Is Elon Musk hurting Tesla? (Mod Note Post #1)

PixelCrafter · 22-01-2025 01:50PM

I could see Tesla going wallop at some point and Musk just exiting, still a extremely wealthy and spending all his time on X and Space X

Tesla doesn’t even fit his new gun toting, oil burning, right wing persona anyway.

Musk’s politics appeals to people who are highly unlikely to buy Teslas in the first place. They tend to buy into ideas that environmentalism and climate change is a conspiracy theory, they hate wind power, many even actively hate electric vehicles, seeing them as “woke.”

Tesla grew up on the side of the California’s tech bubble. It had nothing to do with any of this wave of right wing politics. He’s utterly ruining it.

To me the Cyber Truck is the symbol of the split personality — a big ugly monster truck with styling inspired by dystopian sci-fi. It managed to alienate EV buyers, yet absolutely doesn’t appeal to truck buyers either and has poor performance in all the areas a truck needs to work well in and targeting audience that doesn’t really exist. You can absolutely tell it’s nothing but a crackpot vanity project driven by the CEO. No product development or marketing department would have come up with that mess.

I think Tesla sales will tank. He’ll either get bored and walk away or he’ll ultimately be ousted by shareholders.

Also it’s a much bigger and more dynamic market now with a lot more players and innovation. It’s also possible that Tesla just becomes far less relevant — a trailblazer that lost its way due to corporate issues at the top.

CMOTDibbler · 22-01-2025 01:54PM

If Tesla shares tank, that will hit him personally. He uses his share options as collateral for loans that finance his lifestyle.

PixelCrafter · 22-01-2025 02:09PM

I’d assume the Trump admin will just hand him the entire NASA budget anyway. I doubt he’ll be stuck for cash.

CMOTDibbler · 22-01-2025 02:13PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123084508#Comment_123084508

That's a function of congress. Not sure (with their thin majority) all Republicans would be onboard with this.

PixelCrafter · 22-01-2025 02:22PM

Well, until the midterms at least, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility, but in general I would predict Musk could end up just bursting his own bubble. You can’t really behave like that indefinitely. At some point the market will get sick of it and the bluff will be called.

liamog · 22-01-2025 02:25PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123084358#Comment_123084358

The goal of every investor backed organisation is to deliver value to its shareholders. How you define value will be different depending on the shareholder, it's either purely financial speculative in which case you want the share price to keep increasing, or your shareholders want to collect income over time in which case you issue an annual dividend.

There are also other structures where the shareholder value is less monetary, look at the likes of employee co-ownership where the wellbeing of employees can take precedence over financial gain, or state ownership where the company is directed towards a particular goal such as enabling people to use public transit.

Tesla is very much ran as a company that needs to increase share price over all other factors, it's a big reason why I don't think Tesla will ever sell a robotaxi to a third party. If it's really the money-making machine that Musk has publicly claimed. There's zero point selling a car at 10% margin so somebody else can run it as an automated taxi and make 20% on every journey.

the_amazing_raisin · 22-01-2025 05:23PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123084420#Comment_123084420

Couple of counter arguments to consider

First, it's doubtful a company the size of Tesla would implode suddenly and go out of business

Worst (or best depending on your viewpoint) case scenario the share price tanks and the company gets bought, potentially firing Musk in the process

Second, it's a mistake to think of the current Republican party as a uniform blob of awfulness. There's factions within it and while the gun toting MAGA group are the biggest and loudest, they don't actually represent the majority of the party

There's a lot of wealthy party supporters who probably own businesses and want low taxes, low regulation and access to cheap foreign labour. Musk is generally seen as the leader of that group and somewhat hilariously deplatformed a bunch of MAGA supporters like Larua Loomer for opposing him

Anyway, my point is that outside of the MAGA crowd, many republicans would be quite happy to buy a Tesla. Particularly since it's seen as supporting an American company over foreigners

Seattle · 22-01-2025 05:25PM

Not sure how Musk can be trusted to make sensible decisions. He's not the same person he was a few years ago.

CMOTDibbler · 22-01-2025 05:58PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123085489#Comment_123085489

I'd argue that he's much the same person except with the hidden bits exposed now that he's been emboldened by his wealth, ownership of Twitter and political influence.

Seattle · 22-01-2025 06:04PM

Maybe but I'm not sure. He tried to endorse Ron De Santis to beat Trump for the Republican nomination - so he wasn't full on MAGA, alt right etc. at that point a couple of years ago. He's shown no such signs of that type of moderation now.

the_amazing_raisin · 22-01-2025 06:15PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123085652#Comment_123085652

Again it's important to form a distinction between Musk and the alt right wing of the Republicans. Musk has come out in support of things like the H1-B visa which the MAGA side wants to ban

I would agree with CMOT that what we're seeing now is the Musk that has always been there, he's just not seeing any reason to self moderate anymore

I think Musk has always leaned towards a sort of Ayn Rand style liberarianism, where the so called great people are not held back by any form of government intervention.

Being part of Trumps government feeds into this since he's in charge of cutting expediture. Seems like an opportunity to cut out a lot of oversight and red tape for him

CMOTDibbler · 22-01-2025 06:15PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123085652#Comment_123085652

At that time Trump wasn't looked at seriously as a candidate. Considered as a bit of a joke candidate despite having a good deal of popularity.

But there's been a lot of water under the bridge since then. He didn't take over Twitter until after Trump left office. That's when he started to embrace the loons.

Seattle · 22-01-2025 06:21PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123085694#Comment_123085694

«snip: use the CA thread»

the_amazing_raisin · 22-01-2025 06:22PM

Trying to steer us back on topic, I think it's fair to say that he'll be fairly hands off on managing Tesla for the next while

Question is, does that matter? He's been looking after SpaceX on the side for years and by all accounts often treated Tesla as a side hustle

Understandable, rockets are probably cooler than EVs

Most of the problems seem to occur when Elon turns his attention back to Tesla, like last year when he came in like a wrecking ball, cancelled the Model 2 and fired the Supercharger team (only to rehire most of them later)

I would almost argue that Tesla benefits from free advertising via Musk and also benefits from him paying as little attention to the company as possible

liamog · 22-01-2025 06:22PM

Mod Note: Reminder to read the mod note in post #1. Musk's activities outside of Tesla should be discussed in CA thread.

liamog · 22-01-2025 06:37PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123085736#Comment_123085736

I'd probably agree with you on that one. A distracted Elon seems to be better for the automotive professionals that are working on Tesla vehicles. So long as he doesn't start cross contaminating the business like he did pulling the ordered AI accelerators so they could be used for xAI instead of Tesla compute.

In a properly managed company that should have caused issues with the board.

Gumbo · 22-01-2025 07:26PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123085736#Comment_123085736

"I would almost argue that Tesla benefits from free advertising via Musk and also benefits from him paying as little attention to the company as possible"

This also could fuel a lot of the constant negative press printed about him, right or wrong, every news article online, multiple times a day and many journos, as Tesla don't pay any MSM advertising for their cars etc

the_amazing_raisin · 22-01-2025 07:51PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123086026#Comment_123086026

It probably also helps that he does and says things that many people disagree with

I really don't understand the obsession people have with believing there's some sort of conspiracy to make him look bad

He owns one of the biggest social networks in the world, logically it should be quite easy for him to ensure only positive things get pushed about him

News sites are funded by ad revenue, which is paid per click. Musk is a newsworthy character being one of wealthiest, most powerful and most outspoken people in the world. Additionally people are often driven by outrage online and are more likely to click on links they react negatively to rather than positive ones

So there's a very clear profit motive to push as much clickbait about Musk as possible. Economics rather than conspiracy

yagan · 22-01-2025 08:28PM

There was always a vocal cohort of petrol heads who would attack any promotor of EVs. Musk did probably most with Tesla to finally deliver a desirable mass market package, because prior to Tesla the Nissan Leaf and Chevy Volt just didn't set any pulses racing.

My first iphone was my last, I found most android phones did what I needed without paying the Apple premium. But if Steve Jobs had been using his fame from the iphone to publicly call for uprisings in democracies I wouldn't have tried his product. I feel the same about Tesla now, the repulsion is unavoidable.

ELM327 · 23-01-2025 01:32PM

Just on the topic of tesla suddenly imploding and going bust, that will now never happen. In that it won't implode. It has too much in the way of assets and brand value, if it goes bankrupt tomorrow another large OEM will buy it - or buy parts of it

CMOTDibbler · 24-01-2025 07:04PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123095830#Comment_123095830

The comments are hilarious. "Berlin to Warsaw in a single charge". 🤣

Gumbo · 24-01-2025 07:05PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123095912#Comment_123095912

that’s it. Strange that others get so annoyed about that. Particularly on a brand they have no interest in while ignoring that their own beloved brands do the same thing.

josip · 24-01-2025 07:38PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123095919#Comment_123095919

Model Y Juniper, the 21st century's Panzer II.

listermint · 24-01-2025 10:25PM

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/123095925#Comment_123095925

The world has interest at this point , even if some folks choose to ignore it absolutely and entirely. That itself is more shocking when you think about it. 🤷‍♀️