Tesla's Global Vehicle Deliveries Sank 13% in First Quarter | Hacker News Reader

Tesla's Global Vehicle Deliveries Sank 13% in First Quarter

wsj.com

I’m not one to promote any form of “cancelling” people for political positions, but as a shareholder I think I could make a very good argument that Mr. Musk abandoned his fiduciary duty to Tesla by making personal decisions that he knew would dramatically impact Tesla’s brand image and marketing position.

Earlier post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43556443

And of course because it’s about Musk the other post has already been flagged

This one hasn't: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43556716

Please put in your predictions for the 2nd quarter!

I expect it will be noticeably more than a 13% drop...

My guess is the idea that folks are waiting for a redesigned Model Y will be blown apart by April figures showing that this is brand destruction, not demand deferral.

We also haven’t seen anyone ban or put a special tariff on Teslas, or take the nuclear option, ban cameras-only self-driving cars. (The idea that Musk stepping away will politically neutralise him is nuts.)

TSLA stock price seems to be having a Wile E Coyote moment. Maybe because it can only be a meme stock now, I guess.

Net income dropped 70% YoY. Deliveries have dropped YoY. And the stock price is still higher than it was at this time last year.

Think that's because Trump and Mush are splitting up because he's a political liability. choose your "he" in that last sentence.

To be clear I have no expectation the stock will do anything when this is revealed.

Anyone here have any insight as to why TSLA has a P/E ratio of 126?

Various promises as to world changing technologies around the corner (robotaxis, optimus robots, full self driving using cameras) and the cult of Musk. You have to believe it's not an automobile company and shouldn't be priced like an automobile company.

ok but here are some massive tech companies' p/e ratios:

Amazon: 34

Alphabet: 19

NVIDIA: 37

Microsoft: 30

Most of those companies are still growing despite their size, which is boring to investors. To be a true unicorn you need shrinking sales and margins, a toxic brand, paying your hated CEO more than lifetime revenue of the company, and 2% share of the market you're in (with a valuation of more than all the competition combined).

Both AOL and Yahoo had P/E ratios above 100 at one point in time before the bubble collapsed.

Both were on a trajectory to dominance. Tesla hasn't been for 2 years.

Amazon had a P/E ratio of 3000 right before AWS started making major bank.

Musk's most basic skill is con artistry.

He conned "institutional investors" with pie in the sky promises that are now long overdue and nowhere close to being met.

Example: He bragged about having a million orders for Cybertruck. Only about 50k have been registered.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/demand-off-charts-elon-musk-1...

Now that these "investment professionals" bought what he was selling in a big way (they hold 70% of the stock), they are reluctant to admit they were snookered by selling and locking in their losses. Their upcoming performances bonuses hang in the balance.

I guess it's a good thing for TSLA shareholders that it's a meme stock that has nothing to do with the performance of Tesla.

2024Q1 was already a bad quarter to compare against. It was already %10 down compared to 2023.

I am honestly surprised that it's only 13% and not more. Is it because January was "normal"?

There was already some antiTesla sentiment brewing, has been for quite a while but once he actually started his chainsaw schtick on the real government sentiment went down hill FAST.

Tesla has been vehemently opposed virtually since their founding. Only the hats of the opposition changed.

It is because most of this was expected, even without turmoil. Model Y transitioned from the previous design to an updated design, leading to factory downtimes and a near complete sellout for this quarter. That one model represents ~2/3rds of Tesla sales volume. They kept sellable Model Y inventory to nearly zero, despite massive protests right at the end of quarter.

Q2 is the one to look at to measure actual sales impacts from the protests. The ramp for new Model Y has been fairly smooth, so it should be a full quarter of normal production if demand is there.

Model 3 sales are also down.

This quarter should be fairly representative. February Model Y sales were down significantly for the reason you espouse. March Y sales are up substantially due to unfulfilled orders for February and enhanced demand due to the new model.

However, Model Y availability is now "next day", meaning that the March bump is over.

New Model Y deliveries didn't really get to a good pace in the US until about mid-March.

Toward the end of the month, people said the new Y delivery was "same day" in the US. I looked and saw a few available, but only really specific color and wheel combinations. By the end of the quarter, those were gone and delivery times had jumped to ~2 weeks. All of this stuff varies a bit regionally, but it doesn't seem like they were sitting on meaningful inventory at the end.

I don't think extrapolating from this quarter to anything is particularly easy. It will get even more confusing in the second half, and next year, as they start self-delivering for "robotaxi" operations.

They might not have inventory (aka next day availability), but ~2 week availability means that they aren't production constrained and have already satisfied extraordinary demand for the new Model Y and are back to ordinary demand. When they were production constrained, delivery estimates were much longer than 2 weeks.

Tesla has the capacity to produce 2.5 to 3 million cars a year. They are constantly building new capacity.

The fact that they aren't production constrained isn't indicative of a decline is demand since the company only sold 1.7M cars last year.

The indication of a decline of demand is the decline in the number of sales we've seen over the last few quarters.

Well, January was indeed special, at least in Canada where four Tesla showrooms sold 8600 cars in just three days. https://fortune.com/2025/03/26/elon-musk-tesla-under-investi...

Tesla cars are sold online, not at dealerships or "showrooms" like other cars. A surge of buyers trying to cash in on $5k in rebates before it runs out isn't implausible.

At $75, Snap was priced like Tesla. like the next dominant product, It's now about a tenth of that,

But what about the robots and robotaxis?

OK, sure, what about the glasses?

[dupe]

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