The stock has certainly responded, although only time will tell if it'll return to a more sensible valuation.

My guess is that this robotaxi launch will make or break the company. If the product looks like any other first-gen driverless service, Tesla is screwed.

The price to upgrade all those older Teslas is gonna be gigantic and the company is already heavily scrutinized for their lackadaisical approach to QA and safety.

Stock is betting on VP Musk continuing to pull up the ladder for all the EV competitors. Tesla CEO Musk got his fed grants to build out his charger network, now it's time to make sure no one else does so his remains on top.

Downvote if you must, but the man knows how to protect his moats while branding it "ending wasteful government spending".

Down 5% today 11.6% this week 14% this month

The stock seems to be waking up to the problem. Sales are down 12% in Europe in Jan. Down 60% in Germany. Apparently German electric car drivers are not fans of Nazis. Who knew?

He said “partly” — seems reasonable that throwing nazi salutes around might have a partial impact on declining sales?

Oh no, it's in great part due to his antics. Owning a Tesla used to be about a positive future, the transition to sustainability, and with great engineering and making it sexy. Now owning a Tesla seems to be about kneeling to Moloch, paying for plutocracy, gleefully cutting basic food aid for the world's poorest starving children, undermining democracy around the world, and yes even doing a fascist salute. So, you want that as your brand? And yes, there's now much better competition, but unlike what one might gather from certain "conservative" news sources, the EV market has grown and continues to grow. [1] My guess is Tesla sales will continue to collapse.

The robo-taxi attempt is fraught and Musk's mind seems elsewhere -- swinging a wrecking ball on government, turning Twitter into his microphone (with great damage to its value and creating a real opening for competitors), posting videogame results reminiscent of the old North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung-style, where the newspaper would report on his games of golf in which he swung 18 hole-in-ones.

By hitching his wagon to political movements most despised by the consumers of EVs he's alienated Tesla's audience. By his further actions he's shocked and disgusted them so that driving a Tesla is becoming an embarrassment. The brand is kaput.

There's maybe a separate China story but it's no better. Tesla taxis in China, really?

[1] Global electric vehicle sales up 25% in record 2024 - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/global...

> To me it seems to have very little to do with his antics.

For your hypothesis to make sense, first you would have to establish that Musk's antics have no negative impact on Musk's public opinion or public image.

In the meantime, you've started to see a global wave of both Tesla stores and Tesla cars being vandalized in protest over Musk's public support for Nazism. In some cases such as Germany you even had public protests against the neonazi party that Musk supports and promotes.

So you establish the fact that throughout the world people started protesting Musk due to his public actions. Do you think this change in public sentiment brings with it a neutral impact on sales?

EV sales are generally growing in Europe

Tesla sales are static or shrinking

Take January YoY in the UK, EV sales rose 24%, Tesla's sales dropped 8% ish

Tesla is a very very nice computer with a decent car attached to it.

In the best of times Musk's leadership brought us stuff like "Joe Mode" just because he saw someone complain on Twitter.

Now he's completely unhinged and we can't trust him even as much as before. He might just decide something crazy and force the factories to change it just because.

Looking at the 'best selling car' creates a distorted view

Tesla's sales are spread over a few models, VW's EV sales are spread over ten or so models

It's either "a new car" or the same model that accounts for nearly all Tesla sales making it "best selling" compared to makers with newer cars and a wider selection. So... which?

Pretty sure most people would have a mental breakdown if given 50 billion.

Imagine if pretending to be your friend was basically a fortune 500 size industry.

I remember when we thought we could just pay Trump 1-2 billion to go away. That would've been a good deal and is cheap in retrospect. And maybe Biden should have pardoned him immediately to kick the can down the road on SCOTUS deciding to allow Presidential immunity.. It probably would've happened anyway but it would've given the project2025 and Thiel libertarians less time to organize.

yea, his mental breakdown.

Come on, you cannot have missed this.

We started seeing signs of it when he called that diver rescuer a pedophile. Most recently its been him caught lying about him being the greatest gamer in the world and being one of his biggest fans (Adrian Dittman).

And then high on ketamine doing that salute on the inaguration

Musk is the living embodiment of the ultra rich wet dream.

Nazi salute (two actually) on national television? Destroy government extra legally with presidential pardon immunity? Bust on minorities etc with social impunity?

He doesn't just have eff you money, he has eff you status. No longer being restricted to the milquetoast middle ground CEO trap. Unrestricted treatment of low money people as subhumans. nothing like rights or laws to get in the way.

Thing is, his stock is very very tied to perception, which is a synonym for "hype".

You can see this emerging unrestraint coming from virtually all of silicon valley "leadership". Allin podcast. Zuck the MMA wannabe. Larry Ellison (the archetype) in orbit with trump. Gleeful twitters about eliminating all jobs with AI.

And yet we are entering an era of geopolitical uncertainty, war, reonshoring of manufacturing. To fight looming conflicts with China and Russia, what is needed is functioning institutional democracy, not venal banal oligarchical corruption.

The other historical danger is that the rich poor gap is indicative of a forthcoming rebellion of the lower class. Trump is himself a symptom of this, and while the poor continue to divide themselves between the two parties, Trump shows that wild unpredictable swings in voter sentiment can bring unexpected candidates to the fore.

All it takes is one charismatic candidate to pledge to cull the rich and being universal healthcare...

What about criminal use of punctuation? :)

Although... 4D chess move, if a state starts prosecution against Musk, get the DoJ to do it first and then pardon him after the fact.

Double jeopardy would stop the state from continuing with the prosecution, and the pardon means no consequences.

I hate that I consider this an actually possibly.

I listen to Cohen on his podcast and on YT. He was once Trump's right hand man, they were buddies for 15+ years. Even he says Trump will cast Elon aside when he is no longer useful.

I know a lot of people don't like Cohen. I have my own friends I've had for 15+ years and I know them well, just as much as Cohen knows Trump, so I feel there might be some validity to his thoughts.

I kinda like to think that Jeff Bezos is whispering in Trump's ear, hoping for this inevitable outcome, and waiting to pick up the pieces with Blue Origin.

I've thought that too (you articulated it well). I mean, there are other uber rich in the world that, you know, are president of a different country — and might feel threatened by Musk's wealth.

I too would have liked to see Musk go to Mars.

I have thought the same thing. Musk can protect himself from the average nutjob but he is working very hard to make the kinds of enemies he will NOT be able to protect himself from.

Like that time he was summoned to Israel and "convinced" to tow the line? He looked like a school kid being told off by the principle.

September? It's early February. You really think it'll take 7 months?

The weak Aussie dollar and the low cost of BYD cars is what did that.

Also, Tesla stopped selling the Model S here.

and plenty of other great cars. Zeekr X looks tasty. So many choices Americans won't ever have because Musk owns that country now.

Might not be enough data for good statistical significance yet, but IIRC the "die in a fire" probability in a Tesla Refrigerator is something like 17x the Ford Pinto based on current numbers.

European countries are quite capable of making their own judgement about a gesture, especially when it would be illegal in France and Germany.

https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2025-01/elon-musk-hitler-salute-i...

Obviously this is room for a flame war, but I don’t think the poster was being deliberately malicious, rather it is perfectly reasonable to interpret the gesture as a nazi salute. You may disagree that it was.

We shouldn’t let that argument distract from the impact it has had on Tesla demand in Europe. For me personally it was the final straw and I won’t be buying one as I had hoped to.

Along with other actions certain to hit sales, and the lack of an apology (which would have been wise, even if you didn’t mean it as a nazi salute) suggests that Musk doesn’t care about Tesla car sales.

I suspect he knows the writing is on the wall for Tesla, so he’s betting on robotics as an escape hatch. I wonder if he’s also hoping tariffs against china will help vs their EVs. Either way, I don’t see much hope for Tesla right now.

Must has spent quite a lot of time recently supporting far right groups. Most likely he picked it up unconsciously.

Guy who talks like a nazi, supports nazi parties, boosts nazis on his social media platform does a nazi salute and you still doubt what he meant?

> Elon is not known for his hate of Jewish people.

You might not know him for that, but people who pay attention do.

https://www.cnn.com/2023/11/17/business/elon-musk-reveals-hi...

How is it misinformation? It's obvious what it was. Doesn't mean he's a Nazi, maybe he's "just" a '90s era trolling edgelord. Come to think of it, considering his X shitposts he boosts to hundreds of millions of people every day, that's a good description of him.

[To people who think he's a Nazi: yes, I've read all the arguments, no, I don't care - giving him the benefit of the doubt still makes him a gigantic shitlord who think its funny to do Nazi salutes.]

You forgot the /s tag.

Musk has been going to far right rallies and jew hating for some time now.

eg: https://clearthis.page/?u=https://www.crikey.com.au/2025/01/...

Misinformation? There are multiple videos of Elon doing a Nazi salute.

The goalpost does not need to be moved to "if he's not literally operating a gas chamber, he's fine".

The best interpretation is that he doesn't care how it looks to others when he does a Nazi salute. Like others said, he's more 90s edgelord than actual jew-hating Nazi.

And the car markets in Europe are showing him what they think of people who do Nazi salutes publicly.

Everyone who saw the speech, saw the three (!) Heil Hitlers and the ensuing smirk that said “whatcha gonna do, suckers?”.

Pretending at equivocating just to troll will tank your own credibility.

If it was standalone event you could perhaps argue it was accidental. But the fact that he is supporting Afd who had done similar things in the past where they run a campaign, and make nazi symbolism in such a way that it would be barely legal, but at the same time obvious to everyone what they are referring to, it is pretty damning.

I'm curious if you know what a Nazi salute looks like? Make a comparison by looking it up, he does the salute twice.

Of course you can argue in bad faith because it costs you nothing to be wrong but does that imply you are promoting this behavior? Seems like the obvious implication

The media is outraged because a duck quacks like a duck

You mean the German newspaper Zeit with headlines like "Ein Hitlergruß ist ein Hitlergruß ist ein Hitlergruß"

It WAS a Nazi salute, and claiming otherwise is textbook gaslighting.