Look, I get that Elon wants to chase AI, but why not do relatively simple, low-cost things like build a proper 7-seat SUV that uses the Cybertruck platform - or even a properly stretched Model Y platform (rather than the six-seater L)? Or how about a delivery van on a stretched Y platform?
The total market cap of all the Chinese car companies combined is about 300B.
Tesla alone is worth ~5x that, because the market rewards this behavior of chasing new things.
If Tesla suddenly pivoted to 'caring about cars' and tried their best to produce low cost reliable EVs, the market is going to punish them by valuing them at less than 300B. That is, if they succeed at that. If they fail, which would be more plausible, they go bankrupt.
Why would they voluntarily do that?
We could do that by changing public opinion or regulating what public companies must do/report, but that seems somewhat unlikely. It's so much easier to claim that autonomous driving will be solved in six months :)
Why not a Cyberbus based on the cybertruck platform? I’d kill for 8–12 passenger minibuses in the LVCC tunnels during CES instead of the 3 passenger Teslas.
In Europe, they are usually known as MPVs or "people carriers"; Renault has made their Espace since 1984 (though, it looks like they abandoned that format in 2012); there was also the Renault Grand Scénic, which ended in 2022. So not a uniquely American concept, but it seems like the market in Europe for them is thinning significantly. A shame though, I really like the look of that Espace mk1.
Also the Citroen Grand C4 [1], which is a 7-seater where the back row fold down to get a completely flat foor - great family car. It's been replaced by the Space Tourer now I believe, which goes up to a 9-seater.
It's not really a vehicle that many people need. Our VW Caddy seats 7 with the third row of seats, but that was installed for a week before we took it out and it's been in the garage since then. I've had the car full of stuff more often than I had it full of people. And even then it's mostly air in a car that's shaped like a brick wall that's been driven around most of the time. I can drive it at around 6.5 l/100 km of gas, but 7.1 is more typical. So a more sensible choice would have been a smaller and more efficient car.
Yeah I’d love a cybervan or model XL. Pretty much every family I know would get one. In lieu of that we all got model Ys / cybertrucks instead, and then we grumble about it when the in-laws come to visit and we need to drive two cars to take the family out. YL is fine but they needed to go further. Need 3 proper rows and storage space!
Because tesla has always been selling dollars for $0.50. Investing in their product lines doesn't help them, it's always been a grift and a shell game. Some great products have come out of it, but the valuation has never been one where selling more products helps the business, unless it can lead to the hype train.
Sure, but if they're losing money, you go looking for ways to make a bit more money without having to spend too much. My contention is at least some of these things could be done relatively cheaply and would generate additional sales.
Tesla may be getting belted from pillar to post elsewhere in the world by the Chinese but they a) still have a near-monopoly in EVs in the US, and b) have a cost-competitive EV manufacturing operation in China from which they can supply other parts of the world.
That still doesn't help their image problem, which is still very real for many left-leaning affluent consumers around the world, but that's less of a problem for commercial vehicles.
Sorry TSLA holders, it's partly my fault as I got my 5 years old Model Y checked by a third party garage for everything that should be fixed by Tesla before the end of the main warranty period.
I can't really complain about the maintenance of the EV parts of my cars. I know some EVs fail there too, but my two EVs have been flawless when it comes to the electric drivetrains and the batteries.
But having an electric car doesn't make salt and potholes magically disappear, unfortunately.
What maintenance do they actually need? Tires, brakes, wiper blades, air filter, washer fluid? All fairly trivial to DIY. One thing that I would do is disable the cellular modem, to prevent unwanted "upgrades."
Have not owned a tesla, but have had three EVs in the family. All three new cars. All of the EVs have spent way more days at the dealership than any of my ICE cars of the last 30+ years.
Of course. It's a ridiculous notion yet that hasn't stopped anyone from repeating it constantly.
More than a few times my mechanic has found something pending failure (like a leak) during regularly scheduled ICE maintenance and alerted me to keep an eye on it.
Their marketing worked well here, most Tesla drivers I know have commented that they will never need to service their car. At least, they do until they wear their tyres to the point they disintegrate while driving. A mechanically illiterate public coupled with effective marketing is a dangerous combo when they're flying around in 2 tonne boxes still filled with wear parts.
> At least, they do until they wear their tyres to the point they disintegrate while driving
I don't think anyone who knows tires wear out thinks Teslas have special tires that don't wear.
> A mechanically illiterate public coupled with effective marketing is a dangerous combo when they're flying around in 2 tonne boxes still filled with wear parts.
Good news: Teslas will tell you when you do need to do the little maintenance that is required, including worn tires.
I believe it's the only, or at least first, car that measures tire wear by comparing GPS distance traveled to wheel rotations, accounting for tire pressure.
I understand not wanting to pay the cost of LiDAR like twelve years ago but the price has come down since then. At this point does it even make sense to stick to cameras? What possible reason is there other than an aging Elmo's ego?
Even if it prevents like ten deaths, the LiDAR will have paid for itself.
> Even if it prevents like ten deaths, the LiDAR will have paid for itself.
The statistical value of a human life (for US government purposes) is between 7 to 14 million USD depending on department etc. (Unless there's anything to do with nuclear, then it's pretty much infinity.)
I'm not quite sure how much LiDAR would cost extra?
Of course, in addition to lives saved, you have other benefits. Eg you can conceivably drive more aggressively and faster, when you have more scanners, because you can exploit more situations where a lesser system has to act conservative when it can't be quite sure.
It would also just be good PR at this point. They could easily spin it as "We could make it work like the others with only cameras, now we add back more sensors to improve even further!". Camera-only has been criticized prominently for so long too, it would undermine a lot of the negative arguments people make too. It would honestly just be an easy win for them, even if there is no real improvement at first, they can even take their time to update the software over time.
I take them regularly in SF, twice cheaper than lyft, 4x cheaper than waymo and works fine... it's literally the cheapest other than zoox (free if on tester list, which I am), but it's as fast as Lyft/Uber.
It's disappointing. They were the leading electric car company, and then they blew it. No new good models. The robotaxi that never quite works. The Cybertruck.
The humanoid robot army. The out-to-lunch CEO off being a political.
Tesla should be building something like the Slate pickup. Or like BYD's midrange models. Things that would actually sell.
One of the lessons of the electric car industry is that when gas car companies build electric vehicles, the vehicles suck. They're usually adapted versions of gas cars, which means too much structure and cost in the wrong places. This usually comes out as a $5000 price penalty for the electric model. Tesla was well placed to avoid that.
I drive a shitbox but if I was gonna buy a new car and I had the money to buy one it would probably be tesla considering their realistically the only American car companies that make their cars in the US. Rooting for them to do well, because I live in the midwest and have seen what happens when these trash can companies overshore manufacturing.
Seeing it happen now too with college jobs is funny, because all those same people making fun of your community for complaining about lack of jobs after the factory they built their city around leaves, now are complainjng abiut the same thing. H1B yourself. Love those Indians. Anyway, everyone loses no class solidarity, the poors fighting amongst themselves like animals.
Beyond the long track record of unmet Musk's announcements, Tesla is strategically in a very difficult situation: it went from being the sole option for an electric car, to being a small mid-market player with quality issues.
- chinese companies are now exporting with 25% discount for similar quality
- premium brands occupy the $80'000+ car segment with better comfort and quality
- Tesla sells as many as Renault, a local European player, except the later built a strong alliance network to get scale economics.
I won't even mention the failure of the Cybertruck, which cannot even be exported to Europe due to its dangerous design.
In short: they'd rather merge now with a traditional car company while they have a high valuation, much like US West did with QWest at the end of the Internet bubble. Or else...
I'm not convinced Tesla's schizophrenic strategy is any worse than the strategy of the legacy American automakers, which is to sleepwalk directly into a volcano (when Chinese EV manufactures break into the market with $10k SUVs)
Elon gambled with cybertruck and didn’t won. The winning strategy was to outcompete Chinese with smaller affordable vehicle. I would call it common sense strategy after all.
Problem is, AfD voters also don't want to drive Teslas (not because they disagree with Elon's politics, but because "only hippies drive EVs, patriots drive real cars".)
With a small difference of some 90y or whenever VW was founded between that and now, while Musk is doing Hitler salutes in recent years. Other than that, your argument would make sense.
No, the winning strategy was to release a conventional-looking truck, say something that very much looks like an F150 or a Silverado.
The Cybertruck, or what it should have been, was never meant to be an entry-level truck like the Slate, and the market for trucks clearly shows people are wanting to spent money on big trucks.
The interesting part is that small affordable EVs was Teslas initial goal IIRC. Changing horses in the middle of the stream just did not workout? I’m sure Tesla will be fine in the end though. There is always someone coming to the rescue.
Buying a Tesla vehicle (or not) became a referendum on Elon himself. It became a small personal action one could take to feel like you could actually do something that had an effect. Whether or not it accomplished the goal is precisely the center of debate, but regardless, the feeling was real.
If they follow what they did with AI and make it open-source, I’m first in line to buy. The Spider-Man ads on BMW is just the beginning and even if you would never buy an open-source car, doesn’t mean it won’t keep the competition honest.
You can’t even buy a car in Texas unless it’s from a dealership. Dealerships and Car Manufacturers use regulatory capture to make sure their moat stays. I’m sure they will try to block Chinese EVs and buying one is a long ways out.
Honestly Ford is doing something right with the new Fathom truck, but mostly their catching up to Tesla in terms of manufacturing. The Chinese companies caught up and passed up Tesla in that game about a year ago.
At some point, the reality of being in a highly competitive market must set in and valuations need to come down to Earth.
The fact that Ford in the 2020s took a look at the lightning (which is not a bad vehicle by any means) and thought "this really isn't cutting it" is a good sign.
Henry Ford was the original Elon Musk. He was obsessed with efficiency, minimalism, and just a smidge of Nazism. They only offered the Model T in one color. Tesla doesn't paint the damn Cybertruck at all. A Ford Motors that goes back to its roots (without all the weird white supremacist stuff), would be a strong auto maker indeed.
Tariffs in the US will be just effective as the EU EV tariffs. It will protect the industry for some time, and at the same time make it go stale and irrelevant.
As the headline is the only thing presented here. And the headline not being representative of the truth. I would argue that classifying this as lying is acceptable to the same degree as the headline is.
You (the general you) can’t have it both ways
I was going to comment exactly the same. They used to be all about Tesla, and now they're basically all against Tesla. It's very shocking to see this turn of the editorial approach for a company that did change the full industry. It is true and well known that hate DOES bring more eyeballs than reporting the good news though, and this seems to be a well known bias against Tesla.
> It's very shocking to see this turn of the editorial approach for a company that did change the full industry.
Is it? Regardless of how revolutionary a company was, they don't get a free pass on criticism.
I had a positive sentiment towards Tesla when the mission was basically "make EVs sexy" and "promote clean electricity." Although they didn't have a perfect record (QC, proprietary charging, RtR), at least they were disrupting a stagnant industry, with a noble enough goal.
Now when I think of Tesla, I think of their deployment of "Full Self Driving (Beta) [keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road]", "Robotaxi (with human driver)," "Humanoid robot (why?)," and of course the glorious leader who bought Twitter so he could "protect free speech" by banning people he disagrees with.
Google used to be the "good company" not that long ago. They changed the whole industry. But today, and very deserved, a lot of people that liked or even loved them, turned against. And that can happen when a company changes, but also when the user changes its point of view: you could be a voter for Trump a couple years ago, but today and after watching the results of his politics (that are not that surprising, is not like the president made an U-turn) you might have a different opinion.
If you hold the same opinion forever, even when things obviously changed, you are just a fanatic.
That is true, and I HAVE personally changed my opinion on Tesla, but Electrek IS about moving from Fossil Fuels to Electric vehicles. I guess I expected them to focus on the tech side of things and not on the politics side of it a bit more, when I read a technical magazine is mainly for the tech, not for the US political fight of the day.
When was the last release of a new car from Tesla? When did they do anything exciting? Tesla is going in 5 directions at once, none of it with conviction, bleeding money with the CEO addicted and focused mainly on pity battles online most of the time besides managing 5 companies at this point.
Tesla itself made a turn for the worse over the years and there are a lot of things to criticize honestly
I don't know anyone who thought he was a funny memer man. And definitely cos-play Tony Stark was inside his head.
It was always the other way around, he was okay because he pursued improving road technology doing the things we want but car manufacturers refused. He stopped doing that and was only a Nazi waving, drug addled, idiot and is treated as such.
Look, I get that Elon wants to chase AI, but why not do relatively simple, low-cost things like build a proper 7-seat SUV that uses the Cybertruck platform - or even a properly stretched Model Y platform (rather than the six-seater L)? Or how about a delivery van on a stretched Y platform?
Tesla's product line is narrow and aging rapidly.
This will get TSLA valued as a car company.
They want to be valued as a ~~scifi~~ tech company.
Which is fair, given that the market (and by extension we) chose to brutally punish boring car companies that make reliable high volume cars.
And by punish you mean fairly value?
So, in comparison, punish.
Do they still care about cars though or they're chasing some new things after losing to the Chinese.
>after losing to the Chinese
The total market cap of all the Chinese car companies combined is about 300B.
Tesla alone is worth ~5x that, because the market rewards this behavior of chasing new things.
If Tesla suddenly pivoted to 'caring about cars' and tried their best to produce low cost reliable EVs, the market is going to punish them by valuing them at less than 300B. That is, if they succeed at that. If they fail, which would be more plausible, they go bankrupt.
Why would they voluntarily do that?
We could do that by changing public opinion or regulating what public companies must do/report, but that seems somewhat unlikely. It's so much easier to claim that autonomous driving will be solved in six months :)
Why not a Cyberbus based on the cybertruck platform? I’d kill for 8–12 passenger minibuses in the LVCC tunnels during CES instead of the 3 passenger Teslas.
Its not a car company, according to the CEO...
I would also like a 7 seater, but that might be uniquely american concept.
In Europe, they are usually known as MPVs or "people carriers"; Renault has made their Espace since 1984 (though, it looks like they abandoned that format in 2012); there was also the Renault Grand Scénic, which ended in 2022. So not a uniquely American concept, but it seems like the market in Europe for them is thinning significantly. A shame though, I really like the look of that Espace mk1.
Also the Citroen Grand C4 [1], which is a 7-seater where the back row fold down to get a completely flat foor - great family car. It's been replaced by the Space Tourer now I believe, which goes up to a 9-seater.
[1] https://www.autotrader.co.uk/cars/used/citroen/grand-c4-pica...
It's not really a vehicle that many people need. Our VW Caddy seats 7 with the third row of seats, but that was installed for a week before we took it out and it's been in the garage since then. I've had the car full of stuff more often than I had it full of people. And even then it's mostly air in a car that's shaped like a brick wall that's been driven around most of the time. I can drive it at around 6.5 l/100 km of gas, but 7.1 is more typical. So a more sensible choice would have been a smaller and more efficient car.
Any more than the four-door full-size pickup truck that is the Cybertruck?
Not really. Peugeot has been making 7 seaters for over half a century now.
Yeah I’d love a cybervan or model XL. Pretty much every family I know would get one. In lieu of that we all got model Ys / cybertrucks instead, and then we grumble about it when the in-laws come to visit and we need to drive two cars to take the family out. YL is fine but they needed to go further. Need 3 proper rows and storage space!
If they start doing that, everybody will finally see that they're just a car company and their stock will be priced like one.
Because tesla has always been selling dollars for $0.50. Investing in their product lines doesn't help them, it's always been a grift and a shell game. Some great products have come out of it, but the valuation has never been one where selling more products helps the business, unless it can lead to the hype train.
Sure, but if they're losing money, you go looking for ways to make a bit more money without having to spend too much. My contention is at least some of these things could be done relatively cheaply and would generate additional sales.
Tesla may be getting belted from pillar to post elsewhere in the world by the Chinese but they a) still have a near-monopoly in EVs in the US, and b) have a cost-competitive EV manufacturing operation in China from which they can supply other parts of the world.
That still doesn't help their image problem, which is still very real for many left-leaning affluent consumers around the world, but that's less of a problem for commercial vehicles.
Sorry TSLA holders, it's partly my fault as I got my 5 years old Model Y checked by a third party garage for everything that should be fixed by Tesla before the end of the main warranty period.
I'm reminded nearly every other day that EVs need no maintenance and should never see the inside of a mechanic's garage.
I can't really complain about the maintenance of the EV parts of my cars. I know some EVs fail there too, but my two EVs have been flawless when it comes to the electric drivetrains and the batteries.
But having an electric car doesn't make salt and potholes magically disappear, unfortunately.
What maintenance do they actually need? Tires, brakes, wiper blades, air filter, washer fluid? All fairly trivial to DIY. One thing that I would do is disable the cellular modem, to prevent unwanted "upgrades."
Brakes! They sometimes rust on Teslas due to lack of use.
Do you swap out the rotors anytime there's rust on them?
> One thing that I would do is disable the cellular modem
Is that even possible in modern EVs? Without breaking critical functions like maps, etc.
When did my car being able to navigate become a critical function?
That's what Apple CarPlay and Android Auto are for.
You forgot suspensions.
Have not owned a tesla, but have had three EVs in the family. All three new cars. All of the EVs have spent way more days at the dealership than any of my ICE cars of the last 30+ years.
You still need things like brakes though, right?
They need brakes changed far less often due to regenerative braking.
Of course. It's a ridiculous notion yet that hasn't stopped anyone from repeating it constantly.
More than a few times my mechanic has found something pending failure (like a leak) during regularly scheduled ICE maintenance and alerted me to keep an eye on it.
when I say EVs need less maintenance I mean things like cylinder honing or clutch slipping.
do people actually think you buy a tesla and just drive?
Their marketing worked well here, most Tesla drivers I know have commented that they will never need to service their car. At least, they do until they wear their tyres to the point they disintegrate while driving. A mechanically illiterate public coupled with effective marketing is a dangerous combo when they're flying around in 2 tonne boxes still filled with wear parts.
> At least, they do until they wear their tyres to the point they disintegrate while driving
I don't think anyone who knows tires wear out thinks Teslas have special tires that don't wear.
> A mechanically illiterate public coupled with effective marketing is a dangerous combo when they're flying around in 2 tonne boxes still filled with wear parts.
Good news: Teslas will tell you when you do need to do the little maintenance that is required, including worn tires.
I believe it's the only, or at least first, car that measures tire wear by comparing GPS distance traveled to wheel rotations, accounting for tire pressure.
They do that with ice vehicles anyway. They’re just not ignoring oil changes, fuel and oil filters, transmission, belts, etc. with an ev.
I do that with a Leaf. I did have to change a tyre after 4 years, and last week I filled the wiper fluid.
> do people actually think you buy a tesla and just drive
Unfortunately these people exist by the thousands.
People do this with ICE cars, so yes.
> I'm reminded nearly every other day that EVs need no maintenance and should never see the inside of a mechanic's garage.
Are you being sarcastic, perhaps?
EV ownership is mostly about lying to yourself and saving face.
From direct experience.
Also worth noting that the fuel on a second hand petrol car cost less than the depreciation on the EV for me.
It's okay, we're an AI company now.
A taxi company powered by AI auto drivers with ZERO taxis!
I understand not wanting to pay the cost of LiDAR like twelve years ago but the price has come down since then. At this point does it even make sense to stick to cameras? What possible reason is there other than an aging Elmo's ego?
Even if it prevents like ten deaths, the LiDAR will have paid for itself.
> Even if it prevents like ten deaths, the LiDAR will have paid for itself.
The statistical value of a human life (for US government purposes) is between 7 to 14 million USD depending on department etc. (Unless there's anything to do with nuclear, then it's pretty much infinity.)
I'm not quite sure how much LiDAR would cost extra?
Of course, in addition to lives saved, you have other benefits. Eg you can conceivably drive more aggressively and faster, when you have more scanners, because you can exploit more situations where a lesser system has to act conservative when it can't be quite sure.
It would also just be good PR at this point. They could easily spin it as "We could make it work like the others with only cameras, now we add back more sensors to improve even further!". Camera-only has been criticized prominently for so long too, it would undermine a lot of the negative arguments people make too. It would honestly just be an easy win for them, even if there is no real improvement at first, they can even take their time to update the software over time.
Narcissists can't admit they're wrong.
And if Musk cared at all about deaths, he would not have taken a chainsaw to USAID.
I take them regularly in SF, twice cheaper than lyft, 4x cheaper than waymo and works fine... it's literally the cheapest other than zoox (free if on tester list, which I am), but it's as fast as Lyft/Uber.
Can I buy life insurance on you?
Unless you have an "insurable interest" in their life, probably not. In SF, this is governed by California Insurance Code § 10110. https://law.justia.com/codes/california/code-ins/division-2/...
This could be probably rectified with an ongoing dono in their GitHub Sponsonships.
Statements about the about items in the empty set are always true!
Someone sits in the front though and drives you around manually. That's just a simple taxi except its highly subsidized so Tesla can run its grift
It's disappointing. They were the leading electric car company, and then they blew it. No new good models. The robotaxi that never quite works. The Cybertruck. The humanoid robot army. The out-to-lunch CEO off being a political.
Tesla should be building something like the Slate pickup. Or like BYD's midrange models. Things that would actually sell.
One of the lessons of the electric car industry is that when gas car companies build electric vehicles, the vehicles suck. They're usually adapted versions of gas cars, which means too much structure and cost in the wrong places. This usually comes out as a $5000 price penalty for the electric model. Tesla was well placed to avoid that.
But they blew it.
Invest the $30B into AI build-out with a company called SpaceX, nice. SpaceX invests some more Cybertrucks, nice.
I drive a shitbox but if I was gonna buy a new car and I had the money to buy one it would probably be tesla considering their realistically the only American car companies that make their cars in the US. Rooting for them to do well, because I live in the midwest and have seen what happens when these trash can companies overshore manufacturing.
Seeing it happen now too with college jobs is funny, because all those same people making fun of your community for complaining about lack of jobs after the factory they built their city around leaves, now are complainjng abiut the same thing. H1B yourself. Love those Indians. Anyway, everyone loses no class solidarity, the poors fighting amongst themselves like animals.
Never heard of them. But if they are made in America I will keep them in my mind when/if I buy a new car.
RJ Scaringe (CEO) is who everyone thought Elon was in the early days.
Really good listen:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rivian-rj-scaringe/id1...
Thanks will listen to that on way to work.
Beyond the long track record of unmet Musk's announcements, Tesla is strategically in a very difficult situation: it went from being the sole option for an electric car, to being a small mid-market player with quality issues.
- chinese companies are now exporting with 25% discount for similar quality - premium brands occupy the $80'000+ car segment with better comfort and quality - Tesla sells as many as Renault, a local European player, except the later built a strong alliance network to get scale economics.
I won't even mention the failure of the Cybertruck, which cannot even be exported to Europe due to its dangerous design.
In short: they'd rather merge now with a traditional car company while they have a high valuation, much like US West did with QWest at the end of the Internet bubble. Or else...
I'm not convinced Tesla's schizophrenic strategy is any worse than the strategy of the legacy American automakers, which is to sleepwalk directly into a volcano (when Chinese EV manufactures break into the market with $10k SUVs)
Elon gambled with cybertruck and didn’t won. The winning strategy was to outcompete Chinese with smaller affordable vehicle. I would call it common sense strategy after all.
The cybertruck was a disaster but I think the main issue is they didn't do any new model after that for almost a decade.
Also, Musk getting into politics and alienating most of its consumer base, of course.
That last part is a big thing, especially in Europe where a lot of their sales have almost stopped as no one wants to drive a nazi car.
AfD seems to be doing a little too well across the sea for me to believe that
They might see a rebound from last year which was a bad year for them but that's likely driven by some pretty aggressive price cuts.
China is actually nearly 3x bigger market for them than Europe and we have clearer numbers on how that's going:
2026 so far has been shaping up to be a huge contraction. Only 316,251 were shipped in the first 8 months. (BYD sold 440k units in August alone)Problem is, AfD voters also don't want to drive Teslas (not because they disagree with Elon's politics, but because "only hippies drive EVs, patriots drive real cars".)
Musk’s problem is that the intersection of “votes AfD” and “willing and able to buy premium electric vehicle” is relatively small
> as no one wants to drive a nazi car
Volkswagen had €322 billion in revenue last year and was literally in every way founded by the Nazi party.
The requirement for the air-cooled engine in the Beetle came from none other than Mr. Stubby Mustache himself.
the nazi party doesn't exist anymore and their ceo doesn't do nazi salutes
With a small difference of some 90y or whenever VW was founded between that and now, while Musk is doing Hitler salutes in recent years. Other than that, your argument would make sense.
the only mistake was politics.
No, the winning strategy was to release a conventional-looking truck, say something that very much looks like an F150 or a Silverado.
The Cybertruck, or what it should have been, was never meant to be an entry-level truck like the Slate, and the market for trucks clearly shows people are wanting to spent money on big trucks.
The interesting part is that small affordable EVs was Teslas initial goal IIRC. Changing horses in the middle of the stream just did not workout? I’m sure Tesla will be fine in the end though. There is always someone coming to the rescue.
Cybertruck technology ended up in cybercab and semi, so whether the vehicle itself won might not be relevant in long run.
Two other vehicles that barely exist?
Buying a Tesla vehicle (or not) became a referendum on Elon himself. It became a small personal action one could take to feel like you could actually do something that had an effect. Whether or not it accomplished the goal is precisely the center of debate, but regardless, the feeling was real.
Won't the US government just keep raising tariffs to 'protect' America from those evil Chinese manufacturers?
In any case, just because the legacy incumbents might also be incompetent, doesn't excuse Tesla.
I'm not going to defend the Cybertruck execution, clearly they misjudged the demand.
But Optimus is a fair play. Don't grub for scraps in an efficient competitive market. Make a new market, go big or go home.
If they follow what they did with AI and make it open-source, I’m first in line to buy. The Spider-Man ads on BMW is just the beginning and even if you would never buy an open-source car, doesn’t mean it won’t keep the competition honest.
What makes you think you'd ever be allowed to buy a Chinese EV in the US?
You can’t even buy a car in Texas unless it’s from a dealership. Dealerships and Car Manufacturers use regulatory capture to make sure their moat stays. I’m sure they will try to block Chinese EVs and buying one is a long ways out.
Honestly Ford is doing something right with the new Fathom truck, but mostly their catching up to Tesla in terms of manufacturing. The Chinese companies caught up and passed up Tesla in that game about a year ago.
At some point, the reality of being in a highly competitive market must set in and valuations need to come down to Earth.
The lightning was fantastic as well.
The fact that Ford in the 2020s took a look at the lightning (which is not a bad vehicle by any means) and thought "this really isn't cutting it" is a good sign.
Henry Ford was the original Elon Musk. He was obsessed with efficiency, minimalism, and just a smidge of Nazism. They only offered the Model T in one color. Tesla doesn't paint the damn Cybertruck at all. A Ford Motors that goes back to its roots (without all the weird white supremacist stuff), would be a strong auto maker indeed.
The difference is in the valuation of those vs TSLA
The tariffs will save us
Tariffs in the US will be just effective as the EU EV tariffs. It will protect the industry for some time, and at the same time make it go stale and irrelevant.
Can we update the URL and title for a publication that has less bias:
"Tesla lines up $30 billion credit lines as capex, AI push accelerate"
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
Electrek's full time job is to dunk on anything Elon Musk touches.
Time to become SpAIceXTeslAI
Valuation +420%. Easily.
Sadly solar roofs was dumped. So can't include boring company there. Just imagine what could have been. Under ground solar roadways.
+69,000% in that case. Like with his S3XY cars. Oh well.
Large shiney rock pile awaits!
SpacetAxI? (Sorry, not sorry)
Well, the other company should already be called SpaceXXXai (as a concatenation of the three pre-merger companies).
Electrek has gone completely biased with Tesla. They have done so bad, that even if this is true, I'd take it with a fistful of salt.
The entire post is that Tesla setup $30B in loans that it could potentially use. What salt should I be taking?
Read their prior Tesla posts. They are all negative.
Ok. Are they lying?
As the headline is the only thing presented here. And the headline not being representative of the truth. I would argue that classifying this as lying is acceptable to the same degree as the headline is. You (the general you) can’t have it both ways
Did you read the post? It's all framed as "worrying". It's a very biased, thoughtless piece.
I was going to comment exactly the same. They used to be all about Tesla, and now they're basically all against Tesla. It's very shocking to see this turn of the editorial approach for a company that did change the full industry. It is true and well known that hate DOES bring more eyeballs than reporting the good news though, and this seems to be a well known bias against Tesla.
> It's very shocking to see this turn of the editorial approach for a company that did change the full industry.
Is it? Regardless of how revolutionary a company was, they don't get a free pass on criticism.
I had a positive sentiment towards Tesla when the mission was basically "make EVs sexy" and "promote clean electricity." Although they didn't have a perfect record (QC, proprietary charging, RtR), at least they were disrupting a stagnant industry, with a noble enough goal.
Now when I think of Tesla, I think of their deployment of "Full Self Driving (Beta) [keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road]", "Robotaxi (with human driver)," "Humanoid robot (why?)," and of course the glorious leader who bought Twitter so he could "protect free speech" by banning people he disagrees with.
Google used to be the "good company" not that long ago. They changed the whole industry. But today, and very deserved, a lot of people that liked or even loved them, turned against. And that can happen when a company changes, but also when the user changes its point of view: you could be a voter for Trump a couple years ago, but today and after watching the results of his politics (that are not that surprising, is not like the president made an U-turn) you might have a different opinion.
If you hold the same opinion forever, even when things obviously changed, you are just a fanatic.
That is true, and I HAVE personally changed my opinion on Tesla, but Electrek IS about moving from Fossil Fuels to Electric vehicles. I guess I expected them to focus on the tech side of things and not on the politics side of it a bit more, when I read a technical magazine is mainly for the tech, not for the US political fight of the day.
When was the last release of a new car from Tesla? When did they do anything exciting? Tesla is going in 5 directions at once, none of it with conviction, bleeding money with the CEO addicted and focused mainly on pity battles online most of the time besides managing 5 companies at this point.
Tesla itself made a turn for the worse over the years and there are a lot of things to criticize honestly
but reddit says tesla bad because Elon bad
The funniest thing is how they used to eschew the complete opposite when elon was "funny memer man who's tony stark IRL"
I don't know anyone who thought he was a funny memer man. And definitely cos-play Tony Stark was inside his head.
It was always the other way around, he was okay because he pursued improving road technology doing the things we want but car manufacturers refused. He stopped doing that and was only a Nazi waving, drug addled, idiot and is treated as such.
Elon being crushingly unfunny and being unable to accept that is about 40% of the reason we are in this mess.