Despite New Gigafactory in China, Tesla’s Global Deliveries Drop 4.8% in Q2, Much Worse Than I Expected

Hahahaha, that should have been the universal headline.

By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.

Tesla announced this morning – under enormous media hoopla and Wall Street hyperbole – that its global deliveries dropped 4.8% in the second quarter of 2020, to 90,650 vehicles. It doesn’t disclose how many of them were delivered in the US.

But this was the second quarter in which Tesla’s Gigafactory in Shanghai was operating and selling vehicles in China, the largest auto market and the largest EV market in the world. And auto sales in China overall are experiencing pent-up demand after the lockdown and a solid recovery.

Yet, all combined, including Tesla’s new production and sales in China, Tesla’s deliveries still fell 4.8% compared to the second quarter last year.

OK, there is the pandemic, and Tesla’s Fremont factory was closed for a while, and the decline in deliveries needs to be seen in this light.

But hey, as I said yesterday, Tesla “has become a supernatural phenomenon led by a guy who is regularly seen walking on water,” and so I expected more.

I expected Elon Musk to perform miracles. I expected the new production and sales in China to make up for any shortfalls with US production and sales, and for any shortfalls in sales in the rest of the world. Wasn’t the Gigafactory in Shanghai supposed to outproduce and outsell the Fremont factory?

Since the Gigafactory came on line at the beginning of this year, and wasn’t shut down in Q2, the year over year comparison of both factories combined, even while the Fremont factory was partially shut down in Q2, should have blown last year’s deliveries away.

Musk walks on water. And I believe in him. I expected at least a little bit of growth. I expected 100,000 deliveries at an absolute total fiasco minimum in Q2. That would have been 5% growth year-over-year. Tiny for a miraculous company like Tesla, but it didn’t get anywhere near that. Deliveries instead fell 4.8%. I’m deeply disappointed in Musk’s inability to pull this off despite the Gigafactory in China. What is the Gigafactory in China for, if overall deliveries are now lower than they’d been before the Gigafactory was opened?

But the market doesn’t care about what I expected, and my admiration for Musk’s ability to get sales going in China. Some other folks on Wall Street pretended to expect even lower deliveries, despite the new Gigafactory, and Tesla was able to beat those lowered expectations, and Tesla’s shares soared 7% this morning to $1,228.

So here is my double-WTF chart of the year (updated today mid-morning) that proves beyond reasonable doubt that Tesla’s stock is a supernatural phenomenon despite the decline in deliveries and despite the disappointment in the Gigafactory (share price data via YCharts):

To mark this moment in the history of insane stock prices where a tiny automaker with a global market share of 0.5% and a big loss in 2019 became the most valuable automaker in the world. Read…  Double-WTF Chart of the Year Update: Tesla Becomes Most Valuable Automaker, Blows by Toyota

Enjoy reading WOLF STREET and want to support it? You can donate. I appreciate it immensely. Click on the beer and iced-tea mug to find out how:

Would you like to be notified via email when WOLF STREET publishes a new article? Sign up here.

  85 comments for “Despite New Gigafactory in China, Tesla’s Global Deliveries Drop 4.8% in Q2, Much Worse Than I Expected

  1. andy says:

    The top 3 US corporations are Tesla short of $5 Trillion in combined value. Wealth effect rules, thank you Ben.

    • Old-School says:

      Once your market cap is a trillion dollars, you have priced in about all the future growth a company can have over the next 20 or 30 years. Best long term case is stock sort of flat lines as growth and PE come down. Remember GE and Exxon were the big dogs at one time. It wouldn’t surprise me if Berkshire gets in the top two or three during next tech bust.

  2. Phoenix_Ikki says:

    Well, as if we didn’t see this all coming. In this ever more bizarro world, with news like this, their stock is up 7% and now at 1.2k a share. I can try to pull more of my hair out withnessing madness like this but don’t have that much left anymore or the will to understand this so call insanity of a market.

    Speaking of insanity…just like Tesla, market is once again in giddy mode rallying over worse than forecast unemployed filed numbers even without considering all the nuisances behind the numbers. 2 months in, we’re still seeing the same playbook every Thursday..it’s getting old.

    • andy says:

      With few Trillion new dollars in even fewer months we are back to normal.

    • 2banana says:

      Why pull out your hair?

      This stock is in a massive bubble totally detached from fundamentals or reality.

      Has happened thousands of times in the last 20 years and will happen plenty in the future.

      Don’t play the game. Save your hair.

      • Old-School says:

        No earnings, no growth, that makes it worth about zero, but Jay is giving it a nice boost with the free money.

    • M says:

      I had to ignore a whole bunch of negative nellies. Had to endure the pull back. Now at near 500% gain.
      And will ignore them for the next 500% gain.
      Because they are totally misinformed.
      Tesla has so many irons in the fire that haven’t hit yet,
      This will be an exciting few years coming.
      There is a technology transition in the works.
      Tony Seba and RethinkX have been spot on for years.

      • rhodium says:

        Okay Icarus. I’m going to buy a Toyota ev when they are ready to be sold more cheaply and profitably.

        • Bbj says:

          thats great. But your Toyota will not turn into a self driving taxi and pay for itself a few years after buying it.

  3. Crush the Peasants! says:

    Wolf, Assuming your short does not finish in the money, here are a few possibilities. And wouldn’t a straddle handle the volatility offering protection from either end?

    1. COVID-19 is a temporary interruption to a strong economy.
    2. Related, the market is betting on a future recovery.
    3. Don’t fight the Fed.
    4. A real revolution occurs when pensions go BK.
    5. Ditto 401k’s.
    6. Ditto RE.
    7. Russian Collusion.

    Good health and wealth to you.

    • GotCollateral says:

      the moneyness of a “short” is only applicable to options and other derivatives, Wolf isn’t short via puts (but short via borrowing the shares and selling them outright) from what he has stated in the past… And premiums are way higher compared to when SPX was last at this level in Jan/Feb…

  4. Seneca's cliff says:

    Portland is similar to the bay area in the number of Teslas driving around. I normally see quite a few new ones on any given day ( as evidenced by the temp tags on the window) but in the last three or four months I have not seen a single new Tesla on the road. Perhaps people are buying them and keeping them stashed in their garage as they work from home, but sales don’t seem to be booming around here.

  5. Pete Stubben says:

    Up 8% this morning over $1,200/share.

    He’s the ultimate fraudster I guess…u know, all Elon Musk is doing — single handedly, as he’s been mocked on Wall Street since The Millennial, except for Ron Barron the Boston investor — is transforming the world’s auto transport model; revolutionizing how we think about the urban commute with his Boring Machines; and of course — along with China — transforming the energy model with solar polar. Of course we’re talking about one guy competing against the entire Chinese economy.
    Oh, I forgot…he invented a new rocket and is going to Mars, too.

    Much to mock here… PJS

  6. fred flintstone says:

    I wonder how the fed chair will feel about his legacy……..what will they think……..kids opening up history books in 2060 and a big old picture of him labeled corrupt puppet for the wealthy who almost single handedly destroyed the USA.
    A man who thinks he walks on water, like so many these days, and can ignore basic economics by destroying our savings culture, eliminating economic cycles and shifting wealth from those that earned it to those that want to steal it. Failing to understand that the reason business and investment is rewarded is due to risk……which he is eliminating……and rewarding speculators. All while the demographic storm which he is so fearful of has passed. Just pass an infrastructure bill and let the economy perform……good or bad……instead of picking your friends as the winners.

    • timbers says:

      Are you talking about Jerome Powell or Elon Musk?

    • intosh says:

      He won’t be around in 2060. So why would he care? Meanwhile, the cronies would have added to the fortune for their lineage so…

      Besides, with the attention deficit generation, nobody would remember him or what he did in just a couple of years, let alone 2060.

      “history books” That’s assuming that in 2060, there are still some people who read more than listicles on the Web.

    • Old-School says:

      I feel like I have seen this movie before. The tech savvy say Buffet is stupid for sitting on cash and missing out on the new era. He is pretty logical and a company must be currently making a high return on tangible assets for him to be interested.

      The promise of making money in the future is easy to make, but hard to keep.

  7. Wisdom Seeker says:

    In science, the Tesla is a unit of magnetic field strength.

    In business, perhaps “Tesla” should be a unit of speculative-bubble strength?

    I mean, you can’t use P/E ratios for money-losing companies, so clearly a new unit is needed for unicorns and “disruptive” companies to aspire to!

    Tesla’s got some valuable more-speculative metrics like “deliveries” growth (never mind to where) or unit “sales” growth (never mind to whom) or maybe vaporware “product announcements” (never mind if it’s never produced)… If they went full dot-com they’d also have a metric for “eyeballs” or “media stories” or something too…

    • RepubAnon says:

      There are lots of gamblers in the market these days. At some point, I expect the markets will have a Far Side moment: “Hey, wait a minute! This is grass! We’ve been eating grass!

      • Old-School says:

        I listened to a little of Jay Powell’s testimony. The “wealth affect” has morphed into “encouraging confidence”.

        I am 64. If I desire a “safe” return I can get about 0.2% on short or intermediate term treasuries. My social security check amounts to about 3% of my financial assets. I am thankful to get it, but in some ways I am paying myself through lost interest through Fed policy as probably I should be able to earn a 3% return on short/ intermediate term treasuries. I think really you could say it’s the fiscal policy of politicians that have can kicked the debt ball down the road so far that financial repression is best option Fed has.

    • Andrei says:

      @WS

      “Tesla is a unit of magnetic field strength”

      strictly speaking, this is not correct :)

      Tesla is a unit of magnetic flux density B, not magnetic field strength H, which is measured in ampere per meter (SI)

    • KurtZ says:

      It is actually a lot worse with Tesla. Instead producing an electric car that everyone needs (say 23k for 250 mile range) it has been captured by the Apple techno-solipsists who want a self-driving car.

      Apple’s money bailed out Musk when he was broke. They then almost bought the company and they are the stealth investors who prop the stock up on a daily basis.

      Technology over energy efficiency – a typical late-American losing gambit.

      Instead of a mass-market car that gets 500 miles to the charge and is under 30k, we have an unsafe machine and billions spent on Autopilot.

      Now electric cars are associated with self-driving, a rich man’s dream – no more paid help.

      BTW – Self-driving will never work at high-speeds on American freeways. The hardware alone to make that part of the car truly safe would be 100k a car alone.

      How do I know this? My father’s engineering firm was at the forefront of LIDAR back in the late 70’s and had a DOD contract. They spent billions on the technology to use in the first Star Wars programs. When the Russians came up with a simple countermeasure, blasting shards of tin-foil at altitude, DOD literally dropped the program the next day.

      When I told my Dad that Tesla’s self-driving tech was heavily dependent on LIDAR, he simply said it will never work. I looked at him sideways and he added one word.

      Snow.

      • MCH says:

        Ok, stop right there, you have so many facts wrong it isn’t even funny.

        I will just pick one out for you, Tesla does not use LiDAR in their autopilot system, it’s a combo of cameras and radar.

        • Ravi Uppal says:

          MCH , whether Tesla uses LIDAR or Lego bricks , I don^t care . Are we in agreement that Tesla is the next Enron,We work or whatsoever corporate entity that was ^all air and no punch ^ just accounting gimmickry ?

        • Massbytes says:

          You are correct. Musk said Tesla looked at using Lidar, saw the limitations, and dropped the technology. And, Ravi Uppal, at least I completely disagree with your statements. The level of Tesla hating on the blog is amazing.

        • MCH says:

          Well, Ravi, I simply point out that there are real facts and completely made up BS like what was shown here. If you’re into made up facts to support a theory, that’s fine. Whatever floats your boat, it doesn’t bother me any, but I think most people who come here are interested in real facts, not made up bullshit. Basically your argument boils down to the ends justifies the means…. the answer is, no, not really.

          By the way, I will note that for all of those who “correctly point out” that TSLA is the next Enron, there are plenty of people making a killing on this stock here. Now, that will not last forever. But if the point is to gloat about people losing money because they are suckers for owning TSLA stock or pumping it up. So far, it’s the other way around.

          I notice that the author of the blog hasn’t gone out of the way to put up fake BS to gin up his arguments. Facts are what matter. Otherwise, there are a thousand CNNs and Fox News out there for you.

        • Thomas Roberts says:

          Massbytes,

          I definitely agree.

          I don’t know whether Tesla will succeed or not and be a significant car maker in the future, but, Musk is trying to build a sustainable business; and managed to revive the electric car industry. This is very different from a lot of the unicorns who basically never even had a possibility of ever succeeding (or even the intention of doing so) or long standing companies who hollow out their companies so the executives get paid a lot. Most companies on the stock market are hugely overvalued. Musk isn’t the one who decided the stock price. GM and Ford not having crazily overpriced stocks, shouldn’t be a knock against Tesla.

          He even is the first car maker to take actual steps towards bringing self-driving cars to the market. While it’s still far from complete, Tesla’s approach of developing self driving cars is the best approach. The cars have everything necessary for full autonomy, but, autonomy is added on in steps and are being driven by everyday people in everyday situations. The approach other businesses are using to develop self driving cars, may produce cars in the end that can self drive, but, it may be very difficult to refine them and those companies may have to start over or do major changes.

      • Andrei says:

        I don’t believe they only rely on lasers. At the (rather short) distances and speeds ranges needed for automated driving, even the MM waves should work fine in light snow. In any case, I believe their algorithms should work with any wireless.

      • Prof. Emeritus says:

        Ford does test LIDAR vehicles in snow and they are doing an okay job – the key is merging the data from multiple sensors together in a seamless way. But as mentioned by others Teslas do not even have LIDARs, they build on standard Bosch driving aid systems cheaply available to any auto manufacturer (and then rebrand it with their own marketing name to sell it for more).

    • MCH says:

      Actually that unit of measurement in business should be a Musk, not a Tesla.

    • c1ue says:

      A Tesla magnetic unit is ginormous, so your analogy of a Tesla stock bubble being comparable is valid.
      To put the Tesla magnetic unit in perspective: a car junkyard lifting magnet is around 1 Tesla.

  8. Tsuda says:

    What great news, TLSA is up over $90 so far today, muhahaha :)

  9. Just Some Random Guy says:

    When it hits $1500 will it be the quadruple WTF chart?

    • Wolf Richter says:

      No, it would have to go down to $350 then go up to $1,500, to earn triple-WTF status.

      • DeerInHeadlights says:

        Bam!

      • MCH says:

        Wolf, I would be interested in the title of your blog when TSLA gets to $10K per share. (hell, even $5K per share)

        Yes, I know it sounds utterly insane. And I can’t even believe I’m saying what I said above. But look around you, it’s like sanity has decided to take a leave of absence from the planet.

        • Wolf Richter says:

          I’ll think about it when we get there. Yes, the zoo has gone nuts ?

        • No1 says:

          It only sounds insane because that would make Tesla the world’s most valuable company by a significant margin.

          There is no other criterion against which we can value Tesla.

      • GregHamilton says:

        Wolf,
        Don’t give him any ideas. That just might happen.

  10. Groucho says:

    I thought it was a sure fire short about $400 ago. I’m glad I didn’t pull the trigger.

  11. CX says:

    I would not be surprised if the high stock price of Tesla was pumped up by overseas investors like those in China. First, retail investors dominate the Chinese stock market. Second, lots of Chinese students in the US are good with phones and their parents are rich. They have SS# that allow them to open US trading accounts. Third, Chinese love Elon who did a great show in Shanghai, pumping up “love China” spirit. With China facing resistance from the West (albeit for many wrong reasons), Elon’s open remarks got him love back. Forth, stocks are heavily traded after hours (ie, lots of overseas buying). If you have a retail overseas’ buying army behind you, why do you have to deliver cars? Too bad the Chinese investors don’t look at his other performances. If they did, they would run faster than any US investors.

  12. MiTurn says:

    It’s been frequently stated that the two primary drivers of market stock price determination is fear and greed. Maybe we need a third, like ‘stupid.’

    • Underground says:

      Both fear and greed are instances of stupid. So instead of calling it a third force, it is more appropriate to refer to this as the unified theory of stupid.

  13. Seneca's cliff says:

    I think in the long wrong run the choice of the name Tesla might turn out to be ironic. The company is of course named for the Serbian Electrical genius Nikola Tesla who almost single handedly invented the entire system of polyphase AC power we use today in addition to many other things too numerous to list. But Tesla was a financial failure who died broke owing the Waldorf Astoria Hotel ( where he lived much of his life) a giant bill. I think the current Tesla will one day die a corporate death and many investors and car owners will end up getting stuck with the bill, just like the Waldorf.

    • Greg Hamilton says:

      Seneca,
      I think Musk has powerful friends. Sadly, Nikola Tesla did not.

  14. Paulo says:

    There is more to it than the car itself, Musk. or the Market.

    Would you ever go back to a restaurant if the owner or wait staff said you were criminal, stupid, didn’t want you business, and charged you more?

    I didn’t think so.

    Tesla is an American company. If the Chinese buy the Company or suck it up as a victory they will sell Teslas in China. Until that happens, Chinese production will go nowhere. This comes from 3.75 years of insulting US leadership. Tesla had better hope Americans buy their cars because the rest of the world will buy either domestic, or from allies.

    Many Canadians don’t even buy Heinz ketchup anymore after Buffet shut down the Ontario production facilities. Instead, they buy French’s, Canadian made. That is what tariffs do. Tariffs are aggressive in nature and after awhile it becomes a point of patriotism and pride not to bend over and pull out your wallet.

    When trade becomes a zero sum game, and policy is implemented solely to benefit one country over another, trade declines and eventually stops. That is what is happening. No one has to buy a Tesla, even if they could afford it. Take away the desire to buy one and………

    It didn’t work with the British colonies and it doesn’t work in today’s world, either.

    regards

    • intosh says:

      “Tesla is an American company”

      It has ceased to be one the moment it built the factory in China and opened a design center (an obligation, despite EM’s claim it was his idea) there. This China expansion brought Tesla and EM out of the gutter (e.g. running out of cash rumours), scared the shorts away for good and was the catalyst for this WTF stock surge. EM owes China big time and he knows it.

  15. Joe says:

    I had read that Musk gets his pay by share price hikes.
    So, he is already paid and should the shares tank, oh well.
    His money is already in his account and can’t be touched should his company implodes in the future.

  16. MonkeyBusiness says:

    Tesla is a microcosm of the United States. They had so many executives quitting for “family reasons”. To me that’s a tell tale of “we don’t want to spend time in jail”. Multiple hedge fund managers including David Einhorn also raised a number of valid points regarding the accounting practices of this company but the SEC, etc simply refuse to take a look.

    Tesla at this point is no different from a Chinese company.

  17. dr spock says:

    Believe it or not, the US trade deficit in May went UP for the 3rd month in a row to 54 billion, the highest level since December, 2018, and half of the deficit was with China, this while world trade went down. During the “Great Recession” the trade deficit DROPPED dramatically. Both exports and imports during this crash have also gone down dramatically, but exports are dropping faster allowing for the trade deficit to rise for the last 3 months. I think the US demand for things including imports has been supported tremendously despite incredible unemployment this time around because of the magnificent work of the crooked fed. Big corporations received massive aid from the crooked fed and are laughing all the way to the banks, which are also bloated with aid. Many individuals received the temporary $600 per month from the federal government plus their local state govt unemployment benefits, increased their debt on credit cards, did home refinancing at lower interest rates for more buying power, and partook in forbearance of mortgage payments for a year. Also some are living in their houses and apartments while not paying the mortgage or rent, some are living in their cars and on the streets, while others are resorting to stealing and looting. Those with stocks, bonds, and retirement plans were heartened by their resurgence to give them some confidence to buy things. I think that a lot of jobs lost this time around are never coming back in their present form, but rather big corporations will be hiring and expanding the number of low paying jobs in a take it or leave it situation. The rioting will probably will not only continue, but increase. I have observed a lot of very angry people like never before for the last 10 years in the service area since we recovered from the “Great Recession”, but BEFORE the rioting started, and wouldn’t doubt that we will see negative interest rates in the future because the pay for the serfs will be so bad that it will have to be supplemented. How long this can go on before civil unrest causes extreme changes is anyone’s guess. We, the people, were really snookered by both political parties.

  18. Brant Lee says:

    In my neck of the woods (Ozarks), I’ve seen exactly one Tesla, ever. Maybe they will begin showing up on used car lots soon, sitting beside repo’d Dodge trucks.

  19. This is like the two revolutions in computer tech. In the first revolution the innovative design, Apple, nearly went bankrupt. In the second iteration they discovered the Iphone, and Dell and Microsoft, which led in the first part, faded into the background. Tesla is all about consumers. Consumers are tired of their oil dripping, smoke belching ICEs. Stir in some consumer tech, car apps, and you have it. The psychology of this thing is easier to understand than the finances. Also the EV is a familiar view of the future, not like Mazda turbine engines. Then of course your cities are air pollution free, and your atmosphere is full of greenhouse gas either way.

    • Andrei says:

      “oil dripping, smoke belching ICEs.”

      how old / how abused a car should be for you to notice that?? With proper maintenance ICE can work properly for decades.

      OTOH, the batteries in almost all of the cell phones I had were hooped after couple of years :)

  20. breamrod says:

    I’ve said it before. Musk is connected! period!! The SEC rolled over and played dead. If anybody else pulled his shenanigans they’d be in jail.

    • Julian says:

      That’s simply not true at all.

      Did you miss the GFC?

      How many crooks of the GFC ended up in jail?

  21. DR DOOM says:

    Well,I bought SQQQ at $7 today. I couldn’t sit out the 4th long weekend holding nothing.The QQQ 100 and especially Tesla of the fab 5 have got the voodoo-hex on me. Elon may have his all seeing Ju-ju eyeball on me and my ilk. I threw that $2400 my wife and I got from the Gov’ment at it also. Fiat dollars thrown at a (almost) fiat company , Karma may be on the move.I feel icky now that I have confessed and need a bath. For the 4th I am going to grill dogs and have multiple fill ups of the Heck Mug and maybe a couple rounds of single malt and be glad I live in America.

  22. Prof. Emeritus says:

    July 2020 – Dropping sales, Tesla prices on record high level at 1200 $
    August 2020 – Tesla loses Autopilot court case, price soars towards 1400 $
    October 2020 – Second wave of virus imminent, bad outlooks, price of TSLA jumps to 1600 $
    December 2020 – Elon Musk tweets investors are total idiots and calls them ‘pedo’ just to be sure. Stock goes to 2000 $
    February 2021 – Supply chain, production and sales all faltering. 2400 $
    April 2021 – NHSA investigations, recalls. Valuation booms past 3000 $ on the news.
    June 2021 – The company HQ with engineers and staff onboard is launched into the sun by Mr. Musk for no apparent reason other than promoting his SpaceX venture. 4000 $
    September 2021 – Tesla announces all new cars come with an industrial tunnel boring machine. The extra may loose them some money on every car sold, but hey, you can now really go wherever the hell you want with your EV. Prices propped up to 5000$
    November 2021 – Filing for bankruptcy. Shares worth 10…, 20…, wait, a 100.000 $ each!
    All events depicted are fictional. Or not. Time will tell.

    • Andrei says:

      Professor:

      very interesting, but you only highlighted the tops. Please update your forecast with the pullbacks, too :)

  23. IronForge says:

    TSLA are a Subsidies, Hopium, and Short-Squeezing-Longs Fueled Ponzi-Stock-Scam.
    There aren’t too many other BEV Start-ups because TSLA sucked up most of the Fanfare/VC/Subsidies so far; and simply can’t pull off being another Money Losing Venture for 10+Years.

    TSLA Longs BS Rainbows; and StockPx rise up.

    It’ll begin to Tank when the Majors Roll Out BEVs in Quantity.

    TM will Roll Out 2nd Gen HFCVs and their H2 Distro-Infra via the 2021 Olympics.

    • IronForge says:

      So, what would someone do as a Holder of TSLA Stock?
      Brokerages know that they’ll make money Loaning it to the Shorts.
      HFT and BS Rainbow-Talkers and Call-Sellers_looking-for-a-Graceful-Exit will Pump Up the Px and Entice Other Herd Buyers – which Squeeze Out the Shorts. Shorts have to Cover, which Bump Up the Px a bit Further.

      Borrowing Chairman Greenspan’s Situational Moniker of “Irrational Exuberance” would describe TSLA’s Stock Px Dynamics.

      I add, “Illogical” to this TSLA_Px situation – knowing that many have rushed into Retail Stock Trading due to the Economic Environment.

  24. Wakarimasen says:

    The message what is told to us by this chart is simple :” We give a sh.. whether a company is performing well in their business model or not, we make things happen whatever it costs and we want this technology as we wanted google, facebook and so on”. And you know where is a fu…. will there is a fu… chart. And exactly this is what happens. Influential forces have so much money available that they create developments by the stock market, they let things flourish and others die just by the pure amount of money the put into their darlings. That gives reason to the questions whether there is a stock market as we know it at all or the public just believe that. Later perhaps due to the sheer amount of money Tesla can buy its competitors even without having a working business model nor having a functioning technology, since if EV should have a significant market share the alternate energy which can produced for them is by far not enough to let them run. It needs then old energies like coal or nuclear power to produce enough electrical energy for them. And that is basically what nobody wants.
    And when TSLA buy their from the crisis suffering competitors like Toyota, Ford or GM; Tesla wins the game without even having a properly working product. Or does Tesla have loading stations at a rate similar to petrol stations what would be needed to be competitive and how long does it take then to charge an EV at what price. There are no answers so far I know to this questions. That is why I speak about “They” because even if the retail investors do not see the flaws, business investors should see and if they do not then I have reason to say “They”
    That is no conspiracy theory since when you take a history book to your hand you see that conspiracy was never a theory but always a practice.
    And when you look at the things in this light you can easily understand why Elon Musk can perform wonders and why he can walk over the waters; because the gods are with him !

  25. aqualech says:

    I’d like to think that in the good old days, whenever that was, the stock prices were based on something besides hype/speculation/momentum/herding. I’d probably be wrong.
    The secret to wealth from the market these days seems to be to look for the most overpriced stuff and jump in. I wish I was better at that, but I keep remembering 2000-2002.

  26. roddy6667 says:

    Tesla fans in America believe that the car is popular in China. It was the toy-du-jour a couple years ago with rich Trendoids, but no more. On days when I travel all over Qingdao, I usually spot one Tesla, sometimes two. EV’s are easy to see because of the large green and white license plate. However, on any busy street, I see 2 or 3 Chinese EV’s every MINUTE. To participate in the world’s largest automotive market, an outside company must form a partnership with a native one. Technology is shared and within a couple of years, it is in the partner company’s vehicles. This is not a problem with any manufacturer that is constantly improving. VW has been doing this for 40 years and making lots of money. GM has been at it over 20 years and makes more money in China than in the US.
    Tesla is the only company allowed to manufacture without a partner. There is no technology to transfer. They have lots of competition. They will fail, leaving a factory that will be taken over by a native manufacturer. Meanwhile, they provide jobs for the locals.

  27. John Taylor says:

    Wolff – you admit that Musk has supernatural powers, but you’re looking in the wrong place if you expect heavy growth in production or sales.

    Tesla’s miraculous growth – which makes it easily the #1 car company – is in it’s share price!

    No need to worry about the silly little details on that pesky financial statement.

  28. Bet says:

    Tsla has a small float under 200 million , easy to manipulate. Also heavily shorted and musk owns a nice chunk of the float
    Options are the only way to trade the stock with finite risk. For myself. I just watch it like some crazy fantastic breathtaking exotic animal. I have traded it a couple times and wanted to make a t shirt that said
    “I traded tsla and lived “

  29. Carlos Leiro says:

    There are advantages to car brands that Tesla does not have. The Volkswagen group owns Audi, Porsche and Bugatti, among others. Hence, it is not uncommon for some vehicles to share parts from other models in order to reduce costs and production time.

    • Prof. Emeritus says:

      Tesla does not benefit from such a great cost reduction effect, but there is still plenty of generic parts coming from suppliers that are also used in a variety of models. I’m sure there is a fair share of Mercedes in their cars (the two companies even co-operated for a while on a Tesla-powered B-Class) and things such as wind-shield wipers, switches, buttons, indicator lights, seatbelts are also unlikely to be Tesla-specific. The more valuable drivetrain components are shared with various power electronics used in high-power equipments such as power supplies of industrial machines or emergency power systems (in a much repackaged form, of course).

  30. leo says:

    I have3 lost big shorting but then i turned round and bet it would go up – success. not for long though cos it goes against what I believe. this is a ponzi scheme. people buy for novelty to be ahead of the crowd. sales in USA have collapsed- i dont know why Wolf hasnt seen the figures-so reliant on China, but for how long ? New factory in Berlin coming but ponzi effect fading imo . there is a huge amount to be made shorting in the future for certain. Someone tell me when we get there.

  31. Dave Mac says:

    Musk, Gates, Bezos…they get much richer, while the rest of us…

  32. BuySome says:

    When Tesla achieves 88 cars per hour based on the power of 1.21 Gigafactories, we shall all be back to the future living in Jetsonia. [Insert mask painting here.] To space and beyond! [Cut!] We’re ready for your close up, Mr. Musk.

  33. Bruce says:

    Since most of Tesla’s “profit” is due to selling pollution credits rather than cars, I wonder if anyone’s done any digging into how many credits they have left, how many more they get in the next few years, etc. Is it an endless supply of government free money or is the gravy train ending any time soon?

  34. Manqueman says:

    Little as I’m impressed by Musk, gotta admit that a drop of ~5% is apparently far better than the major manufacturers did. Of course, carting to the 10% surely helps. (That said, I wonder why he doesn’t occasionally jack up prices to ensure a little profitability. Can’t believe S and Ys costing $5k more, for example, would be dealbreakers.)

Comments are closed.