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.
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.
Yes. Try living in DWF. The truck are the problem for all kinds of reasons.
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.
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).
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.