The decision represents an abandonment of a longstanding goal that Tesla chief Elon Musk has often characterized as its primary mission: affordable electric cars for the masses. His first “master plan”, opens new tab for the company in 2006 called for manufacturing luxury models first, then using the profits to finance a “low cost family car.”
Tesla shares were down about 3% in early afternoon trading after the Reuters report.
Musk has since repeatedly promised such a vehicle to investors and consumers. As recently as January, Musk told investors that Tesla planned to start production of the affordable model at its Texas factory in the second half of 2025, following an exclusive Reuters report detailing those plans.
I don’t understand how the stock price doesn’t crash. I thought the whole basis for the ridiculous value was the idea that eventually nearly everyone would be driving a Tesla but here they are just backing out of a massive market to focus on shitty ‘luxury’ EVs. I just don’t get how the price hasn’t caught up to reality yet.
Share prices catching up to reality, good one 🤣🤣🤣
Yeah those two words rarely belong in the same paragraph.
Last year their revenue from selling cars, powerwalls, and solar tiles was around $90 million. Makes the stock price seem crazy, yes. But then they sold $1.8 billion of carbon credits to other auto manufacturers, and that costs them basically nothing. Still doesn’t justify the stock price, but makes it less ridiculous. Selling carbon credits is Tesla’s main business at this point, the things they make just provide the justification for it.
That math doesn’t seem right. If you use $50k as an average price their cars sell for then $90,000,000 / $50,000 is 1800 cars. Tesla sold 1.8 million cars in 2023.
Personally I don’t understand it either, but I think the thesis is/was that Tesla isn’t just a car company.
So beyond just the car business you’d also have the vertical manufacturing including batteries, eventually autonomous self driving, the charging network, and even at people’s homes stuff like the solar roofs.
How that ever made them more expensive than basically the rest of the car industry combined I don’t know.
I could see the high evaluation if they have a lead in self driving, but they don’t have any edge compared to their competitors including Google/wamyo, Mercedes and so on
It’s pretty simple. The market is not rational, and anyone trying to convince you otherwise is an idiot
In fairness, tesla is not just a car company. Batteries and solar are a significant and growing part of their business.
Their plan was always to popularize evs and then sell batteries to Ford, Chevy, and all the others.
Same here. I’ve been a huge fan of Tesla disrupting the car industry and have been one of those seeing the potential for ridiculous growth, but wtf? Where’s the growth potential for cars now?
Sure, Tesla does other things but I find it hard to believe they have the growth rate and profit margin of cars. There’s no way the company has ridiculous growth off the other stuff: it may still be big and more stable of a market but it’s much slower growth.
I glossed over the previous stock dips with reckless optimism, but I don’t see why it didn’t immediately tank this time
I, for one, cannot believe Tesla went back on a promise.
So Biden is trying to block the import of BYD cars, and now Tesla isn’t making an affordable car, where are we supposed to get affordable electric cars from now?
There’s all of the other automakers that are dipping their toes into the electric market.
Oh wait, they are all leaning hard into SUVs. Nevermind.
How else would they be able to keep shaming poor people and telling them climate change is their fault?
It’s dooming the majority of US car buyers to a used market where they will struggle to find an affordable EV whose battery isn’t toast when there is a comparable ICE vehicle for just a little less than the EV.
Cue shifting the blame to poor people and increasing gas taxes on consumer vehicles.
Didn’t something similar go down in France?
That’s what happens when the major incentive from subsidies and tax breaks is focused on SUV production. We need more regulation on safety and functionality as well as deeper incentives to cover the range of market needs instead of a single weight class.
Kia has a reletively affordable one, its a game of wrapping your head and accepting its a Kia.
Elon lied about something? I’m shocked!
Ok, I’m not that shocked.
Eh, he’s an awful person and frequent liar, but not this time. Modifying plans as market conditions are changing isn’t the same thing as lying. Few people were taking Chinese automakers seriously in 2006.
Anyone with a minute of spare time and access to the Internet can easily see why this is the end of Tesla as an independent company. Success in the automobile market is cars for the masses. Time and time you see a company who made it bread and butter on small cars buying up luxury brands as they failed
- VW owns Lamborghini and Bentley
- Tata owns Jaguar Land Rover
- Fiat owns Maserati (and apparently 12 other bands) Aston is independent but has declared bankruptcy seven times. And Ferrari used to part of Fiat but was spun off)
I am sure there is more, the money is and has always been in small cheap cars. Making luxury only cars is a road to failure.
What do Chinese EVs have to do with the American market?
BYD (Chinese company) is building an auto plant in Mexico specifically so they can sell in the North American market. Their EVs are actually pretty decent and sold like hotcakes in SEA and home markets. They’re set to produce and sell locally in Europe, Africa, SA and NA now. Their cars are targetting the sub-$20k-$24k market. Overseas their cars sell for the equivalent of $14k-$19k
Does this mean BYD will be able to sell Mexican produced cars in America?
I’d honestly be surprised if they didn’t update the laws to prevent Chinese competition no matter what the companies do. They’ve done it for the auto industry in the past, to countries they’re not hostile towards, and they’ve done it to Chinese companies in other industries with substantial lobbying dollars, notably phones, IT infra, social media, and weapon manufacture.
There is Mexican competition too in this sector. They’re building their own national brand of EV and are gunning to beat BYD to the market.
And despite the Lemmy/Reddit circle jerk that “EVs are bad”, BYD pass the notoriously strict Australian safety standards and sell well here. The BYD Seal seems to be everywhere of late
The theory is that if they were able to be sold here at a reasonable price while meeting our much stricter safety standards, it would create competition and this apply downward pressure on prices.
So Biden blocked Chinese EV from entering the American market in order to keep automaker CEOs wealthy af? I feel like this is a silly question to bring up, but why is it that a car can be built in China, shipped to the other side of the planet, eat the cost of tariffs, and it’s still either so good or so cheap that it is dangerous competition to American automakers? It kinda feels like we only encourage free market capitalism until old money gets challenged by innovation. It’s frustrating. We want boring, basic sedans with limited features with EV tech slapped inside instead of ICE tech, and we want to pay under $25k for it. I’m all for phasing out ICE vehicles, but every EV is a luxury vehicle at a time when half the country is living paycheck to paycheck. We need uncool, cheap EVs to replace uncool, cheap gasoline cars. We need a Prius or Yaris of EVs. We need Civic and Accord EVs. Taurus, Impala, Neon, Escort, etc. Average Americans don’t want and cannot afford a goddamn EV Escalade or whatever.
The Nissan Leaf is pretty decent. Grab a used one and it’s quite cheap.
I just checked and even new, base model ones are right around the price point I said. I’ll keep an eye on Nissan. I have heard good things about Kia/Hyundai EVs too but I haven’t done much research. I’m hoping to not need a new vehicle for a long while, so I’m not particularly motivated to dig deep yet.
As a civic owner. Yes please, give me an electric civic. I drove a Benz previously and they’re a pain in the ass and expensive when anything goes wrong with them, and trust me, it will.
