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

He's going to cut down his work for Trump to one or two days a week. Eh yeah Elon, I don't think it's your super hardcore work ethic being missing that's causing issues for Tesla. Might be something to do with those nazi salutes you've been doing.

If he seriously can't see they being associated with Trump in any way is what the problem is then he's even crazier than I thought.

And of course the share price is up in after hours trading, because... Tesla.

everything is up today, so the Tesla rally is only a few percent, but it’ll be interesting to see who wins the tug of war over the next week as the market digests the financials (and the fact that he’s not actually going back to Tesla, he’s just going to commit more time to it), between the retail musketeers, and the institutions.

In November, the Q1 eps was forecast by Dan Ivey at $3:31, and yesterday they delivered over 92% less than this and he’s calling it a very net positive day for the SP.

Id love to know how much of TSLA these guys are holding that’s between $250 and $480/share.

I wonder if just thinks a Model 2 is just too boring personally, I think someone mentioned here that the CT was first preference by Musk yet a smaller car in the lineup makes total sense.

No one asked for the CT.

100%
musk is bored of selling cars

If Tesla were building production line capacity for the 20-30% annual growth they forecasted, and are e.g -45% in the EU27 so far in Q1, you’d have to think they have big gaps in production?

Are they still planning the plant in Mexico?

My limited understanding of car manufacturing is that you can’t ’slow down’ a production line, you run at capacity and then have full downtime, or remove lines

This is a hilarious list to read

During the Q&A section of the earnings call one analyst asked about the reliability of Tesla’s cameras when confronting sun glare, fog, or dust. Musk claimed that the company’s vision system bypasses image processing and instead uses direct photon counting to account for “noise” like glare or dust.

Tesla's are not equipt with photon camera tech. Caught lieing again. A pure conman.

From my time in manufacturing they are probably running a JIT operation. They probably have contracts with suppliers fo X amount of parts for assembly every month. There probably is clause where they can reduce or increase this by a certain %. But they will probably have to build the cars they have the parts ordered for and let them sit there. This goes for all car makers. If they are overproducing cars they will eventually have to cut prices to shift them. I personally wouldnt buy a Tesla as i dont like them and Elon has just made that decision very easy. But at the end of the day pricing will be the major factor in peoples choices. And if the Tesla is considerbly cheaper peoples morals will go out the door. As they say money talks. Will be interesting ahead. Will money dictate to Elon to keep a low profile in the future.

That maybe the case but they cant have stock sitting in a field. They will have to offer good deals. Either by price cuts, finance deals or good trade in deals. The year ahead will tell.

I think that was already established here to be virtue signalling, and nothing more.

The M3 and MY are savage cars at their price point.

I was working in a luxury car company for the last 3 years. Doing Software Design and implementation…

What I found strange is the glorification of Tesla in the industry. It went outside common sense, what ever Tesla did was right and all others were wrong.

I explained that Tesla were smart an had a product in the market years in advance, but that is all it was… They had the only EV from £40k to £130k. Because they had that and leader who leveraged it and himself into genius status. This is a billionaire trick of today, they pay a social media company to make them sound like godlike intelligence… This has all the hallmarks of Seanie Fitzpatrick and Anglo Irish, maybe not as bad but the unquestioning brilliance bit was there…

So Tesla moved towards the DTC(Direct to Customer) with the Agnecy model… This was the OEM owns the vehicle and the dealer is only an agent… Who gets more money? Tesla, Who gets less? Dealer. Customer benefit, probably less as Dealers will use 20 somethings sell you a luxury car, bad after sale service.

I said that the car market is now getting flooded in Tesla space and Customers would not accept that especially if coming from a known trusted brand. It might have seemed novel and new at Tesla but very old quickly for people who spend £100k+ on a car. Those people expect service and that is why good car sales guys make good money, they know how they want to be treated and make it happen.

This is what surprises me at Tesla being so valuable… Do they have the ground break tech which gives them the competitive advantage? Musk has massively tarnished his personal brand and in places he will always be a stigma to the company.

So what you're saying is we should buy bikes? 😉

There's a strong chance your bike will be made in China by a Chinese govt owned factory

One they have to factor in they're buying an aging model which could well be obsolete soon.

Two, if they buy now and there's a price cut later they'll get shafted on depreciation. So better to wait and see

Yes and yes

Three, they have to factor in the increasingly real risk of vandalism and abuse from people who aren't fans of Elon's policies

This hasn't proven to be the case so far in Ireland, generally speaking the people who vandalise Teslas will vandalise any car so you'll never really be safe

Back in 2019 if you wanted a long range EV with good charging speeds and a great charging network behind it your choices were Tesla or nothing. Now there's plenty of other options and Tesla has to contend with the fact they can't just do whatever they want now without losing customers

This is true, however the product Tesla offers today is a family sized D-segment car with a battery capable of 350-400km and capable of charging at up to 170kW (Still above 50kW to 90%) for a price of €36,984 with a referal link. To my knowledge that's not something that any other car manufacturer offers. That great charging network you refer to is expanding as well. I think that's largely why Tesla is surviving here, price.

However, I accept this is only true for Ireland and maybe England

We'll you'd be wrong, I know several people who have opted against even giving them a test drive because of Musk, and chosen other EVs instead.

The fact that sales are plummeting across Europe pretty much proves that Musk's actions have a negative effect on sales and habe turned off potential customers.

Sales in Ireland are so far better than last year. Mainland Europeans might be more sensitive to his antics and that is their right. Car prices tend to be lower on the continent as well so that might help there

I know several people who have opted against even giving them a test drive because of Musk

I know serval people who took test drives despite him so I guess they cancel each other out.

And as we learned, there are buyers with no intention of looking at Tesla who are happy to say "I would never buy a Tesla because of Musk".

There are also buyers (on here) who couldn't buy Tesla because their wives wouldn't allow them, who still wished to claim some weird perspective on the moral high ground anyway.

There is plenty of room for all buyers in the market and while Tesla cars are absolutely brilliant at their price points, there are other very good marques with great offers as well. If you truly wish to take a principled stand you probably wouldn't buy any car to be fair - all the marques have their ugly underbellies.

Tesla sales are down in Germany as a protest against the CEO's ugly 3rd Reich gesture. Sales are up in this country because Irish people couldn't give two figs about such things and are at least honest enough to admit it without reaching for some veil of moral superiority.

As someone commented a while back on one of the other threads; which is worse - being selfish or being disingenuous?

The brand’s basically ruined now. It’s a 'Muskmobile'—forever tied to his politics: X/Twitter, his direct involvement with the Trump administration, clumsy and often deeply offensive dabbling in international relations, the DOGE nonsense, online rants and quasi-meltdowns, and the fact that he backs policies completely and utterly at odds with what people most likely to choose an EV actually care about.

Then there’s the Cybertruck, which is basically self-satirising. I don’t think that one even needs explaining.

I don’t see really any way it recovers without him being very dramatically ousted by the board—which isn’t going to happen, since he controls so much of the company. I'm no expert, but when you've a hugely overvalued company, largely based on hype and a cult like followers bubbling up the stock market, and driven by a rather controversial and erratic personality, and competition that's rapidly caught up and even surpassed them at this point, I just can't see it ending well.