Musk's antics and distractions are backfiring as Tesla's car business stalls Tesla reported its vehicle delivery and production numbers for Q2 2025 this week, and while the figures weren't quite as low in absolute terms as Q1, they still mark a worrying downward trend as CEO Elon Musk continues to spread his attention across a huge variety of topics unrelated to making and selling electric cars. " …
The models are old and dated. The build quality is your average dogshit "Made in the USA" standard. He alienated the "left" (USA left, not rest of world left), but the right want 10 litre tanks.
Put simply there is no compelling reason to buy a Tesla over all the others out there.
They're also very much made on the cheap if you know what you're looking for. I wonder if they can even decently self park now because even that Tesla messed up before and that's something that even non EVs got right years ago.
But enough about the car - what I'm interested in is what desperate stunt he's going to pull on the next earnings call to again distract his believers/cult members investors from his failings as he has done every time before to prevent the much needed correction of the stock price towards reality (imho down, by a lot).
Maybe a robotic President to replace Trump? Given that one's limited vocabulary you would not even a large LLM..
"what I'm interested in is what desperate stunt he's going to pull on the next earnings call to again distract his believers/cult members investors from his failings as he has done every time before to prevent the much needed correction of the stock price towards reality (imho down, by a lot)."
Invest short term, buy the dips, sell when it recovers. As a long or medium term investment case Tesla is ultra high risk, but if you have the appetite for short term risk, look to benefit from the volatility and the Muskbois inability to see how crap their god is.
Tesla's cars are typical of vehicles that weren't designed and made by a car company but by some IT technology company. They're having to re-learn the lessons most car manufacturers have learned over more than a century of car making.
The only reason the company was succesful is that they were more or less the only game in town when it comes to EVs. Now that this starting to change its failures start to stick out lke a sore thumb and they're quickly overtaken by rivals, especially the Chinese, who can make better cars at much lower cost.
"And... Jesus, they're ugly."
Zoot suits are ugly. Bustles are grotesquely ugly, uncomforatble and downright evil. Cabbage Patch dolls were ugly (do they still exist?) Men wearing their underwear and trousers low enough to expose their bums are ugly, to many of us. Lots of things are ugly yet are strangely popular. There are incredibly ugly males who have managed to attract and to marry incredibly bright, talented and beautifiul women - I know this from experience :) .
Ford's Model "T" is ugly, yet it was popular.
Ugly isn't always a dawback. Sometimes it is only a parochial, insular and temporary matter of taste which - in some future date - becomes beauty.
Twenty years from now, if there is still a civilisation, the lines of the Cybertruck may be thought of by critics and consumers alike as classical, clean, perfectly produced and tightly made.
Or perhaps not. Maybe "ugly" is timeless and universal?
The best ‘Made in USA’ cars are made by the Japanese and South Koreans in numerous USA factories - Toyota, Honda, Kia/Hyundai, BMW.. and Nissan who are advertising ‘USA Made/tariff free’ these days. The made by foreign company cars wilfully get overlooked by the blowhards.
Most BMW X- Series SUV’s globally are built at BMW Spartanburg, SC mega plant.
https://www.bmwgroup-werke.com/spartanburg/en.html
… and before the German Plant Tesla’s USA to Europe:
When they say ‘no-one wants ‘Merican cars … that’s factually incorrect… and the truck industry is protected by trade/tariff barriers (funnny that).
"For some stupid reason they made up their own measurement system that no-one else has ever used."
Wrong. The US's units are stupid, but that gallon they use was the British gallon. It was, in fact, the UK who redefined the gallon in 1824, before which they used the same thing the US uses now. None of that makes the gallon a useful unit, but at least when the US uses it, they can correctly claim to be using the same thing consistently for a long time rather than switching the unit significantly without switching the name like the UK did.
A comment was posted yesterday implying anthropogenic CO2 emission is not the primary environmental problem the popular culture takes it for. ("> ...but CO2 is not one of them...")
I offered the following:
It may or it may not be. It is certainly an intriguing hypothesis.
In natural sciences, hypotheses are promoted into scientifically accepted fact with devices such as mathematics, physics, chemistry and repeatable experiments. In social sciences and religion, this is done with panels of experts. Statistics never provides the proof, it supports equally well speculations and hallucinations.
Both comments were promptly removed by the moderator. If the same happens to done to this one, I'll consider it a fair warning:
Public expression of any doubt in anthropogenic global warming hypothesis must have transitioned from scientific discourse into the religious heresy. First step in dealing with heresies is removing posts from popular forums. I might as well stop before the heretics are dealt with using more resolute methods.
Public expression of any doubt in anthropogenic global warming hypothesis must have transitioned from scientific discourse into the religious heresy. First step in dealing with heresies is removing posts from popular forums. I might as well stop before the heretics are dealt with using more resolute methods.
Generally heretical comments are memoryholed, sadly without moderators adding a comment about why a post was removed. Otherwise the usual reaction is just angry thumbs. Unless you're a Bbc employee, in which case they may get sent for re-education
https://dailysceptic.org/2025/07/02/bbc-complaints-director-takes-six-month-sabbatical-to-learn-how-to-promote-climate-crisis/
The BBC Complaints Director Colin Tregear has enrolled on the green grooming course run as a six-month sabbatical by the Oxford Climate Journalism Network (OCJN). The course is funded by the Green Blob and aims to make the ‘climate crisis’ a central element in the journalism of the attendees. Tregear is said to have responsibility for climate complaints at the BBC. Quite why the British TV taxpayer should fund this activist boondoggle for a man who is supposed to independently consider matters that often involve disputed areas of science is not immediately clear.
But sticking to the topic of Tesla, they're a bit vulnerable right now. They were a bit of a Green darling because they make EVs, solar panels and battery banks. On the plus side, this should be vaguely sustainable and environmentally friendly. Buy an EV, fit solar and a battery and you get 'free' motoring, at a pretty substantial capital cost. Assorted governments in their rush to virtue signal.. I mean implement 'Net Zero' policies incentivised EVs, solar and 'renewables' in general via tax breaks & subsidies. Tesla made bank exploiting these. But like with any motoring, there's a few speed bumps.
EVs, solar and 'renewables' in general put a massive strain on existing power transmission and distribution networks, along with the costs of transitioning away from ICE to EV. So installing charging networks to replace fuel pumps. Currently these are heavily subsidised, but some subsidies and tax breaks are under threat. So cost of supporting EVs might be from subsidies charged to all energy users, increasing electricity costs. Plus governments face losing billions in revenue generated from car tax, and fuel duty. So some (like the UK) are slowly moving to applying those to EVs, which will increase their running costs. The TCO argument for EVs is also getting more challenging as petrol/diesel prices fall, and costs of using public EV charging points increases.
Then if (when) subsidies are removed or reduced, it has the dual effect of increasing the cost of EVs, and reducing the revenue Tesla generates from selling EV credits.. Which is becoming more challenging given more manufacturers make their own EVs, so don't need to buy credits from Tesla.. And of course the general competition across Tesla's model range from low cost to high-end. Plus politics, because Tesla is no longer a darling of the left because of Musk's statements and actions, or just Tesla sticking to their minimalist design/style choice.. Or just the unique styling of their Cybertruck.
That depends on how fast the subsidies are removed. You need to take economies of scale bringing costs down into account too.
Also which subsidies, and there's the old adage that "We'll make it up in volume". Which doesn't work if you're making a loss, and only increases the loss. It also assumes economies of scale can be achieved, or haven't already been achieved. So Tesla's been busy building 'Gigafactories' to churn out cars, with claims that robots and automation make it cheap. So basically doing what Ford, GM, Toyota, Honda etc etc have already been doing for decades. Tesla may not be quite as successful given customers finding defects that somehow slipped past Tesla's QA checks.
But currently every vehicle (except trucks?) creates an EV credit, which ICE makers have to buy, and those are somehow worth a lot of money-
https://carboncredits.com/teslas-carbon-credits-crash-in-q1-2025-earnings-drop-and-ev-sales-fall/
Another significant factor that pulls a major chunk of Tesla’s revenue is its automotive regulatory credits. For the latest quarter, Tesla earned $595 million, which is again below Q4 2024.
The EV maker generated $692 million from selling regulatory credits in the last quarter of 2024 alone. It accounted for nearly 30% of its quarterly net income of $2.33 billion.
And..
In the first quarter, Tesla produced over 362,000 vehicles and delivered more than 336,000. However, its total revenue dropped 9% year-over-year to $19.3 billion, with the automotive segment seeing a 20% decline to $14 billion. The dip came largely from lower average selling prices and fewer vehicle deliveries.
So crude calcs with 362K cars generating $692m credits gives $1,911 per vehicle. If those credits disappear, margin/cost per vehicle drops, price might have to increase to compensate. Then other factors like tariff costs on parts or complete vehicles, ie vehicles produced in China and if Tesla's having to eat tariff costs as Japanese manufacturers have been doing. Plus other interesting challenges, like a car transporter ship recently caught fire & sank afer EVs onboard caught fire. Which isn't the first EV fire at sea and will probably mean increases in shipping costs and insurance.
And then there's just general competition costs. So Ford makes their own EVs, so doesn't have to buy as many credits from Tesla, plus general competition from all the other EV makers now. Then on the customer side, the potential effects of cancelling tax credits for EV buyers, creating EV equivalents to replace fuel duty and VED. Or subsidising the roll-out of EV charge points, which is already starting to blow holes in the idea that an EV's TCO is lower than an ICE as charging costs inrease.
Which is really the same problem that killed off EV's from the time that Henrietta Ford owned one. It's rather hard to defy physics and that producing hydrocarbon fuel, transporting it, storing and dispensing it is just a lot cheaper & easier than electricity. Especially when all the infrastructure for hydrocarbons already exists.
This post has been deleted by its author
Oh, the sheer tragedy. Tesla’s Q2 deliveries plummeted a whole 14 percent. And the Cybertruck - that hulking monument to vaporware and vanity - failed, quite spectacularly, to rescue the quarter.
The horror.
One weeps for the afflicted shareholder class, bravely enduring the trauma of a wobbly line on their portfolio chart.
Meanwhile, as the author laments stale inventory and half-baked robotaxis, perhaps - just for a moment - spare a thought for the millions facing actual, daily terror in Ukraine.
Because while Tesla misses targets, Musk’s other toy—X, formerly Twitter—has evolved into something far more consequential than a mere “distraction.” It’s a precision-engineered chaos engine, explicitly enabling Russian state propaganda (as the European Commission itself has starkly documented), warping public discourse, and doing demonstrable harm in the real world. This isn't "antics"; it's a strategic platform for information warfare that actively supports a regime committing atrocities.
To call this "antics" is laughable. These aren’t slip-ups. They’re signals.
And increasingly, those signals are telling potential buyers that driving a Tesla is akin to driving a Volkswagen in the 1930s: a brand deeply entangled with, and implicitly endorsing, deeply disturbing geopolitical realities. Many no longer see a Tesla as a car - but as a rolling endorsement of a man actively platforming a regime engaged in terrorism.
While the article clutches its pearls over missed analyst expectations, it carefully, perhaps even cynically, ignores what those signals enable: the amplification of war crimes, the destabilization of democracies, and suffering on a scale that doesn’t fit neatly into an earnings report. Or a shiny new car for that matter.
But hey - the Cybertruck didn’t move stale inventory. And in some circles, that still counts as the bigger crisis than some war in the middle of Europe.
Not in the UK if you live in a block of flats, a house with no driveway style parking (cannot have cables snaking across pavement to on street parked EV as a major health & safety hazard) then no chance to home charge.
If you cannot charge "at home" then infrastructure is quite poor and often very expensive (lack of provision masked by the fact that not that many people have EV cars yet )
"then infrastructure is quite poor and often very expensive"
I have an EV. Because of the type it is, it charges from a domestic socket, not one of the three phase jobbies and certainly not the high voltage DC thing.
Let's see:
* Needs an app and an account
* Needs a different app and a different account
* Doesn't have the right sort of socket
* Or it's broken (a *shocking* number of these things are "unavailable")
* Or the electricity is marked up ridiculously
* Or the electricity is a good price but they add on a per-minute service charge
I believe there's a certain type of Ivizia (?) charger that you scan a QR code and it takes you to a website where you enter your bank card details and plug in....but I've yet to encounter a working one in the wild.
If it's more complicated, or more potential data grabby, than going to a regular filling station, I'm not especially interested. My identity should be of no concern, only whether or not my payment is good.
Absolutely it's not as easy if you don't have off street parking.
This RAC survey suggests that only 35% of households in the UK don't have off street parking, or the potential for it.
At the same time 20% of households don't have a car at all.
The overlap here won't be perfect, but it will be better than average.
So we're talking about a relatively small slice of the nation.
You are right though - we should have far more ubiquitous AC charging... everywhere there is a car park we should have a bank of AC chargers. Train stations, retail, entertainment, workplaces... park and ride... everywhere.
But let's not lose sight of the massive damage done every day by the continued use of fossil fuelled vehicles in our villages, towns, and cities.
Just as an anecdotal semi-data point: I see a lot of E.V.'s in southrn UKland. Amazon Prime and other delivery companies use them.
They probably don't amount to 1% of the total traffic and few of them ae pasenger 'buses but they do seem to be getting more common with every year.
I've yet to see a Tesla. I doubt that that is significant.
I read this article not as pointing out a tragedy for the shareholders but rather gloating about musk's chickens coming home to roost so to speak. If Tesla's share price crashes enough, Musk would be in serious trouble financially; he has a lot of loans collateralized by Tesla stock. If there was a margin call and he had to start actually selling shares, it would set of a chain reaction that would destroy at least his control over most of his companies. One can hope, at least.
I bought a model 3 in 2019; at that point it was obvious that he was an ass but it wasn't yet obvious that he was a _systemically problematic_ one. It's not like it's possible to get through life without ever doing business with someone who you think is personally objectionable, unfortunately. Plus, at the time the competition in the EV market was very far behind. That's not true any more, and I certainly wouldn't buy one today, but I don't regret my purchase.
I live in the SF Bay area, where it was the #1 selling car in the region during the quarter when I bought it. It's like 20% of the cars in the supermarket parking lot. Ownership of one of them probably is seen differently outside of this bubble.
You're so wrong about Twitter.
Yes it is used for propaganda but the difference is, it is used by everyone's propaganda as opposed to just the deep states / globalists. The EU hate it because it exposes their lies. Banging on about Russia alone shows you've been fully programmed. They are no different to USA, EU, UK, China or any other country. Globalism will succeed in a way because we are starting to see there is very little difference in reality from one country to another only in presentation.
You do realise the West helped prolong the war between the Ukraine and Russia.
Some allege Buffoon Boris, the bumbling UK ex PM played a big role in persuading Ukraine to not accept a peace deal, given this odd timeing.
"In a surprise visit to Ukraine on 9 April, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said "Putin is a war criminal, he should be pressured, not negotiated with," and that the collective West was not willing to make a deal with Putin. Three days after Johnson left Kyiv, Putin stated publicly that talks with Ukraine "had turned into a dead end"."
from wikipedia
..or for a more anti establishment view than Wikipedia (UK politics article)
Many believe there are major political reasons why the EU/UK/US want to take a very different approach to Russia than they do to e.g. Israel
If the non mainstream (media* & politics) view is easy to find on Twitter**, then I say good. People should be exposed to a plurality of opinions.
Before anyone accuses me of being a Russian stooge, I manage to dislike both the Ukraine & Russian political leaders (I tend to strongly dislike most politicians! as so often politicians seem to be amongst the worse representatives of humanity, rather than the best (if we had an ideal scenario of representation of the people by politicians))
* one interesting effect noticeable in UK media was that prior to the war, plenty of UK media reports of far right / Nazi groups in Ukraine, once the war got going that stopped (as did other "detrimental" reporting such as Pandora Papers stories featuring Zelensky & friends).
** Not really a Twitter user
"You do realise the West helped prolong the war between the Ukraine and Russia."
And that's a good thing, because without it being prolonged Ukraine would have ceased to exist.
Now, could we have assisted more, and better - absolutely, but prolonging the war isn't the bad thing here.
Nearly half of the deliveries were in June, so there's probably some channel stuffing given the excess of production vs deliveries. You can't keep producing more than you deliver (they did it in Q1 also) as you aren't paid for cars sitting on lots outside the factory.
Still they should worry more about the fact that Tesla's robotaxi had more driving violations in its first few days with a handful of cars than Waymo's entire fleet has had since they started operating in the state of Texas. And that NHSTA has started looking into it - and Musk no longer has an "in" in the government to tell them to back off like he did a few months ago when he made all the previous actions go away (and who knows, those "gone away" actions might come back since Trump is signaling to his underlings that Musk is no longer one of the protected in crowd.
> You can't keep producing more than you deliver... as you aren't paid for cars sitting on lots outside the factory.
And yet, Chrysler did it for years. Rented or bought every vacant lot near Detroit to park their over-production. The production side did NOT talk to the sales side, due to a misguided stockholder suit in the 1930s(?). Production got paid for every car-like assembly that came out the factory door. Even if it could not be sold, even if it didn't work. 1950s, 1960s, and even later. It was Iacocca who largely fixed that stupid situation.
> You can't keep producing more than you deliver... as you aren't paid for cars sitting on lots outside the factory.
The 1970's and 80's from the UK called and want a chat, well remember fields full of unsold cars all quietly rusting away...and boy did they rust in those days!!
The 1970's and 80's from the UK called and want a chat, well remember fields full of unsold cars all quietly rusting away...and boy did they rust in those days!!
There's a reason why the native British [1] car industry no longer exists except for tiny luxury marques..
[1] Let's not count Nissan, Jaguar et. al - all foreign companies that still happen to make cars in the UK.
Production got paid for every car-like assembly that came out the factory door. Even if it could not be sold, even if it didn't work. 1950s, 1960s, and even later. It was Iacocca who largely fixed that stupid situation.
But Musk knows more about manufacturing than anyone alive! And also knows that for every car-like assembly produced, there's an EV credit. Which is the only thing that has been keeping Tesla out of the red pretty much since inception. Which might also be Musk's gamble that Tesla is too big to fail, and if the failure is due to Trump ending their subsidies, then it wasn't Musk's fault.
Great - downvotes, but still no references...
It's almost as if just asking for evidence of a pretty wild claim is somehow considered fawning.
Clearly my google fu is weak this morning, but I haven't found stats on either (though Waymo parking tickets in SF are widely reported)
Might have considered a Tesla in bygone years, but opted for a much preferable/superior Hyundai IONIQ 5 when we retired our last ICE vehicle. EV only for us from now on. BTW, yes, that's me outside the Tesla dealer on Saturdays, joining the "Tesla Takedown" crowd. I don't fault those that own Teslas (well, maybe Cybertruck owners), but do have major issues with the owner/management. Shedding no tears...
Working like a champ. But, TBH, it's early days. I will be keeping an eye on it. The car has an actual AGM battery, so less worry there. Still, after having rented Teslas while traveling I, can say the IONIQ has a much smoother and quieter ride. And no worries about FSD crashes. Mine has a built-in NACS charging port and adapters for CCS1 and J1772, so can use the breadth of the EV charging network. Charges faster than Teslas, too.
I don't even understand why the numbers are still what they are:
Who, as of now, still would go and think "I want an EV and I'm going to make it a Tesla".
The MAGA heads never were in the market, now even less so. He lost the "green car" crowd, who lean leftward. There aren't enough Musk fanbois to still move the needle - and they probably already got theirs years ago.
I'm honestly surprised the numbers simply don't crash to zero!
I think it's unlikely the market will crash completely – many people don't really care about the politics and Musk still has a lot of friends because of his "futurist" policies. But, as noted above, the reported "sales" figures do not correspond directly to individuals actually buying new cars. In America, a fairly large part of sales goes to car rental companies who like to keep their fleet modern and tend to sell them on after a year. Real damage to the brand can be seen in the second-hand market where prices have really fallen due to lack of demand. But manufacturers have lots of other schemes just so that they can move vehicles away from factories.
I'm not a fan of Musk or Tesla, but the cars aren't rubbish and I'd rather see their saloons on the roads than the massive and overpriced plugin-hybrid SUVs that people still keep wanting to buy. Musk aside, Tesla has made a big mistake over the last couple of years in going for scale at the expense of innovation and apparently ignoring the competition. For a while it was considered that other car manufacturers could catch them, especially in software. And, having seen quite how massively VW fucked up trying to run a software business, this was understandable. But the car industry is much less monolithic than many realised and the supply chains have demonstrated their ability to adapt. And then there's China, where competition has fostered the same kind of innovation that was common in the Japanese electronics market in the 1980s and 1990s. BYD now has scale, engineering innovation and "reasonable" quality.
But, at the end of the day, I view this "feud" a bit like something from the WWF as a made-for-TV drama that suits everyone involved. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Trump and Musk back together before the end of the year. Find out what happens after this message.
<quote> "But, at the end of the day, I view this "feud" a bit like something from the WWF as a made-for-TV drama that suits everyone involved. It wouldn't surprise me at all to see Trump and Musk back together before the end of the year. Find out what happens after this message." </quote>
Agree completely. The big question to ask oneself these days, when confronted with 99% of the faux drama of the Frmpf presidency - is "What is this a distraction from?"
THe Elong-Frumpf split was beyond predictable. Of course they would get into a "Public feud" in the runup weeks to Wrestlemania 46 or WWIII or whatever....
If you squint hard enough, you can almost see the argument for how Musk's pro-Trump pivot could theoretically make sense for Tesla from a business standpoint: Chinese EV makers like BYD already have better and cheaper offerings than Tesla and the imbalance is only getting worse over time, so it's in Tesla's interest to help gin up anti-Chinese xenophobic hysteria, to build support for a massive wall of protectionist trade barriers to keep the Chinese auto industry from eating Tesla's market share for lunch (and the vast majority of Musk's net worth along with it).
Of course the obvious logical flaw in this strategy is that "Tesla customers" and "Trump supporters" are about as close to mutually exclusive as it gets for a company that big, and if you'd gone up to a bunch of random people on the street a few years ago and asked them to think of a hypothetical example of something stupid a major company could do that would irreversibly alienate the vast majority its customer base in one fell swoop, Tesla pivoting its brand image toward MAGA might've easily been one of the top suggestions, right up there with, I dunno, Fox News launching a children's network dedicated exclusively to "drag queen story hours".
Deluded Tesla owners. Usually they have their fingers in ears "lalalala I'm not listening", but they are crying into their keyboards reading this thread, realising they're not quite the cool kids that they think they are when they're driving around in their Panzer wagons (note: doesn't describe all Tesla owners, I suspect most are planning to pivot away, but there's certainly some like this).
Never thought I'd say this, but they're bigger twats than Audi drivers.
"it's in Tesla's interest to help gin up anti-Chinese xenophobic hysteria, to build support for a massive wall of protectionist trade barriers to keep the Chinese auto industry from eating Tesla's market share for lunch (and the vast majority of Musk's net worth along with it)."
What if a company with a factory in the US does a deal with BYD to license BYD's vehicles and pays them $X,XXX/vehicle built? (Reminds me a lot of computer companies paying M$ a license fee for every PC they made). The badge is different, but the design is substantially the same with changes to comply with local regulations. It's not BYD as the maker, but some domestic firm with, perhaps, BYD holding some stock in that company. Is the US government going to try and ban that licensing practice? Major component parts might be sourced from BYD subsidiaries making them in Mexico or some other "most favored nation" trading partner. It's an end-run, but hard to defend against without lots of other collateral damage if Congress/President were to try. BYD does have a manufacturing plant in California so it might be able to expand that to make things such as drive components or shift all of that sort of work outside of California to someplace such as.... hmmm.... How about Texas? That might keep proprietary processes and designs in-house.
This is sort of what Tesla is doing with BYD - it wants to move from using BYD's batteries to building them under licence. Unfortunately, Donny Dumb's tariff policies make this impossible.
Meanwhile, in Brazil, BYD is reopening an old Ford factory…
Imagine a device which could take an image and zoom in to 1 micron, continue zooming in to 1 fermi, and finally get to 1 zeptometre. And If you look very carefully you night see a tiny tiny speck right in the centre of the image. Yes it's the world's smallest violin and it's playing for Musk.
We've all seen the original demo of the Optimus dancing on stage.
Now put that together with Musk chumming up to Trump earlier in the year - obviously, Elon was going to take his cues from SF again. Not from Ian M Banks this time, but from Charles Stross: Optimus was clearly a meat puppet enrolled in the Company Face Compliance Scheme, as tested at FlavrsMart. Possibly without the Misery Quotient Indicators being used for their original purpose, but, hmm, the way things are going...
Anyway, Trump was meant to be sending all those de-emphasised individuals to the Musk facilities (for - well, call it on the job training; mostly training the Neuralink technicians to move faster and more accurately, on pain of becoming the next Optimised Worker). Instead, the masked ICEmen bundled the potential resource units onto planes.
If only Musk hadn't chosen to tell Trump that he intended to use the warm bodied Optimus to "stage a worker revolution and invade the hearts of America", such a poor choice of phrase. Elon and Donnie had words, it all got out of control and here we are.
Taking his cues from Science Fiction?
There's an awful lot of background from the TV serial "Continuum" in your post. Not that "Continuum" did it first but it was a fun exploration of a dystopian, Corporate future.
The sort of future Mush might have liked and which I was slightly surprised that the TV comanies allowed to be demonised.
"Hot take: the car company will end up worthless, but the charging network will be worth a fortune for the long term."
I see this as one of their biggest failings outside of their cars. I know, it doesn't leave much. If they had migrated from their own proprietary plug ages ago and gave every owner an adapter for free, they could have updated to the CCScombo connector as they had to do in other markets outside of China. Along with that, adding a payment terminal at the dispensers and longer leads would have let them utilize their charging stations to a much greater extent. Now they have to retrofit what they have and also switch to 800v capability to meet the market requirements. They also won't allow other makes to charge that haven't paid a fee (my supposition) at the stations where they do allow other cars to charge. I'd really not like to sign up for an account with Tesla. I also don't like the data gathering that goes on with automatic vehicle identification as that's ripe for all sorts of abuse. A failing of every other station I've seen is the lack of an option to pay with cash. If chargers are associated with a retail business, such as a travel center, there should be an option to pay with cash. When all else fails, if you have cash, you could still get a charge. The retail shop also has a way to get you to come in and purchase heavily marked-up snacks and bevvies. The station manager at the local petrol station has told me that with the upgrade in the payment terminals at the pump (they work more often), there's less traffic through the store. It's only when the receipt printers don't work that people will come in. Throughput at the pumps is better, but that's not where they earn their crust. For EV's that do take more time, it's an obvious chance for the driver to buy a light meal and enjoy it while they have a few minutes.
Did Elon Musk think that Conservatives were out buying his cars? That would be totally illogical since Conservatives have been fed by their media that global warming is a hoax, that anything labeled 'green' is a Liberal attack on free markets and EVs are being forced on a public which doesn't want them(fed by Conservative press). So if he thought for one minute that going ape over Trump and his Conservative lemmings wasn't going to get a negative reaction from the non-Conservatives buying his cars he need to rethink his understanding of policies and politics.
And if he had gone gaga over Trump in his first term, ~6 years ago, it would be game over for Tesla. They just squeaked by the supply chain issues post Covid and if he was doing Nazi salutes and kissing Trump's behind etc etc back then I don't think they would have made it out.
How will he turn things around is anyone's guess but the damage has been done.
He doesn't have one.
Neither does he have the gene that gives a normal human brain the possibility to think : "wait, maybe I shouldn't do that".
He got lucky by being at the right place at the right time and he's been coasting on that ever since.
Well now he's luck is running out, and he is entirely responsible for that.
He weeps for no one but himself, and I'm not weeping for him.
"Neither does he have the gene that gives a normal human brain the possibility to think : "wait, maybe I shouldn't do that"."
He's come from money via both mom and dad so that hasn't been an issue. Later in life he's not been slapped down when acting out so there hasn't the real world training that it needed with some people. I'm not claiming innocence from being a dolt myself, but I did pay the consequences and learned lessons along the way. With SpaceX there's been lines he hasn't crossed, but he'll still do things such as build a launch tower without planning permission and call it an "integration tower" when it's obviously labeled "launch platform" on internal docs and site signage. Did he get permission from the Army Corps of Engineers for the water deluge system and new flame trench? (it now seems that a flame trench is a really good idea. Whodda thunk?) If I dropped a candy wrapper in a protected wetland right in front of a ranger, I'd be skewered. Elon spreading shredded metal all over one, not so much.
The burnt hand is a good teacher. One of the body's teaching mechanism is pain and it doesn't need to be physical. You push limits and you get stung. If you don't get stung, you haven't reached a limit, so you push a bit more. And a bit more. If the most that ever comes from it is an annoying trip to a courthouse every once in a while, when not too much of an inconvenience, there's no pain. Elon did inform a court that he wouldn't be appearing due to a SpaceX launch he "had" to attend and got away with it. You try telling a judge that you can't show up due to a conflict with your work schedule. A schedule you have ultimate control over. (yes Elon, there will be another 4/20 next year too).
"That would be totally illogical since Conservatives have been fed by their media that global warming is a hoax, that anything labeled 'green' is a Liberal attack on free markets and EVs are being forced on a public which doesn't want them"
Only treehuggers would be buying an EV solely for environmental reasons. I hope to get an EV this year and it's purely financial. My driving habits fit an EV down to the ground, I own a home and plan on adding more solar panels plus storage. Whether I do will be down to finding a good enough deal on a well looked after used EV. The numbers have to work out or I'll keep my current car going since it will be cheaper in the short term to do that.
Musk being the richest man in the world (for now) and formerly having the support of the President of the U.S. has led him to think he's Tony Stark and invincible. However, his antics supporting an extreme right-wing German political party have led to Tesla becoming a no-go brand for European consumers.
This and his blindsiding of not seeing the disaster that is the Cybertruck has made the company vulnerable. If Tesla's Full Self Driving software is involved in more fatal accidents it could well spell the end of the company.
Despite all this Tesla has played an instrumental part in demonstrating the viability of electric vehicles and should be credited with starting the EV revolution. The company has played its part no matter what its fate.
Your first statement is correct. Musk has lost the magic touch.
Supporting a "right" wing German party is misleading. They are not far right from anything I have listened to, they're positioned where most were 40 years ago with no intentions on dictatorship, genocide or world war that I can see. So all this conflation to "far-right" is very dangerous because it provides cover for truly far-right which is coming from left field so to speak. There absolutely is a far-right movement going on and succeeding but it aint AFD. It's coming in sheep's clothing using the left as its tool. They also adopt many communist strategies but they are not communists. Not that it makes any difference ultimately; far-left or far-right always ends being brutal and miserable for the people with a pyschopathic and narcissistic elite running things.
Your last paragraph is correct too.
I think both Musk and Trump have gone off the rails a bit. DOGE was a damn good idea though but that is now falling by the wayside or the savings replaced by just spending elsewhere. I agree with Musk and Massie the debt issue needs addressing but Musk's attack on Trump when he didn't get his way doesn't seem a good strategy. It all looks like that debt bubble will have to pop but likely to be more devastating explosion than pop!
I am am Tesla owner - 2019 Model 3 Stealth Performance
Musk has clearly gone nuts and appears to have an untreated substance abuse issue.
As for the car: It's a brilliant thing, but you have to understand what it is. The build quality is noticeably worse than a BMW or an Audi. the doors go 'bong' instead of that deep satisfying 'clunk' that is the weird proxy for quality everyone uses. On the other hand I do 0-60mph in 3.2 seconds, can drive half way across Ireland and back again for 7 Euros and have access to by far the best charging network. I spend more on tyres than I do on energy. With a Tesla the software and charging capability are key selling points, whereas with a lot of competitors they are an afterthought. So far servicing and parts are entirely affordable. Are other manufacturers catching up? Yes, but the industry leader was and still is Telsa, like them or not.,
Your fancy german car supposedly has better engineering, but wait until it's got some miles on it and is out of warranty. I once made the terrible mistake of buying a ten year old 528i, which was like having a black hole that only attracted banknotes sitting in your front garden. "Build quality" is used to justify premium prices, but doesn't seem to affect the life expectancy or maintenance requirements of said car. And once it gets older the fancy TLAs the germans love will come back to haunt you...
I agree, I also had a Made in Fremont 2019 Tesla Model 3 and the build quality was unimpressive.
However, in 2022 I traded it for a Made in China Model Y and the car is much better built, it is widely reported that 2025 Made in Germany Juniper Model Y is even better, so I may trade up to that.
Prior to 2019 I owned a number of BMWs and spent plenty of time and money at the dealers whereas aside from tyres and screen wash the Teslas have cost nothing to maintain or service.
"I once made the terrible mistake of buying a ten year old 528i, which was like having a black hole that only attracted banknotes sitting in your front garden"
Many of us have been there with expensive to maintain old cars but how do you think a ten year old Tesla of similar mileage will do? All the suspension issues of older cars will be there, droplinks, bushes, worn dampers plus steering system. Likewise all the expensive to fix stuff like ventilation and air conditioning systems, brake calipers, wiper motors, window motors and switches, central locking, infotainment. Then you've got propulsion control systems and sensors, even if Tesla are as reliable/unreliable as the established brands, Tesla cars have rather more in the way of electronics. The battery on an EV will also become a huge risk on older cars - I'm not saying it's LIKELY to go wrong, but there's a good chance that on a third or fourth hand vehicle it would be uneconomic to fix many battery faults. Agree an EV has no big clunky gearbag, engine and turbocharger to go wrong, but looking at vehicle fault stats it seems that the vast majority of ICE vehicle faults are not with the ICE drivetrain.
" but looking at vehicle fault stats it seems that the vast majority of ICE vehicle faults are not with the ICE drivetrain."
There are oddities that aren't as obvious either that can make them hard to repair. Edmunds had the Cybertruck they bought for a year-long evaluation crashed into while it was parked. The damage estimate was $60,000ish and 5-6 months. That gigacasting turns out to be a huge Achilles heel. It was cracked and threaded inserts destroyed so it would have to be entirely replaced (take truck completely apart and reassemble with new parts). Another reviewer dinged a rear corner of a 3/Y. The back hatch had to come off to do the repairs, but that required taking the glass off to access the bolts. The shop warned that 90% of the time, the glass would crack when trying to remove it. It cracked. If the hatch could come off without touching the glass, it would have been a 20 minute job. Over time, designers have built up the knowledge to look at those sorts of issues and come up with vehicles that can be repaired. If common repairs are too costly, insurance companies tend to notice which isn't great for sales of that make/model. Backing into something at a slow speed isn't uncommon so it's something that needs to be easy to repair.
I don't see why Tesla doesn't introduce a Model 3 Lite. No glass roof. No autopilot hardware. Delete about 1/2 the motors and solenoids. More modest wheels/tires, etc, etc. Trying to bank on owners someday "upgrading" to FSD hasn't worked thus far so many things on the cars that's been there for ages isn't that useful. There are still plenty of people that don't care for autosteering/braking and other "features" and would rather save the money. Ora's R1 is a perfect demonstration of how peeling back the options can lead to an inexpensive EV's that still very useful. Having an entry level car is less likely cannibalize sales as a Model 2 that has substantially the same features as a 3/Y for less money. A Lite version would also share production lines much better.
Your fancy german car supposedly has better engineering, but wait until it's got some miles on it and is out of warranty
My nephew has a 10-year old model 5 - with almost 200K miles on the clock. He's had to have some work done on the engine (apparently, driving a diesel into deep water by mistake is a Bad Thing) but, other than that, not a problem.
It is amusing and strange watching the internal conflict of 'we must save the world with EVs' yet unable to detach that from disagreeing with Musks policies. Seeing videos of lefties damaging property of lefties because these 'earth saving cars' are from a company fronted by what they perceive to be Hitler. Almost as funny as watching the nuttiness arguing for open borders yet crying at South African refugees for being the wrong colour.
5 years ago when there were few EVs available other than Tesla unless you wanted a small city car with low range and pedestrian performance.
But now the market is awash with EVs that directly compete in terms of price and performance with Tesla, and often with better build quality. Tesla has also screwed up things that cars have done right for years like rain sensing windscreen wipers and parking sensors, because of Musk's cheapskate insistence you can do these tasks with the cameras alone. For the same reason, Teslas dumped lidar and so rivals are way ahead in terms of self-drive and adaptive cruise control that can actually be trusted.
As well as big European brands which do the car side really well, the Chinese are eating Tesla's lunch on the tech and battery side.
For anyone in the market now, there are really no compelling reasons to buy a Tesla. Certainly not in Europe.
"because these 'earth saving cars' "
Earth will be just fine. Humans? time will tell.
The use of petroleum to inefficiently transport people to and fro is a problem. Crude oil is an amazingly useful raw material and a better way of pushing around most cars is well known. The lowest hanging fruit is personal transportation, heavy goods on rail, regular truck routes and local heavy delivery. Aircraft are best left for later since physics and engineering realities get in the way.
The post office could do really well with a purpose built vehicle as they have set routes and a vehicle that is designed especially for that job could be amazing. Besides being integrated so any driver could navigate any route by looking at a screen, there could also be less misdelivered mail. I never get mail at my house, but until I remove the mail box, I will check it every couple of weeks. I had a stack of mail in it lately that was not only the wrong address, the address was on the other side of town. Wrong tray? Technology could have been used to prevent that and I'm sure that the bank statements and bills would have been delivered the people in a more timely manner. The vehicles can also be set to limit power. The delivery people often peel out with jack rabbit starts in town as we have many dirt roads and no sidewalks in most places where there is paving. It's not uncommon to see deep holes that the mail vehicle has been digging out at many stops. Medical labs that pick up samples from doctor's offices also have well defined routes and could benefit from EV's equipped to work for them. Auto-programming of stops if doctor's don't have something everyday and routes that adjust for those times. The back end information for managing a fleet can be much better with an EV. Given the level of tech, the car and the operator can maintain service info and other data. I'd love for my car to keep a detailed service record onboard that I can access when at home via wi-fi. If I were ever to sell the car, that data would become available to the new owner. Sans my personal info, of course.
Death is a certainty so it must make sense to invest in deathtraps, right?
2023: Report: ‘massive’ Tesla leak reveals data breaches, thousands of safety complaints
"TSLA is up 25.38% on this time last year."
So is their P/E. What isn't up is sales/revenue. 1Q2025 was only profitable through government credits. If a stroke of some politician's pen removes those credits at some point, they won't be there the next time to buoy the bottom line. 2Q2025 might be really ugly. The company also claims more cash, equivalents and investments than they've ever posted in net profits, which leads to more questions about their accounting.
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1Q2025 Tesla had more production than sales. In 2Q2025, they have a bunch more. That's storage lots filling up with unsold vehicles. Vehicles that don't do well with being sat for too long and not turned on so the 12v battery can recharge besides the obvious tying up of capital.
It's not possible to pull back already assembled cars, but it can be possible to dial up production if demand is brisk. There will also be some slack, but 20,000ish is not slack, it's poor management.
With top execs leaving and Elon assuming their roles part-time, the board should be taking action. It's nice that Robyn is so confident in Elon, but why is a mystery. The rest of the board is family and friends that owe much of their wealth to Elon handing them board seats so they are bought and unlikely to rock the boat.
"Cess pit of an article”
Maybe, maybe not, what part of it do you disagree with, why do you disagree, have the author(s) made a mistake, point it out? Why do you think it is so bad?
Make your argument? Explain why you think it is wrong. After all make a good case and you may change people’s minds.
If your argument is simply that ‘the sun shines out of Elon’s backside and any, any criticism of him is tantamount to High Treason’; then fine, make that claim, argue it. I suspect it won’t end well.
You aren’t going to come back and post a proper rebuttal are you?
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