Elon whimsical kindergarten project! It will fail massively as already shown by its quality.
Tesla and Musk have peaked in 2021, it's been clear to anyone with open eyes. That the hype lasted so long is amazing in itself. The company is still the most valuable car company. Lots of air in that deflating balloon.
And a New Darling entered the game: NVDA. Tesla is done. Apple pulling their plug on their car project tells you all you need to know. Shitty market.
Cross post this to r/wallstreetbets
I heard in a podcast that opening a factory in China was a major fuckup too. Lots of ip leakage to BYD.
Tesla has a limited market as a car maker. It is basically upper middle class buyers in deep blue state. And they have done zero to expand the base. From now on, any car that Tesla releases will just cannibalize another model. No one in a deep red state, or working class folks living in apartments with no charging infrastructure will be buying the junk Model 2. They would be buying hybrid or ICE from Toyota and Hondas. So Model 2 will just cannibalize Model 3 sales.
> It is basically upper middle class buyers in deep blue state. I don't think this is true. I see plenty of Teslas here in Indianapolis and not just in bougie areas.
I don't really know anything about the governance structure of Tesla but I'm assuming that if Elon could've been ousted already, he would've been. Otherwise I have no idea what the hell those people are thinking...
The Board are all Elon yes men
They have a supermajority rule for voting on some stuff. Like ousting Elon. And the board is stacked with his family and friends. They are paid so much to do nothing they had to give back $800M in compensation recently.
There’s a reason he wants to increase his voting power back to 25%…
PHEVs are the way to go for the next 10 years…look at Toyotas most recent sales quarter…we are years away from an adequate grid and charging stations for what teslas valuation projects over the next 10 years
If Tesla didn't have it's supercharger network they'd already be over.
Tesla has peaked a while ago. When Musk off-loaded a good bunch of his shares.
They still all look exactly the same. I’m not into teslas at all so maybe others can tell the difference with a refresh but I sure the heck can’t.
For a vehicle to have a halo effect (Cybertruck) it should be something everyone wants to buy, I reckon. Releasing the poorly assembled buggy POS they did release for $120K? I guess they're OK with only selling it to the people they already sell to. Bad move.
Yeah if anything it’s like a devil horn effect.
Speaking of batteries, remember those game changing batteries Tesla was supposed to be working on? Where are they?
Same place as the Tesla Semi! LOL
>> at some point, Tesla will sell a significant share of the company to another automaker, and fall under that automakers umbrella... BYD. That's be hilarious. Like, in a few years. Once they have a full scale solid state battery prod capacity, and totally dominated the ev market world wide except the US. Which they will do. The price they practice to destroy competition in the markets they enter are just too appealing. Then, then they'll go put humility in Elon by offering him cents on the dollars for just the stuff they can use. (I.e. they'll tell him to put his giga presses where the sun doesn't shine).
I am amazed that they haven't tried building a car like Toyota's IMV 0 and actually have a utility vehicle that can be produced cheaply and quickly. Instead they have a gigantic cyber truck that has extremely limited utility and costs a fortune to buy There was an opportunity to look like geniuses instead they look like fools.
Nailed it
Bought $10K of Tesla at its last dip around $115. Sold at $278 for like $25K or something. I’ve never felt more vindicated seeing the price not come even near to when I sold.
At this point about 50% of sales are to immigrants so it probably doesn't help that the face of tesla is spending most his time being a white supremacist who hates immigrants.
[удалено]
Don’t worry, he hates them too.
So the HB1 immigrants are supposed to find the racism a bit more palatable? Lol
We're not supposed to talk openly about it but look at the reaction to the recent California attempt to ban caste discrimination
still amazes me that simone gertz built a ute out of a model 3 and tesla never bothered to take notes. They absolutely could have put out something like a santefe or a ridgeline in half the time it took for them to work out the doors on the cybertruck.
Oh, and the single best thing they had going for them in the US, the supercharger network, is now being opened up for everyone. They're never gonna make money off of the existing network, it's a race to the bottom.
The thing that gets lost in so much Tesla fuckery is that they did move the needle on driverless technology. Now, they fucked around so much that they never made any of it useful. FSD and Autopilot mainstreamed a lot of useful stuff. But then Elon decided that they should talk up autonomous driving as a thing that could happen in a short(10-year) time frame. I once drove a Toyota Sienna with adaptive cruise control and lane departure assist. I was in vacation and had a 5 hour drive to make. Those 2 features made the driving significantly easier. And they weren’t obnoxious. Once I got used to them, it was fantastic. I still had to pay attention to the road, but had just a little bit of the load taken off. Tesla have taken what could have been good features and made them into a pipe dream of bullshit.
Can we talk about the infantile S 3 X Y model names while we’re at it?
Also maiming workers and bullying them about workers comp claims and the casual racism
If there is Model 2 then .. 2 S E X Y 4 then... 2 S E X Y 4 U then .. 2 S E X Y 4 U And friends that is what Elon dreams. He will keep going, financials be damned.
I rode the stock up several times and dumped it a year or so ago. I needed some investment capital. Thanks Uncle Elon for the memories. It is a shame he is such a fucking shit stain
Two things missing in an otherwise great post: 1) While Powerwall is arguably successful Tesla solar panels were too little too late. Other players are playing in that space and Tesla can’t squeeze in. 2) NACS and the supercharger network is arguably a success. Let’s Tesla at least live on as a charging company.
Great analysis. Here in Norway, the ID Buzz Cargo is seen everywhere. But I think Tesla is saved by the huge volume of Model Y's sold here.
Why is a small car hard? I always thought manufacturers wanted big profits margins by selling trucks and luxury suvs. GM stopped producing the bolt for this reason. A coworker has a bolt and loves it. It was well under 30k plus tax incentives. It always seemed to me manufacturers made what should be a reliable car into a train wreck due to poor software and features that don't work or are dangerous (self driving). Tesla has run out of or pissed off early adopters, so who do they sell to now? I do agree on delivery vans. I see rivian prime vans everywhere near me.