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Things Are Bad at Tesla. They're About to Get Much Worse

forbes.com

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Re: Things Are Bad at Tesla. They're About to Get Much Worse

#41

Post by jauntywundrkind »

quantified wrote: post #23
jqpabc123 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In that world he built tesla into only a 60 billion dollar company Only $60 billion??? You're selling him way short. At it's peak earlier this year, Tesla market cap was $1.5 TRILLION --- valued at more than all the world's major auto manufacturer's COMBINED. All while commanding only about 4% of unit sales. Can you say O-U-T-R-A-G-E-O-U-S-L-Y over priced? Since then, TSLA has lost almost half it's value --- and by a…

It's really hard to say how much was meme valuation and how much was people actually believing his statements about Full* Self-Driving, cars becoming an appreciating asset (!), humanoid robots. Plenty of people believe his ~lies~commercial puffery.

Its really distressing that there's seemingly zero enforcement over the incredible campaign of lies Musk has used to sell Tesla and SpaceX, HyperLoop, and others.

Musk was claiming Cybertruck had a million preorders! A million! Yet there are ~50k sales, a 20:1 ratio. https://www.wired.com/story/where-did-the-one-million-people...

Musk keeps getting away with dumping the investors, with saying whatever crazy shit he wants. And so far, the market regulators havent once bothered to care.

Meanwhile, National Labor Board has been investigating Tesla for firing employees who complained online about sexually despairing comments. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has investigating Tesla factories for racism including slurs, racist graffiti, and nooses. uS Transportation Board has been investigating accidents caused by Actually Smart Summons and self driving modes. FAA has been investigating illegal rocket launches in Florida, & reviewing requests to turn the once experimental star base launch site into a much busier production site. CFPB would have been involved in regulating X's move to become a banking app. FEC has been investigating Musk offering $1M/day to voters who sign up for his PAC. SEC has been investigating failure to give timely notice in the Twitter acquisition, costing investors billions. EPA has been investigating multiple Tesla sites (very) improperly disposing of hazardous waste. All agencies have recent seen cuts from Musk's DOGE, with many of these investigators forced out. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-03-27/elon-musk-...

Re: Things Are Bad at Tesla. They're About to Get Much Worse

#43

Post by maxglute »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #11

To be such a smart guy, Musk does some really dumb stuff --- like alienating most of his customer base. Like investing billions to build an auto manufacturing academy for the Chinese --- now his primary competition. The article highlights Tesla marketplace trouble --- but it ignores the other half of a "double whammy" that envelopes Tesla. While Musk was busy shooting his company in the foot, investors were buying hi…

IMO if Musk serious about going to mars, being mere richest 100 billionaire from wildly overhyped meme Tesla stock simply isn't enough. The smart play IS what he's doing right now... go for government power and get trillions, not just any government, but US government with trillions to extract. Of course that assumes he can secure his influence medium-long term, but dumb execution = doesn't look like he can survive next 4 years with how many enemies he's making.

Re: Things Are Bad at Tesla. They're About to Get Much Worse

#44

Post by kreetx »

JohnFen wrote: post #26
kreetx wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla stock buyers are buying it for future promise, thus the value. The other car makers aren't innovating as much so there isn't any perceived future to pull forward and buy. The disaster you are expecting is just your wishful thinking, if you look around the web, there is an alternate reality that says the direct opposite from you.

The reality is that nobody knows what the future will be. Not the person you're replying to, not the investors, not you, not me. But my gut tells me it's more likely to be the speculative investors who are engaging in wishful thinking. I haven't seen any real reason to suspect otherwise, even before the events of the last couple of years.

Technically, sure, it's not possible to tell what the future will be, yet other automakers somehow haven't managed to innovate as much and here is a new carmaker from the US that ships actual products en masse. Also, apparently Elon is able to do more than one difficult thing at the same time and succeed. The stock bubbles may burst and fall but it's unlikely an end to anything.

Re: Things Are Bad at Tesla. They're About to Get Much Worse

#45

Post by itsdrewmiller »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #20
itsdrewmiller wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>If TSLA was valued like other car companies (90% of TSLA revenue is from auto sales), would Musk look like a business genius? Yes? In that world he built tesla into only a 60 billion dollar company, along with his work at X/paypal and SpaceX. That's still incredible. (Obviously that skill hasn't transferred to government work though.)

In that world he built tesla into only a 60 billion dollar company Only $60 billion??? You're selling him way short. At it's peak earlier this year, Tesla market cap was $1.5 TRILLION --- valued at more than all the world's major auto manufacturer's COMBINED. All while commanding only about 4% of unit sales. Can you say O-U-T-R-A-G-E-O-U-S-L-Y over priced? Since then, TSLA has lost almost half it's value --- and by a…

The post I responded to estimated it was 13x overpriced, so I divided the current market cap by 13. I'm sure Ford and GM were at one point above 10x PtE also.

Re: Things Are Bad at Tesla. They're About to Get Much Worse

#46

Post by JohnFen »

kreetx wrote: post #44
JohnFen wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reality is that nobody knows what the future will be. Not the person you're replying to, not the investors, not you, not me. But my gut tells me it's more likely to be the speculative investors who are engaging in wishful thinking. I haven't seen any real reason to suspect otherwise, even before the events of the last couple of years.

Technically, sure, it's not possible to tell what the future will be, yet other automakers somehow haven't managed to innovate as much and here is a new carmaker from the US that ships actual products en masse. Also, apparently Elon is able to do more than one difficult thing at the same time and succeed. The stock bubbles may burst and fall but it's unlikely an end to anything.

> yet other automakers somehow haven't managed to innovate as much

Sure, but that's a bit orthogonal to the question of whether the wild speculative valuations of Tesla stock will end in tears or not. Innovation, all by itself, is not sufficient or a good indicator of total value.

> apparently Elon is able to do more than one difficult thing at the same time and succeed

He's far from the only one, though, and he only appears exceptional if you ignore his much larger list of abject failures. This mythologizing of Musk is just as accurate and cringe as claims that he is terrible at everything.

Re: Things Are Bad at Tesla. They're About to Get Much Worse

#47

Post by kreetx »

JohnFen wrote: post #46
kreetx wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Technically, sure, it's not possible to tell what the future will be, yet other automakers somehow haven't managed to innovate as much and here is a new carmaker from the US that ships actual products en masse. Also, apparently Elon is able to do more than one difficult thing at the same time and succeed. The stock bubbles may burst and fall but it's unlikely an end to anything.

> yet other automakers somehow haven't managed to innovate as much Sure, but that's a bit orthogonal to the question of whether the wild speculative valuations of Tesla stock will end in tears or not. Innovation, all by itself, is not sufficient or a good indicator of total value. > apparently Elon is able to do more than one difficult thing at the same time and succeed He's far from the only one, though, and he only…

Stock bubbles pretty much are due to a promise for the future, i.e, innovation, what else do you think people would be buying?

Who are the many others succeeding at this scale? And it's not really mythologizing, it's just that the naysayers seem to not count his achievements to their proper size, yet they themselves probably have little to nothing to show for on that scale.

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