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If we just look at these cars purely on their merits, I think they’d still struggle.

You’re talking about a very expensive car with tons of basic quality control issues. The EV market has stalled. I don’t need a car, but I’d probably stick to a classic gas car. Charging stations are still too few in the US.

Teslas feel like luxury secondary cars. With the economy the way it is they won’t sell well

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> The EV market has stalled.

The EV market grew 10% YoY in Q125. Tesla has declined.

https://www.coxautoinc.com/market-insights/q1-2025-ev-sales/

Ok, the near 100K EV car market has stalled.

Regardless not enough charging stations exist for me, if I’m going to buy a car I want to be able to drive it cross country.

Unless you live in Dakotas, there are likely enough fast charging stations nearby for any trip.

For travels along the coasts, it doesn't even require planning. Just hop in and start driving.

It’s not clear those stations are going to be around much longer.

https://electrek.co/2025/02/21/trump-to-shut-down-all-8000-e...

Do you really want to buy a new EV and risk your local charging station shutting down in 18 months

The stations near Federal buildings are slow chargers, they don't matter for road trips. Most fast chargers are commercial, and are not susceptible to Trump's meddling.

You can use Plugshare to look up stations near you. Set the filter to 100kW or faster charging.

The Dakotas are fine. They're better covered than Saskatchewan and we visited there in a Tesla. Superchargers on the highway, the friends and family we visited all had welders so had high amperage 240V, and campgrounds also let us charge overnight.

> Ok, the near 100K EV car market has stalled.

Meh. The near 100k EV market was never going to make a serious impact on GHG emissions, nor save consumers much in fuel costs.

Bring on the near 30K market.

>The EV market has stalled. I don’t need a car, but I’d probably stick to a classic gas car.

Why is this argument frequently framed as either/or?

I love my hybrid vehicle (the Toyota gearbox is incredible, and apparently more reliable than a manual transmission).

Frankly, I rather the simplicity of one drive train over a hybrid. The plug in charging is short ranged enough that it's not meaningful and you still need to maintain all the combustion stuff.

Hybrids may be the best of both worlds, but they're also the worst of both worlds.

I recently drove a Suzuki Vitara Hybrid for 4-5 days. The only downside I saw is its fuel consumption is very low.

Also, this one is not a fancy hybrid like Toyota's one. It has a motor between the engine and the gearbox. It also does regen braking, but that's all.

My colleague's Toyota C-HR's fuel consumption is also pretty bad. Half of its nearest competitor, and lower than most car's highway consumption, in the city.

My hybrid doesn't even plug in... only has a 1kWH battery... and is warranted for 150k miles / 10 years.

I traded-in a turbo-charged petrol-only vehicle, so I definitely understand your wanting to reduce complexity. My Camry is about as fast as the Subaru, and gets 2.5x the mileage on low-octane (city driving, primarily: high-40's).

On roadtrips the battery really isn't that helpful (other than brief accelerations), dropping to ~38 mpg.

> The plug in charging is short ranged enough that it's not meaningful and you still need to maintain all the combustion stuff.

Probably depends on usage patterns; I know someone with one of the plugin BMWs, and they effectively never end up running on petrol.

So fuel goes off after a month or so and can damage your engine. If they never run the fuel, do they add stabilizers? Do they just accept the reduced engine life? Or do they run with an empty tank?

AIUI most plugin hybrids have sealed pressurised fuel tanks, which prolong the life; many will also automatically use the engine such that they consume a full tank once every six months or something even if battery power is always available.

I use ethanol-free (i.e. 100%) gasoline in my hybrid; the gas tank is also pressurized. These combine to give shelf-stable fuel, for years.

Where do you find ethanol-free gasoline? I haven't seen that in decades.

Hybrids are gas cars.

The EV market has not stalled. Tesla has stalled and declined.

If and when autopilot achieves level 3, the economic equation changes substantially. Whoever does it, I'd be in line demanding that they take my money. After years of false promises I understand the skepticism, but think that the industry is finally getting close. Tesla's large Cybercab bet depends on it so they are demonstrating their confidence in cash. From the beginning it has been Tesla's strategy to leverage the luxury market to fund their market-wide ambitions.

Yeah, but there are actually autonomous cabs rolling out to my metro, and Tesla didn't build them...

So it won't be a monopoly. Which means you're right back to a cutthroat, low margin business.

Personally... I'm generally a "buy the whole market" kind of investor. But I'm actively looking to exclude Tesla. It's shaping up to be a complete and total bust.

How would you exclude Tesla?

There are probably ETFs that are something like "all of S&P except for Tesla".

Buy a broad-market ETF, and then short the exact amount of TSLA in that ETF's holdings?

I looked into it, you need to do something called “direct indexing” if you want to specifically exclude a stock. Here is one example, Wealthfront can also do it.

https://www.schwab.com/direct-indexing

Calls on SPY, puts on Tesla.

You're exposing yourself to tracking error every time the index rebalances. If you want to show it to the man, just go to a protest while buying a cheap index fund.

I don't personally care enough, I made my point years ago when I bought my EV from a different manufacturer.

Not super relevant. The point is using puts to hedge out Tesla is a bad way to buy the market ex Tesla.

If you want to buy the market and bet against Tesla, it's actually a great way. It may not be the most profitable, but that's never been the point doing something out of protest or spite.

> If you want to buy the market and bet against Tesla, it's actually a great way

Nope. Certainly not in the long term. You’re better off direct indexing. If you don’t have enough money to direct index, you’re wasting money.

I'm not wasting any money, because I don't personally care enough to follow this strategy. Thanks for the info though.

> Yeah, but there are actually autonomous cabs rolling out to my metro

The economic difference is that a level 2 cab requires much higher remote labor costs than a level 3 cab to achieve the same productivity, almost by definition of "level 3". As long as a cab company has that advantage they can undercut the competition by price and still make a profit. That advantage is definitely not yet a given. It could even be achieved by open source models and go global for everyone at once. In that scenario Tesla still starts with a large advantage in cost per cab over everyone but BYD.

> Tesla still starts with a large advantage in cost per cab over everyone but BYD

Waymo is way ahead of Tesla.

>In that scenario Tesla still starts with a large advantage in cost per cab over everyone but BYD.

They literally don't have a cab.

Waymo is driving people around right now.

> If and when autopilot achieves level 3, the economic equation changes substantially.

How so?

It kills me that no one else has an "autopilot" on par with Tesla's. All the competitors have very limited scope and tight constraints on conditions. Tesla is the only one you can take into a new neighborhood and it will drive around without saying "sorry not available here".

If you're doing that in my neighborhood, better watch out because I am prepared to defend my family and friends from your monstrosity with considered force and those vehicles are quite easy to "manage" for anyone who knows anything about it.

"Rocket man bad" at it's finest

Level 3 is not useful. Humans can't do the rapid task switch that's imagined, so in practice you're still supervising the car at all times even though notionally SAE says that's not what you're doing. Or, likely, you aren't supervising (e.g. you're looking at your phone) and so each such transition is incredibly dangerous.

Mercedes Drive-Pilot is level 3 and available now, apparently. Looks like recently updated to work up to 95km/h.

https://group.mercedes-benz.com/innovations/product-innovati...

> If and when autopilot achieves level 3, the economic equation changes substantially

The market is limited to America. Nobody is going to let Tesla develop a monopoly (or even commanding lead) in their country for self-driving cars after the way Musk has behaved with Starlink. (I suspect a ban on cameras-only self-driving cars would be popular in e.g. California and New York, too.)

Stalled? Saw a BYD Shark in Texas yesterday.

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