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by cloutchaser 1435 days ago
I don't think Elon is trying to get out of it, he's got 2 goals:

1. Buy more time until stock market (i.e. Tesla shares) recover 2. Renegotiate the price

Either one will probably mean he goes through with the deal. If he is under litigation for a year so be it, once the stock market recovers he's sacrificing a lot less of tesla to buy it.

It's a big IF though. If the US recession gets really bad and the Fed stops interest rate hikes, the market could recover very quickly. But equally if Powell wants to go the Volcker route, Elon is fucked probably, the market won't recover for years.

And in the meantime Elon's reputation I think is taking a massive hit. And I think a lot of his new political allies on the free speech side will be extremely disappointed. He might end up with no friends on either side.

So he is taking a big risk here.

1 comments

> buy more time until Tesla shares recover

The problem is that Tesla is massively over-inflated and Musk knows it and many people believe that was actually the reason for the whole twitter thing (Musk converting overinflated Tesla shares to fair-market value Twitter shares). With Tesla very likely losing the 'biggest EV maker' title to Volkswagen by the end of the year, it here has to be some sleight-of-musk for TSLA to recover.

> With Tesla very likely losing the 'biggest EV maker' title

Since you mention it...

https://uk.pcmag.com/cars-auto/141332/tesla-is-no-longer-the...

Yeah, but this is only half-true. BYD produces as much hybrids as full-EVs, so Tesla is still the biggest maker of full EVs.

What I was saying: If you extrapolate year-over-year sales of full EVs, Volkswagen will likely sell more full EVs than TSLA sometime this year.

Since it was shown in the last years that legacy car makers are perfectlh able to transition to EVs, regardless of market segment, I think we are approaching the point of realizing that both, EVs and ICEs and everything in between, are just cars. Meaning that purely EV makers should be compared to ICE makers. What that means for companies like Telsa is everyones guess, at the very least so it would just be fair to treat Tesla as a car maker and not some SV style tech company.
Except they are miles ahead in battery tech, autonomous driving, and supercharger rollout.

I wouldn’t write them off just yet, they’ve got a lot more innovation in their DNA than the old car makers

> autonomous driving

No they aren’t. Their sensor stack is handicapped and has literally murdered people. Sure they have “autonomous” cars in customer’s hands now, but that’s only because Musk is reckless, that doesn’t mean they are ahead. GM bought Cruise which I would say is definitely ahead of Tesla in their technology and ethics.

> Super charger rollout

US only, Europe those super chargers are available for everyone. In some asia countries they are behind https://paultan.org/2022/05/13/tesla-open-to-idea-of-establi...

> Battery tech

Yes, others are catching up or are competitive, differences are much smaller than expected improvement over next 10 years.

https://insideevs.com/news/528346/ev-weight-per-battery-capa...

> autonomous driving

roll out only, performance of the rolled out solution is not so impressive. This is also because they use fewer sensors.

I don't write them off, by no means, even if I was sceptical a couple of years ago. Tesla will remain a car maker for sure.

Battery tech, so, is mostly Panasonic. And other are catching up. Esentially, there are ICE makers that don't have the best engines. And lately I sae mucj more, relative, innovation and transformation cing from the likes of VW than from Tesla.

This is rubbish and proven wrong. Tesla claimed to be years ahead, European Regulators beg to differ
Apple sells less smart phones than Samsung. Yet Apple is the most valuable company in the world and Samsung isn’t even in the top ten.

So while I think what your claim matters little as it relates to the value of the company I also think your assertion that this or that company will sell more EV’s than Tesla any time soon is more likely that not wrong.

Eh? VW is aiming for ~800k this year, whereas Tesla is going for roughly 2M? Am I misinterpreting?
@EricD: I took historic sales increase year-over-year and extrapolated from that, which led me to believe VW will narrowly pass TSLA by the end of the year.

You seem to have better or more recent information than me. If so, please share the source. Thanks.

Very misleading to include hybrids in “EV sales”.