The vibes are off at Tesla
theverge.com
theverge.com
Model Y was the best selling car in November in all of Europe, beating out the VW Golf. Supercharger network is still best in class, and “recalls” are all typically addressed as simple OTA updates requiring no service visit.
Record sales, best and reliable charging network, and easy customer maintenance (https://www.consumerreports.org/cars/car-reliability-owner-s...).
"The cracks are already starting to show. S&P Global reports that while Tesla made up 65 percent of the EV market in the U.S., making it far and away the market leader, that number is down from 79 percent in 2020 and it’s expected to drop another 20 percent by 2025."
OP said caught up, not “catching up in 3 years”
Sure you can try and separate Elon the CEO from Elon the Twitter Influencer but he's saddled himself to Trump, and I for one wouldn't take a free Tesla. Ultimately Tesla's future is tied to Elon, the longer he's at the helm, the more likely the stock continues a downward trend. Same probably trends for all of his companies at this point.
You can't cater emotionally to the right, and hope to sell 70% of your goods to the left. Honestly, I even used to be a Musk Fan... probably if you check my comment history circa 2016-2017, the BFR, and the mars mission video had me jonesing for an interplanetary greyhound system which thus far hasn't even close to materialized on schedule. Since, a colony was supposed to be launched by 2024.
Most CEOs historically usually play close to center on politics, maybe they are openly dem/republican but they don't broadcast it all-day, till everyone is weary of listening to them rant.
Look at how spread the landscape is in the European EV capital of Norway: https://elbilstatistikk.no/
I am not sure of how many of the EVs are being registered/delivered after long wait periods, but the Model Y as a single model is being chased by every major automaker’s popular model. Nearly all competetive models are also available for cheaper (and also have access to the charging network in Norway at least.)
Speaking of Norway, Model Y just broke the previous record this year there for most registrations of all time of any car:
https://insideevs.com/news/628187/tesla-modely-bestselling-c...
Other cars still have weird edge cases and bad cold weather performance (yes even worse than that Tesla charging incident a week back).
Tesla also developed their connector long before CCS was a clear universal choice, though they do sell cars in Europe with a CCS connector as standard. In North America you just need to plug in the CCS adapter and you’re good to go from any charger you want.
Tesla also plans to open up their supercharger network in North America at some point, just as they have already in Europe. Unclear if they will retrofit stations with adapters or new cabling though
I have a feeling this would only ever happen over Elon's cold dead body
If you hate Elon, that’s fine, but the supercharger network will become available to all vehicles in North America. However that will be implemented remains to be seen, but it’s a big deal for a lot of non-tesla owners.
VW (brand) eg sold 3750 vs 5382 Tesla in December spread over ID.3, ID.4, ID.Buzz*. Add 449 Porsche Taycans, 1392 SKODAs, 2086 Audis and VW (the conglomerate) is ahead, just spread out over many models and brands.
"Record sales" are in the past. Some markets Tesla is already declining. Other carmakers either have or are about to introduce very competing products. It is easy to lead sales with few competent competitors. Not so much when other teams take to the field, with their advantages.
"Best and reliable charging network" is still a solid advantage, but how durable as standardized charging stations come online rapidly?
"Easy customer maintenance" is questionable. It seems more like if you get lucky and get a good car it's low maintenance, but if you need maintenance, good luck getting anything resembling competent and timely repairs, even under warranty. The continuous drumbeat of horror stories every week may just be the press making noise of rare events, but it is still there, and certainly enough to give potential buyers cause to look elsewhere. (N=2, but we were seriously looking at Tesla for a next car, but won't be buying one until they show serious evidence of a solid service network; multiple other mfgrs are far ahead on the list, because they have decades-old service networks and know how to run them.)
TSLA: $380B
Toyota: $188B
Ford: $45B
GM: $47B
Volkswagen: $71B
Honda: $38B
TSLA: 120B (current), yearly high of 364B That's more than half lost!
Toyota: 140B (current), yearly high is 202B, 130B for the low.
Ford: 46.39 (current) w/ a high of 100B ... in the past year.
I'm tired of sourcing the data, feel free to continue but my point is, track the trends.
The gaps and losses are way higher with Tesla and it hasn't even begun to bottom out, and is now tied to the success of Twitter apparently.
Tesla is doing just fine. As I said before [0] and about the whole market being inflated for years before the tech crash happened.
It's not like he borrowed the money from Space X by giving them TeslaBucks, and claiming that one TeslaBuck was worth $1000 USD. That would be dodgy as shit. And more analogous to what happened between FTX and Alameda.
Ref: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/15/business/elon-musk-tesla-...
Presumably that went to financing his purchase of Twitter plus paying his taxes (capital gains and taxes on his additional stock grants) and keeping some as pocket change.
With a 70%+ decline in share value, and a large percentage (Forbes reported over 90%) shares pledged, regardless of the terms Elon's margin creditors give him, I do not see how he is in compliance with Tesla's board's policy. Elon's brother had 75% of his shares pledged that are now worth 70% less, too. That don't math.