Good. Seems like the sales decline will reach the US eventually too. Even Toyota is coming out with compelling EV products this year.
Tesla came from nowhere, developed essentially one world-dominating product (lumping the 3 and Y together), then the CEO basically ruined everything.
Imagine Tesla with a "normal" CEO and marketing department. They would have a bunch of different trims and options for the 3/Y, a redesigned X, a functional truck, and a market cap of 400 billion!
Apple had been around 12 til 2019, now around 32 [1]. They were/are discounted for a long time but some kind of stocks had a price never based on fundamentals.
> Tesla came from nowhere, developed essentially one world-dominating product (lumping the 3 and Y together), then the CEO basically ruined everything.
It seems strange to attribute only the fall -- and not the rise -- to the CEO
Lets be real, the original founders drove the start up against the wall and Tesla was a complete disaster before Musk took over the company. Not to mention that they wouldn't even have gotten that far without Musk money and JD.
There exists a huge amount of Musk derangement syndrome these days.
Elon Musk is a great businessman and develops great products for general consumers. There is not much wrong with him other than his online persona... which most normal people can ignore. He's probably more normal than any other business leader.
What's weird is people lumping in some of Elon's actions with falls in Tesla sales as if he didn't:
1. Predict it
2. Gift the whole world the motivation to do it
I don't care about Elon Musk. He's a good businessman and a weird personality. But it doesn't take a genius to realise that he can't lead a winning product unchallenged, forever.
Elon Musk is a fascist sympathizer who is currently being investigated in at least one European country for election interference, a known lier who has promised level 5 self driving by the end of the year every year since 2018 or so, landing people on Mars by next year since 2022, Tesla electric truck cheaper than rail, "today", in 2020, and many others.
>Elon Musk is a great businessman and develops great products for general consumers.
The only thing he's great at is creating the illusion of genius.
He didn't found Tesla, despite his title. He's not an engineer at SpaceX, despite his title. He spent 44 billion on Twitter which is most certainly losing money hand over fist. The Boring Company is a flop. Tesla is famously anything but a car company because their cars are mediocre in every way except the battery range.
SpaceX is his only real success, but then again SpaceX only succeeded because of massive government funding, which Elon would happily decry as communism if the money went to anyone else.
He's not a genius and not a particularly good businessman. He's just a normie with Daddy's emerald mine money, who got lucky with a large severance package when he was fired from Paypal for being terrible, and now uses his wealth to create a cult of personality.
> Tesla is famously anything but a car company because their cars are mediocre in every way except the battery range
I can't say that I'm a big fan of this guy... But I can tell you this: I learned to drive only after moving to the U.S. recently, and when I had to choose my first car, I found Tesla to be the best among many I tried. It's just awesome, and I don't even use their FSD, the car itself is superb (at least the latest "3"). Minimalistic, no BS, drives well, quiet, comfortable. The same feeling I had with the first iPhone, compared to other phones.
I'm surprised people are forgetting that the person who predicted the coming wars against his personality was himself. He basically told everyone what was coming... then it came and people still fell for it.
Tesla has a marketing department. It just refuses to talk to anyone except to talk at journalists...and journalists are so desperate to get quotes, they'll put up with it.
When Tesla started with the "no marketing department" nonsense, the press should have just stopped quoting them or covering them. Especially given that half the things Musk says are blatant lies.
One of the interesting things you start seeing and then can't stop seeing is "CEO says" journalism, where the whole article is about the CEO saying something and that's newsworthy and there's no real analysis of it or no looking at the track record of the CEO. Just stenography.
It's not limited to this one company, they'll do it with any company that's newsworthy or has a CEO who will generate clicks for their article.
Is it me or do the nay-sayers state that Elon is a grifter and added nothing to Tesla, but yet he ruined it? How can he both not create something and ruin it?
Also, Tesla isn't the only manufacturer (In the US) stopping electric cars, Porsche (IMO Taycan is the best electric model) is essentially stopping electric cars too, nothing to do with Elon.
Musk didn't found Tesla, he invested into it when it was small. Musk brought good marketing and gave the people who were declined at GM a platform. So far so good.
It was a success. He got more investment, built factories, became market leader. Built an industrial stack where there was none.
And gradually he got crazy. Dodgecoin, Nazi gestures, thinking he has to safe humanity because left radicaly are destroying it.
Instead of cutting down on costs, Tesla insisted it is the only electrical car and priced it as such. Not to mention the cybertruck disaster everybody saw from miiles away.
Meanwhile, the Chinese have the best electrics with the currently best industrial basis for production and cheap resources.
Musk has too much money, got lucky with an investment and started becoming complacent. The rest of the story writes itself.
Tesla came from nowhere, developed essentially one world-dominating product (lumping the 3 and Y together), then the CEO basically ruined everything.
Imagine Tesla with a "normal" CEO and marketing department. They would have a bunch of different trims and options for the 3/Y, a redesigned X, a functional truck, and a market cap of 400 billion!