Elon’s antics certainly haven’t helped things, but the real story is legitimate alternatives finally entering the market from multiple OEMs (especially BYD) and Tesla’s absolute face plant on model development.
A large portion of Tesla’s sales were driven by a lack of decent alternatives if you wanted a BEV. Today that’s no longer the case, especially in Europe and China.
And instead of pushing for a new small Model 2 with global appeal, they launched Cybertruck and Cybercab. Meanwhile Model S and X are just plain old. This is becoming a case study in 1) squandering a market lead, and 2) the danger of making devil’s bargains with China.
Model 2 might seem like the sensible move, but it is also a capitulation to the idea that Tesla is just a “car company” and has to compete on price and is destined for the inevitable race to the bottom with the likes of byd in an increasingly commoditized market.
Cybercab is doubling down on the speculative fiction future that fuels stock valuations that are out of line with the rest of the industry.
You are right. However, I think I agree with the vision, too bad its Musk+Tesla. I do think in the end we won't each own a car.
It's so incredibly inefficient to have individually owned cars just rotting away on the side of the road and in car parks waiting for their owner.
It would be so much better for everyone if no one, except enthusiasts, would own a car. And you could just grab an "auto taxi" wherever you are within a few minutes instead. Perhaps someday...
I think Musk should be more bold in his vision here. What if instead of a cybercab that seats just two people, we could come up with an even bigger one that seats many people at once? And then maybe we could have it drive on a predictable, efficient route that covers multiple popular destinations, instead of just going from point A to point B. Has anyone considered building something like this?
They literally did this in the announcement for the cybercab. Look up the “Tesla Robovan”. It was clearly a proof of concept, but in theory it’s a good idea. Claimed to be able to seat 20 people.
Anecdote: my wife wanted to trade up from a 3 to a Y. We won't so long as Elon is involved.
I also have an "Occupy Mars" shirt. It was one thing to bandwagon onto some topical events by a CEO who was touting Tesla's 100/100 lgbt friendliness rating and progressing toward human exploration, then one seig heiling and throwing the whole government into disarray and betraying our allies.
Personally the "Occupy Mars" thing rubbed me the wrong way when it came out. The message seemed to be "don't worry about inequality or the rise of the oligarchy because it'll get humans to Mars."
Also, Cybertruck has three competitors in the US. The F-150 is definitely better for truck stuff, and the R1T definitely wins for camping/off-roading/recreation. Unlike the Cybertruck, the bed-mounted MAGA flag is optional on those two.
Why do they always try to make a taxi out of it? I mean Waymo, now Cybercab. I would gladly pay a high premium for such a car to be able to work on my laptop on the way from my home to the office while in a car. I don't mind the whole taxi concept for some cases but just not sure about focusing or taking a meeting call from a taxi with strangers.
Neither the competition or the antics are the cause.
The combination however has been highly toxic for Tesla, like Apple it had an initial lead and a high trust factor due to size, experience and perceived tech lead. This also allowed them to charge a premium compared to the other makers.
Elon single-handedly eroded most of the trust factor and now that people are looking at alternatives (and being happy), they'll notice that there isn't much of a reason to be paying the premium in 2025 (not like 5-10 years ago).
The biggest question now is if they can ever recapture the position they held even with Elon gone or if they're yet another BEV automaker, trust as the saying goes is hard to gain and easy to squander (And even if Elon is gone, some of the previous halo goes with him but the antipathy cannot be gotten over with him in the reins, catch-22).
I think it's pretty obvious that the antics are a bit part of it. It's a big part in how Musk is eroding the trust in Tesla, but more than that, a car is also an image, a feeling. A few years ago, Tesla was widely loved ajd many people hoped to buy one some day, including me. Now lots of people wouldn't want to be caught dead in one.
And the real big factor are his support for Trump and his weird and destructive antics these past few months. There was competition a year ago, buy it's only now that sales are really falling off a cliff.
I honestly don't think Tesla wil exist in a couple of years. Musk will have made the brand too toxic.
It's honestly mind-blowing watching people desperately reach for anything, anything to explain the brand's sudden fall, out of nowhere. Even calling Elon's actions "antics" serves to downplay it. This isn't "antics" and it wasn't an "odd gesture" or whatever euphemism his supporters keep trying to use to downplay what happened. The CEO did a Nazi salute on stage. It's on video, and it's very, very obvious.
But no, it's not that. Surely anything but that! It's definitely a vague, complex web of market dynamics that's the real cause of the brand's downfall.
I think they were facing a rough 5+ years because their products aren’t great. Want a three row SUV? Tesla makes one, but it doesn’t have a steering wheel.
They win on efficiency (miles / kwh), but that’s about it at this point. Other manufacturers have better interiors (knobs and build quality, car play / android auto), form factors, etc.
Either that, or Elon would have been a serious problem for the company. Since they’re happening at the same time, it’s going to be rough.
> The CEO did a Nazi salute on stage. It's on video, and it's very, very obvious.
I think the only people who care about this are people who care about politics in the first place or didn't already like Elon, which isn't everyone and probably not the majority.
Whilst Elon has some blame for Tesla's bad brand image, competition in Europe has made it so if you go Tesla your basically paying a premium for the brand and that's it, Tesla's in Europe iirc have self driving capability much less than the US.
Note that GP used "whilst" which is British English, and previous posts seem Euro-centric and talk about renaming "American football." So it sounds like this person is Europe's problem.
The post had a number of grammatical errors too, so if "whilst" we're at it, should we criticize all of European education? Please don't post low-effort negative nationalism. It's cheap and the subject (the richest person alive is apparently a nazi) is a serious matter.
It doesn't seem to be going down very well in the US either.
One factor is that even if you think Musk was just mucking about or misunderstood, there is still the embarrassment of other people thinking your car choice endorses that.
It's also worth noting the S and X haven't been available in Australia for years (and I assume some other countries), which is probably a limiting factor too.
But that doesn't explain the massive drop in sales.
It really is a combination of better and cheaper Chinese EVs, Trump negatively impacting Australia e.g. tariffs, undermining security and Musk's antics e.g. Nazi salute etc.
Electric cars are getting simpler. Lithium-iron-phosphate batteries are safer. BYD has an "E-axle" kit, where motor, axle, and differential are a single unit. That goes with a power electronics box and battery.[1] Talks CANbus to the controls. Plug everything together and put a body on top, and you have a car. Or a truck.
EVs from all manufacturers are getting much cheaper. Margins are decreasing. This is a big problem for Tesla, with their grossly inflated stock price. Musk liked to say that Tesla investors are not investing in a car company, they are betting on Tesla's technology. What technology? Tesla is way behind Waymo in self-driving. There are at least four other humanoid robots as good as Tesla's, none profitable. Tesla is nowhere in solid-state batteries.
Rivian is outselling all other US makers in electric pickup trucks. Rivian's truck is not weird, like the Cybertruck, and it seems to be a decent pickup truck, although overpriced. I see them being driven around, often being used to do truck things, not just car things.
Even in the US, with protectionism keeping BYD out, Tesla isn't doing that well any more.
Thankfully, we only have a few months before this excuse runs dry.
Tesla has had the slowest and most minor refresh cycles of any car marker in my lifetime and it has had a minimal impact on sales. Not sure why a refreshed Y is suddenly going to result in a 70% increase in sales.
Especially when in the next few weeks Trump/Musk are expected to start a trade war with Australia.
The other downside is that us other drivers get to experience their beta testing in prod. Few things are as annoying as driving behind a Model Y where the adaptive high beams don't work properly, and getting flashed by every oncoming car for miles on end.
They did operate on a "continuous refresh" basis. However, it mostly stopped for almost 2 years now. Other than HW4 I don't think anything else is different between current models and their iterations 2 years ago.
Edit: mostly speaking about Model Y, as Model 3 had actual refresh recently.
It’s telling that Tesla’s largest market share loses are occurring in foreign markets where BYD is allowed to compete.
If the falls were actually caused by Musks antics you would expect the inverse, with a larger effect in the US and attenuated effects in countries less invested in US politics.
That might tie back to Elon’s antics. Tesla seems to be mostly leaderless since Elon decided that his mission was pushing right-wing populism instead of sustainable transportation and Mars.
I personally think he and Tesla can weather this current decline in sales and make it to a world where most people have an electric car. At that point, most MAGA types around the world might just choose a Tesla over cheaper better alternatives for the status, same way many American men buy pavement princess pickup trucks over cheaper, higher utility alternatives.
IF the Maga types would be buying electric cars it'd probably be a Dodge with horns or something alike. Sleek/futuristic was never their thing to begin with.
I guess he really thought that his initial userbase was now too small, and the larger more sustainable base is what he thought would be enough. He could still be right (no pun intended), but he would need all of the MAGA people to buy his cars, and China. It's not the worst bet, but more importantly, it very much exposes the lack of conviction in values.
The vast majority of people are good, and we're finally seeing that spirit moving (about time!).
That would require him to not be in the media long enough for people to forget. He loves the attention he's getting, so don't expect that to happen any time soon.
You just need liquidity to hide the transaction time. As in, all transactions are instantaneous because they are all instant loans, where the reconciliation of the actual transaction happens slower in a back channel.
Unless the cryptocurrency people realize that there's nothing special about any one of the implementations and get bored of the lottery ticket game of initial coin offerings.
Republicans went from being the party against marriages and protection for gay people (in the early 2000s), to claiming "Trump is the most pro-gay president". Going from "roll coal to own the libs" to not caring would be a small change in comparison.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but anyone claiming that Trump is the greatest anything of all time is little more than brown-nosing. if you can point to serious policy change, that would support your argument more strongly
Red counties have 30% of the GDP in the US. Blue counties have 70%. Doesn't seem like a good strategy to pivot from one to the other! Also, MAGA people don't believe in the environment and don't want to pay extra to save it. That was the big leverage that Tesla had originally.
He could have kept out of politics and tried to capture both markets. Little fast cars for blue people, big ugly cars for red people. That's now totally impossible. It's one or the other.
Red counties tend to have smaller populations, but there are more of them. Those factors balance out to each of the groups having roughly 50% of the total voting population (contributing to close elections). If we assume the proportion of non-voters is the same in both groups, then the blue counties are over twice as economically productive per capita, which shouldn't be surprising given that the red counties tend to be rural and agrarian.
I'm not sure the turnout assumption holds, but I'm also not sure which way has lower voter turnout. This 2016 map of voter turnout by county (https://abag.ca.gov/sites/default/files/maps/motm_10_18_18_L...) suggests urban areas (e.g. bay area, NoVA, new england) have higher voter turnouts than rural areas, so the per capita numbers may be even more sharply skewed towards blue counties.
There are conservatives with money, and those without. The latter is louder and more visible. Importantly, one should always, as a business, be optimizing for those with dollars vs opinions. Opinions do not contribute to revenue.
It's a moral failure. Even in business. You know the electric car people are bleeding heart liberals. Is it okay to mislead them with false advertising? They really did look at him as a role model. So, immorality is bad business. But how can that be shown to you? I suppose a few more of these articles until this thing goes bankrupt over time. That would truly be god.
Edit: I just want to add a little grace here (got my Sunday suit on). I think Elon is probably the most interesting person you can ever hang out with most likely. He's definitely in a dark mindset atm, and I pray he gets out of it because it's not leading to a better world (and I know he once cared for this).
I bought my Teslas to contribute to electrification of transportation, climate change and whatnot. Also invested early on after test driving the original Roadster, I believed it was the future. We win or we learn. I learned. There are no heroes, only people. Onward.
Also, BMW, Rivian, Ford and (until recently; not sure about the new ones) GM. Kia and Hyundai share the same platforms. Subaru, Stellantis, Lucid, Volvo (Polestar) and Audi are shipping too. Toyota and Honda are basically the only holdouts.
Elon probably was interesting to hang out with, but right now I imagine he’s absolutely insufferable to be around. If I want to be inundated with bullshit right-wing talking points, I can just leave Fox News playing on my TV.
> There are conservatives with money, and those without. The latter is louder and more visible. Importantly, one should always, as a business, be optimizing for those with dollars vs opinions
The problem is the addressable market size. They traded the larger one (liberals with money and pro-EV opinions) for a much much smaller one (conservatives with money and pro-EV opinions).
The issue is that among conservatives with money, the primary opinion in their culture is anti-EV, so unless there is a pro-EV tipping soon point on that side, it's not likely that market will grow, or that it would even go to them vs more traditional auto-makers.
Pro-EV Tesla-owning conservative here. There aren't many of us, and for those of us in a blue city (e.g. Seattle) we now also have to contend with Kristallnacht-like environments for Tesla owners. Politically apathetic Asians are probably buying most of the Teslas here, but as the hostility and vandalism ramps up, they'll do the pragmatic thing and trade in for a brand that doesn't attract such unhinged behavior.
No good. A car is expensive, so whether you like someone's politics or not, honor the sweat of their labor. Nonetheless, the owners need to understand what people feel as well. Hopefully cooler hearts prevail.
Stick a rather visible "What would Jesus do?" on your car.
> Kristallnacht-like environments for Tesla owners.
C'mon, Kristallnacht? I'm not seeing any moves towards rounding up Tesla owners and sending them to camps. There's no political party carrying out organized pogroms against Tesla owners. No comparison whatsoever.
I've seen quite the opposite in liberal areas: a lot of empathy for neighbors who bought Teslas
a while ago because many - Tesla owners or not - feel deceived by Elon.
That's how I feel about my neighbors with Teslas. None of them bought them with the intention of promoting techno-feudalism, and because it's an expensive product, they are stuck with it for a while.
Far less of a pass for cybertrucks. Even absent Elon's politics that thing is rolling fuck you to everyone else on the road.
In that analogy, it’d be the government burning down Tesla dealerships as part of a false flag operation, rounding up liberals, and sending them to camps.
I haven’t heard of that happening either.
Anyway people stuck with an old Tesla can just get an anti-musk bumpersticker.
Who's running Tesla? Top management below Musk is just Tom Zhu, who went back to China, and a chief financial officer.[1] Drew Baglino, the powertrain guy, quit last year.
In Germany, it sure didn’t help that the 2024 TüV report says that 14% of Tesla Model 3s fail their first inspection, which is done when the car is 2/3 years old (VW is at 3,5 - 7%).
My last car, a Ford Focus, passed the inspections on the first try for 13 years in a row
Tesla is a battery company propped up on tax credits. The cars never came close to profitability. Now that the tax credits are gone/going and there are competitors for the battery space, there is no reasonable path forward, which is why we're seeing a taxi that'll never happen, a truck that isn't very good at truck, and a mechanical Turk serving drinks.
The net margin on a Tesla is only a few percent, and of that Musk only receives 12% (only owns 12% of Tesla stock).
A guy who is worth hundreds of billions, and is willing to give Wikimedia a billion dollars to change their name to dickipedia, doesn’t care whether he makes an extra hundred from you or not.
I think that was true at some point in his life, but these days he regularly and deliberately torches billions of dollars just to make a point on principle.
Which car you buy makes a significant difference to your life, but virtually zero difference to shareholders of the automaker, so buy whatever car you want instead of spiting yourself.
Well, when I see the disaster of the 'We are going to run this country like a bussiness', one has to think, what kind of disasters should one await from the bussiness that he is running like bussiness...cyber..cough..track..cough...
It seems to me like when a young IT engineer comes on project running for 100 years, and starts to rewrite the core service in nodejs, because it will cost less to run it, or whatever - and you end up with half working production, because someone didint't understood, why the system is and was built how it was built, and what are the implications of changing it...
It might work on greenfield project, but anything else will probably not survive such a 'expert' in charge.
Do you think the board will push Elon out, or will the company just collapse when it can't raise cash?
I kinda want to buy a used Tesla now while they're cheap and stash it in the garage until this blows over. But I need it to keep getting software support.
Tesla's 2024 Free Cash Flow was roughly $3.5 billion. Other than BYD, they're still the only company I'm aware of that can profitably sell an EV. So, raising cash might not be a near-term pressure point.
The board's historically comped Elon on revenues, net income and stock price -- all those aren't that great compared with highs in the last five years. They are, however, astronomical compared to where Tesla was when they gave him his 'crazy' incentive stock plan. I imagine the board is probably repeatedly asking him to settle down, lower the drug intake and ... please don't make things worse bro. Maybe in stronger language than that. And, I'm sure if they think Tesla would be better off without Elon they'll work hard to make that happen. Right now, though is sort of peak anti-Elon sentiment in the public, making it harder to parse out what's helpful / where he's impacting his companies on the non-public side.
Without a strong theory for why anti-Elon sentiment can't get worse, it's quite plausible we haven't actually hit the "peak" of it.
Personally I think it quite likely that Musk will catch significant blame for whatever bad things related to American government happen in the coming year, deserved or otherwise.
That's always been the catch for me; its an always-on remotely controlled camera-mobile, of which you happen to sit in the drivers seat and pretend you own while it drives you around dangerously.
Simply being always-online and sending telemetry, doesnt preclude the ability to remotely intercede in the car's operations.
I think there's precedent with the OnStar system in other cars, and there has anecdotally been evidence of various systems being operable by some kind of admin terminal.
I think "summon mode" is actually a great demonstration of how you can remotely access and do some form of piloting the car without a driver. There's also the disabling of features remotely on resale, and probably other examples.
Dude sieg-heiled twice on stage. He needs to have no connection, including stock, and they need a rebrand, before I’d consider them. The T logo is a swastika now, and I would’ve drive around with one of those on my car.
Not OP, but how about "remigration" of many people, but among them German citizens, "back" to their countries of origin, voluntary or otherwise?
Their members have been making statements like, the Nazis weren't all that bad, a number of them were found to be parroting Nazi talking points, or quoting verbatim.
Germany is facing enormous stability problems unless it does something radical, not to mention total cultural erasure. Remigration sounds good even reasonable, within reason.
I hope we can agree this is clearly not about genocide? In this regard the Nazi-comparison seems weird.
The original goal of the Nazi concentration camps was relocating ethnic groups to help stabilize Germany and protect its culture. Your viewpoints are indistinguishable from those of a pro-Hitler German in the lead up to world war two.
Wow, I didn't have this on my bingo card for today, but this has got to be the most full-throated, impassioned defense and downplaying of an obvious Nazi salute I've ever read in my life.
I tell ya what. Instead of trying to convince you of what you're wishing to be not true, try this: Pull up the video of the gesture he made, practice it at home, make sure you can duplicate it perfectly, and then go into work and do it in front of each person you meet, and come back here and tell us what happens.
Nah. Not misinformation. Just other people aren't willing to give him the massive benefit of the doubt that you are. There's no point arguing with you about it, of course. But in context, watching the full video, seeing his opinions expressed on Twitter... surely you can see how people can come to the conclusion that they have.
For you to act like it's 100% definitely misinformation rather than a judgement call is disingenuous to the extreme.
> For you to act like it's 100% definitely misinformation rather than a judgement call is disingenuous to the extreme.
I’ll go on the unpopular limb and say that anyone seriously considering the fact that any mainstream persona intentionally did a «Nazi» thing has been consuming too much traditional, commercial media who almost by definition thrives on controversy and clicks. Their core interest is not in facts or honest reporting.
I don’t think HN is the most appropriate place for such discussions, but if anyone seriously wants to accuse Elon Musk of being a «Nazi», I would kindly request that they first define what they mean by that word in 2025, because to me that is honestly not very obvious.
He’s pro Israel and want less government regulation. I’m no expert, but to me that seems anti-Nazi?
> He’s pro Israel and want less government regulation. I’m no expert, but to me that seems anti-Nazi?
Elon obviously does not tick off every box for "Nazi", but he gets so many that a lot of people are understandably horrified.
The salute was, physically, a Nazi salute - as any video comparison clearly shows. And he did it twice. Maybe he didn't "mean" it - maybe it was ironic, maybe it was for kicks, but it obviously was one.
Add to that his support for far-right parties around the world. That includes Germany, and, yes, Israel - while historic Nazis were antisemites, but some far-right people today find common ground with the far-right in Israel, which is exactly who is in power there now.
And Elon is allied with Trump, who got elected after a campaign in which he demonized immigrants as "poisoning the blood" of the nation, said that (legal!) immigrants were "eating the cats and the dogs", etc. etc. Those are classic lines from far-right, fascist governments. Demonizing gay and trans people as well, and Elon has done plenty of that himself.
So, is Elon just "far-right" and not "Nazi"? I'm not sure it's worth debating the difference. Obviously literal card-carrying Nazis are in the past, but the overlap between the modern far-right and historical fascism is enormous.
You’d be surprised on the Israel thing. There are not-small sections of white supremacy and neo-Nazism who see Israel as the realization of the kind of ethnostate they think should be the norm. “Yes, hooray Israel! All the Jews we want to expel should go over there! It’s a model state!”
To the rest of this, playing with Nazi shit to “trigger the libs” is a whole thing on the right, and I 100% think it’s what Elon was doing (and why we’ve seen more of it since, from others). The other explanations are bizarre (what the fuck is “my heart goes out to you”? The closest thing I can think of to that sort of gesture doesn’t risk this kind of confusion) and this kind of “trolling” is read as absolutely serious and a show of support by the worst elements of the right.
For my part, play with Nazi shit, you’re a Nazi, and so’s anyone who keeps associating with you. Most of the right didn’t run away from this, so we’ve got a pretty serious Nazi problem now.
> Most of the right didn’t run away from this, so we’ve got a pretty serious Nazi problem now
I appreciate the honest response, I really do.
But right here is where I’ll have to go back to my original comment about imagining problems.
You imagine he did something Nazi like. You imagined there are big swaths of right wing people supporting this imagined Nazi act. You imagine a big Nazi problem.
And it could be all in your head.
Listen to Bill Maher: Focus on becoming a viable alternative, rather than chasing crazy things. The world can only benefit from more viable options at the next election.
If this were literally the only issue, idk, maybe? But there’s also the broader plan they’re implementing, and the normalization of wildly illegal action from the executive. It’s authoritarianism top to bottom, and they said exactly what they’re aiming to do.
I’m focusing on a lot of things, and the fact that Nazi salutes (it’s on video! He did it twice! Watch that again and tell me what would look different if that were in-fact what he’s doing. What the hell gesture even looks close to what he does, if not that? I find the denial of what we can all plainly see shocking, similar to attempts to deny what happened on January 6th which we watched live) are now “eh, it’s fine” for the Republican Party is not nothing.
Like we’re a multifaceted coup attempt and an “if I lose to Hillary, the 2nd amendment folks can do something about it” in, and we’re in the middle of “shock and awe” (their words) against the government bureaucracy, firing of the people charged with preventing much worse and who did prevent that last time (IGs, generals), 40ish days out from the publicly stated deadline for agency reports on whether Trump should invoke the insurrection act, and the richest dude in the world Nazi salutes on stage twice and people are still going “IDK”. Gimme a fucking break.
But yes the actual problem is I can tell what kind of gesture he very obviously made and find it repugnant. That’s the problem. Not that all the above is going on and people are still entertaining “he just meant ‘my heart goes out to you’, which one expresses with a firm grimace, a slap to the chest and quick extension of the arm, fucking exactly like a Nazi salute” as if it’s not obvious bullshit.
Dude it’s on video. We can just watch it. This wasn’t an innocent gesture caught in an awkward still, it’s on video. I get that it’s also on video that he looked high as a kite at the event, but most people manage not to nazi salute when high, too.
Elon seems really unhinged, and there's so much to criticize without reaching for inflammatory labels.
I don't understand the gesture. It's not something I see myself ever doing. But here's Tim Walz doing the exact same thing on video. Evidence of secret NSDAP membership?
If this looks like the "exact same thing" Elon Musk did, have your eyes checked. Seriously. I literally clicked the link, spent 5 seconds, and it's a totally different gesture...?
That’s pretty weird but that’s also not what Elon did. I just re-watched his in case my memory was faulty, and no, it’s simply a Nazi salute, straight-up.
Don’t be so damned gullible. These shitheads thrive on doing reprehensible stuff, and then giving it a stupid cover story so people like you go out and defend them for free.
It was a “haha only serious” Nazi salute. It’s not “unhinged” to see what’s plainly visible.
I find the concept that the left is pulling this nazi stuff of their ass to a bad problem with anyone out there defending it. If someone accused me of giving a nazi salute, and then the nazis high five each other in the internet, I’d be releasing a statements that this was a complete misunderstanding. Nazi’s are losers and can fuck off.
Then there wouldn’t even be room for this. But the man keeps finding himself questionable close to nazi adjacent shit far too often. It might be for lulz, but don’t be surprised when consumers back off your products.
What is your basis for this? This sounds like rubbish. I would imagine the car would function as well as any other manufactuter who runs their own entertainment system - some hosted features might fail, but the car itself will continue to run fine.
You ever get software updates for legacy software? Not really right? The term is abandonware. In the video game market what they do is hand off the dead games to some Chinese company that milks a few more DLCs/cashshops out of it (this re-release is effectively a pump and dump IPO). Then they pack it up and shut the game down.
The timeline would like this for a Tesla owner:
- Tesla goes bankrupt
- Some Chinese company takes up the upkeep of the software
- They introduce ads similar to Jeep
- No core functionality or QoL improvements are made
- Abandonware, no real software updates
- Your car runs fine, but you paid for a car with a computer in it, and the business basically repossessed the computer part of it. So, if that's possible, it's better to avoid.
I don’t need updates, so step three is where I disconnect the car and keep driving it like that. There haven’t been any significant updates to the software in the past couple of years anyway, outside of FSD.
it is, and for moral reasons i wouldn't buy one new.
but i've had the same thought as parent. if the 2nd hand market really dips, i'm not going to let dirty looks from strangers get in the way of a smart economic & ecological move for me
Anecdotal but I just purchased an Atto3 in Melbourne. Tesla wasn't even considered after Musk's behaviour and the value for money that the BYD provides.
The reason I brought the Atto3 was after talking to 4 or 5 Uber drivers with them who swore by them.
yes, they taught us in school that Denmark, which makes no cars, had significantly cheaper cars than... oooh wait a minute, they got sucked into the EU which does make cars... is it still true? how is this handled by EC policy?
Are you proposing that Denmark is a part of the EU because it does not produce its own cars?
Cars are incredibly expensive in Denmark (Not quite Singapore levels, but high). This, however, is more grounded in a cultural difference where walkable cities are preferred.
The US is incredibly car centric - to an extend where US trips can be directly read in my stress levels as measured on my watch. The US is so incredibly noisy and smelly.
Anecdotally in New Zealand I have several neighbours with new BYDs. In my same neighbourhood there are two Teslas (Model 3) and both were purchased over 5 years ago. No one in their right mind is buying a Tesla in this market, and not because Elon is a twat (although he very much is). BYD is just better value.
The base model 3 and seal are about $10k difference in AU (not a huge difference in that price range) and the BYD is slower with less range.
Personally every time I've rented a BYD (only the Atto admittedly) I've found the UI to be awful. The two Android screens are often out of sync on key information, and the interior looks like it was designed by Homer Simpson making a "future car".
No one is buying the Seal, it's the Atto 3. And 10k is about a quarter of the price, I don't know what you mean by "not a huge difference in that price range".
A new car purchase should make the buyer feel /good/. With Tesla, it just doesn't feel good anymore. It feels dirty, dishonest, and corrupt. No thanks.
A majority of investors could get together and replace the board.
Otherwise not much. Part of the risk in investing is that you might invest in a company with shitty management. If you made a bad investment (except in very extreme cases which this probably doesnt cross the line into) that is your fault. Investing is not the same thing as free money.
They can celebrate a couple of decades of success. Tesla won, it truly changed the world - EV's are everywhere now. The shareholders helped build that, and even if Tesla is now dying - it meant they made a difference.
If Trump is a narcissist, Musk is a megalomaniac. "Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. This is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control," says former Musk friend Philip Low.
When you buy a Tesla you're enriching a megalomaniac who wants to control members of congress by threatening to primary them [1], and control judges by threatening to impeach them [2].
He has way more money than he needs to buy essentially anything. Quadrupling his net worth would have pretty much zero impact on him at this point.
He wants power. Wealth is a route to power (money is ultimately a form of power) but it only goes so far. He maxed that out and now he’s finding other means.
my understanding is that he just got a bit too involved with the culture wars online, a la JK Rowling and your nutso uncle/conspiracy-obsessed facebook friend, but he's just that much more exposed to influence, and that much more powerful, and then he semi-accidentally locked himself into it by buying twitter. I really don't think there's a genius play at the end of it all, or even that it's corruption
I kind of have to sit back and laugh at the "I'm a genius / Oh no!" schadenfreude of his decision-making of late. Nevermind his present playbook is directly ripped from Bob Page (billionaire villain of Deus Ex), but seeing people tie themselves up into knots to still defend his "4D-Chess Brilliance" as he keeps footgunning his business enterprises just makes me facepalm at the sheer stupidity of these bootblacks.
The guy invested in an EV company and built a cult of personality around going lean, mean, and green with EVs. Sporty, well-built cars with tasteful interiors and designs, that also did away with the traditional American dealership model. That worked, because it was an objectively good idea. Then he cut costs, lost the plot, and did everything he could to game the share price rather than run a better car company. As a result, others began moving into the space and copying Tesla's M.O.: in-vehicle surveillance tech, cloud-required connectivity, a focus on digital features over physical reliability, cheaper materials at higher costs, etc. So now the car market is full of "pseudo-Teslas" that nobody can afford, and nobody really wants; if we're going to buy a cheap piece of junk, we can buy a used car with the advantage it won't spy on us.
He did the same thing with SpaceX: transformed the company into a payload juggernaut, lost the plot, invested into every ancillary market possible, threw out quality control, and seems content riding wave after wave of massive explosions instead of serious R&D and QA/QC while pivoting to internet service that's angering governments, environmentalists, and scientists alike.
I could repeat this with X and DOGE, but we all know the scorecard there. The dude has completely lost the plot, and is high on his own supply. He doesn't invest assuming failure and preparing for success, he invests assuming success and failure isn't a possibility (which, to be fair, is kind of true when you've captured weakened governments).
He's just a bad leader. Full stop. If his companies' boards weren't packed with boot-licking sycophants, they'd likely have tossed his butt out for doing drugs on multiple interviews like some sort of college drug dealer instead of a C-Suite visionary.
At this point, for most of the world buying a Chinese product carries less geopolitical risk than buying similar American product. China is predictable in advancing its own interests abroad, while Trump's administration has shown itself to be exactly the opposite.
It's too bad for Elon that their new buddies in Russia aren't much into electric cars. Even Chinese companies mainly export petrol powered ones there due to lack of demand for EV's.
Is there really? In the sense of a global organized boycott spearheaded by a particular organization? I've not yet seen anything like that. It seems like instead the brand has just been damaged by Musk in the eyes of the kind of person who might be likely to buy an EV in the first place.
Furthermore, that has happened as their offerings have become stale in their primary markets - their old branding approach (techno-utopianism) has lost its appeal, but their new branding (techno-dystopianism) is turning most people off.
> Is there really? In the sense of a global organized boycott spearheaded by a particular organization? I've not yet seen anything like that. It seems like instead the brand has just been damaged by Musk in the eyes of the kind of person who might be likely to buy an EV in the first place.
"According to Germany's road traffic agency, Tesla sold 1,429 cars in Germany, a decline of 76%, an even bigger decline than the 60% drop in January. Overall, sales of electric vehicles rose 30.8% to 35,949 in Germany."
"Tesla sales were down 24% in the Netherlands, 42% in Sweden, 48% in both Norway and Denmark, 45% in France, 55% in Italy, 10% in Spain and 53% in Portugal"
If there was an organized boycott, the US Office of Antiboycott Compliance could stop that quickly. That's why most boycotts these days are not officially organized and spearheaded by any actual government or powerful body
They don't do it now. They would do it if a new organized boycott popped up because that's what they were invented to do. Plus Trump will surely utilize it if he ever feels the desire
Tesla will not be able to solve FSD with their current approach. Even if Tesla were to solve it tomorrow, it will take YEARS to be approved (decades in Europe).
Teslas models are being outcompeted - not only by Chinese companies I might tell you.
And most of all... Tesla = Elon... And we all know he is losing his mind currently. Calling the Polish minister of foreign affairs a "little man". Suggesting that the US should leave NATO. You should see how much he tweets nowadays, and how little sleep he gets.
Elon Musk is Howard Hughes, about to move into his cinema and stay there for years.
The article talks about January and February and he made the salute with 10 days still to go in Jan. seems like enough time to have an impact on Feb. But yeah there’s probably a lot more too it.
It's wild how "Elon did a Nazi salute" is now taken as an unquestioned truth. Most of the time here, false or exaggerated statements are "source?"-d and nitpicked to death, but not this one because so many people want it to be true.
You can critically think for yourself, the video is there for anyone to watch. Why do you need 'reputable media' to confirm things for you? Especially since I'm sure you will denounce any source provided as non-reputable.
And then, if he still doesn't believe it's a Nazi salute, he should go into work and try doing it in front of all his co-workers and see what they think...
I think people who focus too much on "whether he really meant it or really made the salute" etc, are missing the forrest for the trees.
He's a guy who supports the AFD, who has said "German people are too focused on the past and should get rid of national guilt" or something along these lines. He definitely spends a lot of time online regurgitating 4chan like memes (which fine, I do that too, but I'm not a world leader) and acts and talks like a person who is obsessed with white demographics in Western societies.
He has a reputation of someone who would plausibly do that as a playful nod towards his terminally online fanbase. That's the issue. His reputation makes it believable. Whether he really meant to or not has little to do with that fact. Ultimately one's reputation is everything in democratic politics
Most people are capable of recognizing that countries are not monoliths, but a collection of separate entities, so that it is possible to treat a country's politics and its car brands differently.
It is really hard to do that for Elon Musk the politician and Elon Musk the Tesla CEO, since they're the same person.
you're comparing the actions of a government vs those of the ceo. of course any company in china is more linked to the gov than most in the US, but BYD's ceo is far more likeable and less offensive to the majority
China isn't here destroying my country. They aren't trying to destroy the department of education. They aren't trying to destroy the entire research establishment.
This has nothing to do with PR. China can say whatever it wants, but it doesn't really affect my life much. Musk is having a direct massive negative effect.
People are plenty happy to make that distinction over US invasions which ended up killing millions of people, overseas black sites, extraordinary rendition, and electoral interference. Why is it surprising they'd do the same with China?
It's quite likely that most of that fall in sales is just an effect of the retooling for the Model Y refresh. However, I would not be entirely surprised if Tesla does struggle a bit given how politically charged owning a Tesla currently is. I however doubt that it's anything like "falling off a cliff".
Pay no attention to the catastrophic drop in sales in Scandinavia and Germany following Elon’s Nazi salute on national television. Pay no attention to the dozens of dealerships subjected to violent responses due to the above and the CEOs mass firings of civil servants.
Or… Google around for cases of vandalism of the cars and the dealers. Maybe review some of the protest language. Pretty sure “politically charged” misses the point by several orders of magnitude.
Elon’s antics certainly haven’t helped things, but the real story is legitimate alternatives finally entering the market from multiple OEMs (especially BYD) and Tesla’s absolute face plant on model development.
A large portion of Tesla’s sales were driven by a lack of decent alternatives if you wanted a BEV. Today that’s no longer the case, especially in Europe and China.
And instead of pushing for a new small Model 2 with global appeal, they launched Cybertruck and Cybercab. Meanwhile Model S and X are just plain old. This is becoming a case study in 1) squandering a market lead, and 2) the danger of making devil’s bargains with China.
Model 2 might seem like the sensible move, but it is also a capitulation to the idea that Tesla is just a “car company” and has to compete on price and is destined for the inevitable race to the bottom with the likes of byd in an increasingly commoditized market.
Cybercab is doubling down on the speculative fiction future that fuels stock valuations that are out of line with the rest of the industry.
You are right. However, I think I agree with the vision, too bad its Musk+Tesla. I do think in the end we won't each own a car.
It's so incredibly inefficient to have individually owned cars just rotting away on the side of the road and in car parks waiting for their owner.
It would be so much better for everyone if no one, except enthusiasts, would own a car. And you could just grab an "auto taxi" wherever you are within a few minutes instead. Perhaps someday...
I think Musk should be more bold in his vision here. What if instead of a cybercab that seats just two people, we could come up with an even bigger one that seats many people at once? And then maybe we could have it drive on a predictable, efficient route that covers multiple popular destinations, instead of just going from point A to point B. Has anyone considered building something like this?
They literally did this in the announcement for the cybercab. Look up the “Tesla Robovan”. It was clearly a proof of concept, but in theory it’s a good idea. Claimed to be able to seat 20 people.
Anecdote: my wife wanted to trade up from a 3 to a Y. We won't so long as Elon is involved.
I also have an "Occupy Mars" shirt. It was one thing to bandwagon onto some topical events by a CEO who was touting Tesla's 100/100 lgbt friendliness rating and progressing toward human exploration, then one seig heiling and throwing the whole government into disarray and betraying our allies.
Personally the "Occupy Mars" thing rubbed me the wrong way when it came out. The message seemed to be "don't worry about inequality or the rise of the oligarchy because it'll get humans to Mars."
I hope we can now all see that
1) it won't get us to mars but
2) it will bring us a total-recall like dystopia.
Also, Cybertruck has three competitors in the US. The F-150 is definitely better for truck stuff, and the R1T definitely wins for camping/off-roading/recreation. Unlike the Cybertruck, the bed-mounted MAGA flag is optional on those two.
> Cybercab
Why do they always try to make a taxi out of it? I mean Waymo, now Cybercab. I would gladly pay a high premium for such a car to be able to work on my laptop on the way from my home to the office while in a car. I don't mind the whole taxi concept for some cases but just not sure about focusing or taking a meeting call from a taxi with strangers.
Why sell you a product once when they can milk you forever with a service?
Neither the competition or the antics are the cause.
The combination however has been highly toxic for Tesla, like Apple it had an initial lead and a high trust factor due to size, experience and perceived tech lead. This also allowed them to charge a premium compared to the other makers.
Elon single-handedly eroded most of the trust factor and now that people are looking at alternatives (and being happy), they'll notice that there isn't much of a reason to be paying the premium in 2025 (not like 5-10 years ago).
The biggest question now is if they can ever recapture the position they held even with Elon gone or if they're yet another BEV automaker, trust as the saying goes is hard to gain and easy to squander (And even if Elon is gone, some of the previous halo goes with him but the antipathy cannot be gotten over with him in the reins, catch-22).
I think it's pretty obvious that the antics are a bit part of it. It's a big part in how Musk is eroding the trust in Tesla, but more than that, a car is also an image, a feeling. A few years ago, Tesla was widely loved ajd many people hoped to buy one some day, including me. Now lots of people wouldn't want to be caught dead in one.
And the real big factor are his support for Trump and his weird and destructive antics these past few months. There was competition a year ago, buy it's only now that sales are really falling off a cliff.
I honestly don't think Tesla wil exist in a couple of years. Musk will have made the brand too toxic.
It's honestly mind-blowing watching people desperately reach for anything, anything to explain the brand's sudden fall, out of nowhere. Even calling Elon's actions "antics" serves to downplay it. This isn't "antics" and it wasn't an "odd gesture" or whatever euphemism his supporters keep trying to use to downplay what happened. The CEO did a Nazi salute on stage. It's on video, and it's very, very obvious.
But no, it's not that. Surely anything but that! It's definitely a vague, complex web of market dynamics that's the real cause of the brand's downfall.
I think they were facing a rough 5+ years because their products aren’t great. Want a three row SUV? Tesla makes one, but it doesn’t have a steering wheel.
They win on efficiency (miles / kwh), but that’s about it at this point. Other manufacturers have better interiors (knobs and build quality, car play / android auto), form factors, etc.
Either that, or Elon would have been a serious problem for the company. Since they’re happening at the same time, it’s going to be rough.
> The CEO did a Nazi salute on stage. It's on video, and it's very, very obvious.
I think the only people who care about this are people who care about politics in the first place or didn't already like Elon, which isn't everyone and probably not the majority.
Whilst Elon has some blame for Tesla's bad brand image, competition in Europe has made it so if you go Tesla your basically paying a premium for the brand and that's it, Tesla's in Europe iirc have self driving capability much less than the US.
Apparently a nazi salute is a funny joke in the US. Very much not so in Europe.
Note that GP used "whilst" which is British English, and previous posts seem Euro-centric and talk about renaming "American football." So it sounds like this person is Europe's problem.
The post had a number of grammatical errors too, so if "whilst" we're at it, should we criticize all of European education? Please don't post low-effort negative nationalism. It's cheap and the subject (the richest person alive is apparently a nazi) is a serious matter.
It doesn't seem to be going down very well in the US either.
One factor is that even if you think Musk was just mucking about or misunderstood, there is still the embarrassment of other people thinking your car choice endorses that.
In Europe it's absolutely a majority. Musk is widely despised now. And this used to be a big market for Tesla.
It's also worth noting the S and X haven't been available in Australia for years (and I assume some other countries), which is probably a limiting factor too.
3 and Y compose 95% of Tesla’s sales. Not offering S and X does not move the needle.
https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-fourth-quarter-2024...
Makes sense, just adding the data point though. They weren't a common car here before that either.
Not sure why you’re getting downvoted. You’re completely correct.
But that doesn't explain the massive drop in sales.
It really is a combination of better and cheaper Chinese EVs, Trump negatively impacting Australia e.g. tariffs, undermining security and Musk's antics e.g. Nazi salute etc.
Yes.
Electric cars are getting simpler. Lithium-iron-phosphate batteries are safer. BYD has an "E-axle" kit, where motor, axle, and differential are a single unit. That goes with a power electronics box and battery.[1] Talks CANbus to the controls. Plug everything together and put a body on top, and you have a car. Or a truck.
EVs from all manufacturers are getting much cheaper. Margins are decreasing. This is a big problem for Tesla, with their grossly inflated stock price. Musk liked to say that Tesla investors are not investing in a car company, they are betting on Tesla's technology. What technology? Tesla is way behind Waymo in self-driving. There are at least four other humanoid robots as good as Tesla's, none profitable. Tesla is nowhere in solid-state batteries.
Rivian is outselling all other US makers in electric pickup trucks. Rivian's truck is not weird, like the Cybertruck, and it seems to be a decent pickup truck, although overpriced. I see them being driven around, often being used to do truck things, not just car things.
Even in the US, with protectionism keeping BYD out, Tesla isn't doing that well any more.
[1] https://insideevs.com/news/738606/byd-ev-teardown-impresses-...
> But that doesn't explain the massive drop in sales.
New model y releasing in May.
This may not explain all of the drop off, but I’m certain this refreshed model explains some of it.
Thankfully, we only have a few months before this excuse runs dry.
Tesla has had the slowest and most minor refresh cycles of any car marker in my lifetime and it has had a minimal impact on sales. Not sure why a refreshed Y is suddenly going to result in a 70% increase in sales.
Especially when in the next few weeks Trump/Musk are expected to start a trade war with Australia.
> Tesla has had the slowest and minimal refresh cycles of any car marker in my lifetime and it has had a minimal impact on sales.
The thing is Tesla operates on a "continuous refresh" model, they constantly iterate on all aspects of their design.
The downside of this is it makes supply chains for spare parts an utter damn nightmare, which is why spare parts are so hard to come by.
The other downside is that us other drivers get to experience their beta testing in prod. Few things are as annoying as driving behind a Model Y where the adaptive high beams don't work properly, and getting flashed by every oncoming car for miles on end.
They did operate on a "continuous refresh" basis. However, it mostly stopped for almost 2 years now. Other than HW4 I don't think anything else is different between current models and their iterations 2 years ago.
Edit: mostly speaking about Model Y, as Model 3 had actual refresh recently.
What electric alternatives do you recommend with decent self driving tech for stop and go work commute?
It’s telling that Tesla’s largest market share loses are occurring in foreign markets where BYD is allowed to compete.
If the falls were actually caused by Musks antics you would expect the inverse, with a larger effect in the US and attenuated effects in countries less invested in US politics.
If you assumed all markets were equally annoyed with the antics you'd expect more of an impact where it's easy to switch to something else.
Other countries don’t care about US politics as much as Americans think they do.
Especially non-English speaking countries.
That might tie back to Elon’s antics. Tesla seems to be mostly leaderless since Elon decided that his mission was pushing right-wing populism instead of sustainable transportation and Mars.
> Elon’s antics certainly haven’t helped things
Doing Nazi salutes might drive sales in the US, but this is the understatement of the year.
Yeah; they’re going to nail the EV market for coal-rolling neo-nazis with “drill-baby-drill” bumper stickers.
The rest of the US? Not so much.
Pissing off your primary customer base probably isn't smart. I don't see MAGA buying electric cars. In foreign markets BYD is a better value.
He did become the world's richest man and he bought himself and election so I wouldn't under estimate him.
I personally think he and Tesla can weather this current decline in sales and make it to a world where most people have an electric car. At that point, most MAGA types around the world might just choose a Tesla over cheaper better alternatives for the status, same way many American men buy pavement princess pickup trucks over cheaper, higher utility alternatives.
I don't like him. But I could see this happening
IF the Maga types would be buying electric cars it'd probably be a Dodge with horns or something alike. Sleek/futuristic was never their thing to begin with.
"I don't see MAGA buying electric cars"
The most vehement Trump supporters I know have been Musk fans since the time he supported Babylon Bee when they were kicked off Twitter.
They believe that the Climate Change stuff is all a big con to get government money, of course.
And those MAGA now have Tesla's and Starlink because.
> And those MAGA now have Tesla's and Starlink because.
no they don't. and the sales numbers prove it.
I guess he really thought that his initial userbase was now too small, and the larger more sustainable base is what he thought would be enough. He could still be right (no pun intended), but he would need all of the MAGA people to buy his cars, and China. It's not the worst bet, but more importantly, it very much exposes the lack of conviction in values.
The vast majority of people are good, and we're finally seeing that spirit moving (about time!).
Can’t see the trade war helping him much in China. And MAGA is a pretty small market compared with…the rest of the world.
He could be banking on people having short memories.
That would require him to not be in the media long enough for people to forget. He loves the attention he's getting, so don't expect that to happen any time soon.
He might think he is like the president and can just use a new controversy to make people forget about the previous one.
Yeah, he's kinda fkd. Trumpty isn't even letting him fire people over the cabinet heads. Oops, fascism.
He's all bitcoin now, his companies don't matter. Now he can push for more inflation, bitcoin will be the only hedge against it, boom, trillionaire.
Leaving the rest of us with no jobs, stagflation, no government.
> Now he can push for more inflation, bitcoin will be the only hedge against it, boom, trillionaire.
That's assuming that Bitcoin gains value disconnected from the US dollar/economy. That's not a given.
If it doesn't, the trillionaire class can eliminate the fed and require all taxes to be paid in bitcoin.
At 7 transactions/second? Good luck.
You just need liquidity to hide the transaction time. As in, all transactions are instantaneous because they are all instant loans, where the reconciliation of the actual transaction happens slower in a back channel.
With Crypto volatility? That's a reconciliation nightmare.
Unless the cryptocurrency people realize that there's nothing special about any one of the implementations and get bored of the lottery ticket game of initial coin offerings.
BYD is nailing them in china, and look likely to continue to do so.
They're nailing them in Australia, too. They'll surpass Tesla in EV sales likely this year.
This would have been unthinkable a few years ago.
The Chinese EV's and hybrids are brilliant - the US market doesn't know what it's missing out on.
The coal rollers are hardly going to go full electric no matter what musk says
Republicans went from being the party against marriages and protection for gay people (in the early 2000s), to claiming "Trump is the most pro-gay president". Going from "roll coal to own the libs" to not caring would be a small change in comparison.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/24/absurb-cl...
The pro-gay claim is not sincere. See Jean-Paul Sartre for more explanation.
I'm not saying you're wrong, but anyone claiming that Trump is the greatest anything of all time is little more than brown-nosing. if you can point to serious policy change, that would support your argument more strongly
Is it? I think he's the greatest con man of all time. Certainly the most corrupt US president.
I think it was a lie to catch liberal strays: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/republican-lawmakers-increas...
They've started with the T, but they'll get to the other letters eventually.
Red counties have 30% of the GDP in the US. Blue counties have 70%. Doesn't seem like a good strategy to pivot from one to the other! Also, MAGA people don't believe in the environment and don't want to pay extra to save it. That was the big leverage that Tesla had originally.
He could have kept out of politics and tried to capture both markets. Little fast cars for blue people, big ugly cars for red people. That's now totally impossible. It's one or the other.
Now it's neither for Tesla it seems.
>Red counties have 30% of the GDP in the US. Blue counties have 70%
Now let's look at the number of voters
Looks like the numbers are from the 2020 election (https://www.brookings.edu/articles/biden-voting-counties-equ...).
Red counties tend to have smaller populations, but there are more of them. Those factors balance out to each of the groups having roughly 50% of the total voting population (contributing to close elections). If we assume the proportion of non-voters is the same in both groups, then the blue counties are over twice as economically productive per capita, which shouldn't be surprising given that the red counties tend to be rural and agrarian.
I'm not sure the turnout assumption holds, but I'm also not sure which way has lower voter turnout. This 2016 map of voter turnout by county (https://abag.ca.gov/sites/default/files/maps/motm_10_18_18_L...) suggests urban areas (e.g. bay area, NoVA, new england) have higher voter turnouts than rural areas, so the per capita numbers may be even more sharply skewed towards blue counties.
He can just make money insider trading on Trump's policies before they're announced.
Short some industry just before tariffs are introduced that will hurt them.
And cancelling competitors' government contracts and replacing the contracts with his own companies'.
or more likely invest in competitors that will benefit. short positions are far stronger evidence for insider trading
The DOJ isn't prosecuting him and if it did he would simply be pardoned.
> he would need all of the MAGA people to buy his cars, and China.
Everyone in those groups would be behind a guy throwing Nazi salutes?
There are conservatives with money, and those without. The latter is louder and more visible. Importantly, one should always, as a business, be optimizing for those with dollars vs opinions. Opinions do not contribute to revenue.
It's a moral failure. Even in business. You know the electric car people are bleeding heart liberals. Is it okay to mislead them with false advertising? They really did look at him as a role model. So, immorality is bad business. But how can that be shown to you? I suppose a few more of these articles until this thing goes bankrupt over time. That would truly be god.
Edit: I just want to add a little grace here (got my Sunday suit on). I think Elon is probably the most interesting person you can ever hang out with most likely. He's definitely in a dark mindset atm, and I pray he gets out of it because it's not leading to a better world (and I know he once cared for this).
I bought my Teslas to contribute to electrification of transportation, climate change and whatnot. Also invested early on after test driving the original Roadster, I believed it was the future. We win or we learn. I learned. There are no heroes, only people. Onward.
I'm sure you did the right thing. Tesla was great for electric cars, but it's time to move on now and look forward to the next good thing. BYD maybe?
Hyundai is making some awesome EVs
Also, BMW, Rivian, Ford and (until recently; not sure about the new ones) GM. Kia and Hyundai share the same platforms. Subaru, Stellantis, Lucid, Volvo (Polestar) and Audi are shipping too. Toyota and Honda are basically the only holdouts.
South Korean Chaebols don’t have the greatest moral foundations either
Perfect is here probably the enemy of good. At least their CEO is not bringing down Western democracy and embracing fascism.
They don't, but at least they learned not to publicly insult fellow citizens, never mind allied leaders.
Beautifully put.
Elon probably was interesting to hang out with, but right now I imagine he’s absolutely insufferable to be around. If I want to be inundated with bullshit right-wing talking points, I can just leave Fox News playing on my TV.
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> There are conservatives with money, and those without. The latter is louder and more visible. Importantly, one should always, as a business, be optimizing for those with dollars vs opinions
The problem is the addressable market size. They traded the larger one (liberals with money and pro-EV opinions) for a much much smaller one (conservatives with money and pro-EV opinions).
The issue is that among conservatives with money, the primary opinion in their culture is anti-EV, so unless there is a pro-EV tipping soon point on that side, it's not likely that market will grow, or that it would even go to them vs more traditional auto-makers.
Pro-EV Tesla-owning conservative here. There aren't many of us, and for those of us in a blue city (e.g. Seattle) we now also have to contend with Kristallnacht-like environments for Tesla owners. Politically apathetic Asians are probably buying most of the Teslas here, but as the hostility and vandalism ramps up, they'll do the pragmatic thing and trade in for a brand that doesn't attract such unhinged behavior.
No good. A car is expensive, so whether you like someone's politics or not, honor the sweat of their labor. Nonetheless, the owners need to understand what people feel as well. Hopefully cooler hearts prevail.
Stick a rather visible "What would Jesus do?" on your car.
> Kristallnacht-like environments for Tesla owners.
C'mon, Kristallnacht? I'm not seeing any moves towards rounding up Tesla owners and sending them to camps. There's no political party carrying out organized pogroms against Tesla owners. No comparison whatsoever.
I've seen quite the opposite in liberal areas: a lot of empathy for neighbors who bought Teslas a while ago because many - Tesla owners or not - feel deceived by Elon.
That's how I feel about my neighbors with Teslas. None of them bought them with the intention of promoting techno-feudalism, and because it's an expensive product, they are stuck with it for a while.
Far less of a pass for cybertrucks. Even absent Elon's politics that thing is rolling fuck you to everyone else on the road.
While it's not widespead this is a little Kristallnacht - Tigard dealership shooting - https://www.opb.org/article/2025/03/06/tigard-tesla-dealersh...
In that analogy, it’d be the government burning down Tesla dealerships as part of a false flag operation, rounding up liberals, and sending them to camps.
I haven’t heard of that happening either.
Anyway people stuck with an old Tesla can just get an anti-musk bumpersticker.
Sentry Mode is a thing.
It's even worse than that, many conservatives live in rural areas where EV chargers are less common.
This really is a case of trading a good addressable market for a much smaller one. Business-wise it makes no sense at all.
> There are conservatives with money, and those without
The main issue with conservatives is that they just don't like EVs and are much more skeptical about climate change.
Who's running Tesla? Top management below Musk is just Tom Zhu, who went back to China, and a chief financial officer.[1] Drew Baglino, the powertrain guy, quit last year.
[1] https://electrek.co/2024/05/06/elon-musk-no-2-tesla-goes-bac...
In Germany, it sure didn’t help that the 2024 TüV report says that 14% of Tesla Model 3s fail their first inspection, which is done when the car is 2/3 years old (VW is at 3,5 - 7%).
My last car, a Ford Focus, passed the inspections on the first try for 13 years in a row
I wonder what will the failure rate for BYD. I wish automakers would started to deliver on a promise EV being more reliable.
I'd rather drive an Austin Allegro or a Rover than a piece of Tesla junk on wheels.
Tesla tried to copy British Leyland "that'll do" coachbuilding and failed miserably!
I'd love to drive a Rover V8 in my lifetime.
Tesla is a battery company propped up on tax credits. The cars never came close to profitability. Now that the tax credits are gone/going and there are competitors for the battery space, there is no reasonable path forward, which is why we're seeing a taxi that'll never happen, a truck that isn't very good at truck, and a mechanical Turk serving drinks.
I’ve on my 4th Tesla so far. There will not be a 5th one. I will not let my money go to Musk.
The net margin on a Tesla is only a few percent, and of that Musk only receives 12% (only owns 12% of Tesla stock).
A guy who is worth hundreds of billions, and is willing to give Wikimedia a billion dollars to change their name to dickipedia, doesn’t care whether he makes an extra hundred from you or not.
Just buy the car you like.
there is literally nothing he cares about except for money (including his own myriad of children he probably can’t even name)
I think that was true at some point in his life, but these days he regularly and deliberately torches billions of dollars just to make a point on principle.
Which car you buy makes a significant difference to your life, but virtually zero difference to shareholders of the automaker, so buy whatever car you want instead of spiting yourself.
Well, when I see the disaster of the 'We are going to run this country like a bussiness', one has to think, what kind of disasters should one await from the bussiness that he is running like bussiness...cyber..cough..track..cough...
It seems to me like when a young IT engineer comes on project running for 100 years, and starts to rewrite the core service in nodejs, because it will cost less to run it, or whatever - and you end up with half working production, because someone didint't understood, why the system is and was built how it was built, and what are the implications of changing it... It might work on greenfield project, but anything else will probably not survive such a 'expert' in charge.
Do you think the board will push Elon out, or will the company just collapse when it can't raise cash?
I kinda want to buy a used Tesla now while they're cheap and stash it in the garage until this blows over. But I need it to keep getting software support.
Tesla's 2024 Free Cash Flow was roughly $3.5 billion. Other than BYD, they're still the only company I'm aware of that can profitably sell an EV. So, raising cash might not be a near-term pressure point.
The board's historically comped Elon on revenues, net income and stock price -- all those aren't that great compared with highs in the last five years. They are, however, astronomical compared to where Tesla was when they gave him his 'crazy' incentive stock plan. I imagine the board is probably repeatedly asking him to settle down, lower the drug intake and ... please don't make things worse bro. Maybe in stronger language than that. And, I'm sure if they think Tesla would be better off without Elon they'll work hard to make that happen. Right now, though is sort of peak anti-Elon sentiment in the public, making it harder to parse out what's helpful / where he's impacting his companies on the non-public side.
Without a strong theory for why anti-Elon sentiment can't get worse, it's quite plausible we haven't actually hit the "peak" of it.
Personally I think it quite likely that Musk will catch significant blame for whatever bad things related to American government happen in the coming year, deserved or otherwise.
Also a clash with Trump or other MAGA figureheads is likely and Musk will be kicked out from the MAGA team.
The board is die hard Elon loyalists, for example - his brother.
The board’s not doing anything
I’m going to guess they won’t work if they turn the Tesla servers off. Just a guess - I have no inside info.
They will, I’ve tested it by turning my cellular connectivity on the vehicle off (I have root on my vehicles as a registered security researcher).
You lose maps, supercharger status, etc but the car still works fine.
That's always been the catch for me; its an always-on remotely controlled camera-mobile, of which you happen to sit in the drivers seat and pretend you own while it drives you around dangerously.
Aside from the gimmicky "summon mode", what remote control are you talking about?
Simply being always-online and sending telemetry, doesnt preclude the ability to remotely intercede in the car's operations.
I think there's precedent with the OnStar system in other cars, and there has anecdotally been evidence of various systems being operable by some kind of admin terminal.
I think "summon mode" is actually a great demonstration of how you can remotely access and do some form of piloting the car without a driver. There's also the disabling of features remotely on resale, and probably other examples.
They probably do it properly now, but there were stories in the past that they were able to ssh into the cars: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17835760 https://www.reddit.com/r/EnoughMuskSpam/comments/99sbwa/form...
Even then you can always install an update that allows remote control.
Are they cheap though? I’ve been searching on AT and Craigslist and prices don’t seem to have dropped yet.
Maybe Russian and Middle Eastern money bails him out again.
Tesla has $36B in cash. They don't need to raise.
Not too many years ago I watched Ford burn $36 billion in cash in a year.
Dude sieg-heiled twice on stage. He needs to have no connection, including stock, and they need a rebrand, before I’d consider them. The T logo is a swastika now, and I would’ve drive around with one of those on my car.
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The sieg hiel meme probably wouldn't have caught as much traction if he wasn't appearing at AfD rallies like the face of Big Brother
And why is supporting AfF bad?
It was voted on by 1 in 5 Germans, are pro Jewish interests and is especially popular among the German gay demographic.
What part of their policies do you find troubling or Nazi-like?
Do you have a stance based on facts or did you just read in the news that you are supposed to think that AfD is bad? Be honest.
Not OP, but how about "remigration" of many people, but among them German citizens, "back" to their countries of origin, voluntary or otherwise?
Their members have been making statements like, the Nazis weren't all that bad, a number of them were found to be parroting Nazi talking points, or quoting verbatim.
Germany is facing enormous stability problems unless it does something radical, not to mention total cultural erasure. Remigration sounds good even reasonable, within reason.
I hope we can agree this is clearly not about genocide? In this regard the Nazi-comparison seems weird.
«Their members» is too vague for me to opine on.
They support ethnic cleansing of Palestinians.
The original goal of the Nazi concentration camps was relocating ethnic groups to help stabilize Germany and protect its culture. Your viewpoints are indistinguishable from those of a pro-Hitler German in the lead up to world war two.
Far left? https://www.wired.com/story/neo-nazis-love-elon-musk-nazi-li...
His grandfather emigrated from Canada to South Africa after the fascist party he was a member of got banned.
That's just one grandfather though. Albeit a full on out and out Hitler supporting grandfather.
His other grandfather was a well respected senior government minister.
( Who defended aparthied tooth and nail in the white South African Government )
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QAHSgVk84B0
A little historical background.
I'm a bit older than that crowd, I remember first hand where they came from and read the long form Guardian article when it was written.
Still, if you like youtube material, the lyrics to songs they all grew up with in SA are telling enough: e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIGnIvL18_4&t=31s
As the twigs were bent ...
Wow, I didn't have this on my bingo card for today, but this has got to be the most full-throated, impassioned defense and downplaying of an obvious Nazi salute I've ever read in my life.
I tell ya what. Instead of trying to convince you of what you're wishing to be not true, try this: Pull up the video of the gesture he made, practice it at home, make sure you can duplicate it perfectly, and then go into work and do it in front of each person you meet, and come back here and tell us what happens.
Nah. Not misinformation. Just other people aren't willing to give him the massive benefit of the doubt that you are. There's no point arguing with you about it, of course. But in context, watching the full video, seeing his opinions expressed on Twitter... surely you can see how people can come to the conclusion that they have.
For you to act like it's 100% definitely misinformation rather than a judgement call is disingenuous to the extreme.
> For you to act like it's 100% definitely misinformation rather than a judgement call is disingenuous to the extreme.
I’ll go on the unpopular limb and say that anyone seriously considering the fact that any mainstream persona intentionally did a «Nazi» thing has been consuming too much traditional, commercial media who almost by definition thrives on controversy and clicks. Their core interest is not in facts or honest reporting.
I don’t think HN is the most appropriate place for such discussions, but if anyone seriously wants to accuse Elon Musk of being a «Nazi», I would kindly request that they first define what they mean by that word in 2025, because to me that is honestly not very obvious.
He’s pro Israel and want less government regulation. I’m no expert, but to me that seems anti-Nazi?
> He’s pro Israel and want less government regulation. I’m no expert, but to me that seems anti-Nazi?
Elon obviously does not tick off every box for "Nazi", but he gets so many that a lot of people are understandably horrified.
The salute was, physically, a Nazi salute - as any video comparison clearly shows. And he did it twice. Maybe he didn't "mean" it - maybe it was ironic, maybe it was for kicks, but it obviously was one.
Add to that his support for far-right parties around the world. That includes Germany, and, yes, Israel - while historic Nazis were antisemites, but some far-right people today find common ground with the far-right in Israel, which is exactly who is in power there now.
And Elon is allied with Trump, who got elected after a campaign in which he demonized immigrants as "poisoning the blood" of the nation, said that (legal!) immigrants were "eating the cats and the dogs", etc. etc. Those are classic lines from far-right, fascist governments. Demonizing gay and trans people as well, and Elon has done plenty of that himself.
So, is Elon just "far-right" and not "Nazi"? I'm not sure it's worth debating the difference. Obviously literal card-carrying Nazis are in the past, but the overlap between the modern far-right and historical fascism is enormous.
> the fact that any mainstream persona intentionally did a «Nazi» thing
Here's video of him doing it intentionally. Twice:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smQNNo2a9xc
You’d be surprised on the Israel thing. There are not-small sections of white supremacy and neo-Nazism who see Israel as the realization of the kind of ethnostate they think should be the norm. “Yes, hooray Israel! All the Jews we want to expel should go over there! It’s a model state!”
To the rest of this, playing with Nazi shit to “trigger the libs” is a whole thing on the right, and I 100% think it’s what Elon was doing (and why we’ve seen more of it since, from others). The other explanations are bizarre (what the fuck is “my heart goes out to you”? The closest thing I can think of to that sort of gesture doesn’t risk this kind of confusion) and this kind of “trolling” is read as absolutely serious and a show of support by the worst elements of the right.
For my part, play with Nazi shit, you’re a Nazi, and so’s anyone who keeps associating with you. Most of the right didn’t run away from this, so we’ve got a pretty serious Nazi problem now.
> Most of the right didn’t run away from this, so we’ve got a pretty serious Nazi problem now
I appreciate the honest response, I really do.
But right here is where I’ll have to go back to my original comment about imagining problems.
You imagine he did something Nazi like. You imagined there are big swaths of right wing people supporting this imagined Nazi act. You imagine a big Nazi problem.
And it could be all in your head.
Listen to Bill Maher: Focus on becoming a viable alternative, rather than chasing crazy things. The world can only benefit from more viable options at the next election.
It’s. On. Video.
If this were literally the only issue, idk, maybe? But there’s also the broader plan they’re implementing, and the normalization of wildly illegal action from the executive. It’s authoritarianism top to bottom, and they said exactly what they’re aiming to do.
I’m focusing on a lot of things, and the fact that Nazi salutes (it’s on video! He did it twice! Watch that again and tell me what would look different if that were in-fact what he’s doing. What the hell gesture even looks close to what he does, if not that? I find the denial of what we can all plainly see shocking, similar to attempts to deny what happened on January 6th which we watched live) are now “eh, it’s fine” for the Republican Party is not nothing.
Like we’re a multifaceted coup attempt and an “if I lose to Hillary, the 2nd amendment folks can do something about it” in, and we’re in the middle of “shock and awe” (their words) against the government bureaucracy, firing of the people charged with preventing much worse and who did prevent that last time (IGs, generals), 40ish days out from the publicly stated deadline for agency reports on whether Trump should invoke the insurrection act, and the richest dude in the world Nazi salutes on stage twice and people are still going “IDK”. Gimme a fucking break.
But yes the actual problem is I can tell what kind of gesture he very obviously made and find it repugnant. That’s the problem. Not that all the above is going on and people are still entertaining “he just meant ‘my heart goes out to you’, which one expresses with a firm grimace, a slap to the chest and quick extension of the arm, fucking exactly like a Nazi salute” as if it’s not obvious bullshit.
Dude it’s on video. We can just watch it. This wasn’t an innocent gesture caught in an awkward still, it’s on video. I get that it’s also on video that he looked high as a kite at the event, but most people manage not to nazi salute when high, too.
Elon seems really unhinged, and there's so much to criticize without reaching for inflammatory labels.
I don't understand the gesture. It's not something I see myself ever doing. But here's Tim Walz doing the exact same thing on video. Evidence of secret NSDAP membership?
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/qdntrfPInBk
If this looks like the "exact same thing" Elon Musk did, have your eyes checked. Seriously. I literally clicked the link, spent 5 seconds, and it's a totally different gesture...?
That’s pretty weird but that’s also not what Elon did. I just re-watched his in case my memory was faulty, and no, it’s simply a Nazi salute, straight-up.
Don’t be so damned gullible. These shitheads thrive on doing reprehensible stuff, and then giving it a stupid cover story so people like you go out and defend them for free.
It was a “haha only serious” Nazi salute. It’s not “unhinged” to see what’s plainly visible.
I find the concept that the left is pulling this nazi stuff of their ass to a bad problem with anyone out there defending it. If someone accused me of giving a nazi salute, and then the nazis high five each other in the internet, I’d be releasing a statements that this was a complete misunderstanding. Nazi’s are losers and can fuck off.
Then there wouldn’t even be room for this. But the man keeps finding himself questionable close to nazi adjacent shit far too often. It might be for lulz, but don’t be surprised when consumers back off your products.
If TSLA goes bust, your car will cease to function. This is guaranteed, m8. Don't buy this junk.
What is your basis for this? This sounds like rubbish. I would imagine the car would function as well as any other manufactuter who runs their own entertainment system - some hosted features might fail, but the car itself will continue to run fine.
You ever get software updates for legacy software? Not really right? The term is abandonware. In the video game market what they do is hand off the dead games to some Chinese company that milks a few more DLCs/cashshops out of it (this re-release is effectively a pump and dump IPO). Then they pack it up and shut the game down.
The timeline would like this for a Tesla owner:
- Tesla goes bankrupt
- Some Chinese company takes up the upkeep of the software
- They introduce ads similar to Jeep
- No core functionality or QoL improvements are made
- Abandonware, no real software updates
- Your car runs fine, but you paid for a car with a computer in it, and the business basically repossessed the computer part of it. So, if that's possible, it's better to avoid.
I don’t need updates, so step three is where I disconnect the car and keep driving it like that. There haven’t been any significant updates to the software in the past couple of years anyway, outside of FSD.
You can’t really do the OTA update for any recall issue that could become apparent. There have been quite a few of those.
The brand is forever tainted by "Dark Gothic MAGA".
Forever?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volkswagen#History
The leader of the nazis was murdered, so were most of the hardcore loyalists and his soldiers.
If Hitler and his loyalists were still around chilling in Argentina I'm sure Volkswagen wouldn't do so well.
it is, and for moral reasons i wouldn't buy one new.
but i've had the same thought as parent. if the 2nd hand market really dips, i'm not going to let dirty looks from strangers get in the way of a smart economic & ecological move for me
I would be concerned about more than dirty looks at the rate things are going.
I'm sure Musk would send you a sieg heil for doing it.
i mean what do they get from buying a second hand car? i'll have solar soon, will very rarely need the charging network
Resale value plays into buy decisions
Good riddance
The real story here is Australia and China. According to some auto blogs, BYD is destroying them in both markets.
Anecdotal but I just purchased an Atto3 in Melbourne. Tesla wasn't even considered after Musk's behaviour and the value for money that the BYD provides.
The reason I brought the Atto3 was after talking to 4 or 5 Uber drivers with them who swore by them.
Australia not having local car manufacturers really makes it easier for BYD, not having to worry about protectionist tariffs like in the US
yes, they taught us in school that Denmark, which makes no cars, had significantly cheaper cars than... oooh wait a minute, they got sucked into the EU which does make cars... is it still true? how is this handled by EC policy?
Are you proposing that Denmark is a part of the EU because it does not produce its own cars?
Cars are incredibly expensive in Denmark (Not quite Singapore levels, but high). This, however, is more grounded in a cultural difference where walkable cities are preferred.
The US is incredibly car centric - to an extend where US trips can be directly read in my stress levels as measured on my watch. The US is so incredibly noisy and smelly.
Denmark has companies making parts for car companies elsewhere in Europe.
I don't know the relative size of this industry compared to anywhere else.
Is it? They're doing well in AU, but still well behind Tesla[1].
1. https://evcentral.com.au/2024-australian-ev-sales-tesla-and-...
Article is from 10/24
Things haven’t improved for BYD since then.
I think BYD makes a great car for a great price, but Tesla is still outselling them 5:1
Anecdotally in New Zealand I have several neighbours with new BYDs. In my same neighbourhood there are two Teslas (Model 3) and both were purchased over 5 years ago. No one in their right mind is buying a Tesla in this market, and not because Elon is a twat (although he very much is). BYD is just better value.
The base model 3 and seal are about $10k difference in AU (not a huge difference in that price range) and the BYD is slower with less range.
Personally every time I've rented a BYD (only the Atto admittedly) I've found the UI to be awful. The two Android screens are often out of sync on key information, and the interior looks like it was designed by Homer Simpson making a "future car".
No one is buying the Seal, it's the Atto 3. And 10k is about a quarter of the price, I don't know what you mean by "not a huge difference in that price range".
A new car purchase should make the buyer feel /good/. With Tesla, it just doesn't feel good anymore. It feels dirty, dishonest, and corrupt. No thanks.
If Musk’s reputation has a significant effect on Tesla sales overseas, what can investors do?
A majority of investors could get together and replace the board.
Otherwise not much. Part of the risk in investing is that you might invest in a company with shitty management. If you made a bad investment (except in very extreme cases which this probably doesnt cross the line into) that is your fault. Investing is not the same thing as free money.
Sell their tesla shares, and the sooner the better
Sell earlier than later?
Sell it now and minimize the loss.
They can celebrate a couple of decades of success. Tesla won, it truly changed the world - EV's are everywhere now. The shareholders helped build that, and even if Tesla is now dying - it meant they made a difference.
other than sell? it's still not clear if they even have director independence.
Musk's job is to make investors money. The moment he stops doing that, he's dead weight.
If Trump is a narcissist, Musk is a megalomaniac. "Everything Elon does is about acquiring and consolidating power. This is why he likes far right parties, because they are easier to control," says former Musk friend Philip Low.
When you buy a Tesla you're enriching a megalomaniac who wants to control members of congress by threatening to primary them [1], and control judges by threatening to impeach them [2].
[1] https://www.msnbc.com/top-stories/latest/trump-elon-musk-pri...
[2] https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/american...
I though the consensus here was that he went into politics to get richer?
He has way more money than he needs to buy essentially anything. Quadrupling his net worth would have pretty much zero impact on him at this point.
He wants power. Wealth is a route to power (money is ultimately a form of power) but it only goes so far. He maxed that out and now he’s finding other means.
Him getting richer is orthogonal to Tesla going bust.
my understanding is that he just got a bit too involved with the culture wars online, a la JK Rowling and your nutso uncle/conspiracy-obsessed facebook friend, but he's just that much more exposed to influence, and that much more powerful, and then he semi-accidentally locked himself into it by buying twitter. I really don't think there's a genius play at the end of it all, or even that it's corruption
Where the fuck are the minority shareholder lawsuits? Anyone?
Good.
I kind of have to sit back and laugh at the "I'm a genius / Oh no!" schadenfreude of his decision-making of late. Nevermind his present playbook is directly ripped from Bob Page (billionaire villain of Deus Ex), but seeing people tie themselves up into knots to still defend his "4D-Chess Brilliance" as he keeps footgunning his business enterprises just makes me facepalm at the sheer stupidity of these bootblacks.
The guy invested in an EV company and built a cult of personality around going lean, mean, and green with EVs. Sporty, well-built cars with tasteful interiors and designs, that also did away with the traditional American dealership model. That worked, because it was an objectively good idea. Then he cut costs, lost the plot, and did everything he could to game the share price rather than run a better car company. As a result, others began moving into the space and copying Tesla's M.O.: in-vehicle surveillance tech, cloud-required connectivity, a focus on digital features over physical reliability, cheaper materials at higher costs, etc. So now the car market is full of "pseudo-Teslas" that nobody can afford, and nobody really wants; if we're going to buy a cheap piece of junk, we can buy a used car with the advantage it won't spy on us.
He did the same thing with SpaceX: transformed the company into a payload juggernaut, lost the plot, invested into every ancillary market possible, threw out quality control, and seems content riding wave after wave of massive explosions instead of serious R&D and QA/QC while pivoting to internet service that's angering governments, environmentalists, and scientists alike.
I could repeat this with X and DOGE, but we all know the scorecard there. The dude has completely lost the plot, and is high on his own supply. He doesn't invest assuming failure and preparing for success, he invests assuming success and failure isn't a possibility (which, to be fair, is kind of true when you've captured weakened governments).
He's just a bad leader. Full stop. If his companies' boards weren't packed with boot-licking sycophants, they'd likely have tossed his butt out for doing drugs on multiple interviews like some sort of college drug dealer instead of a C-Suite visionary.
At this point, for most of the world buying a Chinese product carries less geopolitical risk than buying similar American product. China is predictable in advancing its own interests abroad, while Trump's administration has shown itself to be exactly the opposite.
It's too bad for Elon that their new buddies in Russia aren't much into electric cars. Even Chinese companies mainly export petrol powered ones there due to lack of demand for EV's.
All I have to say is: good. Hope it continues to nosedive.
oddly, UK sales are UP 20%...
Of course, there is a global Tesla boycott. Other electric cars are also made by other companies which sell cheaper than a Tesla.
> Of course, there is a global Tesla boycott.
Is there really? In the sense of a global organized boycott spearheaded by a particular organization? I've not yet seen anything like that. It seems like instead the brand has just been damaged by Musk in the eyes of the kind of person who might be likely to buy an EV in the first place.
Furthermore, that has happened as their offerings have become stale in their primary markets - their old branding approach (techno-utopianism) has lost its appeal, but their new branding (techno-dystopianism) is turning most people off.
> Is there really? In the sense of a global organized boycott spearheaded by a particular organization?
That's not the normal definition of boycott.
Usually boycott just means to refuse to buy from a particular vendor due to some reason other than cost-value of the product.
I dont know about "global" but there are certainly many regional groups boycotting american products in general, and musk doubly so.
> Is there really? In the sense of a global organized boycott spearheaded by a particular organization? I've not yet seen anything like that. It seems like instead the brand has just been damaged by Musk in the eyes of the kind of person who might be likely to buy an EV in the first place.
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/uk-new...
"According to Germany's road traffic agency, Tesla sold 1,429 cars in Germany, a decline of 76%, an even bigger decline than the 60% drop in January. Overall, sales of electric vehicles rose 30.8% to 35,949 in Germany."
"Tesla sales were down 24% in the Netherlands, 42% in Sweden, 48% in both Norway and Denmark, 45% in France, 55% in Italy, 10% in Spain and 53% in Portugal"
Not an organised boycott, just people voting with their wallets.
If there was an organized boycott, the US Office of Antiboycott Compliance could stop that quickly. That's why most boycotts these days are not officially organized and spearheaded by any actual government or powerful body
Nah that's not what they do.
https://www.bis.doc.gov/index.php/enforcement/oac
They don't do it now. They would do it if a new organized boycott popped up because that's what they were invented to do. Plus Trump will surely utilize it if he ever feels the desire
Buying an alternative product for selfish reasons is not a "boycott".
Lets be real.
Tesla will not be able to solve FSD with their current approach. Even if Tesla were to solve it tomorrow, it will take YEARS to be approved (decades in Europe).
Teslas models are being outcompeted - not only by Chinese companies I might tell you.
And most of all... Tesla = Elon... And we all know he is losing his mind currently. Calling the Polish minister of foreign affairs a "little man". Suggesting that the US should leave NATO. You should see how much he tweets nowadays, and how little sleep he gets.
Elon Musk is Howard Hughes, about to move into his cinema and stay there for years.
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He made the Nazi salute too late in the month to have that dramatic of an impact on sales.
the article we are reading is fairly context free, how it does link to one with a lot better data
https://www.carscoops.com/2025/03/tesla-sales-plunge-44-in-n...
The article talks about January and February and he made the salute with 10 days still to go in Jan. seems like enough time to have an impact on Feb. But yeah there’s probably a lot more too it.
Which makes predictions even worse then.
It's wild how "Elon did a Nazi salute" is now taken as an unquestioned truth. Most of the time here, false or exaggerated statements are "source?"-d and nitpicked to death, but not this one because so many people want it to be true.
Important to remember that his maternal grandfather and mother were ardent nazi supporters, which is why they moved from Canada to South Africa.
There is a freaking video. There is no "exaggeration" or possibility of it being false. The video shows he clearly did a Nazi salute.
Time for the "source?"-ing. If it is an undisputed fact, then is there any reputable media that plainly states "Elon did a Nazi salute"?
You can critically think for yourself, the video is there for anyone to watch. Why do you need 'reputable media' to confirm things for you? Especially since I'm sure you will denounce any source provided as non-reputable.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jan/20/trump-elo...
Why do we need media to interpret for us? Just go watch the video.
And then, if he still doesn't believe it's a Nazi salute, he should go into work and try doing it in front of all his co-workers and see what they think...
The salute he did on stage was false?
The proof is out there for everyone to see.
I think people who focus too much on "whether he really meant it or really made the salute" etc, are missing the forrest for the trees.
He's a guy who supports the AFD, who has said "German people are too focused on the past and should get rid of national guilt" or something along these lines. He definitely spends a lot of time online regurgitating 4chan like memes (which fine, I do that too, but I'm not a world leader) and acts and talks like a person who is obsessed with white demographics in Western societies.
He has a reputation of someone who would plausibly do that as a playful nod towards his terminally online fanbase. That's the issue. His reputation makes it believable. Whether he really meant to or not has little to do with that fact. Ultimately one's reputation is everything in democratic politics
What did he say about it after the fact?
> It's wild how "Elon did a Nazi salute" is now taken as an unquestioned truth.
He did it deliberately, he did it with gusto, and he did it twice just to make sure: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smQNNo2a9xc
These guys loved it: https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/elon-mus...
And so does this guy: https://www.reddit.com/r/facepalm/comments/1i68puj/have_we_l...
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Most people are capable of recognizing that countries are not monoliths, but a collection of separate entities, so that it is possible to treat a country's politics and its car brands differently.
It is really hard to do that for Elon Musk the politician and Elon Musk the Tesla CEO, since they're the same person.
you're comparing the actions of a government vs those of the ceo. of course any company in china is more linked to the gov than most in the US, but BYD's ceo is far more likeable and less offensive to the majority
China isn't here destroying my country. They aren't trying to destroy the department of education. They aren't trying to destroy the entire research establishment.
This has nothing to do with PR. China can say whatever it wants, but it doesn't really affect my life much. Musk is having a direct massive negative effect.
People are plenty happy to make that distinction over US invasions which ended up killing millions of people, overseas black sites, extraordinary rendition, and electoral interference. Why is it surprising they'd do the same with China?
It's a good point.
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It's quite likely that most of that fall in sales is just an effect of the retooling for the Model Y refresh. However, I would not be entirely surprised if Tesla does struggle a bit given how politically charged owning a Tesla currently is. I however doubt that it's anything like "falling off a cliff".
Pay no attention to the catastrophic drop in sales in Scandinavia and Germany following Elon’s Nazi salute on national television. Pay no attention to the dozens of dealerships subjected to violent responses due to the above and the CEOs mass firings of civil servants.
Or… Google around for cases of vandalism of the cars and the dealers. Maybe review some of the protest language. Pretty sure “politically charged” misses the point by several orders of magnitude.