Hacker News Reader

Comment by themgt | Hacker News Reader

Better just short all legacy automotive and include Tesla in that group, but at that point you have to wonder about these economies more generally. Tesla is falling behind but the rest of these companies are barely even in the game. The idea that Laotians and Chileans will all have $10k self-driving BYD sedans to complement their $10k Unitree robot servants while "the west" drives Toyota Corollas with v6 engines and folds their own laundry out of the dryer ... doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

View on HN

Shorting is often a bad strategy due to the hight cost if you plan to hold for the long term. And with these companies with irrational evaluations you gave no idea when the stock price will correct. Better to exlude stocks that you can't price accurately from your portefolio.

but then it moves us away from index fund.

    "Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent."
        -- John Maynard Keynes

Tesla simply shouldn't be a $1T company and that's been true for some time. Last year they sold ~1.8M vehicles in 2024 (down 1.1% from 2023), which values the company at roughly $600k per car sold.

GM has a market cap of $46B and sold roughly 3 times as many cars and that was an increase over 2023. That values GM at under $10k per car sold in 2024.

Consider Tesla sales by country [1]. A large chunk of those sales were in China. Those will get eaten by BYD and others. That says nothing about Tesla. The Chinese government always plays favorites with local companies. There is no "winning" in China for foreign companies.

Tesla relies on trade barriers to exist. In the US, Europe and Australia, the floodgates could open to much more affordable EVs from China. Even if they can survive that, it'll drive down average selling prices.

The Supercharger network is a competitive advantage but one with a ticking clock on it.

On top of all this, Elon's personal politics hurt him most with the very people who are most inclined to buy EVs: people who live in cities and care about the enviroment.

The American government tends to protect large American companies so maybe Tesla is a safe bet. But you're betting this administration or a later one not having a falling out with Elon or simply eviscerating the EV market because it's "woke". We're already getting rid of Biden's EV tax credit. That's going to hurt Tesla too.

[1]: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/tesla-sal...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com