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Comment by Alupis | Hacker News Reader

The "downward spiral" of Tesla is greatly exaggerated - almost entirely by those who hate the CEO's politics and therefore irrationally hate anything near him.

Most of your other "big" car companies are also experiencing down-trending sales. Perhaps not the the same percentage as Tesla, but as soon as people are told to hate something/someone else, sales will go back like they always have. People have a short attention span - and only a minority of people wear their politics around as some sort of identity. An even smaller minority of the people cheering on the "downward spiral" of Tesla were ever going to be a Tesla customer (ie. a luxury brand car buyer).

The "downward spiral" of Tesla is greatly exaggerated.

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> Most of your other "big" car companies are also experiencing down-trending sales.

But they're priced at P/E of 7, while TSLA is P/E of 170.

Negative growth at 170 P/E is... Much, much worse than negative growth at P/E of 7.

Honda Q2 sales are up year over year, and not just slightly. Figures came out today: https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-corporate/releases/release...

Well to be fair the new civic hybrid is a really fantastic car at a great price and exactly what most car buyers need. And additionally their model Y competitor the Passport is very nice and well priced.

I’d consider Honda a bit of an outlier considering the quality of their offering this year.

> only a minority of people wear their politics around as some sort of identity

I think you accidentally hit the nail on the head here. Yes, only a minority of people do that, and Musk is one of them! Which is a problem when your job is selling cars to people.

If you're at a 180+ P/E and you're not growing, you're in big trouble.

My thoughts exactly. I don’t care for the CEO’s politics but I don’t tie my morals of owning a vehicle to it. That’s just silly. Imagine if we did that with all other companies. Stocks rise and fall. Hell, Tesla’s has a ton. Ignore the noise.

Is Tesla's stock priced like other "big" car companies experiencing down-trending sales?

> only a minority of people wear their politics around as some sort of identity

A minority perhaps, but not an economically insignificant one. The sales of MAGA hats show that a significant number of people literally wear their politics as a form of identity.

It is and isn't. Tesla's downward spiral gets more media traction than other companies but that doesn't change the fact it is in a downward spiral. I may be one of the few people that read Tesla's recent financials and they are completely propped up by two things: Tesla holds a lot of Bitcoin which increased in value and other companies buy carbon credits from Tesla which is a large source of revenue for them. If either of these two things were to change, Tesla would be in a very bad situation. Rumor is that Trump is trying to kill the entire carbon credit thing. This would be a disaster for Tesla.

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