Tesla stock marks lowest close in years as investors worry about Musk’s focus
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Having the manufacturer own the "gas stations" in a printer-ink business model might be worse.
Essentially they can use the patents if they accept something stronger than patents: no copying Tesla's unpatented designs or they can go back and get you for the patent violation in perpetuity (or statute of limitations).
what we got is a truck that no one knows its weights so you can't tell how much it can move in cargo, that costs two times more to operate with a very limited range unless you want to destroy your batteries really quickly but hey they did engineer the best phone charger for it....
I got that "electricity is 0.50" is a claim not backed up by reality.
I can't charge at work. I can't even plug in a block heater. I imagine most folks everywhere can't charge at work.
Plus, charging at home depends heavily on the ownership of a garage. For one, power sockets (let alone charging stations) are pretty rare at most dense housing. Secondly, charging cables contain enough copper that they are rich targets for thieves.
Currently, most apartment owners are not interested in providing charging stations, even if their tenants want them. The cost of putting them in and maintaining them is too high to justify it. Or the laziness quota, either/or.
In most states with high housing costs (such as California), landlords are required to let tenants install EV charging stations.[1] Also there are companies such as ChargePoint that go around to apartment complexes and sell them charging stations. The stations bring the apartment complex revenue and attract higher-end tenants.
I think the concerns about charging are overrated. Yes, some landlords will drag their feet, but that's true for all tech adoption. I'm sure the same thing happened with cable TV, telephone lines, and dishwashers. The fancy places adopt the new thing first, then the average places, and finally the low-end places.
1. https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billTextClient.xhtm...
And charging cable theft is like bike theft. Combine exceptionally low risk with a fairly high reward, and it will happen everywhere, no matter how “low” of a crime area you’re in. A quick application of bolt cutters nets them hundreds of dollars, and may cost the owner thousands, depending on the250 per battery. Now imagine this applied to charging cables with their excess of copper and data lines and occasionally cooling jackets.
Downplay the problems as you like, but they are problems.
Stealing a charging cable is extremely high risk. A thief would be dealing with lethal currents. Also almost every EV has a phone app that notifies the owner if charging is interrupted. If you're home you'll almost certainly be able confront the thief. If it's a Tesla, sentry mode means you'll also have camera footage of the thief.
If you're worried about thieves, you should get an EV. Combustion vehicles have catalytic converters. In terms of risk-reward they are much juicier targets than charging cables. I don't know a single EV owner who has had their cable stolen. I know plenty of people who have had their catalytic converters stolen. (Yes, far fewer people have EVs, but you'd think I'd have heard of it happening at least once by now, especially in the Portland area.) EVs don't have cats, and they're basically rolling iPhones that record their surroundings, so they're less likely to be messed with.
This stuff can add up fast if you don’t already have capacity.
For fast charging on road trips, Teslas can get CCS adapters and charge at competing stations. (Although considering the current state of Electrify America, I don't know why anyone would do that.) Also Tesla is starting to open their chargers to non-Teslas. Charging is becoming a commodity. The main advantages of the Supercharger network are reliability and integration with the car's built-in trip planning. In the long term, Tesla's Superchargers will be like Apple's AirPods: compatible with pretty much everything, but nicer for those who use the company's other products.
Ford has the Mustang and the Lightning.
I’ve seen all of these on the roads recently. As many, if not more than I see Teslas. I am not in California where Tesla probably has a locational advantage due to the infrastructure being better for EVs.
Thinking Tesla is the only company investing in electric is insane. GM and Ford’s body panel alignment embarrasses these Teslas too.
Until you have to use Electrify America. Good luck with that!
pro tip: they lie, thats what desperate car companies do.
For the record, I don’t tell Fords. If you’re referring to the inability to get one… yeah, it’s extremely popular.
Chevy is lying about the price same way Ford was. Nobody bought Lightning at msrp other than brand advocates and media personalities (certain youtubers magically get allocated unobtanium cars skipping queue and sticker price).
Between small inventory and dealer premiums those halo cars are just PR stunts.
It's not hard to see what competition is going to do to Tesla's marketshare in the US once all those models are introduced here.
But in neighboring Norway you'd find a ton of Teslas, when before Tesla an American made car would be a very strange sight there (Ford excepted, but not the USA versions of Ford).
However, Tesla is down to a 10% market-share in Norway as well, so they completely squandered their first-mover advantage there as well. Apparently the "dinosaurs" managed to ramp up and pivot quite nicely despite what everyone said.
Ironic given how much they benefited from exporting pollution to the rest of the planet.
One of the things that has been at the back of my mind is this: when the CEO of a large company is selling large volumes of stock they know more than anybody what is at stake. A CEO that has an optimistic outlook about the company they run will buy stock, not sell it. Elon has been selling across a 50% drop as though it makes no difference.
recalled for burning down houses
>Ford has the Mustang and the Lightning.
truck with range going down to less than 30-40% if its slightly cold or if you tow an empty trailer
Maybe. Probably not. With a large region of the US losing power during a cold blast because TVA couldn't keep up across multiple power distribution areas, I wouldn't expect to see people jumping in on that bargain. When you need it, your electric car will be significantly less useful in a crisis. States are also beginning to raise registration fees significantly to make up for the lack of gas tax revenue.
It's really frustrating.
I think hybrid will be in peak demand in 10 years. Electric doesn’t work well for anyone that doesn’t have a house/residential charging.
Tesla didn't break 1m last year btw, and IDK what their numbers will be this year - but on track to be a little higher, but not the growth they have had to date. Definitely slowing down considerably.
The reality is that he has been acting exactly the same way for the past 20 years. Nothing has changed except the observers.
His clear shift towards messiness was at least four years ago, with his unnecessary statements and actions during the Thai soccer team cave crisis.
I have always made this same comment about movies, where script writers can make something that I don't know about believable but when it came time to talk about networking or hacking or computers, it always seemed so lame. I realized that "sounding accurate" and "being accurate" were actually orthogonal characteristics of discourse.
It has always been the case where I adjust my 'believability index' by what is accomplished rather than by what is said.
I suspect there are very smart capable people at Tesla and SpaceX who are pulling off miracles but not getting credit for it. If that is true, I wish I knew who they were because I have mad respect for what they have done.
I have been in the game long enough to understand the use but eventually you have to make good.
It is stunning that there haven’t been lawsuits about ‘Full Self Driving’ and that it has taken the Feds this long to raise eyebrows about it
The internet culture surrounding him is pretty detached from reality. I can't imagine not wanting to hire a former SpaceX engineer into my current company because we think Elon did everything himself.
I remember hanging out with friends who worked for ULA around the time when Falcon IX was pulling off its first landings. We were at a party drinking beer, and they were repeating their company's propaganda as if the ideas were their own. It's possible for even the best engineers to become irrationally biased if they're worried about their jobs.
I don't keep a list of usernames but a few folks talk with authority across a range of topics - both tech and adjacent interests - and when they happen to step into some niche where they obviously don't have the same depth, and yet project the same level of authority while being not entirely correct, it really does recalibrate that "believability index".
If it makes the situation more risky for Twitter and more likely to be sued.
If Twitter did something wrong or illegal in the past, couldn't it be held accountable today and have to pay a fine or compensation?
Sounds like stepping on your own foot.
But that’s not the dirty laundry I meant. I just mean all of the replies to the Twitter peanut gallery and reposting lame memes and looking generally boorish, rude, and unhip. He doesn’t have to do any of that, yet he chooses to.
The fact that it has turned into such an obvious nothingburger just highlights how out of touch with reality Elon has become, and how badly he needs to feel like people like him.
I wonder how much of the drop is based on perceived lack of "focus" from Musk (valid, but possibly temporary), and how much because of a loss of faith in the man himself.
He has unarguably lost a ton of respect.
It’s only anecdata, but I know two recent EV buyers who ruled out Tesla because of Musk’s suddenly in-your-face politics.
I'm sorry, what? This claim is laughable. Musk claims he hasn't ever voted for him, and they have publicly fueded frequently.
You can argue his politics have moved right. You can't credibly argue he's a Trump supporter.
I guess to some people these two things are equivalent, but it's simply incorrect, and reveals a certain political naivete in those making such claims.
Good luck making your argument to anyone who isn't a partisan hack.
“If you’re not with us, you’re against us.” Intelligent commentators mocked the famous George W. Bush line when he uttered it. But a decade and a half later and it’s the prevailing sentiment among many of the same people who ridiculed it.
Paul Krugman wrote recently that Elon Musk has “gone full MAGA.” The press will tell you what they can get away with. And right-thinking readers will uncritically accept it, for the most part. Trump was good for news traffic. My guess is that Musk is similarly good for business, judging on how many journalists seem to be on the Elon beat. I expect to read and hear a lot more of this for as long as that remains true.
The degree to which this has occurred, across a wide range of issues, is still stunning to me.
Hard to succeed at solving a problem when your actions seem almost perfectly tailored to exacerbate it.
I'm not going to relitigate the Obama era. Democrats seem incapable of understanding that the "clinging to guns, religion" comment, and the policies that follow from such a stance, were divisive.
Edit: Responding to the comment below because this account is rate limited:
Indeed, they did not. That entire "movement" is a stain on the GOP, and you are right to criticize them for it.
It's a great example of Trumpian nonsense Musk has never engaged in.
There is meaningful daylight between the views and actions of men like Trump, DeSantis, and Elon Musk. They are not "aligned" to the degree claimed throughout this thread. Though, I understand why it's politically convenient to state otherwise.
But there is something to be said about a Trumpian style to public behavior. Maybe it’s just social media demagoguery. Tactical trolling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wkvvAQxxo_0
Musk, like other celebrity public figures on social media who make a lot of vapid grandiose statements and then flame out when challenged, are simply operating in the same style.
It’s funny you mentioned Bush, because growing up during his presidency, when terms like “reality-based community” and “truthiness” were coined, I never felt that Trump was a radically new phenomenon. He was Bush except louder - with less subtext.
While Bush II was far from the inventor of executive dissimulation, his administration did have a uniquely dysfunctional relationship with the truth. But truthiness was coined by Colbert, a brilliant critic of that administration, to describe things that aren’t true but feel true. It’s regrettable, but increasingly over the last five or six years, that term could be applied with similar frequency to claims made on either side of the aisle.
Trump is isolationist (but didn't push through his policies), didn't start a war and would probably have prevented the Ukraine war had he still been president. Yes, without further loss of territories!
There are no similarities at all. But no-more-mean-tweets is all that matters for the $250,000 per year SV chickenhawks. Others will go to war for them.
You may not have been around for his presidency, which is why you’re choosing to focus on substantiative policy choices rather than the public style I am talking about, but Bush was well criticized for appearing to be a brash and foolishly pugnacious figure. Not all that different from Trump, except Bush’s ranch owner shtick made him more rural coded- a cowboy. Both also liked to lambaste so-called experts and make use of anti-intellectual sentiment. They are more stylistically similar to each other than to say, Romney, McCain, Jeb Bush, or even Ted Cruz.
He was not at all pugnacious, although, like Trump, the outrage he inspired was partly due to his lack of presidential decorum and sophistication. He put his foot in his mouth. He was a national embarrassment. But his image was that of a born-again Christian, with an upright moral posture. Quite a distance from the verbal pugilist who made ridiculous threats to celebrities like Rosie O’Donnell.
The Democratic opposition saw his election as illegitimate—the Pat Buchanan vote, hanging chad Florida controversy. Worth remembering. Not the first and certainly not the last disputed election.
I'd argue that it went further than that. Perhaps this was ginned up by his liberal critics, who loved to muckrake up shocking exposés like Jesus Camp and make clumsy analogies between Evangelicalism and the Taliban, but Bush's bluff, often stumbling, manner and tendency to engage in dismissing "those in the know" also encapsulated an anti-intellectualism that was intended to appeal to anti-elite, and thus populist, image.
Hell, his anti-intellectualism was written about in December 2000 [0], before his presidency had even begun! The fact that he was seen as somewhat of a dunderhead also fed into that. Despite being a dynastic scion and cabal of advisors, he also posed as a political outsider as well [1]. Perhaps in some ways, Bush's attempts to portray himself as diametrically opposite of what he was, thereby using the Big Lie technique, is something that he and Trump stylistically have in common, and is something that made libs mad in both eras.
> He was not at all pugnacious
While he might not have personally attacked critics as later presidents might have- calling anti-war critics treasonous in a more roundabout, conventional-politician way than directly- he was certainly seen as a bellicose warmonger to critics, especially by foreign observers. Though sure, perhaps this is a case where policy overshadowed personal style.
But no, I'm sure he was seen as a pugnacious to some degree, even if it was only in a ridiculous, chickenhawk, "lemme at him, chief" sort of way.
> to his lack of presidential decorum and sophistication.
As per above, burnished his populist image to a segment of the electorate. Certainly in contrast to Kerry.
[0] https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-renaissance-of-anti-in...
[1]https://www.quora.com/Why-was-George-W-Bush-seen-as-an-outsi...
Does it suck that we have such clearly delineated tribes? Yes. But Musk is also smart enough to realize that that's the case, and he's knowingly chosen to repeat and engage with the shibboleths of the extreme right.
When Musk is tweeting “kek”, unbanning insurrectionists, banning left leaning journalists (not even far left!), then it’s clear that he’s not actually about balance. He’s signaling he is part of a particular tribe whose chief is Donald Trump, not that he’s a centrist.
He has already sold to the non Trump crowd. Maybe he can sell a whole lot more if the other team believes he is one of their own :)
https://www.google.com/finance/quote/TSLA:NASDAQ?comparison=...
Tesla stock is only at the lowest since the start of the pandemic when everything wildly inflated due to the massive influx of money into the system. It’s still radically up since 2017. The last two years were a severe anomaly.
The good news is that this rate of descent can't be maintained for much longer.
Perhaps that's the reason why Tesla is offering big discounts right now.
Actually, a stock can fall 11% every day for an infinite number of days (discreteness of pennies notwithstanding)!
In all seriousness, though, I would be very wary about thinking that "this rate of descent can't be maintained for much longer." Many stocks have lost half their value, only to then lose 50% more shortly thereafter, and then 50% more after that.
I can think of one option: The SEC halts trading on Tesla stock. They've done it before, there's no reason to believe they would not do it here.
Otherwise, isn't there a class of stocks called "penny stocks"?
See AMC.
"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
~Confucius (probably)
Seriously though, there's no natural law, perhaps other than greed, which can stop a descent. Especially for something which was (is?) irrationally overvalued.
> But I expect a floor at least somewhat above that unless even Tesla's assets end up being worth nothing.
That's the thing though, the value of stocks is only tenuously related to the value of anything Tesla (any company, really) actually does, owns, or sells. It's value is solely based on what it can be sold for. And its sale price depends solely upon what someone thinks they can sell it for at a later date.
So, aside from not going away (and buying its own stock), there's not a company can really do that can have a predictably effect on the stock price.
I've seen too many stocks move solely based on the feelings of a few stock analysts, regardless of the company's achievements, to believe otherwise.
It's just taken a while for people to see that corporate optimism needs to be held in check and be accountable. Fake-it-to-make-it is one thing, but you can only fake robot videos, solar tiles and hyperloops for so long before you completely break it.
There is an interesting rumour that Musk maybe looking to take the company private courtesy of the Saudi sovereign fund.
And that there is an effort to artificially depress the stock price to meet a purchase target.
They do own 61% of Lucid so there is precedent.
The lack of intellectual integrity in the news media in the 2020's, across the board, not just in finance, is pretty shocking.
And given they famously don't do marketing they have relied entirely on the click bait loving finance media. Can't complain now when it turns against them.
If you look back at the actual history and the actual numbers, when Tesla is punished due to macro, it's always out of proportion to what the actual business is doing. Those who have been actually following the stock know this well.
And given they famously don't do marketing they have relied entirely on the click bait loving finance media. Can't complain now when it turns against them.
Here's the thing: The finance media is generally pushing a Tesla narrative based on fear, which would be contradicted by the facts, which they never present. So there's plenty of room to complain about the accuracy and truthfulness of the media.
Tesla stock has been crazy high until recently relative to other automakers. Who is to say that this narrative is truly fear, or simply the absence of a previous hype narrative that inflated the value of the stock? Did anyone truly believe that $TSLA was worth more than the rest of the industry put together?
This is called beta [1]. Tesla’s beta is 1.9 [2]. Tesla has been falling more than 2x the market. There are obvious, firm-specific and novel risks that have emerged in the last year that are being priced in.
[1] https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/valuation/wh...
Those assumptions are somehow materialized and Tesla is growing very fast, but not in a perfect shape. Tesla's ramp up was slower than (admittedly unrealistic) market expectations so it gave its competitors too much time. FSD still looks 2 years ahead. And Elon now seems completely distracted by Twitter and making collateral damages to Tesla everyday. Given all the contexts, investors' concern seems legitimate IMO.
So it’s very hard to agree on actual value. It’s certainly not an objective number; it will always depend on assumptions about future profits and rates of change.
This isn’t a good financial situation for the lenders.
Or something like that.
Equity in an established and profitable business like Tesla is not a bad deal in the event of default, so I do not see what incentive lenders would have to renegotiate.
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4503494-tesla-stock-as-coll...
>It looks like The Guardian is hoping that Elon will do for their subscriber numbers what Trump did for the New York Times's.
https://twitter.com/paulg/status/1587079038463606787
pg's Twitter from the end of October 31, that is before he got temporarily deactivated for tweeting on December 19
>This is the last straw. I give up. You can find a link to my new Mastodon profile on my site.
Since most of Musk's cash comes from selling Tesla shares, perhaps this downward trend is a good opportunity for the U.S. government to buy SpaceX from him at a discount (or for the SpaceX investors to push for an IPO).
The only real reason why they'd want to do that, is to get rid of actual innovation in space to get back to the wasteful go-nowhere days of cost-plus contracting as a jobs program.
I guess they can finance the acquisition by transferring the debt to the company itself (probably an LBO?).
The teams are great, so it would be a matter of keeping the operational teams and the board the way they are, a separate entity, etc.
I see SpaceX as a very strategic company that can benefit everyone (hence the push for public ownership).
This would render it mediocre over time, then it would slowly wilt into the apathetic evil that killed the Challenger and Columbia astronauts.
That said, no way musk gives up his desire to rule over mars or control asteroid mining industry over a few billion dollars.
Frankly, he seems trumpish by the day. I don't think he has anyone close to him who cares for him and isn't afraid of upsetting him. Surround yourself with yes men and never apologize for anything, the true way of insecure and isolated powerful men.
NASA leadership seems to think NASA’s job is primarily to set requirements and distribute funds to contractors and to avoid managing, building, or operating anything if it can possibly be avoided. They just want to pay someone to do something and slap a NASA logo on it and pat themselves on the back for their “achievement”.
I recall ULA being more diversified across states, so it'd probably make a bunch of legislators happier anyhow.
Take a look at the Space Launch System, for example. It's not the best and it sure isn't the cheapest, but reusing factories built for Space Shuttle components does get politicians re-elected!
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://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
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
Tesla Semi: Delivers FAILURE!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3dCDNIRM34
Elon Musk DEBUNKS the Tesla Semi, BOOED, Twitter Bannings, and Tesla CRASHING
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U07ZxBE6iY8
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!