I listened to the entire Tesla investor call last night and, amid the exaggerations and big promises, the one thought that I couldn’t shake was that this didn’t sound like Iron Man. I don’t know that any human being is well-equipped to gain the kind of adoration and wealth that Musk acquired, let alone so quickly, which may explain why he seems unable to maintain either.
His ability to gain all that money and all that fame had less to do with a specific genius, and more to do with a somewhat ineffable quality of showmanship. The ideas may not be his, but his gift has always been in a certain kind of external and internal aggrandizement that inspired his employees to do what some thought could not be done, and that inspired investors to put money behind yet-unrealized goals. He had the juice.
I don’t love putting a question in a Morning Dump headline, but I’m so far from an answer that I couldn’t make it definitive. Does Elon Musk have the juice? I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it, and the Q1 call and numbers aren’t supportive of the notion that he does.
It’s not like everyone else has the answers. Chinese automakers are obviously killing it when it comes to electrification. They have an abundance of juice, and that, itself, is a problem. GM is stuck in a weird spot with its own electrification, being both ahead and also, still, tentatively behind.
Does Matt Farah have the juice? Zack and Matt just did their 1,000th episode, so it seems likely. Matt also gets a fun profile in Bloomberg that’s worth reading.
Tesla Was Profitable In Q1 Thanks To Regulatory Credits
Tesla has sold the most popular car in the world for roughly the last two years. Built in the United States, Germany, and China, the Model Y is a global phenomenon. Last quarter, the automaker embarked on the ambitious project of switching over all lines almost simultaneously to start pumping out the revised Model Y.
In any other universe, this would be a big accomplishment that would dominate the headlines about the company around the world. That’s not what happened. Tesla’s Q1 numbers were bad in a way that these plant disruptions cannot fully explain. All the numbers are here if you want to look. The company’s once mighty operating margin, which reached into the teens as recently as Q2 2024, dropped to just 2.1%.
What’s the cause? Here’s how Tesla describes the ongoing issues the company faces:
Uncertainty in the automotive and energy markets continues to increase as rapidly evolving trade policy adversely impacts the global supply chain and cost structure of Tesla and our peers. This dynamic, along with changing political sentiment, could have a meaningful impact on demand for our products in the near-term. We remain committed to expanding our business model to include delivering autonomous robots across multiple form factors and use cases – powered by our real-world AI expertise – to our customers and for use in our factories, as we navigate these headwinds.
It is easy to point out that the tariff uncertainty, caused entirely by the current administration he helped elect, is partially his fault. On the call, Musk reiterated many times that he’s not the President, so it’s not his decision. But it’s hard to see the “changing political sentiment” as anything other than an own-goal. Musk may be trying to save the planet with the Department of Government Efficiency, but right now the biggest shift in money seems to be to investors shorting Tesla stock and not to taxpayers.
Musk said last night that he’d be stepping away from DOGE soon, as he’d done the hard work of setting it up and trying to control the “insane deficit.” That is, in theory, a noble goal. We do have a large deficit, and it does need to be addressed, and a car blog isn’t going to be the place that solves that problem, but the chainsaw approach hasn’t exactly endeared Tesla to a lot of its natural buyers. Here’s how Musk responded to that concept in his opening:
The natural blowback from [my work] is those who were receiving the wasteful dollars and the fortunate dollars will try to attack me and DOGE team and anything associated with me. So, but then I’m really left with two choices. Should we just let the waste and fraud continue?
Some of these cuts suggested by DOGE have included such “wasteful” dollars as, let’s pick a random one: the people who run the Veterans Affairs Suicide Hotline (though these folks were reportedly re-hired — an indication of just how hastily this is all happening).
As Electrek points out, this is all a bit ironic given that Tesla wouldn’t be profitable this quarter without the existence of a government-engineered wealth transfer in the form of regulatory credits:
[It’s] particularly relevant today, to the very earnings call where Musk made his ridiculous assertion, because in Q1 2025, Tesla only turned a profit due to government credits. Without them, it would have lost money.
Per today’s earnings report, Tesla earned $595 million in regulatory credits in Q1. But its total net income for the quarter was $409 million.
This means that without those regulatory credits, Tesla would have posted a -$189 million loss in Q1. It was saved not just by credit sales, but credit sales which increased year over year – in the year-ago quarter, Tesla made $442 million in regulatory credits, despite having higher sales in Q1 2024 than in Q1 2025. So not only were credits higher, but credits per vehicle were higher.
Having the juice means your haters can’t touch you. I think it’s a big sign that the market response to the company’s numbers, as measured by how Tesla futures performed, was pretty muted, but then went up when Musk said he was getting the hell outta DOGE. The company’s stock opened higher this morning, but isn’t as high as you’d expect given that other market trends (President Trump seeming to back down on firing the Fed Reserve Chairman and China) are propelling stocks forward.
The whole call was like this. Musk sounded listless and unmotivated, broken up by the occasional laugh. Most of his pronouncements were a rehash of previous statements or a downgrade of previous promises. As mentioned yesterday, the cheap Teslas are likely to be decontented cars. Musk had to make it clear to people who were expecting Cybercabs on the streets of Austin soon that the vehicles will, in fact, just be Model Ys.
From the SeekingAlpha transcript of the call:
The team and I are laser-focused on bringing robotaxi to Austin in June. Unsupervised autonomy will first be solved for the Model Y in Austin. And then — actually you should parse out the terms robotic taxi or robotaxi and just generally like what’s the Cybercab, because we’ve got a product called the Cybercab and then any Tesla which could be an S3 extra wide that is autonomous, is a robotic taxi or robotaxi. It’s very confusing. So the vast majority of the Tesla fleet that we’ve made is capable of being a robotaxi or robotic taxi.
Later on the call, he goes further to admit that the company will launch with 10-20 of them, maybe, and someone else from Tesla says that, of course, there will be remote teleoperators.
Here’s the weirdest exchange, though:
Elon Musk
Yeah, I mean, very basic terms. If that — if we’re seeing an accident every 10,000 miles, well, then you have to drive 10,000 miles of average before you get an accident or an intervention. So, it’s like, okay, I mean, we must be really, you don’t have to be very worked out by the sheer number of Teslas doing [indiscernible] in Austin right now. We’re like, it’s going to look pretty bizarre.
Ashok Elluswamy
Some people are chasing us away.
Being charitable here, maybe he’s talking about interventions only, because an accident every 10,000 miles is bad. That’s an accident every year. If you’re getting into an accident every year, you’re not a good driver.
At this point, I could keep going through parts of the call I found underwhelming, but it doesn’t matter. Elon Musk is famous for pulling rabbits out of his hat, and it’s possible that in five years, everyone is sleeping inside autonomous Teslas, humanoid robots are doing all of our jobs, and Tesla’s AI rules everything. It’s possible.
The important thing for me, though, is that Musk’s explanations and enthusiasm have never sounded further from reality. That’s subjective, so I invite you to listen to the call and see if that sounds correct to you. The stock will probably rally today, and if it does so, it’s probably not because Musk wowed the crowd with a new idea, but because he’s taking a break from extracurriculars.
I mean, when you’ve lost longtime cheerleader Ross Gerber:
The billionaire’s work as an adviser to Trump and his embrace of right-wing politics in Europe have drawn widespread opposition, including protests and vandalism at Tesla showrooms.
“His time is very valuable, and I think Tesla needs his attention,” said Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management and a prominent investor.
“But it doesn’t change that people don’t want the Tesla brand. I don’t know how you fix that.”
You fix it with the juice, which is not always a renewable resource.
China Has The Cars, What It Needs Is The Customers
It’s the big Shanghai International Automobile Industry Exhibition this week, which is what no one calls it. Instead, it’s Auto Shanghai, and the home automakers are happy to celebrate that local Chinese brands now control 70% of the marketplace after taking a back seat to Buick, Volkswagen, and other Western cars for years.
China has the juice. So much juice. Too much juice. There simply aren’t enough customers even in China to contain all that juice. The juice must be released somehow.
While barely any Chinese EVs are sold in the U.S. — meaning the new 145% tariffs U.S. President Donald Trump has imposed on China have little direct impact on them — any hopes of expansion into one of the world’s biggest markets may be dashed. Other governments’ efforts to avoid a flood of imports and slower global economic growth also pose threats.
China’s passenger vehicle exports hit 6.4 million units in 2024, more than 50% above second-ranked Japan, according to consulting firm AlixPartners. But it estimates that export growth will slow to just 4% in 2025, from 23% last year, due to the effects of tariffs.
A bright spot for Chinese exporters has been Russia and Belarus, which have been under economic sanctions from the West since Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, noted Andrew Bergbaum, global leader of automotive and industrial practice at AlixPartners. “China’s car sales to Russia and Belarus have more than doubled over the past five years, insulating it in part from the volatility of tariffs,” Bergbaum said.
You can’t gamble feeding BYD on that Belarusian money; it might not always be sufficient. (hopefully that link explains what this line means)
A Rocket Scientist Cannot Buy The Silverado EV He Wants
Here’s a remarkably good but frustrating story from Jackie Charniga over at the Detroit Free Press (who has consistently impressed me with her work the last few months). It’s a literal rocket scientist trying to buy a Silverado EV and not being able to do it.
From the story:
For David Rosing, a former system engineer at the CalTech Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Sunland, California, the decision to purchase an electric vehicle was far from rocket science. After meticulous research and a thorough understanding of the technology, Rosing decided back in January to purchase a Chevrolet Silverado EV.
Since then, he has tried, and failed, to procure the exact version he wanted. When he learned that the assembly facility that produced the truck of his dreams would be laying off employees, he felt betrayed.
“I would love to get the message to the C suite at GM that there’s a lot of people ticked off at Tesla looking for something else,” Rosing told the Detroit Free Press. “Please pass along a message to the workforce at Factory Zero that there is, indeed, demand for their products.”’
This seems to be the classic trimflation problem, where given limited production, it’s not easy to find the exact lower trim model that you want because the automaker is not economically incentivized to build it (in this case, it sounds like a specific blue LT extended range).
Matt Farah, Pro-Urbanist Car Guy
I’ve been meaning to write up the 1,000th episode of The Smoking Tire podcast because it’s a big deal. I’m a bad friend and haven’t done so yet. It’s above. Please watch and enjoy it. The show’s hosts, Matt Farah and Zack Klapman, are great people and super knowledgeable.
Matt, like many of us, recognizes that for all the good cars bring into our lives, some walkability isn’t the worst idea. Here’s a long profile in Bloomberg from David Zipper that gets into how loving cars and loving cities don’t have to be contradictory thoughts:
“In this city, some of the most desirable places to live are the most walkable,” he told me over lunch that afternoon. “But you can’t build more places like that right now, because of parking minimums and stupid s— like that.”
In addition to gushing over the latest Lamborghinis, Farah can hold forth on the benefits of multimodal streets, the perils of car bloat, and the upsides of upzoning. He believes that it’s entirely possible to love cars while recognizing that cities would be better if fewer people used them.
“LA is a place that doesn’t understand the difference between car dependence and car enthusiasm,” Farah said. “If I can just make that one point, I think that would do a lot of good.”
I think this is correct. Wanting a car and needing a car are sometimes different things. Commuting in Houston and being stuck on freeways didn’t make me love cars. Being able to take the train into New York and then come home and have the energy to take my BMW on a joyride upstate makes me love cars.
Farah also goes on to say that the idea of a “war on cars” is dumb:
“Car enthusiasts hear talking points like that and think ‘They’re going to take your cars away.’ Of course nobody wants to do that.”
It’s a fun profile. You should consider reading the whole thing.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
ABBA’s “Mamma Mia” just turned 50, and it would be a shame to honor that here. It’s fine if you’re not an ABBA fan. I am not an ABBA fan. But I’m not not an ABBA fan. If the sound of this song brings you no joy, then you must be one who enjoys only sadness.
The Big Question
Who, in the automotive industry, has the juice right now?
Top photo: Austin Powers, Depositphotos.com
>That is, in theory, a noble goal. We do have a large deficit, and it does need to be addressed
No, it doesn’t. It’s a bogeyman Republicans use to swindle the public. Even if you believe this, you need to understand that deficit reduction is what the Bill Clinton administration did, successfully, and it would look like that — careful work and legislation, not the wrecking ball coated in arsenic that is DOGE (properly pronounced “dodgy”). DOGE is a criminal enterprise meant to further enrich billionaires and punish American citizens for wrongthink.
Republicans while running: “We have to get this debt under control!”
Republicans in power: spend like drunken sailors, add trillions to said debt.
Exactly this. If Trump gets what he wants the national debt is estimated to go up by 5 TRILLION. But by all means, lets fire National Park workers who make a pittance while keeping some of our greatest national treasures beautiful and accessible.
So much for fiscal responsibility…
That INFURIATED me. Yes, let’s fire thousands of employees of one of the most popular and successful govt agencies that make barely slave wages (avg salary is 40K) in order to fund tax cuts for the people that least need it.
Never mind all the environmental protection they’re rolling back.
https://www.frommers.com/trip-ideas/national-park/national-parks-make-more-money-than-they-take-in-taxes/
This is yet another case where feigned neutrality just makes everyone who reads the article dumber than they would have been otherwise. That is what happens when you think making peace with evil is a winning strategy. Really, all it does is normalize evil and make it more generally acceptable.
Tesla has literally been propped up by government handouts during its entire existence. I understand that Elon and his ilk aren’t the most self-aware folks in the world, but surely he realizes there’s some irony in his hatred of government assistance? If it wasn’t for the US government Tesla as we know it wouldn’t exist.
Billionaires are the direct beneficiaries of all kinds of government handouts and the number 1 indicator of whether or not someone will become a billionaire is…you guessed it! Family wealth. The projection is astounding. It’s easier, more honest, and unfortunately just as socially acceptable in 2025 to just say you hate poor people.
Enough of this charade, no one is buying it…and a big chunk of the deficit is the result of Republicans aggressively slashing taxes on the 1% over and over again forever. But I digress. The emperor has no clothes. He hasn’t at any point if you’ve been paying attention, but for people that aren’t terminally online on car blogs who’ve been aware of Tesla for 15 years I understand why it took some time to figure it out.
Anyway, Matt Farah is right, as he often is. Honestly I wish more enthusiasts would understand this. Being urbanist/pro transit and being a car enthusiast are not mutually exclusive…and I actually think that making our society less car dependent will keep cars around longer. There are many safer, more affordable, less environmentally problematic ways to get people around…and options are good!
More people walking, on bikes, and on trains means less people on the road. That’s good for us car enjoyers AND good for society as a whole! Spend any time in a major European city and you’ll get it. Cars slowly but surely being relegated to hobbies rather than necessities is perfectly fine. They’ll still be here for us to enjoy but the average inattentive crossover owner who views driving as a chore and hogs the left lane will be able to get to work another way.
Elon and his companies are the biggest welfare queen around.
“Handouts for me, not for thee”-Conservative proverb
Always. And I’m sure billions of tax dollars will go towards bailing out companies as a result of the Republicans shooting the economy in the head while the everyday citizens starve and lose their homes. Again.
Privatize the gains, socialize the losses.
Even ignoring the bailouts of Wall St over Main St. and socialized losses billionaires and their companies love an occasional recession so they can buy up competition or diversify at a discount when smaller companies can’t outlast the downturn.
True. On that note, I can’t help but think everything is going exactly to plan.
Unfortunately I agree…
I love TST, congrats to Matt and Zach on 1000!
Matt Farah should have gotten his own headline. He’s a breath of fresh air when thinking about the car-influencer space, because he knows where cars belong (canyon roads) and where they don’t (mall parking lots).
Hey now, nothing wrong with doing a few donuts in the back of a mall parking lot.
Or, in our case here, Cars & Coffee events.
On another note: They are showing live Indy Car testing at Indy of course on the You Tube NTT channel.
If anyone needs to waste (?) some time at work.
I first realized Musk was an idiot gasbag (or worse) when he pushed Hyperloop so hard many years ago. Technology is never the issue with mass transit; the issue is politics, real old-fashioned 20th century style politics involving right-of-way, nimbys, and the entitled wealthy. We’ve had viable technology for mass transit since the 19th century.
Every “disrupting” company that tries to rethink public or mass transit always comes back around to inventing the train or the bus.
Yeah, he’s definitely running low on Precious Bodily Fluids.
https://youtu.be/N1KvgtEnABY?si=aGVMsiV58CFE4MdP
If by “juice” you mean “Ketamine” then, yes. Elon has the “juice”
Was going to say this. He’s juiced up on it to the point that would probably kill someone who hasn’t built up the tolerance he has. Legal prescription, yeah, but that’s all but irrelevant at his level where he can easily put a Dr Feelgood on the payroll.
Came here to ask if “juice” was new slang meant to replace “special K.”
About the genius that is Elon. I have a vendor that does machining work for SpaceX and is at the Hawthorne facility pretty regularly. He was in a meeting with some engineers and the CEO stopped by to say hi. While the CEO was chatting Elon walked in and started making all kinds of weird requests about a new revision to the Falcon9. Elon stood in the middle and pontificated for a couple of minutes then as abruptly as he entered he left. When he was gone all the engineers just rolled their eyes and acted as if Elon was the drunk uncle at Christmas.
For all his “genius” I’m not sure that he is much more than a snake oil salesman that has managed to be in the right place at the right time. He is trending towards the fake until you make it.
AND, any of you that wants to argue how good SpaceX is, keep in mind that Gwen Shotwell really runs that thing and Elon kept at an arms length from the day to day operations.
Steve Jobs didn’t design the Apple computer, but without him, there wouldn’t have been one in my parent’s living room in 1983.
I wish Musk had stayed out of politics. People would still consider Tesla and SpaceX as awesome as they did a couple years ago.
Even if he had stayed out of politics, Tesla’s lineup would still be in the same sad state it is now. Yes, their sales would probably be a little higher, but his political stances are only a part of Tesla’s issues.
Jobs was actually smart and very involved in making good market-altering decisions. Musk is a moron who has gotten lucky at stock manipulation and subsidy mining. He has zero competence in anything technical or market-related. This was undeniably clear once we saw the SSyberturckkk, which directly manifests what Musk thinks is a good idea.
Steve Jobs was there from the beginning. Elon bought his way into Tesla after they made the very cool roadster based on the Lotus Elise.
It’s fun when the boss doesn’t know a damn thing about what they’re bossing on about. I worked for a gaming company in the late 90’s. Most of the folks with the higher tax bracket positions realized they had no idea what us technical types were doing and would keep their critiques deadline-based. One of the company directors however would randomly pop into a room if he sensed a problem and then loudly say something like “Well, just scale it by -100 in the x-direction. Then you can reuse that texture asset and save some memory!” Uh… sure, that will definitely solve the problem of our proprietary software not wanting to read the UVW coordinates on the .obj files we’re being supplied with. Yep, got it. Let me just jot… that… down… in… [looks around room – is he gone yet?]
It didn’t take long to realize it was just best to go with whatever answer got that guy out of the room the fastest. And if it came up later a quick “oh yeah, we were able to leverage your suggestion into a workable solution once accounting for a few unknowns we hadn’t previously encountered – thanks” generally kept any more painful technical discussion at bay.
I applaud Gwen and the other holders of those lengthy arms at SpaceX.
Just remember, Tesla is an AI and robotics company. They can’t make FSD fully viable, but trust him: millions of humanoid robots will be ready for retail next year.
When we were first promised FSD? Nine years ago?
A $35k electric car?
The return of the roadster?
Being able to earn money from your car by utilizing it as an autonomous taxi?
Bulletproof Cybertruck?
Colonizing Mars?
Hyperloop?
But hey, we did manage to pull off viable electric cars, limited autonomy, reusable rockets and Neuralink I guess still has a chance. I think we can trust what he says.
Musk juice. Yikes!
Smells kind of… earthy.
Stings the nostrils.
Regulatory credits = corporate welfare. That should have been the first thing DOGE cut.
Oh, wait, I get it now.
Elon ran out of juice when he got lost in the political sauce.
For a lot of people, it was the name-calling of a professional diver
For me, it was when he suggested Crimea should vote on whether or not to go back to Russia, and 3 weeks later, then turning around and suggesting Taiwan should be a Chinese SAR like Hong Kong. Why not have the Taiwanese vote? Oh wait, they voted for independence
“so I invite you to listen to the call and see if that sounds correct to you.”
I’d rather get out a fresh #2 pencil, sharpen it to the finest point possible, and shove it into my ear canal.
Nobody in the auto industry has any juice as far as I am concerned. They are ALL dead to me.
The sooner that Musk gets to the final stage of “crazy rich dude” – the recluse stage – the better off the world will be. He is the Gen-X Howard Hughes. In his case, recluse on Mars would be just fine with me. One-way trip.
I really hope he doesn’t start buying up Las Vegas
Las Vegas is distilled Elon — all flash, façade and inflated promises pandering to base instincts.
I wish we were all his children so he would ignore us and we’d never have to hear from him again.
And get a slice of his billions when he kicks? Sign me up!
ROFL!
When Chevy introduced the original Colorado they had a commercial with a passenger in the back singing along to “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!”
Are they channeling Shania again? “Okay, so you’re a rocket scientist? / That don’t impress me much”
I sympathize with David Rosing.
All I wanted was a VW Golf 6MT AWD wagon, ideally in red. It was right there in their books as a valid option, and I was ordering at the start of the model year production.
But, mysteriously, it could not be done.
So I walked away and purchased a different brand entirely.
I used to own an ’18 Golf wagon 4motion 6-speed, albeit in blue over tan cloth, and it was a truly excellent car, but I sold it when it was nearing the end of warranty, because it was a VW, and the day before I traded it in, low coolant warning because of the ubiquitous EA888 water pump fiasco. It was so good, and I miss driving it, but boy am I ever glad I got rid of it before it turned into a headache.
I had a VW prior.
I was willing to accept the risks of German vehicle ownership.
I had the same experience trying to get a SportWagen with the brown interior and a 6MT. It’s why I drive a GTI today (I do love it).
More blatant lies from Musk, he is stepping away soon because his status as a special government employee is on a time limit of 130 days that’s up soon.
As if that 130 day limit matters.
Right? Like anyone would actually enforce that. There were also a bunch of “conflict of interest” rules for special employees that he completely ignored.
Didn’t Musk try to claim that he actually only worked one day a week at DOGE? So that way he’d get to stay on for 130 weeks?
Wouldn’t surprise me
This is the first time I’ve seen anyone reference this so thank you!
WTF is the point of a humanoid robot?
We are surrounded by robots. They don’t look like humans, because the human form is often not the best design to accomplish certain tasks.
For under $1000, I can have a machine that washes my clothing. Its spinning stainless tub is better at this task than a humanoid robot scrubbing my underwear in a washtub.
For half that price I can have a machine that washes my dishes which is superior to a humanoid robot standing over the sink sponging my dishes by hand.
For half of that price I can have a little thing that navigates around the house and cleans the floor.
I don’t understand the use case for these things, other than manipulating his unsophisticated investors who until now have been all-in on sci-fi products regardless of whether they can ever function reliably or find buyers.
Someone pushing humanoid robots is how you know they’re probably full of shit. The human shape is best at basically one thing – being the jack-of-all-trades we need to navigate the modern world (and surviving in our ecological niche when humans first evolved, but that’s not exactly relevant anymore). We are so, so far away from a jack-of-all-trades robot making any sense – if you want a robot to stock shelves, a wheeled base is better. If you want a robot for POS, a screen with a speaker is better. If you want a robot to make fast food, a bunch of arms over the assembly area is better. For combat roles to replace infantry (god help us if this happens and they aren’t all remotely controlled), various combinations of wheeled, tracked, and quadrupedal configurations are better.
The only thing that a humanoid robot is better for is the sci-fi robot butler role.
I’d like one to fold laundry and empty the dishwasher. Maybe scrub some pots and pans.
Doesn’t need to be humanoid.
Me too. I wonder what epic levels of lazy I could achieve with a robot to feed and operate my other robots.
I would just order a potty / recliner combo the day this becomes an attainable thing.
Wall-E; Our Disappointing Future
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohcwksrvDOg
More descriptive: The Future Of Humanity | WALL-E 4K HDR
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tzqt5jveggg
The EV anecdote is the exact thing that most of us in Middle America have been dealing with since EVs were first introduced (but now that a Californian can’t find a SilEVrado, it’s a story!).
Fast forward about 10 years, and 90%+ of all the EVs here are lightly used Model 3/Y. The demand was always there, and now all the business is going to Tesla because nobody else has been around long enough, in large enough numbers, to have a robust used market yet. It’s an accidental stroke of genius because every Tesla looks basically the same, so they’re all just rolling billboards for the brand…a brand that opened exactly zero showrooms in our MSA, yet is still killing it against traditional dealers (who, again, carry almost zero EV inventory!).
It’s all a cluster.
Also I think the bigger problem here are the people who are losing their jobs and not the rich guy who can’t get his immediate gratification.
I hope when the dust settles from all of this kneejerk DOGE work and tariff mistakes, someone is able to get a real tally of the true amount of unemployment and waste that came from such a petty, kneejerk economic roadmap (or lack thereof). Every single day, billions of dollars in decisions are being made over tariffs or government reorganization, only to see the course reversed in a few days or weeks.
The old adage is still true that it doesn’t matter as much the politician in charge, as long as they make reliable promises and give the world a chance to react appropriately. Right now, our country is being run by powerful children.
They’re doing the “move fast and break things” approach that might work in Silicon Valley but is not applicable when you’re dealing with an actual government.
Along the way they’re treating Federal employees like tech startup ones, oblivious to the fact they had made the opposite deal – people get government jobs knowing the base pay will be well below what they’re actually worth but the job security will be top notch. If the government has to start paying market rate, I hope the next president is a good enough messenger to put that on the Trump legacy’s tab.
Andrew Yang had an expert on his podcast yesterday who said that we’ve done damage that will last decades, and we may not see the economy that we had prior to Feb 2025 again in our lifetimes. The US cultivated its place in the world following WW2, and we’ve essentially walked away from it.
They’re trying to turn us into the world’s new manufacturing hub where we’re all so broke we have no choice but to work in a non-union factory job stamping out fake vomit.
There was a recent poll where 80% of respondents said that the US should bring back more manufacturing, but only 25% of those same people said they would actually want one of those jobs.
If they were shooting for 1950s/60’s manufacturing jobs with strong unions and prosperity would be one thing, but what they really want is a 1900’s style Gilded Age 2.0 where a few robber barons control 99% of the wealth while everyone else toils in sweatshops.
Isn’t that essentially what we have now?
And can’t move within the country for better work, hence the tariff policies making new cars and parts for existing ones more expensive, while defunding transit and making it Federal policy to double down on sprawl-inducing single family zoning.
Being an export economy would remove us from the world stage. We’ve been a post-industrial economy for decades…and why would China or India want anything made in the US if it’s more expensive?
I love listening to Yang, he always seems so informed and reasonable.
And to be clear, I’m not 100% anti-Trump, I’m probably on board with half of his ideas, but ZERO of his execution. To your point, the artificial need for haste (getting things done!) is making certain things irreparable when it all could have been done much more reasonably over 1-2 terms, including setting a successor up for continuing certain programs. Not to mention the damage done to any future of a moderate GOP.
I don’t think he cares about Tesla at all any more, tbh. The only things he really wants in life are to be the main character in a hentai manga and for the entire world to find him hilarious, and no amount of money can buy him either.
He’s clearly sinking into some sort of depression, and I think what clinched it was him being made less publicly visible after he cost the Republicans that election in Wisconsin. Nobody likes him outside of people who use him to make money off crypto.
I do think Tesla could turn it around, but he needs to be gone in order for that to happen.
If people get nervous about their cars turning usage data over to insurance companies, it could really open another front against Tesla.
They gather the most data and have from the start. They are almost more surveillance machines than automobiles.
With Musk’s unrestricted access to government information (Social Security, IRS, ICE), we’re about two bad decisions away from innocent citizens being abducted off the streets because they walked by a Tesla with a dusty camera lens that facial-recognitioned them as undocumented.
Don’t give them any ideas
They have already had the ideas years before the consequences come into focus for the populace.
If by some miracle Tesla could ditch Elon, then they’d “just” have the problem of a small outdated product line with absolutely nothing new in the pipeline.
It’s bleak, to be sure, but it could be turned around with the right leadership. They’ve already got brand recognition, a great charging network, manufacturing facilities, and engineers who know what they’re doing.
All they need is a leader who cares more about actually leading a company than dicking around at the government.
Could it?
I don’t know what IP they hold or if they license it out currently (outside of the charging connector), but it seems like everyone has figured out how to build an EV at this point.
Tesla has just invented a bad way to build a vehicle that is subject to traffic accidents. With the high repair costs and rapid depreciation, these things can’t be loved by insurance companies.
If they need to survive on their sales alone (those carbon credit sales will dry up as traditional manufacturers sell more EVs of their own), Tesla does not have the money to develop a full car lineup.
I don’t see any traditional automaker buying them. They certainly won’t want to taint their own brands with the stink currently surrounding Tesla.
I don’t know who holds Tesla stock, but institutional investors will cut their losses and sell at some point. Whether its a huge price drop or overall volatility, they are in it for the numbers not the message. Retail investors will act less rationally, but there will eventually be a number that gets them to sell also.
Car companies are incredibly capital-intensive to start, so investment groups and PE firms often jump at the chance to pick one up, usually to sell off pieces of it
If Elon were ousted and Tesla remained independent, they’d probably appoint an existing person in Tesla as CEO and hire an SVP of Product, since they currently don’t have one and all product decisions go through musk
And his design input has only resulted in production delays, additional production costs and/or warranty claims and increased customer frustration.
The one car he forced to follow his design ideas (Cybertruck) may turn out to be one of the biggest failures in US car design.
Pretty much. A lot of Tesla seems to work in spite of him, rather than because of him. The cybercab might be the next folly: He cancelled and ignored an internal report saying it wouldn’t do well
The CT is interesting because it’s simultaneously the best-selling EV truck while simultaneously being a sales failure because they delivered 40k trucks last year against 1 million deposits. Must be a capex nightmare too because they probably tooled up to build far more than that per year
Pretty bad when you’re wishing you were Chrysler…
I’ve spent the better part of 1/4 century working in design and branding. Tesla is a case study of how a company can put themselves into the WORST possible position when it comes to their brand. Its now what we in the biz call a damaged brand. So long as Elon is a part of the picture there’s no fixing it.
And of course all of it is so much worse when at the same time the entire product lineup either looks or IS very outdated. That generic, jellybean shaped design they use for everything looks bland and old.
Amazing that at one point in time I actually had some respect for both he and Tesla. Now? I could care less. It mostly sucks for the workers on the assemblylines and offices who wanted nothing to do with his Nazi shit who will in turn suffer as a result.
It would be interesting to see if his return tarnishes the brand more by his closer involvement.
It’s fully tarnished for me. I will not put an IRS surveillance camera on me while I drive to work to pay the IRS, and certainly won’t pay my car to rat me out to Geico. (PS, F Geico right up that lizard’s cloaca).
Elon at DOGE is almost perfectly analogous to how other large donors received Ambassadorships (which is a really f*cked up thing).
“Have you been to Djibouti before? Any connections to the country? Do you even speak French or Arabic?”
“Nah, bro, I got this. Hehehe, Djibouti.”
Is the Silverado EV selling so well that dealers can’t place orders for them with immediate delivery?
No one wanted a truck just like mine, so I factory ordered it. Is that not an option for him, either because GM doesn’t do orders on EVs or because he doesn’t want to wait?
From the aritcle it seems like they’re just not doing orders, so the configuration he wants is a schrodinger’s pickup
“I’m a Catch-22 in GM’s eyes — they think there’s no demand even when we’re begging to order one, but we can’t order one because they think there’s no demand,”
The Freep article mentioned he wanted a specific color with a specific optioned package that brought the price under the $80k limit to qualify for the federal incentive.
“The Silverado EV LT has an option package with features above those offered in the base model, Rosing said, but has a price tag that still qualifies for the federal EV tax credit. The premium midgate option on the work truck can fit items reaching up to 10 feet 10 inches, tow a maximum 10,000 pounds and has a company-estimated 450-mile range, according to the website.”
Some of this might be on the customer for wanted to spend $72,500 instead of $110k. There was also no mention of him trying a second dealership that may have a different allocation because they were doing a better job of selling the lux version.
This is exactly the issue with having to deal with a “dealership”, you have no idea what is reality as to what you can and can’t order or if the dealer is playing a game with you for whatever reason. Tesla has plenty of issues but you either click the button to order what you want how you want it or it’s simply not offered and nowhere else in the same market can you click the button to order that configuration either at that specific time.
It sounds like this was GM’s fault if the web form that he filled out sent him to a dealership that could not currently place an order for the car he built. A good website experience would at least check if it was possible with the actual ordering system before sending the dealer your contact information.
Also it is GM’s fault for not setting up a queue for people wanting the most expensive truck that qualifies for the tax incentive because that is the version that customers willing to wait for a good deal will want. It is also the fault of how the tax credit was designed, because GM’s goal is to build the trucks that make the most profit not the trucks that qualify for the most government money.
I have seen maybe ONE Silverado EV that wasn’t a fleet vehicle. One. And that is here in California. I imagine even less so in any of the redneck states.
I’m in North Carolina and haven’t seen one. There are electric F150s around but the Rivian seems to be the most popular electric pickup by far.
Any dealer I’ve dealt with is very open to swapping cars with another dealer in the area to make a deal. When I bought my Civic a long time ago, we had three different dealers quoting us pricing on the exact same car (we had looked up inventory online and noted the VIN which was not all that common in 1998). Oddly, we got the best price from a dealer other than the one who had it on their lot.
I think the difference in this case the truck is not on anyone’s lot because the lower priced trucks are only available to order based on the model trim mix set at the beginning of the year. Meaning the only dealerships allowed to order the cheap version already has the top trip truck and the Hummer sitting on the lot.
It probably does not have to do with product planners thinking that no one wants to buy the cheap version, but selling fewer trucks that barely make any money even with a government subsidy probably leads to higher profits if it means that even a few more higher profit trucks get sold because that is all that is available.
Musk may have the same “juice” as Hugo Drax had in the movie Moonraker.
Do we know if Elon expressed interest in rare orchids indigenous to the Amazon River area, or a glass-blowing factory in Venice?