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Tesla is at risk of losing subsidies in Korea over widespread battery failures
- josefritzishere 1y agoIt's most incredible to me that this company, obviously in distress, still has not fired their CEO.
- Rover222 1y agoMy god, people are so brainwashed. You really think the most effective CEO in generations should... be fired. It's absurd.
- testing22321 1y agoThey sold more vehicles in the most recent quarter than ever in their history. It’s always interesting when the perception given by the media is so far removed from the actual facts.
- kmontrose 1y agoYoY sales are down while other automakers are up, Q3 might be an artifact of EV incentives expiring. Iirc other manufactures also saw an increase in EV sales in Q3.
- lesuorac 1y agoEh downvote. This is so trivially look-up-able. > [1] Total revenue decreased 12% YoY to $22.5B. YoY, revenue was impacted by the following items: > - decline in vehicle deliveries [1]: Page 5 - https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/TSLA-Q2-2025-Update.pdf https://www.tesla.com/sites/default/files/downloads/TSLA-Q2-...
- stronglikedan 1y agoI'd imagine the entire EV segment suffered the same decline as people start to realize what a pain in the ass they still are, myself included. I can't wait to get rid of the failed experiment that is my EV and go back to ICE. Only two more years on my lease.
- recursive 1y agoCurious. I've talked to a number of EV owners, and that's the first I've heard that. Most sentiment seems to be between meh-alright and never-going-back-to-ICE. I'm curious which part of the experiment failed for you.
- IncreasePosts 1y agoYeah, I have a model Y and don't intend on offer buying a non-EV if reasonable.
- vsl 1y agoThe opposite actually: the market is growing, only Tesla sales are shrinking: https://electrek.co/2025/09/25/tesla-tsla-down-22-europe-while-evs-were-up-30/ https://electrek.co/2025/09/25/tesla-tsla-down-22-europe-whi...
- rootusrootus 1y agoTesla is in trouble for exactly the reasons many of us saw coming. Irrespective of Elons political antics, Teslas product offering strategy is very different from the rest of the market. They’re banking on this approach changing the market, my bet is they are wrong. Model 3 and Y are long in the tooth, getting stale.
- mschuster91 1y ago> Model 3 and Y are long in the tooth, getting stale. Musk's antics and focus issues (i.e. too many resources focused on Cybertruck) aside: The thing with Tesla is, they operate completely antithetical to the classic car industry. The classic car industry designs a model series and signs four-ish year contracts with all the suppliers for the expected amount of vehicles to sell, with a few extension clauses to cover for higher than expected demand. During these four years, the "rebrush" is designed, keeping most of the car the same but incorporating learnings during production, newly developed technologies (e.g. improved compute power) and maybe retooling to make production more efficient, and then it's another four-ish years that are used to make the next generation. That business model makes sense when operating with a shit ton of suppliers, so both the manufacturer and the suppliers can plan for the mid term. Tesla however, just like SpaceX, takes pride in not following this business model. As much as possible is made in-house, which means less vendors to deal with, and that enables continuous improvements and iteration. The downside is that it makes life so much harder for spare parts because any given part might just have been in production for a few weeks if not days, and for consumers and consumer protection agencies it's orders of magnitude harder to warn about construction defects because there is no such thing as a "generation" any more.
- _fizz_buzz_ 1y agoI think they were talking about Q3 and not Q2.
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> Eh downvote “Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.” [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- lesuorac 1y agoIsn't that saying don't write "Why is everybody downvoting me?".
- etchalon 1y agoI think next quarters results are going to be a lot more indicating of the company's health than the most recent one, since the ending of federal subsidies inflated demand across the industry. But "more vehicles than ever" is factually false, according to Tesla itself. They delivered ~397,000 vehicles in Q2-2025. They delivered ~437,000 in Q4 of 2024. So I'm not sure what you meant by that statement.
- sottol 1y agoBeat Q4'24 by 0.3% in the quarter that EV tax credits ran out and EV buyers used their last chance to pocket it. Most other EV models had 50%+ sales lift that quarter.
- nkrebs13 1y agoMost legacy manufacturers were/are still trying to figure out how to produce EVs to compete. Looking at this month's KBB report for EV-first brands: YTD Sales - Lucid: 23.4% - Tesla: -4.3% - Rivian: -13.2% Lucid is the big surprise there to me (though only ~8K sold).
- sottol 1y agoI think Lucid just released their SUV, Lucid Gravity. That might explain it. I've seen a few driving around now but that's about all I know.
- Aurornis 1y ago> They sold more vehicles in the most recent quarter than ever in their history. EV tax credits were only available through Q3. There was a rush to buy EVs before credits expired. If you’re only looking at that one quarter, that’s the most biased signal you could get.
- bdcravens 1y agoThat quarter is an asterisk for every EV maker, due to the ending of US subsidies. (ditto for whatever decline we see in Q4)
- blackoil 1y agoTSLA is near all-time high and more valuable than next 10 automakers combined.
- LargeWu 1y agoAnd it will be, until it isn't. It certainly isn't on the basis of fundamentals. It's purely vibes, but that won't last forever.
- ekianjo 1y ago[flagged]
- avh02 1y agoWait till you find out about honda Edit: for context, look up ASIMO.
- dlivingston 1y agoand Hyundai owns Boston Dynamics.
- ekianjo 1y agoSaw it in real when it fell from the stairs. Not impressed.
- chronci739 1y ago> Other car manufacturers make robots? I didn't know. No shit they make robots. Toyota also has a machine that builds the machine. Tesla is not special in that regard. Oh, you mean humanoid robots. I’m guessing you purchased FSD? How’s that going? One day. The future. Believe. The. Hype.
- gorpy7 1y agoTesla’s current products are similar to older failed products from other manufacturers. Tesla’s future products are similar to older failed products from other manufacturers. Tesla’s current products are largely profitable. Just exactly why are we bashing on attempts to bring products to market? I will say i view the “lies” as woefully aspirational but not malicious in intent. and i do think the lines can blur. but i’d rather have cool new things and a few fools fooled benevolently than, for instance, no true EV market.
- kibwen 1y agoTSLA is a meme stock; the CEO's antics are the source of its value, and the board knows this.
- izzydata 1y agoIt's interesting that people are willing to take the risk buying a vehicle from a company that is effectively a meme. I take my safety seriously and I'd prefer the company that builds the vehicle I am driving to also be serious.
- lotsofpulp 1y agoTeslas rank pretty highly on safety reports. https://www.iihs.org/ratings/top-safety-picks https://www.iihs.org/ratings/top-safety-picks https://www.nhtsa.gov/ratings-search https://www.nhtsa.gov/ratings-search There was also that guy that tried to murder-suicide his whole family by driving off a cliff and everyone survived. Crazy considering the picture of the crumpled car.. https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/luck-tesla-family-plunged-cliff-rcna64547 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/luck-tesla-family-plung... Is there any evidence Teslas are not at least average, if not above average in safety? Edit: see post below for insurance loss comparisons, which would be the most accurate data in my opinion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45582701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45582701
- noboostforyou 1y agoSafety reports can be misleading apparently - https://philkoopman.substack.com/p/debunking-tesla-safest-car-on-the https://philkoopman.substack.com/p/debunking-tesla-safest-ca... Tesla gets high test scores, but real world results seem to differ - https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2025/02/11/tesla-again-has-the-highest-accident-rate-of-any-auto-brand/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/stevebanker/2025/02/11/tesla-ag...
- lotsofpulp 1y agoAccidents <> safety. Accidents could be caused by inattentive and/or aggressive drivers due to Tesla vehicles’ auto pilot functionality and higher torque. The question is if driving the same way in the same conditions in the same places, would one experience more injury in a given model of Tesla versus a competing car?
- hearsathought 1y agoThe stock doubled in the past 6 months. And tsla has a market cap of $1.5 Trillion. To put that into perspective, south korea's GDP is $1.7 trillion. I don't think tsla shareholders are complaining.
- josefritzishere 1y agoThe reason it increased (not doubled) is that their CEOs public behavior drove the value down over 100 points in the months prior. I think the meme stock comment above actually has some merit though.
- hearsathought 1y ago> The reason it increased (not doubled) It did double. Check the april lows. > is that their CEOs public behavior drove the value down over 100 points in the months prior. And yet, he is still CEO. Not only that, didn't the board just award him a new pay package? > I think the meme stock comment above actually has some merit though. A $1.5 trillion meme stock? Don't think so. A S&P500 company that is a meme stock. Don't think so. It is highly volatile, but it isn't gamestop. All I'm saying is that Musk is still the CEO because enough shareholders back him. Why? Who knows. Maybe it's because he's increased the value of tsla from a few billion to $1.5 trillion in the past 15 years. Who knows.
- solumunus 1y agoI would feel better as an investor if he made it a highly profitable company with a trusted brand, instead of heading in the other direction on both fronts.
- b112 1y agoWe certainly need to hold people accountable for their actions, and their words. Yet at the same time, Elon seems to have no filter. I don't suspect him of plotting anything sneaky, because if he was, he'd just imbibe something, and go on about it one night on X. I get more worried about all the CEOs that say effectively nothing. That seem to have PR team coaching them on everything they say. It's the quiet, plotting ones we should be exceptionally concerned about. Because we have no idea what they're really thinking.
- GuB-42 1y agoElon Musk personal brand is incredibly valuable, justified or not. I don't think that he really runs the company, and kicking him out will most likely not change anything technical, but it will affect the company image among shareholders, most likely negatively.
- MBCook 1y agoI thought they couldn’t? Doesn’t he basically control the board through his shares and puppet/crony board members who have little incentive to kick him out? I thought it was similar FB where Zuck owns enough voting shares to be effectively untouchable as well.
- testing22321 1y agoStrange this has never been reported to happen elsewhere in the world with teslas. Is there something different about South Korean cars?
- pengaru 1y agoMy totally uninformed guess is a defective run of batteries from gigafactory shanghai that landed in SK market next door
- bestouff 1y ago... or something different about Korean administration which makes it more immune to corruption and allows it to report effectively batteries failures ?
- Etheryte 1y agoSurely you can understand that the option that Tesla has quietly bribed every country in the world that its vehicles are bought at is not very likely.
- HWR_14 1y agoI don't think it is happening in this case. The idea that a trillion dollar corporation has sufficient lobbyists/PR people in western countries to cover up bad news up to a certain level seems reasonable.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 1y agoIt’s just confirmation bias seeing pictures in shadows. An absence of evidence is an absence of evidence.
- iknowstuff 1y agoLmao of course they bribed every country on earth except for the “immune” one known for chaebols like Samsung, Hyundai and LG
- tromp 1y agoWith possibly more cases outside Korea: > My understanding is that most of Tesla’s vehicles sold in Korea are made at Gigafactory Shanghai in China, and that’s Tesla’s main export hub. Most of Tesla’s vehicles outside of the US are made in China. We should start seeing similar issues in other markets unless there’s a specific contributing factor in Korea.
- cyp0633 1y agoA brief search in Chinese social media turns out: - the cases are rare, once every several months - the affected battery pack is usually replaced free of charge - many of the cases are from Chinese in North America, and even one case is about imported Model 3 Considering Chinese media prefer reporting Tesla defects to gain more clicks, I would assume this is not a Shanghai-specific, broadly affecting problem.
- zamadatix 1y agoI suppose that may depend how one defines a "broadly affecting problem". 2/3 (~2.9k) of the cases are for 2021 vehicles, and maybe it's possible those relate to specific batches shipped only to South Korea or something, but that still wouldn't explain the other 1/3 (~1.6k) of cases. Tesla hasn't provided statistics about cases in the Chinese market, but I have a hard time believing it's really a handful of battery issues per year (regardless what one assumes of social media). That's just too far beyond any reasonable quality level expectation for ~half a million cars over the time period.
- nitwit005 1y agoI have never considered posting to social media about automotive issues, unless something truly egregious happened that I felt I should warn people about. If you see complaints, it's probably fairly frequent.
- cyp0633 1y agoThat's you, not the common Chinese crowd - compared to a known problem of another good-selling car, I can say that Tesla problem is indeed rare.
- speedgoose 1y agoAs an owner of a 2021 Model Y made from the same factory, I will try to not think much about this. But it needs a battery replacement under warranty, my car will truly be some modern ship of Theseus.
- guywithahat 1y agoI'm not sure about the ones made in Shanghai, but the US ones have a very strong warranty, with an 8 year 120k miles retaining 70% of the battery. You likely still have four years to see
- _ea1k 1y agoIn the US, the 2021 Model Y is known to have some fairly significant battery issues. It appears to have started around when they updated from 74kwh to >80 kwh packs. Unfortunately, the replacements are often refurbished packs that also fail early. I'm not sure about yours, but if you do end up needing a replacement, replacing the car soon after might be a wise move.
- sidcool 1y agoWell it's Fred Lambert from Electrek. A widely known Tesla hater. So I would take it with a pinch of salt.
- _ea1k 1y agoYou are getting downvoted, but there's definitely some truth to this. Every negative gets a little bit over-dramatized by his writing. It is weird.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 1y ago> You are getting downvoted “Please don't comment about the voting on comments. It never does any good, and it makes boring reading.” https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Veserv 1y agoYou mean a widely known and documented Tesla promoter: https://www.jalopnik.com/elon-musks-antics-cause-tesla-superfan-fred-lambert-to-1851641309/ https://www.jalopnik.com/elon-musks-antics-cause-tesla-super... He held undisclosed stock, made millions of dollars worth of referrals to Tesla, and was owed hundreds of thousands of dollars from those referrals all while reporting positively on Tesla while actively refusing to disclose their clear conflict of interest even when the issue was raised.
- Rover222 1y agoI was ready to assume the article was bullshit, but it seems like a legit, accurate piece.
- nothrowaways 1y agoI never understood why Tesla valuation is orders of magnitude higher than honda
- zerotolerance 1y agoBecause it isn't a car company, it feels more like a fraud funnel for retail investor funds into multi-billion special dividends and bonuses for Musk.
- thethimble 1y agoYou're welcome to short it and make lots of money if you are correct!
- jordanscales 1y ago“Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent.” - John Maynard Keynes
- whatever1 1y agoEnron was going up for years and years before the fraud could not be hidden anymore. A short Tesla position is correct. The question is at what expiration date ?
- rsynnott 1y agoOften the difficult thing isn't predicting "this bubble will collapse eventually"; it's predicting the _date_ of the collapse. You really need both, to short.
- justin66 1y agoWhy would shorting TSLA make him lots of money if he is correct? If he's correct, the fraud is working. He hasn't staked out a position on what might stop it and when.
- nitwit005 1y agoIt's generally difficult to do. The problem is you have no idea when the collapse in value will happen, or even if it will. A lot of the companies I'd have bet against in the past, like AOL, sold for huge sums of money, and the purchasing company ended up regretting their decision. The actual AOL stock never collapsed.
- plqbfbv 1y agoThis is far from a new story. What is notable is that the failure is so widespread it's prompting government inquiry and action. When I still had my reddit account, maybe 95% of battery failures showing up in r/TeslaLounge or r/TeslaModel3 were from 2021 models. If I understood correctly by reading the many threads, 2021 it's around the time that Tesla changed the manufacturing process to seal the battery, so this is likely the initial batch of batteries with the new sealing process (perhaps not so refined/polished). For most of these cars the powertrain and battery are still under warranty (8y or 100k/120k miles). As noted in the article, Tesla normally replaces failed packs with refurbished packs of about the same capacity/degradation, which are bound to fail sooner than brand new ones of course. I don't see a way out of this for Tesla except to recognize the manufacturing defect and waive the mileage warranty limit (and only hold to the 8y age) when a 2021 car rolls in to swap the battery pack.