[AtlasBarfed]

I'd drop Tesla from that argument. No, not that the SC network is bad.

Their CEO alienated 50% of their customer base with politics. This is going to be one of the most interesting case studies in brand management and advertising history.

But you are probably correct. I think making the infrastructure act funding contingent on reliability metrics is pretty key.

You know, if the money doesn't get yanked by the administration in a month.

So what is the incentive for operational gas pumps: Oh right, the convenience store (even more important for EVs who have to idle longer) and brand name.

[iknowstuff]

50% is grossly exaggerated and kind of shows you’re in a bubble. Tesla sells in China, the world’s largest car market and by far the largest EV market, and Europe, and Australia, and Japan etc. even half of americans dont give a fuck despite some democrats claiming that. Most people dont give a fuck about the ceo’s politics except maybe in the bay area.

[Animats]

Tesla's sales in China are shrinking, but for ordinary car sales reasons - the competition has cheaper cars.[1]

The disaster in US automotive is that the manufacturers thought they could increase prices, and discovered that, instead, unsold cars are piling up. Tesla's oversupply can be seen from space.[2] Stellantis overdid price increases so much that the CEO was canned.

The US currently has 3 million unsold new cars.[3] One wonders how many will still start.

[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/teslas-china-sales-fall-a...

[2] https://jalopnik.com/so-many-unsold-teslas-are-piling-up-tha...

[3] https://www.bing.com/videos/riverview/relatedvideo

[iknowstuff]

Jalopnik has been peddling stories about tesla’s imminent demise due to parking lots full of unsold teslas every year since before the model 3 release lol

[rootusrootus]

Agreed. Tesla fans are so enamored with Elon that there isn’t really going to be anything that changes their mind. The vast majority of people I’ve talked to who said they won’t buy a Tesla because of him are not EV owners at all. Just democrats.

[AtlasBarfed]

Once you get past the passionate technologist crowd, and there have been signs the initial buyer pool for Tesla was already stagnating a bit in 2023, who are the next natural candidates for buyers?

The mass market is 1/3 right wing, 1/3 left wing, 1/3 centrist roughly.

The 1/3 right wing are the pickup truck buyers. Like a rock ... Strong as I can be.

The 1/3 left wing is now pretty much a no.

The 1/3 centrist is probably price driven. Tesla is still too expensive for them, and if they want a Tesla, I would say they are buying a used one.

Tesla has two cars: a sedan, a crossover, in small and medium. They don't have real pickups, work trucks, station wagons, sports cars, roadsters, delivery vans, real SUVs, city cars/kei cars, or minivans. The cybertruck is a sideshow, the robotaxi is years away given Tesla's roadmap with mundane manufacturing scaling, to say nothing of the AI advance it requires and the alien nature of it to the larger buying public.

Tesla failed to utilize its name brand in ebikes, motorcycles, scooters, or even other battery/motor devices like hand tools, lawn tools, snowblowers, riding mowers. Obviously no heavy equipment aside from some pilot Semis. No RVs.

The Solar business is meh. The grid business likely will be outcompeted by sodium ion/lfp/other schemes. Home storage is slow uptake, and again they'll probably be outcompeted in price.

Tesla has no more tech advantage. Their EV drivetrain may be a percent or two more efficient, but likely not enough to matter. NMC cylindrical cells are about to be economically noncompetitive with 150 wh/kg sodium ion and 200-225 wh/kg LFP, and denser stuff is on the 3 year roadmap. The battery day 4680 tech is basically undelivered or won't scale.

I just don't see the growth path for this company anymore barring miraculous AI combined with miraculous execution combined with miraculous domestic battery supply. About the only thing I can see floating the company it terms of real sales figures would be the Semi, but it sure looks like a soft launch to me that is still a year away, and something that will need either sulfur chemistries, solid state, or dirt cheap high density LFP/Sodium Ion to be economically viable.

[ninalanyon]

I think Tesla has probably missed the boat on the semi, at least in Europe.

Scania has already delivered plenty of heavy goods EVs here in Norway. Delivery companies like the Post office, DHL, ASKO are investing heavily in large EVs but most of that is going to either Swedish Scania. Chinese SAIC is also selling well for urban delivery vehicles.

Scania sell electric articulated lorries with gross trailer weight up to 75 tonne. The range at 64 tonne is 375 km. https://www.scania.com/no/no/home/products/trucks/battery-el...

[mapt]

Tesla still has a great many advantages.

Their problem is that their valuation had the market predicting that they would generate a MAJORITY of all profit in US automotive manufacturing - they were worth more than every other player combined. This was grossly unrealistic. So expect a down round. Whether they survive that drop to... What... 5-10% of their former value? Depends on what sort of explicit and implicit dental they have accrued to scale.

[mapt]

*"Debts" + Android Autocorrect, ladies and gentlemen

[iknowstuff]

Tesla is likely quite happy to install lfp/sodium megapacks.

Self driving is in fact the growth plan. You’re not paying attention if you’re calling it miraculous, which is fine, more money for investors.

[caycep]

Have they already lost in battery tech to CATL?

[NotSammyHagar]

Tesla was using CATL batteries in part. Tesla uses different batteries in diff cars, also some come from China, some other places.

Tesla said they'd have amazing new 4680 batteries but that didn't really succeed, a reason why the ct has lower range than planned is the new higher density batteries didn't arrive.

Tesla has one advantage left, they can make their cars at mass quantities and make a profit. Most of the western auto companies can't do that, unless they charge very high prices.

[natch]

You should short the stock, then.

[boredatoms]

Anecdotally, Australians are very very unhappy with Musk now due to the US election

[peutetre]

Tesla's brand damage in Australia:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/science/2024-08-22/tesla-reputat...

[05]

Which is a moot point anyway, since without 100% tariffs Tesla isn’t competitive with Chinese EVs that are taking Australia by storm.

[AtlasBarfed]

Such ANGER.

The Internet says 50% of US buyers are identified democrats, YMMV for internet stats. That number doesn't seem stupid -- EVs are progressive, environmentalist, anti-establishment.

Tesla's stock is a huge bubble. It's worth the next 10 car companies combined! Yes there's a ton of AI speculation in there, but fundamentally the company's stock is about geometric growth in sales.

The most important customer to a car company is their current ones, since those have a very high chance of being loyal to the brand when they buy again.

Tesla is a company that does almost no advertising. Maybe that's because the press gives them enough hype, but I suspect there is a huge degree of passionate advocacy. I should know, I ... was ... a strong advocate for Tesla. I still am for EVs, but they were one and the same with Tesla for 20 years.

A subtle thing happened with the Tesla owners I know. They went from advocating for their car, to rationalizing it, within the span of six months. I don't think it is a stretch to say that Tesla owners were passionate advocates for their vehicles. All progressive, environmentalist people I know are now hell-nos.

Point is, Tesla is stock bubble. Their sales are already down this year, and I'm picking up the popcorn to see what happens in Q3/Q4. The trade war will probably make Tesla a noncompetitive product in China. So US sales are going to get MORE important, not less.

People are actively selling their Teslas. Sure, it's on the used market, what does that matter? I don't have stats, but how many sales of new Teslas will a robust used market (which also has Hertz dumping cars onto the market) cannibalize? I'd say each used Tesla is half of a new one.

Point is, I don't see Tesla as a stock that can rationalize bad sales. They don't have a brand-spanking new car for a new mass market: the Cybertruck is explicitly a miss from the pickup truck market. The Semi still can't seem to scale production. The robotaxi is, face it, two years away and a fundamental leap in AI from working.

Trump is going to be on television reminding every democrat who helped him vocally, publicly, monetarily, possibly illegally get him in office, and will join an agency that will target progressive government systematically and with high visibility.

All it takes is, what, 1/3 of the 50% democrats of their potential customer base to say "hell no" and that's ... 16% drop in sales. Ever seen a company lose 16% of sales?

Good luck with that stock, folks.

[melodyogonna]

Is it Tesla sales that is down or a general down trend in the car market? Tesla's Model Y is still the best selling car model in the world in 2024

[ac29]

> Tesla's Model Y is still the best selling car model in the world in 2024

Do you have a source for that? Tesla is not even in the top 10 largest auto manufacturers, but the larger ones have way more models so I suppose it is possible Model Y is the best selling car (though it certainly isnt in the US).

[borski]

Other EV brands have increased sales in the same time period Tesla has lost them.

[natch]

The geography matters, but just speaking for the US, rational buyers who want an EV will learn their lesson and come to Tesla. Maybe after one last ICE mistake but eventually.

Superchargers are not just a bullet point, having them or not is a dividing line between "it just works" and "life is miserable" for EV owners. And only a small subset of them are open to non-Teslas for who knows how long.

[borski]

That is simply not true. You are speaking about the past. In the present and the future, especially as superchargers open up to other brands and more NEVI chargers get built in the second half of this decade, I see absolutely no reason people would “come to Tesla.”

I would put money on the opposite, and on people moving to other brands.

[iknowstuff]

Tesla is not importing to china. Its not debt ridden like the 10 other car companies, and has a growth outlook far beyond them via FSD and renewables. They produce 1.5M cars a year, Hertz is a blip. FSD13 is looking fantastic.

[AtlasBarfed]

What competitive advantage does Tesla have in renewables?

They produced 1.5 million. Their sales are down, they have no new models releasing, they have competition on all fronts, they likely will lose the Chinese market in the trade war. They need to sell 20 million vehicles to justify their stock.

If Tesla has a kuckass sub 10000$ sodium ion city car (aka the car for 1-3 billion people)... But they have luxury vehicles and that's it.

Fully auto drive is a convergent evolution of infrastructure problem. It is ten years away. Army of Indians won't cut it.

[iknowstuff]

You’re not paying attention to fsd but talk very confidently about the stock. I encourage you to short it

[rossjudson]

When I look at my Tesla, I see the hard work of hundreds (or thousands) of engineers, tasked with doing something new and complicated. They're collective trailblazers, and they know they're making the product that best it can be, given the constraints.

You look and you see one person.

[AtlasBarfed]

They were once trailblazing, while their CEO is lighting progressive environmentalism on fire.

Tesla is building a moat. They are defending their market share, preventing subsidies aiding competitors, keeping China out of the US market. That's not trailblazing, its not innovative.

Tesla needs to jettison their CEO. He's toxic and destructive to the mission of the company, or at least the mission it used to have.

[rossjudson]

How is progressive environmentalism different from normal environmentalism?

I don't see that the mission of Tesla is any different from when it started. What's the new mission?

[caycep]

how many of those engineers are still at Tesla? their churn rate is known to be pretty high...

[m463]

> incentive for operational gas pumps

It seems gas stations get 70% of the profits from the conveience stores.

EV charging stations are pretty standalone. They could probably do the mcdonalds thing - become real-estate companies. Leasing surrounding land to convenience stores could be a good model.

[cebert]

I don’t think most people make purchasing decisions based on the personal politics of a firm’s CEO. It will be interesting to see how impactful it ends up being.

[AtlasBarfed]

Most car buyers buy cars on a practical basis.

For a consumer to buy an EV is one that involves other brand factors: politics/environmentalism was a large component of initial buyers. Tesla's inception was around the time of Michael Moore's who killed the electric car.

The core demographic of the electric vehicle in America is still Urban.

[borski]

Most CEOs don’t attempt to directly influence an election to align with their personal politics by spending a quarter of a billion dollars on a candidate’s campaign, either.

[boredatoms]

Most CEOs aren’t in the spotlight actively campaigning