When Tesla releases its first quarter earnings this afternoon, the company’s CEO Elon Musk will field the usual questions about new products, new factories, and progress toward its futuristic vision of self-driving cars and robot workers. But Musk will also face increasingly urgent questions about its current state of affairs — and why everything seems to be going to shit.
Earlier this month, the company reported its first year-over-year sales drop in four years, a sign of rougher waters ahead. Tesla’s stock has fallen more than 40 percent since the start of the year, including a 13 percent drop in the last week. The company laid off over 14,000 employees last week, 10 percent of its global workforce — which could end up being closer to 20 percent when all’s said and done, according to Bloomberg. Today’s earnings report is expected to include Tesla’s lowest profit margins in six years, a sign that rampant price-cutting continues to exact a toll.
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Honestly, if another CEO steps in and Elon retires, the company might actually recover. Right now the image of Tesla is tied too closely to Elon who we know is an asshat.
They might finally develop the affordable, mass market car that Musk has been claiming is in the works for years, instead of idiotic and expensive passion projects like the cybertruck.
Musk thinks he already did that with the model 3, right? Billionaires have no concept of “affordable” after all.
It’s the Model 2, which he has being talking about for years but it’s not clear if it will ever happen.
Idk, I think the idea of selling trucks want bad. Americans love trucks. That being said, the execution seems very poor.
The execution is very poor, and I’d rather these dangerous monstrosities go away and be replaced by smaller, less dangerous, and more practical vehicles. And ideally, car ownership will decline over the long term with viable alternatives to driving hopefully being developed across the world (but that’s a whole other discussion).
The idea of a truck EV isn’t bad market wise, look at Rivian for example. It was purely poor execution, no doubt attributed to Musk.
Yes. Try living in DWF. The truck are the problem for all kinds of reasons.
Musk instead is now going all in with AI and Robotaxis.
Probably realised that “full” self-driving the way people think of it is not likely to happen in our lifetimes. And Tesla’s existing system is an out and out scam.
But I expect he’ll try and combine it with his stupid tunnel idea, instead of, I don’t know, a train?
It’s funny how so many were confident FSD really was safer than human drivers 10 years ago. Some even said it’s irresponsible not to let these self driving cars drive on the street.
Relaxi-cabs
I’ve got coworkers who literally think Elon is humanity’s savior. This came up today (shared a pic of a tesla w/ a bumper sticker that said “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy…” and they IMMEDIATELY started gargling his metaphorical balls).
There’s a tiny sliver of market that represents the overlapped portion of 1) hopeless rednecks, and 2) people interested in owning an electric vehicle… that’s Tesla’s target customer. It’s gonna saturate in a hurry, but it’s also a cult-like following of cash cows eager to be milked. My money’s on Tesla’s performance steadying out and maintaining a not-great but not-bad-enough-to-tank-the-company level of financial success.
I’m sure it’s anyone else’s fault but Elon, just ask him he’ll say so.
It’s the fault of those 9% he fired, so everything is fine now.
/S
Turns out business is easy when running a virtual monopoly while receiving truckloads of government welfare. Shit gets harder when actual car manufacturers get in on the game, competing with an i-phone you put wheels on and called a car.
Unfortunately this is gonna bite NASA due to them handing the lander mission to Musk and his bogus claims, and in that case there won’t be many competitors ready to pick up the slack
So far, SpaceX has been run with much less Musk involvement. That could change on a whim, but so far it seems to be a pretty well run government-supplier under Gwynne Shotwell.
The problem is starship, Musk’s mars-shot brain child, seems to be increasingly behind schedule for the Artemis missions.
Not to mention using starship is apparently forcing any moon landings to launch between 8-12 rockets to get one SpaceX lander on the moon?
Overall it seems like SpaceX is getting fucked by Musk’s involvement as well.
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Since Musk outed himself as pro-right-wing idiot with his X fiasco, the mostly left leaning electric vehicle crowd is looking for untainted brands.
looking for untainted brands.
I wish them good luck for the hunt
Let’s be honest, they are looking for brands where it is not everyone’s first association that the CEO is in the news every week for being in the wrong side of the culture war. They don’t mind if the company they buy from does some union busting and buys raw materials mined by slaves, as long as it’s drowned out by the marketing of said brand.
I’ll settle for one where the CEO isn’t a Nazi.
Tesla’s biggest market is China, not America. Elon’s antics are not the cause of this drop. Selling Teslas in China getting harder due to American policies against China. How many Teslas do you think they will let Elon sell if the US bans Tiktok?
This is all because they failed to award Elmo with those billions. Quick, there is still time to save the company. /s
I guess… Now’s the time to short?
No, never short Tesla. The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.
This is a fantastic quote btw
It’s a classic old saying in stock trading.
I would have thought the same thing but the after hours ticker has the stock up damn near $20 which is just insane to me.
I guess they were expecting even worse?
He made a lot more promises, and uncancelled the reportedly canceled Model 2. Investors in Tesla feed on his investor call grandstanding lies.
Shorting is designed to only be used by the ultra rich and is therefore too dangerous for average mofos like us imo
Always remember: when you invest in a stock, you can only lose what you’re putting in. When you short a stock, there’s no limit in how much you can lose. Yes, that means you can go in debt.
I think people just realized that Tesla’s aren’t that great. They’re not build well, simple repairs cost a fortune and for the same price you get better vehicles from other manufacturers, especially from ones in China.
Also, the resale values are…not good.
I love mine. Which BEV lets me have seamless phone key and instant bootup, letting me walk up and get into the car and drive away immediately? I also have my heat/cooling and heated seats on auto and love not having to fiddle with knobs. If another car maker can catch up to them I’d switch but I don’t see it happening soon.
My hood isn’t perfectly flush with the front on one half of the front though, and the FM radio reception is pretty bad, so I do have some complaints.
Every other EV I know has instant boot up, Volvo/polestar, Hyundai, rivian etc. I was under the impression this was pretty Universal for EVs. A huge amount of current model year cars in a similar price range also have remote keyless control functionality, even ICE cars.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
When Tesla releases its first quarter earnings this afternoon, the company’s CEO Elon Musk will field the usual questions about new products, new factories, and progress toward its futuristic vision of self-driving cars and robot workers.
Today’s earnings report is expected to include Tesla’s lowest profit margins in six years, a sign that rampant price-cutting continues to exact a toll.
Musk reportedly canceled the low-cost Model 2 in favor of the upcoming robotaxi — despite repeatedly failing to make good on his promise for a fully driverless vehicle.
Tesla has been forced to recall its two main driver-assist systems, Autopilot and Full Self-Driving, in the face of increased government scrutiny over the company’s autonomy claims.
And Musk’s tenure as head of X, formerly Twitter, has alienated many of Tesla’s progressive-leaning customers, who have watched in horror as he promotes right-wing conspiracy theories on the platform.
While other companies are pursuing important innovations like lighter, more powerful batteries and recycling techniques that can shrink the auto industry’s carbon footprint, Tesla is putting it all on the line for an “apocalypse-proof truck” and a full suite of vaporware robots.
The original article contains 1,146 words, the summary contains 186 words. Saved 84%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
I’m honestly shocked. Who could have predicted? 😲
Well that’s embarrassing
Nice name
🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿
aw yehh die!!!
It’s a flip-flop, spring head… Fliiiip floooop??
Let’s hope it stays there.
Infinite growth bad but a drop in quarterly sales also bad.
