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Comment by andsoitis | Hacker News Reader

Company value is dependent on expected future profit/revenue/etc. not market share per se.

If the market grows in size and you’re able to grow revenue and profit, reduced market share in and of itself doesn’t matter.

While the U.S. market share has declined, Tesla's overall annual revenue has continued to grow from $11.75 billion in 2017 to over $97 billion in 2024, though it saw a slight decline in revenue for the 12 months ending June 30, 2025.

https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/TSLA/tesla/revenue

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> If the market grows in size and you’re able to grow revenue and profit, reduced market share in and of itself doesn’t matter.

The Tesla story and its high valuation were based on the idea that Tesla had won the car market, others couldn’t catch up, and Tesla was going to be doing laps around the competition with all of their additional business lines that grew out of their class-leading EV business.

If their EV business is losing market share, that really is a problem for the narrative. They could be fine as an EV company, but they’ve sold themselves as something far more.

> Tesla's overall annual revenue has continued to grow from $11.75 billion in 2017

2017 was forever ago in technology and economic terms. The most important problem right now is that their revenue isn’t growing while everyone else is getting better at EVs.

Most of the issue is that their competitors are selling at a big loss. Ford admitted so recently and are starting to make fewer cars. Rivian and lucid are also hemmoraging money.

Without the tax credit these companies may cease to exist or stop making evs in the case of Ford.

It's likely they will have fewer competitors soon

> If their EV business is losing market share, that really is a problem for the narrative. They could be fine as an EV company, but they’ve sold themselves as something far more.

Long-term growth is pinned on success in AI, robotics, robotaxis, and autonomous services.

> The Tesla story and its high valuation were based on the idea that Tesla had won the car market, others couldn’t catch up

This story never made sense. They sold about 1.8 million cars in 2024 (and also in 2023), VAG sold 9 million. Tesla is no where close to winning the car market. Until recently, Ford regularly sold more F-Series than Tesla sold cars.

Sure, for quite some time, Tesla was selling a lot more EVs than anyone else. But, building EVs is supposed to be easier than building ICE cars, and some of the old guard auto manufacturers have been building cars for hundreds of years... Once they decide to build EVs and figure out the logistics of batteries, they're going to have no trouble building EVs or selling them, and then Tesla is left with the moat of the Musk Reality Distortion Field which seems to be weaker now than ever.

When nobody else was making competent EVs, Telsa's market value was clear. Now, I don't know. There are so many to choose from, but what does a Tesla give you that some other EV doesn't?

As the link you provided shows Tesla's revenues have been flat almost 3 years now.

> As the link you provided shows Tesla's revenues have been flat almost 3 years now.

2024: $97.69 B, i.e. +0.95% vs. 2023

2023: $96.77 B, i.e. +18.8% vs. 2022

2022: $81.46 B, i.e. +51.35% vs. 2021

So flat for 1 year (going into 2024) and we don't yet know 2025 numbers, which is less pessimistic than your "almost 3 years flat".

2025 is half done, and Tesla is down about $3B/quarter compared to last year already. If that trend keeps up, then 2025 will come in around $85B or so. (Although analyst expectations seem to be that Q3 and Q4 will jump back to 2024 levels, which... really defies all the available evidence.)

Trailing 3 years meaning last 12 quaters (3×4)

  2022-Q3 $21.5B revenue
  2025-Q2 $22.5b revenue

Anything happen in 2022?

If you adjust for inflation, the 2022-2023 rise is going to look fairly anaemic (and 23-24 is a drop, of course).

Marketshare is how revenue is determined. If the market as whole grows but Tesla's share of it does not at least stay static, it means it is losing revenue.

That's not how revenue is determined. Revenue is determined by, well, revenue.

You can lose market share and increase revenue if the market is growing fast enough.

If you measure market share by units moved (as many markets are measured), you can raise prices and increase revenue despite lower unit sales and lost market share.

If the total sales of a market = 100 and Tesla has 20% share then it has 20 in revenue.

Basic math dude.

There’s such a thing as a top down vs bottom up approach.

You could technically guess it that way, in an incredibly simplified market if you didn’t have the actual number available to you. The car market isn’t incredibly simplified, and we do have the revenue number.

The numbers cited in the article are units sold. Tesla has 38% of 128k cars sold. Now tell me what the Tesla revenue was using your method?

See why serious people just look at what revenue was to determine what revenue was? It’s not a “bottom up” approach, it’s a “look at that reported and audited number and tell me what it is” approach.

Did you figure out what the revenue is yet, I'm super curious about how close the "top down" approach is going to be to reality. Don't forget that Tesla has revenue from non car products!

> If the total sales of a market = 100 and Tesla has 20% share then it has 20 in revenue.

Okay. And if the total sales of a market = 1000 and Tesla has 10% share then it has 100 in revenue. That's how percentages work.

Losing market share as a percentage is expected in a growing market as new players enter.

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