9 ms·
Tesla sales fell by 9 percent in 2025, its second yearly decline
- ChrisArchitect 11mo ago[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465041 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46465041
- wateralien 11mo agoWouldn’t mind if they went bankrupt. I won’t support the ideologies of their ceo.
- nashashmi 11mo agoThe shareholders should mind him being CEO.
- jimbokun 11mo agoSure but do you examine the ideologies of the CEOs of the companies making all the products you buy? I imagine many of their privately held beliefs are just as horrible but they’re not dumb enough to say them publicly.
- jonahx 11mo agohttps://youtu.be/N_ympM1TPBw?si=7fnfN3RPZdF0wVv7&t=31 https://youtu.be/N_ympM1TPBw?si=7fnfN3RPZdF0wVv7&t=31
- stonogo 11mo agoHard to think of other CEOs who took time off from running the company to play in DC for a while. I'm sure there are some, but none come to mind.
- j_maffe 11mo agoPretty sure there are plenty but non that have done so so brazenly
- CamperBob2 11mo agoOnly one I can recall is Dave Packard, who served as assistant undersecretary of defense for a few years in the early 1970s. I don't recall that he brought a mob of script kiddies with him to sack the government, threw any Nazi salutes at Nixon's inauguration, or slunk out of town with a literal black eye, though.
- tastyface 11mo agoWhy financially support an ardent, unabashed white nationalist who eagerly funnels money to a party that *he himself claims* protects pedophiles? What other CEOs are this level of pure garbage? I can't think of a single one. (And that's before we even bring up the people his policies have directly killed: https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-food-program-starvation-children-deaths https://www.propublica.org/article/kenya-trump-usaid-world-f...)
- acdha 11mo agoI’d have agreed with you in 2024 but there’s enough of a difference in active support to be significant. Not many of those CEOs have direct personal involvement killing millions of people, for example, but DOGE appears to have managed that without really even understanding what they were cutting.
- th0masfrancis 11mo agoExactly why I stopped supporting petroleum companies causing wars, terrorism and regional instability to keep up with world’s appetite for cheap crude oil.
- LeoPanthera 11mo agoThere is an enormous difference between holding unpleasant views in private and actively, publicly, working to dismantle the country and take away the rights of its citizens and celebrating it.
- pureagave 11mo ago[flagged]
- kenjackson 11mo agoI didn’t plan on examining Elon’s ideology. He shoved it in my face. If other CEOs want to to be coy with Nazi salutes and post the types of things he does on X then let me know. I’ll happily treat them the same way.
- triceratops 11mo ago> I imagine many of their privately held beliefs are just as horrible but they’re not dumb enough to say them publicly. That's correct. And therefore I don't boycott their companies.
- vkou 11mo agoAny of them would run me over to make the line go up, but some of them are loudly putting their foot on the accelerator. Publicly signalling that you support awful shit is more likely to make that world a reality than quiet private support.
- evilduck 11mo agoYes when possible and feasible to know. And it's super easy to avoid everything Musk touches. Nothing he helms is without easy alternatives.
- nkmnz 11mo agoI used to ask the same questions, but then I've realized: this line of argument tries to justify non-action on known known because there are also known unknowns and maybe even unknown unknowns. Now what? Smoke a cigarette because we know that unknown carcinogens exist that are not included in cigarette smoke?
- wat10000 11mo agoHiding abhorrent beliefs is a good thing and we should heavily encourage it.
- estearum 11mo agoI'm honestly baffled that this isn't completely obvious to everyone. People act like "bad but hiding it" is no different from "bad and not hiding it," but the former is literally identical to being decent. The only scenarios in which it's not identical are those in which they failed to hide their badness! I don't give a fuck how evil someone is in the dark little corners of their mind, so long as they show up as a decent person in all their interactions with the outside world.
- UltraSane 11mo agoYes, at least for the CEOs going out of their way to get into politics like Musk and Larry Ellison. The way Ellison is using Bari Weiss to censor 60 Minutes is evil.
- johneth 11mo ago> I imagine many of their privately held beliefs are just as horrible but they’re not dumb enough to say them publicly. Why would you support a company run by someone stupid enough to say their polarising beliefs publicly? It doesn't inspire confidence in their judgment. Even if you personally agree with their polarising beliefs, you have to question their decision making process in why they chose to deliberately make them public, damaging the company. If they're stupid like that, maybe they've made stupid decisions with their products (which in Elon's case, yes, he has, and not just at Tesla).
- kurtis_reed 11mo agoGive yourself a pat on the back
- xvxvx 11mo ago[flagged]
- jeffbee 11mo agoThe most outrageous anti-Indian sentiments I ever heard came out of the mouths of other, very slightly different Indian immigrants. So I doubt "Indian" is a monolithic identity. This is, of course, by no means specific to India. The vitriol that my Vietnamese in-laws reserve for Vietnamese who were born 30km from where they were born is incredible.
- ben_w 11mo ago> The vitriol that my Vietnamese in-laws reserve for Vietnamese who were born 30km from where they were born is incredible. While I don't know the exact level of vitriol involved, I can confirm similar themes to a perhaps lower temperature were present at all of the locations within the UK where I have lived over the years. Except Aberystwyth. But that's because there's nothing noteworthy within 30 km of Aberystwyth.
- jeffbee 11mo agoThese things are hard for Americans to understand. I live in Berkeley. Try to imagine that Berkeley has repeatedly gone to war against Stockton and we hate their guts because of their language and their false god.
- ben_w 11mo agoYeah, that seems fair given what I saw of the US when visiting it. "In the UK, 100 miles is a long way. In the US, 100 years is a long time." has a converse. UK has a thing with football teams: I walked the wrong way once in Sheffield as a football stadium emptied and one group violently ambushed another while I was in the middle of them both. While a police helicopter was overhead. Back two generations and switching denomination of Christianity was scandalous for some of my relatives. My Welsh university got me some local stereotype jokes at my expense, ac mae yna bobl o Saeson sy'n amheus iawn o bobl o Gymru yn siarad Cymraeg.
- hdgvhicv 11mo agoI guess when your CEO has a highly publicised pivot to a position that’s the antithesis of your customers views it doesn’t help. What’s that saying — “Go Fash Lose Cash”?
- rvz 11mo ago[flagged]
- maplant 11mo agoThis is a 9% drop in _sales_, not the stock
- exe34 11mo ago[flagged]
- cindyllm 11mo ago[dead]
- dhosek 11mo agoThat’s not a 9% drop in the stock price but in sales. Declining sales for two years in a row does not bode well for future revenue growth.
- dhosek 11mo agoI’d note also that while the stock is up about 15 percent and a fraction over the last year, the S&P 500 is up 16 percent and a fraction over the same period. Given a company with declining sales, for two consecutive years it seems likely that the stock price is due for a big correction.
- rvz 11mo agoIt will be more than just a correction, more like a market-wide crash in general and that would be a gift to buy lots of Tesla stock.
- bpt3 11mo agoThey are considered radioactive by their primary target audience in the US, have been surpassed in various ways outside the US, seem to be focused on a few boondoggles internally rather than fixing what is broken in their core business, and their CEO has been distracted by other ventures. I expect this decline to continue indefinitely. I also wonder when the stock price will reflect the company's past and projected results.
- epistasis 11mo ago> I also wonder when the stock price will reflect the company's past and projected results. This is the $1T question. What happens when Tesla finally gets valued as a car manufacturer, with side businesses in cheap but unreliable solar, and over-priced grid storage? The self-driving car boondoggle has persisted for the better part of a decade, without a come-to-Jesus moment on the stock price. The pivot to robotics is clear fraud, yet retail stock investors are all to willing to keep the stock price high. Musk has to lose a lot more reputation with the public before Tesla stock starts being valued based on the reality of Tesla.
- lukan 11mo agoThe optimus will save the day! At least that seems the current story. And I mean if it lives up to it's promises, it might. I surely would have a need for a robot servant. But I won't preorder as I a) don't trust it will work as promised b) if it actually works out, I still don't trust Elon enough to put a robot in my home that he controls.
- epistasis 11mo agoAssuming for a second Optimus is not complete vaporware, and that people will trust Musk with humanoid robots in their home after he said "I'm not building a robot army unless I have control".... Optimus will face the Roomba problem. Cheaper robots from competitors will destroy any profit margins, and there's zero moat. And the problem with shorting Tesla has been apparent for years: the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
- 11mo ago
- postalrat 11mo ago[flagged]
- lobf 11mo agoWhat is the reason in your mind?
- almosthere 11mo agoSold out manufacturing years ago. Long term building real physical products is going to be the only value. LLMs are going to drop the price of informational value.
- catlover76 11mo ago[dead]
- epistasis 11mo agoBuilding widgets is not a high-profit industry, and every country that got good at building widgets wants the high-profit industries that the US had: tech and biotech and science in general. Not recognizing the US's massive wealth and strength, and climbing down the value chain to imitate China, is a recipe for the decline of the US, which is being followed today.
- gmd63 11mo agoYep. Also an issue: the high profit industries are abused by pump and dump scammers like Vivek Ramaswamy who had his doctor mother run a phase 2 clinical trial on a struggling Alzheimer's drug he bought from GlaxoSmithKline before he cashed out and it inevitably failed phase 3 trials. We're moving in the opposite direction of ensuring that capital is allocated productively in said industries by destroying regulations and agencies like the CFPB, FTC, SEC, and by giving platforms and political power to the cheaters and fraudsters who have infested the Republican party.
- lobf 11mo ago
- agentifysh 11mo agoif Tesla is still banking on EV it has no future, already other manufacturers are eating their lunch.
- kwanbix 11mo agoWhat do you suggest they do instead?
- eithed 11mo agoInvest in batteries Edit: I mean focus solely on. It's a boring technology prone to disruption, used everywhere
- QuantumSeed 11mo agoPreferably, solid state
- nomel 11mo agoThey're seem to be, with their factories and utility-scale systems: https://www.tesla.com/megapack https://www.tesla.com/megapack
- jqpabc123 11mo agoTesla has nothing obvious here to add to the marketplace --- most of their battery tech has typically been out sourced. Lots of other companies with far more experience and expertice is battery research, development and manufacturing.
- bdcravens 11mo agoOutside of the US, EVs are doing well. They actually sell (and produce) more cars in China than the US.
- paxys 11mo agoUSA has 340 million people. "Outside the US" has ~8 billion. So Tesla selling more cars outside the US isn't by itself a crazy achievement. China was supposed to be Tesla's next big market after US and Europe but sales there have already cooled off due to competition from domestic manufacturers. Tesla used to be #1 in the Chinese EV market when it launched and has now fallen outside the top 5.
- amykhar 11mo agoI'm frankly disappointed that number isn't much higher.
- jeffrallen 11mo ago1. The products are barely competitive, and the design is dated. 2. The Cybertruck is no F-150. 3. The CEO built the brand on a cult of personality, and then went fascist. It's a free country, be an asshole if you want, and pay the price personally, whatever. But don't link your asshole personality to the brand that you and thousands of your employees depend on to make sales. It's just not difficult to understand at all.
- nomel 11mo ago> 2. The Cybertruck is no F-150. The electric F-150 is also no F-150, and was cancelled [1]. Electric just doesn't work for towing yet, with the range and charging compromise. [1] https://www.npr.org/2025/12/15/nx-s1-5645147/ford-discontinues-all-electric-f-150-lightning https://www.npr.org/2025/12/15/nx-s1-5645147/ford-discontinu...
- jeffrallen 11mo agoMany (most?) F-150 buyers do not tow anything. This is a distraction. It would obviously be possible to make something electric that's better than a bottom of the line F-150, that's what Tesla should have done.
- nomel 10mo agoWhy do you think it wasn't attractive to their F-150 audience? Are you saying all the people who didn't buy them were tricked?
- jeffrallen 10mo agoThe Cybertruck was a bold vision of the future. Like Daft Punk. F-150 buyers are not bold visionaries, and that's ok. They are more Kelly Clarkson. The Ford customers Tesla could have targeted are the ones who never tow anything, want to know they could put a 4x8 sheet of plywood in it (but never do), and who want lane following, good cupholders and seat heaters. That was probably 5% of the F-150 market, which is such an enormous market that even a 5% slice would have been bigger than what the Cybertruck market turned out to be.
- Animats 11mo agoOuch. Tesla should have had a new car model by now. Something comparable to BYD's midrange cars. Or a useful delivery van. Or a new roadster. Or something. For some reason, most of the Cybertrucks seem to have disappeared. A year ago, they were common on Silicon Valley roads. Now I see more driverless Waymos mid-peninsula than Cybertrucks. It's been raining lately; maybe people don't want to take them out. As for the value being in self-driving, there's no moat there. Ford and Mercedes have SAE level 3 systems about as good as Tesla's. Several Chinese auto companies have systems. Toyota is partnering with Waymo. Level 3 is just another car option. It's 2026. Where are the Musk-promised Robotaxis? Do they have anything, anywhere, in revenue service with no driver in it? In this area, there is a moat, and Waymo is behind it. There are at least eighteen companies with demo humanoid robots good enough to have Youtube videos. Again, Tesla has no moat. As far as I know, there are zero autonomous humanoid robots generating revenue. Autonomous human robots are going to be a thing, but probably about 5-10 years out. And the door problem. There was no US regulation prohibiting a car door that can't be opened in an emergency because nobody was ever dumb enough to make one. Regulations are written in blood. Consumer Reports: "On a newer Tesla Model Y, remove the mat from the bottom of the rear door pocket, press the red tab to remove an access door that reveals a mechanical release cable, and pull the cable." Musk is getting paid how much for this?
- evilduck 11mo ago> maybe people don't want to take them out. Maybe people no longer want to be seen in one. Musk's politics and the fact that Cybertrucks didn't live up to any of its hype and turned into a heap of recalls didn't turn out to be the flex people thought it would be.
- recursive 11mo agoI see a few cybertrucks per week. FWIW.
- pureagave 11mo agoPeople who claim Ford and Mercedes have systems as good as Tesla haven't personally taken a currently shipping v14 FSD trip and then personally used Ford and Mercedes systems. I see Cybertrucks many times a day in San Francisco and on the 101. I took a Robotaxi ride in SF last week. It was cheaper than Uber and Waymo but I am hoping they bring back the 2014 price wars of Uber/Lyft. I think Musk's pay is $1/yr.
- daryl_martis 11mo ago[dead]
- nashashmi 11mo agoCan we all agree that another CEO would be a better leader than Elon? There would be more stable and profitable innovations? Edit: yeah he has a big stock multiplier factor, but then consider valuation from actual future innovations. Inflated stock price is just that: vapor.
- kimos 11mo agoWithout him the stock would crash. Most of its value is the cult of personality. (Which, to be clear, is bad)
- paxys 11mo agoAnother CEO would be better for the company but disastrous for the company's stock price. Guess which one investors want to prioritize?
- SonOfKyuss 11mo agoIf you’re a Tesla shareholder, there is no better leader than Elon. For of all his many faults, I can’t think of anyone else who could keep that stock price pumped at a level so far far detached from reality for so long.
- pureagave 11mo agoAll the other car, robot, solar and energy companies have CEOs that aren't Elon. How are they doing?
- nashashmi 11mo agoBetter
- Kristopher1337 11mo agoIve owned a Tesla since 2018 and honestly besides my gripes with body damage repairs (specifically dealing with insurance) from 3 separate instances of people hitting me it's been a great car. I definitely wouldn't consider any future car that isn't an EV but I also wouldn't consider a Tesla at this point. My concern is that other car manufacturers would continue to signal that EVs have lost interest from buyers if Tesla went under and I believe that is far from the truth. EVs are very much a luxury item. The fact I haven't had to inconvenience myself even once in seven years going to gas station has been amazing. Electricity pricing is both stable and cheap where I live and so I don't have to even care about fluctuations in gas pricing. I don't have to waste my time getting oil changes either. Owning a traditional car is just a bunch of wasted time. I have more than a few complaints of current EVs manufacturers outside of Tesla. Every manufacturer has been very slow to adopt NACS. I wouldn't consider a new car without that it and I will absolutely not accept an adapter solution. I don't trust legacy car manufacturers even manufactures like Mercedes that they will keep the car updated and instead use that as a way to push me to purchase a new car. One of the reasons that pushed me to Tesla back in 2018 was they kept their cars updated and provided new features over time. They also had a track record of not changing the looks of their cars that often which I very much prefer. An EV can last significantly longer than ICE vehicles and so you need the ability to not only support the cars for longer through software but also by doing new computer hardware drop in replacements. I want the ability to extend the life of my car not replace it. I have absolutely zero interest in lease deals which every manufacture and dealer push with EVs because I don't drive very far in the city so I keep cars for a long time with low miles. I fundamentally HATE the push from buyers who desire large batteries for range when they don't even use it which has resulted in many of the smaller cars to not be sold here in the US. This is also preventing desired cars from even being made. If Ford would have made the Maverick an EV instead of wasting their time on the F-150 Lightning it would have significantly cost them less to develop and their issue would have been keeping them in stock. The EV market is absolutely frustrating. Tesla brought these vehicles mainstream and for the most part outside the Cybertruck they have decent products where they have shown willingness to support longterm. Everything else made them undesirable.
- flyinglizard 11mo agoI oil change once a year. I fill in gas once every like 7-10 days, half the time someone pumps it for me. It takes five minutes, maybe. I don't need to fuss about range, chargers or connect my car as it were a phone when I'm home every day. I find EVs an inconvenience. There are many reasons why choose an EV, and I just might, but these are not.
- paxys 11mo agoReminder that Tesla is still worth more than ~every other auto manufacturer in the world combined. It is unbelievable just how irrational the market is when dealing with this particular stock.
- diogenescynic 11mo agoResale values are trash, motion sickness is terrible, electrical rates are going up, and it's a pain in the ass to travel long distance and wait to recharge constantly. I think EVs have hit that saturation point where everyone who wanted one has bought one and now some people are going back to other options. Also Elon hasn't exactly remained neutral so that probably makes it even harder since it seems like there is significant overlap between Tesla's potential customer base and his political opposition.
- Marsymars 10mo ago> I think EVs have hit that saturation point where everyone who wanted one has bought one I don't think so. In my immediate family we've got a combined six cars and one EVs. If we all had to replace our cars today we'd probably be looking at 4/6 EVs. But cars have long lives, and none of our cars are slated for imminent replacement.
- Havoc 11mo agoTesla seems 100% fucked to me. They clearly can't compete against BYD and a company that relies on sanctions to survive doesn't seem like it is long for this world never mind the crazy multiples people are willing to pay for Tesla
- apublicfrog 11mo agoHave you driven a BYD? They're... fine. Tesla is a much better car, BYD is a pretty average and they're within 15% of the same Tesla in price.
- paxys 11mo agoIt isn't within 15% of Tesla in price. Not even close. BYD models start at like $10K, and the cheapest BYD Sedan is $15K. The cheapest Model 3 meanwhile will be around $35-40K depending on the inventory around you.
- apublicfrog 11mo agoI just checked and if we're doing like for like the cheapest BYD Seal is $50k AUD (510km range, 0-100 in 7.5). The cheapest model 3 is $59k (520km range, 0-100 in 6.1). So I guess closer to 20%. If you're comparing the Atto 1 it's $26k for 200 range, 0-100 in 11.1. Not really a fair comparison.
- nickff 11mo agoThe "Big Three" US automakers have relied on (less obvious) sanctions since the 1980s, which may not be the best strategy, but they still exist.
- ggm 11mo agoI do not understand the P/E at all. It feels to me like a screaming red flag. If I'd been in front of this, holding long, I would be walking to other investment now and only looking to buy when the inevitable corrections come. But I don't hold directly and nobody I know who does feels the way i do about the P/E so.. I just don't understand. Can you think of any non tech business where a P/E like this was not a signal of corporate diseased thinking?
- estearum 11mo ago> I do not understand the P/E at all cult
- techgnosis 11mo agoBloom Energy (BE). It's PE is higher than TSLA but I don't think it's culty, we just need power badly and people see that. I could be wrong. I hold BE shares.
- lamontcg 11mo agoBloom Energy is a growing company which is just shifting towards profitability and positive free cash flow and earnings. Those stocks are expected to have silly P/E ratios. They haven't had 2 years of declining sales.
- thunky 11mo ago> Can you think of any non tech business where a P/E like this was not a signal of corporate diseased thinking? PE is measuring the past, stock price is measuring the future. I'm not saying TSLA PE makes sense, but if people expect earnings growth then in theory it could.
- rsynnott 11mo agoBut, but, robotaxis! Er, no, we mean humanoid robots! I wonder what it’ll be next. Betting on ‘quantum’ something, which has the great benefit of being rather vague.
- QuantumGood 11mo ago
- beanjuiceII 11mo ago[flagged]
- jqpabc123 11mo agohttps://electrek.co/2025/12/30/elon-musk-top-5-tesla-predictions-2025-didnt-happen/ https://electrek.co/2025/12/30/elon-musk-top-5-tesla-predict... Here’s an interesting quote from Musk: “The ability to predict the future is the best measure of intelligence.” Based on Musk’s own standard of intelligence, he is a grade A moron.
- troglo-byte 11mo agoTo zoom in on how toxic the brand has become, look at the European market. Sales were down 71% in Sweden and 66% in France for 2025[1], despite ~35% growth in European EV sales. The only "bright spot" was Norway, but that's partly because EVs increased to 96% of sales there (vs ~25% in Europe.) https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2026/01/02/tesla-closes-out-brutal-year-in-europe-with-sales-declines/87990960007/ https://www.detroitnews.com/story/business/autos/2026/01/02/...
- hnburnsy 11mo agoFor comparison, US market only... GM +5.1 Toyota +8.4 Ford +5.6 Stellantis -4.4 Tesla -8.9 Mercedes -10.5 VW -12.5 https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights-hub/cox-automotive-forecast-dec-2025-u-s-auto-sales-forecast/ https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights-hub/cox-automotive-forec...
- hnburnsy 11mo agoTo add, Rivian announced today that they delivered 42,247 vehicles in 2025, -18% from 2024.