Brutal week sees Tesla shares lose $80B in market value | Hacker News Reader

Brutal week sees Tesla shares lose $80B in market value

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I had a ride in a Tesla for the first time the other day. Apart from the huge screen in the centre panel, it really did not feel like the luxury car it is portrayed as. Once the other big manufacturers are fully up to speed with production what really is the reason to buy a Tesla?

It's not a luxury car, never has been. I'm not sure it's even portrayed as a luxury car, perhaps it was perceived as a bit of a luxury car before it came out with the Model 3 (buying a Model S was the first thing someone coming into money from a startup exit would commonly do in the early-mid 2010's).

Base Model Tesla 3: 49K Long Range: 56K Performance: 62K

Fully Self-Driving is another 15K add on and there are other add ons as well. So let's say 49-80K depending on trim and options.

A 2022 BMW 3 Series goes from 42K to 57K. A 5-Series goes from 60K-74K (we'll ignore the 2 and 4 series) depending on trim and all wheel drive.

So Tesla is priced as a luxury car, and therefore is in that market -- or it better be, otherwise they need to start cutting prices.

If you look at the demographics of Tesla buyers, it's a median age of 54 and median household income of 128K[1]. So yes -- luxury market. Not Rolls Royce luxury, but Lexus/Audi/BMW/Mercedes luxury.

[1]https://www.start.io/blog/tesla-target-market-analysis-and-s...

Depending where you live, all cars could be considered luxury cars but in reality they are just expensive. For example in Ireland a new scoda Octavia starts from 34k-54k euros. There is not big difference in price, but it's not considered luxury car for sure. I remember back in 2002 a good version of this car would cost between 16k-24k.

Let's not pretend that we are babes in the woods, with glistening eyes just opened to the world, trying to decide for ourselves what a "luxury car" really is.

This is a well defined market segment for suppliers and consumers alike. It is a term of art used by industry analysts, investors, producers, and car buyers. Don't create your own definitions. If I say I am going to buy a junk bond, you don't need to start questioning "what is junk? All things are needed in life. One man's junk is another man's treasure", etc.

You are living in a wealthy bubble if you don’t think a Tesla is a luxury car.

I had the same experience as you four years ago. I have owned Tesla from 3 years. It is a great commuter car, and I am hardly tired at the end of 70 min one way commute every day. This is because of AutoPilot, acceleration and the ease with which it handles curves in AP. And I bought an electric tire inflator the other day, because I never had to visit the dealer in 3 years. It offers comfort in a different way - for busy people in cities.

Access to the supercharging network.

My perception of Tesla’s supercharging network is that it was a huge edge 5 years ago, or even 2, but not so much anymore.

Yeah, it may still be the densest, but generic chargers are popping up everywhere. If I’m deciding on which brand to go with today, the charging network doesn’t even make the list of considerations. In 2017 it may have been near the top of that list.

Couple that with Tesla’s stale designs and continuous decontenting and I don’t see a Model 3 as all that compelling.

Anecdata: I regularly stop at a UK motorway services (Hopwood Park, M42) where there are 16 superchargers (and have been for several years) and even on the busiest days there’s always been a couple free.

Meanwhile over at the “public” “fast” chargers (4 of them) there’s regular contention, to the point of heated verbal disagreements between drivers one busy day this summer.

(I thankfully drive a Prius which can make the entire 250 mile trip on half a tank of petrol.)

Tesla have their own contention problems here and there, but I consider the supercharger network a definite competitive advantage over other EVs.

Not correct it’s still a huge advantage

My wife and I did a trip from Houston to San Diego in a non-Tesla EV, and from what I could tell, along the freeways (I-10 and I-8) there were roughly as many Superchargers as the high speed Electrify America chargers we used. Superchargers do seem to outnumber EA in major cities, however.

It's also important to consider number of stalls v.s. number of locations. The biggest Electrify America location on I-5 between SF and LA has 10 stalls. The biggest Tesla supercharger location has over 100.

As far as I know, the largest Supercharger in California only has 98 stalls (Harris Ranch + Coalinga, which are technically two stations but collocated in the same parking lot).

The next largest are:

* Kettleman City (again technically two stations, this time across the street) with 95

* Tejon Ranch (again two stations about 1000 ft distant) with 80.

Quartzsite (sic) AZ with 36 is scheduled to have, in the future, 124 stalls when expansion is complete

True. The largest I saw was in Tempe, in an outlet mall (16 stalls I think). That said, the locations along the freeway (often tiny towns) in such a trip are more relevant. Typically these were 4-6 stall locations in places like gas stations and WalMarts.

Interestingly enough, the largest Supercharger in the Houston area only has 16 stalls.

I've seen exactly one supercharger station in the last three years, and it's attached to the tesla dealer a good 30 miles away. There's a generic charger on my office building, a different generic charger a mile from my house, then a couple more in between.

Unless they've changed things, you need an adapter to use the generic chargers with a tesla. I'd rather just buy a car meant to work with the infrastructure available to me

The "generic" charger at your work is probably J1772? Teslas come with an adapter for that plug. The benefit of the supercharger network is mainly for DC fast charging (which J1772 can't provide) on road trips. You aren't getting 250Kw from your office building.

isn't there any adapters for other manufacturers?

No but the new super chargers going in next year will have a built in ccs adapter in the US. In Europe they all currently use the European version of ccs

Tesla cars are just overpriced and poorly manufactured, and definitely not luxury. Their FSD software does not work as advertised. There are much better EVs out there from other manufacturers at a fraction of the price.

Drive a model S plaid and get back to me on that.

You can play steam games on it.

Same reason you buy any car from any brand, you like the product they have better than the alternatives.

This video showing the atrocious build quality in a new Plaid was making the rounds a while ago. It's not the only one of its type but I think it had unusually high distribution: https://youtube.com/shorts/_PbBkY6rfrI

I wouldn't be surprised if it was solely responsible for turning off thousands of buyers. Sure did for me.

I have a family member with a model s plaid and have driven it quite a bit, it’s an incredible car that’s been flawless for years. So many car companies have put out dog shit for decades, I don’t understand why Tesla seems to get all the hate.

It’s political. I’m in the tribe that loves what Elon Musk is currently doing. But many are in the tribe that hates what Musk is doing because it threatens the arrangements that benefited their tribe for many years.

You're in the tribe of fan-boy Musk stans who gullibly believe and parrot without question anything Elon Musk says no matter how ludicrous and manifestly false and cruel, who don't have the intellectual honesty or rudimentary research skills to bother expending the slightest effort trying to fact-check his obvious lies against reality, and instead knowingly spread his lies at the non-refundable expense of your own integrity and reputation, and then you suddenly go conspicuously silent when confronted with the objective evidence that you're deluded and spreading lies.

Your admission of one-sided tribalism and hysterically thin skinned criticism of other tribes is purely psychological projection and an admission of guilt about what you're actually doing yourself.

Is Musk's shutting down the suicide prevention system over Christmas and his pathological easily disproven lies about it (that his own very own latest Head of Trust and Safety Ella Irwin promptly contradicted in public and on the record) really the hill you choose to die on?

That just goes to show what kind of a person you and Musk really are. It actually is just all about the cruelty, isn't it?

Case in point:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34122346

cbeach:

Claimed “sources familiar with the matter” who can’t be named.

Meanwhile the CEO of the actual company concerned confirms the news report of this notorious leftwing hack paper is factually incorrect.

DonHopkins:

Then explain why his latest head of trust and safety contradicted him. Her name is Ella Irwin. She's certainly familiar with the matter, and definitely not anonymous, and now you know her name. Musk is a bald faced liar, and you're willingly gullible to believe him, and dishonest to spread his lies and blame it on "fake news". Have any more false conspiracy theories you want to spread?

https://www.mediaite.com/online/twitter-removes-thereishelp-...

Twitter head of trust and safety Ella Irwin sent Reuters an email after the article was published. “We have been fixing and revamping our prompts,” she wrote. “They were just temporarily removed while we do that.”

“We know these prompts are useful in many cases and just want to make sure they are functioning properly and continue to be relevant,” Irwin added.

The two sources who told the Reuters reporters about Musk’s decision to disable the feature requested anonymity because they “feared retaliation,” the outlet reported. “One of them said millions of people had encountered #ThereIsHelp messages.”

The decision to disable the feature — even temporarily — was sharply criticized, especially because of the timing during the holiday season.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34127061

According to Musk himself, who is a liar, which is my point. It's pretty pathetic when his fan-boy stans spread his lies for him without checking the facts. That winningness to destroy your own reputation by lying for him is shameful and disgraceful.

You should spend more time correcting your mistaken beliefs by learning the truth, than spreading Musk's lies out of intellectual lazyness and willingly gullible unquestioning ignorance.

Why you should NEVER believe Elon Musk!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN-kajBcyew

Elon Musk, War Profiteering? W-T-F!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qGg6wiXoSc

Why you should NEVER believe Elon Musk! (part Deux)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uO9yw9QThzU

Elon Musks BIG mistake!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9sCYxE0_W-s

Why you should NEVER believe Elon Musk! (Part 33 ⅓)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrwkNp_AOjQ

cbeach: I know you're afraid to actually watch any of those videos, which totally undermine your trust in Musk and prove my point that he's a pathological liar, but you can't keep everyone else from watching them, because they're fucking hilarious and entertaining, and without watching them you're not remotely qualified to even attempt rebutting them.

All you can do is cry "fake news" about the proof you refuse to watch and can't rebut, which is largely recordings and quotes of Musk's own words, without providing any facts or citing any true news.

This is a strange rant, with a lot of unreasonable assumptions.

It's unreasonable to assume Musk isn't lying, especially after his own Head of Trust and Safety Ella Irwin directly contradicted him in public and on the record.

He (cbeach) falsely whined that the source can't be named, but that's just not true: Ella Irwin is the name of the source who works for Twitter as Head of Trust and Safety, who authoritatively claimed on behalf of the company that “We have been fixing and revamping our prompts,” she wrote. “They were just temporarily removed while we do that.”

There are many sources:

https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/technology/twitter...

https://www.engadget.com/twitter-restores-suicde-prevention-...

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2022/dec/24/twitter-r...

https://www.transcontinentaltimes.com/twitter-brings-back-it...

Crying "fake news" when the facts contradict what you said just like Musk or Trump just makes you look idiotic and delusional.

While her claim may or not be true with respect to WHY they actually removed the suicide prompts (there's no reason Twitter would disable the system in place before rolling out a new system, ESPECIALLY during the holiday season when so many people commit suicide), it certainly does confirm beyond a doubt that Twitter DID remove the suicide prompts, which absolutely proves Elon Musk definitely did lie about that. No argument about that.

But that's no surprise to anyone but the most gullible fanboy, because it is a widely known well established fact that Elon Musk is a serial liar, because he has such a long track record of lying about so many things, all very well documented. There's no argument about that either, it's a well established objective fact.

Elon Musk is pretty much single handedly destroying their brand as we speak

That'll be 137,990€ plus Tip

LPT: Don't insult the people buying your cars while you are flailing at running twitter.

Nah, this is all some brilliant galaxy-brain marketing ploy that we're too stupid to understand. You just gotta put your entire savings into tesla stock and you'll be rich like Elon in a few years!

Tesla EV production capacity (2023): ~2.3M cars/year. Market cap: $388B

Mercedes EV production capacity (2024): ~1M cars/year. Market cap: $65B

The EV production edge and first mover edge is gone. So where is the edge/premium?

  * FSD
  * Battery production capacity
  * US charging network
  * US chip supply chain
  * Free advertising on Twitter
  * No costs for winding down internal combustion business

What else?

> The EV production edge and first mover edge is gone. So where is the edge/premium?

They actually make money.

Rivian spends an incremental $3 for each $1 of revenue. Lucid spends $5. Ford admitted last year that inflation made the Mach-e unprofitable at the unit level. And none of the legacy manufacturers break out revenue and expense for their EV divisions. Go read their quarterly reports. I’ll wait. Not one of them does it.

In contrast, Tesla has 30% gross margins. Maybe Model 3 isn’t luxury, but can competitors sell a product for 30% less? Tesla can play the attrition game for a couple years if they want and just starve everyone else out.

Play the attrition game for a couple of years, huh?

Then let's walk through the math, and review Elon Musk's own words and numbers...

Why you should NEVER believe Elon Musk! (Part 33 ⅓):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrwkNp_AOjQ&t=2m58s

[...]

>But Musk is adamant that his amazing decision making is what drives what happens at Tesla.

>It is Tesla that has lost HALF A TRILLION DOLLARS, five hundred BILLION dollars off its market cap this year.

>But Elon Musk was so proud about the money he could save Tesla in a half hour meeting.

>"Every good hour or even minute of thinking about Tesla and SpaceX has such a big effect no the company..." -Elon Musk

https://sadtrombone.com/

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/tsla/historica...

>"...and that I really try to work as much as possible, you know, to the edge of sanity, basically." -Elon Musk

>Yeah, it's only because of Elon Musk's hard work that Tesla has lost over 50% of its value this year.

>"Every high quality minute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla." -Elon Musk

>Oh, oh, it was so close. If he'd said that every minute he spends alive he causes a million dollars damage to Tesla's market cap.

>"I mean, there are many instances where a half-hour meeting -- I was able to improve the financial acumen of the company by $100 million in a half-hour meeting." -Elon Musk

>Let's see. Tesla's market cap is about $500 billion dollars. And it's lost about half of its value this year. Meaning that Tesla has lost some $500 BILLION DOLLARS in market cap this year.

>For perspective, that's about TWICE the market cap of Walmart.

>So let's see, $500 billion dollars in a years, there's roughly 10,000 hours in a year, so EVERY HOUR THIS YEAR, thanks to Musk's brilliant leadership, Teslas's lost about $50 MILLION DOLLARS of its market cap, give or take $1 MILLION DOLLARS for EVERY MINUTE Musk has been alive this year.

>"Every high quality minute of thinking is a million dollars impact on Tesla." -Elon Musk

>You've been watching this video for about five minutes. The time it takes Elon Musk to $5 MILLION DOLLARS OF DAMAGE to Tesla stock.

>And this might give you some insight into why buying BURNING CANCER was still more valuable to Elon Musk than Tesla stock. Damn straight!

>What he can do for Tesla, he can do for Twitter.

>Now, Elizabeth Holmes this week got sentenced to ten years in jail for lying to investors, eventually resulting in a loss of about $10 billion dollars of the market cap of the company.

>Musk has been leading Tesla to lose market value at the rate of about a Thernos EVERY WEEK!

>And I should stress, one of the reasons Holmes got off so lightly -- yes, 10 years is lightly -- is she hadn't unloaded the stock when it was massively over-valued on her false promises.

>That is, she claimed that her heart is in the right place. And that she hadn't clearly pumped the stock up and then sold loads of it.

>I mean, it's not like she promised self-driving cars that would give you 100% return on investment with zero risks.

>"You say, what would be the probable gross profits from a single robo-taxi. We think probably something on the order of about $30,000 per year, and we expect to have the first operating robo-taxis next year. With no one in them. Next year." -Elon Musk, 2019

>And that they would be ready by 2020. Then after the stock explodes in value on a promise that would make most Ponzi schemes seem believable.

>Selling some $30 BILLION DOLLARS worth of stock.

>I mean, I'm not really a stock market guy, but I think this called "Pumping and Dumping". Let me see:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump

>Pumping and dumping is an ILLEGAL scheme to boost stocks and security price based on false, misleading, or greatly exaggerated statements.

>"Like the Model S and Model X, at this point, can drive autonomously with greater safety than a person, right now." -Elon Musk

>"The convoy technology, the tracking technology, this is something that we are confident we can do TODAY 10 times safer than a human driver. I WANT TO BE CLEAR, this is something we can do NOW!" -Elon Musk

>Huh. But let's leave the legality of Musk's billions on the side for a second. And for those fans adamant that Musk bought Twitter for the greater good.

>"...function of Democracy. It's important to the function of the United States. I don't care about the economics at all." -Elon Musk

>"This is not about the economics. It's about the moral good that you think it will shape..." -Sycophantic Interviewer

>Maybe now is a good time to remember that Musk spent most of the summer filing lawsuits to try and wiggle out of buying Twitter. Trying his hardest to renege on the deal.

[...]

It's well worth watching the rest of this hilarious and fact-filled chock-full-of-Musk-quotes video, and the entire series, as Thunderf00t publishes more every time Musk lies and loses billions of dollars, which is quite often:

https://www.youtube.com/@Thunderf00t/videos

The Tesla-Bot videos are so much more side-splittingly funnier than any episode of Silicon Valley or Futurama or Rick and Mortey ever, but it's 100% totally true:

Tesla-Bot BUSTED: Why you should NEVER believe Elon Musk!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN-kajBcyew

Tesla AI Day 2!!!! ITS HERE!!!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qxth7F8Y5jM

The Tesla Bot: BUSTED!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rmkFrv80b7Y

Stock price is forward looking, not based on current sales. It's why some start-up with $0 revenue can be worth billions.

Not to say that Telsa's peak valuation is justified (it doesn't make a lot of sense), but a much higher market cap could be justified by expectation of substantial growth in Tesla sales, but flat revenue for Mercedes.

That expectation has generally been based on having a well respected CEO.

Having no CEO may reasonably affect expectations.

FSD is a liability, not a feature.

You compare 2023 numbers of Tesla with 2024 for Mercedes. With a plan for 50% YoY, Tesla will be at 3.5M cars/year in 2024. Seems like they will still have an edge on production.

Mercedes is only one manufacturer of many? theres toyota ford VW nissan and more all ramping up

The parent mentioned Mercedes so that’s what I replied to. What are the 2024 numbers for the ones you mention ?

https://archive.vn/vzYfP

Everyone knew the stock was overvalued. The stock is now returning to sane levels.

It can go further, I assure you. They haven’t been forced to rename FSD yet. I wouldn’t be surprised if they are forced to stop selling it entirely. Refunding everyone who bought something that doesn’t exist wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility either.

(I am a Model 3 owner).

The viscosity of the kool aid on Twitter, even in 2022, is still shocking to me.

I casually see conversations on Twitter where people are seriously discussing how they plan on monetizing their cars by using them as robotaxis. How the latest insert Tesla influencer FSD video was so impressive, that they'll be able to sleep in their commute anyday now.

The reality distortion field around Tesla fanboys and FSD is one of the strongest RDF's I've EVER seen.

I have used FSD. It is extremely stressful. It can't go more than ~5 miles without making a life-threatening mistake on my quiet suburban streets.

Transit could solve that

It reminds me of how communists on Twitter will go on about how their job in the forthcoming communist utopia will be to teach part time classes on intersectional poetry and spend the rest of their time wandering the forests to connect with the earth.

Sounds nice, actually.

I know these numbers are basically imaginary, but it sure is funny to watch

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