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fshr | 1 year ago

To me it seems to have very little to do with his antics. Surely inflation, market saturation, and increased competition is more probable?

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theshrike79|1 year ago

Tesla is a very very nice computer with a decent car attached to it.

In the best of times Musk's leadership brought us stuff like "Joe Mode" just because he saw someone complain on Twitter.

Now he's completely unhinged and we can't trust him even as much as before. He might just decide something crazy and force the factories to change it just because.

whynotminot|1 year ago

He said “partly” — seems reasonable that throwing nazi salutes around might have a partial impact on declining sales?

penjelly|1 year ago

sales were trending down significantly in Europe even before the salute though.

malloryerik|1 year ago

Oh no, it's in great part due to his antics. Owning a Tesla used to be about a positive future, the transition to sustainability, and with great engineering and making it sexy. Now owning a Tesla seems to be about kneeling to Moloch, paying for plutocracy, gleefully cutting basic food aid for the world's poorest starving children, undermining democracy around the world, and yes even doing a fascist salute. So, you want that as your brand? And yes, there's now much better competition, but unlike what one might gather from certain "conservative" news sources, the EV market has grown and continues to grow. [1] My guess is Tesla sales will continue to collapse.

The robo-taxi attempt is fraught and Musk's mind seems elsewhere -- swinging a wrecking ball on government, turning Twitter into his microphone (with great damage to its value and creating a real opening for competitors), posting videogame results reminiscent of the old North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung-style, where the newspaper would report on his games of golf in which he swung 18 hole-in-ones.

By hitching his wagon to political movements most despised by the consumers of EVs he's alienated Tesla's audience. By his further actions he's shocked and disgusted them so that driving a Tesla is becoming an embarrassment. The brand is kaput.

There's maybe a separate China story but it's no better. Tesla taxis in China, really?

[1] Global electric vehicle sales up 25% in record 2024 - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/global...

AtlasBarfed|1 year ago

I'm actually shocked in such a media and marketing driven society that absolutely, nobody brings up the fact that the Tesla brand has been completely destroyed in the US and EU.

Companies simply do not survive this in the long run unless very specific inelastic demand (I'm thinking bp oil spill as the only example) exists, and even then BP wasn't as international or charged or so ... Nazi.

Tesla is musk. Musk is a Nazi. Musk was a progressive environmental future in the previous media construction.

That radical shift means no brand, no customers. How many people want to drive a car that basically has a swastika on it? 4% of the population?

On top of this, musks absent leadership since the model Y, in addition to Tesla's general problems getting new designs out the door, and his marketing ignorance in the good days, means Tesla has no badge diversification a luxury marque, no extensive model diversity for all the markets of the world, no cabin options for their extreme design, no trims and body style variations.

It's just the 3 and Y basically.

Tesla should have bought another car company to gain engineer, design, oem relationships, and manufacturing capacity.

Too late. Tesla is now a pump and dump scheme, musk wants his 60 billion that Delaware is holding up and then he'll sell off just like the board is doing now.

China will seize teskas assets on a whim from a trade war or a hot war with Taiwan.

The energy sector is not one I look forward to, Tesla doesn't have any advantage in battery packaging or battery technology("battery day" is now officially a dud), and lfp lmfp and sodium ion chemistries are far more suited to grid storage and home storage.

We all know AI driving at Q4 isnt happening under musk. It's a long slog and musk fires software teams too quickly, because he treats them like hardware. That's basically all the hype.

youngtaff|1 year ago

EV sales are generally growing in Europe

Tesla sales are static or shrinking

Take January YoY in the UK, EV sales rose 24%, Tesla's sales dropped 8% ish

motorest|1 year ago

> To me it seems to have very little to do with his antics.

For your hypothesis to make sense, first you would have to establish that Musk's antics have no negative impact on Musk's public opinion or public image.

In the meantime, you've started to see a global wave of both Tesla stores and Tesla cars being vandalized in protest over Musk's public support for Nazism. In some cases such as Germany you even had public protests against the neonazi party that Musk supports and promotes.

So you establish the fact that throughout the world people started protesting Musk due to his public actions. Do you think this change in public sentiment brings with it a neutral impact on sales?