Tesla Sales Down 55% UK, 58% Spain, 59% Germany, 81% Netherlands, 93% Norway

https://cleantechnica.com/2026/02/15/tesla-sales-down-tremendously-in-uk-norway-netherlands-germany-spain-sweden-denmark-portugal-switzerland/

by whynotmaybe • 5 months ago

359 366 5 months ago

cleantechnica.com

pseingatl• 5 months ago

BYD is a formidable competitor and a great product for less.

rsynnott7• 5 months ago

BYD is not, despite the press, really very big in Europe (though it is in a couple of individual countries, notably Spain). Europe-wide, Geely, the Chinese manufacturer that everyone forgets about, is actually bigger: https://eu-evs.com/marketShare/ALL/Groups/Bar/All-time-by-Qu...

digizeph• 5 months ago

The graph linked doesn’t have BYD sales, how curious

epolanski• 5 months ago

I see lots of byds in Europe.

I mean, they aren't common as Teslas, but there are more and more.

pbronez• 5 months ago

Geely is also present in the US via Volvo and Polestar. They haven’t delivered an affordable entry level EV yet, but I’ve been impressed with the Polestars. I’d never buy one because a Chinese car running on Google software sounds like a nightmare, but they’ve been good when I rented them.

cyberax3• 5 months ago

BYD has barely started exporting cars, a bit less than 1 million last year. The total European market is 11 million cars a year. The global market is 90 million units.

And BYD obviously is focusing on easier markets, where they don't have to fight against tariffs.

philistine3• 5 months ago

That graph is interesting because you can see direct patterns before 2020. The market was dominated by the Leaf, but during the pandemic the electric offerings of everybody arrived and we moved to a typical car market with the usual suspects being the most successful. Tesla got swamped by cheaper competitors. That and the Nazi stuff.

DoesntMatter225• 5 months ago

A lot of it is subsidized by the Chinese government and also, BYD's sales in January were down 33%

Dah00n3• 5 months ago

subsidized

So, like Tesla. Why is it that when it is a Chinese company it is basically Evil Communism, but when it is in the US it is fine?

Neil44• 5 months ago

It's strange to me that some Americans will cheer on Chinese companies over Tesla, even overlooking those companies questionable labour practices. (I don't know if you're American)

Dah00n3• 5 months ago

Why? Tesla has huge quality problems (ranked by far the worst used cars in several countries incl. in Germany), an awful CEO, etc. BYD are better quality and cheaper which is insane.

ZeroGravitas3• 5 months ago

More than half of Tesla's cars are built in China so you can hate them for both reasons.

mlrtime2• 5 months ago

Because politics bring out the highest emotions in people. We all have strong internal moral compasses and it is very difficult to violate or change them.

Yossarrian223• 5 months ago

Because distortions of the free market make us all poorer

stephen_g2• 5 months ago

I'm not American (I'm Australian), but until Tesla divests from Elon Musk, chances are the next car I buy will be Chinese...

jqpabc1234• 5 months ago

Wait? Tesla still sells cars?

After successfully teaching China how to build EVs and embracing fascism, I thought they moved on to AI/robotaxi/robots/(insert your preferred fantasy here)?

mekdoonggi2• 5 months ago

Good. Seems like the sales decline will reach the US eventually too. Even Toyota is coming out with compelling EV products this year.

Tesla came from nowhere, developed essentially one world-dominating product (lumping the 3 and Y together), then the CEO basically ruined everything.

Imagine Tesla with a "normal" CEO and marketing department. They would have a bunch of different trims and options for the 3/Y, a redesigned X, a functional truck, and a market cap of 400 billion!

nwah12• 5 months ago

TSLA market cap is 1.29 trillion today.

Of course, with a P/E ratio of over 381

mekdoonggi2• 5 months ago

I'm aware, that part was sarcasm

bdangubic• 5 months ago

they are building stuff on the Moon, P/E should be 150k! building Moon stuff is cool

Betelbuddy2• 5 months ago

NVIDIA P/E is 46

KennyBlanken3• 5 months ago

Tesla has a marketing department. It just refuses to talk to anyone except to talk at journalists...and journalists are so desperate to get quotes, they'll put up with it.

When Tesla started with the "no marketing department" nonsense, the press should have just stopped quoting them or covering them. Especially given that half the things Musk says are blatant lies.

davidw• 5 months ago

One of the interesting things you start seeing and then can't stop seeing is "CEO says" journalism, where the whole article is about the CEO saying something and that's newsworthy and there's no real analysis of it or no looking at the track record of the CEO. Just stenography.

It's not limited to this one company, they'll do it with any company that's newsworthy or has a CEO who will generate clicks for their article.

petesergeant2• 5 months ago

Tesla came from nowhere, developed essentially one world-dominating product (lumping the 3 and Y together), then the CEO basically ruined everything.

It seems strange to attribute only the fall -- and not the rise -- to the CEO

jimbob45• 5 months ago

Shhhh we’re pretending that China wasn’t behind the massive propaganda campaign against Tesla to boost the popularity of their own BYD brand.

adfm• 5 months ago

It seems strange to talk of attribution without talking about the founders.

throwerxyz3• 5 months ago

There exists a huge amount of Musk derangement syndrome these days.

Elon Musk is a great businessman and develops great products for general consumers. There is not much wrong with him other than his online persona... which most normal people can ignore. He's probably more normal than any other business leader.

What's weird is people lumping in some of Elon's actions with falls in Tesla sales as if he didn't:

1. Predict it

2. Gift the whole world the motivation to do it

I don't care about Elon Musk. He's a good businessman and a weird personality. But it doesn't take a genius to realise that he can't lead a winning product unchallenged, forever.

blackoil• 5 months ago

market cap of 400 billion

And hence Musk will be the CEO.

mlrtime2• 5 months ago

then the CEO basically ruined everything.

Is it me or do the nay-sayers state that Elon is a grifter and added nothing to Tesla, but yet he ruined it? How can he both not create something and ruin it?

Also, Tesla isn't the only manufacturer (In the US) stopping electric cars, Porsche (IMO Taycan is the best electric model) is essentially stopping electric cars too, nothing to do with Elon.

Just my observation.

DarkNova6• 5 months ago

Musk didn't found Tesla, he invested into it when it was small. Musk brought good marketing and gave the people who were declined at GM a platform. So far so good.

It was a success. He got more investment, built factories, became market leader. Built an industrial stack where there was none.

And gradually he got crazy. Dodgecoin, Nazi gestures, thinking he has to safe humanity because left radicaly are destroying it.

Instead of cutting down on costs, Tesla insisted it is the only electrical car and priced it as such. Not to mention the cybertruck disaster everybody saw from miiles away.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have the best electrics with the currently best industrial basis for production and cheap resources.

Musk has too much money, got lucky with an investment and started becoming complacent. The rest of the story writes itself.

CamperBob25• 5 months ago

Many have argued that Musk's shift to far-right politics is responsible for some of this decline -- and it certainly makes some sense -- but I wonder if the cause and effect are being conflated.

If Musk were aware that Tesla was going to lose this much ground due to factors beyond his own mismanagement, including the threat of Chinese imports and a widespread shift away from EVs due to a right-populist sentiment swing that was already under way, then maybe his goose-stepping and Trump-humping act was an attempt to sync up with a trend that he saw as inevitable.

That's about the most charitable spin I can put on it. Either way, Tesla now has to pitch electric cars to right-wing climate-change deniers, which is not a great strategy to adopt voluntarily or otherwise.

tim-tday• 5 months ago

That’s a rather tortured logical contortion.

Isn’t it simpler to assume that he honestly holds the views he says he holds?

CamperBob25• 5 months ago

Yes, which is why I said it was the most charitable spin I could think of.

It doesn't mean I believe he's a hapless victim of larger trends. Just that I consider it possible.

hulitu• 5 months ago

but I wonder if the cause and effect are being conflated.

Tesla is an ugly car. And they didn't had a new model since at least 10 years.

platevoltage• 5 months ago

The Model S looked pretty sleek at one point in time. The Y, X, and that dumpster on wheels are all hideous.

rsynnott7• 5 months ago

I mean, there's no need to go all 4D chess here, really. Sometimes a crazy person who tweets about "woke mind viruses" at four in the morning is just a crazy person who tweets about "woke mind viruses" at four in the morning.

hakfoo• 5 months ago

They didn't have to box themselves into "pitching electric cars to right-wing climate change deniers."

I've heard there are rumours there are least three or four countries outside the US. In several of them, EVs are selling like like hotcakes, or at least not with the current American militant hostility to the very concept.

I suspect they spent too long riding the horse they got here on though. Making an EV appealing to American premium buyers was a marketing coup. Selling it as a software-style "we'll continue iterating with OTA updates" was an interesting alternative to the model-year redesign when you're targeting an early-adopter audience used to regular software refreshes.

But now these things are a liability. Your product matrix is full of America-centric designs with iffy product-market fits in other markets (will a Model S or Cybertruck literally fit in some side streets of Europe or Asia?) You've failed to make a recognizable, exciting redesign of an existing model, so what you do have looks dated. You never really developed a reputation for quality or reliability. These are product problems that have nothing to do with politics. You could have addressed them and been a viable player elsewhere, even as the US continues to eat itself alive. (Of course, that might have involved not intentionally rubbing your brand all over a highly polarizing and toxic political scenario)

I was excited about Tesla back when they were a novelty. I can recall going to the mall with the Microsoft Store (remember those? They sold "bloatfree" PCs because it used to be the OEM who loaded them full of crapware instead of MS itself) to buy a Windows 8 tablet, and then looking across the aisle to see a Model S on display at the Tesla "not really a dealership" stall.

I bought like $2000 in shares back then, figuring one day, jokingly, they'd be worth enough to exchange for a new Tesla. It looks like I could probably get one now. But these days, I just want a BYD; they seem to be actually building a coherent product line and long-term vision.

AnthonyMouse3• 5 months ago

Tesla now has to pitch electric cars to right-wing climate-change deniers, which is not a great strategy to adopt voluntarily or otherwise.

Part of the trouble here is that was always the case. The best selling "car" in the US is the Ford F-series truck. Followed by the Chevy truck, two Japanese SUVs, the Stellantis truck, the GMC rebadge of the Chevy truck, a Chevy SUV and then the Tesla Model Y.

To get anywhere they were always going to have to appeal to the people who buy trucks.

And when everything is polarized and your product is tribe-coded, how do you do that?

I suspect the error here was buying Twitter and then aligning with the party expected to take power instead of buying Twitter and then using it to shift things in the direction of depolarization.

It also doesn't help that the Cybertruck looks weird and costs too much. I mean you can blame attitudes as you like but then there's the fact that the F-150 starts at ~$40k and the Cybertruck starts at ~$80k. They need the battery prices to come down more before people are going to buy something that needs as much battery as a truck.

cyberax3• 5 months ago

Battery is not the issue. NMC li-ion batteries have fallen down to $100 per kWh on the _pack_ level (not cell). And LFPs are around $80.

CyberTruck battery is around 130kWh, so that's just $13k for the more pricey NMC chemistry. This is what makes the Ford fumble with the electric F-150 so comical.

Out of curiosity, I wanted to see if there are any Chinese brands selling batteries of this capacity. And there are plenty. You can buy a 200kWh, with a home delivery today. https://lithiumbattery.en.made-in-china.com/product/kEDRHjlV... Sure, it'll likely explode if you put it in a car. But it's only a matter of time before some enterprising Chinese company makes a compelling truck.

US automakers are sooooo screwed.

imtringued• 5 months ago

As far as I know the hypothesis is that Elon knew before the election that he will be in trouble and tried to cozy up with Trump to cover his ass but it backfired hard.

dudefeliciano6• 5 months ago

Why would you try to put a charitable spin on it? Musk is not a 5d chess playing super genius, quite the opposite.

CamperBob25• 5 months ago

(Shrug) At the end of the day, he ended up the richest guy in the world somehow.

citrin_ru2• 5 months ago

Given less than stellar sales how come TSLA stock is not far below all times high and 15% higher than a year ago? Investors still expect some miracle?

nwah12• 5 months ago

See also: meme stock

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meme_stock

rsynnott7• 5 months ago

It's not a car company anymore, it's an energy company... Ahem, I mean self-driving... Er, maybe robots? ... Okay, that not going so well? How about quantum? That's probably a thing, right?

Tesla seems basically priced based on hype, rather than anything relating to its actual business.

cyanydeez• 5 months ago

Its a billionaire bubble making machine

spiderfarmer• 5 months ago

The reason Tesla stock is still high is the same reason Bitcoin is worth anything.

enaaem• 5 months ago

Maybe someday they will do half the things Hyundai is doing right now.

plagiarist• 5 months ago

The market can remain irrational longer than we can remain solvent.

And possibly also the overt government corruption is priced in.

PearlRiver2• 5 months ago

God help us all if AI takes over the stock market and starts making rational decisions!

65103• 5 months ago

That happened already with the 2010 flash crash.

asa400• 5 months ago

It's a cult. Really. This is a stock devoid of any connection to reality, fundamentals, products, anything. All that matters is that Musk is on the nameplate. Do not bet against the ability of people in a cult to remain irrational in the face of overwhelming evidence. Do not touch the cult.

dboreham2• 5 months ago

It's a bit more than just his name. It's the statements he makes, that turn out to not be true.

citrin_ru2• 5 months ago

If it's a cult why BlackRock is heavily invested in TSLA? Should not be they more rational (e. g. look at P/E ratio and other financial stats).

DoesntMatter225• 5 months ago

Still making fantastic profit every quarter. So there's really no issue.

ben_w5• 5 months ago

Those profits have also gone down; the only year they made lower-but-still-positive profit than 2025 ($3794m) was the first year since their founding in which they made any profit (which was 2020 and $721m).

Tesla's total profits over its entire existence ($37,883m [0]) is about as much as Musk has personally made by selling Tesla shares ($40bn ish [1]), but of that profit I can find $12.8bn can be attributed to government incentives[2] that have now largely or completely gone away.

[0] Net lifetime based on all the ups and downs of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla%2C_Inc.#Finances

[1] I assume some of this got rounded: https://markets.businessinsider.com/news/stocks/elon-musk-te...

[2] Between US federal ($11.4bn for just zero-emission vehicles standards) and local state incentives (and more, I didn't fully sum everything): https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/interactive/2025/e...

jackvalentine2• 5 months ago

I just ordered a 37,000AUD BYD, the "$25k (USD) car" that Elon used to promise was coming.

Seems like I'm not the only one with 2779 BYD EVs sold in the country in January compared to just 501 Teslas.[1]

[1] https://business.carsales.com.au/news-room/news/vfacts-janua...

Betelbuddy2• 5 months ago

This is a quote from Tesla latest earnings call, at 04 min..

"Because we're really moving into a future that is based on autonomy and so if you're interested in buying a Model S and X, now would be the time to order it, because we expect to wind down S and X production in next quarter and basically stop production of Model S and X next quarter. We'll obviously continue to support the Model S and X programs for as long as people have the vehicles, but we're gonna take the Model S and X production space in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory, which will... with the long-term goal of having 1 million units a year of Optimus robots in the current S/X space in Fremont."

jackvalentine2• 5 months ago

I'm not sure what you're trying to tell me.

kelipso• 5 months ago

Wonder what the maintenance picture for Tesla will be like from now on. Crazy expensive parts at the very least I would imagine.

bhouston2• 5 months ago

This reads to me like someone saying “you can’t dump me, because I am preemptively dumping you.” It is a forced pivot to avoid having to admit failure.

PearlRiver2• 5 months ago

I bet Chinese robots will be cheaper lol.

prawn• 5 months ago

I think those are just two of the models that aren't pushed particularly hard. As I understand it, Model 3 and Model Y are the major models in recent time?

I think S, X and Cybertruck are just 3% of 2025 deliveries?

KennyBlanken3• 5 months ago

1 million Optimus robots

Are there that many unemployed actors available?

palmotea3• 5 months ago

but we're gonna take the Model S and X production space in our Fremont factory and convert that into an Optimus factory, which will... with the long-term goal of having 1 million units a year of Optimus robots in the current S/X space in Fremont."

I don't know how well that's going to work out for them. I saw these robots (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVX6vq0RSnY) on the Chinese New Year Gala, and they look way more dexterous than any Optimus video I've ever seen.

gradus_ad• 5 months ago

The whole pivot to Optimus is insane. I can understand the market following Elon down all the other paths he randomly skips down but Optimus... Really?? The only way to explain it is it's not being taken seriously but Elon seems to be taking it very seriously...

NalNezumi• 5 months ago

Can someone enlighten me WHO the customer to those million Optimus robots are?

I've been working in robotics for years now, I've talked with ex Optimus developers, FigureAI devs, some Japanese humanoid devs, researchers, talked to people in conferences and no one. Absolutely no one I've met take Optimus seriously. If a lab is considering buying a humanoid they'll go to China. Hell, even MIT professors that have been crucial to the development (Boston dynamics etc) seems to not put too much emphasis on Tesla.

But I've also been to industrial robotics conferences, mostly for customers and user focus and not developers and usually the perception is different in those circles.

So who are the optimistic customers for Optimus?

dboreham2• 5 months ago

Saw lots of BYD in New Zealand recently. Probably more than I saw in Hong Kong.

vardump2• 5 months ago

Did Musk actually ever promise a $25k car?

mburns• 5 months ago

Repeatedly since at least 2020.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/tesla-said-it-would-sta...

TOMDM• 5 months ago

https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/25/25000-tesla-in-the-work...

plugger4• 5 months ago

You're definitely not alone! I just took delivery of a new BYD Shark 6 on Monday. It's amazing and I paid $41k USD ($57,900 AUD) for it. Before that was available I was planning on punting on a used Hilux.

I'm charging my Shark right now and I couldn't be happier. I expect my fuel bill (it's a PHEV) to drop by 70-80% when compared to the 2010 Commodore wagon I was driving last week.

Rodeoclash• 5 months ago

Congrats on your upgrade from bogan to neuvo-bogan ;)

(I kid, I also drive a byd, ATTO though rather than shark)

blub• 5 months ago

The apparently widespread enthusiasm for spyware on wheels (a category in which Tesla also competes) is sobering.

Many customers really only care about price and that it generally works and looks fine and have zero idea about the hidden costs.

panick21_5• 5 months ago

When Tesla dropped the 'Model 2' car because 'the future would be all robo taxi' I dropped my remaining position in the stock. The idea that car sales would collapse by 50% because robo-taxi would happen just around the corner was crazy.

dkobia• 5 months ago

The average price of a new car in the US is now ~$50,000 and the average monthly payment is almost $800. All people want is an affordable car and it is clear that won’t happen any time soon. It isn’t strange at all that prisoners to this system are cheering on the Chinese disruption.

Rover2222• 5 months ago

The current model 3 is about $29k with inflation from 2017. They didn't quite hit the mark, but it's not like they're wildly off.

yalogin• 5 months ago

Very soon musk will merge Tesla with SpaceX and say he is going to have robots drive the cars to space. The stock will multiply 4 fold making him a multi- trillionaire

VirusNewbie2• 5 months ago

My (2019) Tesla has been the most reliable car I've ever owned, but it sure seems like they're not interested in being a car company anymore.

Not having turn stalks and the drive selector, making me either pay for internet access or use bluetooth if I want to play spotify or youtube music (which I get for 'free' in cars with CarPlay or Android Auto), making the cybertruck way too big for a garage, discontinuing the model S and X...like are they even trying?

They used to have a third row option for the model Y, good for small kids or something, but then they got rid of that.

They were going to do the roadster, but didn't bother. They only have 6 paint colors, not even options for PTS. It's like they don't want to be a successful car company.

SoftTalker• 5 months ago

2019 is far too new to make any pronouncements on reliability. Get back to us in 2035.

wraptile• 5 months ago

The car is still under warranty and they are talking about reliability. A good ol' Toyota will live longer than Tesla has been a company.

mattmaroon4• 5 months ago

They don’t. Their market cap is higher than all the successful car companies combined. Becoming a successful car company would cost Elon half of his unrealized capital gains. It’s far better to be the company who is going to make us $30,000 robot slaves because that’s a bigger market and one he’ll own entirely.

The only question is what will be the next hype cycle when that succeeds about as well as the Cyber Truck.

palmotea3• 5 months ago

It’s far better to be the company who is going to make us $30,000 robot slaves because that’s a bigger market and one he’ll own entirely.

The Chinese are making humanoid robots too, and my bet is they'll be better and cheaper than Tesla's.

mentalfist• 5 months ago

That's an uncommon experience.

Tesla is a very strong leader for faults, breakage, and costly maintenance/repairs in the 3-5 year old segment.

See any European comprehensive car inspection statistics report.

lnsru2• 5 months ago

Take the reports with a grain of salt. Tesla does not mandate maintenance. The cars in the reports are the ones who left factory and get checked after 3 years of intensive use without any maintenance. Check the light alignment, check rust in the brakes and check the suspension and the inspection will be fine. Still cheaper than 400-600€ bi-yearly coolant refill from other manufacturers. Plus Tesla has published repair manual which is very strong advantage for me. I am poor and maintain my cars by myself. Maybe I like it too.

zvqcMMV6Zcr• 5 months ago

That's an uncommon experience.

The very first thing that Tesla was criticised for was terrible QA process. The quality was random and there were huge differences between factories. So I can totally believe there are plenty of Tesla made cars that made their owners happy. Of course few people can afford such gamble.

VirusNewbie2• 5 months ago

That's an uncommon experience.

A big part Part of the reason tesla is considered less reliable is the number of recalls it gets, most of which are software related and fixed over the air.

In terms of maintenance, it is by far the lowest cost of ownership vehicle I've had, I'm in my 40s, not exactly new to owning cars.

vardump2• 5 months ago

Not having turn stalks

Aren't turn stalks back now?

t0mas88• 5 months ago

Yes, they've gone back to the traditional physical turn stalk.

speedylight• 5 months ago

All EVs will naturally be more reliable than ICE cars because there are a lot less components that can break!

mcs5280• 5 months ago

Some day Tesla stock will rediscover gravity...some day

moomoo11• 5 months ago

Gravity doesn't exist when you're in a K-hole. That's why we can become a extraterrestrial society in the next 5 years (repeat infinitely - in 5 years)

overfeed• 5 months ago

Musk may let it fall for a bit of a discount before rolling it up, Katamari-style, into SpaceX, and preserving his ridiculous Tesla package.

lateforwork• 5 months ago

Musk expects ~80% Of Tesla's value will be Optimus robots [1]. It can't be any other way given that he helped elect a President that's against electric cars, against regulation for limiting climate change, against collaborating with our European allies.

https://www.theautopian.com/elon-musk-doesnt-see-cars-as-a-p...

palmotea3• 5 months ago

Musk expects ~80% Of Tesla's value will be Optimus robots [1].

Well one way to do that is destroy so much of Tesla that the Optimus division is 80% of the (much smaller) value that remains.

stephen_g2• 5 months ago

I expect that to go about as well as Facebook changing their name to Meta and putting all their eggs in the Metaverse/VR basket...

But at least Meta's legacy businesses (Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp) were still valuable enough to fall back on - whereas Tesla's seems to be tanking. Only their utility-scale fixed battery business seems to have much potential if they can't turn around their dwindling car business.

0xbadcafebee2• 5 months ago

Poor Elon. How's he gonna get to Mars^H^H^H^Hthe Moon now? Oh right, the same way he built Tesla: government handouts.

gpt5• 5 months ago

SpaceX is making that majority (70%) of its revenue, and all of its profits from Starlink, and mostly from subscriptions.

98% of government money SpaceX receives is payment for services rendered, which they provide at a significantly lower cost than their competitors.

On the other hand, their competitors are routinely receiving actual handouts. For example, ULA used to receive a $1 billion annual "Launch Capability" stipend essentially just to keep their lights.

0xbadcafebee2• 5 months ago

I'm not saying he's not providing services. Tesla shipped cars and chargers for its govt money too. But I'm also saying they wouldn't have been in business without it. Elon is one of the great scam artists of our age, and a huge part of that is reliant on the taxpayer (when not reliant on SV investors and feeble-brained stock market)

pllbnk• 5 months ago

Many of the comments here resemble Reddit, disappointingly. I read HN due to market insights, analysis, interesting perspectives. I am sorry for digression.

upmind• 5 months ago

+1 agreed. Everyone just seems to be an Elon hater (which is totally fine) but don't expect it from HN.

dudefeliciano6• 5 months ago

You are more than welcome to make your case in his favor, if you can. Maybe this is just this is just the sentiment of users on hackernews, why is that so hard to accept?

CamperBob25• 5 months ago

What market insight explains TSLA other than the same thing you'd hear on Reddit: that TSLA investors are a glassy-eyed, slack-jawed cult?

Are there any other explanations that can be steelmanned, just for the sake of an even-handed discussion? "We're going to build humanoid robots" just doesn't seem like enough. Neither does "We're going to build robotaxis", considering that other companies like Waymo are already well ahead of Tesla in that sector.

SloppyDrive2• 5 months ago

They have a current production capacity in the high hundreds of thousands, a software solution that has a reasonable chance of competing in the self driving market, and a worldwide distribution platform.

So the optimistic valuation is based on: Global ride share killer + Large car manufacturer + power infrastructure + Robotics.

Somehow the valuation is as though TSLA will succeeded early enough to entrench itself; if robotaxi wide rollout happens in the next six months, i would be happy to say TSLA is worth more than its current valuation. If it cant then at best 30% of current valuation.

pedroma• 5 months ago

There is a lot of anti-American sentiment on HN and Reddit. You may think it a bit ironic, but maybe the "YCombinator" part takes a back seat to "Hacker News".

rabf• 5 months ago

I'll burn what little karma I have and say that for market insights and interesting perspectives, x.com is the best place (manual curation required). Beyond that you should be watching earnings calls each quarter for a range of companies in the market. Most of what is written here, in the press and on reddit is complete nonsense.

testdelacc1• 5 months ago

What kind of analysis are you expecting? Someone explaining why Tesla’s stock price is justified despite the falling car sales? It can’t be explained because it’s a meme stock.

srid• 5 months ago

HN has been like that with anything Elon Musk related. You may have better luck with https://www.themotte.org/

belZaah• 5 months ago

There’s an old saying: if civil engineers built houses the way software people build software, the first woodpecker to appear would destroy the civilization. With Tesla, we build cars. That, as told in court documents, absolutely should continue accelerating while in cruise control despite the driver pressing the brakes. There’s a century of institutional knowledge on system safety built into most cars. And (looking at you, Pinto), the carmakers are not even especially good at it. As a former software engineer, I’d rather rely on some actual engineers rather than a bunch of tech bros led by a deranged sociopath.

shubhamjain2• 5 months ago

The mystery I can wrap my head around is how Tesla has avoided getting hammered despite being hit from a hundred different directions. What exactly is the market pricing in?

They peaked around 2021, and even after posting multiple quarters of disappointing results, the stock is still trading above 2021 levels. For almost any other company, slightly lowering guidance or missing estimates by a few percentage points simply tanks the stock. But for Tesla, no amount of Musk’s idiocy seems to be enough to seriously move it.

TulliusCicero2• 5 months ago

There's a lot of true believers who think Tesla+Musk will crack self driving and/or humanoid robots any day now.

jdross• 5 months ago

I am so confused when I read things like this because my Tesla model 3 is effectively self driving for me for months now. Hundreds of miles without intervention. No other car I can buy can do this yet

tartoran2• 5 months ago

And there are also a lot of people claiming Tesla stock is being manipulated.

dvrj1012• 5 months ago

"true believers" yup this never changes .

vintermann• 5 months ago

Meanwhile in China, the humanoid robots are doing Tai Chi and somersaults...

Hamuko• 5 months ago

What exactly is the market pricing in?

Elon Musk.

wvenable• 5 months ago

But that doesn't make any sense anymore either.

paxys• 5 months ago

Tesla is the world’s largest meme stock. People stopped applying rational pricing models, and rationality in general, to it a lot time ago.

jmcgough• 5 months ago

PE ratios will suddenly matter again when we get hit with the next recession.

bamboozled• 5 months ago

If Tesla is worth a trillion dollars, is it a meme ?

dudefeliciano6• 5 months ago

yup, remember when musk was pushing doge coin? not much difference

jredwards• 5 months ago

That can't be whole story, though. They're still profitable.

gigatexal• 5 months ago

It’s Elon. It’s a meme stock. Fundamentals don’t matter. That his wealth is so wrapped up in the public valuation of Tesla I guess investors think he will do everything he can to keep th stock price up that is until SpaceX goes public the I think he won’t care because his wealth will come form that primarily.

SvenL• 5 months ago

They don’t care because Musk is marketing Tesla not as a car company but as a technology company (building robots and self driving rental service). And why does he do that? Maybe because his car sales are down…

shubhamjain2• 5 months ago

I always assumed “tech company” meant using technology to build a fundamentally better car from the ground up. I don't know at what point the bait-and-switch happened, it was suddenly about pursuing every stupid moonshot fantasy at the cost of making better cars.

tbrownaw• 5 months ago

I thought it was always a tech company focused around trying to import things from the future. Since before they ever had enough sales that sales could go down.

hcnews• 5 months ago

At some point you have to wonder if there's some manipulation going on? Do 100s of bots buy and sell these stocks at specific times to keep the price up? Maybe there's an institutional investor or few who secretly back Elon and are part of a scheme?

A bit speculative reply but would appreciate if anybody links any such analysis'/investigations.

From my limited knowledge, I know people have been shorting Tesla based on fundamentals for a while now but haven't been successful.

bjourne• 5 months ago

The billionaire class loves their crypto nazis--they won't let Musk fall from grace. Given the Epstein files, the Panama papers, and what we know about the elite networks, you'd have to be a sucker not to believe that the stock market is manipulated to the core.

maxbond2• 5 months ago

The market discounts future returns but it is unclear and shifting what proportion of those returns are from the operations of the company in the market it sells products in and what proportion comes from the operations of traders in financial markets. More plainly, traders discount returns from buybacks and dividends financed by the operations of the company and returns from selling their shares to "greater fools".

As long as the music is playing they will keep dancing. Musk is a master of DJing that party. We might wake up tomorrow and find that his house of cards has fallen apart, but we might wake up to learn they really have solved FSD. That ambiguity keeps the price from collapsing.

danaris4• 5 months ago

There's zero chance that Musk will have suddenly "solved" FSD in a day, a week, or a year. He's not an engineer; he's a money man, and a grifter.

That's why people keep giving Tesla money: because Musk has fooled so many people into believing he's this amazing engineer, who could, possibly, "solve" FSD overnight—and, moreover, has gotten them to buy into it so deeply that they have tied their identity into that belief, and so in order to continue to cling to it, they reject empirical evidence of both his lack of qualifications and his outright crimes.

notTooFarGone• 5 months ago

Really it's just pricing in musk fusing all of his business under the tesla name.

beAbU4• 5 months ago

What is it about FSD that results in this valuation though?

If elon builds a time machine and goes to the future to get FSD tech from 100 years from now and rolls it out to all teslas tomorrow, what will change? Will every car driver get rid of their cars and get a tesla? Will that suddenly justify the stupid valuation?

Realistically, I don't think the majority of drivers will care that much. Sure, their sales will go up, but I can't see it going up by that much.

FSD will never be "achieved" suddenly. The tech will incrementally improve every year, across all manufacturers until one day we are manual driving only 1% of the time with FSD doing the rest. Like AGI, there is no moat in FSD. This is the natural outcome of the trajectory that we are on right now, and nothing about tesla is making me believe they will offer anything that other OEMs can't.

No, I think the market is much more cynical than that. Tesla is a meme stock similar to bitcoin or GME. Investors are degenerate gamblers, hoping that it will continue to rise because that's what it does atm, and hoping they won't be the one left behind holding the bag when it crashes one day. It's little more than a voluntary ponzi scheme that most big investors openly buy into knowing full well what's at stake.

dh20222• 5 months ago

Even if they have FSD ready tomorrow the financials would not support this valuation.

Summing the sales figures in [0] we get 9M to 10M Teslas on the road. Let's say 10M and and let's say Tesla will keep selling 1.6M / year for the next 5 years [1]. This is 18M Teslas and let's assume all of them are converted into paying customers at $100 / month [2]. This works out to $21 B / year in income. $22 B / year in income cannot justify $1.5 T in market value.

Good thing they are switching to robots :)

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Tesla,_Inc.#Timelin... [1] - this is a huge assumption. Teslas sales are declining because of Musk's image, lack of innovation and competition from China.

[2] this is another huge assumption - I know 5 Teslas owners. They tried the $100 / month assisted driving (or whatever Tesla calls it these days). All said it was cool, but not worth it and did not sign up after the trial period. These are professionals who value their time (tech engineers and 1 banker)

keeda• 5 months ago

Haven't looked into this much myself, but throwing it out there: https://statmodeling.stat.columbia.edu/2025/04/19/for-15-yea...

jqpabc1234• 5 months ago

Long story short --- it's a cult --- there is no logical way to explain it.

Musk is the leader selling his own brand of fantasy that he makes up as he goes along. A lot (if not most) of what he says never comes to pass but people still cling to every prognostication as if it is gospel.

For over two decades, he was all about taking over the auto business with full self driving EVs. Obviously never happened. So now he is off to take over ride sharing and robots and AI and whatever else comes down the pike tomorrow.

panick21_5• 5 months ago

I agree with you. I personally dropped my stock when it was clear that the bull thesis had collapsed.

I had priced in, margin staying the same or going slowly down. FSD not working but achieving at least a decent amount of software sale conversion. Service to become a profit center. And most importantly, a profitable truck and 'Model 2' program to further push volume. Beyond that, just generally that electrification was ongoing and Tesla had a role to play.

I never considered Robi-Taxi or Human Robots.

All of these failed. Volume didn't continue to go up. Margin couldn't be substantiated. FSD didn't get much buys (not helped by absurdly increasing price). Truck program was a failure (and I don't think its because of the design). And 'Model 2' program was cancelled.

I profited a lot from this stock and I think there was time where the stock-price was reasonable (I don't buy the claim that it was always a pure meme stock). But every quarter it got worse and worse. I can't understand why its still so high either.

4gotunameagain• 5 months ago

Its CEO is the most gifted person alive ..in pump and dump schemes.

The rational thing would be to short it, but Tesla value will remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.

It really has tarnished the name of the genius inventor.

scotty79• 5 months ago

What exactly is the market pricing in?

Musk, the perception of. As always. Popular media drilled in that geniuses behaving like idiots is on point. So other idiots with money still suspect him of being a genius and singlehandedly turning things around at some point before the cliff.

tim333• 5 months ago

I guess the thesis is Musk is building the sci-fi future. Robots, cities on Mars etc.

It's impressive what marketing images can achieve - the future vision pumping the stock, the seig heil halving car sales.

newyankee• 5 months ago

Actually the funny thing is that there is a mixing of meme stuff, Elon verse impacts (AI + self driving + Energy) etc. and under none of these circumstances is a 200+ PE justified.

The funny thing is after 6 years of effort apparently they have managed to get the dry coating process for batteries working and according to a few reputed sources have ingredients for entire battery chain available locally.

The thing is if this stock was underpriced and rational this would be such a positive news after 2-3 years of growth stall.

Instead they are trying to keep the hype up with endless goalpost changing and self driving possibly stuck perenially in edge case doom scenario with camera only decision

Zigurd2• 5 months ago

Batteries are boring, or at least the hype has a short shelf life. There are enough normies making progress on batteries that Elon hasn't got a credible argument that he is different and better.

Same for cheap Teslas. Some hype trains hit the buffers sooner than later.

curiousguy• 5 months ago

Wouldn’t this be a side effect of everyone buying only indexes funds or ETFs?

Me and other millions of people are investing in our pensions every month and buying ETF (S&P500 or global) and indirectly buying Tesla stocks even if we don’t want to.

The system would need a big shock to cause the ETFs to rebalance and reduce the proportion of Tesla stocks that are part of the index.

Rover2222• 5 months ago

It's not a mystery, regardless of if it's dumb or not - the market is pricing in likely dominance in robotics, both cybercab and optimus.

xg15• 5 months ago

I wonder if some of it is because of Musk, not despite him. Yes, his actions and statements in the last year have been terrible, but he also demonstrated he is very close to one of the most important power centers on the planet. That might be enough for some investors.

seydor• 5 months ago

Y all need to realize that Tesla is a humanoid android company now, and soon will dive into teleportation, immortality and invisibility.

tartoran2• 5 months ago

And soon self drive will also work on Mars. Tesla and SpaceX are now joint at the hip.

LeoPanthera• 5 months ago

Tesla cars can't even self drive properly on Earth.

ncallaway• 5 months ago

I gotta give Musk credit. I continue to think his grift has reached the end of the road, and I'm always shocked at how credulously the market follows him onto the next grift while immediately forgetting the prior one.

The market is far more naive and credulous than I anticipated, and Musk seems to understand much better than I just how fucking moronic most market participants are.

majani• 5 months ago

Since he's now being seen as a conservative, he is now adding into Christian elements to his grift. Expect to see him get even more mystical now

plugger4• 5 months ago

No it's not, it's a car company. It may be moving to robots, but for companies to survive they require products and profits, neither of which seem to be real when it comes to Optimus. According to Musk commercial sales may begin in 2027 with wider consumer availability in 2028. I don't know about you, but when I hear Elon Musk state that something will be real in 2 years I don't believe it at all. This is the exact same playbook with FSD, Mars, etc.

satvikpendem2• 5 months ago

They are being sarcastic.

maxdo7• 5 months ago

I watched his interview recently to save you time, and the suffer :

His Vision — Hate It, Laugh at It, or Love It:

AI has solved (or is solving) coding in 2026.

Robots are doing drunken panda moves, yet FSD is insanely good — running on MacBook-grade hardware.

A few other companies are running large-scale self-driving pilots.

Cars are already being heavily built using specialized robots today.

At this point, it’s stupid for any car brand to invest money into anything that isn’t autonomous driving or robotics.

Sammi2• 5 months ago

As a software developer I only really started to understand how divorced from reality Elon is when he started talking about software development. That was a sinking feeling: "Oh he doesn't actually know something I don't know. He's just keeping the music playing, so he doesn't have to sit down on the chairs that don't exist. Fuck."

rileymichael2• 5 months ago

yeah the recent “LLMs will just make the binary directly” comment should be a massive signal that the guys clueless

whynotmaybe• 5 months ago

Just like watching the movie Hackers and hearing how he hacked the gibson or the 7 screens setup in swordfish : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1Ds9CeG-VY

twilo• 5 months ago

Their cars today are much better than when sales were at their peak.

Getting politics to get in the way of good engineering is a real shame.

kevin061• 5 months ago

I do not consider removing redundant sensors like lidar or infrared from the comprehensive Tesla sensor network and pretending that cameras can do FSD perfectly a good example of engineerring.

lawn2• 5 months ago

The cars are much worse today when you compare them to the competition.

niek_pas• 5 months ago

Totally agree, let the guy do his nazi salute, who cares about politics?? Car go vroom!

shellkr• 5 months ago

Tesla (or Elon) decided to fight the labour union.. people do not like that much. So when there are alternatives people do that.

aaa_aaa• 5 months ago

This is probably the least likely reason people stop buying Tesla.

Tarq0n2• 5 months ago

In Europe people aren't really aware of the labor politics, but doing a nazi salute has made Elon radioactive.

ph4rsikal• 5 months ago

Well, in more positive news (for Tesla), their first Cybercab rolled off the production lines.

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cybercab-robotaxi-prod...

yehat• 5 months ago

Amazing (not) how the sales data is represented LOL I don't have any sweetspot for EVs anyway, but here the title and the comments are not even related to EVs! It's all "ahahaha TESLA/Elon sucks" LOL Fine, but why pretend anything else - the "story" picked data like a cherrypicker - those that make the biggest number in negative. Anyone ever cared to look at the data? 2024 to 2026, or 2023 to 2026 whatever is greater (downwards)... what a joke of stats.

simonebrunozzi• 5 months ago

So, let's try to guess: is Tesla going to be dominating robots and autonomous driving, and worth $10T, or at some point this castle of cards will fall to the ground?

3rodents• 5 months ago

My predictions:

1. Tesla does not dominate robots or autonomous driving, it fades away 2. Tesla’s stock price exceeds $10T after it is shoe-horned into being a part of SpaceXAIBoringTesla

Musk is almost certainly too big to fail at this point. The cult of personality and SpaceX give him a lot of room for financial engineering, he doesn’t need Tesla.

dudefeliciano6• 5 months ago

if democrats win midterms and then 2028 elections, they will be able to come back in full force and retaliate at least against the most egregious of Trump supporters. Will Musk survive in that scenario?

user____name• 5 months ago

Musks public meltdowns couldn't have come at a better time for his competitors.

MagicMoonlight• 5 months ago

They just don’t have any good cars now. They want top of the line money, for meh.

When they first came out they were revolutionary. But they don’t even have a speedometer, let alone a HUD. It’s embarrassing. They’re being so cheap.

thelastgallon• 5 months ago

Tesla is going pre-revenue.

abraxas• 5 months ago

A few more nazi salutes by the CEO and those declines will approach 100%. But the optimus stormtroopers will make up the lost revenue no doubt.

hbogert• 5 months ago

I think most brands are being hammered in the netherlands. The tax climate for eletric company leased cars is not good compared to extremely good just a couple of years ago.

Tesla Sales Down 55% UK, 58% Spain, 59% Germany, 81% Netherlands, 93% Norway

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