Doing a quick bit of searching based on the 4680 makes me think that there has been or will be a change from NMC811 to LFP chemistry in the 4680, including one article talking about changing to US and European-based in-house manufacturing and reducing dependence on China.
I'm no fan of Tesla, but this looks like the collapse of the contract with the supplier for the battery chemistry they've moved away from, aka "no [more] big deal."
2023 article confirming NMC chemistry: https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1149/1945-7111/ad14d0
5/2025 article discussing change to LFP: https://roboticsbiz.com/teslas-4680-lfp-battery-explained-ch...
3/2025 article comparing BYD's LFP and Tesla's NMC/NCM: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S266638642...
Reuters earlier this year - "The development of the 4680 battery has been facing troubles, with the company losing 70% to 80% of the cathodes in test production compared with conventional battery makers, which lose fewer than 2% of their components to manufacturing defects, the report said."
The company L&F referenced in this article were supplying said cathode material.
ref https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-plans-four-new-batt...
A headline that actually undersells the article. The 2,900,000,000 $ deal to 7,400 $ is not just a 99% reduction, it is actually over a 99.999% reduction. I guess that is one way to get the "march of nines" they keep promising.
At some point the question isn’t “how many nines” but “why is the contract worth $7400 and not $0”.
It was on some very nice letterhead and quite tastefully bound in a bespoke leather case!
Maybe they can still invoice Tesla for some office stationary or something.
we humans aren't really good after the first couple 9's
Tesla is actually starting to make cathodes in house via a dry process, which is why they are no longer buying cathode material from this supplier. Typical sloppy reporting from Electrek.
> Tesla is actually starting to make cathodes in house via a dry process, which is why they are no longer buying cathode material from this supplier.
The latter part of this is speculative. Tesla may have begun shipping dry cathodes but it isn't clear that they're capable of matching the former third-party volume. Tesla would absolutely need the additional 4680 volume if Cybertruck sales were meeting their original projections (as opposed to now when they are ~an order of magnitude lower).
The entire article is speculative.
The poster to which I responded and the article are each speculating on the "why" for this contract. That said, we do not need to speculate about Cybertruck sales - Business Insider reported that Tesla sold only 5,400 of them in 2025Q3.
We know from this that they do not need the same level of third-party 4680 capacity, and (call it speculative if you so desire) this is the most parsimonious explanation for the L&F write down.
There is plenty there “for journalism to occur” in terms of the write-down of the deal and Teslas current performance. It’s newsworthy in itself.
Citing Business Insider means nothing - you need to cite Business Insider's source.
I would say the article is speculative. My statement is based on information given at Tesla's shareholder meeting.
Vertical integration only makes sense if you're actually ramping output
I think the missing information here is whether there are plans to put the 4680 in vehicles that sell well.
Electrek’s ‘reporting’ has proven so one-sided that I take all their stories with a bucket of salt. Even if the truck has been a flop I doubt their whole battery program has been. Perhaps they’re rejigging suppliers and pausing whilst they get ready to ramp up cyber cab production lines
> get ready to ramp up cyber cab production lines
The word on the street is this is only 2 weeks out.
Right after fulfilling the roadster orders.
And right before the Dyson sphere that will power Grok AI is deployed.
If we build a Dyson sphere just to power chat bots, I'm turning into an eco-terrorist.
Is there something you'd prefer the shoddy beginnings of a Dyson sphere be doing?
I understand thinking it would be a terrible idea in many ways, but in this scenario I think the only thing an "eco-terrorist" accomplishes is getting more servers to stay on earth where they damage the ecosystem more.
And really, we’ve had great advances in tech come out of eg the military - if AI chatbot power needs bring us Dyson spheres I’m fine with it
How does a Dyson sphere make you feel, Dave?
And what evidence do you base those assumptions on? According to the journalists at electrek despite Tesla having capacity to manufacture 250k cybertrucks per year, they're only selling 20-25k per year
I actually get a kick out of Eletrek’s roasting of Elon and Tesla, but if you read a few of their articles, it’s clear they don’t like him. Lots of opinions and editorializing in the articles. I have no problem with that, you just have to realize where they are coming from and base your interpretation accordingly
Its not that they dont like him, its more of Editor was big believer until Tesla scammed him out of half a $mil worth of fake roadsters that never materialized.
> booo hoooo
If your employer said they'd pay you half a million if you worked for them, and then you did and they didn't pay you, I doubt you'd be dismissing it so frivolously
It's called fraud, the editor was a victim of fraud. At least he clued on late I guess..
The reason for that is actually very funny. Electrek guy (Fred) was one of the main propagandist for Tesla's cult - he 'earned' 2 free Tesla Roadsters for his convincing enough people to buy a Tesla.
It was only once he realized that he has been duped and those will never materialize that the coverage turned negative.
Fred has been going at Tesla far longer than Elon has been political.
Yup. Plain and simple.
I won’t purchase or use anything Elon Musk does. Bad behavior and corroding society needs to be met with social disapproval.
Thanks for this - I've paid much less attention to Tesla over recent years, but my memory of Electrek was that it was a distinctly-pro Tesla outlet, but this was a few years back now.
and SpaceX has been a major buyer of Cybertrucks
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The second part of your post is your opinion plus a hypothesis that supports your opinion.
The battery is only used for the truck. No one else is building on Tesla's new battery form factor.
Which I do have to point out, doubting it's a failure isn't evidence that it isn't a failure. Which is why I asked you to back up your claims
The haters on here are ridiculous. If everyone who ever had a product that failed in the market was called a fraud on HN then probably almost everyone would be. SpaceX failed on their first three launches. All the haters here would have voted to shut it all down. Glad Elon's able to recover from business failures without going to the HN comments section to find out what he should do next.
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Elon has done sufficiently impressive things which is why it’s sad that he has to make up a whole bunch of new things to try to impress people. Being the richest man alive is not enough he also has to be the best gamer as well. If he lies about small things that don’t matter then how could I trust him to tell the truth on important things that do matter.
Hughes had untreated syphilis. He was highly promiscuous before modern antibiotics and he paid for it.
Perfect was not the bar that was set. Elon can be the richest person in the world and a lair at the same time. It's about what kind of person lies about being one of the best gamers in the world when clearly they're not. This is of course not the only thing he has lied about but it is possibly the pettiest. And possibly the stupidest because the very people it was supposed to impress were going to find out near instantly and now despise him for it. Consider his foray into politics, it wasn't enough to sway the elections with a large sum of money he also had to insert himself into the process. In addition to being the best gamer he was trying to be the best politician - the result was a catastrophic failure. I'm still pretty convinced Adrian Dittmann is his sock puppet account and his attempt at being the best streamer as well. Done 'anonymously' to make the case that he's not bootstrapping on his other successes but not too anonymously to avoid being totally irrelevant.
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So the only two options you can imagine entail his detractors being irrational and emotional? You can not comprehend that anyone can have any valid complaint regarding him and his behavior at all?
Musk has accomplished some remarkable things, by having grand visions, ruthlessly executing on them, and being willing to repeatedly take on a massive amount of risk. If that had been all, I don’t think many people would be decrying him like this. It’s still easy to justify admiring those bits, if you’re so inclined
But he has also done a lot of things that make him unlikable and are harder to justify. He happily whips up massive amounts of hype, regardless of how likely his claims are to actually manifest (which is a large part of why the Tesla stock price is where it’s at). He sucks himself off at every possible turn, and takes dubious personal credit for a lot of things his companies achieve. He is vindictive and has exacted retribution on people with much less power than him (or pouts about it in an undignified fashion when the opponent is too powerful to crush, like the SEC). He has an easily bruised ego and lashes out in a very childish manner (remember the diver he called a pedo on Twitter). He enters into realms he has no expertise in and proclaims to the whole world that he has all the answers. He directly interferes in US and world politics by wielding his wealth and influence, sometimes with disastrous results (it doesn’t help that his political views usually are unsophisticated and immature, especially since he acts so certain of them). Etc, etc
Basically, he’s a dickhead that thinks he’s the best in the world at everything, and many of whose actions are detrimental to both individuals and the world at large. He doesn’t get a free pass for that just because he’s done some impressive things with his businesses
I still remember when Tesla was going to sell 20 million cars per year: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
Now, mysteriously, Tesla's new target is 20 million in total by 2035: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/09/05/business/elon-musk-tesla-...
That'll be fewer cars sold in what will then be the 32 year history of the company than Toyota sold in the last two years.
And, given that Tesla is typically full of lies and hype, maybe they won't even achieve the new target.
It never did become affordable.
Over promising is fraud. The hyperbole doesn’t help your argument at all.
Yeah, I'm getting the same feeling. They've announced that semi will use 4680 and Cyber Cab as well, right? If that's the case, this would point to a specific supplier issue rather than something more general.
It isn't something that I've looked into in depth, but it feels like a lot of the discussion isn't hitting the mark here.
When somebody is siding with reality, especially a media source, that's a reason to listen to them more not less.
And when it's straight up facts easily verifiable from others sources, pretending that it's not based in reality is just sticking your fingers in your ears and screaming "la la la la" which is something that even very few 12 year olds do.
The only fact was about the contract which is like a sentence of the article. Then it goes into a guessing game on what it could mean, with the most negative spin possible.
I honestly don’t follow this much but I doubt that production ramp up is the Cybercab’s long pole when they’ll need a significant number of market approvals for FSD to reach critical mass.
Let's stay positive folks! /s
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It's just a popular opinion. Not everything is a conspiracy.
HN has lots of people who can think for themselves and lots who can't.
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> In a regulatory filing today, L&F revealed that the contract’s value has been written down to just $7,386.
> No, that is not a typo. $2.9 billion to roughly $7,400.
Ooft. That’s one hell of a write down. Imagine the person that had to do the calculation and report it back.
$7,386 seems to be roughly one Cybertruck batteries worth (the only vehicle that uses that battery).
As in they literally expect to build one more Cybertruck battery and that's it. I'm guessing the excess stock in the Tesla factories covers spares for a few years already.
I wonder when the cancellation will be announced by Tesla? It's all but leaked at this point.
Maybe they did this to keep the contract with a symbolic value; or to avoid the headlines that Tesla 'cancelled' the contract?
A '99% write down' is such an uncommon term that many people might not register it.
> Maybe they did this to keep the contract with a symbolic value;
Tax reasons? Keep it on the book and write the loss off against other profit over coming years? No clue how it would work in practice but it sounds taxy.
posting it on HN had the opposite effect for me. if the headline was "tesla cancelled contract to buy batteries" i would not have cared. the things that still confuses me is that this is caused by tesla no longer needing these batteries, but the headline to me reads like it is caused by the partner and tesla is somehow negatively affected by that.
Tesla had a ridiculous lead over everyone and they spaffed it.
No new features, no HUD, no dashboard. They want 60k for cars which have nothing in them. Other companies have now ripped the software and the iPad, so they have nothing unique.
All they had to do was continue to improve the product. They didn’t even try.
> They want 60k for cars which have nothing in them. Other companies have now ripped the software and the iPad, so they have nothing unique
You are not wrong about Tesla's base models like the 3 and Y being light on traditional 60k car features, but the second part is much more debatable. With the exception of some Chinese car manufacturers, almost no Western car makers have managed to match Tesla's software stack.
I can't think of another car brand that makes its own silicon, ships OTA updates weekly, runs an in-house OS that isn't an outdated Android skin, and tightly integrates media, navigation, charging, and energy management all in the same platform. Most legacy automakers still rely on their old infotainment vendors, release update slowly (if at all!), and struggle with fragmented software architectures. Their driver assistance systems are improving very slowly, and they are behind Tesla even for basic features like lane-keep assist. And that's even before getting into self-driving ambitions, where no brand has been able to ship anything similar AFAIK.
Rivian and Lucid are closer philosophically and technically, but they're still quite tiny players compared to Tesla, and haven't proven they can execute at Tesla's volume and pricing.
Seriously, I don't need my car to get weekly OTA updates. And my 8yr old nissan qashqai had lane assist, it's hardly revolutionary. Tesla is pretty much dead in Europe, mainly due to Musks personality, but the quality of its product is also poor.
> I can't think of another car brand that makes its own silicon, ships OTA updates weekly, runs an in-house OS that isn't an outdated Android skin, and tightly integrates media, navigation, charging, and energy management all in the same platform.
VW (ID software 3/4/5), Mercedes (MBUX).
They don't update weekly (I don't think so, anyway), but I don't see how that would be inherently positive. They should be able to update weekly (e.g. security patches), sure, but car software should probably not be changing week-to-week for years on end.
That being said, since the US is basically a captive and stagnating market for EVs now, it seems most models from European makers are not available in the US anyway.
My personal bet is on nvidia. They always show advanced selfdriving capabilities based on ML.
They are also forefront of ml simulation. 3D, weather pattern etc.
Tesla also had plenty of missshapes like Dojo or cybertruck and the sitll not finished FSD.
My Car OS from Ford Mustang Mach-e works completly fine. No clue why this is some advantage Tesla should have? BMW just launched their new Gen 6 incl. their new os.
All the advantages of that fully integrated 'platform' also just works in my car?
BMW is very good in lane keeping, Mercedes can drive more km in germany autonomes than BMW and BMW can drive more km than Tesla.
I of course focus on german brands because i'm from germany. But XPeng and others working on all of that too.
Some other brands rely on Mobileye for driver assistance. It’s clear from demos that Mobileye is on the same level as Tesla, the difference is that the don’t use end users as beta testers. I suspect that when actual full self driving is possible, other car companies won’t be as far behind as you’d think based on the features Tesla has in their cars now.
They mostly only work on pre-mapped highways. They're also not commercially available.
There's currently no other DA other than Tesla's FSD available in the US that will work on city streets and highways.
I'm going to assert that Tesla's FSD™ does not, in fact work on city streets and highways.
Or, if you want to loosely define "work", Ernst Dickmanns had self driving in the 80s, and put in on the autobahn in the 90s. I'd rather define it more tightly as "statistically at least as safe to be in _and_ to be near, as a human driver".
Tesla claims to have achieved that, but I don't believe them. That's because the data they report 1) omits a fair bit of critical info, and 2) frequently changes definitions. Both serve to make comparisons difficult. If it was clearly safe, I think they'd put effort into making the comparison transparent.
Bear in mind that Musk has been claiming "Full Self-Driving" since at least 2016, and people involved have asserted that he wasn't wrong, he was lying.
Rivian recently moved away from mobileye in their newer models, because mobileye is are far behind and limited. The progression of their new in house driver assistance since then is already proving that was a good choice.
Why do cars need weekly software updates? Or - more specifically, what sorts of new software-enabled features (or bug fixes) besides FSD are rolling out weekly in Teslas? Genuinely curious! Is there downtime?
A couple of recent software additions to my ‘23 MY: * Dynamic speed profiles for Autopilot/FSD
* The ability to specify individual drop-off locations for FSD arrivals (curbside, parking lot, driveway, etc)
* Grok as a voice assistant for the infotainment system
* iOS live activity viewer for the Dog Mode camera feed
* Speed/steering/control statuses being overlaid on dashcam footage
* “Santa Mode” which revamps the UI with Christmas theming for the holiday season
* Automatic HOV lane routing based on vehicle occupancy status
* Vehicle alerts/chimes when exiting, if leaving your phone within the vehicle
* Location-based individual charge limits
* 3D visualizations of supercharger locations, synced with active availability/occupancy per stall
* The SpaceX docking simulator ported as an in-vehicle game, playable on the infotainment screen
These are all additions from just the most recent update, and I can confidently say this is the only vehicle I’ve had that consistently gets better and better in terms of its software features over the course of ownership. Each update takes anywhere from 20-45 minutes during which, unfortunately, you’re not able to utilize the vehicle at all.
I own a Mustang Mach-E and I do not want to have weekly updates to my car software.
If you look at your updates, the FSD one is clearly a beta thing now for so long, of course you need to update regularly if you still change that much. Btw. Musk said 2014 that FSD will allow you to sleep in your Car while driving in 2023. Soooo?
Something like Grok was also added OTA in my Ford car. So yes they can do it apparently too.
Everything else just feels like gimicks I wouldn't want to have. I drive my car i do not play with my car. My car is not a gimmick.
some sound good, but:
> The SpaceX docking simulator ported as an in-vehicle game, playable on the infotainment screen
Really? People want that? I know that Elon Musk would think that it would be great to play a video game about Elon Musk's companies, but are Tesla owners similarly afflicted?
FWIW the “location based charge limits” are entirely up to the user; for example, I may want a full-charge at home but a limited charge at the office (where it might be paid).
> Why do cars need weekly software updates?
Because musk has been over promising and under delivering for years. What do you want to bet those updates still haven't put the "self driving" in FSD? Classic bait and switch. They give you a little thread of hope that one day your car will be better, and give you goofy infotainment features instead of autonomous driving.
Why not?
why are they making cars at all of the software is what they are good at?
Because traditional car companies aren’t interested in buying software that they can’t get built by cheap contractors. Tesla actually hires high end engineers to build software, and that’s not cheap.
Mercedes appears to have the best infotainment system, but it's not a US company.
This is purely anecdotal but at the local mall (Stonetown in SF) they are giving out free rides.
To me, it looks desperate, and poorly executed. I was even waiting outside shake shack for my order, and the sales person approached me to offer me a test drive unsolicited. While I was waiting, I saw groups of people flicking them off and trolling them.
The irony to me - they have paid me $250,000 back for vehicles under lemon law instead of acknowledging and fixing a safety issue in the software, instead labeling it from “bug” to “characteristic”.
Now, they’re approaching me outside a shake shack begging me to accept a test drive, and i bet the issue is still not fixed. BMW driver assistance pro may be more limited but it is boring in the ways you want.
I was really intent on supporting Tesla, but they refused to work with me when I repeatedly raised the safety issue. They just repeatedly returned the car and said it was an expected characteristic for the car to turn left when I’m turning the wheel right.
I suspect they don’t wanna fix the false positive lane departure avoidance because they probably know they would be even more cases of accidental FSD engagement that do result in a collision where it needs to kick in. At the time I was reporting the issue they did not disclose the hidden disabled lane departure state, either.
I' m not defending Tesla for a moment, but I disagree with your take...
1) Wasn't it always inevitable that, once tha large established car manufacturers really started to knuckle down to creating EVs, that Tesla's lead and 'moat' would mostly vanish? They still have some of the most efficient EVs available, and their UI/UX is still one of the best, but of course they'll face compeition, and of course their competitors will try to differentiate in all directions, and especially those that are superficially attractive (and less expensive to deliver) like interior design.
2) Back in his earlier, pre-crazy days, Musk suggested (something along the lines of) that Tesla's goal wasn't to be a huge successful car company, so much as to prove that EVs were viable as everyday cars, and drive a revolution in the car industry. By this measure, they've mostly succeeded.
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Big picture, totally agree that Tesla seems to have lost its way over the past few years, which unsurprisingly correlates (to an outside observer) with Musk's apparent changes in judgement and behaviour, with its consequent impact on Tesla's image and desirability amongst consumers. The Cybertruck turns out to have been a huge misstep, and not having delivered a 'model 2' - i.e. a small mid-sized option - (maybe instead?) is a huge miss.
Advantage for Tesla is that the rest of the auto industry has lost their way, too. For example, the infotainment in a brand new, expensive vehicle like a new GM is atrociously bad, unreliable, and slow/clunky to use.
Have you used it? The Equinox EV/LYRIQ has a large OLED screen spanning a lot of the dash and the Android based menu is pretty decent.
Yes, I have. It has the infamous Android delays, and also conked out in the middle of a trip (this was in a renal); had to stop and start the car and re-pair the phone and navigation never worked again.
2025 model year, less than 20k miles.
I can get an iPad myself and a GPS myself that don’t have these problems.
I would argue that Tesla didn't lose its way, it used it way to get were they are and now you see the deficits of it.
They started without all the legacy and worries. Like existing suppliers, existing things, existing image. Fresh market, modern software development etc. brought them a proper market share.
Now the olds had to update themselves, which they did and now they are stuck with tesla.
But thats it. Tesla doesn't has that much innovation. Plenty of things did not materialize at all.
Nobody is even close on software. I’m honestly shocked more software people here don’t appreciate Tesla more for their software efforts. If you’d prefer the traditional automaker route of contracting out software to cheap labor in third world countries then ok, but you’re working against yourself
No one is within a decade of Tesla.
There are no other vehicles that can take you as easily to the grocery store as they can across the country.
Buying another brand for me at this point would be like picking up a part time job as a driver. No thank you lol. FSD is all the mote that they need.
I can't tell if you're joking or serious. I recently rented a tesla on a vacation back east, and the nightmare that is charging cannot be erased. And FSD of course does not work (yet... they've been at it for 10+ years, maybe someday, who knows?). My rented 2025 MY with full self driving could barely keep itself between 2 white-painted lines!
I assume this post is a troll, 'no one is within a decade of Tesla' -- are you serious ? Have a look at Rivian, which is preparing to make the Cybertruck even more of a laughing stock.
I own a 2023 model Y and have never had charging issues, and use FSD successfully every day.
I loath Musk and will never buy a Tesla, but your criticisms are strange. I don't want a HUD. I don't want new features. I want as basic a car as possible that goes forward when I press the gas and stops when I press the brakes. I had a 2007 Honda Fit which I still regret getting rid of. I have a new Honda and every single new feature (except for displaying the speed limit, which has it's own problems) is useless at best and dangerous and distracting at worse.
> I want as basic a car as possible that goes forward when I press the gas and stops when I press the brakes.
GP was talking about HUD and "new features" in the context of a $60k car. Presumably your desired "basic car" would cost considerably less.
What "new features" are we talking about? What else do you need in a car? Do you complain about "new features" in an expensive bottle of whiskey? Or a nice computer? No, you want the basics done really well and made with the highest of quality.
And a few downgrades (if my 2023 Polestar 2 is an indication)
* Wait 60 seconds to start using the GPS / nav to become responsive
* Unreliable backup camera (even after several software "fixes")
* No buttons or knobs for climate control
* No way to disable intrusive line detection that makes car vibrate when you get close to yellow and white lines
* Overzealous auto-dim of high beams (our 2023 Mazda CX-5 is significantly better with almost no false positives)
It's not all bad, and once the infotainment warms up, it's plenty responsive. It's certainly a luxury car though (as an admitted Mazda fan) you can get a lot of nice from a $30k Mazda.
I'm with the other poster. You're comparing apples to oranges in a 20k vs 60k car. I assume people spending that much on vehicles do want the fancy electronics.
20k cars do not exist any longer :)
better chance finding Waldo
I’m looking for a new car. Not a single manufacturer achieved anything similar to what Tesla has achieved. Tesla’s software is so good, that I can’t drive anything else.
The comment you're replying to says other companies have taken the "software" and the "iPad". To genuinely believe that, one must have not spent much time using Tesla's software or "iPad" to compare with competitors.
It becomes more and more clear that traditional automakers see software as just another lowest-cost component of the car. I understand VW actually started putting effort into their software, but I haven't heard good things about it. Maybe it'll get better.
They cancelled that effort. They tried to create their own software company but shuttled that effort and are back on the "integrate the different vendors" bandwagon.
Ah. Unfortunate.
The updated self driving is also very nice, to the point where I would consider it worth paying $100 per month for aging parents or those who otherwise could use a slight guardrail. I might get one for my parents since Waymo is still probably 10 years out from being ubiquitous.
Also bizarre to me that only Tesla/Rivian offer dash cam recordings as a standard feature. All the other cars seem to come with cameras, they just choose not to allow the video to be saved?
?
My Ford Mustang Mach-e has great software. It works, is reliable, supports apple and android car.
BMW software stack does even more.
Where is this coming from? What are the features you are missing?
BMW can be remote controled also Mercedes and VW btw.
> supports apple and android car
That’s precisely what I don’t want my car to support. Every other car’s software is essentially a CarPlay integration.
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are you on crack? The only German car that even comes close to Tesla is the new BMV Neue Klasse.
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Yes but have you heard of the Somali daycare in Minnesota? Also, something something great replacement.
Did you get lost on your way to Reddit?
"In a regulatory filing today, L&F revealed that the contract’s value has been written down to just $7,386.
No, that is not a typo. $2.9 billion to roughly $7,400."
https://electrek.co/2025/12/29/tesla-4680-battery-supply-cha...
For years, we’ve been told that the 4680 cell was the “holy grail” that would allow Tesla to produce a $25,000 electric car.
For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition.
Just 6 months ago, we were told that Robotaxi would be available to half the US population by the end of the year.
https://electrek.co/2025/07/23/elon-musk-with-straight-face-...
There is an entire Wikipedia article about Musk's (mostly) failed predictions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
At what point is it fair to call the list something other than ‘predictions’
"Forward-looking statements" aka legal stock pumping.
s/Predictions/Ketamine-and-adderall-fueled ramblings
There's a slash missing at the end.
I still don’t understand how they haven’t been sued for the hundreds of millions they took as a deposit for a new Roadster…8 years ago!
Those are borderline lies that deceived both customers and investors.
After the first few some responsibility begins shifting to those still believing him.
Investors know what's up. They want number to go up, therefore they "believe" him and the number goes up.
The map precedes the territory
> Put that on your resumé and you'll easily land a cushy job in Washington.
I think you have it backwards. The entire tech bro scene reeks of fraud schemes, and the most successful ones seem to be pulled into all kinds of government schemes as well.
Pump and dump scheme?
That’s a fair point, but a combination of “fake it ‘til you make it” together with extracting massive “compensation” before you actually make it amounts to pretty much the same thing.
IIRC, back in 2022 or so he'd made about as much selling TSLA shares as Tesla Inc. has made lifetime profits selling cars.
Tesla's profits have been positive since then, so this may no longer be the case, but still, that's a very iffy state of affairs.
He has been selling a lot of Tesla stocks through the life of the company (not that it matters to him as other shareholders are giving him load of free shares all the time).
It's not the usual type of 'dump', but he will probably again request massive bonus or threaten to leave. And his statements are the key for pumping part.
He might be pumping until his potential trillion USD bonus :P
I'd say more in Doge and Bitcoin but you could argue with his stocks even though they're announced/scheduled.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/antoniopequenoiv/2024/05/31/tes...
> Musk sold 19.5 million Tesla shares worth about $3.95 billion in November 2022
I mean sure it is his to sell, but how is that different?
I guess when people stop believing them. Until then, they're words from a visionary that's building the future, who can get some things wrong / be over zealous etc. When people stop believing him, they become lies.
Imagine me standing next to the fence of the White House, calling the Meta Office. "I am calling from the White House", while technically true would be a lie, as my intent would be to make the other person believe something that isn't true, that I would be calling in some kind of official role.
So the statement does not necessarily be false to be a lie - if the intent is to deceive.
According to the article, a court would call this "corporate puffery", but to me it's nothing but lies and grifting.
To be "mere puff", the claim needs to be so obviously untrue that no reasonable bystander would suppose it to be meant literally.
But Musk often acts as if he does actually intend to be taken seriously. In the case of the current story, consider the marketing resources Tesla have poured into their previous "Battery Day" events and look at the press reaction; it's clear that at least some people believed that the claims stacked up.
A quick search of the hn archives for "4680" shows a similar picture. Yes, there were always some sceptical voices, but they were often shouted down as being from people motivated by an anti-Elon grudge. Nevertheless, the sentiment tended to be overwhelmingly positive with many posters actively reinforcing the hype.
Now, whether or not a self-selecting sample of hn posters can be seen as "reasonable bystanders" is certainly debatable - but it does seem that we're getting close to the point where Musk is going to have to start branding those who believe him as being exceptionally gullible in order to escape a charge of misleading advertising.
Predicting is easy. Predicting correctly less so.
When you are making predictions about what you are going to do, "correctly" is spelled "honestly".
"Tech Optimism"
Neat.
It's a bummer though that it's limited to Telsa. Would love to see a fuller one of his all bold statements about robotics, tunnel transportation, space travel, and AI.
This one was from a couple years back. The list could probably double with DOGE alone.
https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...
For the silent down votes, I'd be curious how you can hold claims Elon made regarding what DOGE would get done against him.
I don't agree with how they went about trying to cut government spending, but that's beside the point. When he wasn't in control and ultimately got stonewalled and removed as soon as he ran through the initial hype of the project, how is it his fault the claims failed? Do you disagree that the government has a similar amount of waste and spending that could be cut?
https://elonmusk.today/ has a bunch more, although it's also likely very incomplete since most are >1000 days ago and some kind of did happen (it's been updated this year, but it seems to pretend the cybertruck and Tesla Semi never happened).
I had no idea this existed, that's pretty damning.
The question - is Musk lying on purpose, or is this more 90-90 rule where he made (obviously wrong) assumptions based on current progress?
If he himself believes he can achieve his off-the-cuff deadlines or not doesn't matter for the rest of us: he already proven himself to be a fabulist, and after so many failed predictions, should know better than to air them in public, especially as he must be acutely aware that making such claims inflates his and his companies' net worth, and hence has legal implications. Only he cares not about those, as none of his past misdeeds had any serious consequences to himself.
Tesla stock goes up because it frequently goes up. It's a top-tier "buy the dip stock". Analysts know it, traders know it, the stock is a consistent winner. A total house of cards, but it hasn't fallen yet.
Well, feel free to short Tesla.
(And I say that with conviction. https://hindenburgresearch.com/ are my heroes.)
How about the possibility that the cost of lying is less than the capital gains that can be realized by lying about it? EM was only fined $20 million when he said he had secured funding to take the company private at $420/share [0]. The stock bounce from that "news" was in the billions.
As it stands, he can get a trillion dollar pay package if a something-trillion market cap target is hit.
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/04/elon-musk-loses-...
Yes, that's the problem. The fines for his actions should have been at least a hundred times greater, maybe a thousand times greater.
The latter implies there is any progress to project out from.
The best counter argument to that is that he did manage to predict/make into reality electric vehicles (when going into that industry was crazy) and reusable rockets. If someone makes a thousand moonshot attempts but still succeeds with two that's impressive.
Electric vehicles were the first types of cars invented.
Musk also bought into Tesla.
So its not like he invented some kind of alien technology.
It was always about having good enough marketing to permit 10 years of R&D to make the car actually attractive.
They were also mass produced before Tesla.
Gigapress has almost nothing to do with Tesla. It is just the name given by Tesla to a process they purchase from a third party vendor(Idra Group). Tesla was the first to use this product for large scale automotive production though.
Musk's behaviors should be separated into before drugs and after drugs. Since the day he smoked pot on camera, it's been all downhill.
> it's that he profitably manufactured decently reliable cars for a price that lots of people found attractive.
Huh? Nearly all of his profit was government subsidies designed to push EV adoption. And now he’s trying to pull the ladder up behind him.
Tesla has not been profitable for the vast majority of its existence when it comes to selling a car for more money than it takes to produce.
> Electric vehicles were the first types of cars invented.
Where is this claim coming from? I don't see that in the history of the automobile wiki [1], and given that the first early motorized carriages were a century before Ben Franklin flew a kite I have to assume they were electric vehicles.
Something is missing here. Once you get two moonshots done, you have free pass to claim anything any number of times with zero results? I cannot agree.
he did manage to predict/make into reality electric vehicles (when going into that industry was crazy)
Nissan might like a word about that.
That’s underselling the Leaf quite a lot. The original 2011 model had 107 HP and 207 ft-lb of torque (later bumped to 147 and 236, respectively), which puts it handily above several gas models of gas cars that don’t get labeled as golf carts. It was a perfectly fine car, it just had a poor battery.
Yes, early Tesla cabins just oozed luxury, for twice or more what the Leaf cost. :eyeroll: Regardless, Nissan put out production EVs before Tesla did, accouterments aside.
So Elon invented selling a slightly more expensive EV in a state with generous government support for this?
A business plan that the real Tesla founders actually came up with because they'd seen Silicon Valley homes with Porsches and Prius parked next to each other and thought they could combine those two things?
> he did manage to predict/make into reality electric vehicles
I miss the morning delivery of milk to the doorstep. And the milk carts that used to deliver it
But they weren’t designed as a commuter car. THey were designed to deliver milk.
[flagged]
Lancet lost all credibility long ago. They had to retract several seminal papers on autism and vaccines as well as Covid.
USAID isn’t an aid organization, it’s a front for CIA efforts internationally. It funded CORDS during the Vietnam War which was a paramilitary force.
DOGE didn’t get rid of USAID, Rubio did day one (since it falls under the State Department).
You mean Trump's elimination of USAID? You really think he's worse than Hitler?
Traditionally it’s TWO minutes of hate at a selected government target after your morning exercise program. To do otherwise is wrongthink
Reusable rockets are a rehash of old tech that was considered - at the time - not economically feasible; Given how subject to interpretation spacex commercial numbers are, there is nothing indicating a clear cost or efficiency advantage compared with traditional launch systems so far. What we clearly know is that using software development methodologies to building critical hardware is as a bad idea as it sounds.
I’ve got as much of a distaste for Musk as anybody else these days, but SpaceX’s methodology has if nothing else netted them velocity and turnaround times that no other company or governmental space agency has been able to hold a candle to thus far, and do it with a very low failure rate. They’re clearly doing something right.
Yeah, Falcon rockets are a regular workhorse kinda rockets. Nothing special about them. NASA could have made their own but someone decided it needs to be outsourced.
I mean they did a fine job there, but nothing to write home about IMHO.
And on the topic of reusability I can't really find much info besides that it is just partially reusable. Not sure what the point of it actually is. I guess what matters is the launch price?
The question I still have it, wasn't SpaceX supposed to get USA back on the moon? And I heard they got billions in subsidies but have nothing to show for it.
Spacex is a private company; this means "we" know nothing about actual costs. Fundraising documents dont show this either, as they are a washed-down version for, well, fundraising purposes. As an investor, it is common practice to sign an NDA just to get access to actual somewhat relevant numbers, so any actual relevant info isnt public.
Also it seems you conflate "making money" with being profitable - its not the same thing. A private company can easily "massage" the PNL sheet to present itself as at a break-even point, and some back-of-the-napkin calculation seems to point to it. Granted, I may be wrong, but the fact is we don't know for sure.
You also seem to not be aware that there are multiple internet satellite providers with south pole coverage, as well as other regions in the globe.
Weird hill to die on in 2025
If you had said this in 2015, we would be nodding along
tbh, it still isn't economically feasible. spacex 'cheated' to achieving reuse by just making the the entire plumbing and engine assembly bolt-on to the lower stage on F9 and they just replace that every time one is 'reused'. to my knowledge, they still haven't reused an engine without either replacing the nozzle, turbopumps or both, which are so expensive that reuse might actually cost them more money in the end for the benefit of faster turnaround times in years where launches are booked heavily.
Actually a very interesting article! Didn't know he'd been selling this lie for so long.
The only one that actually came true out of the long list was a 'prediction' he made about something happening in the same month.
'failed predictions'
I am an old man.
In my youth we called this lies. Or investor deception.
Some would even go as far as calling what he claims fraud but hey...
When the weather forecast said it would rain on Friday and it didn’t was that also called a lie?
Ah yes, managing people, science, and research and development are well known to be very predictable and stable, easily modeled even by a teenager.
Weather forecasts are a best-effort.
CEOs should have a reasonable grasp of what's possible for their team on a given short/medium timeline.
It won't be perfect but should be ballpark.
Elon and those like him make these statements with no reference to realistic project delivery timelines, business capacity or anything else - despite having all of that information readily available.
That's not a best guess, it's making shit up.
"Predictions" feels like the wrong word for what a CEO is saying his company is intending to deliver.
That looks like it would make the basis of a nice Tesla class action law suit!
See also elonmusk.today
It’d be neat to have a dedicated site similar to killed by google.
"Tesla, where we make the impossible late"
I'm sure Godot will be along any moment now
Waiting for Godot’s robotaxi
It's really amazing. Anyone still remembers Dojo ? 2 years ago or so they stated that they start to mass produce Dojo and it was supposed to be a top 5 supercomputer in the world by the end of 2024...
https://thedriven.io/2023/06/22/tesla-to-start-building-its-...
The Dojo team left tesla to do their own ASIC. https://www.theverge.com/news/756706/tesla-dojo-team-shut-do...
Yeah, that was already almost 1 year after they were supposedly planning to have the top 5 compute ...
The reality is they announced that as a pipe dream. Just like the FSD, Robotaxi, Optimus and 10 other projects that will never work - or more precisely, they will work but >10 years from now, and it won't be from Tesla but from a competitor.
You understand what the word “Full” means, right? It doesn’t mean 99%.
One would be crazy to bet on that on Polymarket. They had a bet for Tesla Robotaxi rollout before end of 2025 and it resolved to YES. So it must be like your FSD - Tesla is apparently already operating a general public access autonomus Robotaxi, maybe even 50% of the US population like the CEO said.
I don't personally want to get into that kind of betting, but in theory...
If I had bet that purchasable Teslas wouldn't have level 3 or level 4 driving by 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024, and 2025 I would have won every single one of those bets.
FSD is improving, but they finally put "supervised" in the name for a reason. It's a feature-packed level 2. That doesn't meet the bar.
?? Tesla have never manufactured a single car. They simply don’t exist. Just like those rockets that don’t exist. It’s all just CGI.
Sure you do.
Add HLS to the list.
I suspect the departure was mutual... The team didn't seem on track to deliver anything workable.
The full Robotaxi rollout is going to happen as soon as they finish fulfilling the Roadster preorders.
so like 2080 or thereabouts?
2026 is the Year of Tesla on the Desktop.
Tesla fans have no ability to learn from past lies.
Fool me once, shame on you, fool me 65535 times...
Let's hope they used a short unsigned int, just one more time and they can start all over again!
Hey just fool them once more and the counter goes to zero
Maybe "cultists" is a better word than fans, with Musk as their guru.
The model Y is a genuinely good car... I can't think of an automaker with better software.
I've recently been shopping for another electric SUV and to be told that to get charging stops on your long trip 'through an app on your phone' instead of built into the navigation is.... Wild
Edit: it needs to be said that I consider a car a solution to the A to B problem, and nothing more :) This was one of the premium German automakers by the way. On a ~$50k car....
What car exceeds a Tesla in all these categories that I can get used for the same price as a used Tesla?
I'm asking this as a challenge; in a Tesla the biggest complaint I have actually is the half-baked music software. You can't set it to start playing USB music when you get in, and there's no button to resume it either. You have to use the voice command "switch to USB" to get it playing where it left off.
The car's performance, convenience, mechanical reliability, service center experience, documentation, all fantastic. I don't have stock in Tesla, I just really don't understand the criticisms. Are other cars really better? Should I take some test drives?
> Pretty much every electric car has charging stops built-in to the navigation
That's my expectation too.
> For some the quality of the data isn’t as high, but it will be there.
This is a real issue. You might be stranded with low quality suggestions. Chargers that don't work. The large number of accounts you need to have as every charger has their own etcetera
> That's why Teslas navigation accounts for traffic, weather, elevation changes, charger speed & availability to plan routes. For legacy car manufactures battery preconditioning is about the most sophisticated route planning feature they'll have.
Would be more convincing if my legacy car maker car didn’t do all these things you claim only a Tesla can.
Audi Q4, and if the dealer doesn't know how their own cars work then that's the same to me.
In an EV it's a necessity.
> I can't think of an automaker with better software.
So I have a Zoe, tesla has much fancier software, the remote control on the phone for the tesla is great.
the Zoe has a chugging navigation system and no adaptive cruise control.
But it has buttons. Its cheap to run and is super easy to drive. Its also faster than most ICE cars.
More importantly its smaller than a model Y, and I don't look like a massive penis driving it.
Also the doors shut properly, the trim isnt hollow and its not falling apart.
The software is shite though.
> Edit: it needs to be said that I consider a car a solution to the A to B problem,
the solution to that problem is a Prius
My car does not have software. Certainly no screens. Thank god.
If they're not available, then I can't consider them an option?
I've obviously not tested every car out there. But for years Tesla has been the only car that came close to the convenience of a gas powered car. Their charging infrastructure really allowed it to be a normal car when you live in populated areas.
I’m in a market where we can buy the Chinese cars.
Lots of hi-res graphics, modern looking interfaces and flashy animations do not good software make.
Function > form.
Gotta be joking.
"The car is driving itself. The human is only there for legal reasons." (Tesla, 2016)
Tesla video promoting self-driving was staged, engineer testifies - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34415413 - January 2023 (342 comments)
This was also litigated in court where they admitted that when they tried to have the car drive itself it crashed into a fence
"It's technically true at any given point in time" - Felon Musk, probably.
It's incredible there is something wrong with a group of people completely unable to see when someone is lying to them. And no matter how many times they are lied to, as long as they are rich enough they believe them.
I don't know what to think anymore about this. He has continuously conned his way along and does it just long enough to jump to the next con.
Tesla is crashing and somehow people though giving him a huge pay package made sense. Cyber truck is flopping but now he's again living off government graft by having another company buy up the dead weight supply. Tesla is only around because of govt subsidy and now that that's dead he's turned to another govt spigot. While supposedly being opposed politically to what he's doing.
And time and time again people still make up excuses because they can't believe they were conned.
Probably the biggest sign AI is going to flop is him starting talking about it being right around the corner.
Little technical skills, no forecasting ability, we saw how much his "efficiency management" philosophy flopped when done in public via DOGE (vs behind the scenes in a private company) and yet people keep falling for it. As long as he can keep spitting out BS, people keep falling for it.
> Tesla is crashing and somehow people thought giving him a huge pay package made sense.
There’s only upside for shareholders.
Musk’s package is entirely performance-contingent and structured as 12 stock grants.
And the targets are very ambitious: valuation ($8.5 trillion) and operational goals (20M cars, 10M FSD, 1M robotaxis, $400B profit) over 10 years.
https://poole.ncsu.edu/thought-leadership/article/inside-the...
> There’s only upside for shareholders
On the other side of the coin, they really don't have a choice; either they attempt to provide leverage (and using non-realistic goals is excellent to avoid actually having to pay it), or any major misshap with any of the other businesses that may have as collateral tesla stock (either directly or indirectly) would basically bankrupt the company. And the scenario where Elon would attempt to do a sort of firesale on purpose just to take revenge isnt far-fetched either;
IMO The only way forward for them is to keep him happy for now, while attempting to either do damage control or graceful exits.
I think this is a misread. They want extraordinary returns and think Musk can deliver it. Push him, make more money.
I think you think about it in the wrong way. The obvious con is what hypes the fan base. They think they are in on it and that they will fool the "NPCs" or what ever they call normal people.
Only simpletons can't see the end game of beautiful profits!
https://americanliterature.com/author/hans-christian-anderse...
I always thought the story ended with the emperor and his entourage being embarassed after the child said he's naked... but no, it ends even more close to real human behavior. (Sorry for writing a clickbait sentence).
> Tesla is crashing
But the stock keeps hitting new all time highs.
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can stay solvent" applies here.
Luckily I don't bet, I would have taken a huge short position and lost a bunch of money on Tesla years ago because they were already over valued by any plausible revenue projection, and yet the stock went up and up.
But worth remembering, the South Sea Company was worth the equivalent of a few trillion dollars too.
To the moon <rocket emoji> <diamond emoji> <hand emoji>
Not when accounting for inflation. Then that high was years back.
The problem with the stock market is, even if you know with 100% certainty that EM is lying and Tesla is overvalued, you only can cash in that knowledge if the stock price makes contact with reality.
In fact even if every single shareholder in Tesla knows that the price is unsustainable they can still hold out for a greater fool for years. To a large extent you are betting on what the crowd will do, not what the company will do.
For this to work every single shareholder has to be in on the game. I wonder if the only reason it has gone on this long is because TSLA has so many required institutional investors stabilizing the market.
This is exactly it: they're making a perfectly rational decision keeping Musk on the way he is, because the alternative once he's out is the stock crashes due to the uncertainty and the fanboys bailing.
Why have less money when you actually don't care what happens if you have more money? So long as the stock retains its value, you can do things like borrow against your holdings, leverage that into other investments etc.
Well, he cashed in 2 billion of govt money for the moon mission and that doesn't look like it will fly.
Well, it is flying, it's the "refuel in space" and "re-entry in a manner such that it's reusable" parts which are questionable.
Beyond a certain point it becomes self-reinforcing. You will distort everything else about your world view to support that lie. You will surround yourself with other people who believe it and live in a completely internally consistent reality, surrounded by a vast conspiracy trying to bring you down.
The really killer part is, I can't even be 100% certain that it's not me. I'm quite sure, and justify it solidly, but then, I would.
I feel the same re: killer part...
Maybe the smart people are the ones who can intuitively feel the stupidity of the masses and take advantage of that, whereas the dumb are the ones who are too cautious about houses of cards and unstable Ponzi schemes...
> there is something wrong with a group of people completely unable to see when someone is lying to them.
They mistakenly believe, like temporarily embarrassed millionaires/capitalists [1], that they are actually in the winning group.
If something is literally incredible, then it's prudent to stop and consider whether it should be believed or that you have made an incorrect assumption. In this case, you wrongly assume that Musk is somehow being rewarded for something that happened in the past, or for something that might not even happen. The reality is that the pay package will only have value if Elon manages to dig Tesla out of the hole.
Despite how much conning you believe Musk has done (I won't refute it), Tesla is a company that actually builds cars, and while the Cybertruck flopped and anyone could see that coming from a mile away, that doesn't really affect the Tesla bottom line. That Musk grifted the government into buying them doesn't really do anything besides saving Tesla some money.
I wouldn't buy Tesla shares, I still don't really see their crazy valuation, but I would buy a Tesla car, as they are ostensibly awesome. If you disregard all the lying Musk has done it's still an epic car with unrivaled self driving capabilities.
That he starts talking about something historically has been a sign that some part of it is going to be a reality. You can stand apart from the crazy people who worship the ground he walks on, and still appreciate that he accomplishes great things. Whether it's through conning and grifting, or hard work and keen insight, there are still an electric car company and a rocket company where there weren't before.
Just stop reacting to people believing or shouting things or grotesque behaviors, and just look at the actual reality. It'll do you a lot better than just believing everything Musk says is BS.
Did he always have this problem? I don't recall this from the early Tesla days. I have the totally subjective impression that the predictions have been getting worse and worse.
The thing seems to be that he's made the same claims since the beginning and things are always being pushed out every year .. "fully self driving taxis in 2 years"
He's the perfect salesman for giving investors hope, and delivers some things but promises everything.
The hyperloop.. Colonizing mars by 2025 I think was one claim..
Good article here https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-lists/elon-musk...
I'm happy he's pushed space access but everything else, he's coming across as a bit of a confidence man.
That's a great summary by the rolling stone. I was thinking much earlier though around the time when Tesla was switching from the original Roadster to the first sedan and when SpaceX was really focused on landing its first rocket.
I think he suffers from a kind of protagonist's dilemma.
His words are literally taken as Bible by a huge part of the global audience, that he is compelled to keep the earth hopeful.
Very much yes.
But he says that every year in the earnings call, he will say it again in the q1 call. 'By september' full of confidence and no one calling him out.
> For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition.
Sometimes I wonder if Musk's astronomical pay package is an engineered rug pull on Tesla's investors. Imagine if they know the jig is up and intend to fleece stockholders one last time by leaving them holding the bag when the house of cards comes crumbling down.
I'm still sour of how easily I was deceived while being so happy when envisioning a future that won't come.
First with autopilot, then with boring's tunnels, then a $39k cybertruck, then ...
What's that saying about "fool me so many times I can't keep count" ?
Whatever angry feeling we may have towards Elon Musk, he's not the richest man on earth for nothing.
Lesson learned, till next time !
>>he's not the richest man on earth for nothing.
He engineers perceptions, finance, and govt funds, not technology. Every report and available evidence shows he is barely technologically astute, nevermind genius; the accomplishments of his teams are despite him not because of him.
Which is why a better description would be: The Greediest Man On Earth.
> Every report and available evidence shows he is barely technologically astute, nevermind genius; the accomplishments of his teams are despite him not because of him.
In particular, nothing that comes out of his mouth regarding AI makes any sense.
And still, people listen to him as if he was an expert. Go figure.
Or even vehicle autonomy.
His latest bullshit was about Tesla cameras and fog/rain/snow - on an investor call, no less - "Oh, we do photon counting directly from the sensor, so it's a non-issue".
No. 1, Tesla cameras are not capable of that - you need a special sensor, that's not useful for any real visual representation. And 2, even if you did, photon counting requires a closed "box" so to speak - you can't count photons in "open air".
And no-one calls it out.
Seen from the other side of the Atlantic, I've regularly felt that the US is rather prone to hero worship, see e.g. the passion dedicated to presidential candidates, former presidents, billionaires, but also how the main characters of pretty much all American biopics I recall can't ever be wrong.
If my observation is correct, I guess what we're witnessing with Musk could be a case of hero worship – and in any narrative in which Musk is a hero, he's of course right.
Just stating that he does seem to inspire and build teams/orgs that do great things.
Both SpaceX and Tesla are accomplishments if you consider where their competitors are.
It takes a lot more effort to be first. When they were making the roadster, who else was interesting in BEV?
For SpaceX, who is landing rockets for reuse?
With all due respect, China at this point does seem to only get in when the early adoption is done. Then they just throw state money at the problem to catch up. They might be innovating now but they left the hard work to someone else
The Chinese cars makers are heavily government funded, with the goal of flooding markets.
It’s not hard to sell EVs when you’re losing money on each one.
For Tesla maybe (if you ignore self driving as useless), but that doesn’t apply to spacex.
Just imagine how much more successful they'd be if Elon Musk wasn't meddling and leeching from them!
When they do this on their own dime and get results years ahead of competitors, is that a bad thing?
If not for crew dragon, the US would be begging Russia for seats to the ISS still. Is that your preferred outcome?
> Just 6 months ago, we were told that Robotaxi would be available to half the US population by the end of the year.
It's available! Everyone in the US can go to Austin and get a ride in a Tesla robotaxi!
Reports say there are only about 10 Robotaxis operating in Austin at any one time.
https://electrek.co/2025/12/22/tesla-robotaxi-project-austin...
So s/everyone/anyone/ I guess?
There are 24 hours left in the year. Don't lose hope!
And Tesla's ability to tightly align promises with engineering and supply chain execution seems to be slipping
There's never been any such ability. Musk has been promising actual full self driving within a year or two yearly or multiple times a year since 2015 (and partial such since 2014 at least).
And of those things we've been told, a high percentage of them have had to do with battery technology. Science is full of discoveries, science at scale doesn't always work out like we've hoped.
Everything I remember about the Jobs RDF was entirely about things like MacWorld Expo presentations. Selling lesser-performing products for more by claiming they did more with things like Photoshop bakeoffs, or with (claimed) style over substance. (I was a big long-term Mac user so I felt like Mac OS was enough of an advantage over Windows for a long time that it wasn't just style over substance.)
Musk just took it way further. When Jobs missed with the RDF it was on stuff like the G4 Cube being "cool" enough to make up for its issues. He wasn't promising miracles.
Took me some time to remember that RDF meant Reality Distortion Field.
How should we consider other claims by CEOs, like claims made about the future of AI? What about claims made by politicians? Or claims made by the Federal Reserve?
With analysis? Like what else?
Throwing ones hands up in the air and giving up, would be valid if it was actually hard. The example you have given just mixes up CEOs, Politicians and the Fed.
Being charitable, this is a question of whether someone can understand all these domains well enough to make out good from bad. Yes - people have. It takes time, effort and a desire to learn these things, but its done regularly.
> For years, we've been told a lot of things that have never come to fruition.
This is the specific comment I was replying to.
It isn't about throwing ones hands in the air, its about realizing that CEOs are always going to embellish the present as much as possible and make claims of the future that are aspirational at best.
I raise both politicians and the Fed because they both do the exact same thing when it comes to making claims of the future that they don't know will happen but hope will push people today in a certain direction.
I wasn't claiming that all three groups are the same, only that they all fall afoul of the frustrating type of claimed the earlier comment took issue with.
Gotcha.
Year isn't over yet, hah.
BYD Atto 3 enters the chat
Just wait another 6 months /s
Tesla isn't a car company it's a robotics company (2025)
Tesla isn't a robotics company it's a meme company (2027)
The one that intrigued me more was circa the 2017 era when Tesla was supposedly an energy company. That might have justified their valuation at the time, but it turned out to be dishonest spin.
Yet again, there are no adults and the shallow fabric of society fails to conceal the greed boner under the sheets.
That's when he was bailing out the solar roof company owned by his cousins.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SolarCity
Being in Australia, we have the benefit of getting US, EU, CN, and other vehicle brands, as well as solar and battery suppliers.
Tesla sells a lot of home batteries, but there are numerous other brands.
Tesla's cars are old now, the difference is the Hyundai, Kia, Geely, ZeekR, BYD, Polestar, Mini, Lexus, Porsche, BMW, Mercedes and other brands are cars that happen to be powered by batteries, not some magic carpet of future ideas.
Tesla isn't a company (2029)
Tesla is acquired by xAI (2026)
https://spaceflightnow.com/2016/04/27/spacex-announces-plan-...
Remember in 2016 when people would be on Mars by 2018?
Please don't be so cynical. With the right mix of drugs, it is actually possible.
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Is anybody surprised by the cratering demand for the Cybertruck (directly attributable to 4680 troubles)? Tesla sold the idea of a crazy space truck to a bunch of techie dorks, who then pulled out of the deal when faced with the reality of owning a vehicle that they have to clean with Barkeeper's Friend. This was the obvious result.
I would buy a Cybertruck tomorrow if it had a gas engine. I would buy a $10,000 or $15,000 gas generator add-on if it enabled unlimited range (provided I have gasoline).
There are just too many places, even in California, where I have to limit my trip because of electric range.
I'm surprised no one has done the generator.
It's ugly, poorly built, expensive and not very good as a truck. A gas engine will not fix all these flaws.
i actually love the way it looks. i dont own it but i find it some inspiring that a company had to have audacity to create something so futuristic - what are you driving that is so beautiful ?
maybe at the time, not anymore. that car is ugly.
I suppose there's no accounting for taste.
I don't find the idea all that audacious. Several EV trucks were already in the works. The Cybertruck is unique in form, but certainly not in function. There's precedent for sloppily-made stainless steel wedge-shaped American cars [2] thought up by executives on too many drugs [1].
The execution? Whoever figured out how to get a stainless steel wedge on stilts through NHTSA testing deserves a raise. That's sorcery.
The picture of Tesla across internet is so polarizing. X and YouTube is full of Tesla is the future vibe. Electrek and HN is calling it a complete scam. I am sure it's in the middle, but I can't find a balanced opinion anywhere.
But I have seen Electrek being too negative about Tesla always. And never reporting anything positive as such.
In many parts of the world, you can walk into a Tesla store and tell them you're not interested in purchasing but would like to try it anyway. More likely than not, they will give you a free test drive. You'll be able to decide for yourself whether it's the future or a scam.
> X and YouTube is full of Tesla is the future vibe.
X is owned by Musk and has their algorithm tuned to boost his posts. What makes you think he also isn't artificially boosting Tesla is the future vibe? X is a pure propaganda spigot right now.
research what's in the product if you're interested in buying, and then take your risk as a consumer as with any new product one buys. Or research into the company if you want to buy shares.
Elektrek was one of the biggest Tesla cheerleaders until 2023 or so. Founder promoting neonazi and fascist ideas kinda made them sour on the brand, can you blame them?
I think that's probably the main reason but also Fred Lambert "earned" a free roadster through referrals gassing up Elon and Tesla and as always with Elons promises it has not materialized.
He had numerous problems with his early edition Model 3 in the Canadian winter and when complaining about it got into a spat with Musk over it on Twitter. Afterwards all 'access' to Tesla was forever lost I guess. The roadster fiasco came later I think. Roadsters are reserved for friends of Elon only regardless of what referrals they got. THink there is some fine print to disqualify people after the fact. Rich Rebuilds lost his roadster for much more benign things. (Reverse engineering Tesla stuff)
Exactly what "neonazi" and "fascist" ideas has he been promoting?
I mean, not that it matters. Yes, you can "blame them", because if you're writing articles based on how you feel about the subject and not the facts, you're not a journalist or a news-writer, you're a propagandist.
The future of electrification is at risk because the market chose to bet on TSLA. Many companies backpedaled on EV and the POTUS is making a major push towards oil (including invading Venezuela). The future looks grim.
> The future of electrification is at risk because the market chose to bet on TSLA
It really isn't. BYD is progressively becoming ubiquitous here (large South America city)
Thats why Potus is planning to liberate you guys.
He's going to have to liberate the entire world if he wants to stop BYD from being popular.
They essentially gave away the market to Chinese companies, while at the same time complaining that China is "stealing" something.
Why didn’t the Europeans come out on top?
Volkswagen EV sales go brrr in Europe, while Tesla is in free fall.
All the traditional car companies in the west failed.
I think short term focus is far too rewarded in Western companies. In fact that's pretty much the only oversight given to the CEOs. The next quarterly report is all that matters. Even if you wanted to do the right thing and focus on long term goals office politics will ensure that a single down quarter where you focused on long term investments will be punished by those looking to move up. Pump the numbers each and every quarter and don't bother about long term visions since those aren't important for your career, bonuses and golden parachute. The big shareholders too aren't worried about the long term either since shareholders are fluid. Pump this quarter and they can move their investments to the next company before the rot sets in.
The companies that do extremely well in the West are those with singular stable long term leadership where the leaders have authority (or simply majority ownership) to take risks. Berkshire Hathaway, Meta, Nvidia, Amazon, Musks companies, Apple (under Jobs when he was around), etc.
This is partly why Tesla stock price is ridiculous. The competition is the traditional car companies which are extremely poorly run while Tesla is seen as a company run by a singular individual with more authority to take on longer term projects than just the next quarters goal. I think the market isn't correctly taking into account the possible mental illness from Musk but none the less there is merit to the idea that a company with singular stable leadership will be more successful than those which have quarterly focus.
This can be seen in many many examples. I actually don't think SpaceX is particularly well run either but their competition are companies where the only thing that matters for their leadership is the next quarterly report. So it's a case of a poorly run company vs an extremely terribly run company (eg. Boeing). No wonder SpaceX is doing well when their competition is fucking Boeing. Likewise with Amazon vs Walmart, Apple under jobs vs Apple not under Jobs, etc.
China commonly avoids this trap with stakeholder rather than shareholder based governance. This is less than perfect but it's still a league better than the race to the next quarter that Western shareholder governed companies have been doing. Details from an academic point of view: https://clsbluesky.law.columbia.edu/2025/06/18/what-chinas-e...
In other words the Western incentives for leadership is pretty broken (except when the leadership has the stability to avoid worrying about these short term incentives). I have the opinion that it's likely to lead to the fall of the West in the long term. We can see China repeatedly winning in various fields, electric cars being a clear example. We can also see in the West whenever we have shareholder based governance the companies have poor long term outcomes.
> short term focus is far too rewarded in Western companies
Zero auto companies outside China, America and Europe have successfully pivoted to EVs. And even within China, it's basically Geely and Changan. All the others are new entrants.
> China commonly avoids this trap with stakeholder rather than shareholder based governance
GM's unions own a significant fraction of its shares. This is a stakeholder system. What you may be referring to is state ownership, not stakeholder-based governance.
Because they're complacent and risk adverse.
> VW, Mercedes, BMW, Peugeot, Polestar all make great EVs and they absolutely dominate the European market.
Maybe, but which part of the market? China imports are popular because they're good value at a much lower price point, even after tariffs.
Many EU makers have been late to, or totally absent from, the market for a car for the masses. I've always bought Asian cars and probably always will because they're just better value.
All the established brands (except for maybe Nissan and some parts of GM) wanted their cake and eat it, too. They wanted electrification while still holding onto high margins. So they made almost their EVs all sit in the luxury segment.
And in North America they failed to bring dealers to heal.
It's ok, it's only our children's future at risk.
> Why didn’t the Europeans come out on top?
Fewer new entrants? America has Tesla, Rivian, Lucid, et cetera in the EV native camp, and Waymo in the autonomous-native camp.
If we limit ourselves to export variants, Europe has Polestar. (And by this metric, China has dozens of new entrants in both fields.)
> Europe doesn’t need new entrants. They got legacy automakers that are no worse at making EVs than Chinese and American startups
Innovator's dilemma. It's not a coincidence that the two largest EV makers in the world are battery natives [1], and that they outproduce Nos. 3 (Geely), 4 (GM) and 5 (VW) combined.
Polestar is owned by Geely, a Chinese company
Why any car manufacturer would be my question. This just sort of shows how tied Big Auto and Big Oil are
I've been looking at the BMW Neue Klasse electric vehicles. They seem to exceed almost all other western competitors when it comes to the metrics I care about (mainly charging speed). I do think it's the most promising European brand when it comes to EVs.
Complacency made them sleep on the wheel ehen they doubled down on diesel.
Thank god for the CCP setting EV development a strategic goal. If we depended on western free market alone we would be fucked.
The "theft" they are really worried about is the loss of oil industry profits.
That's who is sock-puppeting all these misanthropes.
US capitalism was fine with a few wealthy people driving around some novelty luxury cars with EV motors in them. China turned it into an actual mass market product.
Only investor's share prices at risk, there's no risk to the future of electrification.
Look at solar, an industry that has continual bankruptcies, yet is eating the world. New players grow, die, and get replaced all the time, in a continual churn of new technology.
That Tesla would die a death was not inevitable, merely a choice due to recent years of extremely poor leadership and terrible mismanagment. Even now, Tesla may pull out of the slump and recover! It's doubtful it will ever justify its share price, but it's likely that if it ever gets fairly priced as a company, it could be sold to a US auto major that is regretting it's failure to produce EVs for the international market, and wants to try to catch up. Maybe. That time might have passed too...
The future looks Chinese.
China's future looks very grim.
China has all sorts of demographic and debt problems no one is talking about:
https://open.substack.com/pub/crosscurrents28/p/chinas-broke...
Trump is going to be lauded in the history books for sure. The Chinese history books, that is. Before this massive self-own, we at least had a chance.
And electric
The market didn’t choose to bet on Tesla. It was the only game in town for years.
For the US and the US only.
I disagree on that, just growing pains in the US
No the US is just becoming a laggard in this technology because the investments made with the push of the Biden administration have not panned out and are now having to be written down. Its not just Trump, they wrongly anticipated how much demand there would be in the US. Other regions are making great progress, the US is moving forward but much slower than expected. The US will get there eventually but its going to be on peoples own terms.
The US invaded Venezuela ?
i don't understand americans, two years ago i wanted a tesla, now i want a byd, you've let down the only american company competing against the chinese, all because of trump and politics
Elon's personality has been known before he ever came out in support of Trump. Think back to when he called someone trying to rescue kids a "pedo" because they ignored his idea of building a submarine. Moreover, his inability to deliver on promises has been a well-known fact for years.
He regularly delivers on promises. What he consistently fails to deliver on is timelines.
I guess that's true if you stretch timelines to infinity. I'm still waiting on:
- L5 autonomous driving
- $35k Teslas
- Hyperloop
- Lunar trips to the moon on spacex
- Humans on Mars
But I guess if we just consider those delayed, then all good.
The entry level Model 3 currently sells for $38,630. In 2016 dollars, that's $28,600.
> impressive system that is leaps and bounds ahead of where it was just six months
It isn't full autonomy. It isn't full self-driving.
In 2016 Tesla claimed that "as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver."
The blog entry is no longer on Tesla's website but the Internet Archive has it: https://web.archive.org/web/20240730071548/https://tesla.com...
There were supposed to be 1 million robotaxis on the road by 2020. That didn't happen either: https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil...
Tesla set their own benchmarks and timelines. Tesla failed to achieve them.
They find it easier to lie and have people make excuses for them than to actually execute.
Lying is part of the company culture at Tesla.
Since when is someone trying to build a difficult thing on a tight timeline referred to as a "promise"?
He sets extremely ambitious goals and usually/often misses them, but the end result is that despite missing the ambitious goal, something amazing is delivered still much faster than anyone else could do it.
Being a Nazi is a huge red line
I think you're underselling what Trump and Musk has done to the stability of Democracy in the US. Aside from all that, there are other American car manufacturers with great EVs: Mustang Mach-E, Chevy Equinox/Bolt/Blazer, etc. Not saying that BYD isn't better, but comparing to Tesla, there is plenty of US competition.
> Aside from all that, there are other American car manufacturers with great EVs: Mustang Mach-E, Chevy Equinox/Bolt/Blazer, etc.
Teslas aren’t perfect, and they are definitely starting to get a bit dated, but the list you made has precisely zero “great EVs” imho.
I absolutely prefer my Ioniq 5 over a Tesla, not merely 'tolerate it'.
Tesla has everyone else beat on charging infrastructure, that is true, but I don't need that except for about 0.5% of the miles I drive (and even there, Tesla's competitors exist and are fine on the routes I'd take).
A lot more manual controls, in particular. I've never liked needing to use a touchscreen to manage functions of the car I might need to use while driving. Ioniq could actually go further still, some of the physical interface still uses a capacitive button rather than a physical button, but it is at least single-function so I can trace my hand along the bottom and the button I want is always in the same spot.
I like that by default it is set to two-pedal drive, especially in case I end up having to use an ICE or hybrid car (or have other drivers use my Ioniq). I like that I have a key fob and there's a physical interaction I need to make to turn the car on. I like that it supports Android Auto.
I think the styling is much better. I haven't sat in a Tesla long enough to give a direct comparison but the Ioniq interior is in the top quarter of cars I've driven.
It's not all roses, there's been Ioniq drivers run into ICCU issues that you don't really see the equivalent of with Tesla, but if I run into that then I'll just take it as a warranty item.
Edit: I forgot about the turn signal stalks but that was a primary thing for me as well, I literally thought it was some kind of anti-Tesla meme at first that they didn't have normal turn signals, until I verified it for myself.
They are as good as any Tesla, however, and in some areas better. Source: I own a Tesla Model 3 (my second) and I have owned a Bolt in the past, and currently own a Lightning. Aside from towing range, I prefer the Lightning the majority of the time. Tesla does some things better, while Ford excels in other ways. Both definitely have glaring faults.
I will stick to the Lightning since I know it best:
1. The Lightning auto-resumes lane centering after a lane switch, Tesla requires manually restarting (along with the annoyances which accompany that, like re-enabling auto wipers every single time).
2. CarPlay. (Which presumably Tesla is finally going to bring us.) Responding to text messages while driving is easier and less fussy with CarPlay (plus, if you are used to how CarPlay works, you will forget that after you dictate a reply to a text message in the Tesla you need to hit the send button on the screen). iMessages to non-phone recipients works with CarPlay but not at all with Tesla.
3. The Ford app lets me set a one-off "charge to 100%" flag which automatically resets to the previous setting after that charge.
4. And even though it is so obvious that it is probably boring to point out at this point, the rain sensing wipers on the Lightning actually work. The Tesla dry wipes, or not at all even when it is pouring, and everything in between.
5. The Lightning has radar. Without a lead car my Tesla remains prone to phantom braking at overpasses on bright sunny days. I have not ever had phantom braking on my pickup.
6. Windows. No amount of recalibration makes my Tesla windows go up exactly into the right position to be sealed. And pushing the button again just makes them lower slightly. So you have to monkey with it a couple times to make the sound of wind next to your ear go silent. I've never had a car amongst the dozens I've owned that got this basic functionality wrong, but both of my Teslas have struggled with it.
7. Comfort. Ford does not vertically integrate production of the interior and seats, and it shows. Nor do they cut corners on insulation. Someone else in this thread said that interiors were an inexpensive way for incumbents to differentiate from Tesla but I disagree on one point -- I think good interior design is expensive, which is exactly why Tesla does basically nothing. So the road noise is excessive and the flat, thin, barely bolstered seats are uncomfortable if you don't have enough built-in padding on your butt. Ford just outsources, probably to someone like Recaro, who has infinitely more experience making seats that don't suck.
First the Bolt, and then the Lightning has convinced me that there is no special sauce. I have a pickup that drives like my Tesla, but is still a pickup with all of the upsides and still has a comfy normal interior without the quirks. Tesla won't get any more of my business, for example, until they bring back the stalks and put in an IR rain sensor. They may eventually do both of these (I think they may have already started caving on the stalks). But now that I know that there are other options at least as good, I'm more picky and less accepting of the persistent cost cutting.
All opinions I suppose, huh?
You had the opportunity to blame one person or an entire country. Which did you choose?
There's both collective blame for the US, and also individual blame for the idiocy of Musk. No choice necessary.
The country that chose the one person?
Americans? Elon Musk is one person. He might be the richest person in the world but he doesn't represent us.
We voted with our wallets. Between communism and Nazis, communism was the lesser evil. This is Musk's WW3.
Communism has killed hundreds of millions of innocent people. It's not cute or funny.
Every decade, global capitalism decides that 100 million people don't need to eat and they get to starve to death. In the same time period, slightly less than that die from lack of medical care the market decides they don't need.
And that's just contemporary capitalism. Hundreds of millions starved in famines, and starving people got to watch as the food they themselves harvested was shipped to markets that would pay more for it. Millions were enslaved, and cultures, races and communities were wiped off the faces of continents in the name of profit.
And created such a boom of medicine that one can assert that the poorest among us should be entitled to it, and not have that assertion dismissed for being literally impossible.
If only the market didn't decide that hundreds of millions of those people don't need to eat
You will find me on my fainting couch
I know there’s a lot of Tesla/Elon hate here. I’m not denying any of it. I’m just sharing a genuinely strange experience I wasn’t expecting.
We needed a car again. Sold ours a year ago and got by with Uber, rentals, taxis. Life changed a bit and we needed something more predictable. I was planning to buy something used and boring and didn’t really care what.
My wife asked, “What about an EV?” We can’t charge in our rental garage, but there’s a Tesla Supercharger literally across the street. Took a Tesla test drive mostly out of curiosity.
And… I drove maybe 1% of that drive. The rest was on full self driving (FSD).
Fast forward, I now own a Tesla, and about 99% of my driving is on FSD.
Important context: when we picked it up, it was still on v13. It immediately made an illegal turn and scared some pedestrians in a crosswalk. So yes, I get the concern and skepticism. I had it too.
Then v14.2 landed.
Whatever they changed in that release feels real. It’s not just incremental. It feels like a different system. Elon says “we finally cracked it” (and probably says that all the time), so take that with a grain of salt, but with my very small sample size… it kind of looks like they might have.
Two moments that really stuck with me:
While self-driving, the car clearly anticipated a bus making a massive wide turn into our lane and hung way back until the maneuver was complete. It saw that developing long before I did.
At ~70 mph, I was mid lane-change with my blinker on when a driver towing a large trailer decided to drift into the same lane without checking their blind spot. The Tesla instantly aborted the lane change and smoothly moved back, avoiding what would’ve been a nasty accident. No panic, no hard braking, no drama.
I know this probably sounds like shilling. I’m not interested in the politics and don’t want to defend any of that. But it genuinely feels like stepping into the future, and honestly a much safer way to drive.
I want Rivian, Waymo, whoever to nail this too. I hope they do. But right now, Tesla seems to actually have something that crossed a line from “demo” to “wow, this is real.”
I didn’t expect to come away thinking that. But here we are.
Tesla drivers, the road is for everyone and the road is not an experiment. Please drive carefully & responsibly as accidents can destroy families.
The sad reality is that tons of people are terrible drivers. I’d much rather have Tesla self driving over a significant portion of the population.
This genuine technological breakthrough is real and should be a main topic when discussing Tesla.
Admittedly, the road to a working version of FSD has been a bumpy one, with many overly optimistic timelines, but now it's finally here, and it is almost completely ignored.
It’s been “here” or “almost here” for a decade according to Elon. The world and media are sleeping the hype because they ate up the hype for so long and never saw results.
This reads like “ChatGPT is a better programmer than me, so I let it do all the work”
You have a real obligation to learn how to drive. Your examples indicate neglect to take the safety of your family and others’ seriously
I stopped at "this reads like ChatGPT" but maybe I'm old and cynical :/
Agree with your take 100%.
Other than yelling at people, how are you getting drunk drivers off the road? Even though it's not perfect this shit works better than those assholes. Don't let perfect be the enemy of the good. Unless you're volunteering to drive Uber for free for everybody everywhere, telling people to just be more responsible hasn't worked in the whole history of humanity.
What percent of your driving is on highways vs urban? Almost all car brands today have incredible ADAS systems for highway driving. When Consumer Reports compared ADAS systems in 2023 Tesla was ranked 8th
https://www.consumerreports.org/-a2103632203/
If almost all of your driving is on highways then you could probably rely on ADAS for 99% of your driving with almost any other car brand as well
Why did you choose to run this through an LLM?
It's great until it isn't and it runs over some kids or smashes into a school bus. It doesn't matter how good the software is, the hardware is inadequate to be safe.
Does Elon’s politics and DOGE’s impact on the US change at all how you feel? Regardless of how great a Tesla, starlink, etc is I could never purchase on myself after the gutting DOGE did.
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Aren't those "smart quotes" associated with Mac software? And which part of the story did you find irrelevant?
It feels unnatural compared to the rest of the comment history.
Eventually, we will all be sitting here with LLMs trying to digest each other’s LLM generated comments.
Worth noting this Branden Flasch video from a year ago talking about how the charging speed on the 4680 pack tesla Model Y was uncompetitively slow and arguably shouldn't have been sold: https://youtu.be/eQeziVkRwSA
The big lie that you've all been sold is that Tesla has any kind of battery technology at all. Outside of repackaging Panasonic (in America) and other batteries (abroad), Tesla has dabbled in a few experiments and they all failed.
I am no big fan of Tesla, but Electrek has a clear bias in their reporting.
There's a lot of speculation here.
The actual facts of this reporting could just as likely be explained by vertical integration, very typical of Tesla, or of a supplier shift due to absurdly high tariffs.
> Despite a production capacity of 250,000 units per year at Giga Texas, the Cybertruck is currently selling at a run rate of roughly 20,000 to 25,000 units annually.
How can such an overcapacity be possible ? Is that a massive failure of market analysis ?
On the other hand, is the factory building the cybertruck easy to modify to build other, most successful models ? I hear there is demand for billions of autonomous robotaxis.
> How can such an overcapacity be possible ? Is that a massive failure of market analysis ?
Partially. Turns out that the cost, size, impracticality, and look turn off most people who would buy an EV.
But then there is also the active brand sabotage by the CEO, whose state of mind the Cybertruck seems to originate from and embody.
What is TSLA's valuation based on anymore? Maybe next week it'll be the moon colony they’ll have up and running in 2028.
Aren’t shaped prismatic cells the current state of the art anyway? The article mentioned BMW and Rivian using this size of cylindrical cell but I believe the latest from GM, Hyundai, and VW are all prismatic after the earlier designs were either pouch cells or cylindrical.
I guess it depends on who you’d ask. BMW made a switch from prismatic cells to cylindrical design only recently, and it looks like the biggest gain was in costs and weight efficiency. The range/capacity ratio didn’t improve that much. Although, to be fair, none of these parameters depend on battery alone.
Tesla stock dipped a little today it seems but it's still up 8 percent over the month. I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly.
> I really don't understand those investors and how they price a struggling company so highly.
Struggling, not so much: '24/'25 revenue of just under $100B, with Q3'25 record profitability and deliveries yielding $1.5B net income. Strong liquidity and a current ratio of about 2, boosting short-term financial stability. Solid cash reserves and relatively low debt ratio.
High stock price: far exceeds that of traditional auto makers even though Tesla's revenue is significantly lower. High valuation reflects investor expectations of growth and future tech upside. Exuberant? Probably. OTOH, Tesla has delivered better ROI for investors than the other automakers.
Tesla is probably the only EV maker with declining sales for the last two years. Quite a feat in a booming market, and remarkable considering that the stock already has a few orders of magnitude of growth priced in.
This is an interesting take, considering several EVs from traditional manufacturers have been canned entirely.
In the EU, jan-nov 2025 compared to jan-nov 2024: BEV market is +27.6% while Tesla is -38.8%.
Lack of FSD in Europe. If they manage to get it approved in 2026 expect that to reverse.
> Traditional auto manufacturers are dead. Full stop. They just haven't realized it yet. Tesla had a chance to compete in this market with Model 2 but Musk decided to blow their lead on a completely stillborn and gimmick-filled robotaxi.
Not sure whether you know, but Geely entered the automotive business in 1997 (founded in 1986).
The company has subsidiaries / joint ventures with automakers like Volvo, Polestar, Proton, Smart, Lotus, Renault, etc.
Lin Shufu, Geely’s founder and chairman bought just shy of 10% of Mercedes Benz in 2018, making him the second biggest individual shareholder in the German carmaker. The #1 spot is occupied by The Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Co. (BAIC), via its state-owned parent.
US auto is not the trend setter here. BYD is crushing it by comparison
The declining sales is a concern. Was curious though so I looked it up and Tesla is currently selling more than Volkswagen, Ford, Rivian, Mercedes, and Toyota combined. Interesting.
The big dog is BYD though. Twice as many as 2nd place Tesla.
The problem is Tesla's valuation is overpriced even if they owned 100% of the car market, their P/E ratio is > 300.
"But it's high margin", sure it is, but so is Ferrari, and their P/E is 30-40.
> Figured that metric is for EV only, which is not that surprising.
But it is stunning that legacy automakers are sticking to fossil fuels.
> Was curious though so I looked it up and Tesla is currently selling more than Volkswagen, Ford, Rivian, Mercedes, and Toyota combined. Interesting.
Indeed. Global 2024 data shows Tesla selling about 1.8M. EV's only by that group of automakers comes to around 1.5M. Toyota and Ford are hybrid-first, not EV. VW is the only legacy automaker that comes near Tesla's EV scale. Mercedes prioritizes margin over volume. Rivian is capacity-limited.
EVs or vehicles generally?
Ah, but you missed the pivot, Tesla is no longer an EV maker, it's now a robotics company.
This fully explains the market valuation, of course! Never mind a swarm of retail investors driven by a news media that covered Musk as if he were Tony Stark for years, this market cap is fully based on solid fundamental analysis of expected future revenue.
The pivot to robotics came exactly when it became clear Tesla is a failed car company. The valuation is not based on solid fundamental analysis of expected future revenue in robotics, because the company is lead by someone who fundamentally does not understand robotics (as evidenced by his continued failure to deliver FSD and robo taxis, his wrongheaded and stubborn insistence on vision-only sensing, and his completely backwards belief that sensor fusion makes belief estimates worse). Tesla's track record on autonomy and robotics is they are responsible for the first autonomous robot death, they invented something they dub "mecha-hitler" due to how vile it is, and they promised a product capable of driving across the US 8 years ago but still can't deliver it today. So no, the valuation is not solid, it's vapor.
there was a rush to buy electric cars in the US for as long as the $7500 incentive was in place, so the Q3 2025 number if inflated; it's a pull forward effect.
Sales have been flat for 3 years and the delivery numbers in Europe are catastrophic
on a fully diluted basis, the market cap is above $1.6tn, so at a PE of 20, they'd have to generate something like $80bn in profit per year - hard to do in an industry that is as brutally competitive and low margin as passenger cars.
Not to mention China heavily subsidizing BYD.
> It's a myth that China heavily subsidises its EV industry.
We must live in parallel universes.
From 2009 to 2022, China offered national purchase subsidies for EV buyers. Peak subsidies: ¥40,000–60,000 per vehicle (~$6k–9k). Combined with local subsidies, some buyers paid 30–40% less than market cost. These subsidies were phased down and formally ended in 2022, but the industry had already reached massive scale.
This policy alone created the world’s largest EV market.
Even after direct subsidies ended, China continues to provide: EV purchase tax exemptions (10% tax waived), extended through 2027.
China provides EV manufacturers with: Cheap or free land, Low-interest or state-directed loans, Preferential electricity pricing, Grants for factories, R&D, and tooling, State-backed battery supply chains.
China strategically subsidized battery production: CATL, BYD, and others received R&D grants, Guaranteed demand, Export financing.
China now controls ~75% of global lithium refining and ~80% of battery cell manufacturing.
This dramatically lowers EV costs versus foreign competitors.
No value judgement about subsidizing, but to say it is a myth that China has and continues to subsidize their EV industry is false.
From the article that you added in addition to the statements below, I don't think BYD is succeeding only by subsidies. I'm solely stating that they're heavily subsidized. China has a strategy where most western nations don't appear to have one.
----
It might be tempting when one has been asleep at the wheel to chalk up the rise of Chinese carmakers led by BYD to unfair subsidies, especially since leaders in Washington and Brussels have done so. No doubt, China is far from a free, fair and open market. The scale and pervasiveness of corporate subsidies at the federal and local level far exceed what other market-based economies offer.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2024-10-17/byd-s-...
----
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-11-10/china-s-c...
How come BYD’s stock price is essentially flat?
Lately I've realized that "Chinese subsidies" are psychologically useful for people outside China to believe in, as cope to handwave away their own failing industries. Solar panels aren't really subsidized in China either.
there are around 140 EV companies in china competing very aggressively, they have excess capacity and are flooding the world market with cheap EVs, tough for Tesla to have a healthy margin in that environment
BYD's exports are not subsidized, and are, in fact, a massive cash cow for the firm.
They are also way cheaper and at comparable quality to western cars.
It’s also Americans realized how inconvenient electric cars are. I take a fair amount of road trips. I don’t have the time to wait 30 minutes minimum to charge. And if there’s a line it’s even worse. And in the winter the heater reduces the distance a ton. It just isn’t practical
I have found charging to be a huge issue, and so has the majority of Americans (clearly). But why let facts interrupt an HN circle jerk?
Q3'25 was a known blip due to the rush to get the $7500 U.S. tax break, which IIRC, even Elon noted.
Past performance is meaningless here.
They lost the massive US subsidy making EV’s appealing and are getting outcomes in China. Model E and Cybertruck have anemic and shrinking sales numbers etc.
Model E?
Letter grade E?
That the stock has gone up a lot does not mean it will continue going up.
On the contrary, Teslas remarkably high stock price means it's less likely to go up and a big correction is more likely.
1.5B net on $100B revenue is not great. 1.5%? If that's not struggling, it's uncomfortably close.
> 1.5B net on $100B revenue is not great. 1.5%? If that's not struggling, it's uncomfortably close.
You're misreading. $100B annual revenue. 1.5B quarterly new income.
Q3 2025 was record revenue of $27B (up 12% YoY). Operating margin was 5.8% (down from 10.8 Q3 2024).
Why the lower profitability? Higher expenses for AI and R&D costs, lower EV prices (very strong competition), etc.
For comparison, GM brought in $1.3B on $48B.
Sorry, I lost the thread - GM looks twice as profitable, the same profit on half the revenue
How does that justify Tesla's valuation?
Is it based on the idea that the margin can be improved?
Look at the free cash flow, and the situation looks maybe even worse. They're basically not worth much, if anything, from a free cash flow perspective.
With many traditional auto makers you at this point have to wonder if they are still going to be around in ten years. Companies like Ford, Toyota, BMW, etc. are not looking so great. They each have the dilemma of a market that's shrinking by double digit percentages year on year (ICE cars) while another market is growing by the same percentage (EVs).
The way Toyota and Ford deal with this is reducing investments in EVs while at the same time meeting increased EV demand by heavily leaning on other companies to make them some EVs. Ford is working with VW and Renault in Europe. Toyota is working with big Chinese manufacturers in China. So is Ford. BMW has some success with their recent EV models but it is taking big hits with demand for their overall products in markets like the US and China.
The US is clearly lagging the EU and China when it comes to electrification. It's not at all clear that Tesla is doing much better. Their market share has tanked in markets where EVs do well (China, EU). However, it does have its own tech and still plenty of money. Where other manufacturers are leaning on outside suppliers, Tesla is pushing their own technology hard for just about everything. Including self driving cars and batteries. It's a different strategy at least and one that isn't dependent on the ICE market doing well or Chinese manufacturers doing all the technical heavy lifting.
Tesla's stock price is based on investor expectations on some of those bets working out eventually. Even if a lot of that stuff seems like it is struggling right now, it's too early to write all of it off as failed. The 4680 is still expected to be a big part of the semi's Tesla is expected to finally start mass producing in 2026. Self driving tests are still continuing and might eventually add up to something that works well enough. And it's also a relavant format for LFP based chemistries.
The problem for all of them have right now (especially Tesla) is that the Chinese are moving full steam ahead and are doing really well on technology and growth currently. Including things like self driving and of course batteries. The 4680 seems like it is old news when solid state is happening and new chemistries other than NMC are starting to dominate. And FSD while impressive has plenty of competition from other vendors at this point. Rivian has its own version. So do several Chinese vendors. And of course Waymo is actually moving lots of passengers autonomously at this point.
> High valuation reflects investor expectations of growth and future tech upside.
Yeah, sure.
I wonder if there are still legacy short positions (from 2018-2020 era) that prop up the stock price by covering during dips.
If revenue or profit was the deciding factor TSLA wouldn't be valued as highly as it is.
It has delivered a better ROI in the same way a ponzi scheme can deliver higher ROI.
> It has delivered a better ROI in the same way a ponzi scheme can deliver higher ROI.
It sounds like you're arguing that high valuation compared to fundamentals means buyers expect gains from future buyers paying more sounds like a Ponzi, but it isn't, it is speculation.
The comparison doesn't make sense. Some surface features of speculative markets can look Ponzi-like, but the underlying mechanics are very different.
A Ponzi-scheme returns to earlier participants directly from money contributed by later participants, with no real underlying business generating value. In a Ponzi-scheme, there is no real product (or it is irrelevant), the operator controls payouts, and investors are promised steady or guaranteed returns. None of that applies to Tesla stock.
Ponzi-schemes hide losses, smooth returns, collapse suddenly. Tesla stock is volatile, has had large drawdowns, and public reflects bad news, margin compression, demand shifts. Volatility is a sign of a market, not a Ponzi.
If you believe Tesla is a Ponzi scheme then you also believe that the SEC is either knowingly keeping a Ponzi scheme going (and it is getting included in indexes) OR the SEC doesn’t know OR you are wrong.
We have BYD here, it's a stiff competitor for Tesla, but it's not end game for Tesla material.
I personally prefer a BYD, Musk has damaged his brand by being so political, but the BYD product is (IMO) superior.
Having said that BYD isnt without its issues (eg. over reporting of range)
> If BYD was in the US I think we could check this box reeeeaaally quickly. It would make Tesla irrelevant.
Why? What's your logic?
Yeah, the target keeps moving. Earlier it was “it’s not a car company, it’s a battery company”. Then it was all about FSD and robotaxis. Now that that is not working out, it’s going to be a robot company.
The actual underlying product, the cars, don’t match the crazy valuation.
It also has the characteristics that most of the dupes are not pleased that the fraud was discovered to be a fraud. People swindled by Madoff swore that it was all legit. It's not easy to give up a belief one has held fervently for years.
Ponzi schemes don’t make $100B revenue, traded on the stock exchange, or make profit.
There's nothing to understand really. Tesla is a meme stock, and will keep rising as long as Elon and others keep hyping it up.
I don't understand why this keeps working. The dude doing the hyping is widely hated.
67% of Americans have said they'll never consider buying a Tesla. 56% cite Musk as either the entire reason or part of the reason. [0]
Tesla IS Elon Musk. Without him they're nothing, with him they can't access 2/3rds of the market. Why would anyone invest in that?
[0] https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-thirds-of-americans-now-say-t...
TSLA investors:
* don't believe the 67% will follow through with that after experiencing FSD
* don't need 67% of Americans to purchase the car. Robotaxi use is plenty.
* look beyond the American market and its pathetic 5% EV share.
Personally, I suspect they're very wrong about the first two points, but that's just my opinion.
Thanks for explaining the other side of it.
How is that a Tesla thing though?
I'm fairly certain every auto manufacturer and many non-auto manufacturers are working on it. I doubt they'll be able to patent anything truly important to the process, since others beat them to the market with most of it. Or am I missing something essential?
> I’ve tried v13 few weeks ago, knowing it works so well. Still got shocked how good it is.
You're not in a position to makes those claims. People think that if it works for them, it's great, which is nonsense of course.
> FSD is going to wipe everything off.
Then why are Tesla's sales down globally?
Stock valuations are not a democracy of public opinion, they are the product of investors putting their money into the stock.
Musk is a shit human, but to an investor, everything he touches turns to gold. Whether his companies make anything useful doesn't matter, what matters is that the stock price in his companies goes up, so people give him more money. This works until it doesn't.
My take is there are not really any reasonable Tesla investors left. Due to a steady supply of Real Believers, anyone with a short bet got burnt time after time.
So these people are no longer shorting. Sane long-only people, likewise have been out for a long time. You're left with a clique of people who won't sell regardless, and when Elon promises to make ice cream with robotaxies, they'll buy a bit more stock.
When only irrational people trade something, the price and market for it are irrational too.
I don't think Tesla stock has traded on fundamentals for a while.
Or ever.
Of course it hasn't, it is a cult of personality.
Short it then
> Short it then
Just because stock is trading on memes, doesn't mean it can't keep doing so well past your solvency to short it...
Such as lazy excuse.
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Meaning you also need to get the timing just right otherwise you'll lose big, even if Tesla crashes and burns to zero just after.
Timing shorts is one of the hardest problems in human history.
It doesn't mean that Tesla stock won't crash unless it actually delivers a Holy Grail. Which is supremely unlikely
> stock value isn't rooted in reality
> "Short it then"
I can smell your personal finance through the screen.
Can't win against irrational exuberance and fraud that isn't prosecuted in the capital markets ("voting machine vs weighing machine"). Just have to wait for failure of the enterprise, equity wipeout, and recapitalization under better human management (if you're optimizing for a company that actually manufacturers and sells a product vs a shell to pump a stock and enrich the board members who enable him with a lack of corporate governance). The factories and Supercharger network will remain intact under a reorganization.
Musk can move money around SpaceX/Tesla/XAI/whatever the next story to investors is to prop up valuations and share prices, but can he win against China's clean tech export machine? Long term, I think not (China is a third of global manufacturing capacity as of this comment, and the world is their TAM). So he'll do the tech bro thing, giving talks, going to demo days, spending his wealth on pet projects, etc, while innovators innovate and point the firehose of these products at the world. Are you going to talk people out of his religion? Unlikely. The faithful will remain so, because that's how the human brain sometimes operates.
Ember Energy: China Cleantech Exports Data Explorer - https://ember-energy.org/data/china-cleantech-exports-data-e... (updated monthly) ("In 2024, China produced around 80% of the world’s solar PV modules and battery cells, and 70% of electric vehicles.")
US warns China overproducing EVs, batteries, semiconductors for global dominance - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41909869 - October 2024
China's Batteries Are Now Cheap Enough to Power Huge Shifts - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40954508 - July 2024
China Already Makes as Many Batteries as the Entire World Wants - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40933773 - July 2024
(as of this comment, ~50% of light vehicle sales in China are NEVs [battery electric of plug in hybrid] while exporting ~6M units/year, more than total annual US light vehicle sales)
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
The stock market learns from experience, because it's made of people who learn from experience.
Imagine an investor's experience with TSLA. From the beginning, they're flooded with news reports about 'fundamentals' this, 'fundamentals' that, about how Tesla would imminently collapse, how it's a scam, yada yada. Said investors _constantly_ see themselves being right and those skeptics wrong. Tesla is in fact disrupting an industry. They really are just continuing to scale. Marginal profitability keeps going up. Their cars keep getting better. FSD keeps getting better. The competition that people kept pointing at kept failing to materialize. None of this seems to change the skeptics' byline.
Tesla is actually in a materially worse position than it was a few years ago, by many metrics, but the stock price isn't set by 'fundamentals', it's set by the people setting demand for the stock. With TSLA, this is disproportionately going to be people who have learned to and gotten rich from ignoring the people loudly telling them why investing in Tesla is a bad idea.
A market will correct eventually, but corrections either require people to change their minds or run out of capital. Neither has happened yet, so the market can't correct.
If you want to understand how Tesla bulls pump the stock, check out any of the numerous videos of Dan Ives you will find on YouTube. He is regularly invited on CNBC and other financial new media as well as on financial blogs/vlogs. Here is one recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecLsZ4bkW6Q
Wow, that is the least confidence-inspiring person I've ever listened to (and perhaps laid eyes upon).
I think somehow the goofiness and untrustworthiness of the pumpers is a way to select their audience, just like how spammers intentionally misspell to not waste their time on people with discernment
Think of Tesla as a well-funded pharmaceutical company that has invented a cure for a widespread ailment (call it “driving”) and now is waiting on regulatory approval.
I see a lot of Teslas on the road. But I spend a lot of time in Massachusetts and some in California.
Stock market is all based on vibes at this point. Giant gambling system
Has been for much of the late-and post-ZIRP period.
Our so-called "gdp" is mostly rent and legal ponzi schemes
Because you're getting a biased storyline both here and over there. The 4680 supply chain isn't a requirement for anything to succeed at Tesla. The product still sells, just with lower profit per unit. At best, it marks the removal of the current Cybertruck battery pack chemistry. Everything else about the future of Tesla is (as always) clickbait speculation.
Teslas CEO bought the presidency of the USA.
have because despite the story that most people try to tell about the market and the economy... in the late- and post-ZIRP era, it's been mostly based on Hype, Feelings, and Vibes.
It's why the entire S&P 500 teeters on the back of 7 companies without any presently viable paths to profitability that would justify the current valuations.
It's why repeatedly lying for a decade+ made Elon so rich even though the business output and fundamentals never really matched the valuation.
Still doesn't - this valuation is mostly vestigial beliefs that AI would eliminate an entire workforce ("history often rhymes") of drivers and replace car ownership with subscription.
The majority of the performance in the market has little to do with actual material value being produced and everything to do with how much rent finance bros think they can extract from the stock.
TSLA exposure is a call option on Musk succeeding (with success criteria being "TSLA price go up") regardless of reality. SpaceX is buying up Cybertrucks; is it illegal? Will anyone do anything about it? That sort of success (quasi fraud). The product is the stock and the hope there is a greater fool who will buy it eventually.
SpaceX Buys over 1000 Cybertrucks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46405984 - December 2025
Last week: Elon Musk's SpaceX bought tens of millions worth of Cybertrucks Tesla can't sell - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46317462 - December 2025 (6 comments)
Elon Musk's SpaceX and XAI Are Buying Tesla's Unsold Cybertrucks - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45572152 - October 2025 (8 comments)
Tesla's European Sales Plunge - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46391352 - December 2025 (3 comments)
Tesla US sales drop to nearly 4-year low in November - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46248803 - December 2025 (60 comments)
Tesla looks to reset strategy amid sluggish India sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46084554 - November 2025 (2 comments)
Tesla's European sales tumble nearly 50% in October - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46063634 - November 2025 (57 comments)
Tesla sees worst sales performance in China in years - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45881302 - November 2025 (1 comment)
BYD Pulls Ahead of Tesla in UK, Closes Sales Gap in Germany - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45859618 - November 2025 (35 comments)
Tesla's German car sales more than halve in October as wider EV sales jump - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45827314 - November 2025 (135 comments)
[Flagged] Tesla sales in Germany have cratered from last year, data shows - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45826384 - November 2025 (28 comments)
Study: The Musk Partisan Effect on Tesla Sales - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45825382 - November 2025 (2 comments) ("Without the Musk partisan effect, Tesla sales between October 2022 and April 2025 would have been 67-83% higher, equivalent to 1-1.26 million more vehicles. Musk’s partisan activities also increased the sales of other automakers' electric and hybrid vehicles 17-22% because of substitution, and undermined California’s progress in meeting its zero-emissions vehicle target.")
Tesla Cybertruck sales are flatlining - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45573985 - October 2025 (17 comments)
Tesla Pivots to Robots as Investors Question Sales and Soaring Valuation - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45228566 - September 2025 (3 comments)
The "new economy" is full of self-dealing. That's the result of loose (or non-existing) regulations on monopolies. It all starts with Wall Street controlling stocks on thousands of large companies that are ultimately owned by small groups of the same shareholders. Now it's evolving to large sectors owned by fewer and fewer people.
That is certainly a contributing factor, which Matt Stoller has documented robustly in his newsletter "Big" [1] [2], as well as the More Perfect Union org [3] [4].
[1] https://www.thebignewsletter.com/
[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=thebignewsletter.com
I don’t think self-dealing is new. Although it was eye-opening, when I learned that BlackRock, Vanguard, and Fidelity all own 5-10% of every company and competition between the companies they hold is not meaningful. Everyone just has to have nice steady predictable returns and nobody is allowed to innovate too far ahead of anyone else for fear of devaluing the real bosses’ other assets.
I don’t even know what to call the kind of system we have.
As I said, BlackRock and their friends were just the beginning. NVdia is trying to own a huge chunk of the AI space using their profits. Other tech companies are using a similar playbook. And of course they're all owned by Wall Street. The competition is highly controlled so the winners are all part of the same club.
All BEV sales, not just Tesla, are tanking, at least in the USA. Ford and and others have retreated on their plans as well. Tesla may be worse off because of Musk's extracurricular antics but BEVs are not selling well.
In the US, which is due to policy, which is temporary. The rest of the world remains very hungry for affordable electric vehicles [1], which only China seems interested in producing at scale. Once that manufacturing capacity and distribution systems are spun up (BYD has its own car carrier for exports, the BYD Shenzhen, for example [2]), it will remain in production. "Can Tesla survive until regime change?" is an important question for those with economic exposure to it. Ironically, its peril is entirely self inflicted.
> BYD announced in 2022 its plans to launch a fleet of car carriers to build what it calls a “maritime bridge” to support its global sales growth and supply chain. The company said it would invest about $687 million to develop a fleet of eight car carriers. The first of the vessels, BYD Explorer No. 1 was delivered in January 2024 followed by BYD Changzhou in December 2024, and BYD Hefei, which was the company’s first owned PCTC. Each of the first three vessels has a capacity of 7,000 units. [My note: current BYD vertical integration marine fleet capacity is ~30k units when including the Shenzhen vessel mentioned above, but does not include capacity through third party charters]
[1] China EV Exports Worldwide Rise 87% Year over Year to 199,836 in November [2025] - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-12-29/china-ev-... | https://archive.today/Q80Zs - December 29, 2025
[2] Chinese EV Manufacturer BYD Takes Delivery of [World's] Largest Capacity Car Carrier - https://maritime-executive.com/article/chinese-ev-manufactur... - April 24th, 2025
(think in systems; US light vehicle TAM is ~18M units/year, global TAM is ~90M units/year; Tesla US sales will finalize at ~600k units for 2025)
I'd consider an affordable BEV. There are none sold in the US, and nobody seems interested in making one. Closest thing might be a used Nissan Leaf.
It feels like you already lost the whole point of this thread. Then why is the stock up?
If I could explain why stocks do what they do I would not be writing code for a living.
Tesla's stock is a tulip future at this point.
Tesla has the government and a vast propaganda apparatus behind it:
https://fortune.com/2025/03/20/howard-lutnick-pumps-tesla-st...
“If you want to learn something on this show tonight, buy Tesla,” Lutnick told Fox News host Jesse Watters.
In this economy we have a billionaire clan selling hot air and backing each other up. The main "achievements" of this administration are in pumping Bitcoin, "AI", cannabis sales and and online gambling.
The promise of self driving is what's driving Tesla stock.
Two things can happen:
The dream is a bust, and Tesla is worthless.
Or the dream pans out, and almost all other car companies are worth a lot less.
Unless you absolutely want to believe that either self driving is impossible, or Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it, the valuation is not entirely unwarranted.
Put shortly, Tesla is not a car company, it's a bet on self-driving cars.
There's a simple third option you omitted:
Tesla is not the only company to achieve self-driving, and all companies that achieve it share the market with them.
(Or the fourth option, it will take decades for self-driving to take even a significant market of "driving" as humans continue to want to own and drive cars rather than short-term rentals.)
A more likely outcome is that all major auto manufacturers offer self driving. Ford and Mercedes already have Level 3 systems. Toyota is working with Waymo. Several Chinese automakers have self driving, at various levels of quality. It's going to become a routine feature of cars. Tesla isn't even the leader.
This is the Pascal's wager of stock arguments.
It omits a lot of other scenarios that increase the actual risk of betting on Tesla...
Self-driving becomes a commodity and so there's no unique Tesla win.
Self-driving becomes something only Tesla controls but (in the fleet/rental model) doesn't bring back returns to justify this investment because of extremely high capital, maintenance, regulatory, or other costs.
Self-driving becomes something only Tesla controls but (in the personal-owner model) doesn't bring back returns to justify this investment because it doesn't motivate the entire world to splash out on new vehicles overnight and also doesn't override other existing biases/preferences.
Self-driving is won by someone else (maybe someone with less religious views about Lidar, say) and Tesla no longer can even sell that promise.
Those are just the ones that occur to me in a few minutes!
Well, they don't have a self-driving car but they do have a self-driving share price!
Waymo is 5 years ahead of Tesla, but Tesla has 50% of Google's market cap, with 10x the P/E.
So something isn't being priced correctly.
This omits the fact that Musk has slashed costs in critical areas of Tesla cars, notably in relying only on visual sensors.
They abandoned the hardware most promising to help enable self-driving.
Framing it as unwarranted to not think "Tesla is uniquely unable to achieve it"...? Seriously?
The real question is if Tesla is uniquely ABLE to achieve it, above others in the market... including new startups or tech/auto-maker partnerships which may yet form.
Tesla has some supply chain innovation, but none of what they do can't be replicated... and Musk's slavish commitment to video as opposed to LIDAR is hobbling them.
Seems odd to have a supply contract without a penalty clause.
I actually did want a lighter, 2 Wheel Drive Cybertruck (for $40,000). The "Long Range" trim was close. But it was actually $70k not the $60k they were saying.
Get rid of the touchscreen and the four-wheel-drive steering and the electrical flush door handles, the hatch thing in the back, smaller wheels, any other electronic features like 120v inverters, etc. solid rear axel would be nice but that would be a major redesign.
You should look at the Slate...
Not falling for that again, I'll consider it when it actually exists
Should be shipping next year
Swap "solid rear axle" with "De Dion axle" and your description fits the Slate truck pretty well.
Slate truck or telo trucks could be the move
How easily can stocks be redirected to eg energy supply logistics and make battery stacks?
How easily can the inputs be redirected by the source to more viable longterm contract sells?
How strongly will this push back on mining and minerals in related fields? E.g. palladium prices have collapsed, could this kind of thing move mining product pricing?
what would it look like to directly sell EV batteries to consumers? what would have to happen?
this sort of happened. the people who sold these battery materials for the 4680 thought they were making a B2B sale, and they still wound up making a B2C sale - that ended in disaster - in disguise.
> what would it look like to directly sell EV batteries to consumers? what would have to happen?
It looks like this: https://www.amazon.com/JESSY-3-7-Volt-Rechargeable-Battery/d...
These cells aren't special, they're all off the shelf designs. The 4680 got some marketing spin, but really it was just a bigger form factor with a tweaked chemistry that apparently just didn't work out. And of course that means you can meta-spin the failure as "supply chain collapse", etc...
Obviously, no, you can't just buy a bunch of 21700 cells and stuff them in the car yourself, the balancing and calibration needs to happen in an integrated way and that repair (digging into a 400V DC battery!) is just way too dangerous for amateurs. But the batteries themselves are mature technology and kinda boring.
Note that you should never buy raw cells from Amazon. They are always fake or under-spec. At the very least, this seller claims "Multiple Protections" when this is a fully unprotected cell.
Distributors usually won't sell to regular consumers, but there are specialized retailers who base their reputation on selling quality goods, usually to the RC, flashlight, and vape market.
FWIW, this is definitely the opinion among Ego tool users on reddit. The aftermarket stuff comes with a discount and the possibility of a free surprise inside every box.
Unfortunately nobody else makes any good electric cars at this time, and certainly none that have anything approaching FSD. But you can't buy one due to Elon's treachery. It's extremely frustrating.
Gotta love Electrek and Fred Lambert, he’s managed to lose a crap-ton of money on Tesla stock. What a total loser. I always read his stuff and think the opposite, that’s the safe bet.
A little tangential, but seeing now the name of the steering-wheel-less cabs, why'd they name it Cyber{truck,cab} anyway? Doesn't it imply we use them to drive through the internet?
Its even better with the ancient Greek definition of cyber. Then it becomes a steer-truck/cab, literally implying the opposite.
Take anything on electrek.co with a grain of salt, it is a wildly anti-Tesla, pro-China website.
Is there something you disagree with in the article or you just don’t like the author?
Whenever I see people decry it as "anti Tesla" or "anti Elon" I just wonder "what have they done they can be covered positively?"
While I'm an out and proud "Tesla hater" and freely admit my own bias. The defenders never actually seem to have any "look here's something good that [site] overlooked!" It's just whining about the site being anti-Tesla
Its not about complementing the bad with some good. Its about how much the bad is exxagerated.
Is it 'exaggeration' when it's all that's there to report on?
Would it be less 'exaggeration' if the site only talked about Tesla "half" the time? (that is to say, just ignored Tesla rather than reported on issues)
I don't have any comments on their supposed slant, but I do know electrek.co articles often contain mistakes or inaccuracies.
When I comment on the articles or email their authors/editors about the inaccuracies they never respond, nor fix the article.
So yeah... Take anything on electrek.co with a grain of salt.
Yet the 4680 was supposed to be a platform shift, not a single-model experiment
I think the amount of vitriol in this thread directed at one of the most successful tech entrepreneurs of all time is sad. He may be too optimistic in his predictions but at least he has goals worth achieving and doesn't stop just because it doesn't work the first time.
You frame it as if the "vitriol" were entirely based on his success in business or lack thereof. Surely it has nothing to do with his behaviour and adventures in politics? Yes, people must be entirely misguided in their judgement of a complete lack of moral character.
Nothing like that was discussed in the thread as far as I saw.
Can I ask you something since you love to brag about being a VC? Do you guys have any morals? Seriously. Because from some one that was raised to believe that lying is wrong and that liars (which Elon blatantly is) are not to be respected, you all seem to have no real values other than money and power.
I don't think he is lying. He believes it when he says it.
I picture some evangelical church where people get together every week to amp each other up and randomly yell out some angry sound bites while looking around eagerly for approval.
[dead]
[flagged]
One of the greatest mass murderers in history...? I uh, am morbidly curious to hear your thought process here.
If you are unfamiliar with the shuttering of USAID this year, you “uh” be in an information bubble that is not serving you.
Search terms that will help you on your journey include “DOGE”, “Kenya”, and “cholera”.
Well, that’s between you and your worth as a human being I suppose. I do thank you for doing the legwork.
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Search terms that will help you on your journey include “DOGE”, “Kenya”, and “cholera”.
I’m sorry that the death of hundreds of thousands of people did not register in your world, but I feel like charges of “lunacy” are a bit rich coming from someone living in a soft bubble of ignorance.
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I guess Nazi salute didn't help.
Which bmw models use that battery?
In any case I'm more and more convinced that Tesla does not hold any significant advantage anymore over legacy automakers in EV space like Volkswagen group, which has 20+ electric models.
Musk increasingly feels like a charlatan selling snake oil. He is great at hype and storytelling, not so great at execution. Big promises, missed timelines, excuses reframed as genius.
He has been promising fully autonomous Teslas since at least 2015 and “level 5” self-driving within a couple of years, yet cars still require human oversight and true autonomy remains elusive.
He said Tesla robotaxis would be on the road by 2020 and then “next year” repeatedly, which never happened.
He promised an affordable $35,000 Model 3 and a cheap family EV, but those never materialized as advertised.
He unveiled the Cybertruck with specific features and price points that did not pan out, and several promised add-ons never appeared.
He set repeated production deadlines for the Tesla Roadster that kept slipping for years.
And his Mars colonization timelines are still nowhere near realistic.
The same cycle keeps repeating, with fans focusing on a few wins while ignoring a long list of missed commitments. At some point it stops being bold vision and starts looking like a confidence game.
This article is drivel. If a supplier writes down the value of a contract with Tesla, they're saying Tesla is buying fewer batteries, or will in the near future. That is, there is a lack of demand for the batteries. If you're determined to take this as bad news for Tesla, rather than bad news for L&F, you could maybe speculate about lack of demand for Cybertrucks, but spinning it as "supply chain collapse" is just silly.
This 2 hour old entry with 242 comments and 231 points has dropped off the front page. Interesting.
Turns out making a box is even easier than a larger tootsie roll.
In other news: https://www.electrive.com/2025/12/17/powerco-starts-unified-...
It is totally absurd how far Tesla has fallen behind legacy auto makers, who are now starting up their own battery production and are very close to actually releasing a 25.000 Euro car in Europe.
I ride in budget BYD’s regularly in Asia.
Tesla is absolutely fucked.
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What failed in the technology?
Because batteries are the only part you can criticize, take a look at the sodium batteries made by CATL:
https://cnevpost.com/2025/12/29/catl-expects-sodium-batterie...
https://carnewschina.com/2025/12/28/catl-confirms-2026-large...
It's a real breakthrough in battery tech. With gasoline you simply can't have this.
I don't want to pile on you as I see you've already taken a hit - so I'll leave the voting out of this. But consider how many people you knew in the 80s/90s with a Laser Disc player. It was very niche. You likely had one techy nerd friend, or you had a friend that had a dad that was always buying "the next big thing". I think I knew ONE GUY that bought a laser disc player. Contrast that with just Tesla (not even EVs). You likely know 4 or 5 friends or family that own one. The model Y was the best selling vehicle last year. Whether that trend lasts into the 2050s, none of us can know. But calling it a failure? I just don't see it.
Electric cars were a failure, their market share tanked back in the 1910s. So a vague "electric cars failed in the market" is technically true. However, that past failure is quite distinct from the current electric car thing.
We will see. I drove them for 9 years. I , sadly , saw the reality
I will never go back to a ICE car after 30k km of driving an EV
The technology is fine, it's the leadership. Plenty of other countries are rolling out EVs fine, we (the US) just can't seem to build out the charging infrastructure or standardize on a charging port.
(And don't forget that Laserdisk was quite successful for what it tried to do, and that when you buy physical videos today, they're in optical disk format.)
The U.S. already standardized on a charging port: Tesla's. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_American_Charging_Standa...
There is no legal mandate for NACS.
Cars are still sold with J1772/CCS ports, there are still CCS chargers being deployed, there are still J1772 home chargers being sold, almost every level 2 charger is J1772, and my NACS EV came with two dongles.
(FWIW, the new Leaf has a NACS port that's only used for level 3 charging, and separate J1772 port for level 1/2 charging.)
If there was a legal mandate for a changeover, it would be a very different story.
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We pretty much need to force NACS: Force all public chargers (level 2 and 3) to be NACS, force all cars sold to be NACS, and make it super-easy for people with older cars to get dongles.
The manufacturers all want you to use their dongle. It's not CYA, either. A lot of the Amazon ones aren't safe.
> I think you're underselling how standard it is.
It's about availability:
There's still way more CCS / J1772 than NACS when I use public chargers, or when I look to purchase home chargers. The dealer that I bought my Ioniq 9 had a CCS charger, and the other dealer that I took it to for service had a CCS charger. When I park it near work, it's a J1772. (I wouldn't have bought the Ionic 9 if it was CCS/J1772.)
Searching Google for "What percentage of EVs for sale in the US are NACS" says:
> Transition Period for New Sales: While nearly all major automakers have committed to the NACS standard, many 2025 model year vehicles are still a mix of CCS ports with available NACS adapters, or new models coming with a native NACS port.
> 2026 Model Year: Virtually all new models from every major automaker are expected to come standard with the NACS port
Searching Google for "What percentage of EV chargers in the US are NACS" says:
> As of late 2025, NACS (Tesla's standard, now SAE J3400) dominates in available ports, especially DC fast charging, due to Tesla's massive Supercharger network (over 57% of ports) and rapid adoption by other automakers, with NACS already representing a significant portion of all installed ports, though CCS1 still sees new deployments, creating a dynamic transition where NACS is the majority in Tesla vehicles and rapidly growing across the infrastructure.
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What distorts the issue is that so many EVs are Teslas, and that so many chargers are Supercharger. Once you exclude Tesla / Supercharger from the comparison, there's still too much CCS/J1772.
Wouldn't be if we could buy byd cars in the US
Electric car sales keep growing and even their biggest critics agree they are better to drive than ICE cars.
I’ll buy a cybertruck if and only if the board replaces Elon. I’m serious
So this battery pipeline can only be used for the cybertruck? Cannot be adapted to be used with the other vehicles? That seems odd.
The thing you made up sure seems odd yes! The facts are that it is not currently used in any other vehicle and we can assume by the fact that the contract was written down by 99% that there is no plan to do so in the near term, otherwise they'd actually, you know, need the batteries.
But don't let facts get in the way of some good bullshit!
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Maybe your brain could tell us where the batteries are being used and who is producing them.
You know, evidence, instead of just something that resides in your brain.
> can only be used for the cybertruck
vs
> where the batteries are being used
It's just a different battery cell size with less overhead. 46 by 80 mm instead of e.g. 21 by 70 mm.
I get it, but if the supplier shutting it down suggests that its not being used anywhere else.
So besides speculation, where is the evidence. In particular I'm wondering about production within Tesla, another supplier, anything that suggests there is a model adopting them.
If you see electrek news , these are just plain sour haters.
Cyberteack is a flop. This battery has a parallel track and is used elsewhere so conclusions are just basesless .
Isn’t this design DOA though, with LFP and upcoming solid state batteries?
Where else are the batteries used?
It says in the article other manufacturers are using 4680 tech in their cars, BMW, Rivian ...
Don't worry, the 99% reduction in battery materials is just a strategic pivot to an 'asset-light' approach. The 4680 supply chain isn't collapsing, it’s just being 'optimized' for a future where cars apparently don't need batteries—just FSD subscriptions and robotaxis that run on optimism.
This makes sense but does it make sense to manufacture LFPs as 4680 cylinders instead of rectangular blocks/blades, given https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Blade_battery ?
Which cell technology to use depends on the application. Tesla actually uses BYD blade batteries in some of their vehicles sold in Europe. The main issue with prismatic cells is that to be safe, they must be made with LFP chemistry, which hurts energy density. LFP is also worse at charging/discharging when cold, though battery management software mostly solves that.
Cylindrical cells make sense for higher performance NMC and NCA chemistries, as they can be cooled more easily (coolant lines can run in the voids between cylindrical cells), and any single cell failure is less likely to cascade to other cells. Batteries with cylindrical cells were easier to repair, but nowadays cells are welded together instead of bolted, so that's no longer an advantage.
> The main issue with prismatic cells is that to be safe, they must be made with LFP chemistry, which hurts energy density
This is obviously untrue. Tons of other chemistries have used prismatic cells with good safety as well. You think Macbooks and iPhones use LFP or cylinder cells?
> Batteries with cylindrical cells were easier to repair,
It can be just as easy to repair a prismatic battery as a cylinder battery. It all comes down to the layout of the battery. And as you mentioned, how the battery is constructed, if the battery is structural, etc.
Apart from Tesla very few EVs ever used cylindrical cells.
But it still is untrue even in the discussion of electric vehicles. Tons of EVs have been made safely with chemistries other than LFP with prismatic cells. In fact most non-LFP EV batteries are pouch or prismatic, not cylinder.
And I can find tons of videos of cylindrical cells catching fire and exploding. What's your point exactly?
Yep. Prismatic cells have poorer packaging-to-material ratio (circles are optimal). They offer better thermal properties, but thermals are not the main limiting factor anymore.
And the US automakers tried prismatic cells before. Chevy Volt used them in 2012!
Chevy sells EVs with prismatic and pouch cells. I don't recall any they've widely sold that used cylinder cells. Most automakers use prismatic cells on their cars, even non-LFP variants.
Also GM had to replace batteries in 142,000 Chevy Bolts & Volts due to fire risk, so I'm not sure that should count as an example of a successful use of non-cylindrical, non-LFP batteries.
I can go to any major metro area in the US and go buy a GM EV today. That's widely sold.
How are circles optimal???
Circle packing = 90%
Blade battery packing = 100%
it's not just a basic geometry problem, it's an engineering problem. You need to account for far more details.
It's more complicated. You can't pack the battery at 100% anyway, because you need cooling. Cylindrical cells are also more rigid, so they need less supporting material, or they can even be a part of the support structure itself.
With cylindrical cells, you have more leeway in the overall shape of the battery pack and can fill nooks and crannies with them.
Yeah, it's typical of Elektrec to interpret anything Tesla-related in the worst light.
I personally fact checked articles about "Autopilot disengages milliseconds before collision" and the one related to Benavides v. Tesla case.
In the first case they jumped to conclusions. In the second case they "forgot" to mention any details that contradict their narrative: that there were two cases separated by years, that the police has received all the information they needed in the first case, that the driver was pressing the accelerator.
My understanding is Fred (Electrek) has been nothing but negative about Tesla since he got upset that they haven't released the roadster yet. Something to do with having enough referral points to get one. It has become his whole identity and it is sad to see.
Pretty sure those comments are tongue in cheek. And it’s not that he’s dying to buy one, Tesla owes him one, and doesn’t have to fulfill it by never making any
HN audience loves to undermine one of the only places actually objectively calling out the mega corps
I wouldn't speculate about his reasons, but many of his articles are objectively bad journalism.
I havent seen an article on that site be remotely positive to tesla in a long time if ever. Its weird, the obsession with Tesla hating.
he also sold all is tesla stock, so I assume there is some incentive too feel better in case tesla fails.
Does having larger LFP cells, like the 4680 format, allow this chemistry to be used in higher-performance models? Right now it looks like only the RWD basic models use LFP cells everything else uses NMC.
This is more recent and informative.
https://youtu.be/-sN2_Lp10lw?si=blBPFQ9jy2L8rCNp