None of it matters to Tesla stock --- investors have moved on from the dream of owning the worldwide auto market to owning the worldwide robo taxi market and personal robots --- which are still just dreams with no better (if not less) chance of success than the one they just abandoned.
Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them.
> Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them.
A wonderful observation.
Has someone made a stab at describing these new paradigms of advertising and value? I don't think I've seen exactly this stated or named, but there's a lot of writing and thinking out there. If it strikes anyone reading this, links welcome.
Specifically, it seems like advertising may have gone from "the quality of the product doesn't matter", to "the product existing doesn't matter". Quite a big leap.
I doubt there are many TSLA investors that actually believe that the company is well positioned to dominate ANY market at this point. They just believe that there are _other_ people that believe it. Greater fool and all that.
Meme stocks have a way of defying normal economic gravity and irritating traditional investors up until they don't, and when that happens their demise is usually rapid and complete.
This gist of it is that central banks tried to stimulate investment in the economy by purchasing bonds, which lowered their yields and made them unattractive to institutional investors. As a result, institutional investors had no choice but to use the QE printed money to invest in stocks instead. This greatly repressed the risk in the stock market, while decoupling it from profits, because for a long time “numbers would only go up”.
Separately, the repressed borrowing costs (another intended effect of QE) enabled big tech to consolidate their monopolies, creating the attention harvesting platforms of today. Alongside inequality also being amplified by QE, those platforms started to favour rage baiting.
The combination of high risk appetite + algorithmic promotion of outrage enabled a kind of business model which is based on nothing except ridiculous dreams. Elon and his Tesla are therefore the quintessential creatures of the era.
They’re in for a rude awakening when they realize that Tesla robotaxi is a lie. I dunno, maybe musk can keep the ponzie scheme rolling forever by continuously moving the goalpost.
So, fresh from angering virtually every government in the world, Musk will move on to introducing a service that utterly requires government approval and licensing, while costing a lot of jobs. To do this he'll have to get approval from politicians that are taking a leftist turn just to avoid being associated with either him or Trump (or didn't and are very angry at him and Trump for costing them a LOT of votes) ...
Makes you want to ask, "say, Elon, how's that full-self-driving going?"
I can't believe we're still asking Elon about when we'll get full-self-driving, he's already answered that question every year since 2013. It's coming next year.
Most of the teslas I see have a sticker on them “Vintage pre insanity Tesla” or simply an anti “Elon” with a red strike through.
It’s interesting that Bloomberg makes no mention of the intense backlash to Elon’s Nazi salute and other recent antics.
Wait until those investors find out what China is investing in and actually succeeding in with automation, personal robots, and making self driving cars with affordable LIDAR (negating Tesla's camera bet).
"Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them."
This seems to be how Silicon Valley works. (Also Redmond.)
A captive audience, e.g., manipulated through intermediaries like Twitter, etc., that is prohibited from considering past or present failures and forced to remain fixated on a future that Silicon Valley assures can be predicted, but only by Silicon Vallley and its devotees.
Can confirm anecdotally, I am seeing way more Chinese made cars on the streets of Copenhagen. Just this morning I did a literal head-turn to check out an XPeng sedan I hadn't seen before. One of my partners drives a Chinese SUV and gotta say the massaging seats were pretty sweet. me: American, used to own a Tesla Model S.
It's really a shame you literally can't buy a BYD car in the US because they're great vehicles. They're "boring" electric cars— not trying to redefine the driving experience, not trying to be luxury cars. Just your Honda Civic Toyota Corolla of EV. They've got a smooth ride, pretty nice faux leather trim, and a decent stereo.
They're "boring" electric cars— not trying to redefine the driving experience, not trying to be luxury cars.
That's not the image or the cars they're pushing in Europe. Their cheapest car, at least in Sweden, costs more than the VW id3, and their flagship SUV that they're pushing hard starts at around the same price as a BMW iX with all the 'luxury' frills to match.
That's selling them way short. Yes there are plenty of cheap/economy cars in the lineup but higher end BYD models are significantly more luxurious than anything Tesla can put out.
It does seem that for the average person, an EV is only going to be an "add-on". You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip so the EV should just be a little, low cost, grocery getter. Maybe once we start seeing 1000+ km ranges that will change. The rate of improvement in terms of range has been glacial however so that might be a long way off.
The rate of improvement in terms of range has been glacial however so that might be a long way off.
Current range is more than adequate. The missing piece is public fast recharge stations.
A 30 minute recharge on a 600 mile trip is not a real issue. You probably take a break anyway for food, rest and bathroom. Most people can't last 10 hours without it.
Like or not, electric is not only viable now but also inevitable --- mainly due to economic forces, some of which remain to be fully developed. And Walmart and BP/Waffle House are leading the charge with plans to add public recharge stations to their locations.
Modern EV ranges are in the ballpark of 350km which charging time under one hour. That's more than enough for most nowadays especially in Europe where long trips are not the norm and well past grocery getter.
You can cross most European countries with one stop.
> You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip...
In the US, I've traveled about 50k miles on long road trips in a Tesla and I haven't used my ICE car for a road trip since I got the Tesla. Long range and Tesla's excellent network of superchargers made that possible.
I would imagine it's even more doable in Europe since "long distance" road trips there are on the order of 100 miles, while in the US they're more like 1000 miles.
The routes to most destinations 1000 km from my house in Berlin, usually involve passing at least three international borders.
I've heard that the US has a lot of "food deserts" where you have to go a long way to get groceries, but is it really that bad?
More importantly, the route Google Maps gives me to Paris (1051 km from city to city) is supposedly 11 hr 31 min. Even if the car could do that in one trip, neither my bladder nor my stomach could.
One of the smartest things the EU could do right now is threaten to drop tariffs on Chinese cars as part of its trade negotiations with Trump. He’s going to TACO, might as well get some goodies out of him in the process.
Tesla was having very serious difficulty long before the election. For Musk the choice was probably to join the democrats, and get the tiniest amount of power, or help Trump and be the unofficial vice president.
And as everyone was saying last year "Trump can't be THAT bad", you know, before the stock market dropped 3.66 trillion dollars.
> you know, before the stock market dropped 3.66 trillion dollars.
And the disappearing people, threats against allies, stripping of hard fought rights, siding with Putin, airbrushing women and non-white men from the history books, declaring Gaza should become a holiday resort and spreading FUD about white genocide etc etc etc
Tesla were always a weird fit for the European markets. They are too big and especially too wide. The finish is haphazard. At their price point, which is high for all the segments they compete in, they don't really compare favorably to European brands. They used to be able to compete on battery performance and drive trains but that's hardly the case anymore. It was always pretty clear that Tesla is entirely driven from the USA and has no idea of how and what to sell to European in a way not too dissimilar to other American car makers which could never really succeed in Europe either.
Meanwhile, BYD is genuinely competitive in Europe. Their cars are well positioned in the middle of every segments they are in. They would actually be on the more accessible side without tariffs. Their design is nothing to talk about but they blend well with other cars. Their size is great. They do ok confort-wise, nothing extraordinary but not too shabby either.
Basically, they are ok cars at an ok price, something which can't be said of Tesla.
Might be just sampling error? (10 taxis isn't a lot of taxis). Most electric taxis I see in Dublin are VW id3/4. (Though Toyotas seem to be on the rise now that Toyota has grudgingly released an EV; taxi drivers have always loved Toyota.)
EDIT: Yeah. So far this year, the id.4 is number 18 overall, Kia EV3 is 26th, Tesla Model 3 is 27th, Tesla Y is 86th. So Telsa's... not quite irrelevant, EV-wise, but kinda getting there (note that Hyundai, Kia, VW, BYD etc all have a bunch of models vs Tesla's two models, and Tesla's still trailing). https://stats.beepbeep.ie
> The Tesla CEO asserts he’s seeing a major rebound in customer interest for his EVs despite persistent evidence to the contrary. “The stock wouldn’t be trading near all-time highs if things weren’t in good shape,” he said.
> Tesla’s return to the elite club of trillion-dollar market cap stocks is all the evidence Elon Musk needs to convince him the worst of the blowback over his political activism is over.
Like a conman losing its grips on the victims' confidence, he entered the phase of "do not believe your eyes and ears" phase of the swindle.
Last earnings showed a steep decline in sales, just around my house in Sweden I've seen 3 neighbours with a new BYD the past 3 months, the one right across my house used to have a Model 3 which I haven't seen in a while.
I can only definitely call him a liar on the next earnings report so there's some 2 months before we can see actual figures and not just his words...
Musk's Nazi salute is going to go down in history as one of the stupidest things a businessman has ever done. There's still plenty of people in Europe with a personal connection to WW2, family members who died fighting or died in the camps or bombings. There are relatives I never met because of the Nazis.
It's unthinkable for me to give any sum of money to - let alone purchase a car from - a company associated with neo-Nazism.
I couldn't care less about DOGE or anything Musk is doing with US domestic politics, it's really just that salute that would prevent me from buying a Tesla.
Totally agreed. And do note this is an opinion coming from EU. We really, really, really don’t understand _anyhting_ about US internal politics and most people here in EU countries who _think_ they do really don’t. And vice versa - europolitics are mostly non-sequitur in US context.
It seems inconceivable to some in US how some ”tropes” are not just ”harmless larping” but actually in a specific environments deeply insulting gestures.
I do realize the deep wounds nazism caused are plusibly hard to understand if one is not european.
But that does not really excuse someone who clearly signals he strives to be a thoughtleader.
In general it’s Pauling and Vitamin-C again. You are great at something and thus presume those intrinsic strengths serve equally well in some other context.
Human failures aside, hurtfull things are hurtfull and they cannot be reasoned away. Forgiven - sure, in right circumstances. Forgotten as well.
Not sure why this is downvoted. Even if you dispute if that have gesture was a Nazi salute, or think that people shouldn't consider the behavior of a CEO when making a purchase, this is the reality.
My thinking as well. Regardless of intent, trolling or otherwise, the fact that he did that is a huge miss and the most irrational behavior, not something you want in a leader.
It's wild to see this being downvoted while explanations based on build quality are going to the top. I'm not sure if it's a coordinated effort to suppress criticism of him from the Nazi perspective or that I was just wrong to assume the anti-fascist feeling that's so strong here in Europe must also exist in the US and the rest of the old Western world.
Musk's Nazi salute is going to go down in history as one of the stupidest things a businessman has ever done.
The second stupidest thing he did was build a huge EV manufacturing academy for the Chinese.
I always thought this was odd --- he could have farmed out select parts and pieces to China manufacturing with the final assembly in Europe but he went all in --- and helped accelerate China surpassing him.
It reminds me of a line from a movie, "Look at you now, you stupid fvck".
If you take Musk for his word massive expansion of EV automotive was his main goal all the time regardless who makes the cars. In that narrative BYD expansion is a win - validation&healthy competition.
Ofc the impact to Tesla-as-a-business is a different matter.
Readit News
Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them.
A wonderful observation.
Has someone made a stab at describing these new paradigms of advertising and value? I don't think I've seen exactly this stated or named, but there's a lot of writing and thinking out there. If it strikes anyone reading this, links welcome.
Specifically, it seems like advertising may have gone from "the quality of the product doesn't matter", to "the product existing doesn't matter". Quite a big leap.
Meme stocks have a way of defying normal economic gravity and irritating traditional investors up until they don't, and when that happens their demise is usually rapid and complete.
https://www.newstatesman.com/business/economics/2024/02/the-...
This gist of it is that central banks tried to stimulate investment in the economy by purchasing bonds, which lowered their yields and made them unattractive to institutional investors. As a result, institutional investors had no choice but to use the QE printed money to invest in stocks instead. This greatly repressed the risk in the stock market, while decoupling it from profits, because for a long time “numbers would only go up”.
Separately, the repressed borrowing costs (another intended effect of QE) enabled big tech to consolidate their monopolies, creating the attention harvesting platforms of today. Alongside inequality also being amplified by QE, those platforms started to favour rage baiting.
The combination of high risk appetite + algorithmic promotion of outrage enabled a kind of business model which is based on nothing except ridiculous dreams. Elon and his Tesla are therefore the quintessential creatures of the era.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/05/17/tesla-...
How many billionaires are willing to bet their life on a cell tower connection? How many people would be bold enough to ask them to?
Makes you want to ask, "say, Elon, how's that full-self-driving going?"
Last year, roughly 90 million new light vehicles were sold worldwide. 1.8 million of these were Tesla --- about 2% of the total.
Earlier this year, Tesla's market capitalization was $1.5 TRILLION --- more than virtually all the major auto manufacturers in the world COMBINED.
Can you say, "Ridiculously over priced"?
Wait until those investors find out what China is investing in and actually succeeding in with automation, personal robots, and making self driving cars with affordable LIDAR (negating Tesla's camera bet).
This seems to be how Silicon Valley works. (Also Redmond.)
A captive audience, e.g., manipulated through intermediaries like Twitter, etc., that is prohibited from considering past or present failures and forced to remain fixated on a future that Silicon Valley assures can be predicted, but only by Silicon Vallley and its devotees.
Can Silicon Valley be "disrupted".
Also, a lot of European car brands' EV models are also rebadged Chinese models or the brand is Chinese owned. MG, Volvo, Dacia Spring
MG, Volvo/Polestar/Lynk & Co, or Lotus are brands owned by Chinese automotive groups SAIC and Geely.
That's not the image or the cars they're pushing in Europe. Their cheapest car, at least in Sweden, costs more than the VW id3, and their flagship SUV that they're pushing hard starts at around the same price as a BMW iX with all the 'luxury' frills to match.
Current range is more than adequate. The missing piece is public fast recharge stations.
A 30 minute recharge on a 600 mile trip is not a real issue. You probably take a break anyway for food, rest and bathroom. Most people can't last 10 hours without it.
Like or not, electric is not only viable now but also inevitable --- mainly due to economic forces, some of which remain to be fully developed. And Walmart and BP/Waffle House are leading the charge with plans to add public recharge stations to their locations.
https://theevreport.com/bp-pulse-waffle-house-boost-ev-charg...
https://insideevs.com/news/757648/walmart-ev-charging-networ...
You can cross most European countries with one stop.
In the US, I've traveled about 50k miles on long road trips in a Tesla and I haven't used my ICE car for a road trip since I got the Tesla. Long range and Tesla's excellent network of superchargers made that possible.
I would imagine it's even more doable in Europe since "long distance" road trips there are on the order of 100 miles, while in the US they're more like 1000 miles.
I've heard that the US has a lot of "food deserts" where you have to go a long way to get groceries, but is it really that bad?
More importantly, the route Google Maps gives me to Paris (1051 km from city to city) is supposedly 11 hr 31 min. Even if the car could do that in one trip, neither my bladder nor my stomach could.
What's TACO?
Surely there were pretty clear signals that a significant number of those people would vote with their wallets based on his politics.
And as everyone was saying last year "Trump can't be THAT bad", you know, before the stock market dropped 3.66 trillion dollars.
And the disappearing people, threats against allies, stripping of hard fought rights, siding with Putin, airbrushing women and non-white men from the history books, declaring Gaza should become a holiday resort and spreading FUD about white genocide etc etc etc
Tesla were always a weird fit for the European markets. They are too big and especially too wide. The finish is haphazard. At their price point, which is high for all the segments they compete in, they don't really compare favorably to European brands. They used to be able to compete on battery performance and drive trains but that's hardly the case anymore. It was always pretty clear that Tesla is entirely driven from the USA and has no idea of how and what to sell to European in a way not too dissimilar to other American car makers which could never really succeed in Europe either.
Meanwhile, BYD is genuinely competitive in Europe. Their cars are well positioned in the middle of every segments they are in. They would actually be on the more accessible side without tariffs. Their design is nothing to talk about but they blend well with other cars. Their size is great. They do ok confort-wise, nothing extraordinary but not too shabby either.
Basically, they are ok cars at an ok price, something which can't be said of Tesla.
EDIT: Yeah. So far this year, the id.4 is number 18 overall, Kia EV3 is 26th, Tesla Model 3 is 27th, Tesla Y is 86th. So Telsa's... not quite irrelevant, EV-wise, but kinda getting there (note that Hyundai, Kia, VW, BYD etc all have a bunch of models vs Tesla's two models, and Tesla's still trailing). https://stats.beepbeep.ie
[1]: https://fortune.com/2025/05/21/elon-musk-fears-tesla-demand-...
> The Tesla CEO asserts he’s seeing a major rebound in customer interest for his EVs despite persistent evidence to the contrary. “The stock wouldn’t be trading near all-time highs if things weren’t in good shape,” he said.
> Tesla’s return to the elite club of trillion-dollar market cap stocks is all the evidence Elon Musk needs to convince him the worst of the blowback over his political activism is over.
Like a conman losing its grips on the victims' confidence, he entered the phase of "do not believe your eyes and ears" phase of the swindle.
Last earnings showed a steep decline in sales, just around my house in Sweden I've seen 3 neighbours with a new BYD the past 3 months, the one right across my house used to have a Model 3 which I haven't seen in a while.
I can only definitely call him a liar on the next earnings report so there's some 2 months before we can see actual figures and not just his words...
It's unthinkable for me to give any sum of money to - let alone purchase a car from - a company associated with neo-Nazism.
I couldn't care less about DOGE or anything Musk is doing with US domestic politics, it's really just that salute that would prevent me from buying a Tesla.
It seems inconceivable to some in US how some ”tropes” are not just ”harmless larping” but actually in a specific environments deeply insulting gestures.
I do realize the deep wounds nazism caused are plusibly hard to understand if one is not european.
But that does not really excuse someone who clearly signals he strives to be a thoughtleader.
In general it’s Pauling and Vitamin-C again. You are great at something and thus presume those intrinsic strengths serve equally well in some other context.
Human failures aside, hurtfull things are hurtfull and they cannot be reasoned away. Forgiven - sure, in right circumstances. Forgotten as well.
The second stupidest thing he did was build a huge EV manufacturing academy for the Chinese.
I always thought this was odd --- he could have farmed out select parts and pieces to China manufacturing with the final assembly in Europe but he went all in --- and helped accelerate China surpassing him.
It reminds me of a line from a movie, "Look at you now, you stupid fvck".
Ofc the impact to Tesla-as-a-business is a different matter.
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