All the market correctly predicted is that the market would continue to incorrectly predict their value.
As a mental exercise, imagine there’s a bubble that went on for 5 years. They sometimes go that long or longer. Do you not think 3 years in people would think they were seeing the market just having been correct the prior few? It would look exactly the way you view this.
I don’t understand why so many don’t get this, especially after crypto currencies became a thing. The token can be DOGE or TSLA, the mechanism is the same, only marketing and PR content change, reality doesn’t matter. In fact Musk already said Tesla is not a car company anymore. Crypto opened the eyes of a lot of smart CEOs, and not in a good way, and investors look away as long as the dance continue.
I drove a Volvo after that, until landing in a very dangerous accident recently (the Volvo literally saved my life). Now I'm driving a rental Honda (which was my starter car on which I learnt to drive). Both beat Tesla by a mile.
Pray what's that mean?
So much better than my Skoda where half the dashboard fell apart and the gearbox suddenly just "crashed"
If I ever own a car again it'll be a Volvo :) won't be an EV for sure because I always buy old cars, i just hate spending a lot on a car. It's not important in my life and the past 6 years I haven't even owned one and rented one only once.
Ps totally anecdotal evidence obviously
But alas I think most major automakers are massively dropping the ball on EVs. I'm particularly disappointed in Toyota and Honda - I really expected better from them.
Where's the Corolla EV or the Civic EV? How about a nice little hatchback? Nope. Everyone's building crossovers, compact SUVs, fuckin' pickup trucks - it's a complete clownshow.
* 2021 is the last year for which Wikipedia has estimates for both vehicles. The Model 3 sold over 1m, the Model Y around 400k.
https://cleantechnica.com/2024/02/05/world-ev-sales-report-t...
Also, the number of boneheaded moves by the legacy car companies is astounding.
Ford just pushed their roadmap out a few years. Stellantis has nothing(?). Chevy dropped the ball by discontinuing their best model and then deciding not to pursue the “people that own cell phones” market segment.
I think the list of top ten global automakers will be very different in ten years. These companies seem likely to be on it (no particular order), based on current lineups of native EV platforms:
Tesla, Rivian, Volvo (polestar), Kia, Mercedes, BMW, Hyundai, and probably Ford, despite the delays.
I’m leaving Genesis and Vinfast off my US-centric list, but they’re certainly contenders.
How would one even do that?
Toyota’s gas hybrid tech has decades of track record that they will hold their value.
The market for electric vehicles that cost quite a bit more than similar size vehicles exists, but it's not like people that are shopping on a budget are going to choose based on performance and prestige, they are going to choose based on price, and conventional vehicles can still be built for lower costs.
Rav 4 gas starts at 28k, and Rav 4 prime is 43k,so 15k more
If your going to buy a 37k electric sedan, with that budget your probably not looking at a corolla anymore?
Think about who's buying Civics and Corollas. It's apartment dwellers mostly, and they don't have chargers, nor can they. Maybe their parking lot has chargers, and those will be expensive, and they could use public chargers, which are also expensive, but you're talking basically making the cost 1:1 with a gas car at that point, but less convenient, less range, heavier, and all that assumes you can even sell it in that price bracket. It simply makes no sense for the majority of consumers. You'd have to invert the gas/electric pricing, which, given current trends, isn't likely to happen.
Now will that always be the case? Very likely not, eventually we'll have cheap power, eventually enough people will be driving EV's that gasoline loses its scale advantage. Until then, the EV market will stay mid-high end, and that means crossovers/suv's/trucks/etc.
Some people view that as dreadfully bad, myself, I'm happy that EV's are being developed and sold. By the time the world is ready for them, they're going to be very, very good, and that's the point which I'll be buying one. That is assuming I don't nab myself a late 90's ford ranger with a blown motor and build my own EV first.
Meanwhile Toyota has been caught unsure of if they should build gas, electric, or hydrogen cars. Fortunately, as a fan of Toyota’s cars, it seems like they’ve figured out a good strategy forward. But for every Toyota there is a BlackBerry, IBM, Reebok, or Blockbuster who doesn’t figure out how to adapt to a changing market in time.
And Toyota is a budget to mid range brand. For high end (the customers where the premium doesn't matter) they have lexus.
It's gotten so bad that Toyota is currently actually outsourcing EVs to BYD at the same time that company is grabbing market share from them. Not a great look if you have to ask your fastest growing competitor to please build a product for you.
Tesla is of course taking a few big bets that may or may not pay off. Many people are rightfully somewhat skeptical about all that but it is a bit disingenuous to portray them as just a car company given their growing number of "definitely not a car" type products and services. E.g. battery storage is bringing in quite a bit of revenue now for them and is one of the things that is rapidly growing. And of course the whole robots, AI, and FSD angle has lots of potential. Regardless of whether you believe Tesla can do that or not.
This article is about OpenAI who is getting quite stellar valuations in that area. Tesla is of course part of that market. Toyota very much isn't.
In short, Tesla might fail or they might succeed. In the same way Toyota might recover or they might not. To be honest, both companies have issues. But I have more confidence in Tesla than Toyota. Toyota seems a company without ambition and vision. Tesla can't be accused of that. Toyota's vision is to do what all their competitors are doing right now but in ten years. Tesla's vision is to do in ten years what nobody is doing right now.
Again, you might not believe in any of that. But you might be wrong. That's the gamble you make in the stock market with either company. And the share price is just a reflection of what people buying shares right now believe.
It seems like the market has priced in gains that have yet to materialize in Tesla's fundamentals. They're still far smaller than auto makers with much lower valuations.
FTFY
It's cool that sales have increased, but so many other signs point to their run being relatively short-lived that it's not an unreasonable viewpoint to expect them not to be as strong as they are long-term.
Edit: Hell, even Musk has said they're not a car company anymore. Can anyone actually tell me what kind of company they are, then? How can I expect for them to be as successful if they're having some kind of existential crisis, for lack of a better word? Good luck getting your employees moving towards the same mission if we're not entirely clear what that is.
Edit 2: Further, they've only been selling their current lines of cars for twelve years. That's a relatively tiny amount of time compared to other leading manufacturers. That's short, and all signs point to them not really knowing where to go from here. Just because there's been growth doesn't mean it's guaranteed to continue. Downvote this comment too, disagree with it, I don't really care - time will tell how this shakes out.