Beyond the consensual hallucination, the real world for automakers is not fun.
By Wolf Richter for WOLF STREET.
Tesla’s shares fell another 1.8% to $123.15 at the close on December 23, back to where they had first been in August 2020. They’re now down by 70.3% from the high on November 4, 2021, and thereby qualify for my ballooning pantheon of Imploded Stocks. For this honor, our heroes must have fallen by at least 70% from their crazy high in the era of money printing and consensual hallucination (data via YCharts):
The stock still has a PE ratio of 38, which is ridiculously high for a profitable automaker, but ridiculously low for an object of religious veneration, which Tesla used to be. It used to be run by Elon Musk, who used to walk on water. But walking on water turned out to be boring, and Elon is having too much fun goofing off over at Twitter for all to see, and he’s too busy tweeting goofy stuff and annoying people, including Tesla’s current or potential customers and shareholders.
So now, as people are coming out of consensual hallucination, they realize that Tesla is just an automaker, with lots of competition in the EV space, and that Musk no longer walks on water. They see that Tesla now has to do stuff that other automakers had to do for decades, like plastering big incentives on its vehicles to get them moving before year-end, talking about hiring freezes and lay-offs, and even, in a desperate move, touting possible share buybacks to try to boost its stock price. But the stock kept sinking.
And what’s the next shoe to drop? Is Tesla going to have to spend a few billion dollars a year on advertising, just like other automakers had to do for decades, in order to move the iron that is parked on vast lots across the country?
And people suddenly realized that Tesla, instead of being an object of religious veneration, is in the same overall industry – the auto industry – as other automakers, and that in terms of unit sales, this auto industry has stagnated for decades, interrupted only by deep plunges in between.
Turns out, EVs are merely replacing ICE vehicles, not adding to them, this industry being a tough zero-sum game, and every new competitor is taking a bite out of everyone else’s lunch, and the only way to increase revenues for the industry is by selling pricier vehicles year after year, which is what they have been doing, which is maybe why vehicle sales look the way they do (2022 new vehicle sales data through November; my estimate for December):
That’s the real world for automakers. And Tesla is joining it.
Tesla rattled these legacy automakers and got them off their lazy butts about EVs, and single-handedly revolutionized the auto industry. Musk was able to pull this off because investors saw him walking on water.
But now the legacy automakers have woken up from their stupor, and a bunch of new ones have piled into the market, and some of them actually have EVs out on the street, and investors have poured hundreds of billions of dollars into these EV makers, and into legacy automakers that are now chasing after Tesla with their own EVs.
Now, Tesla is having to do what other automakers had to do for decades: Pile incentives on its Model 3 and Model Y to move the iron. $7,500 plus “10,000 miles of free Supercharging,” if you take delivery of the vehicle by December 31, as it says on its website.
So there is a bunch of inventory, gone are the waiting lists, and you can just go and pick one out, and get a $7,500 credit plus 10,000 miles of free Supercharging?
This offer is an improvement over its prior offer of a credit of $3,750 for the Model 3 and Model Y.
So Tesla faces a situation: Congress passed legislation that gives $7,500 in incentives to buyers of certain EVs, and Teslas qualify, but those incentives don’t kick in until January 1, and some other automakers still benefit from the old $7,500 incentives that expired for Tesla years ago.
Business might have taken a serious hit as folks decided to wait till January 1 to get that federal $7,500, and so Tesla had to choose: Match it, or report a nasty surprise in Q4 deliveries that could tank its stock further?
And who knows what else might be going on. Maybe potential customers got turned off by Musk’s goofy tweets that you cannot escape even if you never ever look at Twitter because they get picked up everywhere in the media. And while these turned-off customers were moping about that, they found out that there are some other EVs out there now, even real 4×4 580-hp pickup trucks, while Tesla is still promising to eventually build one.
To sort of lower the intense selling pressure on Tesla shares, Musk, who’d said a gazillion times before that he’s done selling shares only to sell a whole bunch more, including $3.6 billion last week, which brought his total sales to nearly $40 billion, at ever lower prices, well, after Tesla shares had kathoomphed 8.9% during regular trading hours Thursday evening, he said at a Twitter Spaces audio chat, reported by Reuters: “I won’t sell stock until, I don’t know, probably two years from now. Definitely not next year under any circumstances and probably not the year thereafter.”
“I needed to sell some stock to make sure, like, there’s powder dry…to account for a worst-case scenario,” he said, according to Reuters. Twitter seems to come to mind in terms of that worst-case scenario.
No regulator is ever going to crack down on what Musk says or tweets. So he says and tweets whatever, no matter how goofy, which is fine for most people but not great for CEOs, and not great for shareholders if this goofy stuff goes in the wrong direction, as it has been doing recently.
Back in the day when he was still walking on water, and when consensual hallucination still ruled the trading day, his goofy tweets would cause the shares to spike. But now Tesla is becoming like other automakers, with the same problems, and what matters is the harsh reality of the auto market that has now woken up to EVs.
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It’s very hard to quantify the value of objects of religious veneration. Tesla will be much easier to assess as an automaker going forward. That said, consensual hallucination is going to leave a bad hangover.
“he’s too busy tweeting goofy stuff and annoying people”
Care to share some examples?
You said this “goofy” thing 3x. Very odd. He must annoy you. I don’t see it. He exposed some stuff that was happening at Twitter that is eye opening.
The rest of your analysis is spot on. Tesla is now like everyone else in the auto industry. No more so than now when the economy is fragile.
Goofy is exactly what that stuff is that he tweets. Always has been. It’s his sense of humor. It started years ago. Remember the “funding assured at $420”? That was a weed joke. His tweet about founding the Texas Institute of Technology and Science. Get it? TITS. But now he is posting dozens or 100s of tweets a day. Like he has nothing else to do. Today he tweeted this goofy thing: “At the risk of being repetitive, these Fed rate increases might go down in history as most damaging ever.” And “Sustainable cars powered by sustainable energy.” And a couple of days ago, “I will resign as CEO as soon as I find someone foolish enough to take the job! After that, I will just run the software & servers teams.” I mean constantly this kind of stuff. Just goofy for a CEO. It’s funny and entertaining in a weird way. But why would I buy a car from a guy that is busy posting this kind of stuff all day long? That’s the issue here.
Given Tesla’s share price, Musk will probably be tweeting about founding the South Houston Institute of Technology and Science very soon.
Muskeg: “At the risk of being repetitive, these Fed rate increases might go down in history as most damaging ever.”
Oddly, I never heard him express worry about the FED’s deranged money printing and the dangers it posed to society, nor have I heard him acknowledge how inflation is ravaging and destroying the working class and poor. It’s almost as if all he cares about is himself or something.
His TWTR comments are beyond stupid and goofy to fraudulent and should’ve been charged like Trevor Milton. Musk knows the reality of TSLA and he knows TSLA was and is in an extreme bubble. I am positive he wished he could’ve dumped all his shares to the sucker investors still waiting for a pickup truck and an autonomous EV.
Don’t forget the naming convention of his cars:
Model S
Model 3 (which he wanted as E)
Model X
Model Y
Peak honk here.
Rumors coming out of the Middle East suggest that Musk is deliberately crashing Tesla stock so that he can take it private, with the help of Saudi Arabia.
He has already consulted Michael Dell about how he took Dell Inc. private.
Everyone of them is falling.
I think, Wolf, you just don’t like what he is doing at Twitter and that has you angry.
Musk has said all kinds of stuff in his past. Done all kinds of stuff that has raise eyebrows.
He seems to have struck a nerve with you.
TimJ,
“and that has you angry.”
Hahaha, no, I’m not “angry” at all. I’m amused. I worked in the auto industry back in the day, and I’ve stayed close to it, and I hated the US legacy automakers for what they did, and I think it’s great that Musk came along and shook them up. And I’m being entertained by one of the greatest shows ever in business and finance.
All you have to do is read the article, and you will see that.
I think this is hilarious. I love what he did to the US automakers. And I love the entertainment he provides. I don’t give a hoot about Twitter, couldn’t care less what happens to it or on it. But I do care about Tesla, the dynamics that Evs brought to the market, and the auto industry in general.
And I’m watching with total amazement and amusement how he is taking down Tesla from the religious pedestal and is turning it into just an automaker without a halo. I’m watching with amazement and amusement how he is trying so hard to piss off potential and current Tesla customers and Tesla investors with his Twitter stuff.
There is nothing to be angry about. This is the most fun I’ve ever had watching this kind of stuff.
You should have gotten that idea by reading this article. I even had fun writing it!
The government will crack down only after public opinion turns and he’s caught with fraud or some other crimes. It’s the American way that all crooks are heroes until proven otherwise!
It’s the Elon Principle: Everyone tweets to their level of incomprehensibility.
Yes, the number of eye-opening things at Twitter from Musk — the mass layoffs, the blue check pratfall, the way Musk judges engineering talent, how Twitter was actually showing preferential treatment for accounts like Libs of Tiktok, how Hunter’s pics were taken down because revenge porn was bad and against policy, how someone can be ultra-wealthy and utterly incompetent except at using that power and leverage over others in a dictatorial fashion, Musk’s views that labor rights developed over the last century were a mistake and that good workers are humans who forgo everything for work and spend 24/7 at their desk in service of dear leader…
Yes, real eye-opening stuff, which is why articles like these exist, because this rich, childish buffoon –who can’t decide which child, be they a company or otherwise, he likes best — is finally being exposed for what he is.
And still people will blindly support him because he antagonizes their enemies and is a “hero to the cause.”
Sound familiar? Oh, sure, I must have a problem with Musk so my opinion doesn’t count and can be handwaved away as the grumblings of a jealous hater or whatever Muskolytes need to tell themselves to keep the faith.
I’ve worked with a half dozen CEOs of companies worth > $10B. Frankly, they were all goofy at some point. Either stentorian or goofy, it just depended on when you worked with them. Most companies hide that from the press, Musk doesn’t let them.
This level of wisdom is unobtainable anywhere else in the universe.
Just to add… if you ignore the Roadster as a concept car, the first four Tesla mass market cars are the “S3XY”. The Model 3 was originally going to be named the Model E, but Ford threatened to sue (claiming ownership of the model brand name) so Tesla went with the “3”. Cute and fun… but it starts to get old when the company isn’t hitting model roll-out dates or production benchmarks.
My price target on Tesla was 150 back in August when it went back over 300. Most thought I was nuts. I should have taken away the “1.” I’ve seen these mean-reversion charts a million times over the decades of boom/bust stock market cycles. Just look at Wolf’s chart there, <50 easily possible…Plus, Tesla cars are not far ahead of competitors anymore, especially with pickups. Musk bafoonery and Tesla hubris basically just handed that business to Ford. I own a Model S, my second one – same build issues as before, same "customer is always wrong" service though still less cost to operate than ICE. However, it is ridiculously costly to fix if something goes wrong out-of-warrantee. You are still forced to bring the car to Tesla service shops as they cling desperately to their bloated service monopoly and accessory gouging (They want 600 dollars for tire chains). My guess is that other car manufacturers' vehicles will be easily serviced by your local mechanic and allow you to buy chains for it at your local O'Reilly or Autozone.
Tread lightly Mr. Wolf… it’s dangerous to poke holes into tin gods till they are truly dead.
… comments not only weird; Howz-bout BS!
FSD will be available for sure next year (2016,17,18,19,20….) gimme $15K please.
1 million robotaxis by 2020.
Swappable battery packs (2013)
Hyperloop is easy. (now test track is parking lot)
“He exposed some stuff that was happening at Twitter that is eye opening.” Care to explain like what he exposed that’s worth $44B? a $44B joke at this point, one that he is making himself look more ridiculous by the day.
I think it’s hilarious he overpaid by over $30 billion for a company. I also think it’s hilarious how it sent the leftist political hacks into a seizure.
I think they’re all the same people – a bunch of self-important, pompous-aszed control freaks who need to be knocked back a few pegs.
If there’s anything this raging mania bubble has taught us, it’s that those with the most money, power and influence have the least amount of class.
He wants to turn the HUGE Twitter user base into something actually profitable. He started by firing the massive amount of dead weight there. It is suspected that he is wanting to modify it to replace Tic Toc which he hopes will be banned and to serve as a YouTube substitute for video content producers who will earn financial compensation for their content just as on YouTube.
Money can’t buy class.
Musk will never have class.
Winston, he bit off more than he can chew, he is flailing in real time, doesn’t know what he is doing, and all any of us can do is point and laugh at all the needless destruction of people’s lives and careers his very public crusade begets.
People can have truth put right in front of their face but will continue to believe the lies because the source of those lies is Elon. Tech’s Orange Man. Got rid of the dead weight, hah. Some of the hull keeping the ship afloat while he was at it.
Having a plan isn’t the same thing as having a good plan. Twitter’s userbase was the product and attempts to monetize them is a mathematical loser.
“Money can’t buy class.
Musk will never have class.”
Let me guess you think you have class?
No, I think they are pointing out an obvious conclusion based on an old observation around Old vs. New money.
I’m not a big fan of Seth McFarlane’s work, as one example, but he has *way* more class than Elon Musk can ever hope to capture, and they both followed the same King Nerd transformation after achieving astronomical success.
“eye opening” sure is a generous characterization of that nothingburger, and the rest of it goes beyond a goofy sense of humor.
Other savy investors are probably paying attention to the way he’s insulting elected officials, while he’s still in a very regulated and subsidy dependent business, or two.
Other savy investors probably notice him saying “The woke mind virus is either defeated or nothing else matters” and then realize selling cars must now be taking, ahem, a backseat.
Collusion with the FBI to censor and besmirch people they didn’t like due to politics or opinions on COVID.
Ok…a nothingburger in a country that has put it’s Constitution in the trash.
Much like how Wolf is destroying the Constitution when he censors inane comments?
Apple,
Wolf allows free speech, within very well defined and very reasonable guidelines, and this site is maintained by him with a clear mission. That is why I read, comment, and make financial contributions to it.
“If freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter.”
“The Constitution is the guide I will never abandon.”
-President George Washington.
Well Tim, if that’s how you really feel, you better sign up with your local domestic terror group and join the fight instead of wasting time posting comments on a financial blog.
Tim, it’s funny you use words like “collusion” and “besmirch” because they don’t really have any firm indication of what happened. It’s almost like you’re trying to sensationalize a nothingburger about how Donald Trump’s FBI sent Twitter a few emails reporting conduct against the law, against the Terms of Service, and threatened state employees.
I agree with Prairie Rider. Wolf can manage his site and the comments however he wants. Though I would think it was odd if Wolf was taking direction and/or input from the FBI on how to moderate comments.
To all the people seriously griping about free speech on the internet… Whether it’s a blog like Wolfstreet or social media platform like Twitter, since they own and control the platform, THEIR speech is protected. Sure, you can say what you want, but THEY have a right to delete comments and ban you, they don’t have to let it stand. This is not a public square, and neither is Twitter, it’s a privately owned house, and the people who own the house can kick you to the curb and there is nothing you can do about it. So please for heavens sake st*u about free speech.
*Want to just clarify my comment above because I’m sure someone will read it incorrectly — I’m not arguing against free speech as an idea or a right, I’m merely pointing out that legally / constitutionally free speech is in fact limited, and private entities do not have to be forced to speak or guarantee speech in all contexts. So to cry about free speech censorship on a site like Twitter or Wolfstreet just sounds ignorant.
@Whatsmynameagain,
Your comments are clearly advocating *for* freedom, as it concens speech or otherwise.
Freedom of Speech isn’t guaranteed by the Constitution. Wolf can write whatever he wants – it’s his web site. Likewise he can moderate any comments he wants – including this one. For all I know, he might even be writing the comments all himself and I’m the only human here, LOL. If Musk wants to buy Twitter, ban all users, and simply use it as his own bully pulpit, so be it. I think it interesting that some people consider a private media company to be covered by the 1st amendment of the Constitution. The 1st amendment simply states the GOVERNMENT shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech. Nowhere does it state that the Government has any authority to ENSURE Freedom of Speech. Big difference.
I like the way some of his tweets expose the hypocrisy of the collusion between the media and the powers that be. However I am not on any social media sites
And I’m sure all the other things you don’t care about, don’t see, or don’t understand are a factor in what you choose to focus on and post about.
Unquestionable support on what he’s doing you like, “He has faults” or other handwavey nonsense on everything else. Bob Altemeyer would be proud.
LK I have no idea what you are talking about
Of course you don’t.
Glad it was eye opening for you Timj. The stuff Musk is exposing at Twitter has been known by millions of people, just attempted to be covered up by entrenched corruption.
Today’s truth is last year’s conspiracy theory.
This change in roles used to take decades to unfold…now it happens very quickly.
Actually he is exposing the liberal agenda. The stock is down because if it, no doubt hedge, pe and market makers were given assignment by the sheep flockers if the left
Totally agree!
You need guys need to put ‘/s’ at the end of your posts as I fear many people won’t realize you are just being sarcastic.
Don’t piss off the “in group” with all the spending and political power. First rule of being a CEO.
Well played, sire.
Timj,
I agree. Musk is pulling back the curtain like Toto.
Goofy he may sometimes be, because most peeps couldn’t take H.L. Mencken.
As far as cars go, since electronic fuel injection came into the picture that’s all the ‘tech’ I need.
Oh c’mon. Citing his antics as goofy is being damn’d generous. Wolf has kid gloves on his kid gloves.
My problem with Elon is his behavior as a “public” company CEO. He seems like a good startup guy or private equity guy or maybe even a turn around guy, but you are supposed to be operating the company in the long term interest of shareholders as a public company CEO. Let’s see if Tesla can make it through a deep recession.
I think Elon Musk is smart. He knew Tesla’s shares would correct as Interest rates increase and hallucinations end.
So he picked up Twitter to give himself the same thing that other billionaires already have or had when they were active. (E.g. Bezos had Washington Post, Zuckerberg has Facebook, Gates had MSN, even both Soros and Buffet have media empires).
The thing that all billionaires want is control to manipulate media (social or mainstream) so that they keep controlling narrative, build a political fan base and earn political immunity in the process.
We should not single out Elon here.
Good article Wolf. It only 2 comments to ignite the 1st Tessssla Fanboy. 😂😂
Musk is a big proponent of freedom of speech I’m surprised more people don’t deem that as as important.
Hope you’re being sarcastic… the thought of Musk being champion of free speech is pretty funny, almost as funny as his $44b comedy show
Not at all. Let anybody say what they want, and you don’t have to listen to them, and that is your freedom too.
He was firing people that deemed things as mis-information when they shouldn’t have.
They have the files of the FBI and Tweeter workers working together following a political parties agenda of censorship
So explain the accounts he’s banned.
Checkmate.
Losing Knowledge It is necessary for you to do some research to become aware
Matt Taibbi reports on ZH now
The files show the FBI acting as doorman to a vast program of social media surveillance and censorship, encompassing agencies across the federal government – from the State Department to the Pentagon to the CIA.
5.The operation is far bigger than the reported 80 members of the Foreign Influence Task Force (FITF), which also facilitates requests from a wide array of smaller actors – from local cops to media to state governments.
6.Twitter had so much contact with so many agencies that executives lost track. Is today the DOD, and tomorrow the FBI? Is it the weekly call, or the monthly meeting? It was dizzying.
Musk is the right guy to get upset about this, LOL, he whose company received enormous financial support from the US government and from other governments, starting with the Nummi deal and the big loan he got from the government during the Financial Crisis, and then the pollution credit system that was implemented by governments to channel cash to companies like Tesla, and then the rebates… And now again, the rebates. He had to make deals with the Chinese government on the data collected by his vehicles in China, and on and on. SpaceX gets ALL its revenues from the government and cooperates with numerous government agencies, including the DOD. Starlink is cooperating with government agencies, including parts of the Intelligence Community. It goes on and on. His Twitter stuff is just funny.
None of that matters to these people, Wolf. Please don’t stop though as the rest of us benefit by the critical retorts.
From what I can tell, the Muskolytes just want the steady stream of tidbits of someone sticking it to government power and anything that fits a narrative fed to them that they have wed their souls to. They profess not caring about X, Y, or Z, but almost immediately go into armchair punditry on X, Y, or Z.
They don’t want to consider the whole picture that paints things as a bit more complex and shows how utterly stupid and lopsided this house of cards has become from craven and greedy people making poor decisions.
I’m sure banning the account that tracks Elon’s private jet, public knowledge I might add, was all about freedom of speech.
Oh yeah, I got an ax to grind with idiots wielding power for themselves or making specious, biased arguments.
Yeah much like the saying Don’t feed thr trolls…I am also not feeding EM simps either…
I find the Musk people exhausting. One of my good friends finally got off the Musk bandwagon this year, though, so at least I feel there is some hope.
If he supports free speech, why did he summarily fire people at Twitter who offered critical feedback?
He didn’t stop them from speaking their minds. He just did not agree with them.
No freedom from consequence? That’s your out of the hole you dug with Elon Musk, Free Speech Warrior?
Implicit,
Yes, free speech except when it gets on his nerves? And he kowtows to Chinese authorities on everything — and forget free speech — because the money he makes in China is so good? He is entertaining tho.
He has his faults, but he is needed to counter attack the the BS going on re:
1.) the pandonomium pandemic
2.) the Brave New World style media brainwashing
with government and media collusion
3.) the deterioration of the bill of rights and
constitution
Live Free or die. Speak your mind. Jefferson said the government should be scared of the people, not the other way around.
Can we democratically vote on banning Implicit? My brain is rotting.
Implicit.. The only free speech Musk cares about is his own. His uncensored mouth and actions has totally turned off the very people that have made him a success. The Techies and Greenies are no longer his fan boys. Just read the comments at Electrek. The bloom is off the Rose and the Model 3 is now the bug of the past. He no longer makes luxury cars. Those with $$$$ and show are buying Etrons, BMW i series, Porsche Taycan’s. I saw my first Lucid Air GT on Thursday.
He is in the commodity business. Batteries, (cars, wall and utility) solar panels, EV Chargers. His engineers who signed on in the last couple of years have underwater options. The only people making money off of Tesla are the shorts.
What did it for me and others was in addition to his other verbal missteps are the pictures of him with the Saudi’s and Jarad. The sooner he get’s canned the better for Tesla.
Merry Christmas Everyone and stay safe and warm!
I think I was 2nd.
I’m not a Musk fan and have ZERO plans to buy an EV.
I was calling out Wolf for getting triggered by Musk’s “goofy” comments. They guy has done all kinds of “goofy” stuff in the past. But now Wolf links it to Tesla crashing which is laughable since the EV market is falling. Hell, the economy is falling. And it has zero to do with Musk.
I think Wolf’s analysis is typically spot on, but he let himself get triggered here because of his political views or thoughts on Twitter. I don’t know. The “tell” was using the word “goofy” three times. It’s like mind virus
The EV market is failing?
Read again.
I said “falling”…not “failing”.
There is a difference.
I read the full article. I don’t see any evidence that Wolf was triggered about Elon being goofy.
Laurence Hunt,
… but someone was obviously triggered.
I quite enjoyed the article and its tone. Light holiday reading, a fun little cherry on top a wacko year. No impression that it triggered anyone till I got to the comment section.
…recommend a palliative – obtain a thesaurus, find ‘goofy’, substitute two alternative words in Wolf’s most-excellent text, and reread.
may we all find a better day.
Talk about FOMO, my bro in law just bought a Model Y because his wife really wanted one, took delivery last month, I am sure he is feeling good that he missed out on that $7500 discount if he waited just another month.
Guess hype does come with a price, can only imagine how much $7500 will buy in terms of Christmas gift
What’s the deal with him saying he’s not going to sell stock, and then selling, isn’t that also a sort of FCC violation?
One can reasonably expect if the owner is proclaiming he’s not selling, that he, from his vantage point, expects the price to go up. And on the other hand, selling definitely makes the price go down. So if he’s saying one thing, and doing another, that effects shareholder value negatively, can’t they bust him again like the did with the 420 texts?
Strange that i was typing in the box at the bottom, and not replying to this comment, yet here we are.
So your sister?
See SNL “A December to Remember” on YouTube.
Musk could be Trump’s Vice President…that would keep the fanboys happy and all the boots clean!
If Musk is clever with Adobe pdf edit etc he can modify his birth certificate and selective service docs and make it look like he’s from Wooster Ohio. I don’t think the Supremes would touch that, for some odd reason.
“I won’t sell stock until, I don’t know, probably two years from now. Definitely not next year under any circumstances and probably not the year thereafter.”
Next year, we’ll find out that he’s entered into a Total Return Swap agreement with a bank this year where the later pays him for not “selling” his stock.
“until, I don’t know, probably two years”
I wait to hear his lawyers dredging this up to cover yet another market-manipulative public statement, when his legal halo fades (as it is for so many of these midlife-crisis down-sloping billionaire megalomaniacs). He already un-promised a material “promise” here inside of one sentence.
His fanboys have some kind of abuse syndrome. Something for the shrinks to parse.
“midlife-crisis down-sloping billionaire megalomaniacs”
Niiiiiice.
This is what a massive speculative bubble, blow-off top, and subsequent horrific crash look like – a Cathie Woodshed special.
Yep. Tops are built on wishful thinking. Bottoms are when stocks are cheap using fundamentals. Not there yet.
Old school,
Corporations were doing buybacks using borrowed money at top prices. So naturally they will start issuing new stock at bottom prices.
Lol! Exactly. And this is why buying back stock should be illegal.
Bottoms are built with Glute Bridges and steep hill running.
If there was a fair justice system, Musk, would have been tried and convicted like Trevor Milton, EV maker Nikola’s founder and CEO. Musk’s fraud on investors is far greater in $$$ terms than Milton’s!
Good summation Wolf, although, you have been much easier on Musk than I would’ve been.
As I wrote here months ago I have been short TSLA for over a year and to avoid TSLA stock. Musk’s worst case scenario is within a decade TSLA could be banko and the company sold in banko court for scrap metal.
Meh….
I look at what was allowed to happen at places like FTX or this latest Omnibus spending debacle by Congress and this is where the world CRIMINAL comes to mind.
I am neutral on Musk. He hypes a TON.
But I see Tesla’s on the road and SpaceX rockets going into orbit.
I look at money laundering outfits like FTX or the Mafia-like Congress making backroom deals that they will be long dead when the bills come due and I don’t get all animated by Musk’s antics.
Exactly! I could care less about Tesla. However, I do hope Tesla goes to Mars privately funded.
I just like a voice that is different than the present media, that found a way to get heard by a wider audience without getting censored and/or oppressed.
It is amazing that all the big media fell in line with an agenda, rather than just reporting the news impartially.
Most people don’t want facts, they want opinions parroted to them, so they don’t have to think and realize painful truths.
I’m impressed at how you can write a paragraph like that last one without a hint of self-awareness evident in it.
Thanks Lk I wanted to impress you
I thought I left this forum troll BS behind but I forget that every day someone has a child who with inevitably grows up to shitpost for lulz.
Remember LK..don’t feed the simps. You simply can’t win, I do applaud you for giving it a try and for what it is worth I like all your points so far.
He gets far too much attention from the media. I see him as doing a public service though, if anyone cares to notice. Perhaps people will start realizing that we shouldn’t be venerating tech CEOs, many of whom start with one good idea, but due to unfettered crony capitalism, lack of meaningful oversight and staggering wealth disparity, they are able to amass excessive power and fortunes (despite their lack of social skills and management acumen). In reality none of these guys would be able to prosper if it weren’t for mania-driven growth of their companies.
It’s too bad that these stock swoons will only be recognized as consequences of excessive stimulus and money printing. That’s great cover for and avoids the need for Congress and the SEC to address serious structural problems with corporations. There will be no reckoning that executive compensation packages have far crossed the line of fleecing shareholders and looting corporation assets, no reckoning of the rot and sycophany of corporation boards manipulating stocks via buybacks and executive giveaways, and certainly no reckoning of the damage to society done by allowing one small class of people to become new age robber barons.
Maybe he drives Twitter into the ground and continues to burn Tesla shares to keep it going. If Twitter fails, maybe the media will get back to actual reporting instead of trawling tweets for the latest outage. Maybe they can expose CEOs like him for the poor managers, parents and human beings that they have become and force some humility upon them – one can only hope.
As a car person who owns a lift and enjoys working on these things and sees the switch to EVs as inevitable, I wanted to root for Tesla for exploitation of a growing hole in the market and hypocrisy of the big manufacturers (who have done everything to protect their legacy interests). They have done the hardest thing there is to do – build a company that actually makes something in a mature and protected market.
Maybe best not to venerate any CEOs. They are only humans and a fair number of them seem very unpleasant.
I agree. Actually manufacturing a complex product in the USA is so much more difficult than being a player in the Financialized economy.
Well stated
I think a bigger issue for the industry as a whole might be the fact that the progress towards the mythical “price parity” between BEVs and ICE vehicles appears to have stalled. There have been many “experts” who have called for this to happen around 2025 (although personally I have been very skeptical of this). Well, currently a BEV costs about 50% more than a comparable ICE vehicle (comparing say a Hyundai Tucson and an Ionic 5 or a VW Tiguan and an ID.4).
Although demand for BEVs in the US is relatively strong, from an overall perspective, I think EVs will remain a small niche segment of the US car market if they continue to cost 50% more than the equivalent ICE competition.
I’m still mad most manufacturers decided to skip right over hybrids and go right to BEV. My Fusion Hybrid is about to tick over 100,000 miles and the only thing that has gone wrong is 1 window switch and I replaced the rear brakes myself due to rust (climate plus brakes rarely get engaged firmly in a hybrid). I would love to replace it with something like a Chevy Volt or the old Fusion Energi, but instead they are sending me into the arms of Toyota who still offers these types of vehicles.
We have a 2010 Fusion hybrid that my wife mainly drives around town. Never had a maintenance issue. I recently bought a new hybrid Maverick that gets almost 40 mpg highway. I’ve occasionally gotten 60 mpg city driving. Check the 2023 Ford lineup. They have a PHEV Escort.
Ken,
Thanks for the comment. Maverick is interesting as I like pickups, but I really do prefer sedans, which Ford decided wasn’t worth their time. I think you are thinking of the Escape (Ford bringing back the Escort would be hilarious) which just doesn’t have much appeal to me. Still, good that there are some PHEV options out there. Hybrids are awesome. I wish there were more turbo-hybrid options out there like Hyundai is doing!
Except for the two dinosaurs, GM and Stellantis (the artist formerly known as Chrysler), car makers are actually churning out a decent crop of hybrids and are adding more models. Ford, Honda, Hyundai, and Toyota and even some of the smaller makers like Mitsubishi all have hybrid models worth checking out. The new CR-V hybrid models look pretty good.
Or energy becomes much more expensive!
The EV manufacturers will just bump up their prices by the amount of the $7500 govt subsidy. Government subsidies always increase prices without exception.
Ford already did it.
Government subsidies are always for the sellers. Exhibit A the student loan racket. College administrators laughing all the way to the bank.
I would have been impressed if he had only bought twitville to announce he was shifting toward mass production of worker bee vehicles with no gimmicky nonsense. Then followed by his decision to eat the loss and shut down the whole damn bird tree annoyance whereafter he would only take to posting humorous comments on this open site. But as it stands, we can only wait for him to arrive by rocket to promote his coming autobiography entitled “To Serve Man”. Unfortunately, I only buy books that come in paper form and have no library space left for yet another useless cook book.
Well Done 👍 Nice homage to Rod Sterling and The Zone.
IT – no doubt the autocorrect ‘serving man’ (happening more often, now. Am spending waay too-much time correcting the corrections which still sneak in when my attention is turned), but with you in remembering Mr. Serling, cigarette smouldering, observing from the intro and/or ending.
The ‘Zone’ abides…
may we all find a better day.
Serling wrote an excellent screenplay that was made into a movie starring Jackie Gleason, Anthony Quinn, Mickey Rooney and Julie Harris, called: “Requiem for a heavyweight”. If you haven’t seen it…
Merry Christmas to all and to all a good morning! Thanks, Wolf, for all you do!!
How – agreed, in glorious b&w, and not to neglect a certain (@ that time) young Cassius Clay in Quinn’s character of ‘Mountain’ Rivera’s pov opening sequence…
Happiest of holidays to all, and-
may we ALL find a better day.
And he’s blowing a fortune on Starship which I believe is a case of him biting off more than he can chew. It is FAR more of a challenge than Falcon development as is their plan to actually CATCH it in flight on the launch pad rather than use the Falcon’s method of surface landing. He also claims Starship is essential to avoid Starlink bankruptcy by launching at much lower cost the MUCH larger Starlink v2 satellites.
Re: Tesla rattled these legacy automakers and got them off their lazy butts
That’s the entire Tesla story in a nutshell and not a bit different than when all the Asian cars became super competitive after the Arab oil bargo
Not really. The automakers all know that battery-powered cars are over-priced, over-weight toys. If EVs are so great why does the government bribe people to buy them and punish people who don’t? This is the biggest misallocation of resources in the 21st century.
The irony is the government doesn’t need to bribe people to buy EVs. EVs are one of the few growing segments in the auto industry. As for over-priced, over-weight toys, many ICE vehicles fit that description perfectly too. Americans do love their toys after all!
Yeah. A nice Christmas present for the few Tesla shorts.
Sold the last tesla puts this Thursday when it hit $125. The strike on those puts was 125. Bought them deep out of money. Seems unreal now.
Tesla is going to $50, but may revisit $200 first.
This is the buying opportunity of a lifetime.
There is really no evidence of a drop in demand. Remember that Tesla will have record production of about 420k units this quarter. US buyers are holding out for the tax credit and China is in the grip of COVID. Even with that all regions including Europe will post all time records in deliveries this quarter and Tesla will make North of $4.5 billion in profits this quarter. Might be as high as $5 billion.
Tesla is NOT like any other company in terms of its financials. No car company operating at this scale has those kinds of margins. Tesla is doing BMW scale at greater than Porsche margins. Tesla does not need to advertise.
For your own sake, I hope you’re not buying. Recessions hit automakers hard. Profits can quickly turn to losses. The charging network is the only remaining barrier to entry. And EVs are still a niche product. Tesla will do well to stay in business if the recession is hard hitting.
Is that you there Ms Woodshed? Merry Christmas to ARKK
Ha ha ha ha! Everyone in the US that wants a Tesla already has one. Tesla is still overvalued by a factor of at least 2.
Please be careful with Tesla. The stock may bounce in the short term, but it is way overvalued even at today’s prices. Tesla will not be able to hold this year’s profits. These profits are engineered by all sorts of accounting tricks. My PT for now is $ 40 within two years, but the stock could fall much lower depending on the severity of lawsuits and the damages Tesla may have to pay.
Rimac Technology, Croatia, has an amazing assortment of in-house engineered and manufactured components for EVs (and many other applications). Porsche is invested in this company.
Check out their AXL_560 twin motor system which is set to run on 750 volts dc. Weight is 90 kg; power is 2 x 220 kW & 2 x 180 kW continuous; torque is 2 x 280 Nm & 2 x 190 Nm continuous; maximum output rpm is 17,200 & continuous rpm is 3,100 rpm. Power to weight and compact size are its winning combo.
Mate Rimac has made the ultimate electric hyper-car. 412 kph rolling down the racetrack! The question is, can his company supply key parts, and / or manufacture cars entirely, for what the market wants? Say, a ‘VW Golf GTI’ type of AWD car with Rimac’s EV tech would be a huge hit if the price was $50k.
Time will tell, but keep an eye on Rimac, eh?
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An acquisition of a small company by giants that due to their sheer size and complexity are unable to innovate and change (big players are unable to innovate on a concept level, but they are exception on incremental improvements and changes).
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They have small scale manufacturing and are highly dependant on a complex supply chain (big players own the chain, small are dependants). We will see are they able to scale, they have the German car industry behind them for supply.
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And how much of their creative and product focused stance will survive, once integrated in the large systems, only time will tell.
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Mergers can go in all ways…
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Since Porsche is invested, Rimac doesn’t need to build it’s own vehicle. Porsche likely has some claim to the tech. Torque vectoring (featured on their site) is nothing new. Acura MDX had it well over a decade ago and markets it under SHAWD.
$50K for a GTI class vehicle is still not affordable for Joe Lunchbucket – especially in a boy racer econo-box configuration. That would be just another niche toy with limited market appeal…. the kind kids buy a poster of and thumbtack to a wall – and certainly incapable of supporting any kind of production facility. Buy bodies in white from VW? Maybe but they’d end up with AMG pricing.
The president of TMC (aka Toyota) still isn’t sold on EV’s and, rumor has it, many auto execs are not either – but they won’t say it out loud for fear of a government or media backlash. Akio Toyoda did. Made headlines in Automotive News with his declaration that EV’s are only part of the solution.
Back to Elon: I find the man refreshing. Yes, he’s a wise a$$, but so what? At least he puts his money where his mouth is, unlike many of the other weasels that are revered by the media. Is he CEO-like? No… but he never has been. His quirkiness was what made him a “darling” of the media and now the same hypocrites have turned on him because he called bullfeathers and exposed their tactics in a quite public way. He took away their toy and kicked sand in their collective face and now he’s branded as a bully.
The $7,500 incentive? It’s marketing, not weakness. Tesla used up their tax credit allowance (which was on a declining scale based on sales volume) a while ago because they were the better EV mousetrap – the iWatch of the highway. IIRC, the $3,750 they previously offered was the second step down on that scale. With the higher profitability, due to the amortization of the tooling, tech, and R&D, they can easily afford to do so…. and lot-rot can’t be kind to an EV – especially if they’re stored in some frozen tundra. The cost to maintain them (so they don’t brick) would be high… it is for ICE vehicles, so an EV is likely worse.
You do remember that there was once a guarantee on the residual of a Model S… that was tied to that of the S-Class Mercedes. That was probably 8-10 years ago when that was announced. Why? Because both cars were in the same price class and Tesla resale had no resale track record – and few were willing to buy or lease one at that price point without some guarantee. It’s what car companies do.
El Katz,
Good point, and you’re right about a $50k GTI. Although that is what I would want for the ability to carry a bicycle inside (folding rear seats), and to have AWD — especially with snow tires in winter, and be very quick to drive.
Perhaps a 2WD VW Passat (station wagon option?) for $30k would be more of what would sell in large numbers to Joe Lunchbucket.
Several of my children own Teslas but the bloom is off the rose. Everyone in my family regards him as a right wing megalomaniac and none of us will ever buy one of his products again. He may as well rename Tesla to MAGA Motors and see how many cars he can sell.
Ta ta Escoetti
Doesn’t matter, your family helped fund Tesla’s growth into a too big to fail behemoth.
Some of the stuff that has been dug up about how Twitter used to be ran is disgusting, Musk is doing some good in the world despite being a total weirdo.
That’s double-good news. Thanks
George Romney ran AMC/Rambler (great on gas!) was certainly not right wing, but had the temerity to speak up against a certain foreign adventure narrative in 1967 and was promptly savaged by the corporate media and ‘experts’in D.C. / Pentagon.
Good point. Your family bought Teslas for reasons other than transportation. No rational reason to buy an EV.
This is what the Tesla brand will represent from here on out. Musk broke the golden rule and tarnished the Brand.
Golden brand to you perhaps.
Never was and never will be for many of us.
I hear you. Elon blew any credibility he had with me in RECORD time. I was amazed someone could drop their mask and be exposed so quickly. I’m so glad I don’t have any lease or products that I would have had to sell or get rid of.
Fortunately, there are other companies in the solar and electric car market that are doing even more.
Look, I detest Musk. I think he’s a narcissist and a crony capitalist who pretends to be acting in the interest of society when he’s really just feeding his own ego. I also think public CEOs should stay out of politics PEIROD.
That said, the idea that the “bloom is off the rose” because he espouses right wing politics, while you have no issue with the 99% of public CEOs who are “woke,” says something about you, and not a good thing.
I tend to buy things based on the quality of the item in question. Lots of stuff I buy from companies I disagree with politically.
Special Alert!
I was the victim of “consensual hallucination” yesterday! While waiting for my girlfriend in the Macy’s parking lot a white Tesla roared, or hummed, into the spot next to me. This person obviously consumed and possessed by consensual hallucination busted out of the car and gave me the nasty “YOU DOLT” look. It quickly dawned on me like unknowingly wearing a ski mask with eye holes into a bank, I was in a Ram 4×4 Cummins Diesel spewing out un told amounts of gunk while idling to stay warm. I need to park farther away next time.
If you think people who believe in global warming are “possessed by consensual hallucination, you may be the one suffering from it.
Don’t conflate believing in global warming and believing it’s caused by human activity. They’re not the same thing, regardless of what trope you can trot out about “97% of scientists.”
So global warming is real, but the 4 billion gallons of oil we burn per day has nothing to do with it???
That’s some interesting mental gymnastics in order to contort yourself into that conclusion.
If you think driving a Tesla addresses global warming in any way, you are even more hallucinatory.
Musk, initially a left winger, a visionary, a scam artists, a pump N dumper, and now a right wing disinformationist. All within a 2 year period. Who has a problem? I think the media has the deep problem, not so much E Musk.
Wolf, you have come up with the best overall new term for the world at large, so overwhelmed by communications and money that there is no longer a distinction between fantasy and the real world.
Consensual Hallucination, should be included in other mental disorder definitions, perhaps under the general term of delusions and narcissism.
I look at videos of so called investors, who become rabid about anyone posting anything opposing their investment in this or that coin or exchange. This is truly bizarre behavior in the face of them losing grotesque values in their ‘investments’. Just can’t figure it out. Will there be a time when questioning false statements by scammers becomes a crime?
…’Consensual Hallucinatons’ provide the most fertile fields for opportunists, akin to those provided by political parties of all stripes and edges…
may we all find a better day.
Here is what I refer to as critical thinking being criminalized. How far are we away from not being able to analyze or express an opinion?
“Bloomberg reports that the complaint follows a 265 page civil lawsuit that was filed over the comments, which the bank said “were harshly critical of it and some of its executives”, including the bank’s new CEO Ulrich Koerner.”
Could FTX’s trustee now sue detractors for damages? How far of a stretch would that be?
Call Musk what you want, he is trying to keep one platform of the media from crushing commentary “not liked” by them or their supporters.
> he is trying to keep one platform of the media from crushing commentary “not liked”
Um, it is and always was one private platform. You do NOT have a “free speech right” toward a private platform. People who “not liked” something can simply GO elsewhere, as free people. Nobody is crushing anybody. So OK, people can choose or un-choose Musk’s twitter just like they chose the old one (or not). Free speech rights are a limit on GOVERNMENT mandating/manipulating/”crushing” speech. It has no application here. Try to go into someone’s store and yell all day, and see what “free speech rights” you have against the proprietors. So now the market will do its thing. Fine. See who likes the store with these freaks yelling in the echo chamber all day. Straight to chapter 11.
But imagine, what if Musk seriously is feeling scared and starts transferring/monetizing twitter’s personal data to his backers here (Saudi prince, Qatar investment, Binance). These folks might like to identify track their critics, I’d imagine.
Meanwhile,. Musk fiddles while Tesla Burns. This adderall-addled midnight stoner (and willfully repeatedly advisor-ignoring) Twitter buy was Musk jumping the shark, diving into his personal dopamine over-stimmie ego trap. Every visionary, like everything else, has an arc. What cannot last forever must end. Yeah, he might right the overall ship, I can see a path, but only by adopting a kind of discipline (and real sharing of corporate power) he is flagrantly not adopting. The right elements of maturity in governance are simply not there. It is all impulse. The urge to cling to being a wisecracking arbitrary 14-year-old is too great: whiz-kid midlife crisis. Some adult must be running SpaceX, not him.
Tesla is not burning… it’s still growing like crazy.
What is Elon neglecting at Tesla?
Other than optics. Tesla has lots of employees other than Elon.
And Trump’s pissed at Musk because the new Twitter is what Devin’s Cow was supposed to bring to the masses with the Truth Social echo chamber. Now they are listening to Musk and Trump. Musk has made Trump’s platform obsolete before the SPAC went through. A billionaire pissing match! May they both obliterate each other and head to the Chapter 11 dugouts. If your on Twitter, and you don’t like it leave. Very simple choice.
Electric cars are not as practical as they need to be to replace internal combustion engines yet. They are more a fad than a real solution. Like solar, they only exist to the extent they do because of government subsidies.
In addition, at some point there will need to be a additional tax placed on them to replace the road tax money the States and Feds are not currently collecting. IMO after the initial fad is over, electric cars will lose market share until their inherent drawbacks are overcome.
Saw that ‘the electrical grid is strained’ and utilities imposing rolling blackout in NE because temps are down to the teens (+ deg F).
Hopefully it is sunny for the solar panels.
Yeah, you’re right. It’s just a fad. That’s why every auto maker on the planet is launching EVs and opening factories. I am sure the guys who sold whale oil said petroleum was just a fad!
Do you think the people who’s miss work because their electric car will not charge in the cold, or the ones who end up stranded and needing a tow because they cannot access a charging station in certain locations are ever going to buy another one? People do not like inconvenience, and electric vehicles are only convenient in certain situations and environments. Unlike gas powered vehicles, they do not work universally. There are still a lot of places in this country where being stranded is deadly.
California is spending $2.6b to build 90000 EV charging stations.
You know where the most and best charging stations are? In every house in the world! Where you conveniently charge at night when the grid has extra juice.
The most &%(*# practical thing ever for 99% of daily auto usage!
There is nothing new about electric vehicles. As a matter of fact their history and existence go back to before the Model T when electric vehicles were more common than ICE vehicles. But now people act as if this is some new technology and an idea that has not been tried before. There are reasons they did not become the favored option, and those reasons have not changed. Only a city dweller would consider an electric vehicle practical for 99% of auto usage, but then you have mass transit which for years has been touted as the ultimate solution also…. expect for its drawbacks.
It’s not a fad. The US is a tough market because we’ve gone all-in on overweight vehicles for personal transportation, subsidized fuel, and sprawl. Don’t forget protectionism. Manufacturers must now more or less focus on two markets – global cars, which by and large, are made to the same standards, and US-Canada cars which have their own nonsensical standards which are somehow causing our road fatalities to increase. The US is in a death spiral of needing a larger per-capita share of resources for the metals and rare materials that go into EVs and we’re increasingly falling further and further behind as everyone else moves past us.
Agree. They will never be more than a niche solution. Costs far more than ICE vehicle and recharge slowly so aren’t practical for long trips. Plug in hybrid far more practical. Mr Toyoda is dead correct.
The missed point:
ICE manufacturers can maybe produce an EV, but they can not make money on an EV. This shift is going to kill them. Not only do they loose their profitable segments, but they are replaced by unprofitable ones. Look at the tear downs of some of the legacy co EVs. The cost involved are crazy as they are trying to convert instead of design from the ground up. They will continue to lose money on EVs for a long time.
TESLA actually can make money on its EV (and yes even without the EV credits).
The stock may be overvalued, but I’ll bet on Tesla surviving over Ford or GM. The most likely long term competition in EVs comes from China and Korea.
(China is GM’s biggest market and its sales there are crashing and will continue to crash as China shifts to EVs that leaves nothing for GM. The Chevy Bolt and the EV Hummer will not keep it alive. GM will be on your imploded stocks soon enough)
Your first point is missed by everyone who thinks all the EV competition coming will kill Tesla. Tesla makes what, 8 or 9 times what Toyota does per vehicle. And they can now produce them by the millions. Not to mention their Class 8 Semi, and accelerating energy business.
Not a fair comparison. Tesla makes luxury vehicles.
When they start making $25K EVs the common person can afford it will be a different story.
Last time I checked, bumpers don’t commonly fall off of luxury vehicles when driving through puddles.
All stocks correct. He has exposed the left as the scum they are. Worthless creatures lacking brains, sheep in most languages, the fbi will be gutted on the exposure
Oh, so that’s his new religious savior halo. from leftist wokist tech-industrialist to rightist influencer-liberator in an eyeblink. Perfect for micro attention spans.
OR maybe Musk simply saw things for what the are, and applied the logic of a “woke leftist” nor a “MAGA” nutcase.
Musk (or anyone else) can have an opinion. One doesn’t have to agree with it – part of it, all of it, or none of it are all options. To do otherwise makes you a lemming.
The need for some to worship these “heroes” – be they sports participants, actors, musicians, influencers, or whatever shows how desperate the supply of “heroes” is in today’s world.
Here, Here! It is called freedom of speech and thought. I’d rather be wrong than overly righteous.
Cd,
So have you bought a Tesla yet?
See, that’s the problem.
If the right-wingers don’t buy Teslas because they don’t buy EVs, period, and if he pisses off the left-wingers and the middle-wingers and the don’t-give-a-crappers, who is going to buy Teslas???
That’s the whole point here.
Tesla has to sell lots of vehicles to US consumers and globally. And if the right-wingers don’t buy Teslas, and everyone else stops buying them because they’re pissed off, then how great of a job did he do as CEO?
Spouting off this kind of political stuff every day on a public platform with this intense media coverage is very risky for a CEO. A CEO’s job is to sell stuff, not to piss off actual and potential customers — and investors.
How has Musk pissed off the middle? Most don’t care about his opinions or what is happening at Twitter. If they want an EV, they will buy an EV. If they don’t, nothing Musk says will change that
BTW, we’ve had DECADES of left leaning corporate leaders spewing their nonsense. Did you do a thread on those places and their “goofy” statements?
Look up a real poll on Elon musk sentiment. It’s not that bad. Plenty of customers until this all blows over.
FiveThirtyEight – How Americans Really Feel About Elon Musk
Dec. 23 2023
2022 is the year when actual profits, actual accounting, and actual governance skills were remembered, out of the wreckage of the consensual hallucination.
By 2025 there will be 140 EV vehicles offered by a dozen or so makers other than Tesla. Some of these names will be members of an auto group, eg. VW, Porsche.
The US Fed agency in charge of auto safety has ordered an engineering assessment of T’s vaunted ‘self driving’. This is often a precursor to a recall.
This doesn’t get recognized often, but the whole charade of CEOs granting themselves huge stock options, selling said stock, then doing a “share buyback” is nothing more than what Sam Bankman-Fried did at FTX. The only difference being it’s considered legal stealing rather than illegal stealing. Nearly every CEO at every company is doing this but Elon Musk is taking it to a particularly egregious level.
Indeed, TSLA is just an automaker. Not only that, but it lacks the thousands of dealership sales and service centers like all of the majors have. Before too much longer the legacy makers will bring a variety of models to market creating serious competition of TSLA. Once this happens, TSLA will be valued at perhaps 15X earnings.
Tesla’s “direct to consumer” approach appealed to the crowd that hates car dealers. Since Tesla gets mostly full MSRP for their products, they are potentially far more profitable on a per unit basis than a company that has franchisees. The franchisee’s are sold the vehicle at a discount and then there’s other payments such as holdback, CSI incentives, volume incentives, floor plan assistance, fuel allowance, etc., that come on the back side on the *real* invoice, not the one they show you when you get an *invoice* deal.
For Tesla to attempt to build out nationwide sales and service on their own nickel would require a gigantic investment. That’s why the franchise system works for them…. the dealers do the bricks and mortar on their own nickel. Most states have laws against direct-from-factory motor vehicle sales. Tesla has an exemption, but that was because they were a fringe player. Once (or if) they become mainstream large volume, they may lose that exemption and that edge.
You forget that EVs need much less maintenance than an ICE car. No more quarterly oil changes or annual tune ups. Most Tesla owners hardly ever need to go into service. Even after years.
Just $30000- battery packs…
Tesla batteries last between 300,000 to 500,000 miles. The average person drives 273 miles a week, so you can expect your Tesla battery to last anywhere from 21 to 35 years, depending on your driving habits.
Point being, Tesla batteries will rarely (if ever) need to be replaced. You’ll probably need to replace your car before you need to replace the battery.
Most EV vehicles will outlast their battery packs with the latest battery tech which is very reliable.
You cannot measure a battery by mileage. It does not work like that. You measure it in charge cycles, and those charge cycles do not matter if if it is a part cycle or a full one. THEORETICALLY if you drove the full distance and then recharged you may be able to get that sort of mileage, but in the real world it is going to be much much less. At current battery costs, that makes EV’s disposable vehicles at the point you have a battery issue. Until cost effective battery recycling becomes a realization, EV’s are going to struggle to gain favor with much of the public. There are also the issues of their power having to be produced by fossil fuels at power plants, their large carbon footprint, their problems in cold weather, and other issues that make them far from the ultimate answer to transportation.
On December 13th, Bloomberg had an article with the headline “Tesla Stock Has Never Been This Cheap”. Google the article, you will find it. The last sentence in the article…“Between the issues with Twitter and the slowdown in demand, Tesla could fall as low as $150 before it becomes attractive to most investors.” At $150 a share Tesla has a market cap of $474 billion. Is Tesla stock “attractive” to most investors with a market cap of $474 billion? No! (Well at least it shouldn’t be.) That is 10 times the market caps of Ford ($45B) and GM ($48B). Yesterday it closed at $123.15 with a market cap of $389 billion. These analysts are delusional. I think the overall problem with the market is a fundamental misunderstanding of how stocks work. The retail trader (and it appears some analysts) look at stock price and not at market capitalization. Stock price has no meaning if I don’t know how many outstanding shares are out there. Often I see headlines on MarketWatch or Bloomberg stating XYZ stock is now $50. Who cares! Tell me the market cap and I can then assess if this XYZ company should be worth that much. Stating the market cap in headlines instead of the stock price would make much more sense.
THE MARKET CAP ALSO PLUNGED BY 70%, LOL
I also said that the PE ratio was still ridiculously high at 38 for a profitable automaker. You can get the PE ratio, for example, by dividing market cap by net income. Go ahead and read the article, it doesn’t bite.
Wolf, I read the article. I always do. Your analysis is great. I think you mistakenly took my comment bashing you. It wasn’t. My comment was directed to Bloomberg, MarketWatch, CNBC, and the Jim Cramers of the world that tout stock price as the end all be all without giving the listener the whole picture. By doing this, the uneducated speculator creates these types of bubbles by thinking that the lower the stock price the better the deal. For instance, they may remember when TSLA was at $750 before the first stock split and think, “Oh this will go back to $750.”…not understanding that there are 15x more outstanding shares available now. This what causes so much volatility in the market. I know market cap, PE, etc. is easy enough to figure out. But the average person out there only hears the stock price. My point was that financial headlines from the BIG financial networks and websites should focus on market capitalization, not stock price. Keep up the great work Wolf. Your site is bookmarked on my browser and and I check out your articles daily…even on Christmas Eve :).
Things that were not mentioned:
Tesla raised prices recently due to high demand:
– Torque News reports that over the last year, the base trim of the Tesla Model Y has increased 25%, from $50,490 to $62,990. Additionally, the Model X Long Range has now broken into costs in the six figures, with a price increase from $89,990 to $114,990.
– Recently Nissan (Leaf) and Chevy (Bolt) lowered pricing on their EVs. (Due to low demand)
Tesla is still run by Elon Musk despite sarcasm in the GDFA. :)
In the same Twitter Spaces chat Wolf quoted Elon also said “He has not missed a single major meeting at Tesla.” and “Tesla is firing on all cylinders.” and paraphrasing, “The goal of Tesla is to advance sustainable energy around the world…. We are already in a recession….. If Tesla has to sell cars at cost due to insane FED high interest rates for short while… it has the capital to sustain that and get through a recession and sell every car it can produce. And continue 40-50% production growth YOY. “ and he implied share buybacks are possible when it becomes clear Tesla has weathered the recession.
I think Elon would rather sell cars at cost than produce less cars. That will be hard to compete with.
There are at least 6 levers Tesla can pull or achieve to sell every car it can produce.
1) open new markets: Turkey just announced
2) Incentives that don’t cost much: Insurance, self driving features, free charging
3) New markets and models: Cybertruck and unannounced entry level vehicle
4) model refreshes
5) FSD/robotaxi
6) Advertising
Analysts consensus this week is
BUY – 27,
HOLD – 13,
SELL – 3
– CNBC
Tesla stands to capture up to $25 billion in subsidies in the next 2 years alone from the IRA due to Tesla USA manufacturing of batteries, energy storage, EVs. And those subsidies are scheduled to exist through 2030 if not amended.
Tesla EV Semi should qualify for $40k IRA subsidy per unit. Production goal of 50k semis in 2024.
The Gigapress has been spotted being delivered/assembled in Texas in preparation for the Cybertruck manufacturing line.
IF other EV makers can mass produce, then we will see if they can cut into Tesla demand.
In the past Elon said he didn’t have any more “planned” stock sales.. So technically he didn’t go back on his word. But everyone seemed to have inferred it was a promise.
Tesla can’t meet demand for Megapacks (grid energy balancing product)
Tesla is now working faster than ever through its backlog with 42 Megapacks per week produced at Gigafactory Nevada, in addition to the new Megafactory in California recently coming online and trying to ramp up to an ambitious capacity of 40 GWh of Megapacks per year. – Electrek
Tesla is not just a car company.
Tesla Cars vs.
BMW & Audi & Toyota & Honda — car manufacturing
Tesla Network vs.
Lyft & Uber — mobility services
Tesla Supercharging vs.
Electrify America & EVgo & Ionity & Fastned — fast charging
Tesla Charging vs.
ChargePoint & EVBox & many others — home/destination chargers
Tesla Autopilot vs.
Mobileye/Intel & Waymo & Cruise/GM & Nvidia — self-driving/driver-assist tech
Tesla Solar vs.
Sunrun & Vivint Solar — solar panel installation
Tesla Solar Tech vs.
SunPower & Trina Solar — rooftop solar generation tech
Tesla Energy Storage vs.
AES & SimpliPhi & sonnen — stationary energy storage
Tesla Grid Services vs.
Utilities around the world & Stem — grid services
Tesla Insurance vs.
Allstate & Geico & State Farm — insurance
Tesla Stores vs.
Auto dealerships — auto sales & service
Tesla Trucks vs.
Freightliner/Daimler & MAN Truck and Bus & Scania & Iveco — semi trucks
Tesla Infotainment vs.
Apple & Google — in-car infotainment
Tesla Computers vs.
Nvidia & Intel — computer chips, systems on a chip, supercomputers
Tesla Batteries vs.
LG Chem & CATL & Panasonic — battery cells
Tesla Seats vs.
Faurecia & Johnson Controls & Lear Corporation & TS Tech & Toyota Boshoku — automotive seats
Tesla Robots vs.
Kuka & ABB & Yaskawa Electric Corporation — industrial robots for manufacturing
Lithium mining vs.
Albemarle (NYSE:ALB), Sociedad Quimica y Minera de Chile (NYSE:SQM) and FMC (NYSE:FMC).
Sorry that the value of your TSLA shares has plunged so much. My thoughts are with you.
Thanks..
The shares I bought yesterday are holding up fine so far though.
I do wish I had as omniscient an understanding of markets as you. I will never doubt “don’t fight the FED”. I didn’t really doubt it. But didn’t act on rising rates. Sell high buy low would have been nice. I don’t spend time trading though. I have 20 year timeframe.
Here to learn.
Willie’s retirement grease.
Ha ha, I’m sure Turkey is full of customers waiting to spend 50 % more than they need to for a car, “new markets” aren’t going to help Tesla, the rich in North America and Europe who want one already bought one, now we are in the phase where year over year sales will dramatically plunge.
Sorry about your religion falling in price.
Fyi Honda produces: automobiles, luxury jets, lawnmowers,gas and propane electric generators, water pumps, ATV’s, snow blowers, motorcycles, hydrogen fuel cells, solar panels, marine engines, etc.
Tesla’s order backlog has disappeared.
Their EV tech is not unique. Competitors are actually producing better EV cars.
It’s extremely difficult to get your Tesla repaired if it breaks.
They have way more productive capacity than orders.
Oh and look they are no longer growing … I wonder why …
Nothing you just posted is accurate. An order backlog is still there, they are easier to get repaired than an ICE vehicle. Check out their mobile repair services. And they are growing at 50 percent YOY. Not to mention 20 billion on the balance sheet with no debt.
Check cost of battery for a 3
As near as I can tell, about 5K less than a Mustang Mach E battery.
And double the price of a new ICE motor IF Tesla has one.
Irrelevant if most model 3 batteries last much longer than engines.
My buddy had to go get a new rear window last week and said the service experience was great.
James0
Tesla’s are easy to fix excluding wrecked cars .
They are Plug and Play . All you need to do is diagnose them easily with simple equipment or experienced knowledge and you know what’s wrong with right off.
Most such repairs take 15 Mins or less but a repair shop will not tell you that .
Just change the part and boot it all done
I don’t have interest in Tesla Stock or any such interest in that area
of market…. Just Saying
And No I don’t own a EV lol I buy broken cars and fix them as I like old Cars .I don’t lose Money on Cars .
thanks for your post tho Merry Xmas
1. Tesla’s secret is not just cars, always keep the hype with mars colonization, hyperloop and self driving cars
2. Never post profits. Once you do, PE ratio will disappoint the investors.
3. FED is not helping the traders exactly.
4. If tesla is not a car company but a sofware or AI company, this dot com bubble 2.0 is the reason.
5. Chilly day in the swamp area. The girl next door asked, are you going to that ugly sweater competition? I think she is hitting on me.
6. I got holidays all this week, I can go all long this week…
7. Happy holidays….whatever….
“Chilly day in the swamp area. The girl next door asked, are you going to that ugly sweater competition? I think she is hitting on me.”
Very funny comment and complex humor. Invokes Charlie Brown
Re: consensual hallucination
The collective consciousness we share is a misguided interpretation of equality, the thought that we are all equal. If anything we’re just all unique, with fingerprints that encapsulate identities that have balances of failures and successes.
What stands out in a world of conformity is abnormality, a person that is one in a million or billion, the freak of nature that transforms through a phoenix-like metamorphic journey, from average, to exceptional to nonlinear phenomena.
How is the Tesla shaman fantasy different from embracing or worshiping trump or SBF’s FTX illusions? Fantasies and desires fuel imagination, up to a point where cult membership is a badge of honor, separating the have’s and have nots.
A great example of being drawn into the magnetic field of cult culture, is the allure of Jim Jones and his Peoples Temple, which sold the manure of “social equality” which graciously allowed members to drink the Kool Aid. In fairness, brainwashing needs an empty canvas or slate in order to build a narrative, then crystallize supportive layers that strengthen foundational core belief.
Discernible differences between worshiping Tesla, trump, FTX, Costco or any stock on any market, anything, any person, is all about the process of accepting a narrative, then opening yourself to devotional obsession.
In the case of Wall Street being a platform for greed, they’ve excelled and pushed every available envelope beyond breaking points, finding new ways to sweeten the honey and sell higher grades of ecstasy, because, there’s always a market, always suckers, always weak regulation, continuous unaccountability and weak enforcement of ambiguous laws that enable political collusion to grow faster than cancer.
If this current financial bubble teaches one lesson, it’s the certainty that greater stupidity will ensnare more people in greater con games, doing greater damage to an increasingly fragile world that will simply accept the narratives of new criminals who will promise things too good to be true.
“If this current financial bubble teaches one lesson, it’s the certainty that greater stupidity will ensnare more people in greater con games, doing greater damage to an increasingly fragile world that will simply accept the narratives of new criminals who will promise things too good to be true.”
Amen. Americans need to stop worshiping egomaniacal, mentally unstable “geniuses” dressed as charlatans loaded with cash and a big checkbook and find some honorable role models whose life’s work the world a better place-not simply made themselves rich, with a huge social media following at the consumers expense. Mother Theresa, Nelson Mandela, Louise Pasteur, John F. Kennedy, come to mind.
The “electric car” is not a game changing invention. Tunnels for cars are not new. Satellites and Rockets to the moon are old hat–and gee that’s great they learned to reuse them….after blowing lots up.
What we need is a visionary who can give us moderately priced, affordable Clean, renewable energy production processes–that will be a human being worthy of distinction, honor and emulation.
The problem with building a great product at a great price point is the (monopoly) competitors. They will do everything in their power to keep high margins, and make sure your enterprise fails. In other words, anyone honorable immediately gets snuffed out.
Nathan..
“What we need is a visionary who can give us moderately priced, affordable Clean, renewable energy production processes–that will be a human being worthy of distinction, honor and emulation.
Everyone seems to think this is some sort of technical problem…. It is not. We do not have a free market in consumables. We are not given choices in buying whatever is the best option, we are only allowed to purchase what is offered by a monopolistic block. It is not about solutions, it is about profit and power. The people in power are not concerned with what is good for us, or the planet, they are concerned with keeping a controlled monopoly on the markets. Energy and everything surrounding it is a tightly controlled monopoly and the same people who control petroleum control the electric industry. Monopolies are like governments, they create the problems, and then they present themselves as the solution to the problems.
Well said. Never try to keep up with the “jonses”- it is deadly
TSLA are going to get more competition from CHN+VNM EV Makers planning to roll out their Products here, so it’s going to get harder for TSLA; but better for EV Consumers in a few years as market competition may improve their Build Quality.
I’m leaning on the CHN EV Makers coming out on Top, since they have Models which range above and below what TSLAs offer and there will be Makers who strive to improve their Build Quality.
Strange – thought the €URoZone EV Makers were going to prevail here in the USA; but thanks to Greentard TreeHuggers Haebeck+Baerbock(Not a Single Environmental/BioChem Degreed Party Exec), and Biden/Truss BombSquad, €URoZone Makers may have to curb their EV Builds…
Great subject, love him or hate him Musk has been able to get a lot done in his time.
Agreed.
In an age where stuff is mostly digital and of questionable value, I see Tesla’s driving around and SpaceX rockets launching and landing. I don’t own a Tesla nor do I plan to get one. I work at a competitor to SpaceX, but I respect what they have achieved
It’s quite remarkable for one guy. I’m neutral on Musk. He’s a mixed bag IMO, but he does tangible things.
He’s just taking fire now because the Left lost an ally vis-a-vis Twitter The Right is now embracing him where just a few years ago they ridiculed him. It’s ALL TRIBAL now and it’s seeping into lots of things.
This whole thread is a reflection of that.
What if Musk is simply a “front man”, (like Milli Vanilli), who creates and sells the “hype and hoopla”, which is then turned into products by really capable engineers who design the products and manufacturing gurus who build his factories and supply chain maestros who make it all happen? Why is this the fawning consumer adoration and idolatry bestowed upon this rather slovenly, disheveled, “quirky”, almost Tourette’s-syndrome like, cluelessly offensive and dishonest charlatan, who is the face of the Boring Company?
The Right may embrace him for his views but they do not constitute a market for EVs. Alienating the Left who DO buy EVs is not a recipe for success. He is trashing his brand with his existing market.
Correct. The double standards of both tribes is nauseating. Plenty of examples here.
….are nauseating..
Musk, Joe Rogan and others are outliers that help change the world by promoting freedom of speech. Just like all the scientists and MDs that have been oppressed by the oligarchs
I personally dislike Elon due to his treatment of employees and society.
However, he has kicked the crony capitalist’s butts and revolutionized EV’s.
EV’s are a better technical solution than gas powered vehicles in so many ways. It will take Elon, or the government, or both to move society in this direction. That is a good thing for so many reasons. Prices will eventually drive adoption once capitalism drives cheaper technology.
Just because Elon drove innovation and change, I was never ready to join the Tesla cult. I won’t join any political cults either.
Musk is the ultimate crony capitalist. Everything he does is government incentivized. Musk’s genius was creating the “green market” in congressional minds, and lining up the subsidies well in advance.
Thank you, Wolf for posting my comment after taking away my questionable afterthought.
You are an awesome moderator.
Happy Holidays!
If you believe this, then you are dealing with a distorted vision of reality.
Musk would have never gotten his first car built if he were not in bed with the same so called crony capitalist’s who control the entire energy industry.
History is littered with the carcasses of innovators who came up with solutions that did not fit the agenda of the energy monopoly. Tucker is a perfect example, but only one of thousands. Nothing is allowed to be produced unless the “powers that be” want that thing produced. We do not have a capitalist economy, and have not had one since the first industrial revolution. Our economy is a tightly controlled monopoly controlled by a very few at the top of the pyramid. It runs on the principals of one of its founders, Rockefeller who said competition is a sin.
TSLA was never about selling cars ; it was the prime indicator of how much stock market gambling was dominating the financial markets .
At one time the market cap of TSLA was equal to the market cap of all other auto companies combined. To justify its market cap, it would have to sell 20-25m cars per year.
Now that government edicts are forcing consumers to buy EVs , every auto company will be producing EVs in volume within a few years.The chance of TSLA ever selling 20-25m cars / year is zero.
Government and the markets always focus on first order effects , but rarely focus on 2nd and 3rd order effects .
I have two questions .
Where are all of the old EV batteries going to be dumped in 5-10 years? A certain % probably will be recycled , but many will not. Given their history of vulnerability to fires , who will accept these batteries , especially when their numbers are exponentially higher than current numbers ?
When EVs replace enough ICEs in significant numbers , demand for gasoline will plummet. Although refiners seasonally alter the % of gasoline that is produced from a barrel of oil , the % of gasoline is still significant during the slow driving season . To reduce production of gasoline CONSIDERABLY further from those low seasonal levels is not viable with the current refining technology . My question is what physically will be done with the gasoline that is still produced during refining .Some of it will be sold to those legacy ICEs that are still on the road . But what will be happen to the rest of the gasoline that is still produced It can NOT be dumped . It can NOT be sold . The only answer is that it will NOT be produced AND NEITHER will ANY of the other products produced by refining oil
NO DIESEL, NO JET FUEL , NO ASPHALT , and NO
PLASTIC STOCK.
Given how much plastic is used in cars, how will any cars be produced .
I’ll just address this one thing in your comment: In terms of the batteries, we already know how that works out because it’s already being done:
1. they will be re-used by electric utilities. This is already being done. When a battery isn’t great for a car anymore, it’s still good enough for energy storage for a utility. Batteries are a huge thing for utilities because they cover brief spikes in loads, among other reasons. In addition, some enterprising people have found out that they can invest in building a big battery storage system and make money by buying electricity in the wholesale market during times of the day/night with it is really cheap and sell it when the prices peak. This form of arbitrage is new, and it’s a booming business.
2. Batteries of this type have been recycled for a long time because laptop batteries are being recycled. The cells in a laptop battery aren’t that much different from cells in an auto battery. But the volume will eventually become much bigger, which makes recycling more profitable.
Re-using and recycling in the auto industry is as old as the auto industry itself. A lot of the body panels are being re-used – when you take your fender-bender to a body shop, they will offer you a better deal if they can install a salvage part instead of a new part. And engine components have been reused forever. You can buy all kinds of “rebuilt” auto parts, including entire motors and transmissions, and that’s a form of re-use. It’s a big profitable business. Batteries are no exception. I have no idea why people get so hung up about this.
It is estimated that only 1% of lithium in lithium batteries are currently recycled in the US and EU. ( Journal of Indian Institute of Science -4/22)
NO DOUBT recycle technology will improve considerably in the future , but the amount of lithium in car batteries that will need to be recycled will also increase considerably in the future . Unless these new technologies succeed in recycling all of lithium in the used car batteries , the lithium must go some place.
Steel is among the most recycled materials .
Plastic is another animal. Plastic degrades after 1 or two cycles , so unlike steel, we are dependent on new plastic production .
“only 1% of lithium in lithium batteries are currently recycled … recycle technology will improve considerably in the future”
Yeah, you stepped into it: Headline garbage thrown around for braindead consumption.
Laptop battery recycling is a LAPTOP-OWNER LAZINESS ISSUE NOT A TECHNICAL ISSUE.
1. There are still not enough old EV batteries out there now for mass-recycling, this will take years to build volume, since EV mass production just started a few years ago.
2. So we’re talking laptop batteries. But most people are too lazy to take out the battery from their laptop and take it to a battery recycling location. They just throw out the whole laptop when the battery becomes useless, because by that time, the laptop may be 8 years old, and it’s time to get a new one. And people just throw the whole laptop in the trash.
So the reason why few laptop batteries get recycled is because people are just to lazy or too dumb and are throwing the entire laptop into the trash when the thing dies. This is NOT a technical issue.
The regular car battery recycling program works just fine because you return your old battery when you buy a new one. That system has been in place for many decades. The battery retailer/installer then returns the old battery to the battery wholesaler, via the same truck that supplies the new battery (we used to run those battery trucks for our auto parts wholesale business back in the 1980s!), and the battery then enters the supply chain of the battery recycler.
But we don’t turn in the old laptops when we buy a new one, and we don’t remove that battery and take it to a recycling drop-off point. We just throw the laptops out. THAT’S A HUMAN LAZINESS PROBLEM, NOT A TECHNICAL PROBLEM.
EV batteries cannot be trashed that like that because the consumer cannot just throw the EV or the battery into the trash. So the battery recycling supply chains control this process, and those old batteries when the become available, will be recycled, no problem. There are valuable materials in a battery, and companies are making money by recycling these materials. Been that way for decades.
What is the market share of Tesla. How is it profitable with such a tiny market share. Is it due to financial engineering
It’s profitable because it has the fattest profit margins in the industry because it sells high-priced luxury and near-luxury performance-oriented vehicles that are relatively simple to assemble compared to a similarly-performing ICE vehicle. The whole powertrain, cooling system, fuel system, exhaust system, emissions control systems etc. on an ICE are complex and expensive to build. Tesla has a luggage compartment where ICE vehicles have the engine and the surrounding stuff that make it work.
Market share in California in 2021, based on registrations. Note that Tesla has the highest market share of any of the luxury and near-luxury automakers. Teslas compete with BMWs, not Toyotas
In past years TSLA derived most of its profits from selling credits . Now TSLA is generating profits , but for how long and at what level.
More and more states and countries are mandating that new car sales be only EVs or the equivalent by a certain date. This means that every auto company will be producing EVs soon . More competition = lower margins .
Yes, TSLAs competition has been in the luxury car price point. But only a certain part of the population are both willing and affluent enough to afford an automobile so expensive . Unless TSLA can deliver a car at lower price levels , the numbers of cars that it can sell is very limited.
Jingle Bells
Santa smells
Easter is on the way
If you can’t afford a Ford
Buy a Chevrolet
Jingle Bells
Tesla’s pals
Musk is on the way
If you can’t buy one now
buy another day
Merry Christmas and Happy holidays
Is Musk going to turn into the same sort of laughing stock that Trump has become? It’s starting to look that way. Which would be quite the character arc. Musk’s biggest life achievement, after all, isn’t building spaceships or electric cars, it’s building his brand. He’s managed to position himself as a brilliant visionary who has devoted his life to saving human civilization. There is very little evidence to support this image when you look deeper but that hasn’t stopped an enormous number of people (mainly men) from buying into Musk’s bullshit.
That’s a strain of COVID sweeping through China and coming to town near you this winter, for those who are wondering what Mr. Engel is talking about.
Bizarrely, despite persistent “Covid is over” narratives, it is busy killing more people in 2022 than in any previous year of the pandemic.
“billion dollars a year on advertising” : he just spent $44B on a huge advertising platform, and also restored 1st amendment rights on it. He de-communisted and sacked most of the staff there, thus proving that communism costs a lot to run. He may not walk on water, but certainly he has done far more for the integrity of democracy than most. There is now a major portal freed from communist censorship where certain frightening truths about the last 3 years are coming to light.
Please show us how Twitter was communist at all. I would love to see where the owner of Twitter advocated for the collective ownership of private property.
Or is Communist = anything anti right wing these days?
I get what your saying, and agree.
But the last time that I mentioned that the next stage after oligarchy/capitalism is communism and then socialism according to history, it upset many people.
People have a hard time seeing what is obviously happening
China is behind the curve. Chinese millionaires trying to escape will have
to buy dollars, diamonds and gold, because Madoff was caught.
What do you think of 10 foot lengths of type L thickness (green stripe) 1/2 diameter copper pipe squirreled away as an investment?
/s?
Better lock them up or the Meth heads will steal them.
What a hoot this joint is! So many comments, so much fun!
But I’m going to check out here now. I’m going to pull an all-nighter by the chimney. Gotta make sure Santa doesn’t get stuck in it.
Merry Christmas everyone!
Could it be that Musk also realizes this finally about owning/running an auto company. That it’s a cut throat business run on small margins and humoungous costs and risks involved in deploying capital. I feel maybe now he realizes this risk and is trying his hand at a business like advertising which doesn’t have huge capital investments and small margins. BYD is crushing him in sales and he probably just wants to get into something which is less labor/ capital intensive like a advertising business.
I’ve read the article, and (ALMOST) all the comments. My overall take is that there are 2 Elon Musks to talk about…
1. Elon Musk – Pop Icon, Celebrity
This version of Musk is no better than (or worse than) the Kardashians of the world. Media seems to increasingly pander to the masses by giving them what they want, which is mindless entertainment about folks whose wealth and lifestyles are unobtainable by most. It allows regular folks to first enjoy placing celebs on pedestals, then even greater joy to find fault and tear them down. Elon seems to actually enjoy this role a lot.
2. Elon Musk – Businessman and Visionary.
He’s had ideas and may have even co-opted one or two, but he, unlike most in this category he’s had the wherewithal to create successful businesses and build new industries that were in their infancy. In the end it doesn’t matter how and what he did to accomplish these feats, the fact is, against all common belief, he has wildly succeeded in the EV sector and the Space sector. Will these remain successful? Who knows, though I think it’s likely.
The point is as a celebrity, he’s a clown, but he knows it and plays to it. As a businessman, he’s been vastly successful and should NEVER be underestimated as it seems many in these comments are doing.
I can only think about a saying I read once…
‘“Consider the track record of your naysayers. How many dreams have they successfully brought into this world?”- Sarah Ban Breathnach
MERRY CHRISTMAS to Wolf all the Wolfsters I’ve had the pleasure to interact with this year…Next year will be even more interesting…
Tesla down 70% and the recession hasn’t even started. Doesn’t look good.
And Cathy Wood keeps buying it.
Wow.
Yep, I used to see Elon and Tesla as very favorable. I was all in for years. Then the truth came out and in RECORD time the idiot blew any credibility he had. I’m really amazed.
Elon showed us he’s not the creator of Tesla, there are others who started the car brand as much as elon thought he could lie about that.
Elon is an ungrateful p.o.s. who had a lot of success here in California but that apparently means nothing.
His activities at TWTR is so incredibly unprofessional and stupid. It’s one thing to buy a media company like that but to get personally involved with daily texting? He’s a middle school drop out apparently. He’s communicating at the level of a republican. What an embarrassment he is.
I want nothing to do with elon, TSLA, or any business he’d be involved with. Solar and Electric cars are great and there are other companies doing even better things. I’m so glad I don’t have a lease or ownership of anything I would have had to ditch.
Buyers strike. Punish Elon for being an unreliable miscreant who has destroyed the lives of 1000s of employees and he has a court docket to prove he loves breaking laws at the expense of the little guy. Sell your Tesla. Quit Twitter. Don’t buy crappy overpriced Starlink. Don’t drive in a Boring tunnel. Boycott Musk! It is time we stop giving our money to companies with Front Men who go against our values. Buyers strike. The power of the purse. Consumers ultimately are in charge! Flex your power over the morally bankrupt miscreants! There are equally acceptable if not better alternatives to all things in life and NOBODY should voluntarily be a victim.
“…And they call him Sandy Claws”. Happy Nightmares!
TESLA is going to be fine because it is now an established brand. I, as most people, dont buy cars for political reasons. Alot of conservatives I know have a TESLA because they a) Wanted a stylish EV b)Kind of realize that is the way the curve is going. and c) They are the buyers who like the new tech(Early adopters).
Now, the media is saying that ELON is going to crash because he is no longer the richest man in the world, but have you seen how cheap he lives? He is not the typical rich jetsetter, but lives in a tiny house and could live in a trailer if needed.
2 big things EV has going for it is a)Higher profit margins than ICE’s and b) Lower maintenance costs. When you think of an EV, the tech and build is totally reimagined from what an ICE is. Someone I know who owns a TESLA says it is a totally different driving experience. There was an article that says TESLA is really a data company building out a huge neural network using the billions of miles of data at its finger tips.
TESLA is now at the point, because of how our world’s focus point where others are now getting into the field and it will down to lower margins and volume. If it comes down much farther in stock value, I can see someone making a bid to buy them. I ultimately see CHINA as their main competitor because they will low cost and volume.
I think that TWITTER is just a new challenge for him. He bought in on10/27/2022, so he has not yet been 2 months of official ownership. I am amazed how he is being written off and ridiculed when it took him years to build SPACE X and TESLA. People forget that TWITTER is still huge name brand, one of the biggest in IT.
Here is my prediction:
1. He will not be allowing free speech, but it will be more open than and less censored than TWITTER was.
2. He will use the user base to bring in more services. When he formed PAYPAL, he originally owned X.com. Now PAYPAL kept the ownershipt after ELON sold out, but he bought the rights to X.com about 5 years ago. I predict that he will get back into the payment process and fintech business, as this is where he originally started. In a techcrunch.com on 11/9, Elon talked about a vision for a Twitter payment system where he would:
1. Users would be able to send money to others on the platform
2. Extract their funds to authenticated bank accounts
3. Be offered a high-yield money market account to encourage them to move their cash to Twitter.
These are just basic ideals he threw out. But I think he bought X.com for a reason, sees himself as competitor to Apple and PAYPAL(who he does not like). Whatever he does with TWITTER, I guarentee he is way past what the MSM is seeing and it is the name brand and network reach he is looking at. He just has to get his cashflow problem fixed first.
“There was an article that says TESLA is really a data company building out a huge neural network using the billions of miles of data at its finger tips.”
If the US Government is on the road to banning Tiktok over privacy concerns, and appears inclined to prohibit any Chinese Communist Party related entity from access to American’s data, it is doubtful any “bad actor” foreign investment group will be permitted to buy Tesla or its “neural network.” Same goes for any US social media company if the Tiktok/Huawei argument has any legs.
how did you see this stock price done fall?
thank youz for the valuable incite.
One of the things Tesla has not had to deal with that the legacy makers have had to for decades is the periodic model refresh/redesign. Yesterday I was in a grocery store parking lot and lined up near each other were a Tesla model Y, model X and a couple of Kia EV’s. The Tesla’s were positively dowdy looking in comparison to the Kia’s. Like some kind of refugees from GM’s old Saturn model shop. They lack all of the latest styling cues. Maybe Elon thinks he is Henry Ford and can build his version of the model T for 17 years or more but I think his fickle customer base will soon tire of his battery buggies unless he spiffs them up.
Franz von Holzhausen is the man behind the design of Tesla vehicles. In 2000, he did work at GM as the design manager of the Saturn Sky and Pontiac Solstice.
Good eye there Seneca’s Cliff.
Before that, Franz worked at Volkswagen and contributed to the design of the ‘New Beetle.’
I always thought the Tesla 3 looked like a Saturn. And both look like glorified bumper cars. Now I know why.
I love how the Church of Musk zealots came out of the woodwork for this article. So much fun!
I’m not surprised. People are groping for information as to why the stock is dropping hard. The answer is the same it was five years ago. Valuations matter.
If you don’t make stock buying decisions based on fundamental financial analysis, like price to earnings ratio and price to sales ratio, you can lose a lot of money.
Bingo!
There are probably more anti Musk zealots.
He had the the guts to release the files of the FBI, CIA etc.. collusion with Twitter, deciding what is to be considered mis-information. This what caught my attention. And he would like to go to Mars which I find interesting.
I recycle by owning real old ice cars, and keeping them going, and if I bought an EV car it would be a used Prius hybrid; Zealot about my family and friends, and that is it.
Elon Musk is apparently a popular topic, but my takeaway from the article is simply that valuations matter.
The primary topic the members of the Musk Church fail to acknowledge, is the evolving and pending earnings revisions and impairment matters that are currently dormant.
As the market bubble popping takes on greater clarity, valuation metrics will test the faith of his worshippers. It’s fairly funny the Dodge Coin is performing better than Tesla this year, and I strongly suspect that the gentle pinprick we’re seeing (hearing) as stocks gently deflate, is just a hint of where this stupidity ends up.
The legacies of Musk, SBF and friends will be fun memories filled with belly laughs in the near future.
Could part of Tesla’s problem be that they are at the top of the initial defects list constantly? If I were shopping for an ev that alone may push me to look elsewhere.
This is an intriguing issue. Lamborghini buyers never complain about manufacturing defects. They’re not buying Lambos for reliable transportation, LOL. Early fans of luxury vehicles (like the Tesla S and X a few years ago) tend to forgive manufacturing issues because they’re early fans and they’re willing to put up with whatever. But once vehicles enter mass-production, and regular consumers with enough money are supposed to buy them, then manufacturing issues – things like squeaks and rattles and leaks and electronics that malfunction and doorjambs that are uneven – may become a decision factor whether or not to buy this brand or that brand.
I think Tesla is at that stage where manufacturing issues begin to matter in the consumer buying decisions, and Tesla knows this and is trying hard to perfect manufacturing, and the manufacturing has gotten a lot better from what it was (it was very much hit and miss in the early years). All automakers deal with that issue.
I think the more pressing issue is that, albeit late to the game, every other manufacturer is building EVs now. Even with improving quality, Tesla’s margins (and market share) are at risk.
So, now there’s a lot of players while there is still much of the population that don’t even want EVs. This market could get very saturated in short order.
Also, it’s possible that a truly disruptive technology ends ICE and electric vehicles. Maybe not. But, I don’t know anyone that got a Kodak camera for Christmas.
How about a Polaroid…only $149
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Elon is a genius, and continues to disrupt many industries. Genius and eccentricity often go hand in hand…it’s part of the deal.
“100 fires”, arson is very disruptive. Disruption without delivering a better plan, product and staying in the game for your consumers is simply arson. All Uber did was put the taxis out of business. The days of disruption as a business model are over and the VCs agree. Never again is my guess. Consumers and investors want good products that plan on being around for awhile. Not loud mouth front men like Musk that have already “given all they have got”…and onto the next grift.
Maybe, but that alone does not make him a good businessman, or Tesla stock a good deal.
Good Article….Good Comments.
Merry Christmas to one and all including the “Muskolytes”
🚀🚀🛸🛸🛹
Everything Musk has said since acquiring Twitter has been the truth. Everything. When we get to a point that we cannot speak the truth for fear of losing market share, we are cooked, stick a fork in our @ss, we are done as a republic and done as a free society. I for one, and many like me, now find Musk to be a hero, and I’m far more likely to support his endeavors now than ever before. I REALLY wish he would develop a phone that competes with Apple and Android. Assuming it was decent, he would easily grab a 35% to 45% market share. About everyone I know would move to it, leaving the current snooping, controlling, condescending, fascist phone makers forever.
“About everyone I know would move to it, leaving the current snooping, controlling, condescending, fascist phone makers forever.”
Hahaha, I don’t like them either, BUT Tesla’s vehicles are the biggest snoop devices ever that people are actually paying for to get — they snoop on you, where you go, how fast you go, what you do wrong when driving, etc., and they snoop on everything and everyone around them, and they record this stuff and send the data back to Tesla, where it’s stored on servers. When it comes to snooping via consumer devices, Musk is #1. Even his Twitter is snooping on you, LOL. Wait till you start using his Starlink internet service, LOEL (laughing out even louder).
But this article was about Tesla the automaker: And to support Musk, you’re going to have to buy a Tesla. This big fancy talk that you and your buddies would eagerly buy a smartphone he might never produce is great, but if you and your buddies don’t actually buy the Tesla vehicles he actually produces, Tesla is going to have a hard time. So prove your love for Musk by buying a Tesla, not by fancy talk.
I am with you buddy, but very low probability of buying a Tesla, unless I come into substantial bullion. And good luck with Mars and his brain chips!
The brainwashing Musk achieved is truly amazing. Even Diess, the former CEO of Volkswagen was a Tesla fan it seems. We will see how this will end.
I like reading through an article that can make men and women think. Also, thanks for allowing me to comment!