Tesla's Global Vehicle Deliveries Plunged in Second Quarter
wsj.com
wsj.com
Electric cars still cost more than gas cars in the US. This seems to be a US-only problem. Electric cars are doing fine in the rest of the world. A majority of new cars in China are electric.
Here's the BYD Dolphin Surf. Costs US$11,000 in Europe.[2] It's apparently a fairly good car. BYD has a whole range of cars, from super-cheap subcompact to supercar. BYD sold over 4 million cars in 2024. Tesla was around 1.7 million and dropping.
[1] https://techcrunch.com/2025/07/02/tesla-faces-second-straigh...
[2] https://electrek.co/2025/06/30/byd-adds-range-to-most-afford...
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/chinas...
I think you're also glossing over the impact of Musk's disastrous foray into politics, his Tweeting, and his Nazi salutes.
Other than that idk.
The solution would be to increase wages/less working hours/less financial repression in China so that they can buy the cars they produce...
They also at least need to pay for inputs and if it is only crude oil.
Here’s Model Y’s charging curve - https://evkx.net/models/tesla/model_y/model_y_long_range/cha... at 30% you’re below 150 kw
Meanwhile here’s a competitor - Kia EV6 https://evkx.net/models/kia/ev6/ev6_long_range_awd/chargingc... keeping above 150 kw at around 70%
You got the Audi Q6 with more range, more comfort - massaging seats, screens everywhere, fancy lights.
7 years with barely any progress.
Then there’s the design - Model X has never head a meaningful exterior design refresh.
Model S hasn’t had one in years since the nose design refresh.
2018 is the first year Musk’s drug abuse is documented to [1].
[1] https://www.wsj.com/business/elon-musk-illegal-drugs-e826a9e...
A real concern is that no US battery manufacturer is working on manufacturing solid state batteries at scale. There are a few small US startups, but companies in China, Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea are spending many billions of dollars on this. Prologium now claims to have shipped 2.4 million units (cells, probably) from their first manufacturing facility. That's not a huge number of cells, but a year ago there were just lab samples. Mercedes is testing these and has some cars driving around with them. About 2x the energy density of lithium-ion batteries, reportedly. Safer, and 5 minute charging if you can find a powerful enough charger.
Tesla isn't even rumored to be doing anything in this space.
(While there's a lot of talk about Mercedes' 670 miles on a charge, what's probably going to sell are cars that have maybe 300 miles of range, are cheaper and weigh less. With 5 minute charging, there's less reason to lug a huge battery around.)
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/prologium-next-generation-lit...
It's a good car and good price but freely translating Chinese prices to EU prices exaggerates slightly.
It costs the equivalent of $11k in China. It costs 19k EUR in Europe (some of this is tariffs, but they're likely also just taking advantage of how limited the sub-20k EV market is in Europe right now, and I'd expect that they have room to drop this once the VW 20k car launches).
>so many compelling alternatives
If the alternatives depend on subsidies from gas car sales, it would seem the automotive industry has not actually solved the problems (both technical and economic) necessary to transition the world off fossil fuels.
Doesn't sound like much of an alternative (for the planet), really.
Legacy auto talks a big game about the entire industry electrifying, but their actions say they're flushing money on compliance cars and stalling until they can kill EV mandates or kill Tesla or (preferably) both.
So US pays for Tesla like China does for some brands. It's the same.
And an electric car is not an alternative for gas cars. A zero km electric car has already tons and tons of CO2 on it's back because mostly of the battery.
It's not being "green". It's just make polution to be produced in another location.
>receive money from other brands to buy fake "carbon" credits
This kinda proves my point. If other automakers don't want to buy smog/ carbon credits from Tesla then make zero emission vehicles. Companies that can't make the vehicles of the future cease to exist, part of "creative destruction" which is an explicit goal in such market-based pollution policies.
We decided those are the rules of the game (because pollution sucks). Can't get offended at the players just because the rules of the game did exactly what we intended.
>they receive money from the state and from their shareholders
This is factually inaccurate.
https://about.bnef.com/insights/clean-transport/no-doubt-abo...
> As electric vehicles become a bigger part of the global car fleet, a contrarian take seems to surface every few months: are electric vehicles really that clean?
> When it comes to lifecycle emissions, the answer is a resounding yes. According to a new report by BloombergNEF, in all analyzed cases, EVs have lower lifecycle emissions than gas cars. Just how much lower depends on how far they are driven, and the cleanliness of the grid where they charge.
I get very tired of hearing/reading this fallacy. Yes, producing EVs creates carbon emissions, just like ICE cars. The difference, though, is that EVs offset those CO2 emissions after a few years of use. And some would say that the most "environmentally friendly" car choice is a used car, that is the case on a net-zero basis. Over time, that used car's emissions will surpass the cost to produce and operate an EV.
Usually, the fallacy described above is bundled with "but an EV uses electricity, mostly created by coal. So your car burns coal!" Even if this were the case (it's not [1]), energy production on a large scale is so much more efficient than using a small gasoline engine that it would still be much better from a carbon emissions standpoint.
[1] Coal is only 15% of the energy mix, I asked ChatGPT and burned lots of energy in the process.
So you prefer to have locally sourced pollution then?
Tesla is not doing all that well with self-driving cars. They're behind Waymo, Zoox, and Baidu in Level 4 systems. (Level 4: good enough for a taxi service). All the major manufacturers have a Level 2 system now. A few have a Level 3 system where the driver can sit back and watch, but has to be ready to take over, which is where Tesla is now.
There are at least 18 humanoid robots far enough along to have YouTube videos, none of which are commercially successful. There's no reason Tesla will dominate that industry, if and when it gets going.
When those industries get going, there's no reason to expect they will have high margins. Humanoid robots compete with low-wage workers. Self driving cars compete with Uber drivers.
[1] https://hgbr.org/elon-musk-unveils-teslas-ambitious-2025-vis...
The big problem is disconnects, where the autonomous system gives up and demands that the human take over. A big question with Tesla is whether "Full Self Driving (supervised)" is really a Level 3 system. It's currently "full self driving until it screws up, then it's your fault". Not "full self driving and if there's a situation it can't handle, it pulls over and parks". This is a big problem.[2]
[1] https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update
[2] https://www.kbb.com/car-advice/level-3-autonomy-what-car-buy...
Many Hyundai are already on the 800V architecture and charge faster
So tired of teslaholes and their superiority complex...
Love how every anti-tesla comment now ends with personal attack.
I have multiple physical buttons I can assign to different functions
Steering wheel buttons are pretty good on Tesla and there's tons of third party options of buttons. In fact I am not sure if there are any modern cars as hackable as Tesla (still long ways to go tho).
p.s. I had rental MB campervan few months ago. IIRC about 12 buttons with 30+ positions. Absolute nightmare to use.
Kona? Reductor gear blows up at 100k km, right as warranty expires.
Have there been some quality problems? Yes, some things were fixed under warranty.
But in my opinion after years of research, the overall experience (especially when you consider the Supercharger network) they are years ahead of any other manufacturer.
EVs (as well as PHEVs) surging in 2025 Q1 numbers.
I own an EV car, but one thing i hate is non-Tesla EV charging. Electrifiy America charging points are so tribal and time sink!
edit: *in the US
Both things have been obvious for a very long time. Better late than never.
Totally respect your opinion, but you’re positioning your opinion a bit too much like objective fact.
Enough subjectivity for you?
If we were to look at this critically, I think Tesla just misplayed the market after covid. Their cars are too expensive and too premium, which is what people wanted during covid but as the market becomes more competitive people are looking for more affordable options
If in the Year of our Lord 2025 you have to ask this question, I don't think any of the mutiple things I could link here would convince you otherwise.
You keep repeating that word. I don't think it means what you think it means.
But by all means, entertain me. What "conspiracies" do people "devote" themselves against Elon?
The top-selling car colours are white, black and grey. Most people, including those with sports cars, don’t want to drive an opinionated car day to day. Even if you agree with Elon’s politics, you may not want everyone in town to know that.
> Tesla just misplayed the market after covid. Their cars are too expensive and too premium, which is what people wanted during covid
People have wanted cheaper cars since Tesla was founded. It’s why Musk won credibility by promising a $25,000 EV.
Then he built the Cybertruck. And instead of recognising that as a failure, Musk doubled down on nonsense, first with a self-driving car with a regulatory cross-section the size of a planet, and then with a semi-focussed robotics push.
Tesla misplayed the market and continues misplaying the market. Musk’s politics now guarantee that it is a hated brand on the right and the left, which creates issues for his plans that require government support.
We all saw Musk's Nazi salutes, and incompetent fuckups in government. Also, he has been lying about the proximity of actual FSD for at least a decade. At least he stopped even trying to lie about a $25k car.