Just want to re-iterate that car companies tend to be terrible investments with their cyclical nature, high fixed costs and high capital intensity.
The only reason you would invest in a company like Tesla at this price is because they have a CEO capable of 10x that is aggressively moving into other markets and not because you think they should become a docile car company and fix a few small things here and there.
I’m an investor because I want to see them go into semi’s and automation etc.
I used to have a lot invested in Tesla, but I sold all my shares 2 years ago. I just don't think that their valuation is justified at the current price. So it can crash and burn at any moment.
Tesla has been underperforming for a long time. If we look back to 2021, at that time Tesla had the best battery tech in the world (maybe not on the cell level, but definitely when looking at the system as a whole), the best-performing drivetrain, and generally OK cars.
Fast-forward 5 years, and Tesla's bread-and-butter Model 3 and Model Y are still using essentially the same battery tech. The range has not increased, and the cars themselves are barely any different with only some cosmetic updates. The infotaiment system is rapidly aging, and the cars lack advanced features like vehicle-to-grid.
The FSD has not materialized, and Tesla is likely on hook for billions in upgrades/refunds to pre-2019 car owners for the promised upgrades.
Other Tesla products are less than stellar. Tesla Semi has essentially disappeared, Cybertruck is barely selling (just around 4000 units in Q2!), Model 2 was canceled, and solar is essentially dead.
The battery storage is the only area that is growing robustly with a good profit margin. But Tesla doesn't have any moat there, and competitors (like BYD) are quickly catching up.
From what I can gather, the institutional shareholders that has signed this letter controls about 1-2% of the Tesla shares (roughly). Add the Norwegian Oil Fund to the mix, which will likely vote similarly and has roughly the same voting power, and we are up to 2-4%. That seems quite small.
I guess they publish this in advance in an effort to persuade other shareholders to vote similarly?
Genuine question as someone not from the US, who’s the average new Tesla owner these days?
Electric cars were seen as a leftist thing a few years back. If (again, as a non American) you asked me what the average car of a right wing American was, I’d say a ginormous pick up truck with a V8 ICE engine or something like that. Did that kind of person really start buying Teslas due to Musk’s close ties with the current US administration? I can’t see that. I also can’t see leftist American people buying Teslas due to environmental reasons alone despite of Musk either. So who’s buying those cars?
Purely anecdotical but I know at least one person who was going to buy a Tesla and he didn’t do it purely because of Musk. Also, the only time I got inside a Tesla was in a Cabify that took me to the airport (model 3), smooth ride but the interior was that of a cheap car from 10 years ago.
While I may only own a small part of Tesla, as a customer of their's, I want nothing more than the company to get rid of Elon and just become a normal, better car company. While they yell about driverless cabs and robots that can serve popcorn to you, none of the music apps have gapless playback. There's multiple stretches of 100+ miles of highway around me that have no supercharging capability, and dozens upon dozens of major population centers that need to travel 150+ miles to get to a service center. You can get the Model Y in any color you want, as long as the color you want is one of the five colors it's always been available in. These and more are all real problems that they could improve to be a better car company; but they're obsessed with constantly leapfrogging themselves and throwing away every customer they've ever won, because now they're an energy company, wait no, they're a robotics company...
I've stopped recommending Tesla to people, despite driving one. The company is way too unpredictable and unstable.
I assume the fear for stock holders is that without Elon people will evaluate the company like a regular car company and that would not be a net positive.
I think they're in some sort of stock price suicide pact at this point.
- music apps and gapless playback: basically all major car manufacturer software is trash, I'd challenge you to find a car software that's better than Tesla
- stretches without superchargers: to be clear, not stretches without places you can charge the car, right? Just places where Tesla's fast charging stations exist. Tesla has an order of magnitude more of these type of stations than any other similar network
- Service centers: I have no knowledge here. From how silly the other arguments are, I kind of assume that this isn't fully true, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and say it's true. Not awesome, definitely an area they need to get better in. But lets not forget, major manufacturer service centers are not exactly know for being quick/good/cheap
- Color options: I guess it would be cool to have truly custom colors, but basically every mainstream car ever has had a limited set of colors to choose from, and individual dealerships almost never have every color of that limited set available
And the answer is to have them become like a normal car company? That's not an industry thats exactly excelling at the very points you're bringing up. You're obviously free to have your take, but we are at peak "Elon is the wurst". Hard to take this stuff seriously
> - music apps and gapless playback: basically all major car manufacturer software is trash, I'd challenge you to find a car software that's better than Tesla
Easy: _any_ car with Android Auto or CarPlay. Including a 10-year-old Toyota.
If Elon leaves, Tesla is cooked. Tesla nosedives every time his focus is on something else which is what's happened since he purchased Twitter, became a political activist and then left to work with Trump. The only reason Tesla trades at such high valuation is because of Elon and the cult following he built around the vision for the company. As soon as he's out of there the stock will lose all of its premium. Institutional investors like Ron Baron who are open supporters of Elon's vision will leave and the business will go to carmaker-like or negative margins. There is absolutely no evidence that Tesla can function at all without Elon but there is plenty of it floundering when he's not focused on it.
This sounds like all upside for the company eventually if it actually is capable of being a good car company. The stock goes down to the price of a car company and the company needs to focus on making good cars instead of wildly flailing around to different distractions.
> There's multiple stretches of 100+ miles of highway around me that have no supercharging capability
Genuinely curious where this is? It's not anywhere on the US Interstate Highway network for sure (OK, fine maybe there are a handful of 120 mile stretches here and there). There are holes in the middle of the interior west, but you have to work really hard to get 100 miles from a supercharger.
I mean, there are always legitimate criticisms to be made, but the breadth of the charging network is... quite frankly the best in the world?
There are more divided highways than interstates. There are US highways like US-101 or states ones like CA-99. Also, all of the US and state highways are called highways, at least when not in towns, not just divided ones.
There are areas of the west that have enough coverage for driving through but not for trips. You would be pushing it visiting the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon cause La Grande or Joseph only have slow chargers. Another is the "Loneliest Road in America", US-50 in Nevada, has 285 mile gap.
Tesla shareholders are the absolute worst bag holders. So vigorously defending a company that could not care less if they lived or died literally, as long as they keep buying unsafe garbage with less range than touted, months-long delays for some repairs, hiding crash data because it made Tesla look bad, beta testing driver-less mode in a way that endangers everyone else, switching to driver mode a split-second before a crash to insulate them from lawsuits, did I mention the fucking Nazi running it?
Readit News
The only reason you would invest in a company like Tesla at this price is because they have a CEO capable of 10x that is aggressively moving into other markets and not because you think they should become a docile car company and fix a few small things here and there.
I’m an investor because I want to see them go into semi’s and automation etc.
Tesla has been underperforming for a long time. If we look back to 2021, at that time Tesla had the best battery tech in the world (maybe not on the cell level, but definitely when looking at the system as a whole), the best-performing drivetrain, and generally OK cars.
Fast-forward 5 years, and Tesla's bread-and-butter Model 3 and Model Y are still using essentially the same battery tech. The range has not increased, and the cars themselves are barely any different with only some cosmetic updates. The infotaiment system is rapidly aging, and the cars lack advanced features like vehicle-to-grid.
The FSD has not materialized, and Tesla is likely on hook for billions in upgrades/refunds to pre-2019 car owners for the promised upgrades.
Other Tesla products are less than stellar. Tesla Semi has essentially disappeared, Cybertruck is barely selling (just around 4000 units in Q2!), Model 2 was canceled, and solar is essentially dead.
The battery storage is the only area that is growing robustly with a good profit margin. But Tesla doesn't have any moat there, and competitors (like BYD) are quickly catching up.
I guess they publish this in advance in an effort to persuade other shareholders to vote similarly?
Yes. Plainly apparent IMO.
The conclusion-paragraph ends with
Electric cars were seen as a leftist thing a few years back. If (again, as a non American) you asked me what the average car of a right wing American was, I’d say a ginormous pick up truck with a V8 ICE engine or something like that. Did that kind of person really start buying Teslas due to Musk’s close ties with the current US administration? I can’t see that. I also can’t see leftist American people buying Teslas due to environmental reasons alone despite of Musk either. So who’s buying those cars?
Purely anecdotical but I know at least one person who was going to buy a Tesla and he didn’t do it purely because of Musk. Also, the only time I got inside a Tesla was in a Cabify that took me to the airport (model 3), smooth ride but the interior was that of a cheap car from 10 years ago.
Just regular average people. EVs are just better than ICE cars, as long as you have charging infrastructure. And Tesla has it.
Tesla made sure the Left hated them due to Nazi garbage from the CEO, the Right is full of coal-rolling clowns, so I have no idea who's buying them.
I've stopped recommending Tesla to people, despite driving one. The company is way too unpredictable and unstable.
I think they're in some sort of stock price suicide pact at this point.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cy46Ag0djjk
I bet their rear passenger seats don't even have toothpick disinfection modules.
Easy: _any_ car with Android Auto or CarPlay. Including a 10-year-old Toyota.
https://electrek.co/2024/04/22/elon-musk-pigeon-ceo-former-t...
Genuinely curious where this is? It's not anywhere on the US Interstate Highway network for sure (OK, fine maybe there are a handful of 120 mile stretches here and there). There are holes in the middle of the interior west, but you have to work really hard to get 100 miles from a supercharger.
I mean, there are always legitimate criticisms to be made, but the breadth of the charging network is... quite frankly the best in the world?
There are areas of the west that have enough coverage for driving through but not for trips. You would be pushing it visiting the Wallowa Mountains in Oregon cause La Grande or Joseph only have slow chargers. Another is the "Loneliest Road in America", US-50 in Nevada, has 285 mile gap.
Elon Musk's $1T pay plan faces pushback from investors, state officials
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/elon-m...
Tesla shareholders are the absolute worst bag holders. So vigorously defending a company that could not care less if they lived or died literally, as long as they keep buying unsafe garbage with less range than touted, months-long delays for some repairs, hiding crash data because it made Tesla look bad, beta testing driver-less mode in a way that endangers everyone else, switching to driver mode a split-second before a crash to insulate them from lawsuits, did I mention the fucking Nazi running it?
Oh and how's FSD going? lol
Dead Comment