Tesla suffers worst quarter since 2022 as deliveries tumble
ft.com
ft.com
Of course that’s a humorous take, not a serious one but I do wonder how much of that is a part of his thinking.
I do think there is a chance he just runs Tesla into the ground and there definitely is an opportunity for another company to come in and position themselves as quality electric vehicles without the politics.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/08/13/e... | https://archive.today/LsqF9
https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musks-quest-to-make-men-great-... | https://archive.today/BgTwJ
It’s funny how fast the Hn crowd can go back and forth between asking “what radicalized you?” and looking away from the answer.
Congrats!
Like go read how he talked about it when he first started publicly fantasizing about mars about a decade ago. Ignore the technical stuff and take the few concrete details he does give about his goals per se and not just the means to accomplish them. And extrapolate out into how that could actually work as an economic or governance system. The only way it could work is as a novel configuration of indentured servitude or possibly straight up slavery. He's smoking the worst ideas from a century of dystopian sci fi and taking them as a blueprint. Literally torment nexus shit.
Or I mean the "pedo diver" thing was seven years ago, this was only just after pizzagate, it was a massive clue he was already deep in far right conspiracy theory subcultures. The article by his first wife came out years before that which sure you could have just dismissed as pure fabrication. But already by then there was enough evidence aligned with it that it was wholly credible. https://www.marieclaire.com/sex-love/a5380/millionaire-start...
Or uh, why did he leave south africa in the first place. Not why did he come to the US, which is what he tries to divert this question to if asked. Emigrating is a massive upheaval, it generally takes a lot of pressure, or anticipation of it, to get someone to do that. What pressure did he perceive to be on him?
I'm not willing or qualified to get too into the political history of south africa but 1987 is frequently mentioned in scholarship as when it became broadly clear to south africans that apartheid was going to collapse in the near future. Musk left in 1988. His father was a south african politician who resigned his party over their support of a constitutional reform that would give (limited!) representation to non-white south africans. People aren't their parents of course but a 18-year-old isn't completely free of their influence either. We'll never know for sure obviously but I think it's very likely ... why am I even writing this how can you not see it.
I ask that you read his words, look at the timing, and connect the dots. Any one of these could be a coincidence, sure, I guess. But given his more recent behavior a much simpler explanation is, again, that he was always an extremist freak.
I clocked this guy as a massive threat in like 2011 just based on vibes and kept an eye on him. I think I got this one right.
[I've edited this post rather than respond to some of the comments because I'm rate limited and out of comments for the next several hours.]
He doesn't exactly strike me as a democrat, but I would like to know his plans?
Indentured servitude I believe he proposed himself actually, though I can't find it now I think it was in a twitter thread and I don't think he used those words precisely. But the idea of people taking loans for the transit costs and then working them off on mars he endorses. That could be called a few different things based on implementation I guess but given the other information we have I find it alarming. At the very least it's company town + 21st century state surveillance apparatus + the above paragraph.
And well but anyway the larger point I was making was just that his extreme political views predate covid or his daughter coming out or democrats being mean to him or several other hypotheses that are regularly asserted. If you don't find that one compelling just skip it and check the others.
Isn't there a saying that companies/startups are all dictatorships? That's exactly what a privately-run space colony would actually be, but without any of the outlets that make working for a company tolerable (the theoretical possibility of getting a job elsewhere, being free outside of work hours, etc.).
I don't think it's helpful to use terms like "slavery" or "indentured servitude" to describe the situation, since those are legal concepts for polity where freer statuses are possible. It'd be more like North Korea. Are North Koreans slaves? Not really. Are they free? No. Do you want to be a North Korean? Probably not.
I'm not sure I see that connection. At the time I though "pedo diver" was more throwing around stereotypes about Thailand and the kinds of people who travel there (e.g full of prostitution, and foreigners seeking it) than anything to do with pizzagate. Like a bullying "Oh you went to Thailand, you must be a pedo. Ha ha, look so-and-so is a pedo!"
> The article by his first wife came out around that time too which sure you could have just dismissed as pure fabrication. But already by then there was enough evidence aligned with it that it was wholly credible.
Can you link that article, or at least give a more specific cite?
> I ask that you read his words and connect the dots.
Can you spell it out more clearly, since I don't have enough time to pour over Elon Musk's words to repeat your analysis right now?
You removed all the context. He replied to a professional diver, who dismissed Elon's useless submarine idea, with the genius retort that he was just a pedo guy. If that context doesn't change your view, then you must be fun at parties where it's fine to call people pedo if they have technical oppositions to your ideas.
> If that context doesn't change your view, then you must be fun at parties where it's fine to call people pedo if they have technical oppositions to your ideas.
I think you totally misread my point and my view of his behavior.
If a comment gets too much blowback: oh, I was just joking.
If it's popular and/or doesn't get blowback: I was absolutely serious.
I don't think Musk was joking with the pedo comment. I think we was being an asshole and a bully. He might have claimed to have been joking in his legal defense, but I think that was a lie.
But I don't think his comment has anything to do with pizzagate.
Vivian has pointed this out - Elon feels personally affronted by having a daughter. She was selected to be be male at birth in a VERY LITERAL sense. Her being transgender is an explicit rejection of his wishes, and that triggers him.
That's kinda f-ed up. I'd understand doing it once, because he wanted at least one boy, but 12 kids and all chosen to be boys? Why?
Maybe he has some dream about being a patriarch of a giant family.
Actually, considering his "pay someone else to play video games" actions, it makes sense that he's paying others to raise his kids. He seems to want the appearance but none of the work behind it.
He observed that all societies evolve from "Being" to "Having" and ultimately devolve into "The Appearance of Having".
It explains a lot of what we see with the rise of Twitter, TikTok, influencers, etc.
After Elon was spectacularly wrong he just canceled the friendship. Also forgot to pay the $1 million dollars.
- Heads: I win
- Tails: Fuck you, I'm never paying you your winnings
And yes, that's a short-term superior way to monetize one's life.
It also makes one an asshole to everyone around them.
Musk isn't interested in liberal/ecological/whatever agendas and never has been, it's a means to an end. Even his libertarian bent... go on shows/podcasts and smoke weed because hey, he's a libertarian. But work at Tesla? Better piss clean or you're fired.
Nissan Renault Hyundai Kia MG BYD
Honestly, there is no "opportunity" for an incumbent alternative to step in here, there are literal dozens of alternatives available right now for every taste and preference, sans any of the fascist political connotations.
More generally: this is what happens when someone in power gets so arrogant they totally lose sight about what they can and can't do, and what the consequences of their actions will be.
I'm reminded of this (about Musk), which is probably the root cause of his arrogance: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...:
> He has people around him who are just enablers. All these Silicon Valley people do. All his minions. And they are minions — they’re all lesser than he is in some fashion, and they all look up to him. They’re typically younger. They laugh at his jokes. Sometimes when he apologizes for a joke, which is not very often, he’ll say that the people around him thought it was funny.
It's worse than that. A significant fraction of the half that doesn't consider his political actions antithetical to their values consider EVs antithetical to their values.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/02/rivian-reports-fall-in-first...
> Rivian reported a 36% decline in first-quarter deliveries on Wednesday, as the electric-vehicle maker grapples with weak demand, sending its shares down more than 2% at the open.
> The company delivered 8,640 vehicles in the quarter ended March 31, down from 13,588 a year earlier. The deliveries, however, exceeded analysts’ average estimate of 8,200, according to Visible Alpha.
> General Motors' sales rose 17% in the first quarter of 2025
> Electric vehicle sales nearly doubled in the quarter, rising 94% to 31,887, making GM the second-largest seller of electric vehicles in the U.S. behind Tesla.
Of course GM still sells way fewer (EDIT: electric) cars than Tesla!
(But the gap is closing.)
> Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) today reported March 2025 U.S. sales of 231,335 vehicles, up 7.7 percent on a volume basis and up 11.8 percent on a daily selling rate (DSR) basis versus March 2024.
> Sales of electrified vehicles for the first quarter totaled 288,796, up 39.6 percent on a volume basis and up 43.3 percent on a DSR basis representing 50.6 percent of total sales volume.
(That includes hybrids, which they sell a lot of.)
GM sells more cars than Tesla, fewer EVs.
https://electrek.co/2025/02/04/lucid-lcid-ev-sales-climb-50-...
I guess it shows that not literally every electric car maker is suffering, but the applicability to the wider market is limited (Lucid delivered less than 1,000 units total, even after their increase).
On the other side it's weird that stock of tesla today are up ~5% even with this news.
Dang hasn't really commented anything supporting nor negating such a theory.
The stock up probably comes more from rumors (nothing explicitly stated except offhand by trump) that Elon is stepping down as head of DOGE. translation: they are making use of some contract terms for Musk to GTFO for both their sakes.
This isn't really recoverable. If the board had a spine (they don't), they'd fire him and find a new CEO.
But both correlations reverse after some level of wealth.
I can't find a source right now but I think there's some lines to draw between jobs we consider "prestigious" and party affiliation but it's not the same line to draw with wealth, i.e. a professor is considered a more prestigious role than a plumber even though the plumber likely makes more.
Yes, just read the articles about the Democrats losing the working class. There's lot of evidence and analysis in them on your very question.
IIRC, the Democrats have been tuning more and more into educated, affluent people, and those people have been tuning into liberal positions on culture war issues. These are the people who inhabit the influential positions of the party, and they set the agenda to resonate with themselves (e.g. student loan forgiveness). That caused them to lose sight of the traditional working class, and thus shed working class support.
TFA mentions this but doesn’t get into much detail.
Specific to the automobile industry, remember what VW's mistake in China was. Long story short: they taught the Chinese how to really build and scale auto production. The Chinese learned, and then shut VW out of the domestic Chinese market once they had a strong Chinese competitor - they were able to scale and produce cars for significantly cheaper.
Other companies now have decent EV offerings.
Of course, if you're conspiratorially minded, you could posit that he's taking such polarizing positions especially against the demographic more likely to purchase EVs in order to give an excuse as to why Tesla sales are down.
But I'm willing to accept that it's a bit of both. Rivian and others now have comparable EVs and Elon's been a bit of a dick.
If you want people to act calmly, don't make them desperate.
I'll just say not to cast stones in a glass house.
* Q1 tends to be a weak quarter for automotive sales in general
* EV sales in the US have been slowing
* AFAIK, basically every other EV vendor has shown better numbers for 2025Q1 in interim results.
In other words, while not all of the problems can be laid at Elon's feet, it's pretty clear that he is damaging Tesla's brand.
Predominantly because Tesla is slowing, and that's where most EV sales were - see: https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q4-2024-ev-sales/
> Most major auto manufacturers ended 2024 with record EV sales, with Tesla being a notable exception.
> General Motors increased its sales by 50% to become the second largest EV seller in the US, Ford's EV sales increased 35%,
> and Kia and Hyundai expanded by 74% and 77% respectively.
EV sales excluding Tesla in the US are expected to be up >20% across the board.
EV sales have continued to increase.
[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/02/us-carmakers-crush-it-o...
This is probably because of competition from BYD. The politics will hit starting from the next quarter.
However, Tesla is not production constrained. There is essentially no delivery backlog for the new Model Y; essentially everybody that wanted one got one. Being able to make more cars in the quarter wouldn't have significantly affected deliveries.
"As Tesla tanks, Musk’s hand-picked board chair is doing just fine" - https://www.reuters.com/investigations/tesla-tanks-musks-han...
"Elon Musk's Divorce Lawyer Is His General Counsel at Tesla" - https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/in-house/elon-musks-divor...
Mere removal from the company doesn't change their stated objections.
That's a 13% decline in sales. They delivered 3740 cars per day (assuming 90 days in quarter), instead of the 4300/day they delivered last year or the 4333/day they forecast.
If you fail to see there's massive amount of propaganda then I'm sorry for you.
He never rebuked it and in fact doubled down with jokes. So I'll call a spade a spade unless something changes.
And once again, he has been persecuted by antifa basically forever.
At least you could focus on Trumps power grab. Instead you are regurgitating propaganda.
You didn't even back up your other points. You said it was propaganda and "persecution"!, but after a comparison video that anyone can see you back off those claims and gish gallop on to something else. Are you admitting that those are ridiculous?
You didn't give any evidence that they are true and just moved on to something more ridiculous and tried to combine it with an insult. It's amazing that you would bring up 'critical thinking' while never giving a shred of evidence to back up your claims.
P.S. where’s your scrutiny for every other politician who made a salute.
P.P.S. Elon’s “mistake” was supporting AfD who is often smeared with nazi’s, because it’s an easy target. It’s a far right party and nazis are super illegal in Germany.
You made all sort of claims about persecution and instead of giving any sort of evidence you seriously say 'the onus is on you'.
People who call themselves nazis say it was a nazi salute. It is identical to hitler. There is no defense, because if there was, someone would have told you what to say and you would have repeated it here.