I guess when your CEO has a highly publicised pivot to a position that’s the antithesis of your customers views it doesn’t help. What’s that saying — “Go Fash Lose Cash”?
Add to that spending large amounts of his own money to help elect people who promised to and then did remove the EV tax credit, which means that those potential customers who were not driven away for ideological reasons would find they had to spend 10-20% more for a Tesla than before.
Those people he worked hard to elect did other things to harm Tesla besides making the cars more expensive. Over the last few years about 30% of Tesla's profits were from selling emissions tax credits to car companies that make ICE cars. Those other companies needed the credits because not enough of the ICE cars met EPA emissions standards. But now those emissions standards are no longer enforced, and so there is no need for them to buy credits.
The people he worked to elect also promised, and have been implementing, policies that will make electricity more expensive in many areas. There were already several states where electricity was expensive enough and gasoline not too expensive so that a Prius there would actually cost less to operated in energy costs per mile than an EV. Rising electricity prices could make that true in more places. (And yes, I'm talking about home electricity prices. For people who do not have adequate home charging and rely on commercial charging a Prius beats an EV on energy costs in most states). That too is probably going to cost Tesla some sales.
Politics aside, the fact that now a handful of companies offer competitive cars at similar pricepoints, while there has been a general slump in EV demand doesn't help either.
I suspect the strategy was 'we've already saturated the liberals. If we can release a truck and I switch to the other side I can capture the other side of the market as well'.
End result is he has neither side and neither the trucks nor the sedans are selling well!
I don't think Musk or Tesla had a strategy in this regard, Musk was just being impulsive and didn't really think about his brand, I think he isn't really self aware even if he must be smart in some other regard (unless his success is an accident, which I doubt).
I imagine he has fallen in the very common trap of being surrounded by sycophants.
A lot of people have a very strong incentive to attach themselves to wealthy/powerful people, and then try to manipulate their understanding of the world and events to their favor.
Last time I checked, his actions secured him 30 Billions USD now, 1 Trillion USD in the future. Also, He is in AI and robotics now.
Anyway, still don't get why Theranos failed to pivot to something else when they couldn't do the single drop blood thing and failed. Was there something contractual in their investment rounds? Was it because they were into healthcare? Was it because she was trying to be Steve Jobs instead of Musk?
It seems to me that Elizabeth Holmes could have promised that the test are coming next year and just release repackaged Siemens machines with a cloud integration and pretty UI and figure out products down the line and keep promising that single drop tests are coming next year. Then pivot to AI and robotic.
And the AI videos are going the same way as full self driving:
1) looking like Tesla is easily two year, probably more behind everyone else
2) the others are seeing real SOTA performance ... and are not planning products because they think it won't work, or at least not yet
I must say ... really reminds me of the Tesla autopilot situation.
And I'd add 3) the really impressive robots, ie. the ones based on Boston Dynamics, are not based on ML algorithms. They are augmented by AI, not running actual AI algorithms in the control loop. The founder was an electrical engineering professor who moved into a CS direction (you know the sort of person who insists not just writing control loops in realtime, in assembly, but actually develops custom hardware for those algorithms. And I don't mean FPGAs or DSPs, I mean actual circuits)
So the entire approach of Tesla (and a lot of other startups) could be very wrong, and could very well be 5 theoretical breakthroughs removed from being feasible.
100%. We are seeing the bet of hard coded functions vs AI learned functions play out for us over the next year or two. Waymo has special case code for so much of their stack. Tesla removes special case code and replaces it with inference. Same with the Boston Dynamics vs Tesla robots. Tesla is making a bet that custom case code isn't going to scale nearly as fast as AI inference scales. Good news is that if one feels strongly one can place bets with one's money! If one doesn't feel strongly you can just comment on HN or Reddit or just watch.
I do not understand the P/E at all. It feels to me like a screaming red flag. If I'd been in front of this, holding long, I would be walking to other investment now and only looking to buy when the inevitable corrections come. But I don't hold directly and nobody I know who does feels the way i do about the P/E so.. I just don't understand.
Can you think of any non tech business where a P/E like this was not a signal of corporate diseased thinking?
Ive owned a Tesla since 2018 and honestly besides my gripes with body damage repairs (specifically dealing with insurance) from 3 separate instances of people hitting me it's been a great car. I definitely wouldn't consider any future car that isn't an EV but I also wouldn't consider a Tesla at this point. My concern is that other car manufacturers would continue to signal that EVs have lost interest from buyers if Tesla went under and I believe that is far from the truth. EVs are very much a luxury item. The fact I haven't had to inconvenience myself even once in seven years going to gas station has been amazing. Electricity pricing is both stable and cheap where I live and so I don't have to even care about fluctuations in gas pricing. I don't have to waste my time getting oil changes either. Owning a traditional car is just a bunch of wasted time.
I have more than a few complaints of current EVs manufacturers outside of Tesla. Every manufacturer has been very slow to adopt NACS. I wouldn't consider a new car without that it and I will absolutely not accept an adapter solution. I don't trust legacy car manufacturers even manufactures like Mercedes that they will keep the car updated and instead use that as a way to push me to purchase a new car. One of the reasons that pushed me to Tesla back in 2018 was they kept their cars updated and provided new features over time. They also had a track record of not changing the looks of their cars that often which I very much prefer. An EV can last significantly longer than ICE vehicles and so you need the ability to not only support the cars for longer through software but also by doing new computer hardware drop in replacements. I want the ability to extend the life of my car not replace it. I have absolutely zero interest in lease deals which every manufacture and dealer push with EVs because I don't drive very far in the city so I keep cars for a long time with low miles. I fundamentally HATE the push from buyers who desire large batteries for range when they don't even use it which has resulted in many of the smaller cars to not be sold here in the US. This is also preventing desired cars from even being made. If Ford would have made the Maverick an EV instead of wasting their time on the F-150 Lightning it would have significantly cost them less to develop and their issue would have been keeping them in stock.
The EV market is absolutely frustrating. Tesla brought these vehicles mainstream and for the most part outside the Cybertruck they have decent products where they have shown willingness to support longterm. Everything else made them undesirable.
How often does it happen in Chevys or Toyotas? Getting trapped in a car after a crash is common enough that there’s a cutesy nickname for the machine used by rescuers to get people out.
three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and whataboutism from Tesla apologists
from the article I linked:
> In an effort to take a comprehensive and systematic look at this issue, Bloomberg sought to examine every fatal EV crash in the US involving a fire. From there, the reporting centered around cases in which there was documented evidence that victims had survived initial impact, and that nonfunctional electric doors had impeded either the occupants’ efforts to escape or rescuers’ attempts to save those inside the vehicle.
this has nothing to do with the Jaws of Life. this is about the car catches fire and the door handles stop working.
If I can't open the door on my CR-V after a crash it will be because there has been serious damage to the door itself or to the frame around the door. The locking and latching mechanisms are entirely in the door and do not rely on any other systems in the car to function. If the door is not severely damaged I can unlock it. If the frame is not damaged then if I can unlock it I can open it.
The incidents people are talking about with cars with electric locking or latching mechanisms I believe are where the door cannot be unlocked because the locking or latching mechanism depends on other systems in the car, typically the 12V power system.
A collision that takes down the 12V system but causes no damage whatsoever to the door or frame can then leave you with a door that would open just fine if you could unlock it, but you can't unlock it because it has no power.
Does the Bloomberg reporting distinguish between these cases?
One of their examples involves a driver who called 911 post-crash and reported they couldn’t open the door. Teslas have mechanical door handles on the interior of the front doors. It’s not hard to find. In fact, it’s so obvious that passengers unfamiliar with the car tend to use it rather than the button.
So what happened here? Did he never try the mechanical handle, or did he try it and it somehow didn’t work? Given how easy the handle is to find, I’d bet on the latter. And there’s nothing about this which makes me think your CR-V’s latch would have fared any better.
Did Bloomberg distinguish between “occupant would have been saved if there had been a mechanical handle” and “occupant would have been saved if the structure hadn’t jammed the door”? It doesn’t sound like it.
The basic fact is, people do get stuck inside crashed cars for all sorts of reasons. Electronic door handles add a new failure mode. But I’d like to know how the aggregate incidents compare, not just declare to be dangerous because it’s an additional failure mode.
I own 2019 model 3. Car is falling apart which is why consumer reports Tesla in last place in reliability. Won’t fix things under warranty either, they claimed I hit a something when my front suspension failed which is a very common issue in my car. Also paid for FSD, but not getting upgraded to the new hardware like Musk promised so will never get true FSD. Worst car I ever bought.
It was mentioned on the Tesla earning's call in Q2 or Q3 2025 that HW3 FSD customers will likely be moved to a version of HW5 that accommodated the older camera sensors.
There’s also Rivian. My R1S is my favorite car I’ve ever owned and this is going to be their “Model 3 year” when the R2 comes out. There’s also Lucid and Zoox.
And the Chinese manufacturers, of course. If you haven’t been outside the US lately you don’t realize just how popular BYD is everywhere but here. I’m in Thailand at the moment and they are everywhere. Mexico too.
It's not really that great of a car. I mean it's driving an iPad, basically. Also, they've been plagued with reliability issues eg limiting how much you can adjust your seat because they're so prone to breaking [1].
Also, the Cybertruck is an unmitigated disaster in practically every way.
> EVs are very much a luxury item
In the US, this is kinda true but largely due to trade barriers. Things would be very different if we could buy BYD cars.
Charging is part of the problem too combined with how much Americans drive. But Americans partly drive so much because there's practically zero robust public transit infrastructure that forces people to drive, we build houses really spread out and a common charging network isn't a state priority like it is in China.
> very slow to adopt NACS
So, Tesla's Supercharger network was the only moat Tesla had for their cars. Even now, I believe Tesla charges third-party users significantly more [2].
> An EV can last significantly longer than ICE vehicles
I see what you're saying but battery degradation is a serious problem over time, such that EV depreciation is super high.
Also, some ICE vehicles are super reliable and some of those are weirdly banned in the US. I'm thinking specifically of the Toyota Hilux. Japanese cars in general were banned (after lobbying from the auto industry) because of their extreme reliability and low price.
> I have absolutely zero interest in lease deals
Each to their own but IMHO leasing is the smartest way to currently "own" an EV, given the depreciation.
> It's not really that great of a car. I mean it's driving an iPad, basically. Also, they've been plagued with reliability issues eg limiting how much you can adjust your seat because they're so prone to breaking [1].
Do you own one? I've had one for 6 years and I've never had issues with it, it's the best car I've ever owned. I've driven lots of other EVs, and none are close.
> Things would be very different if we could buy BYD cars.
We've had BYDs and other EVs for many years in Australia, and EVs are still a luxury item.
> Each to their own but IMHO leasing is the smartest way to currently "own" an EV, given the depreciation.
I've never understood Americans and leasing. Aside from specific styles of novated/chattel leases (where there is a tax benefit), leasing a car seems to almost always be a worse deal.
> We've had BYDs and other EVs for many years in Australia, and EVs are still a luxury item.
Australia is much closer to the US than China in terms of public transit and EV infrastructure. In China, now the majority of new car sales are EVs. There are chargers everywhere and much of the time you don't need to drive because any decently sized city has robust and cheap public transit.
Australia isn't as car-dependent as the US but it's honestly not that far off. Perth, for example, is akin to Los Angeles in car dependence as well as cars owned per capita.
> I've never understood Americans and leasing.
It's complicated. It's not strictly better but it's not strictly worse either. It depends on if you want or need to drive a relatively new car vs holding on to a car until it falls apart.
Some will talk down leasing because new cars depreciate the most in the first 2-3 years, which is true. But leasing gives you the option of just handing it back or paying the balloon payment if the car hasn't depreciated as much as predicted (and priced in). This happened in the pandemic when car prices skyrocketed and, for example, used trucks were selling for at or above the MSRP of a new car for the same model because you simply couldn't buy the new one (at or below MSRP).
> There are chargers everywhere and much of the time you don't need to drive because any decently sized city has robust and cheap public transit.
It's definitely not the density of major Chinese cities, but all major cities in Australia have plenty of EV chargwrs and public transport.
> Australia isn't as car-dependent as the US but it's honestly not that far off. Perth, for example, is akin to Los Angeles in car dependence as well as cars owned per capita.
You've picked the most isolated city in the world as your example, with a heavy lean to FIFO workers and disposable income. But even going with it, Perth has high public transport usage [1] and has halved its costs for patrons in the last year [2]. This was an election promise and important to people.
I'm sorry, but I think you're pulling things out of the air here, what you're saying simply isn't accurate.
I oil change once a year.
I fill in gas once every like 7-10 days, half the time someone pumps it for me. It takes five minutes, maybe. I don't need to fuss about range, chargers or connect my car as it were a phone when I'm home every day. I find EVs an inconvenience. There are many reasons why choose an EV, and I just might, but these are not.
Would you prefer if your phone required a trip to a dedicated refilling station once a week, even if it only took 5 minutes?
Because that's the kind of logic you're implying about your car – that it's more convenient driving somewhere once a week rather than just plugging it in at night before bed.
I'm not driving somewhere special though. I have plenty of gas stations around. I don't think this is outside the norm, most communities have gas stations along their main roads.
Now if you reframed the question and said "visit once a week to charge your phone but you wouldn't have to think of the battery or charger rest of the time".. doesn't seem half bad.
If you have a home charger, it's like having a gas station right where you park. That's where EVs win. It takes me 2 seconds to plug in the car when I get out of it and I have a full tank whenever I need to use it.
I think apartment complexes are where EVs have a bigger problem. What's needed to make EVs a lot more convenient is more L2 charger (or even L1 chargers) in a lot more locations.
> I oil change once a year. I fill in gas once every like 7-10 days, half the time someone pumps it for me. It takes five minutes, maybe. I don't need to fuss about range, chargers or connect my car as it were a phone when I'm home every day. I find EVs an inconvenience.
I suspect I spend less time plugging in my car when I get home than you do filling up with petrol per annum. Having to stop at a service station is objectively less convenient than plugging in when you get home.
Service interval for the car is 15,000km. Some manufacturers even do 30,000km, synthetic oils support that but I prefer to just put it in once a year, at about 15k.
Im not a bot. I also don't believe I was praising Tesla. I won't buy another one even if I haven't had any issues with the one I currently have. My Model 3 has honestly been a great car for me. If it was any other manufacturer I would have absolutely bought another one. I will only consider an EV but I won't buy another Tesla. It's pretty unfortunate TBH.
To zoom in on how toxic the brand has become, look at the European market. Sales were down 71% in Sweden and 66% in France for 2025[1], despite ~35% growth in European EV sales. The only "bright spot" was Norway, but that's partly because EVs increased to 96% of sales there (vs ~25% in Europe.)
I’d have agreed with you in 2024 but there’s enough of a difference in active support to be significant. Not many of those CEOs have direct personal involvement killing millions of people, for example, but DOGE appears to have managed that without really even understanding what they were cutting.
There is an enormous difference between holding unpleasant views in private and actively, publicly, working to dismantle the country and take away the rights of its citizens and celebrating it.
I used to ask the same questions, but then I've realized: this line of argument tries to justify non-action on known known because there are also known unknowns and maybe even unknown unknowns. Now what? Smoke a cigarette because we know that unknown carcinogens exist that are not included in cigarette smoke?
I didn’t plan on examining Elon’s ideology. He shoved it in my face. If other CEOs want to to be coy with Nazi salutes and post the types of things he does on X then let me know. I’ll happily treat them the same way.
I'm honestly baffled that this isn't completely obvious to everyone.
People act like "bad but hiding it" is no different from "bad and not hiding it," but the former is literally identical to being decent. The only scenarios in which it's not identical are those in which they failed to hide their badness!
I don't give a fuck how evil someone is in the dark little corners of their mind, so long as they show up as a decent person in all their interactions with the outside world.
Tesla should have had a new car model by now. Something comparable to BYD's midrange cars.
Or a useful delivery van. Or a new roadster. Or something.
For some reason, most of the Cybertrucks seem to have disappeared. A year ago, they were common on Silicon Valley roads. Now I see more driverless Waymos mid-peninsula than Cybertrucks.
It's been raining lately; maybe people don't want to take them out.
As for the value being in self-driving, there's no moat there. Ford and Mercedes have SAE level 3 systems about as good as Tesla's. Several Chinese auto companies have systems. Toyota is partnering with Waymo. Level 3 is just another car option.
It's 2026. Where are the Musk-promised Robotaxis? Do they have anything, anywhere, in revenue service with no driver in it? In this area, there is a moat, and Waymo is behind it.
There are at least eighteen companies with demo humanoid robots good enough to have Youtube videos.
Again, Tesla has no moat. As far as I know, there are zero autonomous humanoid robots generating revenue. Autonomous human robots are going to be a thing, but probably about 5-10 years out.
And the door problem. There was no US regulation prohibiting a car door that can't be opened in an emergency because nobody was ever dumb enough to make one. Regulations are written in blood.
Consumer Reports: "On a newer Tesla Model Y, remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket, press the red tab to remove an access door that reveals a mechanical release cable, and pull the cable."
People who claim Ford and Mercedes have systems as good as Tesla haven't personally taken a currently shipping v14 FSD trip and then personally used Ford and Mercedes systems.
I see Cybertrucks many times a day in San Francisco and on the 101. I took a Robotaxi ride in SF last week. It was cheaper than Uber and Waymo but I am hoping they bring back the 2014 price wars of Uber/Lyft.
I think Musk's pay is $1/yr.
Musk's politics and the fact that Cybertrucks didn't live up to any of its hype and turned into a heap of recalls didn't turn out to be the flex people thought it would be.
They are considered radioactive by their primary target audience in the US, have been surpassed in various ways outside the US, seem to be focused on a few boondoggles internally rather than fixing what is broken in their core business, and their CEO has been distracted by other ventures.
I expect this decline to continue indefinitely. I also wonder when the stock price will reflect the company's past and projected results.
> I also wonder when the stock price will reflect the company's past and projected results.
This is the $1T question. What happens when Tesla finally gets valued as a car manufacturer, with side businesses in cheap but unreliable solar, and over-priced grid storage?
The self-driving car boondoggle has persisted for the better part of a decade, without a come-to-Jesus moment on the stock price. The pivot to robotics is clear fraud, yet retail stock investors are all to willing to keep the stock price high.
Musk has to lose a lot more reputation with the public before Tesla stock starts being valued based on the reality of Tesla.
At least that seems the current story. And I mean if it lives up to it's promises, it might. I surely would have a need for a robot servant. But I won't preorder as I a) don't trust it will work as promised b) if it actually works out, I still don't trust Elon enough to put a robot in my home that he controls.
Assuming for a second Optimus is not complete vaporware, and that people will trust Musk with humanoid robots in their home after he said "I'm not building a robot army unless I have control"....
Optimus will face the Roomba problem. Cheaper robots from competitors will destroy any profit margins, and there's zero moat.
And the problem with shorting Tesla has been apparent for years: the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
It'd have to be locally controlled, or securely siloed in a cloud, with auditable and accountable interactions. Any sort of home robot will have that challenge; I wouldn't trust any company or person with that sort of access. When even the highest security clearance and most secure facilities and job titles in the world frequently involve people randomly scanning around, trolling through mass surveillance, stalking exes or arbitrary targets, rifling through people's private photos and messages, there's no way a mid-tier tech company job is going to be the one where they suddenly behave ethically and respect security.
That said, robots in factories are a no-brainer, you gain a massive margin over human operated manufacturing, and the technology is effectively at an alpha level of rollout, with more or less full capability of doing any particular thing any human can do, with near perfect repeatability and millisecond granular control, and the effective cost at scale is pennies per year over whatever salary you'd have to pay a human. For municipal jobs, you can get multiple robots to do things like street cleaning, building maintenance, cleaning, facilities maintenance, guard patrols, and so forth. There are all sorts of large scale deployments that are much more compatible with low-trust , low-privacy issues than home robot butlers, and those widely deployed factory and janitor bots will help finance the robo-butlers.
Imagine robot street repair crews that operate on a 24/7 basis, with self driving cars that go around town searching out potholes and other safety issues for the robots to fix. Neighborhood robots that shovel snow or clean out water drains, or trot out with safety cones if a hazard appears. That's millions and millions of dollars in savings year over year compared the cost of paying humans, and it gets rid of the perverse incentives that lead to things like sub-standard materials being used, so that you have to replace materials every year in order to keep the union teams employed doing overpriced roadwork.
Robot contractors that learn from Amish techniques to build a well-made house inside 48 hours, or Earth Day citywide robot blitzes where the robots clean everything, and so on. The economics of things that people won't do, or aren't worth paying to do, change radically when it's a mindless robot's time being allocated.
Even if it's not Optimus, the robots are basically here, the next decade is gonna be full of fun politics and figuring out how to cope with radical change.
"It'd have to be locally controlled, or securely siloed in a cloud, with auditable and accountable interactions. Any sort of home robot will have that challenge; I wouldn't trust any company or person with that sort of access. "
I agree, but we might be in a minority here. Otherwise roombas etc. would not have had their success. Children toys with microphone and always on connection to the company. Cameras as part of a big network. Cars that can be remote controlled any time, ..
I'm slightly optimistic with the heightened scrutiny on AI and general political turmoil - maybe there's a shot at a reasonable digital bill of rights regulation, and both parties seem fairly universally against allowing China to run surveillance apparatus inside US homes. An Alexa or Roomba is one thing, but a humanoid is too close to having an actual person - there's enough of a subjective difference in vibe that it might reach critical mass in the zeitgeist.
US politics is on the "cannot let China win the AI race" side of things, as well as the "cannot have a chinese/corporation/government robot spy in your bedroom" side of things. Cheap Temu speakers with microphones that phone home, or chargers that connect to wifi for botnets, and so on, that sort of abstract IoT threat doesn't resonate. Commander Data doing your dishes feels like a person in your home.
It's amazing to me that Tesla shareholders are not calling for Elon's head.
The stock lives purely on hype, and with the EV market going down the tubes, Optimus (really AI) is the new hype story. Except that Elon is actively stealing Tesla's data for his own company (xAI). He just helps himself to Tesla's GPUs, technology, and data. Tesla didn't bid out their data. They didn't sell it. Elon plundered it into a company in which he owns a larger share.
I'd never buy that stock. I'd short it in a heartbeat if I had any hope of remaining solvent longer than the market remains irrational.
The stockholders are the ones that believe the Musk hype. So that's why Tesla is a time bomb: they can't get competent leadership without destroying the stock price, and they can't meet their promises without getting competent leadership.
> This is the $1T question. What happens when Tesla finally gets valued as a car manufacturer, with side businesses in cheap but unreliable solar, and over-priced grid storage?
They are the 14th largest car maker in the world by annual units sold, and almost in the top 10 by annual revenue from cars.
Surely that is good enough to maintain a market cap that is 50% higher than the combined market caps of the top 10 (Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai-Kia, Renault-Nissan, General Motors, Stellantis, Honda, Ford, BYD, and Suzuki)?
But don't forget that they have truly unique skills as a company that none of those other companies can pull off: they have shrinking sales even when focusing on the only segment of cars that's growing: EVs.
I would love to short it but have avoided doing so because I didn't feel like I could outlast the fanatics, which seems to have been a wise decision in hindsight.
Obviously we're just dueling anecdotes here, but FWIW, I'm a US tech worker who bought a Tesla in 2022 and certainly never will again. I have four friends with Teslas in tech and all of them say the same thing: never again. Replacement cycles for cars are so long that this will take a while to fully show up in the data, but I don't see growth anywhere in their future, especially when BYD is eating their lunch in seemingly every non-US market.
USA has 340 million people. "Outside the US" has ~8 billion. So Tesla selling more cars outside the US isn't by itself a crazy achievement. China was supposed to be Tesla's next big market after US and Europe but sales there have already cooled off due to competition from domestic manufacturers. Tesla used to be #1 in the Chinese EV market when it launched and has now fallen outside the top 5.
They clearly can't compete against BYD and a company that relies on sanctions to survive doesn't seem like it is long for this world never mind the crazy multiples people are willing to pay for Tesla
It isn't within 15% of Tesla in price. Not even close. BYD models start at like $10K, and the cheapest BYD Sedan is $15K. The cheapest Model 3 meanwhile will be around $35-40K depending on the inventory around you.
I just checked and if we're doing like for like the cheapest BYD Seal is $50k AUD (510km range, 0-100 in 7.5). The cheapest model 3 is $59k (520km range, 0-100 in 6.1). So I guess closer to 20%.
If you're comparing the Atto 1 it's $26k for 200 range, 0-100 in 11.1. Not really a fair comparison.
If you’re a Tesla shareholder, there is no better leader than Elon. For of all his many faults, I can’t think of anyone else who could keep that stock price pumped at a level so far far detached from reality for so long.
Resale values are trash, motion sickness is terrible, electrical rates are going up, and it's a pain in the ass to travel long distance and wait to recharge constantly. I think EVs have hit that saturation point where everyone who wanted one has bought one and now some people are going back to other options. Also Elon hasn't exactly remained neutral so that probably makes it even harder since it seems like there is significant overlap between Tesla's potential customer base and his political opposition.
1. The products are barely competitive, and the design is dated.
2. The Cybertruck is no F-150.
3. The CEO built the brand on a cult of personality, and then went fascist. It's a free country, be an asshole if you want, and pay the price personally, whatever. But don't link your asshole personality to the brand that you and thousands of your employees depend on to make sales.
The reality is that there's little technological novelty in EVs, except for maybe the battery. Everybody can build EVs.
Of course you can add a lot of functionality based on computers, but most people just want to go from A to B, and the economics of adding unnecessary features doesn't play out.
Reminder that Tesla is still worth more than ~every other auto manufacturer in the world combined. It is unbelievable just how irrational the market is when dealing with this particular stock.
This has been true until recently w/BYD growth. It's definitely more than the top legacy ones combined, including those selling many times more cars, and unlike most of them it's shrinking
I guess when your CEO has a highly publicised pivot to a position that’s the antithesis of your customers views it doesn’t help. What’s that saying — “Go Fash Lose Cash”?
Add to that spending large amounts of his own money to help elect people who promised to and then did remove the EV tax credit, which means that those potential customers who were not driven away for ideological reasons would find they had to spend 10-20% more for a Tesla than before.
Those people he worked hard to elect did other things to harm Tesla besides making the cars more expensive. Over the last few years about 30% of Tesla's profits were from selling emissions tax credits to car companies that make ICE cars. Those other companies needed the credits because not enough of the ICE cars met EPA emissions standards. But now those emissions standards are no longer enforced, and so there is no need for them to buy credits.
The people he worked to elect also promised, and have been implementing, policies that will make electricity more expensive in many areas. There were already several states where electricity was expensive enough and gasoline not too expensive so that a Prius there would actually cost less to operated in energy costs per mile than an EV. Rising electricity prices could make that true in more places. (And yes, I'm talking about home electricity prices. For people who do not have adequate home charging and rely on commercial charging a Prius beats an EV on energy costs in most states). That too is probably going to cost Tesla some sales.
Politics aside, the fact that now a handful of companies offer competitive cars at similar pricepoints, while there has been a general slump in EV demand doesn't help either.
“TSLA is not a car company” :)
I suspect the strategy was 'we've already saturated the liberals. If we can release a truck and I switch to the other side I can capture the other side of the market as well'.
End result is he has neither side and neither the trucks nor the sedans are selling well!
I don't think Musk or Tesla had a strategy in this regard, Musk was just being impulsive and didn't really think about his brand, I think he isn't really self aware even if he must be smart in some other regard (unless his success is an accident, which I doubt).
I imagine he has fallen in the very common trap of being surrounded by sycophants.
A lot of people have a very strong incentive to attach themselves to wealthy/powerful people, and then try to manipulate their understanding of the world and events to their favor.
It's a very old story
Of course it's an accident: it's primarily an accident of his birth.
If he hadn't been born heir to the wealth of African colonizers' emerald mines, there's zero chance he would have ever become rich or famous.
Last time I checked, his actions secured him 30 Billions USD now, 1 Trillion USD in the future. Also, He is in AI and robotics now.
Anyway, still don't get why Theranos failed to pivot to something else when they couldn't do the single drop blood thing and failed. Was there something contractual in their investment rounds? Was it because they were into healthcare? Was it because she was trying to be Steve Jobs instead of Musk? It seems to me that Elizabeth Holmes could have promised that the test are coming next year and just release repackaged Siemens machines with a cloud integration and pretty UI and figure out products down the line and keep promising that single drop tests are coming next year. Then pivot to AI and robotic.
Edit: I think I forgot that “\s”
> He is in AI and robotics now.
This is why the market clearly does not care about the news about Tesla sales and it was likely priced in.
But again, feel free to zoom out of the Tesla chart.
And the AI videos are going the same way as full self driving:
1) looking like Tesla is easily two year, probably more behind everyone else
2) the others are seeing real SOTA performance ... and are not planning products because they think it won't work, or at least not yet
I must say ... really reminds me of the Tesla autopilot situation.
And I'd add 3) the really impressive robots, ie. the ones based on Boston Dynamics, are not based on ML algorithms. They are augmented by AI, not running actual AI algorithms in the control loop. The founder was an electrical engineering professor who moved into a CS direction (you know the sort of person who insists not just writing control loops in realtime, in assembly, but actually develops custom hardware for those algorithms. And I don't mean FPGAs or DSPs, I mean actual circuits)
So the entire approach of Tesla (and a lot of other startups) could be very wrong, and could very well be 5 theoretical breakthroughs removed from being feasible.
100%. We are seeing the bet of hard coded functions vs AI learned functions play out for us over the next year or two. Waymo has special case code for so much of their stack. Tesla removes special case code and replaces it with inference. Same with the Boston Dynamics vs Tesla robots. Tesla is making a bet that custom case code isn't going to scale nearly as fast as AI inference scales. Good news is that if one feels strongly one can place bets with one's money! If one doesn't feel strongly you can just comment on HN or Reddit or just watch.
I do not understand the P/E at all. It feels to me like a screaming red flag. If I'd been in front of this, holding long, I would be walking to other investment now and only looking to buy when the inevitable corrections come. But I don't hold directly and nobody I know who does feels the way i do about the P/E so.. I just don't understand.
Can you think of any non tech business where a P/E like this was not a signal of corporate diseased thinking?
Bloom Energy (BE). It's PE is higher than TSLA but I don't think it's culty, we just need power badly and people see that.
I could be wrong. I hold BE shares.
> I do not understand the P/E at all
cult
Ive owned a Tesla since 2018 and honestly besides my gripes with body damage repairs (specifically dealing with insurance) from 3 separate instances of people hitting me it's been a great car. I definitely wouldn't consider any future car that isn't an EV but I also wouldn't consider a Tesla at this point. My concern is that other car manufacturers would continue to signal that EVs have lost interest from buyers if Tesla went under and I believe that is far from the truth. EVs are very much a luxury item. The fact I haven't had to inconvenience myself even once in seven years going to gas station has been amazing. Electricity pricing is both stable and cheap where I live and so I don't have to even care about fluctuations in gas pricing. I don't have to waste my time getting oil changes either. Owning a traditional car is just a bunch of wasted time.
I have more than a few complaints of current EVs manufacturers outside of Tesla. Every manufacturer has been very slow to adopt NACS. I wouldn't consider a new car without that it and I will absolutely not accept an adapter solution. I don't trust legacy car manufacturers even manufactures like Mercedes that they will keep the car updated and instead use that as a way to push me to purchase a new car. One of the reasons that pushed me to Tesla back in 2018 was they kept their cars updated and provided new features over time. They also had a track record of not changing the looks of their cars that often which I very much prefer. An EV can last significantly longer than ICE vehicles and so you need the ability to not only support the cars for longer through software but also by doing new computer hardware drop in replacements. I want the ability to extend the life of my car not replace it. I have absolutely zero interest in lease deals which every manufacture and dealer push with EVs because I don't drive very far in the city so I keep cars for a long time with low miles. I fundamentally HATE the push from buyers who desire large batteries for range when they don't even use it which has resulted in many of the smaller cars to not be sold here in the US. This is also preventing desired cars from even being made. If Ford would have made the Maverick an EV instead of wasting their time on the F-150 Lightning it would have significantly cost them less to develop and their issue would have been keeping them in stock.
The EV market is absolutely frustrating. Tesla brought these vehicles mainstream and for the most part outside the Cybertruck they have decent products where they have shown willingness to support longterm. Everything else made them undesirable.
> for the most part outside the Cybertruck they have decent products
your definition of "decent products" is different from mine.
15 People Have Died in Crashes Where Tesla Doors Wouldn’t Open [0, 1]
0: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-12-22/tesla-doo...
1: https://archive.is/VpB1H
How often does it happen in Chevys or Toyotas? Getting trapped in a car after a crash is common enough that there’s a cutesy nickname for the machine used by rescuers to get people out.
> How often does it happen in Chevys or Toyotas?
three things in life are certain: death, taxes, and whataboutism from Tesla apologists
from the article I linked:
> In an effort to take a comprehensive and systematic look at this issue, Bloomberg sought to examine every fatal EV crash in the US involving a fire. From there, the reporting centered around cases in which there was documented evidence that victims had survived initial impact, and that nonfunctional electric doors had impeded either the occupants’ efforts to escape or rescuers’ attempts to save those inside the vehicle.
this has nothing to do with the Jaws of Life. this is about the car catches fire and the door handles stop working.
Getting trapped in a crushed car is quite different from the door handles not working or not being discoverable in an emergency.
Sure. How often do other cars’ doors get stuck? Just because the handle is there doesn’t mean the door will open after a violent kinetic event.
If I can't open the door on my CR-V after a crash it will be because there has been serious damage to the door itself or to the frame around the door. The locking and latching mechanisms are entirely in the door and do not rely on any other systems in the car to function. If the door is not severely damaged I can unlock it. If the frame is not damaged then if I can unlock it I can open it.
The incidents people are talking about with cars with electric locking or latching mechanisms I believe are where the door cannot be unlocked because the locking or latching mechanism depends on other systems in the car, typically the 12V power system.
A collision that takes down the 12V system but causes no damage whatsoever to the door or frame can then leave you with a door that would open just fine if you could unlock it, but you can't unlock it because it has no power.
Does the Bloomberg reporting distinguish between these cases?
One of their examples involves a driver who called 911 post-crash and reported they couldn’t open the door. Teslas have mechanical door handles on the interior of the front doors. It’s not hard to find. In fact, it’s so obvious that passengers unfamiliar with the car tend to use it rather than the button.
So what happened here? Did he never try the mechanical handle, or did he try it and it somehow didn’t work? Given how easy the handle is to find, I’d bet on the latter. And there’s nothing about this which makes me think your CR-V’s latch would have fared any better.
Did Bloomberg distinguish between “occupant would have been saved if there had been a mechanical handle” and “occupant would have been saved if the structure hadn’t jammed the door”? It doesn’t sound like it.
The basic fact is, people do get stuck inside crashed cars for all sorts of reasons. Electronic door handles add a new failure mode. But I’d like to know how the aggregate incidents compare, not just declare to be dangerous because it’s an additional failure mode.
Jaws of life
I own 2019 model 3. Car is falling apart which is why consumer reports Tesla in last place in reliability. Won’t fix things under warranty either, they claimed I hit a something when my front suspension failed which is a very common issue in my car. Also paid for FSD, but not getting upgraded to the new hardware like Musk promised so will never get true FSD. Worst car I ever bought.
It was mentioned on the Tesla earning's call in Q2 or Q3 2025 that HW3 FSD customers will likely be moved to a version of HW5 that accommodated the older camera sensors.
What compelled you to buy FSD?
Promise of a self driving car.
Why don't you ask for a refund ?
This is well said.
Tesla, for all their problems, is the only manufacturer you can count on prioritizing and long term updating their EVs.
There’s also Rivian. My R1S is my favorite car I’ve ever owned and this is going to be their “Model 3 year” when the R2 comes out. There’s also Lucid and Zoox.
And the Chinese manufacturers, of course. If you haven’t been outside the US lately you don’t realize just how popular BYD is everywhere but here. I’m in Thailand at the moment and they are everywhere. Mexico too.
Why? They're an energy errr robotics err AI company now. Seems to me like they're all but calling it quits on cars.
> it's been a great car.
It's not really that great of a car. I mean it's driving an iPad, basically. Also, they've been plagued with reliability issues eg limiting how much you can adjust your seat because they're so prone to breaking [1].
Also, the Cybertruck is an unmitigated disaster in practically every way.
> EVs are very much a luxury item
In the US, this is kinda true but largely due to trade barriers. Things would be very different if we could buy BYD cars.
Charging is part of the problem too combined with how much Americans drive. But Americans partly drive so much because there's practically zero robust public transit infrastructure that forces people to drive, we build houses really spread out and a common charging network isn't a state priority like it is in China.
> very slow to adopt NACS
So, Tesla's Supercharger network was the only moat Tesla had for their cars. Even now, I believe Tesla charges third-party users significantly more [2].
> An EV can last significantly longer than ICE vehicles
I see what you're saying but battery degradation is a serious problem over time, such that EV depreciation is super high.
Also, some ICE vehicles are super reliable and some of those are weirdly banned in the US. I'm thinking specifically of the Toyota Hilux. Japanese cars in general were banned (after lobbying from the auto industry) because of their extreme reliability and low price.
> I have absolutely zero interest in lease deals
Each to their own but IMHO leasing is the smartest way to currently "own" an EV, given the depreciation.
[1]: https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-now-monitors-how-ofte...
[2]: https://insideevs.com/news/710822/tesla-supercharger-cost-fo...
> It's not really that great of a car. I mean it's driving an iPad, basically. Also, they've been plagued with reliability issues eg limiting how much you can adjust your seat because they're so prone to breaking [1].
Do you own one? I've had one for 6 years and I've never had issues with it, it's the best car I've ever owned. I've driven lots of other EVs, and none are close.
> Things would be very different if we could buy BYD cars.
We've had BYDs and other EVs for many years in Australia, and EVs are still a luxury item.
> Each to their own but IMHO leasing is the smartest way to currently "own" an EV, given the depreciation.
I've never understood Americans and leasing. Aside from specific styles of novated/chattel leases (where there is a tax benefit), leasing a car seems to almost always be a worse deal.
> We've had BYDs and other EVs for many years in Australia, and EVs are still a luxury item.
Australia is much closer to the US than China in terms of public transit and EV infrastructure. In China, now the majority of new car sales are EVs. There are chargers everywhere and much of the time you don't need to drive because any decently sized city has robust and cheap public transit.
Australia isn't as car-dependent as the US but it's honestly not that far off. Perth, for example, is akin to Los Angeles in car dependence as well as cars owned per capita.
> I've never understood Americans and leasing.
It's complicated. It's not strictly better but it's not strictly worse either. It depends on if you want or need to drive a relatively new car vs holding on to a car until it falls apart.
Some will talk down leasing because new cars depreciate the most in the first 2-3 years, which is true. But leasing gives you the option of just handing it back or paying the balloon payment if the car hasn't depreciated as much as predicted (and priced in). This happened in the pandemic when car prices skyrocketed and, for example, used trucks were selling for at or above the MSRP of a new car for the same model because you simply couldn't buy the new one (at or below MSRP).
> There are chargers everywhere and much of the time you don't need to drive because any decently sized city has robust and cheap public transit.
It's definitely not the density of major Chinese cities, but all major cities in Australia have plenty of EV chargwrs and public transport.
> Australia isn't as car-dependent as the US but it's honestly not that far off. Perth, for example, is akin to Los Angeles in car dependence as well as cars owned per capita.
You've picked the most isolated city in the world as your example, with a heavy lean to FIFO workers and disposable income. But even going with it, Perth has high public transport usage [1] and has halved its costs for patrons in the last year [2]. This was an election promise and important to people.
I'm sorry, but I think you're pulling things out of the air here, what you're saying simply isn't accurate.
1. https://www.pta.wa.gov.au/news/media-statements/public-trans...
2. https://www.wa.gov.au/government/media-statements/Cook%20Lab...
[1] You say it like it is a bad thing? Next you will say car manufacturers are monitoring engine temperature...
120 sec of usage in 300 sec is plenty. If they did 599 sec in 600 sec, you'll still complain because you are here to complain; you are not a user.
Car letting me know I'm stressing the motor is a good thing.
I oil change once a year. I fill in gas once every like 7-10 days, half the time someone pumps it for me. It takes five minutes, maybe. I don't need to fuss about range, chargers or connect my car as it were a phone when I'm home every day. I find EVs an inconvenience. There are many reasons why choose an EV, and I just might, but these are not.
Would you prefer if your phone required a trip to a dedicated refilling station once a week, even if it only took 5 minutes?
Because that's the kind of logic you're implying about your car – that it's more convenient driving somewhere once a week rather than just plugging it in at night before bed.
I'm not driving somewhere special though. I have plenty of gas stations around. I don't think this is outside the norm, most communities have gas stations along their main roads.
Now if you reframed the question and said "visit once a week to charge your phone but you wouldn't have to think of the battery or charger rest of the time".. doesn't seem half bad.
If you have a home charger, it's like having a gas station right where you park. That's where EVs win. It takes me 2 seconds to plug in the car when I get out of it and I have a full tank whenever I need to use it.
I think apartment complexes are where EVs have a bigger problem. What's needed to make EVs a lot more convenient is more L2 charger (or even L1 chargers) in a lot more locations.
> I oil change once a year. I fill in gas once every like 7-10 days, half the time someone pumps it for me. It takes five minutes, maybe. I don't need to fuss about range, chargers or connect my car as it were a phone when I'm home every day. I find EVs an inconvenience.
I suspect I spend less time plugging in my car when I get home than you do filling up with petrol per annum. Having to stop at a service station is objectively less convenient than plugging in when you get home.
How many miles does your car/oil filter support
Service interval for the car is 15,000km. Some manufacturers even do 30,000km, synthetic oils support that but I prefer to just put it in once a year, at about 15k.
Very objective comment surely, comming from an account that has only 2 comments ever on HN, both praising their Tesla. Definitely not a bot.
Im not a bot. I also don't believe I was praising Tesla. I won't buy another one even if I haven't had any issues with the one I currently have. My Model 3 has honestly been a great car for me. If it was any other manufacturer I would have absolutely bought another one. I will only consider an EV but I won't buy another Tesla. It's pretty unfortunate TBH.
> I also wouldn't consider a Tesla at this point
How does the above fit into your "bot" hypothesis?
Huh? This guy just declared he'll never buy another Tesla again. How is that giving it praise?
To zoom in on how toxic the brand has become, look at the European market. Sales were down 71% in Sweden and 66% in France for 2025[1], despite ~35% growth in European EV sales. The only "bright spot" was Norway, but that's partly because EVs increased to 96% of sales there (vs ~25% in Europe.)
https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2026/01/02/...
Wouldn’t mind if they went bankrupt. I won’t support the ideologies of their ceo.
Sure but do you examine the ideologies of the CEOs of the companies making all the products you buy?
I imagine many of their privately held beliefs are just as horrible but they’re not dumb enough to say them publicly.
I’d have agreed with you in 2024 but there’s enough of a difference in active support to be significant. Not many of those CEOs have direct personal involvement killing millions of people, for example, but DOGE appears to have managed that without really even understanding what they were cutting.
There is an enormous difference between holding unpleasant views in private and actively, publicly, working to dismantle the country and take away the rights of its citizens and celebrating it.
Did I just accidently click on Reddit?
> I imagine many of their privately held beliefs are just as horrible but they’re not dumb enough to say them publicly.
That's correct. And therefore I don't boycott their companies.
I used to ask the same questions, but then I've realized: this line of argument tries to justify non-action on known known because there are also known unknowns and maybe even unknown unknowns. Now what? Smoke a cigarette because we know that unknown carcinogens exist that are not included in cigarette smoke?
https://youtu.be/N_ympM1TPBw?si=7fnfN3RPZdF0wVv7&t=31
Yes when possible and feasible to know. And it's super easy to avoid everything Musk touches. Nothing he helms is without easy alternatives.
I didn’t plan on examining Elon’s ideology. He shoved it in my face. If other CEOs want to to be coy with Nazi salutes and post the types of things he does on X then let me know. I’ll happily treat them the same way.
Hiding abhorrent beliefs is a good thing and we should heavily encourage it.
I'm honestly baffled that this isn't completely obvious to everyone.
People act like "bad but hiding it" is no different from "bad and not hiding it," but the former is literally identical to being decent. The only scenarios in which it's not identical are those in which they failed to hide their badness!
I don't give a fuck how evil someone is in the dark little corners of their mind, so long as they show up as a decent person in all their interactions with the outside world.
Any of them would run me over to make the line go up, but some of them are loudly putting their foot on the accelerator.
Publicly signalling that you support awful shit is more likely to make that world a reality than quiet private support.
Hard to think of other CEOs who took time off from running the company to play in DC for a while. I'm sure there are some, but none come to mind.
Pretty sure there are plenty but non that have done so so brazenly
Most of the others have jobs I think
Why financially support an ardent, unabashed white nationalist who eagerly funnels money to a party that *he himself claims* protects pedophiles?
What other CEOs are this level of pure garbage? I can't think of a single one. (And that's before we even bring up the people his policies have directly killed: https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-f...)
The shareholders should mind him being CEO.
https://electrek.co/2025/12/30/elon-musk-top-5-tesla-predict...
Here’s an interesting quote from Musk: “The ability to predict the future is the best measure of intelligence.”
Based on Musk’s own standard of intelligence, he is a grade A moron.
Ouch.
Tesla should have had a new car model by now. Something comparable to BYD's midrange cars. Or a useful delivery van. Or a new roadster. Or something.
For some reason, most of the Cybertrucks seem to have disappeared. A year ago, they were common on Silicon Valley roads. Now I see more driverless Waymos mid-peninsula than Cybertrucks. It's been raining lately; maybe people don't want to take them out.
As for the value being in self-driving, there's no moat there. Ford and Mercedes have SAE level 3 systems about as good as Tesla's. Several Chinese auto companies have systems. Toyota is partnering with Waymo. Level 3 is just another car option.
It's 2026. Where are the Musk-promised Robotaxis? Do they have anything, anywhere, in revenue service with no driver in it? In this area, there is a moat, and Waymo is behind it.
There are at least eighteen companies with demo humanoid robots good enough to have Youtube videos. Again, Tesla has no moat. As far as I know, there are zero autonomous humanoid robots generating revenue. Autonomous human robots are going to be a thing, but probably about 5-10 years out.
And the door problem. There was no US regulation prohibiting a car door that can't be opened in an emergency because nobody was ever dumb enough to make one. Regulations are written in blood.
Consumer Reports: "On a newer Tesla Model Y, remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket, press the red tab to remove an access door that reveals a mechanical release cable, and pull the cable."
Musk is getting paid how much for this?
People who claim Ford and Mercedes have systems as good as Tesla haven't personally taken a currently shipping v14 FSD trip and then personally used Ford and Mercedes systems. I see Cybertrucks many times a day in San Francisco and on the 101. I took a Robotaxi ride in SF last week. It was cheaper than Uber and Waymo but I am hoping they bring back the 2014 price wars of Uber/Lyft. I think Musk's pay is $1/yr.
> maybe people don't want to take them out.
Maybe people no longer want to be seen in one.
Musk's politics and the fact that Cybertrucks didn't live up to any of its hype and turned into a heap of recalls didn't turn out to be the flex people thought it would be.
I see a few cybertrucks per week. FWIW.
They are considered radioactive by their primary target audience in the US, have been surpassed in various ways outside the US, seem to be focused on a few boondoggles internally rather than fixing what is broken in their core business, and their CEO has been distracted by other ventures.
I expect this decline to continue indefinitely. I also wonder when the stock price will reflect the company's past and projected results.
> I also wonder when the stock price will reflect the company's past and projected results.
This is the $1T question. What happens when Tesla finally gets valued as a car manufacturer, with side businesses in cheap but unreliable solar, and over-priced grid storage?
The self-driving car boondoggle has persisted for the better part of a decade, without a come-to-Jesus moment on the stock price. The pivot to robotics is clear fraud, yet retail stock investors are all to willing to keep the stock price high.
Musk has to lose a lot more reputation with the public before Tesla stock starts being valued based on the reality of Tesla.
The optimus will save the day!
At least that seems the current story. And I mean if it lives up to it's promises, it might. I surely would have a need for a robot servant. But I won't preorder as I a) don't trust it will work as promised b) if it actually works out, I still don't trust Elon enough to put a robot in my home that he controls.
Assuming for a second Optimus is not complete vaporware, and that people will trust Musk with humanoid robots in their home after he said "I'm not building a robot army unless I have control"....
Optimus will face the Roomba problem. Cheaper robots from competitors will destroy any profit margins, and there's zero moat.
And the problem with shorting Tesla has been apparent for years: the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
It'd have to be locally controlled, or securely siloed in a cloud, with auditable and accountable interactions. Any sort of home robot will have that challenge; I wouldn't trust any company or person with that sort of access. When even the highest security clearance and most secure facilities and job titles in the world frequently involve people randomly scanning around, trolling through mass surveillance, stalking exes or arbitrary targets, rifling through people's private photos and messages, there's no way a mid-tier tech company job is going to be the one where they suddenly behave ethically and respect security.
That said, robots in factories are a no-brainer, you gain a massive margin over human operated manufacturing, and the technology is effectively at an alpha level of rollout, with more or less full capability of doing any particular thing any human can do, with near perfect repeatability and millisecond granular control, and the effective cost at scale is pennies per year over whatever salary you'd have to pay a human. For municipal jobs, you can get multiple robots to do things like street cleaning, building maintenance, cleaning, facilities maintenance, guard patrols, and so forth. There are all sorts of large scale deployments that are much more compatible with low-trust , low-privacy issues than home robot butlers, and those widely deployed factory and janitor bots will help finance the robo-butlers.
Imagine robot street repair crews that operate on a 24/7 basis, with self driving cars that go around town searching out potholes and other safety issues for the robots to fix. Neighborhood robots that shovel snow or clean out water drains, or trot out with safety cones if a hazard appears. That's millions and millions of dollars in savings year over year compared the cost of paying humans, and it gets rid of the perverse incentives that lead to things like sub-standard materials being used, so that you have to replace materials every year in order to keep the union teams employed doing overpriced roadwork.
Robot contractors that learn from Amish techniques to build a well-made house inside 48 hours, or Earth Day citywide robot blitzes where the robots clean everything, and so on. The economics of things that people won't do, or aren't worth paying to do, change radically when it's a mindless robot's time being allocated.
Even if it's not Optimus, the robots are basically here, the next decade is gonna be full of fun politics and figuring out how to cope with radical change.
"It'd have to be locally controlled, or securely siloed in a cloud, with auditable and accountable interactions. Any sort of home robot will have that challenge; I wouldn't trust any company or person with that sort of access. "
I agree, but we might be in a minority here. Otherwise roombas etc. would not have had their success. Children toys with microphone and always on connection to the company. Cameras as part of a big network. Cars that can be remote controlled any time, ..
I'm slightly optimistic with the heightened scrutiny on AI and general political turmoil - maybe there's a shot at a reasonable digital bill of rights regulation, and both parties seem fairly universally against allowing China to run surveillance apparatus inside US homes. An Alexa or Roomba is one thing, but a humanoid is too close to having an actual person - there's enough of a subjective difference in vibe that it might reach critical mass in the zeitgeist.
US politics is on the "cannot let China win the AI race" side of things, as well as the "cannot have a chinese/corporation/government robot spy in your bedroom" side of things. Cheap Temu speakers with microphones that phone home, or chargers that connect to wifi for botnets, and so on, that sort of abstract IoT threat doesn't resonate. Commander Data doing your dishes feels like a person in your home.
Then again, the people are regarded.
It's amazing to me that Tesla shareholders are not calling for Elon's head.
The stock lives purely on hype, and with the EV market going down the tubes, Optimus (really AI) is the new hype story. Except that Elon is actively stealing Tesla's data for his own company (xAI). He just helps himself to Tesla's GPUs, technology, and data. Tesla didn't bid out their data. They didn't sell it. Elon plundered it into a company in which he owns a larger share.
I'd never buy that stock. I'd short it in a heartbeat if I had any hope of remaining solvent longer than the market remains irrational.
The stockholders are the ones that believe the Musk hype. So that's why Tesla is a time bomb: they can't get competent leadership without destroying the stock price, and they can't meet their promises without getting competent leadership.
Elon's the only reason the company is worth what it is. If a meteor landed on him tomorrow, their stock would crater.
Not because his presence makes it a better business, but it does make it a better stock.
> This is the $1T question. What happens when Tesla finally gets valued as a car manufacturer, with side businesses in cheap but unreliable solar, and over-priced grid storage?
They are the 14th largest car maker in the world by annual units sold, and almost in the top 10 by annual revenue from cars.
Surely that is good enough to maintain a market cap that is 50% higher than the combined market caps of the top 10 (Toyota, Volkswagen, Hyundai-Kia, Renault-Nissan, General Motors, Stellantis, Honda, Ford, BYD, and Suzuki)?
Haha, good point.
But don't forget that they have truly unique skills as a company that none of those other companies can pull off: they have shrinking sales even when focusing on the only segment of cars that's growing: EVs.
That shows unique grit.
It appears to have become a meme stock.
I would love to short it but have avoided doing so because I didn't feel like I could outlast the fanatics, which seems to have been a wise decision in hindsight.
I think radioactive is a strong word here… I have talked to a lot of people in tech
I don't. YouGov's data suggests 77% of the UK populace has a negative view of the brand. Musk has destroyed its credibility.
Obviously we're just dueling anecdotes here, but FWIW, I'm a US tech worker who bought a Tesla in 2022 and certainly never will again. I have four friends with Teslas in tech and all of them say the same thing: never again. Replacement cycles for cars are so long that this will take a while to fully show up in the data, but I don't see growth anywhere in their future, especially when BYD is eating their lunch in seemingly every non-US market.
Tech workers weren't their core market, upper-middle to upper class liberals in major metro areas were.
Sales to that demographic are approximately zero and will remain there until every shred of Elon is removed from the company's fabric.
if Tesla is still banking on EV it has no future, already other manufacturers are eating their lunch.
Outside of the US, EVs are doing well. They actually sell (and produce) more cars in China than the US.
USA has 340 million people. "Outside the US" has ~8 billion. So Tesla selling more cars outside the US isn't by itself a crazy achievement. China was supposed to be Tesla's next big market after US and Europe but sales there have already cooled off due to competition from domestic manufacturers. Tesla used to be #1 in the Chinese EV market when it launched and has now fallen outside the top 5.
What do you suggest they do instead?
Invest in batteries
Edit: I mean focus solely on. It's a boring technology prone to disruption, used everywhere
Tesla has nothing obvious here to add to the marketplace --- most of their battery tech has typically been out sourced.
Lots of other companies with far more experience and expertice is battery research, development and manufacturing.
They're seem to be, with their factories and utility-scale systems: https://www.tesla.com/megapack
Preferably, solid state
Yep, the game has changed.
I won't buy a Tesla.
And - these days - I don't need to.
[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465041
Tesla seems 100% fucked to me.
They clearly can't compete against BYD and a company that relies on sanctions to survive doesn't seem like it is long for this world never mind the crazy multiples people are willing to pay for Tesla
Have you driven a BYD? They're... fine. Tesla is a much better car, BYD is a pretty average and they're within 15% of the same Tesla in price.
It isn't within 15% of Tesla in price. Not even close. BYD models start at like $10K, and the cheapest BYD Sedan is $15K. The cheapest Model 3 meanwhile will be around $35-40K depending on the inventory around you.
I just checked and if we're doing like for like the cheapest BYD Seal is $50k AUD (510km range, 0-100 in 7.5). The cheapest model 3 is $59k (520km range, 0-100 in 6.1). So I guess closer to 20%.
If you're comparing the Atto 1 it's $26k for 200 range, 0-100 in 11.1. Not really a fair comparison.
Can we all agree that another CEO would be a better leader than Elon? There would be more stable and profitable innovations?
Edit: yeah he has a big stock multiplier factor, but then consider valuation from actual future innovations. Inflated stock price is just that: vapor.
All the other car, robot, solar and energy companies have CEOs that aren't Elon. How are they doing?
Another CEO would be better for the company but disastrous for the company's stock price. Guess which one investors want to prioritize?
If you’re a Tesla shareholder, there is no better leader than Elon. For of all his many faults, I can’t think of anyone else who could keep that stock price pumped at a level so far far detached from reality for so long.
Without him the stock would crash. Most of its value is the cult of personality. (Which, to be clear, is bad)
Resale values are trash, motion sickness is terrible, electrical rates are going up, and it's a pain in the ass to travel long distance and wait to recharge constantly. I think EVs have hit that saturation point where everyone who wanted one has bought one and now some people are going back to other options. Also Elon hasn't exactly remained neutral so that probably makes it even harder since it seems like there is significant overlap between Tesla's potential customer base and his political opposition.
I'm frankly disappointed that number isn't much higher.
1. The products are barely competitive, and the design is dated.
2. The Cybertruck is no F-150.
3. The CEO built the brand on a cult of personality, and then went fascist. It's a free country, be an asshole if you want, and pay the price personally, whatever. But don't link your asshole personality to the brand that you and thousands of your employees depend on to make sales.
It's just not difficult to understand at all.
> 2. The Cybertruck is no F-150.
The electric F-150 is also no F-150, and was cancelled [1]. Electric just doesn't work for towing yet, with the range and charging compromise.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2025/12/15/nx-s1-5645147/ford-discontinu...
The reality is that there's little technological novelty in EVs, except for maybe the battery. Everybody can build EVs.
Of course you can add a lot of functionality based on computers, but most people just want to go from A to B, and the economics of adding unnecessary features doesn't play out.
Reminder that Tesla is still worth more than ~every other auto manufacturer in the world combined. It is unbelievable just how irrational the market is when dealing with this particular stock.
Meaningless comparison. Tesla isn't a car company.
Yeah a company that makes 95%+ of its revenue from selling cars is totally not a car company..
Citation required.
This has been true until recently w/BYD growth. It's definitely more than the top legacy ones combined, including those selling many times more cars, and unlike most of them it's shrinking
you never realize how crazy people on HN are until you watch them get triggered about elon
This is how you filter for all the Reddit users who found out about HN.
It's abhorrent to me those that aren't.