The mystery I can wrap my head around is how Tesla has avoided getting hammered despite being hit from a hundred different directions. What exactly is the market pricing in?
They peaked around 2021, and even after posting multiple quarters of disappointing results, the stock is still trading above 2021 levels. For almost any other company, slightly lowering guidance or missing estimates by a few percentage points simply tanks the stock. But for Tesla, no amount of Musk’s idiocy seems to be enough to seriously move it.
I am so confused when I read things like this because my Tesla model 3 is effectively self driving for me for months now. Hundreds of miles without intervention. No other car I can buy can do this yet
This is a quote from Tesla latest earnings call, at 04 min..
"Because we're really moving into a future that is based on autonomy and so if you're interested in buying a Model S and X, now would be the time to order it, because we expect to wind down S and X production in next quarter and basically stop production of Model S and X next quarter. We'll obviously continue to support the Model S and X programs for as long as people have the vehicles, but we're gonna take the Model S and X production space in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory, which will... with the long-term goal of having 1 million units a year of Optimus robots in the current S/X space in Fremont."
> but we're gonna take the Model S and X production space in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory, which will... with the long-term goal of having 1 million units a year of Optimus robots in the current S/X space in Fremont."
I don't know how well that's going to work out for them. I saw these robots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVX6vq0RSnY) on the Chinese New Year Gala, and they look way more dexterous than any Optimus video I've ever seen.
Optimus is not a leader in humanoids; but that china demo is not really all that impressive; They are lightweight, reduced scale, and not all that dynamic... No idea how adaptable the control would be either.
See how poorly the sword one moves compared to the others.
Optimus hand dexterity is interesting; and the handling capacity is targeting useful weights (10s of kilos).
Boston dynamics is the most interesting; targeting "fit human" manipulation, 50kg. Their adaptable movement and walking are the best ive seen demoed as well.
This reads to me like someone saying “you can’t dump me, because I am preemptively dumping you.” It is a forced pivot to avoid having to admit failure.
China is absolutely crushing everyone mostly across the board in technology these days. It's comical today, but will just be embarrassing soon.
The only bit visually we see China a little behind is AI but I suspect they have much better closed/unreleased models, and the fab/chip space, but they'll close that gap in a short few years I'd expect.
This is amazing! I WISH somebody would take 15 seconds of this clip, add China flag in the bottom, then add scratching sounds of a vinyl disc and forward to this, with Felon Musk/American flag:
I think those are just two of the models that aren't pushed particularly hard. As I understand it, Model 3 and Model Y are the major models in recent time?
I think S, X and Cybertruck are just 3% of 2025 deliveries?
The whole pivot to Optimus is insane. I can understand the market following Elon down all the other paths he randomly skips down but Optimus... Really?? The only way to explain it is it's not being taken seriously but Elon seems to be taking it very seriously...
It's especially strange considering the amount of work that Tesla (the company) put into becoming a car manufacturer which is certainly no easy feat. I'm sure some of the know-how, process, and tooling/supply lines could be transitioned to general purpose robot manufacturing - but why would you build these supply lines and factories just to screw it all up like this?
Judging by the news isn’t the pivot to creating autonomous driving systems for other manufacturers cars?
If I’m understanding correctly the pivot is to sell just the autonomous driving systems. This way it can be trained on more data. It’s a hard sell to do this while competing against the car makers whose business they are trying to court.
Selling actual cars was like Uber when they started with a black car service. Get into the luxury market then leverage that so get into the mass market.
Perhaps this is why Elon has been so adamant about not using LiDAR
Actually if you run the tape back Tesla spent over a decade on trivially preventable manufacturing fuckups by attempting to ignore a century of industry knowledge on the subject and just wing it silicon valley style. That they have infrastructure that is capable of performing manufacturing at some scale is not in question. That any of it is sufficiently optimized for sanity to be repurposed remains to be seen.
I think the only thing he can do now is have Tesla "acquire" SpaceX. He already had SpaceX "acquire" the AI thing, so that would roll all three up into a pubco where he can hide things about the business as needed (no fear of SEC problems).
Good. Seems like the sales decline will reach the US eventually too. Even Toyota is coming out with compelling EV products this year.
Tesla came from nowhere, developed essentially one world-dominating product (lumping the 3 and Y together), then the CEO basically ruined everything.
Imagine Tesla with a "normal" CEO and marketing department. They would have a bunch of different trims and options for the 3/Y, a redesigned X, a functional truck, and a market cap of 400 billion!
Tesla has a marketing department. It just refuses to talk to anyone except to talk at journalists...and journalists are so desperate to get quotes, they'll put up with it.
When Tesla started with the "no marketing department" nonsense, the press should have just stopped quoting them or covering them. Especially given that half the things Musk says are blatant lies.
One of the interesting things you start seeing and then can't stop seeing is "CEO says" journalism, where the whole article is about the CEO saying something and that's newsworthy and there's no real analysis of it or no looking at the track record of the CEO. Just stenography.
It's not limited to this one company, they'll do it with any company that's newsworthy or has a CEO who will generate clicks for their article.
> Tesla came from nowhere, developed essentially one world-dominating product (lumping the 3 and Y together), then the CEO basically ruined everything.
It seems strange to attribute only the fall -- and not the rise -- to the CEO
It's not a car company anymore, it's an energy company... Ahem, I mean self-driving... Er, maybe robots? ... Okay, that not going so well? How about quantum? That's probably a thing, right?
Tesla seems basically priced based on hype, rather than anything relating to its actual business.
It's a cult. Really. This is a stock devoid of any connection to reality, fundamentals, products, anything. All that matters is that Musk is on the nameplate. Do not bet against the ability of people in a cult to remain irrational in the face of overwhelming evidence. Do not touch the cult.
SpaceX is making that majority (70%) of its revenue, and all of its profits from Starlink, and mostly from subscriptions.
98% of government money SpaceX receives is payment for services rendered, which they provide at a significantly lower cost than their competitors.
On the other hand, their competitors are routinely receiving actual handouts. For example, ULA used to receive a $1 billion annual "Launch Capability" stipend essentially just to keep their lights.
Very soon musk will merge Tesla with SpaceX and say he is going to have robots drive the cars to space. The stock will multiply 4 fold making him a multi- trillionaire
BYD is not, despite the press, really very big in Europe (though it is in a couple of individual countries, notably Spain). Europe-wide, Geely, the Chinese manufacturer that everyone forgets about, is actually bigger: https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Bar/All-time-by-Qu...
Geely is also present in the US via Volvo and Polestar. They haven’t delivered an affordable entry level EV yet, but I’ve been impressed with the Polestars. I’d never buy one because a Chinese car running on Google software sounds like a nightmare, but they’ve been good when I rented them.
Note that BYD doesn't just make BEVs. They're quite big in plug-in hybrids, which aren't in that data. They apparently sold 175k cars in Europe last year. A breakdown of BEV vs PHEV doesn't seem to be available, but 75k of those were one particular PHEV, so it's at most 100k BEVs.
Not saying that BYD is completely irrelevant, but the media overplays them. Presumably because BYD vs Tesla is an interesting narrative, even if the actual figures have both of those as small players in BEVs (at least for cars; BYD _is_ quite big in electric buses), with the real race being between VW AG and Stellantis. VW AG vs Stellantis is a painfully boring narrative.
The EU is a highly protected market, therefore the market share of foreign (to the EU) products cannot be used as a measure for the quality or affordability of such products.
I simply find it noteworthy how fast Chinese EVs are scaling up as a climate change mitigation. I don’t care who builds and sells them, just do so as quickly as possible.
I suspect BYD would do a lot better in Europe if the political class wasn´t afraid of the fallout from the European manufacturers (VW, Stellantis, and all their child brands) being seriously damaged or even wiped out by the competition.
That said, if relations between the EU and the US get much chillier, the EU may decide to make some sacrifices in order to have China in their camp. E.g. VW are arm-twisted into selling Škoda to BYD, with job preservation guarantees, and then BYD is badged Škoda and six months later all the old Škoda models are gone and its EVs all the way.
Many of the comments here resemble Reddit, disappointingly. I read HN due to market insights, analysis, interesting perspectives. I am sorry for digression.
My (2019) Tesla has been the most reliable car I've ever owned, but it sure seems like they're not interested in being a car company anymore.
Not having turn stalks and the drive selector, making me either pay for internet access or use bluetooth if I want to play spotify or youtube music (which I get for 'free' in cars with CarPlay or Android Auto), making the cybertruck way too big for a garage, discontinuing the model S and X...like are they even trying?
They used to have a third row option for the model Y, good for small kids or something, but then they got rid of that.
They were going to do the roadster, but didn't bother. They only have 6 paint colors, not even options for PTS. It's like they don't want to be a successful car company.
Take the reports with a grain of salt. Tesla does not mandate maintenance. The cars in the reports are the ones who left factory and get checked after 3 years of intensive use without any maintenance. Check the light alignment, check rust in the brakes and check the suspension and the inspection will be fine. Still cheaper than 400-600€ bi-yearly coolant refill from other manufacturers. Plus Tesla has published repair manual which is very strong advantage for me. I am poor and maintain my cars by myself. Maybe I like it too.
They don’t. Their market cap is higher than all the successful car companies combined. Becoming a successful car company would cost Elon half of his unrealized capital gains. It’s far better to be the company who is going to make us $30,000 robot slaves because that’s a bigger market and one he’ll own entirely.
The only question is what will be the next hype cycle when that succeeds about as well as the Cyber Truck.
Gravity doesn't exist when you're in a K-hole. That's why we can become a extraterrestrial society in the next 5 years (repeat infinitely - in 5 years)
Musk expects ~80% Of Tesla's value will be Optimus robots [1]. It can't be any other way given that he helped elect a President that's against electric cars, against regulation for limiting climate change, against collaborating with our European allies.
There’s an old saying: if civil engineers built houses the way software people build software, the first woodpecker to appear would destroy the civilization. With Tesla, we build cars. That, as told in court documents, absolutely should continue accelerating while in cruise control despite the driver pressing the brakes. There’s a century of institutional knowledge on system safety built into most cars. And (looking at you, Pinto), the carmakers are not even especially good at it. As a former software engineer, I’d rather rely on some actual engineers rather than a bunch of tech bros led by a deranged sociopath.
Many have argued that Musk's shift to far-right politics is responsible for some of this decline -- and it certainly makes some sense -- but I wonder if the cause and effect are being conflated.
If Musk were aware that Tesla was going to lose this much ground due to factors beyond his own mismanagement, including the threat of Chinese imports and a widespread shift away from EVs due to a right-populist sentiment swing that was already under way, then maybe his goose-stepping and Trump-humping act was an attempt to sync up with a trend that he saw as inevitable.
That's about the most charitable spin I can put on it. Either way, Tesla now has to pitch electric cars to right-wing climate-change deniers, which is not a great strategy to adopt voluntarily or otherwise.
Well, I think a more charitable spin would be he really does see that robots taxis are just around the corner and it is entirely plausible that Tesla will be able to deliver them. After all, despite whatever flaws they have and they certainly have some, you can go out today and buy a production car that does essentially drive itself.
When I was growing up, that was absolutely science fucking fiction. You’re telling me I get in this car and touch a piece of glass and then it drives itself? Incredible. Maybe the future really could get here fast.
I think that’s a little more charitable. I have a Tesla, won’t buy another one because Elon sucks, wouldn’t touch the stock, I think he’s generally turned in to a con artist, &c.
> Either way, Tesla now has to pitch electric cars to right-wing climate-change deniers, which is not a great strategy to adopt voluntarily or otherwise.
What’s funny to me is that I legitimately think that the day-to-day experience owning an EV is significantly better than the day-to-day experience owning a gas car. They could have slowly ignited or not emphasized the environment and just focused on it as future tech and it may well work. Over the years owning one I’ve had many a curious person drive by the Supercharger in their car, often times a truck too, and ask about the ownership experience.
EVs by association got this hippie-dippie connotation but that’s because the Prius looks like it does, but the Model 3 is quite nice and I think the perception could be overcome by just making damn cool cars.
They didn't have to box themselves into "pitching electric cars to right-wing climate change deniers."
I've heard there are rumours there are least three or four countries outside the US. In several of them, EVs are selling like like hotcakes, or at least not with the current American militant hostility to the very concept.
I suspect they spent too long riding the horse they got here on though. Making an EV appealing to American premium buyers was a marketing coup. Selling it as a software-style "we'll continue iterating with OTA updates" was an interesting alternative to the model-year redesign when you're targeting an early-adopter audience used to regular software refreshes.
But now these things are a liability. Your product matrix is full of America-centric designs with iffy product-market fits in other markets (will a Model S or Cybertruck literally fit in some side streets of Europe or Asia?) You've failed to make a recognizable, exciting redesign of an existing model, so what you do have looks dated. You never really developed a reputation for quality or reliability. These are product problems that have nothing to do with politics. You could have addressed them and been a viable player elsewhere, even as the US continues to eat itself alive. (Of course, that might have involved not intentionally rubbing your brand all over a highly polarizing and toxic political scenario)
I was excited about Tesla back when they were a novelty. I can recall going to the mall with the Microsoft Store (remember those? They sold "bloatfree" PCs because it used to be the OEM who loaded them full of crapware instead of MS itself) to buy a Windows 8 tablet, and then looking across the aisle to see a Model S on display at the Tesla "not really a dealership" stall.
I bought like $2000 in shares back then, figuring one day, jokingly, they'd be worth enough to exchange for a new Tesla. It looks like I could probably get one now. But these days, I just want a BYD; they seem to be actually building a coherent product line and long-term vision.
I mean, there's no need to go all 4D chess here, really. Sometimes a crazy person who tweets about "woke mind viruses" at four in the morning is just a crazy person who tweets about "woke mind viruses" at four in the morning.
After successfully teaching China how to build EVs and embracing fascism, I thought they moved on to AI/robotaxi/robots/(insert your preferred fantasy here)?
The mystery I can wrap my head around is how Tesla has avoided getting hammered despite being hit from a hundred different directions. What exactly is the market pricing in?
They peaked around 2021, and even after posting multiple quarters of disappointing results, the stock is still trading above 2021 levels. For almost any other company, slightly lowering guidance or missing estimates by a few percentage points simply tanks the stock. But for Tesla, no amount of Musk’s idiocy seems to be enough to seriously move it.
There's a lot of true believers who think Tesla+Musk will crack self driving and/or humanoid robots any day now.
I am so confused when I read things like this because my Tesla model 3 is effectively self driving for me for months now. Hundreds of miles without intervention. No other car I can buy can do this yet
>What exactly is the market pricing in?
Elon Musk.
I just ordered a 37,000AUD BYD, the "$25k (USD) car" that Elon used to promise was coming.
Seems like I'm not the only one with 2779 BYD EVs sold in the country in January compared to just 501 Teslas.[1]
[1] https://business.carsales.com.au/news-room/news/vfacts-janua...
This is a quote from Tesla latest earnings call, at 04 min..
"Because we're really moving into a future that is based on autonomy and so if you're interested in buying a Model S and X, now would be the time to order it, because we expect to wind down S and X production in next quarter and basically stop production of Model S and X next quarter. We'll obviously continue to support the Model S and X programs for as long as people have the vehicles, but we're gonna take the Model S and X production space in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory, which will... with the long-term goal of having 1 million units a year of Optimus robots in the current S/X space in Fremont."
> but we're gonna take the Model S and X production space in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory, which will... with the long-term goal of having 1 million units a year of Optimus robots in the current S/X space in Fremont."
I don't know how well that's going to work out for them. I saw these robots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVX6vq0RSnY) on the Chinese New Year Gala, and they look way more dexterous than any Optimus video I've ever seen.
Optimus is not a leader in humanoids; but that china demo is not really all that impressive; They are lightweight, reduced scale, and not all that dynamic... No idea how adaptable the control would be either.
See how poorly the sword one moves compared to the others.
Optimus hand dexterity is interesting; and the handling capacity is targeting useful weights (10s of kilos).
Boston dynamics is the most interesting; targeting "fit human" manipulation, 50kg. Their adaptable movement and walking are the best ive seen demoed as well.
Great. First ram goes through the roof, and now china has kung-fu robots. 2026 is going great.
At least start with folding the laundry and helping the infirm. They went straight to martial arts.
This reads to me like someone saying “you can’t dump me, because I am preemptively dumping you.” It is a forced pivot to avoid having to admit failure.
You’ve heard of a bridge to nowhere?
I suspect this is a pivot to nowhere.
Sounds a lot like Mars.
> It is a forced pivot to avoid having to admit failure.
It is also a neat way to reset Elon's Very Reliable Prediction Clock.
I look forward to hearing about how fully functional Optimus robots will be ready to ship "later this year" for the next 10 years.
I wonder if they'll be similarly "self-driving"
https://old.reddit.com/r/robotics/comments/1ph3scw/tesla_opt...
I thought this was the greatest product demo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R40IDdAkRZM
I struggle to imagine what the US version of this intimidating propaganda movie would look like. My mind renders only pictures of square dancing.
China is absolutely crushing everyone mostly across the board in technology these days. It's comical today, but will just be embarrassing soon.
The only bit visually we see China a little behind is AI but I suspect they have much better closed/unreleased models, and the fab/chip space, but they'll close that gap in a short few years I'd expect.
This is amazing! I WISH somebody would take 15 seconds of this clip, add China flag in the bottom, then add scratching sounds of a vinyl disc and forward to this, with Felon Musk/American flag:
https://www.reddit.com/r/robotics/comments/1ph3scw/tesla_opt...
Wonder what the maintenance picture for Tesla will be like from now on. Crazy expensive parts at the very least I would imagine.
[delayed]
I think those are just two of the models that aren't pushed particularly hard. As I understand it, Model 3 and Model Y are the major models in recent time?
I think S, X and Cybertruck are just 3% of 2025 deliveries?
the fact that Tesla's newest model sold pitifully isn't exactly a mitigating factor.
> 1 million Optimus robots
Are there that many unemployed actors available?
No but thanks to Elon there are a million unemployed federal government workers.
Down for this lol
Plenty of Mocap actors.
The whole pivot to Optimus is insane. I can understand the market following Elon down all the other paths he randomly skips down but Optimus... Really?? The only way to explain it is it's not being taken seriously but Elon seems to be taking it very seriously...
It's especially strange considering the amount of work that Tesla (the company) put into becoming a car manufacturer which is certainly no easy feat. I'm sure some of the know-how, process, and tooling/supply lines could be transitioned to general purpose robot manufacturing - but why would you build these supply lines and factories just to screw it all up like this?
Judging by the news isn’t the pivot to creating autonomous driving systems for other manufacturers cars?
If I’m understanding correctly the pivot is to sell just the autonomous driving systems. This way it can be trained on more data. It’s a hard sell to do this while competing against the car makers whose business they are trying to court.
Selling actual cars was like Uber when they started with a black car service. Get into the luxury market then leverage that so get into the mass market.
Perhaps this is why Elon has been so adamant about not using LiDAR
Actually if you run the tape back Tesla spent over a decade on trivially preventable manufacturing fuckups by attempting to ignore a century of industry knowledge on the subject and just wing it silicon valley style. That they have infrastructure that is capable of performing manufacturing at some scale is not in question. That any of it is sufficiently optimized for sanity to be repurposed remains to be seen.
I think the only thing he can do now is have Tesla "acquire" SpaceX. He already had SpaceX "acquire" the AI thing, so that would roll all three up into a pubco where he can hide things about the business as needed (no fear of SEC problems).
I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me.
I bet Chinese robots will be cheaper lol.
Saw lots of BYD in New Zealand recently. Probably more than I saw in Hong Kong.
Good. Seems like the sales decline will reach the US eventually too. Even Toyota is coming out with compelling EV products this year.
Tesla came from nowhere, developed essentially one world-dominating product (lumping the 3 and Y together), then the CEO basically ruined everything.
Imagine Tesla with a "normal" CEO and marketing department. They would have a bunch of different trims and options for the 3/Y, a redesigned X, a functional truck, and a market cap of 400 billion!
> market cap of 400 billion
And hence Musk will be the CEO.
Tesla has a marketing department. It just refuses to talk to anyone except to talk at journalists...and journalists are so desperate to get quotes, they'll put up with it.
When Tesla started with the "no marketing department" nonsense, the press should have just stopped quoting them or covering them. Especially given that half the things Musk says are blatant lies.
One of the interesting things you start seeing and then can't stop seeing is "CEO says" journalism, where the whole article is about the CEO saying something and that's newsworthy and there's no real analysis of it or no looking at the track record of the CEO. Just stenography.
It's not limited to this one company, they'll do it with any company that's newsworthy or has a CEO who will generate clicks for their article.
TSLA market cap is 1.29 trillion today.
Of course, with a P/E ratio of over 381
I'm aware, that part was sarcasm
NVIDIA P/E is 46
they are building stuff on the Moon, P/E should be 150k! building Moon stuff is cool
> they are building stuff on the Moon
That's SpaceX!
The AI company?
Someone else might say ISP (starlink)? But you always go by the parent company unless they have clear boundaries like conglomerates.
No, the social media company.
> Tesla came from nowhere, developed essentially one world-dominating product (lumping the 3 and Y together), then the CEO basically ruined everything.
It seems strange to attribute only the fall -- and not the rise -- to the CEO
It seems strange to talk of attribution without talking about the founders.
Shhhh we’re pretending that China wasn’t behind the massive propaganda campaign against Tesla to boost the popularity of their own BYD brand.
Y all need to realize that Tesla is a humanoid android company now, and soon will dive into teleportation, immortality and invisibility.
Given less than stellar sales how come TSLA stock is not far below all times high and 15% higher than a year ago? Investors still expect some miracle?
It's not a car company anymore, it's an energy company... Ahem, I mean self-driving... Er, maybe robots? ... Okay, that not going so well? How about quantum? That's probably a thing, right?
Tesla seems basically priced based on hype, rather than anything relating to its actual business.
Maybe someday they will do half the things Hyundai is doing right now.
The reason Tesla stock is still high is the same reason Bitcoin is worth anything.
...capital flight from totalitarian regimes?
Its a billionaire bubble making machine
The market can remain irrational longer than we can remain solvent.
And possibly also the overt government corruption is priced in.
It's a cult. Really. This is a stock devoid of any connection to reality, fundamentals, products, anything. All that matters is that Musk is on the nameplate. Do not bet against the ability of people in a cult to remain irrational in the face of overwhelming evidence. Do not touch the cult.
It's a bit more than just his name. It's the statements he makes, that turn out to not be true.
God help us all if AI takes over the stock market and starts making rational decisions!
That happened already with the 2010 flash crash.
See also: meme stock
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_stock
Poor Elon. How's he gonna get to Mars^H^H^H^Hthe Moon now? Oh right, the same way he built Tesla: government handouts.
SpaceX is making that majority (70%) of its revenue, and all of its profits from Starlink, and mostly from subscriptions.
98% of government money SpaceX receives is payment for services rendered, which they provide at a significantly lower cost than their competitors.
On the other hand, their competitors are routinely receiving actual handouts. For example, ULA used to receive a $1 billion annual "Launch Capability" stipend essentially just to keep their lights.
Very soon musk will merge Tesla with SpaceX and say he is going to have robots drive the cars to space. The stock will multiply 4 fold making him a multi- trillionaire
BYD is a formidable competitor and a great product for less.
BYD is not, despite the press, really very big in Europe (though it is in a couple of individual countries, notably Spain). Europe-wide, Geely, the Chinese manufacturer that everyone forgets about, is actually bigger: https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Bar/All-time-by-Qu...
Geely is also present in the US via Volvo and Polestar. They haven’t delivered an affordable entry level EV yet, but I’ve been impressed with the Polestars. I’d never buy one because a Chinese car running on Google software sounds like a nightmare, but they’ve been good when I rented them.
Polestar's recent vehicle launches have gone extremely poorly because the software is so buggy. Their service network is also non-existent in the US.
The graph linked doesn’t have BYD sales, how curious
If you look at individual countries, they'll show up in some.
They're not common enough to qualify.
200% YoY growth in Europe. Surpassed Ford in global auto sales, selling only EVs. Largest private employer in China. EV printer go brrr.
BYD uses aggressive discounts in bid to make Germany its leading European market - https://www.autonews.com/byd/ane-byd-discounts-germany-sales... - February 17th, 2026
China's BYD Overtakes Ford in Global Sales for the First Time - https://finance.yahoo.com/news/chinas-byd-overtakes-ford-glo... - February 12th, 2026
BYD's European registrations surge 270% in 2025 while Tesla slips 27% - https://cnevpost.com/2026/01/27/byd-european-registrations-s... - Jan 27th, 2026
BYD Sold Nearly Three Times As Many Cars As Tesla In Europe - https://www.carscoops.com/2025/11/byd-sold-nearly-3-times-as... - November 26th, 2025
The size of BYD's factory - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42228138 - November 2024 (615 comments)
Note that BYD doesn't just make BEVs. They're quite big in plug-in hybrids, which aren't in that data. They apparently sold 175k cars in Europe last year. A breakdown of BEV vs PHEV doesn't seem to be available, but 75k of those were one particular PHEV, so it's at most 100k BEVs.
VW AG sold 750k BEVs in Europe last year: https://www.volkswagen-group.com/en/press-releases/volkswage... (see the PDF).
Not saying that BYD is completely irrelevant, but the media overplays them. Presumably because BYD vs Tesla is an interesting narrative, even if the actual figures have both of those as small players in BEVs (at least for cars; BYD _is_ quite big in electric buses), with the real race being between VW AG and Stellantis. VW AG vs Stellantis is a painfully boring narrative.
The EU is a highly protected market, therefore the market share of foreign (to the EU) products cannot be used as a measure for the quality or affordability of such products.
I simply find it noteworthy how fast Chinese EVs are scaling up as a climate change mitigation. I don’t care who builds and sells them, just do so as quickly as possible.
Oh, yeah, to be clear, BYD is doing amazingly well. Just not, particularly, in Europe. This seems to confuse the media.
I suspect BYD would do a lot better in Europe if the political class wasn´t afraid of the fallout from the European manufacturers (VW, Stellantis, and all their child brands) being seriously damaged or even wiped out by the competition.
That said, if relations between the EU and the US get much chillier, the EU may decide to make some sacrifices in order to have China in their camp. E.g. VW are arm-twisted into selling Škoda to BYD, with job preservation guarantees, and then BYD is badged Škoda and six months later all the old Škoda models are gone and its EVs all the way.
I see lots of byds in Europe.
I mean, they aren't common as Teslas, but there are more and more.
Many of the comments here resemble Reddit, disappointingly. I read HN due to market insights, analysis, interesting perspectives. I am sorry for digression.
+1 agreed. Everyone just seems to be an Elon hater (which is totally fine) but don't expect it from HN.
My (2019) Tesla has been the most reliable car I've ever owned, but it sure seems like they're not interested in being a car company anymore.
Not having turn stalks and the drive selector, making me either pay for internet access or use bluetooth if I want to play spotify or youtube music (which I get for 'free' in cars with CarPlay or Android Auto), making the cybertruck way too big for a garage, discontinuing the model S and X...like are they even trying?
They used to have a third row option for the model Y, good for small kids or something, but then they got rid of that.
They were going to do the roadster, but didn't bother. They only have 6 paint colors, not even options for PTS. It's like they don't want to be a successful car company.
2019 is far too new to make any pronouncements on reliability. Get back to us in 2035.
That's an uncommon experience.
Tesla is a very strong leader for faults, breakage, and costly maintenance/repairs in the 3-5 year old segment.
See any European comprehensive car inspection statistics report.
Take the reports with a grain of salt. Tesla does not mandate maintenance. The cars in the reports are the ones who left factory and get checked after 3 years of intensive use without any maintenance. Check the light alignment, check rust in the brakes and check the suspension and the inspection will be fine. Still cheaper than 400-600€ bi-yearly coolant refill from other manufacturers. Plus Tesla has published repair manual which is very strong advantage for me. I am poor and maintain my cars by myself. Maybe I like it too.
> Still cheaper than 400-600€ bi-yearly coolant refill.
You are being scammed.
Still cheaper than 400-600€ bi-yearly coolant refill from other manufacturers
Wow, what car is that? Even Porsche owners would say, "Damn, son, they're taking you to the cleaners."
They don’t. Their market cap is higher than all the successful car companies combined. Becoming a successful car company would cost Elon half of his unrealized capital gains. It’s far better to be the company who is going to make us $30,000 robot slaves because that’s a bigger market and one he’ll own entirely.
The only question is what will be the next hype cycle when that succeeds about as well as the Cyber Truck.
> It’s far better to be the company who is going to make us $30,000 robot slaves because that’s a bigger market and one he’ll own entirely.
The Chinese are making humanoid robots too, and my bet is they'll be better and cheaper than Tesla's.
Some day Tesla stock will rediscover gravity...some day
Musk may let it fall for a bit of a discount before rolling it up, Katamari-style, into SpaceX, and preserving his ridiculous Tesla package.
Gravity doesn't exist when you're in a K-hole. That's why we can become a extraterrestrial society in the next 5 years (repeat infinitely - in 5 years)
Musk expects ~80% Of Tesla's value will be Optimus robots [1]. It can't be any other way given that he helped elect a President that's against electric cars, against regulation for limiting climate change, against collaborating with our European allies.
https://www.theautopian.com/elon-musk-doesnt-see-cars-as-a-p...
> Musk expects ~80% Of Tesla's value will be Optimus robots [1].
Well one way to do that is destroy so much of Tesla that the Optimus division is 80% of the (much smaller) value that remains.
There’s an old saying: if civil engineers built houses the way software people build software, the first woodpecker to appear would destroy the civilization. With Tesla, we build cars. That, as told in court documents, absolutely should continue accelerating while in cruise control despite the driver pressing the brakes. There’s a century of institutional knowledge on system safety built into most cars. And (looking at you, Pinto), the carmakers are not even especially good at it. As a former software engineer, I’d rather rely on some actual engineers rather than a bunch of tech bros led by a deranged sociopath.
Many have argued that Musk's shift to far-right politics is responsible for some of this decline -- and it certainly makes some sense -- but I wonder if the cause and effect are being conflated.
If Musk were aware that Tesla was going to lose this much ground due to factors beyond his own mismanagement, including the threat of Chinese imports and a widespread shift away from EVs due to a right-populist sentiment swing that was already under way, then maybe his goose-stepping and Trump-humping act was an attempt to sync up with a trend that he saw as inevitable.
That's about the most charitable spin I can put on it. Either way, Tesla now has to pitch electric cars to right-wing climate-change deniers, which is not a great strategy to adopt voluntarily or otherwise.
That’s a rather tortured logical contortion.
Isn’t it simpler to assume that he honestly holds the views he says he holds?
Yes, which is why I said it was the most charitable spin I could think of.
It doesn't mean I believe he's a hapless victim of larger trends. Just that I consider it possible.
Well, I think a more charitable spin would be he really does see that robots taxis are just around the corner and it is entirely plausible that Tesla will be able to deliver them. After all, despite whatever flaws they have and they certainly have some, you can go out today and buy a production car that does essentially drive itself.
When I was growing up, that was absolutely science fucking fiction. You’re telling me I get in this car and touch a piece of glass and then it drives itself? Incredible. Maybe the future really could get here fast.
I think that’s a little more charitable. I have a Tesla, won’t buy another one because Elon sucks, wouldn’t touch the stock, I think he’s generally turned in to a con artist, &c.
> Either way, Tesla now has to pitch electric cars to right-wing climate-change deniers, which is not a great strategy to adopt voluntarily or otherwise.
What’s funny to me is that I legitimately think that the day-to-day experience owning an EV is significantly better than the day-to-day experience owning a gas car. They could have slowly ignited or not emphasized the environment and just focused on it as future tech and it may well work. Over the years owning one I’ve had many a curious person drive by the Supercharger in their car, often times a truck too, and ask about the ownership experience.
EVs by association got this hippie-dippie connotation but that’s because the Prius looks like it does, but the Model 3 is quite nice and I think the perception could be overcome by just making damn cool cars.
They didn't have to box themselves into "pitching electric cars to right-wing climate change deniers."
I've heard there are rumours there are least three or four countries outside the US. In several of them, EVs are selling like like hotcakes, or at least not with the current American militant hostility to the very concept.
I suspect they spent too long riding the horse they got here on though. Making an EV appealing to American premium buyers was a marketing coup. Selling it as a software-style "we'll continue iterating with OTA updates" was an interesting alternative to the model-year redesign when you're targeting an early-adopter audience used to regular software refreshes.
But now these things are a liability. Your product matrix is full of America-centric designs with iffy product-market fits in other markets (will a Model S or Cybertruck literally fit in some side streets of Europe or Asia?) You've failed to make a recognizable, exciting redesign of an existing model, so what you do have looks dated. You never really developed a reputation for quality or reliability. These are product problems that have nothing to do with politics. You could have addressed them and been a viable player elsewhere, even as the US continues to eat itself alive. (Of course, that might have involved not intentionally rubbing your brand all over a highly polarizing and toxic political scenario)
I was excited about Tesla back when they were a novelty. I can recall going to the mall with the Microsoft Store (remember those? They sold "bloatfree" PCs because it used to be the OEM who loaded them full of crapware instead of MS itself) to buy a Windows 8 tablet, and then looking across the aisle to see a Model S on display at the Tesla "not really a dealership" stall.
I bought like $2000 in shares back then, figuring one day, jokingly, they'd be worth enough to exchange for a new Tesla. It looks like I could probably get one now. But these days, I just want a BYD; they seem to be actually building a coherent product line and long-term vision.
I mean, there's no need to go all 4D chess here, really. Sometimes a crazy person who tweets about "woke mind viruses" at four in the morning is just a crazy person who tweets about "woke mind viruses" at four in the morning.
> but I wonder if the cause and effect are being conflated.
Tesla is an ugly car. And they didn't had a new model since at least 10 years.
The Model S looked pretty sleek at one point in time. The Y, X, and that dumpster on wheels are all hideous.
Wait? Tesla still sells cars?
After successfully teaching China how to build EVs and embracing fascism, I thought they moved on to AI/robotaxi/robots/(insert your preferred fantasy here)?
Can’t wait to read the educated, measured, and well considered comments in this thread.