Things Are Bad at Tesla. They're About to Get Much Worse
forbes.com
forbes.com
The article highlights Tesla marketplace trouble --- but it ignores the other half of a "double whammy" that envelopes Tesla.
While Musk was busy shooting his company in the foot, investors were buying his stock like crazy. And not just the "dumb money" retail investors but also the "professional" institutional investors who do this for a living. They now hold 70% of TSLA stock.
The P/E of TSLA is around 130. The P/E of GM, Ford and Toyota are all less than 10. In other words, TSLA is outrageously overpriced --- by a factor of at least 10. If TSLA was valued like other car companies (90% of TSLA revenue is from auto sales), would Musk look like a business genius? I don't think so.
Tesla's stock price and Musk's business persona are dangling by a thread being held up by these "professional investors". In my opinion, out of fear for their upcoming performance bonuses.
Once this thread is cut, Musk will own one of the worst self inflicted financial disasters in the history of business.
Yes? In that world he built tesla into only a 60 billion dollar company, along with his work at X/paypal and SpaceX. That's still incredible. (Obviously that skill hasn't transferred to government work though.)
Only $60 billion??? You're selling him way short.
At it's peak earlier this year, Tesla market cap was $1.5 TRILLION --- valued at more than all the world's major auto manufacturer's COMBINED. All while commanding only about 4% of unit sales.
Can you say O-U-T-R-A-G-E-O-U-S-L-Y over priced?
Since then, TSLA has lost almost half it's value --- and by any sane measure, it is still OUTRAGEOUSLY over priced.
Plenty of these "believers" don't have money to invest in TSLA stock.
Most of those who have invested are so-called "professionals" whose job it is to avoid falling for "puffery". These "professionals" will eventually be forced to own the fact that they have been bamboozled by a con artist. And once this starts, the wheels are going to fall off the Tesla car really fast.
Musk was claiming Cybertruck had a million preorders! A million! Yet there are ~50k sales, a 20:1 ratio. https://www.wired.com/story/where-did-the-one-million-people...
Musk keeps getting away with dumping the investors, with saying whatever crazy shit he wants. And so far, the market regulators havent once bothered to care.
Meanwhile, National Labor Board has been investigating Tesla for firing employees who complained online about sexually despairing comments. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has investigating Tesla factories for racism including slurs, racist graffiti, and nooses. uS Transportation Board has been investigating accidents caused by Actually Smart Summons and self driving modes. FAA has been investigating illegal rocket launches in Florida, & reviewing requests to turn the once experimental star base launch site into a much busier production site. CFPB would have been involved in regulating X's move to become a banking app. FEC has been investigating Musk offering $1M/day to voters who sign up for his PAC. SEC has been investigating failure to give timely notice in the Twitter acquisition, costing investors billions. EPA has been investigating multiple Tesla sites (very) improperly disposing of hazardous waste. All agencies have recent seen cuts from Musk's DOGE, with many of these investigators forced out. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-03-27/elon-musk-...
I own an EV truck and I simply cannot comprehend the animus from “truck guys”. Here is a vehicle made in a U.S. factory, powered by 100% US energy, no foreign oil, with towing capacity, torque and top speed that puts legacy vehicles to shame.
But for reasons that only make sense inside their political bubble, these trucks are threats to their way of life.
Musk’s concept vehicles with nothing but flat screens that promise to take the burden of driving away from us entirely are never going to catch on with heartland Americans.
Yes, that certainly does explain his substantial history of charity, benevolence and ethical business practices.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/12/elon_musk_appeals_voi...
The disaster you are expecting is just your wishful thinking, if you look around the web, there is an alternate reality that says the direct opposite from you.
But my gut tells me it's more likely to be the speculative investors who are engaging in wishful thinking. I haven't seen any real reason to suspect otherwise, even before the events of the last couple of years.
Sure, but that's a bit orthogonal to the question of whether the wild speculative valuations of Tesla stock will end in tears or not. Innovation, all by itself, is not sufficient or a good indicator of total value.
> apparently Elon is able to do more than one difficult thing at the same time and succeed
He's far from the only one, though, and he only appears exceptional if you ignore his much larger list of abject failures. This mythologizing of Musk is just as accurate and cringe as claims that he is terrible at everything.
Who are the many others succeeding at this scale? And it's not really mythologizing, it's just that the naysayers seem to not count his achievements to their proper size, yet they themselves probably have little to nothing to show for on that scale.
If you look around the web, you will see this alternate reality changing rapidly.
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/18/another-leading-us-bank...
Indeed, they're buying into Musk's deep vaporware product line.
I think the robots really took the cake. He wasn't even trying anymore.
And BYD had a leg up...
Germany did they same at the beginning of the last century, Japan also to the end.
Anyway, didn’t Tesla give away these patents?
https://medium.com/@mk_26304/the-genius-behind-teslas-patent...
What people are now seeing in China, with the rise of more than a half-dozen EV companies in competition with each other, would be impossible in the US. We've got nascent protectionism, total non-enforcement of anti-trust laws (and a very slow and very cowed judiciary,) a complex+selective regulatory environment, and industrial policies that shift with the weather. American manufacturing firms like Tesla and US Steel no longer know how to compete on the merits. And big tech, like big pharma, is a game where small firms are inevitably bought before they can possibly threaten the entrenched major players.
Maybe Tesla short sellers will make a fortune.
They seem to allege that BYD somehow mushroomed on the Tesla secret sauce. But really? It seems to surpass it on all angles.
I'm sure they wouldn't be beyond IP grabbing, but let's give credit where it is due. BYD cars just seem better than Teslas, regardless of subsidies, labour costs and price comparisons.
I think it's OK, if there's a lion hollering you might need some gravity and momentum to hear it and they are certainly trying to find the new polarity.
So the simplest explanation is not anyone ‘steering’ anything, but just that he’s absolutely trashed his own reputation outside what is a fairly narrow political persuasion internationally…
(The kind of pro-Trump style conservatism is fairly large in the US but a much smaller minority in much of the rest of the world, and of course the overlap of that and people who would buy EVs is even smaller)