4 ms·

I wonder if shareholders will eventually want him out

adastra22 2y ago
There are no fundamentals justifying the insane valuation of Tesla. Without the Elon myth (real or imagined) of future returns, the stock price would lose 80-90% of its value. Shareholders are incentivized to not speak up, for now. If the company became unprofitable to the point of possible bankruptcy, that's a different story.
- colechristensen 2y ago
  The issue is that Tesla actually _could_ dominate the American market and several others. They have some quality issues and a big personality issue but if they ditched those and had an iconoclast who wasn't ... an autistic Nazi... at the helm Tesla could be Apple. They have a great product that is hampered by some failures (the personality of their leader, the failure of self-driving, the sizable minority of lemons they put on the sales floor). But like, Tesla almost has the best car available on the market anywhere. Almost. They could wipe the floor of any of the existing incumbents. Could.
  - adastra22 2y ago
    Doesn't matter to the point at hand. Tesla has a bigger market cap than every other automaker _combined_. Tesla is bigger than the entire auto industry. There is some justification for that number, based on the theory that Tesla is an energy and AI company with a side hustle in automobiles. But that is pure conjecture that only receives market support because Elon is at the helm.
- mcv 2y ago
  Any smart shareholder will have sold their share by now. I'd expect all remaining shareholders to have truly bought into the Elon myth.
  - semi-extrinsic 2y ago
    As a counterpoint, there are several sophisticated investors and large funds holding substantial Tesla positions. I guess their hypothesis is that meme stocks will meme, markets can stay irrational longer than you can afford to stay on the fence.
    - zurfer 2y ago
      Sophisticated investors might think they can sell quickly enough if the tide turns.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    From what I hear, Wall Street is starting to sell off TSLA stock. But discretely. They gotta keep the hype up so they maximize their sales.
- SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
  The implicit justification for valuing Tesla now is not "we sell good cars", it is state capture.
  - rurp 2y ago
    Yep, the stock price didn't double immediately following the election because Trump is going to help Elon make better EVs. It's purely about the massive grift and corruption that investors expect Elon to capture.
- karlgkk 2y ago
  They've been propped up on the whole "retail trader" "HODL" ecosystem, bolstered by the promise of FSD/Autopilot/Robotaxies making every other car company obsolete. At some point, that facade is going to collapse. Every time I point this out, I get jumped by a bunch of Tesla fanboys, $TSLA holders and the usual associated crowd. So, I'm going to list some major problems with Tesla, in brief summaries of no particular order 1) FSD is a half truth. I am genuinely impressed with the progress they've made and I think Tesla is one of the leaders in the field. HOWEVER: their approach to risk (laying it on the owners), their lack of robotaxi operations center, and even the hardware in the vehicles not being capable for true FSD and remote monitoring, means that all Tesla vehicles on the road today will NEVER be FSD/RoboTaxi capable without: major hardware upgrades (expensive per vehicle), substantial backend upgrades for live support (time consuming), and serious hiring of live support (they've gotten started but this will completely change the math on OpEx). [0] 2) They have huge risk around new battery technologies. This has become a global race. If someone (such as Toyota) introduces a genuine leapfrog (which they seem to be conservatively teasing in the usual Japanese way with solid state batteries), then Tesla is in some serious shit. Tesla's investing heavily in R&D, so I think they're probably not screwed on this point, but it will be a major point of contention for them in the near future. 3) Public opinion: Elon has decided to make himself the Conservative of the Year. I, personally am not a conservative, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that he's polarizing the addressable market for a mass market consumer product. This is increasingly true outside of the US. 4) Upper limits of addressable markets, pending infra: charging infra is getting better, but the simple fact is that they're reaching the point of diminishing returns. The end goal is probably something like be an L2 charger (ideally better) at every parking meter and a farm of them in every WalMart parking lot. Much progress is being made, but it will still be many years before it's where electric cars are feasible for - let's say - 80% of the US domestic market. NACS went a long way in alleviating this. 5) Competition from China: China is deeply incentivized by market forces to build electric cars (they do not have domestic oil). Their domestic market is huge and economies of scale kick in even for relatively niche products. They are already eating at the low end of the electric car market. They are also hungry and see designing beautiful and good things as a matter of national pride[1]. [0] While we're at it, Alphabet has invested heavily in companies doing 5g rollouts - which is a requirement for a RoboTaxi in my opinion. Elon seems to be short sighted in his apparent belief that 5g isn't needed, nor a vision hw update, and they can really build a 0-intervention RoboTaxi. Don't get me started on his refusal to include LIDAR. I wish him the best of luck. [1] I have a lot of complaints about how China and Chinese industry operates, at a moral level. But one must also recognize that as they're late to the table, they are at a disadvantage and they know it. A lot of the things they do that offend and disgruntle western tech people - especially around IP - are frankly, perfectly rational (even if I personally don't like it). The DeepSeek leader Liang Wenfeng put his attitude around China's behavior in a very refreshing manor, which really humanizes a group of people that many like to denigrate: We believe that with economic development, China must gradually transition from being a beneficiary to a contributor, rather than continuing to ride on the coattails of others. Over the past 30 years of the IT revolution, we barely participated in core tech innovation.We’ve grown accustomed to Moore’s Law “falling from the sky”—waiting 18 months for better hardware and software. Scaling Law is treated similarly. However, these advancements are the result of generations of relentless effort by Western-led technology communities. Because we haven’t been actively involved in this process, we’ve come to overlook its significance.
- ein0p 2y ago
  There are no fundamentals justifying valuations of most multi-trillion dollar US companies, and yet here we are. Also, Tesla is currently the only US company that figured out how to make EVs profitably. And one of the very few in the world. All the remaining companies able to profitably make EVs are in China, which we for some reason must "contain" somehow.
  - tzs 2y ago
    Toyota could probably make a profitable EV by just taking their Prius and RAV4 PHEVs and omitting the ICE engine and using that space for more batteries, replacing the charger with one that can handle higher power, and tweaking the software.
    - ein0p 2y ago
      Coulda woulda. Let me know when that actually happens. So far their EV strategy has been an utter and complete failure.
  - johnnyanmac 2y ago
    >Also, Tesla is currently the only US company that figured out how to make EVs profitably. That's not really true these days and hence part of the grift. Early Tesla was only profitable because they were first to market and had huge subsidies to take advantadge of. It's no coincidence that Musk started moving right as Trump took his first office and was clearly antagonizing EV tax credits (as he does now). Meanwhile, in the 2020's TSLA isn't profitable from cars. It's from BTC and some weird loophole I don't fully understand letting them amortize that value for multiple years.
    - ein0p 2y ago
      Citation needed. In 2024 Tesla reported average margins of about 20%, excluding all that. I get it, you don't like Musk, but let's not get carried away here.
      - johnnyanmac 2y ago

There are no fundamentals justifying the insane valuation of Tesla. Without the Elon myth (real or imagined) of future returns, the stock price would lose 80-90% of its value. Shareholders are incentivized to not speak up, for now. If the company became unprofitable to the point of possible bankruptcy, that's a different story.

colechristensen 2y ago
The issue is that Tesla actually _could_ dominate the American market and several others. They have some quality issues and a big personality issue but if they ditched those and had an iconoclast who wasn't ... an autistic Nazi... at the helm Tesla could be Apple. They have a great product that is hampered by some failures (the personality of their leader, the failure of self-driving, the sizable minority of lemons they put on the sales floor). But like, Tesla almost has the best car available on the market anywhere. Almost. They could wipe the floor of any of the existing incumbents. Could.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Doesn't matter to the point at hand. Tesla has a bigger market cap than every other automaker _combined_. Tesla is bigger than the entire auto industry. There is some justification for that number, based on the theory that Tesla is an energy and AI company with a side hustle in automobiles. But that is pure conjecture that only receives market support because Elon is at the helm.
mcv 2y ago
Any smart shareholder will have sold their share by now. I'd expect all remaining shareholders to have truly bought into the Elon myth.
- semi-extrinsic 2y ago
  As a counterpoint, there are several sophisticated investors and large funds holding substantial Tesla positions. I guess their hypothesis is that meme stocks will meme, markets can stay irrational longer than you can afford to stay on the fence.
  - zurfer 2y ago
    Sophisticated investors might think they can sell quickly enough if the tide turns.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  From what I hear, Wall Street is starting to sell off TSLA stock. But discretely. They gotta keep the hype up so they maximize their sales.
SideburnsOfDoom 2y ago
The implicit justification for valuing Tesla now is not "we sell good cars", it is state capture.
- rurp 2y ago
  Yep, the stock price didn't double immediately following the election because Trump is going to help Elon make better EVs. It's purely about the massive grift and corruption that investors expect Elon to capture.
karlgkk 2y ago
They've been propped up on the whole "retail trader" "HODL" ecosystem, bolstered by the promise of FSD/Autopilot/Robotaxies making every other car company obsolete. At some point, that facade is going to collapse. Every time I point this out, I get jumped by a bunch of Tesla fanboys, $TSLA holders and the usual associated crowd. So, I'm going to list some major problems with Tesla, in brief summaries of no particular order 1) FSD is a half truth. I am genuinely impressed with the progress they've made and I think Tesla is one of the leaders in the field. HOWEVER: their approach to risk (laying it on the owners), their lack of robotaxi operations center, and even the hardware in the vehicles not being capable for true FSD and remote monitoring, means that all Tesla vehicles on the road today will NEVER be FSD/RoboTaxi capable without: major hardware upgrades (expensive per vehicle), substantial backend upgrades for live support (time consuming), and serious hiring of live support (they've gotten started but this will completely change the math on OpEx). [0] 2) They have huge risk around new battery technologies. This has become a global race. If someone (such as Toyota) introduces a genuine leapfrog (which they seem to be conservatively teasing in the usual Japanese way with solid state batteries), then Tesla is in some serious shit. Tesla's investing heavily in R&D, so I think they're probably not screwed on this point, but it will be a major point of contention for them in the near future. 3) Public opinion: Elon has decided to make himself the Conservative of the Year. I, personally am not a conservative, but it doesn't take a genius to realize that he's polarizing the addressable market for a mass market consumer product. This is increasingly true outside of the US. 4) Upper limits of addressable markets, pending infra: charging infra is getting better, but the simple fact is that they're reaching the point of diminishing returns. The end goal is probably something like be an L2 charger (ideally better) at every parking meter and a farm of them in every WalMart parking lot. Much progress is being made, but it will still be many years before it's where electric cars are feasible for - let's say - 80% of the US domestic market. NACS went a long way in alleviating this. 5) Competition from China: China is deeply incentivized by market forces to build electric cars (they do not have domestic oil). Their domestic market is huge and economies of scale kick in even for relatively niche products. They are already eating at the low end of the electric car market. They are also hungry and see designing beautiful and good things as a matter of national pride[1]. [0] While we're at it, Alphabet has invested heavily in companies doing 5g rollouts - which is a requirement for a RoboTaxi in my opinion. Elon seems to be short sighted in his apparent belief that 5g isn't needed, nor a vision hw update, and they can really build a 0-intervention RoboTaxi. Don't get me started on his refusal to include LIDAR. I wish him the best of luck. [1] I have a lot of complaints about how China and Chinese industry operates, at a moral level. But one must also recognize that as they're late to the table, they are at a disadvantage and they know it. A lot of the things they do that offend and disgruntle western tech people - especially around IP - are frankly, perfectly rational (even if I personally don't like it). The DeepSeek leader Liang Wenfeng put his attitude around China's behavior in a very refreshing manor, which really humanizes a group of people that many like to denigrate: We believe that with economic development, China must gradually transition from being a beneficiary to a contributor, rather than continuing to ride on the coattails of others. Over the past 30 years of the IT revolution, we barely participated in core tech innovation.We’ve grown accustomed to Moore’s Law “falling from the sky”—waiting 18 months for better hardware and software. Scaling Law is treated similarly. However, these advancements are the result of generations of relentless effort by Western-led technology communities. Because we haven’t been actively involved in this process, we’ve come to overlook its significance.
ein0p 2y ago
There are no fundamentals justifying valuations of most multi-trillion dollar US companies, and yet here we are. Also, Tesla is currently the only US company that figured out how to make EVs profitably. And one of the very few in the world. All the remaining companies able to profitably make EVs are in China, which we for some reason must "contain" somehow.
- tzs 2y ago
  Toyota could probably make a profitable EV by just taking their Prius and RAV4 PHEVs and omitting the ICE engine and using that space for more batteries, replacing the charger with one that can handle higher power, and tweaking the software.
  - ein0p 2y ago
    Coulda woulda. Let me know when that actually happens. So far their EV strategy has been an utter and complete failure.
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  >Also, Tesla is currently the only US company that figured out how to make EVs profitably. That's not really true these days and hence part of the grift. Early Tesla was only profitable because they were first to market and had huge subsidies to take advantadge of. It's no coincidence that Musk started moving right as Trump took his first office and was clearly antagonizing EV tax credits (as he does now). Meanwhile, in the 2020's TSLA isn't profitable from cars. It's from BTC and some weird loophole I don't fully understand letting them amortize that value for multiple years.
  - ein0p 2y ago
    Citation needed. In 2024 Tesla reported average margins of about 20%, excluding all that. I get it, you don't like Musk, but let's not get carried away here.
    - johnnyanmac 2y ago