Those people he worked hard to elect did other things to harm Tesla besides making the cars more expensive. Over the last few years about 30% of Tesla's profits were from selling emissions tax credits to car companies that make ICE cars. Those other companies needed the credits because not enough of the ICE cars met EPA emissions standards. But now those emissions standards are no longer enforced, and so there is no need for them to buy credits.

The people he worked to elect also promised, and have been implementing, policies that will make electricity more expensive in many areas. There were already several states where electricity was expensive enough and gasoline not too expensive so that a Prius there would actually cost less to operated in energy costs per mile than an EV. Rising electricity prices could make that true in more places. (And yes, I'm talking about home electricity prices. For people who do not have adequate home charging and rely on commercial charging a Prius beats an EV on energy costs in most states). That too is probably going to cost Tesla some sales.

Where are you getting these stats/are you _sure_ they’re not US-only stats? Any actual data I find shows a healthy increase in sales on the order of 25% 2023-2024, maybe 20% 2024-2025. (Eg https://open-ev-charts.org/#electric-sales:quarter). Possibly you have a really unusual personal definition of the words ‘virtually identical’ and ‘slump’?

End result is he has neither side and neither the trucks nor the sedans are selling well!

A lot of people have a very strong incentive to attach themselves to wealthy/powerful people, and then try to manipulate their understanding of the world and events to their favor.

It's a very old story

If he hadn't been born heir to the wealth of African colonizers' emerald mines, there's zero chance he would have ever become rich or famous.

When Howard Hughes started insisting that all his peas be the same size, no-one thought he was courting a market; he was just crazy.

Anyway, still don't get why Theranos failed to pivot to something else when they couldn't do the single drop blood thing and failed. Was there something contractual in their investment rounds? Was it because they were into healthcare? Was it because she was trying to be Steve Jobs instead of Musk? It seems to me that Elizabeth Holmes could have promised that the test are coming next year and just release repackaged Siemens machines with a cloud integration and pretty UI and figure out products down the line and keep promising that single drop tests are coming next year. Then pivot to AI and robotic.

Edit: I think I forgot that “\s”

This is why the market clearly does not care about the news about Tesla sales and it was likely priced in.

But again, feel free to zoom out of the Tesla chart.

1) looking like Tesla is easily two year, probably more behind everyone else

2) the others are seeing real SOTA performance ... and are not planning products because they think it won't work, or at least not yet

I must say ... really reminds me of the Tesla autopilot situation.

And I'd add 3) the really impressive robots, ie. the ones based on Boston Dynamics, are not based on ML algorithms. They are augmented by AI, not running actual AI algorithms in the control loop. The founder was an electrical engineering professor who moved into a CS direction (you know the sort of person who insists not just writing control loops in realtime, in assembly, but actually develops custom hardware for those algorithms. And I don't mean FPGAs or DSPs, I mean actual circuits)

So the entire approach of Tesla (and a lot of other startups) could be very wrong, and could very well be 5 theoretical breakthroughs removed from being feasible.

It’s really hard to do sarcasm online in a way which is clear, still funny, and doesn’t normalize beliefs you oppose or make it easy for people to dismiss you with the “both sides” fallacy. It’s been a staple of internet humor for decades but I now think that was a mistake.

While Musk being a loony is certainly making things worse for them, even without that you’d expect them to be in a bad place.

Can you think of any non tech business where a P/E like this was not a signal of corporate diseased thinking?

I could be wrong. I hold BE shares.

cult

PE is measuring the past, stock price is measuring the future.

I'm not saying TSLA PE makes sense, but if people expect earnings growth then in theory it could.

I wonder what it’ll be next. Betting on ‘quantum’ something, which has the great benefit of being rather vague.

I have more than a few complaints of current EVs manufacturers outside of Tesla. Every manufacturer has been very slow to adopt NACS. I wouldn't consider a new car without that it and I will absolutely not accept an adapter solution. I don't trust legacy car manufacturers even manufactures like Mercedes that they will keep the car updated and instead use that as a way to push me to purchase a new car. One of the reasons that pushed me to Tesla back in 2018 was they kept their cars updated and provided new features over time. They also had a track record of not changing the looks of their cars that often which I very much prefer. An EV can last significantly longer than ICE vehicles and so you need the ability to not only support the cars for longer through software but also by doing new computer hardware drop in replacements. I want the ability to extend the life of my car not replace it. I have absolutely zero interest in lease deals which every manufacture and dealer push with EVs because I don't drive very far in the city so I keep cars for a long time with low miles. I fundamentally HATE the push from buyers who desire large batteries for range when they don't even use it which has resulted in many of the smaller cars to not be sold here in the US. This is also preventing desired cars from even being made. If Ford would have made the Maverick an EV instead of wasting their time on the F-150 Lightning it would have significantly cost them less to develop and their issue would have been keeping them in stock.

The EV market is absolutely frustrating. Tesla brought these vehicles mainstream and for the most part outside the Cybertruck they have decent products where they have shown willingness to support longterm. Everything else made them undesirable.

your definition of "decent products" is different from mine.

15 People Have Died in Crashes Where Tesla Doors Wouldn’t Open [0, 1]

0: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-12-22/tesla-doo...

1: https://archive.is/VpB1H

The incidents people are talking about with cars with electric locking or latching mechanisms I believe are where the door cannot be unlocked because the locking or latching mechanism depends on other systems in the car, typically the 12V power system.

A collision that takes down the 12V system but causes no damage whatsoever to the door or frame can then leave you with a door that would open just fine if you could unlock it, but you can't unlock it because it has no power.

One of their examples involves a driver who called 911 post-crash and reported they couldn’t open the door. Teslas have mechanical door handles on the interior of the front doors. It’s not hard to find. In fact, it’s so obvious that passengers unfamiliar with the car tend to use it rather than the button.

So what happened here? Did he never try the mechanical handle, or did he try it and it somehow didn’t work? Given how easy the handle is to find, I’d bet on the latter. And there’s nothing about this which makes me think your CR-V’s latch would have fared any better.

Did Bloomberg distinguish between “occupant would have been saved if there had been a mechanical handle” and “occupant would have been saved if the structure hadn’t jammed the door”? It doesn’t sound like it.

The basic fact is, people do get stuck inside crashed cars for all sorts of reasons. Electronic door handles add a new failure mode. But I’d like to know how the aggregate incidents compare, not just declare to be dangerous because it’s an additional failure mode.

This is not even remotely close to what I'd call "so obvious." The fact that to some people the button is even less obvious than the nearly-invisible "emergency" handle is not credit to your argument, I think.

There's a reason this video exists, and there is a reason many rideshare drivers with Teslas have stickers all over the place explaining how to use the thing. I suspect that's all related to the reason that Tesla is being investigated for trapping people.

You're right, it would require thorough analysis to fully bottom out (that's what investigations are for)

I have one of these cars. I’ve never had a passenger who couldn’t immediately open the front door from the inside. I have had most of them try to open it the “wrong” way.

wait. waitwaitwaitwait.

previously, you said:

> Teslas have mechanical door handles on the interior of the front doors. It’s not hard to find. In fact, it’s so obvious that passengers unfamiliar with the car tend to use it rather than the button.

I'm having trouble believing those two things are both true.

are you seriously saying that Teslas have an "emergency" mechanical door handle...and it's placed in an obvious spot where passengers tend to grab for it...but using it sounds an alarm and scrapes up the car?

It’s a silly design choice. But not, in my opinion, a dangerous one.

three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and whataboutism from Tesla apologists

from the article I linked:

> In an effort to take a comprehensive and systematic look at this issue, Bloomberg sought to examine every fatal EV crash in the US involving a fire. From there, the reporting centered around cases in which there was documented evidence that victims had survived initial impact, and that nonfunctional electric doors had impeded either the occupants’ efforts to escape or rescuers’ attempts to save those inside the vehicle.

this has nothing to do with the Jaws of Life. this is about the car catches fire and the door handles stop working.

right...if a car gets T-boned, that might jam the doors such that they couldn't open. that's true of every model of car.

I have a non-Tesla car, with "old-fashioned" manual door handles. if I got rear-ended, and my driver's side door wasn't physically damaged, I can reasonably expect that my door handle still works, right?

on a Tesla, that's not true. a rear-end collision that damages the electrical system can cause doors that are physically undamaged to stop working. that is a ludicrous design flaw.

You can still get out in a Tesla in that situation. There’s a mechanical release. Depending on the model, it’s either the regular handle, or a big obvious thing that people tend to pull instinctively instead of pushing the button.

The issue here is the exterior handles. Those are only electronic.

One of the reasons I’m skeptical of this reporting is that it doesn’t seem to distinguish. They talk about conscious, mobile drivers being trapped after a crash. If that happens, it’s not because of electronic door handles.

There are a number of possible reasons that any car's doors might not work. Tesla, Ford, Toyota, doesn't matter. Those are just due to the laws of physics. No one is disputing that.

Teslas have an additional reason that their doors might not work in an emergency. And given the frequency with which it sounds like this is happening, it may be much more common in an emergency scenario for this particular situation to occur than for any of the others.

No one is claiming that any other car on the road is 100% safe in all situations. They are pointing out that Tesla has this extra, totally unnecessary, method of killing its occupants. Dying in terror. Trapped.

What you're doing is effectively like saying, "It's not bad that Evil Water™ With Cyanide kills you! People drown in water all the time! You can even die by drinking regular water if you drink too much! You really shouldn't focus on the cyanide in Evil Water™ With Cyanide!"

To the best of my knowledge (and I would be willing to bet money on it), no one in the history of the world has died from the cyanide in almond milk. Despite many millions of cartons of almond milk being sold and consumed every year.

A nontrivial number of people are known to have died specifically because of this failure of Teslas. It is not a hypothetical. It is a real, measurable danger.

Is that number high enough for any given person to choose not to get one? Well, it's high enough for me. And I think that arguing that it shouldn't be even a consideration, as you appear to be, is, at best, disingenuous, and at worst, actively risking people's lives for the sake of supporting a company you happen to like.

An absolute shitload of people die in cars every year. It’s the most dangerous thing most of us do. I want to know what the increment is here. How does it compare to, say, my refusal to cut hamburgers out of my diet?

I’m not arguing it shouldn’t be a consideration. I’m arguing it should be considered as part of the totality of the evidence.

I can guarantee you that there are cars out there much more dangerous than a Tesla. (Anybody want a used Pinto?) If you were ever presented with that choice, I bet you’d have no problem understanding that the one with the electronic door handles is the better choice. And yet when I try to apply this idea more generally, I get attacked, belittled, and accused of risking people’s lives.

Tesla, for all their problems, is the only manufacturer you can count on prioritizing and long term updating their EVs.

And the Chinese manufacturers, of course. If you haven’t been outside the US lately you don’t realize just how popular BYD is everywhere but here. I’m in Thailand at the moment and they are everywhere. Mexico too.

Is that a euphemism for having an aging lineup? Not releasing anything new -- ??? --> must be prioritizing (huh?) and long term updating old ones?

It's not really that great of a car. I mean it's driving an iPad, basically. Also, they've been plagued with reliability issues eg limiting how much you can adjust your seat because they're so prone to breaking [1].

Also, the Cybertruck is an unmitigated disaster in practically every way.

> EVs are very much a luxury item

In the US, this is kinda true but largely due to trade barriers. Things would be very different if we could buy BYD cars.

Charging is part of the problem too combined with how much Americans drive. But Americans partly drive so much because there's practically zero robust public transit infrastructure that forces people to drive, we build houses really spread out and a common charging network isn't a state priority like it is in China.

> very slow to adopt NACS

So, Tesla's Supercharger network was the only moat Tesla had for their cars. Even now, I believe Tesla charges third-party users significantly more [2].

> An EV can last significantly longer than ICE vehicles

I see what you're saying but battery degradation is a serious problem over time, such that EV depreciation is super high.

Also, some ICE vehicles are super reliable and some of those are weirdly banned in the US. I'm thinking specifically of the Toyota Hilux. Japanese cars in general were banned (after lobbying from the auto industry) because of their extreme reliability and low price.

> I have absolutely zero interest in lease deals

Each to their own but IMHO leasing is the smartest way to currently "own" an EV, given the depreciation.

[1]: https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-now-monitors-how-ofte...

[2]: https://insideevs.com/news/710822/tesla-supercharger-cost-fo...

Do you own one? I've had one for 6 years and I've never had issues with it, it's the best car I've ever owned. I've driven lots of other EVs, and none are close.

> Things would be very different if we could buy BYD cars.

We've had BYDs and other EVs for many years in Australia, and EVs are still a luxury item.

> Each to their own but IMHO leasing is the smartest way to currently "own" an EV, given the depreciation.

I've never understood Americans and leasing. Aside from specific styles of novated/chattel leases (where there is a tax benefit), leasing a car seems to almost always be a worse deal.

Australia is much closer to the US than China in terms of public transit and EV infrastructure. In China, now the majority of new car sales are EVs. There are chargers everywhere and much of the time you don't need to drive because any decently sized city has robust and cheap public transit.

Australia isn't as car-dependent as the US but it's honestly not that far off. Perth, for example, is akin to Los Angeles in car dependence as well as cars owned per capita.

> I've never understood Americans and leasing.

It's complicated. It's not strictly better but it's not strictly worse either. It depends on if you want or need to drive a relatively new car vs holding on to a car until it falls apart.

Some will talk down leasing because new cars depreciate the most in the first 2-3 years, which is true. But leasing gives you the option of just handing it back or paying the balloon payment if the car hasn't depreciated as much as predicted (and priced in). This happened in the pandemic when car prices skyrocketed and, for example, used trucks were selling for at or above the MSRP of a new car for the same model because you simply couldn't buy the new one (at or below MSRP).

It's definitely not the density of major Chinese cities, but all major cities in Australia have plenty of EV chargwrs and public transport.

> Australia isn't as car-dependent as the US but it's honestly not that far off. Perth, for example, is akin to Los Angeles in car dependence as well as cars owned per capita.

You've picked the most isolated city in the world as your example, with a heavy lean to FIFO workers and disposable income. But even going with it, Perth has high public transport usage [1] and has halved its costs for patrons in the last year [2]. This was an election promise and important to people.

I'm sorry, but I think you're pulling things out of the air here, what you're saying simply isn't accurate.

1. https://www.pta.wa.gov.au/news/media-statements/public-trans...

2. https://www.wa.gov.au/government/media-statements/Cook%20Lab...

I'm sorry but if you think ANY Australian city has good public transit, it's because you simply haven't been to any city with good public transit. Pick pretty much any major city in SE Asia and compare.

> You've picked the most isolated city in the world as your example

Irrelevant. Public transport is within a city. It doesn't matter if that city is 100km from another city or 3000km.

> with a heavy lean to FIFO workers

FIFO workers account for <3% of Perth's population so irrelevant.

> Perth has high public transport usage

It does not. If someone works full-time or is a student they account for about 400 boardings per year. At 148M annual boardings that's 370,000 people averaged out in a city of 2.3M. And I don't even know how they're accounting for transfers (eg bus to train, ferry to bus or train).

All Australian cities have commuter oriented public transport where the goal is just to go between the CBD and home so that's what most people do. As soon as you want to go anywhere else, you have to go via the city, which kills its usefulness.

Also, all of these cities have substantially grown in recent decades to the point that they have significant public transport deserts. So inner Sydney has relatively OK train support but inner Sydney is horrendously expensive to live in. The majority of Sydney's population will live in Western Sydney now, which by comparison is a desert.

So you'll also find that even when people do use public transport, a lot of them are driving to a train or bus station first.

So, even if you can go into the city for work and you choose to do so, you still have a car because you want to go places that aren't work.

I didn't pick Perth randomly. I picked because I know Perth from back when Padbury was the limit of the city in the north and when Rockingham (let alone Mandurah) were basically separate cities and not just part of a seamless unplanned urban sprawl like it is now. I've known Perth from a time when more than half the suburbs that exist now didn't exist.

But what's clear to me is you simply don't know what good public transport is. Go to New York, even London, a whole bunch of European cities, any major developed city in SE Asia or pretty much any city in China (or even Japan) then get back to me.

LA has a rail system too. And buses. And they go downtown. In spite of that the density and the rates of car ownership and cars per capita are pretty similar to Perth. Or Greater Sydney. Because all of them are heavily car dependent.

Are they very heavily tariffed? You can get electric cars made by Dacia (European), Hyundai (Korean) and BYD (Chinese) for under 20k in Ireland. That’s well under the average cost of a new car (40k); hardly luxury.

(Granted, I assume average distance driven is _way_ higher in Australia than Ireland, which may make shortish-range cars less viable.)

EDIT: Was curious, looked it up.

> The BYD Atto 1 [also known as the Seagull and Dolphin Surf in some markets] is the cheapest electric car in Australia starting from $23,990 plus on-road costs

That’s 13k euro. There is no world in which that is a luxury car.

Whilst it may have an impact and change it, the fact remains currently EVs are significantly above a normal base model new car price in Australia and this has made them a relatively luxury item.

Also for clarity, I am stating it is a luxury item - i.e outside the spending of a normal household, not a luxury car, which has its own definitions in Australia.

120 sec of usage in 300 sec is plenty. If they did 599 sec in 600 sec, you'll still complain because you are here to complain; you are not a user.

Car letting me know I'm stressing the motor is a good thing.

Because that's the kind of logic you're implying about your car – that it's more convenient driving somewhere once a week rather than just plugging it in at night before bed.

Now if you reframed the question and said "visit once a week to charge your phone but you wouldn't have to think of the battery or charger rest of the time".. doesn't seem half bad.

I think apartment complexes are where EVs have a bigger problem. What's needed to make EVs a lot more convenient is more L2 charger (or even L1 chargers) in a lot more locations.

I suspect I spend less time plugging in my car when I get home than you do filling up with petrol per annum. Having to stop at a service station is objectively less convenient than plugging in when you get home.

How does the above fit into your "bot" hypothesis?

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2026/01/02/...

I imagine many of their privately held beliefs are just as horrible but they’re not dumb enough to say them publicly.

That's correct. And therefore I don't boycott their companies.

Publicly signalling that you support awful shit is more likely to make that world a reality than quiet private support.

I don't recall that he brought a mob of script kiddies with him to sack the government, threw any Nazi salutes at Nixon's inauguration, or slunk out of town with a literal black eye, though.

People act like "bad but hiding it" is no different from "bad and not hiding it," but the former is literally identical to being decent. The only scenarios in which it's not identical are those in which they failed to hide their badness!

I don't give a fuck how evil someone is in the dark little corners of their mind, so long as they show up as a decent person in all their interactions with the outside world.

What other CEOs are this level of pure garbage? I can't think of a single one. (And that's before we even bring up the people his policies have directly killed: https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-f...)

Why would you support a company run by someone stupid enough to say their polarising beliefs publicly? It doesn't inspire confidence in their judgment. Even if you personally agree with their polarising beliefs, you have to question their decision making process in why they chose to deliberately make them public, damaging the company. If they're stupid like that, maybe they've made stupid decisions with their products (which in Elon's case, yes, he has, and not just at Tesla).

Here’s an interesting quote from Musk: “The ability to predict the future is the best measure of intelligence.”

Based on Musk’s own standard of intelligence, he is a grade A moron.

Tesla should have had a new car model by now. Something comparable to BYD's midrange cars. Or a useful delivery van. Or a new roadster. Or something.

For some reason, most of the Cybertrucks seem to have disappeared. A year ago, they were common on Silicon Valley roads. Now I see more driverless Waymos mid-peninsula than Cybertrucks. It's been raining lately; maybe people don't want to take them out.

As for the value being in self-driving, there's no moat there. Ford and Mercedes have SAE level 3 systems about as good as Tesla's. Several Chinese auto companies have systems. Toyota is partnering with Waymo. Level 3 is just another car option.

It's 2026. Where are the Musk-promised Robotaxis? Do they have anything, anywhere, in revenue service with no driver in it? In this area, there is a moat, and Waymo is behind it.

There are at least eighteen companies with demo humanoid robots good enough to have Youtube videos. Again, Tesla has no moat. As far as I know, there are zero autonomous humanoid robots generating revenue. Autonomous human robots are going to be a thing, but probably about 5-10 years out.

And the door problem. There was no US regulation prohibiting a car door that can't be opened in an emergency because nobody was ever dumb enough to make one. Regulations are written in blood.

Consumer Reports: "On a newer Tesla Model Y, remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket, press the red tab to remove an access door that reveals a mechanical release cable, and pull the cable."

Musk is getting paid how much for this?

Maybe people no longer want to be seen in one.

Musk's politics and the fact that Cybertrucks didn't live up to any of its hype and turned into a heap of recalls didn't turn out to be the flex people thought it would be.

I expect this decline to continue indefinitely. I also wonder when the stock price will reflect the company's past and projected results.

This is the $1T question. What happens when Tesla finally gets valued as a car manufacturer, with side businesses in cheap but unreliable solar, and over-priced grid storage?

The self-driving car boondoggle has persisted for the better part of a decade, without a come-to-Jesus moment on the stock price. The pivot to robotics is clear fraud, yet retail stock investors are all to willing to keep the stock price high.

Musk has to lose a lot more reputation with the public before Tesla stock starts being valued based on the reality of Tesla.

At least that seems the current story. And I mean if it lives up to it's promises, it might. I surely would have a need for a robot servant. But I won't preorder as I a) don't trust it will work as promised b) if it actually works out, I still don't trust Elon enough to put a robot in my home that he controls.

Optimus will face the Roomba problem. Cheaper robots from competitors will destroy any profit margins, and there's zero moat.

And the problem with shorting Tesla has been apparent for years: the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

That said, robots in factories are a no-brainer, you gain a massive margin over human operated manufacturing, and the technology is effectively at an alpha level of rollout, with more or less full capability of doing any particular thing any human can do, with near perfect repeatability and millisecond granular control, and the effective cost at scale is pennies per year over whatever salary you'd have to pay a human. For municipal jobs, you can get multiple robots to do things like street cleaning, building maintenance, cleaning, facilities maintenance, guard patrols, and so forth. There are all sorts of large scale deployments that are much more compatible with low-trust , low-privacy issues than home robot butlers, and those widely deployed factory and janitor bots will help finance the robo-butlers.

Imagine robot street repair crews that operate on a 24/7 basis, with self driving cars that go around town searching out potholes and other safety issues for the robots to fix. Neighborhood robots that shovel snow or clean out water drains, or trot out with safety cones if a hazard appears. That's millions and millions of dollars in savings year over year compared the cost of paying humans, and it gets rid of the perverse incentives that lead to things like sub-standard materials being used, so that you have to replace materials every year in order to keep the union teams employed doing overpriced roadwork.

Robot contractors that learn from Amish techniques to build a well-made house inside 48 hours, or Earth Day citywide robot blitzes where the robots clean everything, and so on. The economics of things that people won't do, or aren't worth paying to do, change radically when it's a mindless robot's time being allocated.

Even if it's not Optimus, the robots are basically here, the next decade is gonna be full of fun politics and figuring out how to cope with radical change.

I agree, but we might be in a minority here. Otherwise roombas etc. would not have had their success. Children toys with microphone and always on connection to the company. Cameras as part of a big network. Cars that can be remote controlled any time, ..

US politics is on the "cannot let China win the AI race" side of things, as well as the "cannot have a chinese/corporation/government robot spy in your bedroom" side of things. Cheap Temu speakers with microphones that phone home, or chargers that connect to wifi for botnets, and so on, that sort of abstract IoT threat doesn't resonate. Commander Data doing your dishes feels like a person in your home.

Then again, the people are regarded.

How does it get rid of perverse incentives? The unionised human workers use sub-standard material so they can do (and charge for) the same repair next year, but the owners of the robots do not have the very same incentive?

Is it because humans are mendacious, fallible, and corrupt, while Elon is honest, reliable, and not motivated by money?

The stock lives purely on hype, and with the EV market going down the tubes, Optimus (really AI) is the new hype story. Except that Elon is actively stealing Tesla's data for his own company (xAI). He just helps himself to Tesla's GPUs, technology, and data. Tesla didn't bid out their data. They didn't sell it. Elon plundered it into a company in which he owns a larger share.

I'd never buy that stock. I'd short it in a heartbeat if I had any hope of remaining solvent longer than the market remains irrational.

Not because his presence makes it a better business, but it does make it a better stock.

They are the 14th largest car maker in the world by annual units sold, and almost in the top 10 by annual revenue from cars.

Surely that is good enough to maintain a market cap that is 50% higher than the combined market caps of the top 10 (Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai-Kia, Renault-Nissan, General Motors, Stellantis, Honda, Ford, BYD, and Suzuki)?

Across all models Tesla sold around 1.8 million in 2024, with 1.2 million of those being Model Ys.

Toyota across all models sold 10.8 million in 2024. Toyota sold more cars just in the US in 2024 (2.3 million) than Tesla sold in the whole world.

But don't forget that they have truly unique skills as a company that none of those other companies can pull off: they have shrinking sales even when focusing on the only segment of cars that's growing: EVs.

That shows unique grit.

I would love to short it but have avoided doing so because I didn't feel like I could outlast the fanatics, which seems to have been a wise decision in hindsight.

Let’s be realistic in our portrayal here.

Personally, as a Tesla owner I'm concerned that if my car gets totalled I'll get pretty lowballed on the insurance settlement.

The kinda obvious answer there is to use your insurance settlement to buy another highly-depreciated Tesla. Insurance settlements are intended to let you get a comparable replacement as determined by market value. (The alternative is that if your Tesla gets totalled, it's a get-out-of-jail-free card to get a non-Tesla.)

Sales to that demographic are approximately zero and will remain there until every shred of Elon is removed from the company's fabric.

For example, model s had a dashboard. Model 3 comes alone without one, and crams all the status on the left side of a central screen. It had fewer stalks and cheapened less friendly steering wheel controls.

ok, so model S is more expensive and you get more stuff, right? But then the updated model s goes from 4 stalks to zero and gets a smaller central screen.

Edit: I mean focus solely on. It's a boring technology prone to disruption, used everywhere

Lots of other companies with far more experience and expertice is battery research, development and manufacturing.

I won't buy a Tesla.

And - these days - I don't need to.

Edit: yeah he has a big stock multiplier factor, but then consider valuation from actual future innovations. Inflated stock price is just that: vapor.

They clearly can't compete against BYD and a company that relies on sanctions to survive doesn't seem like it is long for this world never mind the crazy multiples people are willing to pay for Tesla

If you're comparing the Atto 1 it's $26k for 200 range, 0-100 in 11.1. Not really a fair comparison.

I don't think so. In my immediate family we've got a combined six cars and one EVs. If we all had to replace our cars today we'd probably be looking at 4/6 EVs. But cars have long lives, and none of our cars are slated for imminent replacement.

2. The Cybertruck is no F-150.

3. The CEO built the brand on a cult of personality, and then went fascist. It's a free country, be an asshole if you want, and pay the price personally, whatever. But don't link your asshole personality to the brand that you and thousands of your employees depend on to make sales.

It's just not difficult to understand at all.

The electric F-150 is also no F-150, and was cancelled [1]. Electric just doesn't work for towing yet, with the range and charging compromise.

[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/12/15/nx-s1-5645147/ford-discontinu...

F-150 buyers are not bold visionaries, and that's ok. They are more Kelly Clarkson.

The Ford customers Tesla could have targeted are the ones who never tow anything, want to know they could put a 4x8 sheet of plywood in it (but never do), and who want lane following, good cupholders and seat heaters. That was probably 5% of the F-150 market, which is such an enormous market that even a 5% slice would have been bigger than what the Cybertruck market turned out to be.

Of course you can add a lot of functionality based on computers, but most people just want to go from A to B, and the economics of adding unnecessary features doesn't play out.

Not recognizing the US's massive wealth and strength, and climbing down the value chain to imitate China, is a recipe for the decline of the US, which is being followed today.

We're moving in the opposite direction of ensuring that capital is allocated productively in said industries by destroying regulations and agencies like the CFPB, FTC, SEC, and by giving platforms and political power to the cheaters and fraudsters who have infested the Republican party.

>LLMs are going to drop the price of informational value.

Maybe... maybe not? I'm not going to try and predict the future wrt AI, personally.

So there isn't one reason, there is a ton of reasons.

It's not irrecoverable but it's bad. I honestly hope there is some wake-up moment for Americans when they realise that their leaders have been selling them out for decades now.

Now, a mere year later, all that economic advantage has been destroyed, the factories are in a precarious position because the entire tax situation was changed underneath them, and the US decided to give up its leadership position on the international stage and hand over all its prior soft power to China, which is now ascendant due to US weakness.

Trump is the cause for all the major weakness of the US as a whole, though Musk can stake a small claim with parts of it such as DOGE. Tesla is on the rocks because of years and years of mismanagement forcing product development into useless, undesirable, and profitless products. The only new product in ages is the cybertruck which was an obvious flop for anyone not addled by Special K, and Full Self Driving and robotics and Tesla taxis are full on vaporware.

The USA will be on the rise again when in returns to its distinctive roots: investing heavily in science and tech, enabling entrepreneurs rather than oligarchs, and eliminating corruption on the government level that chooses favorites rather than letting the best company and products win.

Good thing we’re torching our relationship with both!

While I don't know the exact level of vitriol involved, I can confirm similar themes to a perhaps lower temperature were present at all of the locations within the UK where I have lived over the years.

Except Aberystwyth. But that's because there's nothing noteworthy within 30 km of Aberystwyth.

UK has a thing with football teams: I walked the wrong way once in Sheffield as a football stadium emptied and one group violently ambushed another while I was in the middle of them both. While a police helicopter was overhead.

Back two generations and switching denomination of Christianity was scandalous for some of my relatives.

My Welsh university got me some local stereotype jokes at my expense, ac mae yna bobl o Saeson sy'n amheus iawn o bobl o Gymru yn siarad Cymraeg.

They were threatening my grandparents, for being French catholic. They got local governments to force French speaking communities to stop speaking french. My mother learned french as her first language. I did not. I am not fluent.

It's always here, but it always somehow gets turned into a national thing. It shouldn't be hard for americans to understand, but lots of people keep leaving "And it was your supposedly upstanding in society neighbor who put on the hood and claimed you were poisoning the pure blood of the local trailer park" out of the history book.

  GM +5.1
  Toyota +8.4
  Ford +5.6
  Stellantis -4.4
  Tesla -8.9
  Mercedes -10.5
  VW -12.5