Tesla delays new 'affordable EV/stripped down Model Y' in the US
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GM, Ford, Toyota etc. all have a price to earning ratio (P/E) of less than 10.
Tesla has a P/E of 120.
But, but, but --- Tesla is more than just an auto manufacturer. Again, there is little in the way of actual product to justify this viewpoint. 90 percent of their income is from autos.
But, but, but --- Tesla is a "growth stock" with huge future potential. Again, the actual data shows otherwise. Sales in 2024 actually declined.
The only reason Tesla has a P/E of 120 is because the so called "smart money" (aka institutional investors) remain bought into Musk's fantasy in a big way.
Musk's best skill is con artistry and Wall Street is one of his biggest marks.
But, but, but --- robotaxis. Ditto --- same as above.
The really ominous "death cross" signal for Tesla --- their sales are declining (down 9% last quarter in the US) while EV sales overall continue to grow at a robust pace (up 11% last quarter in the US).
In other words, the competition is eating Tesla's lunch. But for some less than obvious reason, Wall Street continues to favor fantasy over facts.
https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-sales-slump-automakers...
The legacy automakers have been stagnant innovation-wise for a long, long time.
Tesla builds their own equipment to build the cars, which gives them an advantage in design flexibility. They could (or could have) conceivably eat(en) the market share of many of the legacy automakers before they could possibly catch up. I feel like most of the valuation is and was speculation in that direction. It’s not the existing auto makers to compare them to, it’s the entire auto market.
Unfortunately Elon can’t stay focused and thinks he can solve every major problem in parallel himself.
I hope the board can at some point realize that he needs to take a break from Tesla, and later come back if and when he can focus.
2023 was Tesla's best year. They sold just under 2 million vehicles --- about 12% of the global total of 14 million EVs sold.
Earlier this year, Tesla's market cap peaked at over $1.5 trillion --- more than virtually all the major auto manufacturers in the world COMBINED.
Since then, Tesla has lost more than 50% of this outrageous market cap --- and what remains still defies reasonable justification based on actual product and market performance.
Even the most optimistic projections suggest it will be another decade before EVs take a majority of auto sales. So even if you assume Tesla will own 100% of the EV market (instead of 12%) for the next decade, you still can't justify their current outrageous stock price.
https://wardsintelligence.informa.com/wi967636/global-vehicl...
"Global Vehicle Sales Top 92 Million Units in 2023"
So it seems like Telsa in their best year had about 2% of global vehicle sales.
BTW I'm not arguing that the stock price is justified. I just think it's based primarily on exuberance over their breakout success in selling actually usable EVs and actually scaling it and actually achieving profitability, and not based primarily on exuberance over their more questionable long term goals.
A well executing breakout company in the physical goods space is a breath of fresh air, and I think that is mostly what the market is reacting to and speculating on. The other explanation requires a lot of investors to be very stupid, which I don't like accepting lightly when there are alternate explanations.
I personally don't believe Elon is lying about any of this stuff. He is probably wrong, but he's not lying. He has had the ego-expanding experience of proving the haters wrong in a big way multiple times, and it has made him hubristic. This would probably happen to a lot of us in his shoes.
Yes. I revised my post above to show that 14 million in 2023 was EV sales only.
So a company with 2% of total vehicle sales and 12% of EV sales had a market cap larger than all the other auto manufacturers in the world COMBINED.
Absolutely OUTRAGEOUS!. So much for the efficient market hypothesis.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/efficientmarkethypothes...
And this is before all the politics and crash in sales due to Elon's antics.
The stock has show amazing resilience in face of continuous bad news. To summarise just the recent bad news:
- Sales are down 15% in California
- Cybertruck production has been reduced in Texas due to poor demand
- Two models have been pulled from sale in China
- RoboTaxi delayed again, this will probably never ship
- Model Y remodel delayed
It's not an awful approach when a stock already has fear and high volatility. To step it up a notch you can check the ratio of recent implied to realized volatility, and look at option skew (often Puts are extra expensive relative to calls in times of stress) as well as volatility smile shape (far out of the money tail risks can run very expensive in times of stress). All of that is easy for a retail participant, or I should say, anyone expecting to make money from shorting should probably be able to do the "middle school" stuff like this (brokers like ThinkOrSwim will have this info a few clicks/15 seconds away from typing in the ticker).
If you truly know what you are doing, short shops will do things like amplify their exposure and then use software to precisely hedge correlations (short a bank? Long a precise basket of other financials to cancel most of the broad exposure out). For others, the approach above can be nice, because in the case where you are not right about your view but not especially wrong either, the position is just harvesting risk premia which is a proven, core source of return from trading inherent to markets. Of course, if you make a bad bet you're going to get bad results. No avoiding that.
Tl;Dr a covered Put on a short position is just an inverse covered call though. Fairly simple.
It costs Tesla ~<6% of market cap (780b) to acquire Ford (40b) or GM (44b) (with a friendly ftc); so for 15% of their shares, that could become the only "American" manufacturer - then they'd probably strip those 2 for parts, end the dealer model, bust the unions, maybe keep a few of the popular models.
Some of this might be inevitable anyway, as autos become more expensive (tariffs, inflation, chips, unions), and more reliable (dealer maintenance model, fewer sales)
If the US hadn't bailed out Big Auto then maybe someone like Tesla would have been able to pick up the usable parts for pennies on the dollar.
But as things stand today, why would Tesla want Big Auto's problems?
I'm not sure he could do that even if he wanted to. Tesla stock is being used as collateral for some of his other adventures --- like Twitter/X.
I’ll wait.
They don’t?
Do they have charging stations all over the country?
I’ll wait.
They don’t?
FSD, charging stations, and the upcoming CyberCabs are Tesla’s moat, hence the stonk price.
Bad question --- Tesla doesn't actually have FSD. What they actually have is Level 2 automation that requires constant supervision just like the others.
Do they have charging stations all over the country?
Yes, they do. They are all adapting to use Tesla chargers.
https://www.motortrend.com/features/tesla-nacs-charging-port...
FSD, charging stations, and the upcoming CyberCabs are Tesla’s moat, hence the stonk price.
FSD is fake news, charging stations are now open and Cybercabs are pure wishful thinking.
In other words, Tesla has no real moat --- and market data shows it.
https://www.kbb.com/car-news/report-tesla-rehiring-laid-off-...
[1] https://www.theinformation.com/articles/electric-inside-tesl...
In Q4 2024, Tesla recorded a $600 million gain from revaluing its Bitcoin holdings
In Q4 2024 alone, Tesla earned $692 million from selling regulatory credits or carbon credits, accounting for nearly 30% of its quarterly net income of $2.33 billion. Tesla better hope Trump doesn't move away from 'environmental credits' rules. Probably won't happen, Trump seems pretty green focused.
https://carboncredits.com/teslas-carbon-credit-revenue-soars...
"Tesla speeds up odometers to avoid warranty repairs, US lawsuit claims" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43723865
"Tesla odometer mileage vs actual miles discrepancy" - https://www.reddit.com/r/ModelY/comments/106m2dz/tesla_odome...
"...Besides the disappointing result in the range test, the Tesla Model 3 had quite an unusual issue–its onboard trip meter was way off and essentially lied about the distance covered...." - https://insideevs.com/news/747548/ev-winter-range-test-norwa...
This is just more of the same - vague anecdotes. Why dig up 2 year old reddit posts to try to prove your case, when you can definitively prove it with a day's worth of test drives?
>"...Besides the disappointing result in the range test, the Tesla Model 3 had quite an unusual issue–its onboard trip meter was way off and essentially lied about the distance covered...." - https://insideevs.com/news/747548/ev-winter-range-test-norwa...
Is "trip meter" referring to the odometer, or the "estimated range" meter that's also displayed?
"...This analysis identifies over fourteen distinct mileage calculation methods employed by Tesla—ranging from predictive telemetry algorithms to energy-consumption-based estimations—documented explicitly in patent filings and regulatory disclosures. These methodologies influence not just warranty expiration timelines, service monetization, insurance premium structures, leasing mileage penalties, resale valuations, residual-value forecasting, and regulatory credit calculations but also underpin battery health indicators, vehicle range, recorded energy efficiency, and much more. Consequently, Tesla's business model exhibits a unique systemic reliance on odometer accuracy, rendering mileage reporting a fundamental rather than peripheral concern..." -
This is the "they have a patent!" argument all over again. Just because such algorithms exist, doesn't mean they're used in the odometers. It's not even suspicious that they have such algorithms. Batteries are far more complicated than a fuel tank, so even if they weren't trying to fudge odometer ratings, you'd expect them to come up with such algorithms. Finally, you still don't have a response to my main objection: why haven't done an empirical test? They spent all this time making data requests, looking up tesla patents, and digging up old reddit posts, but can't spend a day driving a tesla around to compare what the odometer says vs google maps/another car. What gives?
How difficult is to admit the man is not Tony Stark, he is just a psycho...
This is about the third time I brought this objection, but you still haven't addressed it:
"Finally, you still don't have a response to my main objection: why haven't done an empirical test? They spent all this time making data requests, looking up tesla patents, and digging up old reddit posts, but can't spend a day driving a tesla around to compare what the odometer says vs google maps/another car. What gives?"
>How difficult is to admit the man is not Tony Stark, he is just a psycho...
Quit moving the goalposts.
Also per the argument in the lawsuit, it get's worst as you get close to warranty expiration.
Maybe there is a surprise witness they did not disclosed yet.
It literally was. If you check the wikipedia page, you'd see that it was discovered because researchers from West Virginia University were testing emissions, and found it generated more emissions than expected. They weren't filing lawsuits on some vague suspicion, like the emissions smelled worse than normal, or they found some shady patents. Moreover the diselgate comparison fails because evidence of cheating in odometers are trivial to collect, compared to emissions cheating.
>Also per the argument in the lawsuit, it get's worst as you get close to warranty expiration.
Again, with all the legwork they put into making that site, they can't find a Tesla owner that's close to warranty expiration? I suppose the latter might be more work, but if you're filing a lawsuit surely you'd want a slam dunk case, rather than beating around the bush with vague circumstantial evidence?
>The court will never get their hands on the source code, and Tesla can just roll one of their overnight updates. [...] Maybe there is a surprise witness they did not disclosed it yet.
That's not how lawsuits work. One of the first things that happen in a lawsuit is discovery, where each side can ask the other side to produce documents relevant to the lawsuit, like the odometer source code. Conversely "surprise witnesses" aren't a thing outside of courtroom dramas. The entire process is ensure the trial is over the facts of the case, rather how well each side can blindside the other with surprise witnesses/evidence.
And not hated. I’m personally pressing for heightened street legality requirements for cameras-only self driving in California, New York, Canada and the EU.
Has Tesla accounted for malicious actors trying to sabotage it's vision choice and not just plain jane driving scenarios?
I think at scale and once rolled out malicious actors are going to be one of the number one economic impacts of self driving taxi economics.
They've starting hiring teams in India [0] and Malaysia [1] to work with alternative LFP suppliers.
It's most likely Agratas in India (they manufacture the batteries used in Tata and JLR's EVs) and EVE Energy in Malaysia (they began an expansion outside Chin due to EU and US tariffs).
The Modi admin has also been cultivating Trump and Stephen Miller adjacent advisors [3][4][5] at the Heritage and Hudson Foundation for a couple years now too, by trying to use Walter Russell Mead the same way Graham Allison acted as a conduit between China and the US.
And besides that, the tariffs remain oriented as a de facto blockade against China, and as long as they remain at a rate above 60-70%, Chinese sourced suppliers remain price uncompetitive.
[0] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/india-us-finalise-terms-...
[1] - https://www.reuters.com/world/india/musk-says-he-will-visit-...
[2] - https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Van...
[3] - https://indiafoundation.in/event-reports/india-study-tour-of...
[4] - https://x.com/Scholars_Stage/status/1876079122994401438
On a recent APM Marketplace episode, Kai asked one of his guests to predict how this ends, and their answer was, paraphrasing, “haha are you kidding me? I can’t even tell you what the next 24 hours is going to look like.” [1]
[1] https://pca.st/episode/6ce6c8be-c008-439f-b1a9-dc45cf48c57a?...
Inside Trump's tariff brain - https://www.axios.com/2025/04/19/inside-trump-mindset-tariff... - April 19th, 2025
We'll see about that.
Even when Trump was not president, countries like India, Israel, KSA, Japan, etc tried keeping informal relations with that sphere, which made negotiating much easier from the start.
Hell, Denmark loans out Greenland as an unofficial American protectorate and the US retaliates by seeking to just steal their territory, despite their almost insane pro-American bias. To the extent of sending the VP there to challenge Denmark's hold on its sovereign territory?
Again - that's the guy you're reasoning with?
That's before you factor in the American Right's virulent hatred for Indians, who they see as parasitic, simply for coming to work in the US on H1Bs. I hope it works out perfectly for all parties involved.
Absolutely not. The Trump admin is treating some of our closest allies horribly. That said, there was no reason not to prepare and cultivate relations in case a second Trump admin was formed.
> American Right's virulent hatred for Indians, who they see as parasitic, simply for coming to work in the US on H1Bs
Visas don't matter for the Indian right either (the National Conservative movement). It sucks horribly for the Indian diaspora, but they can't vote in Indian elections so they don't matter to Indian policymakers.
To understand how Trump or Orban or Modi administrations work and think, we need to deep dive into their own ideology (and lack of ideology). Understanding the Stephen Millers, George Birnbaums, and Amit Shahs is critical to understanding the administrations they manage.
> tariffs remain oriented as a de facto blockade against China
They’re against imports, period.
Pretty much. But I'd still disagree that this kind of lobbying doesn't have value. The UK (Vance), Israel (Kushner but now Trump Jr), and KSA have been working on building similar informal networks with the Trump admin. They can't predict everything but they can at least start understand the inner workings of the admin somewhat.
Ironically, this is similar to how China scholars and India scholars would try to approach power dynamics in both countries as well.
Clearly a severe degradation of our administrative capacity though - there's a reason diplomacy was increasingly formalized after the Gulf of Tonkin incident
> They’re against imports, period
Yep! I meant decoupling.
It's nowhere even close to solving it, and it's also no longer even the best at trying.
Elon Musk is a pathological liar.
And yet, this post will get flagged and downvoted into oblivion.
How did we get there ?
As for those downvoting - nope, I'm not hating for him or anything like that. It's just that I like to tell my kids that good guys can win. And Elon is not that.
Until he repeated, more than once, obviously egregious untruths of Trump's.
I will admit I was late to the realisation.
Elon will say whatever he feels will progress his agenda, no matter how far disconnected from reality. He's jumped the shark and is doing far more harm than good. He needs to shrink into obscurity for his own, and the rest of the world's, good.
In what way?
That's just one model and other makers are selling more cars (ad they have more models).
[1] https://www.autoweek.com/news/industry-news/a44600661/is-tes...