Tesla ending Models S and X production

A reasonable guess.

As far as I can tell, the number of humanoid robots doing anything productive is zero. It's all demos.

This is far harder than self-driving. As a guy from Waymo once said in a talk, "the output is only two numbers" (speed and steering angle).

Also, there are at least 18 humanoid robots good enough to have a Youtube video. Tesla is not the leader.

Remember the "cobot" boom of about five years ago? Easy to train and use industrial robots safe around humans? Anybody?

I'm not saying this is impossible, but that it's too early for volume production. This will probably take as long as it took to get to real robotaxis.

The story needs only to hold up until car production has shut down.

We can kill robots without remorse, and they're likely going to be worse than a human agent at most things for a few years. Not a bad timeline for them to waste their time on.

Do think factories are still mostly humans on assembly lines?

The question is what 'high' means in context of revenue.

Uber, the globally available taxi company, is valued 8 times less than tesla. If you are now able to kill all the costs for the taxi driving and reduce the cost for the car also, how much revenue is left?

Robotaxi has to be cheaper than a normal taxi to kill taxis. The margin of that company can't be that much more than a company like uber.

And uber itself will also invest in this, as every other car company. XPeng and co everyone who is building or working on this, will not just idly looking and waiting for tesla to just take 'whatever this cake' will look like.

For me it becomes a complet game changer if it becomes so reliable so extrem reliable, that i can order a car at night, a fresh bed / couch is then in the car and i can lie down while it drives me a few hundred kilometers away.

Probably not a great strategy to piss off every blue voter in the country and then try to setup a business in cities.

that's why I said "Tesla's robotaxis".

They have not proven they are waymo level or near it, or that they will ever be there given the lack of lidar.

> Even if they worked worse than a Waymo I think the demand would still be very high.

They may already work better than a Waymo. It's hard to tell. It's certainly there using the public version of FSD. There's awkwardness, but the same can be said of Waymo. What I don't know is how many mandatory edge cases remain to be handled before they can set it free.

Hyundai is partnering with Boston Dynamics to deploy 30k robots a year.

Amazon is looking to replace 600k employees over the next decade.

Why do you believe demand for humanoids isn't high?

Tesla is already valued 9x higher than uber.

Uber makes money on every ride.

Teslas Robotaxi has to be cheaper than a taxi with a human and i don't think they will be able to have a lot higher revenue per ride than uber. Not 9x

And if Tesla starts to deliver a robotaxi, all of this revenue has to be shared between taxis, uber, Tesla, Waimo, Zoox, Rimac, Cruise, Baidu, WeRide, ...

So how huge is the market for Tesla to be valuated 9x higher than Uber?

We can even combine a big car company, a robotics company, a solar roof company, battery storage company, ETruck and a robotaxi company and STILL don't get to the same valuation than Tesla currently has.

Teslas share price is math for stupid people.

Private taxis don't compete with public transit. They operate in completely different spheres

It would be high if it worked, but it doesn't.

>Uber, lyft, regular taxis

Waymo is already there, just needs to scale and they are already cooperating with Uber.

>public transit

Unless Musk develops the shrink ray it will never compete with actual high throughput public transit, for the same reason if jets flew themselves we wouldn't commute by air. The cost of drivers per fare is less than in a private car, so the benefits for a bus are lesser. Modern metros are already autonomous.

That means a lot more capex though (as it is drivers bring their own cars) and I'm not sure how much enthusiasm there is for more of that right now

I don't know if it's genius or madness, but all of Tesla's cars look the same. When I see a Tesla, I can't tell if it's a 3, S, X, or Y unless I get close. The most distinct one is the X with its fancy doors.

So when I hear they're cancelling the S and X I can't even picture which cars we're talking about.

While that's true, S/X were considered luxury vehicles, 3/Y mainstream and they far, FAR outsold the S/X. In most cases, volume trumps individual prices.

Of course, that doesn't mean they had to discontinue those lines.

How can legacy auto refresh models every two years and Tesla cannot?

The problem is just there is no concept of a car company where they only sell their standard mass market vehicles. Somewhat more expensive higher margin vehicles are in the lineup for almost all the other companies. Its kind of strange to suggest its not worth it when it is seemingly worth it for most other companies.

Maybe the wisdom of having a 'full lineup' is wrong and has to do with making dealers happy.

On the other hand, having 99% of your sales be 2 very similar vehicles seems questionable strategy.

Musk would love to be selling several billion dollars per year of model S/X sales, the issue is they aren’t that competitive with other cars in the luxury segment thus the falling sales numbers.

Tesla’s doesn’t really have a complex strategy at this point, they are getting squeezed out of the high end by legacy automakers where their lower cost batteries don’t matter as much. They are absolutely fucked on the low end as soon as Chinese cars enter the picture.

So self driving is really the only option to sell any long term upside to keep the stock from tanking. It’s not a very convincing argument, but you play the hand your dealt.

> Without some big jumps in battery tech, EVs are going to be difficult to sell without subsidies.

The actual sales figures show otherwise, but sure, there's still a lot of uncertainty with regards to batteries / range, I can imagine even moreso in the US. Traveled to Austria a while ago in an EV (~1000 kilometers), we had to stop 3x on the way, but the battery was good for another 2.5 hours of driving after a coffee. I keep hearing that "solid state batteries are around the corner" and they will solve all problems with capacity and safety / fire risk, apparently. I'll just sit and wait patiently, it'll take years before their production capacity is on par with current battery tech.

And yet Chinese EV's are flying out of their factories, well, a few are - most are self driving out to the shipping yards.

This despite the 2025 support by the Chinese state for the Chines EV industry now being almost nothing.

  By contrast, defenders of China could point out that the data show that subsidies as a percentage of total sales have declined substantially, from over 40% in the early years to only 11.5% in 2023, which reflects a pattern in line with heavier support for infant industries, then a gradual reduction as they mature.

    In addition, they could note that the average support per vehicle has fallen from $13,860 in 2018 to just under $4,600 in 2023, which is less than the $7,500 credit that goes to buyers of qualifying vehicles as part of the U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act.

but the arc of less subsidies is clear.

If his goal was to sell millions of cars he would have developed something beyond Model 3 and Y. But he canceled the next generation programs.

> He wants to sell millions of cheaper cars, not thousands of cars for wealthy people.

Why hasn't the cheap car been designed yet then?

> Musk's goal all along was to get away from boutique production. He wants to sell millions of cheaper cars, not thousands of cars for wealthy people.

So the literal opposite of the Cybertruck, which was released less than a year ago.

Maybe I’m just naive enough, because I love cars and progress, but I think you agree that he really showed our whole small world that EV can exist and work. Everyone laughed, no one believed it will work and here he still is rich and we have Teslas everywhere. Driving, not killing more people than other brands.

While you're correct on the one hand, Tesla made EVs feasible and mainstream, did the investments and caused a rolling effect of worldwide investments in e.g. batteries and EVs, and government subsidies that also made investing in EVs more attractive to competitors.

Besides EVs, Tesla's long term revenue could very well be in the supercharger network, too. It's not as exciting as self driving cars, but the oil companies have been the most valuable companies / stocks worldwide without being exciting like that. I mean I don't think EV charging will be anywhere near as big as oil because it doesn't involve nearly as much infrastructure or international trade, but it's still big, especially if governments refocus on replacing ICEs with EVs.

(the focus has been let go because the subsidies were too popular and expensive)

> The stock is the product.

Musk reeks of scam. But for a stock pump and dumb scheme there sure are a lot of teslas on the road.

Has it all really been just one giant grift to steal every Americans social security number.

It is like me at the climbing gym: "This problem is too hard for me, let's work on a harder one instead, then I at least look cool while failing."

"Since we failed on self-driving since 2016, robotaxis since 2020 (1 million on the road), and ASI since 2023, we might as well start on failing on robots now".

I find it amusing listening to his Q1 earnings calls; every year the same exact blabber of robots everywhere 'end of the year', self driving tesla's everywhere after the summer, mars next year etc. Every Bloody Year. The real clever thing of this guy, no matter how smart/not/nazi/whatever he is, is the fact that investors KEEP throwing money in even though the major ones are on those earning calls every year for a decade already and of course that these stocks are not cratering.

But I recommend listening to those calls, start 5 years back; because on reddit but also here, you get wide eyed awestruck people who say 'ow optimus is december this year! ow self driving everything in september!'.

And why would we even need or want robots shopping for us? I mean, most of us. For some disabled individuals it could be a benefit. For everyone else, it seems like the height of laziness and absurdity.

I am also certain given time this problem is achievable but the problem is what we expect after that ????? mass unemployment or we just convert all human into robot repairer ???? what the end goal there

Its classic Elon over-promising. Problem with robots is that they are useless without AI, while cars can be driven by a human, so as long as controls work and range is good they are viable

We "just" need to figure out the terraforming problem then we can all move to Mars and be interplanetary explorers. Imagine how cool it would be to have corporate leaders who had vision--environmentally friendly automobiles, cheap space travel, etc.--without the clammy snake oil grifter bullshit. Reality is cool AF. The things that are actually achievable are amazing. We don't need to spout nonsense to do great things. We don't need "AGI" (whatever that might be) to do neat things with machine learning. The Jetsons is a cartoon. Trying to make it real is dumb.

Interview in Davos. The “right” has the same touch than the “just” here:

> MUSK: Yeah. But I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point, right? And Tesla’s rolled out a sort of robo-taxi service in a few cities, and will be very, very widespread by the end of this year within the U.S. And then we hope to get supervised full self-driving approval in Europe, hopefully next month.

Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IgifEgm1-e0

It isn't just about sales, it is about margin. F150 Lightning was losing money on each unit produced - they cost about 40% more to product than they sold for. Cybertruck has a positive gross margin, so even though sales are terrible, they don't have have a pressing financial need to cancel it.

is your position that large electric trucks can't succeed in the near future?

While I also don't mind manufacturers trying a new look, and I like the vague "halo warthog" look of the thing, the Cybertruck seems to have ended up a very bad spot.

It's just not a good truck.

It's also suffered from being insanely overhyped, and then underdelivering on basically every front.

---

Part of my problem with modern Tesla is that they seem to have really jumped the shark on delivering products that are functional. Across the board - from autonomous driving, solar roofs, power walls, Cybertruck, Semi, etc... Even the mass manufactured lines like the Y get staggeringly bad reliability ratings and reviews.

Good form is great! Good form at the expense of good function is not.

I have bemoaned the sameness of car design these days. To the Cybertruck I say, thank you for trying something different!

But not like that.

(Also, the problem is "Americans love trucks"—the Cybertruck doesn't solve that. It's still just a lethal grocery-getter in suburbia where the Cybertruck was only going to sell anyway. I'd sooner get behind the new golf-cart craze in suburbia—let them drive their golf carts to Costco.)

If you drive a truck because you like trucks, then a Cybertruck works.

If you drive a truck because you need a truck, then Cybertrucks don't really work.

That being said, I think a lot of people are in the first category.

The second category people have things that can be fit in a normal truck, but not a Cybertruck.

In what world is the Cybertruck not "oversized" and "bloated". It has roughly the same footprint as an F150.

> people tend to drive their electric cars/trucks more gently too

Really? I tend to see much more aggressive acceleration from people in electric cars (including myself when I'm driving, though I try not to). I've been putting it down to people being used to how gas cars seem to be working harder when you ask them to accelerate heavily, while electric just goes with no complaints.

I don’t agree with that external analysis (cnbc is saying it’s lower than their expectations). This is a gen 1 product for super fans that they want to evolve into a mainstream one.

This is most likely due to the fact that it is really bad at resetting blinker when the steering wheel is straight’ish again. Extremely annoying as any other car is much more sensitive (and sensible).

In a tesla an on-ramp to straight highway is rarely enough to stop the blinker, something I’ve never experienced in any other car.

Couple this with, IMO, the best baseline speaker system of any manufacturer… I’ve been driving with the blinker on for several kilometers at times!

Autopilot doesnt turn on the turn signal or change lanes, what you are dealing with is humans.

My Model 3 has radar. It’s no longer functional and just a useless appendage. Until 2020-21 all Tesla had radar but Musk directed Tesla to disable the radar from the software stack, nerfing this hardware on tens of thousands of cars. Why? Because he staked on camera-only and to find out there’s still radar fusion would be against that. The real truth is probably they were derisking the part cost (during Covid) and the development timeline to improve the radar integration (after dangerous false braking incidents). It was wonderful when it worked, especially the time-of-flight ability to sense a decelerating car ahead of the car ahead of the one in front of you. When it didn’t work the Navy Seal guy driving and watching a video was the first statistic.

The real Tesla engineers must be in all kinds of frustrations getting whipsawed by their chief engineer-designer-physicist-scientist-government economist-savant but probably the stock options assuage that.

Lastly Tesla still doesn’t have real birds-eye view / 360 surround view for parking. It’s year 2026 and even cheaper cars have this.

So you're "fully aware" that you're supposed to pay attention, but you still think "making driving more chill" is somehow desirable (or at least supposed to be desirable, for marketing purposes)...

I think you -- and everyone else -- should not only be "distrustful" of these purported "autopilots" or "copilots" or WETF the marketeers call the contraptions, but actively avoid ever buyin any vehicle equipped with them. Just refuse, and do your own damn driving. For everyone's sake, including your own.

Your take makes sense.

i.e. the GigaPress for frames but it just didnt scale like they hoped.

way behind compared to whom ?

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> And they even suck at making cars these days

Aren’t model Y and model 3 considered the best cars in their class by most motor journalists?

I know it’s popular to hate on Elon and therefore Tesla, but you need to be accurate when doing so. They’re still chipping away.

> Tesla Semi?All but dead.

They’ve been running a pilot all this time, and the factory in Nevada to mass produce them is on schedule. Production ramp is second half of this year. The factory is ginormous.

> The new roadster? Also dead.

Elon said yesterday the unveil is in April “hopefully”

> Full Self Driving? Doesn't exist. Robotaxis?

Cars are driving passengers around Austin now with nobody in either front seat.

It takes automakers almost a decade to bring a new vehicle online, Elon just does it all publicly while everyone else doesn’t take the wraps off until the final 6 months.

Obviously everything is way behind elons hype timelines, but I do still think it’s all coming.

A quick search verified they also manufactured batteries, solar modules, and solar shingles.

Anyone who owns a tesla vehicle with "full self driving" is probably chuckling to themselves about Tesla ever making useful general purpose robots any time soon. Disclaimer, I own two tesla's with FSD and it's far from "full" or "self". I am very sceptical of robotaxis unless they have the appropriate sensors & SW (e.g. Waymo) which Elon has not done.

Finally, I know lots of people who own cars, but none who own robots. Many friends will not have Alexa in their homes due to privacy concerns. How many people will trust Elon to have a robot in their homes and assume he's being benign and safe with your personal data?

> Why is making humanoid robots a moat?

It really isn't. (1)

Also, what's the first billion dollar market for humanoid robots? Industry? "lights-out manufacturing" exists already, and doesn't require humanoid robots.

Hyundai and BYD (among others) say they're going to put humanoid robots in their factories (2). They won't be Tesla robots. Is this really such a huge use?

1)https://www.topgear.com/car-news/tech/here-are-nine-humanoid...

2) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgjm5x54ldo

A 5B market cap would imply a P/E ratio of 1.3 and a P/FCF ratio of 0.8, which essentially would be saying “this business is only worth approximately what it made last year”. The corresponding multiples for other auto makers are typically in the high single digits. Even if you believed Tesla’s whole business would collapse tomorrow (i.e. revenue goes to zero) book value is ~83B and net cash is ~29B.

Seems low on a company that is profitable and consistantly has around a $100B a year in revenue with only $13B in debt...

Welcome to 2026:

Companies routinely, exaggerate, obfuscate and mystify investors. Most of investors don't care. The SEC is a joke.

> If you need to do 50 miles on the interstate it's pretty solid though.

So L2 is great, the issue is calling L2 "Full Self Driving"

If your Tesla is 5 years old aren't you getting a degraded FSD model due to weak hardware?

Do you think your anecdote is more likely to be true than an insurance company putting its money where its mouth is?

"Tesla Full Self-Driving is twice as safe, so Lemonade takes 50% off every mile driven with FSD."

They are putting their money behind their words, unless there is some backroom deal we don't know about. If a human operator + FSD is twice safer than human operator alone, then FSD is still a large safety improvement. Considering how human operators behave with these systems, I'd also wager having the human operator (many don't even look at the road!) makes only a small difference.

Also an insurance company that A.M. Best rates B+. Which is fine, but when buying insurance I want to make sure that my company can weather major catastrophes.

Fair market value: the price at which a thing would change hands between a willing and informed buyer and seller.

A company's market cap is, by definition, its fair market value.

> Tesla is not priced according to its underlying assets or technical analysis (e.g. P/E ratio), but solely based on hype/sentiment.

You're right that it's not priced according to underlying assets, but it doesn't follow that it is priced on vibes. Its price is based on potential future earnings; the expectation that Elon can pull off his plans for a robotaxi fleet or building an Optimus robot that might unlock the massive demand for household and/or general use commercial robots. Both offer the prospect of being the first mover into markets which could be worth trillions. It's speculation, sure, but not mere "vibes". The company is also led by a man who has made and delivered on massive, seemingly impossible promises, which adds credibility to the idea that Tesla might actually bring these markets into existence.

Plus assets

Sorry, I didn't remember what it was called. FSD, I think

Dunno where that $3 billion comes from; tesla made 11 billion in regulatory credits alone: https://insideevs.com/news/767939/tesla-regulatory-credit-11...

How should we calculate the enormous subsidy they received through high tariffs against their competitors?

> Trust me, I hate Tesla and Elon as much as the next naysayer

But then you go to defend them as if it were something you're obligated to do. I think you demonstrably do not hate Tesla and Elon as much as the next naysayer.

Of course they did.

If you think of Musk companies as vehicles to extract money from state and federal governments, then everything falls into focus. Carbon credits, government launches and the Quixotic quest for Mars, and soon Tesla robots sold to the DoD and DHS. I'm only half-joking.

Fair point. It's hard to support Tesla's valuation as a car company, it may be even harder to support as a robot company. You have to wonder what might have been if they'd spent that Cybertruck money on battery research.

Is there anything China isn't far ahead in? Maybe capitalism was a failure.

It seems counterintuitive, but this helped Tesla which is why Musk championed it. Basically when that tax credit came out, a bunch of Tesla owners had their cars underwater - loans were more than new cars were selling for and depreciation thru the roof. Plus the tax credit helped their competitors. Now that the credit is gone, Tesla owners are closer to being in the black on their cars and it also caused Ford and GM to cut EV production by I believe 100%. Win win for Tesla.

I would bet that as soon as someone "solves" robots. China will relatively shortly, that is months or few years produce something that surpasses them. They have all the pieces and all the capabilities. Just look at drones for example. It just requires correct solution and China might even be first to provided that.

I'm sure China can. But nobody is producing consumer humanoid robots at any scale yet, so Tesla can at least make the argument that they'll make better robots when people actually start buying robots. People are buying cars at scale right now, and existing Tesla models have fallen behind their Chinese competitors.

Looks like they took Peter Thiel’s animosity towards competition too literally by blocking BYD from the US market. Without competition, they had no incentive to innovate since they were selling into the wealthiest market in the world for their product, the US.

No innovation made them stagnate. Being blocked from the US made BYD innovate.

Elon generated goodwill with DOGE among a group of people. He then alienated them during a public spat with the president. This is also a president who has decided to make EVs synonymous with the opposition political party.

Which is interesting because it seems DOGE failed to do anything useful. Patrick Boyle’s video suggested it actually cost $100B.

Which would be par the course for Ketamine Elon

The people he generated goodwill with don't buy a lot of EVs, apparently.

Elon's a strange hero for MAGA. All the hardcore rural MAGAs I know hate Elon. They consider him a rich dickhead nerd (and group him with Gates) and they hate EVs with a passion, since they are quiet and produce no black smoke.

If they just canceled the S and X I don’t think people would be making quite as much fun.

Saying they’re dropping two products that aren’t profitable so they can make a new product that most people seem to think is a complete joke is the problem.

It's the 4680 cell that is only used by CT at the moment: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-on-its-w...

Being able to slice barb wire fence is a feature.

If you’re beating around the same bush, I think the material science is already there. It’s more the power draw and the societal blowback that are issues. It is an underrated market, but not a >1T$ market (I hope).

Tesla have always said the design of the X was a mistake of over-engineering. I'm guessing there was no money to be made from it, especially as the sales dwindled.

At the moment most of them are running notably below capacity.

Tesla's growth plan originally had them doing factory expansions and new factory in Mexico by now, but instead they have pivoted to trying to keep utilization of their existing lines up by introducing cheaper trims of existing vehicles.

Batteries - lots of uses beyond EVs, but lots of EVs are making use of the batteries they can produce, as well.

Regular car factories with a fancy name.

>the most popular car on the planet

That's the Toyota Corolla. I find this inaccurate glazing of musk to be relatively common but it always strikes me as profoundly weird.

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Can you elaborate for those less familiar with the successes vs failures?

The board cannot rein him in because doing so risks having the stock valued as a car company stock and not as a tech company or meme stock. I think they can only fix this after the stock has crashed.

I don't think that Uber or Lyft are going to invest in self-driving taxis. The capital model is completely different: Uber and Lyft are by design capital light, they own nothing more than the software (1), and someone needs to buy all of these self-driving machines and then someone needs to maintain them, whereas their current model doesn't do that- they can't offer that to any tech partner.

The reason that you don't see more Waymo areas has nothing to do with rider pool or experience, it is because their tech requires pre-mapping everything with LiDAR several times- the advantage is that if you know what is static (because it was in all of that LiDAR mapping) then a simple difference algo can tell you everything that is dynamic in the environment. (Also, they are just starting to hit cities with significant precipitation- SFO, LA, ATX, PHX are all pretty dry cities, they are going into ATL, MIA, DC, DEN, etc.)

1: With a lot of suspicion that much of their profit comes from drivers not understanding depreciation of their vehicles, something that the accountants who work for Uber and Lyft will understand very very well.

His rationale seems to be validated by Nvidia following the same strategy, no?

They can probably hire enough random dudes in India, especially if AI reduces the need for call center employees.

It will be slightly creepy when the Optimus walks into the bedroom and stares while its owner is ... in the middle of something, but that's a small price to pay.

Plus the Tesla employees in the U.S. will also be able to share the video, so it's a win-win.

Tesla has become a meme stock. The stock's performance is disconnected from the company's performance.

I agree that Tesla has clear strengths, like the vast amount of data they've collected from their cars, and their charging network, but it's also obvious that something is going very, very wrong with that company. The stock value is not reflecting that.

Fun fact - recently it was declared that both Tesla and CCP EVs are to be treated as completely untrusted and not accepted in any semi-secure facilities in Poland (so including pretty much any military location)

> like nobody trusts Huawei or Xiaomi phones.

Loads of people trusted Huawei, even after all the hyperbole about backdoors for the government. It needed regulators banning Huawei to knock their share of the market and protect the homegrown spyware.

>Tesla is leading and succeeding. People have faith in Musk as a leader. Nobody trusts CCP EVs, just like nobody trusts Huawei or Xiaomi phones.

That sounds literally like a religious mantra. Do rational investors have 'faith' in the Costco CEO? Do they even know his name on top of their head?

Most of the world is buying chinese EVs and likes them.

Also, fun fact, I do own a Xiaomi 13T and I'm absolutely happy with my phone.

Faith and trust is something nobody uses to describe Musk. Maybe you should pop your own bubble you seem to live in? Using faith and trust while completely ignoring twitter?

The completed original line up was

S 3 X Y

The C didn’t fit that, nor would a 2. Unless he’s aiming for a lineup of products that has you seeing someone next Tuesday.

> the exact people who would buy such a car are now avoiding Teslas

The traditional fix for this is to license the technology and do manufacturing for another carmaker to brand.

It's super common for brand X of car to actually be a rebadged Y with slightly different shaped body panels.

However, it only works if your product is good and you have decent margins. That means you have to compete with china cars, since the obvious thing for a western brand to do is to rebadge a chinese designed car and split the margins with the chinese designer/manufacturer.

There are people like me who still buy teslas. Buddy picked up his new Model Y couple weeks ago. The price and the whole package is fine. Zero interest financing is absolutely nice. Elon showed his real face during children rescue drama in Asia. With this defamation story it was well known who he is for years. Political involvement was the visible tip of an iceberg for everyone.

Now if you ask me if the German car managers are better I doubt it. Gassing apes by Volkswagen in US is on the same level as Elon. Mercedes guy was complaining about lazy workers too much. Only BMW guy was able to keep acceptable silence. Overall German equivalent of model Y is at least 20000€ more expensive than Elon‘s car.

Personally I don’t buy anything from China if I can. I am not brave and as the Ayways story showed clearly, that great Chinese car can quickly be without any service. Maybe it’s ok to lease such car for couple years, but I don’t want to have car after small accident for what no replacement parts are available.

> Teslas I've been in didn't seem to have great design or build quality

Design is subjective (I like it), and build quality. Not sure, I don't have issues with mine except one where after 2 years frunk latch started failing. It was replaced in an hour when I went to service center.

Teslas are the cheapest EV for the features offered in Europe. I would gladly buy another car, but they are either more pricey, or lack features. (I did market research 2 years ago when I was buying Model Y, the closest one was ICE - RAV4 for similar price, but I didn't want ICE).

I spent a month in Spain driving a BYD daily and it was fine. I just don’t like the tackiness of the interior and not in love with the exterior either. The handling is also ok, nothing exciting. There’s something still very Chinese about these cars. Not saying that matters if you just want an affordable and reliable EV that takes you from point A to B. BYD can do that perfectly fine. I personally like the design of the Model Y (own one) very much, it also feels much more “alive” particularly the dual motor. There’s no comparison with the BYD I drove. Also never had any issues with build quality other than the charging port malfunctioning, and it was fixed outside my house, all I had to do was touch a button in the app to call service. FSD is pretty damn amazing. The tech is great and the updates do make the car better in many ways. I hope Tesla finds its way because apart from all the controversy they can make good cars.

Today probably not but there was a time where Tesla doing a rush to electric car market dominance was not totally far fetched. This would have required them to have cars filling the important segments.

because there is still 2012-era belief hanging around many people that Tesla's EV tech is superior to anything else

Even without Musk's public persona, the Tesla build quality is infamous. I would never.

What I've seen so far from Chinese car makers (BYD and MG, to be precise) is, to put it bluntly, the bare minimum. Build quality so-so, design is… unconventional and software is just bad. It drives, but only just.

Maybe the more recent models, like the Xiaomi thing, are better. But at the moment, Tesla is at least on par, if not better. The brand being tainted is very relevant though.

Don't forget Renault 5!

All the big European car manufacturers also have EV cars too.

Plus there are plenty of popular options for high-end EVs that are far more glamorous as well as practical than the Cybertruck.

Is there any indication that they're going to "defeat common sense" again? They're cancelling products, making marginal improvements to old models, alienating their customers, etc.

Tesla as a car company seems dead-set on a continuous downward spiral.

Maybe the switch to robots will pay off and you'll be right. Somehow, I'm skeptical.

Everyone knew that was the future and that the big auto manufacturers were deliberately dragging.

No-one (serious) thought there was a market for the cybertruck.

The stock price is pure madness, it's like it's priced in robotaxis, but that's clearly not going to happen for Tesla. And if it did, it would be a small-ish market, their brand has become toxic in so many big markets.

Elon Musk said he estimated 250k to 500k yearly sales

Idk, his twitter account was enough to sort out he had lost control over himself.

To be "for the masses", it would need to:

- be smaller

- have an actually usuable truck bed

- be painted (so rust isn't an issue)

- have a body that's not literally duck taped together in some places and can easily snap in others

- use steel (which bends) for body construction

- be suitable for towing hauls

- not be ridiculously overpowered (...to the extent where engine can overpower the breaks)

- have good visibility with a windshield that isn't at a sharp angle to the ground and body geometry which doesn't maximize blind spots

- not have sharp corners that the cut you or doors that can decapitate your dog

- have door handles that make doors openable in case of emergencies/no power situations/electric shorts

- not have bulletproof glass (WTF, "for the masses"?) which makes makes it harder to rescue people when accidents happen

- be easily repairable, or at least amenable to repairs in local non-Tesla shops, with customers being confident it their warranty won't go poof (as the law requires)

- be easily customizeable for different applications (particularly when it comes to the bed)

- not look so different from other trucks without any reason other than "Elon Musk wants to be edgy": ugly is subjective, being a billionaire's fashion statement isn't

...to start. That's off the top of my head.

And, of course, being priced for the masses, which doesn't just happen. It's a design requirement.

As it stands, the Cybertruck is, and has always been, a rich boy's luxury toy — and it was designed as one.

It really seems like something got to Musk's head that he thought the world has so many edgy rich boys.

You want to see a modern truck "for the masses"? That's Toyota IMV 0, aka Hilux Champ [1]. Ticks all the above boxes.

And hits the $10,000 price point [2]. A literal order of magnitude cheaper than the Cybertruck.

Speaking of which: a car "for the masses" isn't a truck. It's a minivan (gets the entire family from one place to another), it's a small sedan/hatchback (commuter vehicle), a crossover/small SUV to throw things, kids, and dogs into without having to play 3D Tetris in hard mode.

But not a pickup truck, which is a specialized work vehicle.

The masses aren't farmers and construction workers (most people live in the cities, and only a small number needs such a work vehicle).

The popularity of The Truck in the US is, in a large part, a byproduct of regulation which gives certain exemptions to specialized work vehicles.[3]

That's not even getting to the infrastructure part: trucks shine in remote, rural areas. And while one can always have a canister of gas in the truck bed, power stations can be hard to find in the middle of the field or a remote desert highway.

But again, it's not impossible to make a truck for the masses (at least for certain markets). That's the $10K Hilux Champ.

For all the luxury aspects of the Tesla sedan, it's been one of the most (if not the most) practical electric vehicles on account of range alone. It also looked like a normal car at a time when EVs screamed "look at me, I'm so greeeeeen!" from a mile away (remember 1st gen Nissan Leaf or BMW i3?). It was conformal and utilitarian, while also being futuristic and luxurious enough for the high price point was fair for what was offered.

The public image of having a Tesla was good: you are affluent, future-forward, and caring for the environment.

The Cybertruck went back on everything that made Tesla a success: it's conspicuous, impractical, overpriced, and currently having publicity rivaling that of the recent Melania documentary.

It was not a risky bet. It was an a-priori losing bet. The world simply never needed as many edgy toys as Musk wanted to sell.

And driving a car shaped as an "I'm a Musk fanboy" banner really lost its appeal after a few Roman salutes and the dear leader's DOGE stint.

Overly optimistic engineering assessments? Perhaps, but they are much further down on the list of reasons of Cybertruck's failure.

[1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/reviews/a45752401/toyotas-10000...

[2] https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/2025-toyota-imv-0-pickup-...

[3] https://reason.com/2024/02/02/why-are-pickup-trucks-ridiculo...

Any chance we can get VW to do a Cyber Vanagon??

Tesla has a factor in Germany.

That's weird too, maybe they just have some preorders they need to fulfill. They did stop its production for a while last year and reduced the number of models available.

It failed based on the sales projections that Tesla set. Also, several reviews have not exactly been kind, along with lots of comments from owners about annoying issues and malfunctions.

If Tesla needed beta testers for things they hadn't figured out yet there would have been better ways to go about that.

I think the real issue was that Cybertruck required way more structural parts (body) than Tesla originally thought. It was originally supposed to have a load bearing exoskeleton.

> it was intended a low-volume product for next-gen Tesla tech

If this is true that's not what Musk was saying beforehand.

That is the opposite story that Musk told when hyping the Cybertruck, though.

Musk projected that the Cybertruck would sell 250k annually. It's selling around 20k. Even for Musk, that isn't normal exaggeration; that's a huge difference.

Yes. It's a flop:

https://insideevs.com/news/784715/tesla-cybertruck-ev-sales-...

I think it was the FT that observed about a year ago that even as institutional investors were pulling away from US equities, retail investors (redditors, if you will) were filling in the gap quite enthusiastically. (You know, "Buy the dip!! " and brethren.)

I don't know to what extent that's still the case. But someone always ends up with the hot potato no matter what.

Its not bizzare. Retail investors can no longer compete with big banks, who pretty much set the stock price. Elon solidified this with DOGE by removing oversight of such things.

At this point, investing is exacly like playing slots at casino.

It’s being valued on the hope that they will crack full self driving. People still believe they will crack it.

Once they actually start bleeding money they will go down.

> would have never expected to see a cult of personality being run on the top of S&P 500 market caps,

Steve Jobs had a cult of personality as well. Of course Apple had financial reasons to support its valuation when he was leading it in the 2000s

The most successful meme stock in history, all driven by - "coming soon"

Probably because it’s a segment they think they can grow and is a new vehicle type, rather than redundant.

Regardless, it's probably better to have one flashy car that doesn't sell big numbers than 3. They might treat it as their high end test car or something or plan to figure out a new top tier model.

Probably the same reason Ford makes one, too.

Took one for a test drive - it was fun. The only downside is compared to some other compact/city EV's the legroom in the back is REALLY bad (and I'm not exactly tall).

The legroom in my son's VW e-Up! is markedly better, despite it being a smaller car.

3rd place for most F1 wins as a car motor builder.

It still is, albeit they use the Alpine branding.

It was but I'm not sure how that's relevant.

Also not sure what the point of the "old state" part of the parent comment was. Renault is just another big carmaker.

I think range only really matters in the context of highway drives, I kinda dislike these composite estimates like WLTP (as you can never be sure of what exactly they measure)

I've got a 2025 Model 3 and was blown away by what a great vehicle it is for the price point. I'd be curious how much of a difference there is between and S and a Model 3 Performance.

This is the first year that I personally think that it will come this year...

Actions speak louder than words, and the fact that a 'cybercab' production line is firing up this year is also a strong indicator - the fact they didn't do that 5 years ago means tesla leadership didn't think it was going to work back then. 'cybercab' wouldn't sell well as a 2 seater if it couldn't self drive. (although the actual mass production will be delayed till next year is my guess, but we'll see model 3 or y being used for a taxi service in the meantime)

TUV inspection failures are not a good indication of reliability. The lack of Tesla dealers and no need for yearly servicing means issues get caught at the inspection step for Tesla where for others they are caught at the pre-inspection step.

Also, you need a breakdown of the failures as wear and consumables (washer fluid low, splits in wipers, headlight alignment, mobile phone holder in wrong location) can be a failure but would not be a good indicator for lack of quality.

That is bad. One issue seems to be that brakes of electric cars can get issues over time as they are not used enough (because instead of true braking the regenerative recuperation is used).

Good though: If you are in an accident Teslas are the safest car one can buy

https://www.ancap.com.au/media-and-gallery/media-releases/22...

> The Tesla Model Y achieved the highest overall weighted score of any vehicle assessed by ANCAP in 2025, recording strong performance across all areas of occupant protection and active safety technology.

They still are, the Danish statistics report ~45% of tesla having issues compared to ~7% of the whole plethora of electric vehicles, that's a lot

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/nearly-half-of-tesla-mo...

"Most of the issues involve critical components like brakes, lights, and suspension. Many cars fail because of play in the steering or faulty axles. These are problems rarely seen at the same level in competitors like Volkswagen or Hyundai."

I just received a consumer association (consumentenbond) test on car reliability and this time the Tesla Y is the most reliable EV in the overview. It scored 9.3 out of 10. The Toyota Aygo is the most reliable ICE with a score of 9.7. Looks like Tesla has massively improved their reliability.

Cameras also fail when weather conditions cake your car in snow and/or mud while you're driving. Actually, from what I just looked up, this is an issue with LiDAR as well. So it seems to me like we don't even have the sensors we need to do this properly yet, unless we can somehow make them all self-cleaning.

It always goes back to my long standing belief that we need dedicated lanes with roadside RFID tags to really make this self driving thing work well enough.