None of it matters to Tesla stock --- investors have moved on from the dream of owning the worldwide auto market to owning the worldwide robo taxi market and personal robots --- which are still just dreams with no better (if not less) chance of success than the one they just abandoned.
Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them.
> Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them.
A wonderful observation.
Has someone made a stab at describing these new paradigms of advertising and value? I don't think I've seen exactly this stated or named, but there's a lot of writing and thinking out there. If it strikes anyone reading this, links welcome.
Specifically, it seems like advertising may have gone from "the quality of the product doesn't matter", to "the product existing doesn't matter". Quite a big leap.
I doubt there are many TSLA investors that actually believe that the company is well positioned to dominate ANY market at this point. They just believe that there are _other_ people that believe it. Greater fool and all that.
Meme stocks have a way of defying normal economic gravity and irritating traditional investors up until they don't, and when that happens their demise is usually rapid and complete.
So, fresh from angering virtually every government in the world, Musk will move on to introducing a service that utterly requires government approval and licensing, while costing a lot of jobs. To do this he'll have to get approval from politicians that are taking a leftist turn just to avoid being associated with either him or Trump (or didn't and are very angry at him and Trump for costing them a LOT of votes) ...
Makes you want to ask, "say, Elon, how's that full-self-driving going?"
Wait until those investors find out what China is investing in and actually succeeding in with automation, personal robots, and making self driving cars with affordable LIDAR (negating Tesla's camera bet).
This type of stuff makes me feel so uneasy with our entire economy. I mean, is anything real or are we just making stuff up and then making more stuff up to justify why it's okay?
How can a company's valuation have seemingly no tie at all to how they're doing as a company? Just on the surface that seems absurd. But that's not even my concern - my concern is that this happens and nobody seems to care. As if there's very real exploits in our financial markets and nobody seems to bat an eye.
Just the fact Tesla has somehow managed to do this should be making us uneasy! But then again, I don't understand the stock market, and nobody understands the economy, so I guess it's fine.
The model 3 didn't come out until 2017. Before that, Tesla only made niche Model X/S cars. That was a huge run up in just 8 years, who knows if that would have kept going if Musk didn't make the mistake of binding himself to Trump.
Most of the teslas I see have a sticker on them “Vintage pre insanity Tesla” or simply an anti “Elon” with a red strike through.
It’s interesting that Bloomberg makes no mention of the intense backlash to Elon’s Nazi salute and other recent antics.
They’re in for a rude awakening when they realize that Tesla robotaxi is a lie. I dunno, maybe musk can keep the ponzie scheme rolling forever by continuously moving the goalpost.
Can confirm anecdotally, I am seeing way more Chinese made cars on the streets of Copenhagen. Just this morning I did a literal head-turn to check out an XPeng sedan I hadn't seen before. One of my partners drives a Chinese SUV and gotta say the massaging seats were pretty sweet. me: American, used to own a Tesla Model S.
Tesla were always a weird fit for the European markets. They are too big and especially too wide. The finish is haphazard. At their price point, which is high for all the segments they compete in, they don't really compare favorably to European brands. They used to be able to compete on battery performance and drive trains but that's hardly the case anymore. It was always pretty clear that Tesla is entirely driven from the USA and has no idea of how and what to sell to European in a way not too dissimilar to other American car makers which could never really succeed in Europe either.
Meanwhile, BYD is genuinely competitive in Europe. Their cars are well positioned in the middle of every segments they are in. They would actually be on the more accessible side without tariffs. Their design is nothing to talk about but they blend well with other cars. Their size is great. They do ok confort-wise, nothing extraordinary but not too shabby either.
Basically, they are ok cars at an ok price, something which can't be said of Tesla.
Might be just sampling error? (10 taxis isn't a lot of taxis). Most electric taxis I see in Dublin are VW id3/4. (Though Toyotas seem to be on the rise now that Toyota has grudgingly released an EV; taxi drivers have always loved Toyota.)
EDIT: Yeah. So far this year, the id.4 is number 18 overall, Kia EV3 is 26th, Tesla Model 3 is 27th, Tesla Y is 86th. So Telsa's... not quite irrelevant, EV-wise, but kinda getting there (note that Hyundai, Kia, VW, BYD etc all have a bunch of models vs Tesla's two models, and Tesla's still trailing). https://stats.beepbeep.ie
Another source of sampling error I've run into is that Tesla only makes EVs which makes them easier to count.
I live in the US state (Washington) where energy prices on average are most favorable to EVs (for people who can charge at home) and I'm in the part of the state where gas prices are particularly high.
I'd expect then to see a fair number of EVs. For the maybe three when I'm out driving I've tried to count the EVs I see.
At first I'd see 2 or 3 Teslas per 100 cars (I excluded vehicles that were obviously commercial vehicles), and an occasional Rivian. More recently it is 3 to 5 Teslas and still the occasional Rivian.
The only other EVs I've counted in the last month or so are 1 Hyundai IONIQ 5, 1 Kia EV6, 1 Nissan Ariya, 1 Nissan Leaf, a couple or so Chevy Bolts, and a Ford Mustang Mach-E.
I suspect that there are a lot more than that but I'm missing them because all of those companies make non-EVs too. With a Tesla all I've got to do is see the "T" and I know it is an EV.
Say I see a Chevy SUV. I need to get a close enough look to identify the model. If it is a model for which they have both EV and ICE versions, such as an Equinox or Blazer, I then have to look for details to decide if I'm looking at the EV version of the ICE version. Let's say it is an Equinox. The EV has those weird flat pop out door handles whereas the ICE (I believe) has normal handles. The EV has the charge port on the front driver side, the ICE has the gas intake on the back driver side. The EV has a different grille design (but for some colors they look quite similar if you don't get a close look).
Or say I see a Hyundai Kona. Open these [1][2] in two different browser tabs and flip between them. It looks like just minor stylistic differences.
You can rotate them to look from different angles. If you see a Kona on your left the differences are just a slightly different fender, different wheel design, and slight profile differences in the grille and rear bumper. Easy to miss.
Heck, I have a Kona SEL Electric and if I hadn't just flipped between those two pages looking at them from the right side I would not have been able to tell if another Kona SEL next to me was gas or electric, because those are difference in features of the car that I've simply never noticed.
I only spotted the IONIQ 5, EV6, Ariya, Leaf, and Bolts because they happened to be going in the same direction as me and so when we passed I has able to see the model name, and those particular models are only available as EVs. If they had been going in the opposite direction I probably only would have got the make.
I only spotted the Mach-E because I saw the Mustang logo and the car was one of the ones where the grille does not have a bunch of openings that look like air intakes so I knew I was probably looking at an EV version. If it had been one of the Mach-Es whose grille does have those openings I probably would have missed it.
> The Tesla CEO asserts he’s seeing a major rebound in customer interest for his EVs despite persistent evidence to the contrary. “The stock wouldn’t be trading near all-time highs if things weren’t in good shape,” he said.
> Tesla’s return to the elite club of trillion-dollar market cap stocks is all the evidence Elon Musk needs to convince him the worst of the blowback over his political activism is over.
Like a conman losing its grips on the victims' confidence, he entered the phase of "do not believe your eyes and ears" phase of the swindle.
Last earnings showed a steep decline in sales, just around my house in Sweden I've seen 3 neighbours with a new BYD the past 3 months, the one right across my house used to have a Model 3 which I haven't seen in a while.
I can only definitely call him a liar on the next earnings report so there's some 2 months before we can see actual figures and not just his words...
Tesla was having very serious difficulty long before the election. For Musk the choice was probably to join the democrats, and get the tiniest amount of power, or help Trump and be the unofficial vice president.
And as everyone was saying last year "Trump can't be THAT bad", you know, before the stock market dropped 3.66 trillion dollars.
> you know, before the stock market dropped 3.66 trillion dollars.
And the disappearing people, threats against allies, stripping of hard fought rights, siding with Putin, airbrushing women and non-white men from the history books, declaring Gaza should become a holiday resort and spreading FUD about white genocide etc etc etc
Musk's Nazi salute is going to go down in history as one of the stupidest things a businessman has ever done. There's still plenty of people in Europe with a personal connection to WW2, family members who died fighting or died in the camps or bombings. There are relatives I never met because of the Nazis.
It's unthinkable for me to give any sum of money to - let alone purchase a car from - a company associated with neo-Nazism.
I couldn't care less about DOGE or anything Musk is doing with US domestic politics, it's really just that salute that would prevent me from buying a Tesla.
Totally agreed. And do note this is an opinion coming from EU. We really, really, really don’t understand _anyhting_ about US internal politics and most people here in EU countries who _think_ they do really don’t. And vice versa - europolitics are mostly non-sequitur in US context.
It seems inconceivable to some in US how some ”tropes” are not just ”harmless larping” but actually in a specific environments deeply insulting gestures.
I do realize the deep wounds nazism caused are plusibly hard to understand if one is not european.
But that does not really excuse someone who clearly signals he strives to be a thoughtleader.
In general it’s Pauling and Vitamin-C again. You are great at something and thus presume those intrinsic strengths serve equally well in some other context.
Human failures aside, hurtfull things are hurtfull and they cannot be reasoned away. Forgiven - sure, in right circumstances. Forgotten as well.
Not sure why this is downvoted. Even if you dispute if that have gesture was a Nazi salute, or think that people shouldn't consider the behavior of a CEO when making a purchase, this is the reality.
My thinking as well. Regardless of intent, trolling or otherwise, the fact that he did that is a huge miss and the most irrational behavior, not something you want in a leader.
It's wild to see this being downvoted while explanations based on build quality are going to the top. I'm not sure if it's a coordinated effort to suppress criticism of him from the Nazi perspective or that I was just wrong to assume the anti-fascist feeling that's so strong here in Europe must also exist in the US and the rest of the old Western world.
Musk's Nazi salute is going to go down in history as one of the stupidest things a businessman has ever done.
The second stupidest thing he did was build a huge EV manufacturing academy for the Chinese.
I always thought this was odd --- he could have farmed out select parts and pieces to China manufacturing with the final assembly in Europe but he went all in --- and helped accelerate China surpassing him.
It reminds me of a line from a movie, "Look at you now, you stupid fvck".
If you take Musk for his word massive expansion of EV automotive was his main goal all the time regardless who makes the cars. In that narrative BYD expansion is a win - validation&healthy competition.
Ofc the impact to Tesla-as-a-business is a different matter.
BYD absorbed everything it could from Tesla and then surpassed them on just about every front --- units sold, revenue earned, overall value, quality, battery tech, even self driving capability.
It really isn't or at least not just price. BYD, at least in Sweden, are not cheap cars in an absolute sense. Many car brands have cars that are cheaper than the cheapest car BYD sells in Sweden. MG, Peugeot, Citroen and others all have smaller and cheaper EVs if what you mainly care about is price. BYDs focus is much more on value for money at the mid level.
Nah; BYD are subject to tariffs, and they haven't brought their lowest-end stuff to Europe. They're not particularly cheap, and don't as far as I know compete on at all in the sub-30k space. This is really a story of (a) BYD rising from a low base and (b) Tesla plummeting; the biggest manufacturer at the moment isn't either of them (it's VW AG).
It's really a shame you literally can't buy a BYD car in the US because they're great vehicles. They're "boring" electric cars— not trying to redefine the driving experience, not trying to be luxury cars. Just your Honda Civic Toyota Corolla of EV. They've got a smooth ride, pretty nice faux leather trim, and a decent stereo.
They're "boring" electric cars— not trying to redefine the driving experience, not trying to be luxury cars.
That's not the image or the cars they're pushing in Europe. Their cheapest car, at least in Sweden, costs more than the VW id3, and their flagship SUV that they're pushing hard starts at around the same price as a BMW iX with all the 'luxury' frills to match.
Honestly, why? The only cost I care about is what I have to pay to drive it off the lot. How much of that price is tariffs, sales taxes, road taxes, markups or whatever is really quite irrelevant.
That's selling them way short. Yes there are plenty of cheap/economy cars in the lineup but higher end BYD models are significantly more luxurious than anything Tesla can put out.
It does seem that for the average person, an EV is only going to be an "add-on". You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip so the EV should just be a little, low cost, grocery getter. Maybe once we start seeing 1000+ km ranges that will change. The rate of improvement in terms of range has been glacial however so that might be a long way off.
The rate of improvement in terms of range has been glacial however so that might be a long way off.
Current range is more than adequate. The missing piece is public fast recharge stations.
A 30 minute recharge on a 600 mile trip is not a real issue. You probably take a break anyway for food, rest and bathroom. Most people can't last 10 hours without it.
Like or not, electric is not only viable now but also inevitable --- mainly due to economic forces, some of which remain to be fully developed. And Walmart and BP/Waffle House are leading the charge with plans to add public recharge stations to their locations.
Modern EV ranges are in the ballpark of 350km which charging time under one hour. That's more than enough for most nowadays especially in Europe where long trips are not the norm and well past grocery getter.
You can cross most European countries with one stop.
So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. I don't think that works at scale. Charging stations would be like event parking at a Taylor Swift concert.
Gas cars are still objectively better which is sad and unexpected. I never would have predicted this insanely low rate of improvement 10 years ago. In terms of trucks / tow vehicles, it is even further off. The Cybertruck laughably has 250km of tow range. Disconnecting every 2 hours to charge for an hour is absurd. Until we see a step change in battery technology, EVs are grocery getters in my books. So, might as well double down and make them super cheap with 100km range.
There's no "objectively better", just "objectively better given some set of constraints".
If my commute is less than 100km, I can charge at home, have free solar energy, and only go on long trips once or twice a year, would you still say that gas cars are "objectively better"?
If you regularly go on 400km+ trips or have nowhere to charge an EV overnight then by all means, avoid EVs.
From some objective function a hot wheels car is superior. It all just depends on everything else - my mental model for the universe is a marble rolling on an impossibly flat surface.
> So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time
That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. Someone who takes long trips is going to get something that charges fast like in IONIQ 5 or 6. The IONIQ 6 long range RWD model charges from 10 to 80% in 16 minutes at a 250 kW charger. That would be about 350 km of range at freeway speeds in Europe.
On a long trip then, once you've used up the charge you started with and have make the rest of the trip on energy from charging breaks that would be a 16 minute break every 350 km. 350 km is about 2.8 hours of travel, so about 8% of your remaining trip time after you reach your first stop would be spent charging.
I typically recharge my Model Y every 200 miles for about 20 minutes. Which is similar to how I drove in an ICE car: I like a break every 200 miles so I stop for gas, spend 5 minutes refueling and then 15 using the facilities and having a snack.
The difference is that in the Tesla the refueling takes place in parallel to me using the facilities and having a snack. The car refuels itself unattended and it will notify me on my phone when it has enough charge to continue.
how often do you have to wait around for a charge station to be available? This is the one thing that I can see if we were to have very wide scale adoption of EVS with current battery technology this would essentially become intractable.
> So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time.
... How many people _regularly_ make 400km trips, though? Like, the vast majority of the cars on the road at any given time are not making 400km trips, or anything like it. Some countries in Europe are not 400km across.
(Also that's probably ~4 hours driving; most people are probably stopping for a bit after that anyway).
Why then is the range of a basic car (like a Camry) 700+ km even with extensive refuelling network. If 99.9% of drivers never need this range they have smaller tanks.
Because increasing the range of a petrol car is practically free (and in many cases the tank sizes were kind of notionally set 50 years ago when engines were far less efficient; as engines got more efficient no reason to make them _smaller_). Like, virtually no-one is driving 700km non-stop (that's going to be probably eight hours unless you have excellent roads the whole way; it's arguably _unsafe_, and certainly most people would want to at least eat in that time), but, really, there's no downside.
For electric cars, there _is_ a serious downside to having huge range; it makes them expensive (and heavy). So manufacturers will tend to stop at "sensible for most use cases". I'm sure there are some people for whom electric car range is still a problem, but it's a niche market, especially in _Europe_ (again, you can drive across many countries in Europe in 400km).
> You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip...
In the US, I've traveled about 50k miles on long road trips in a Tesla and I haven't used my ICE car for a road trip since I got the Tesla. Long range and Tesla's excellent network of superchargers made that possible.
I would imagine it's even more doable in Europe since "long distance" road trips there are on the order of 100 miles, while in the US they're more like 1000 miles.
The US is an interesting case because there is so much variation state to state (or even county to county within a state) of both gas prices and electricity prices. The ratio of gas prices in $/gal and electricity prices in $/kWh range from around 9 to around 34. (This is for residential electricity).
Does Europe have that much variation?
In areas where the ratio is low a non-EV can be cheaper than an EV, especially if that non-EV is a hybrid. In about 1/3 of the states a Prius beats an average EV in highway driving and in around 1/6th the Prius wins in city driving. In around 1/6th the Prius will even beat the most efficient EVs in both highway and city.
It's opposite in places with a higher ratio where even a Prius cannot come near the low energy costs of an EV. In roughly 1/5th of the states gas would have to fall to below around $1.70/gal for the Prius to match a typical EV for highway driving, and to around $1.50/gal to match the most efficient highway EVs. Those are gas prices that even Trump probably can't fantasize about.
Note that the above was all using residential electricity prices. Commercial EV chargers usually charge quite a bit more. I'm in one of the states with a high gas/electricity price ratio and I think EVs still win here with commercial charger prices but not by much. Without having run the numbers, my guess is that for most road trips that span several states, especially if the are going east/west, a Prius is going to be the energy cost champion.
I'm curious if there are any road trip planners that can take all this into account? Say you've got an EV and a non-EV. Are there any where you can give your destination, places along the way you want to see, what cars you have available, and how much extra time you are willing to spend to save money, and it will figure out which car can do the trip for with the least energy costs?
Of course it is. But as the ICC just found out, it's a security threat to use USA tech in Europe too.
The worlds global, you have to import a lot of tech from elsewhere, and now both major suppliers (China and the USA) are cuddling up to a rogue nation that is invading a neighbor. They are between a rock and a hard place right now.
Meanwhile Trump and Elon's "business buddy" was flying nuclear capable jets over Poland ... last month [1]. Also yesterday the government Elon is part of refused to implement further sanctions against Russia, that would be a problem for "business opportunities" [2]. And, in order to help fix his image Elon Musk ... makes two Nazi salutes ...
Oh and today DOGE is being blamed for the biggest rise in unemployment in years [3], which caused yet another stock market heart attack yesterday.
For all its marvels, Tesla giving away so many of its discoveries, combined with a deeply Tesla-unfriendly local environment and a China willing to plough a huge amount of money into crushing a genuine manufacturing rival, it doesn't look too good.
I hope they get back on top, though. I just don't see how.
Simple. Musk steps away and the company issues a full statement distancing themselves from Musk and his politics. Tesla negotiates an end to its fights with the unions in Europe. Stop focusing on the Cybertruck and start making an updated Model 3 and a lower priced Model 2. Maybe push out a new Model S to take on the high end market while you're at it. Perhaps do some sort of marketing campaign to highlight that they're now just a cool car company again.
People in Europe still like Tesla the car, and would happily start driving them again given some incentives.
Why? As someone terrified by recent political developments it's unfathomable to me that anyone could have any well wishes for them as long as Mr Musk profits from their success.
Quality is fine (except their rust protection, last I checked), but not making a new mass market car in 5 years, and just 2 lackluster refreshes to pretty milquetoast cars, and no technical updates is a bit baffling with tens of billions of cash in the books (hopefully non-cooked). Their 1.5 models on offer feel quite dated, even with the refresh.
Makes you wonder if, perhaps, doing small incremental updates and spending time on fart apps and light shows is perhaps less successful in the long run than doing bigger updates every 3-5 years.
You think sales would be declining anywhere near as rapidly if it weren't for the nazi salutes, DOGE, and white genocide stuff etc.? Talking about comparatively small strategy errors in a company that was such a big force in the market seems like painting over the elephant in the room when the CEO is going off the rails and talking about exporting his personal brand of neo-facism via threats to "Make Europe Great Again," openly funding far right groups who are later declared illegal extremists etc.
Just disagreeing that the sales performance is _solely_ about that.
Tesla yearly sales stopped growing in 2024.
Also declining in China, where they don't care about what Musk is doing. Musk is still well-liked there, in fact.
Competition is heating up and Tesla have been focusing on stock pumping stratagems instead of their core product line, and continuing to dig their own grave, but Musk's megalomania surely has accelerated that a ton.
None of it matters to Tesla stock --- investors have moved on from the dream of owning the worldwide auto market to owning the worldwide robo taxi market and personal robots --- which are still just dreams with no better (if not less) chance of success than the one they just abandoned.
Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them.
> Apparently, the goal is to keep the dreams alive without ever actually fulfilling any of them.
A wonderful observation.
Has someone made a stab at describing these new paradigms of advertising and value? I don't think I've seen exactly this stated or named, but there's a lot of writing and thinking out there. If it strikes anyone reading this, links welcome.
Specifically, it seems like advertising may have gone from "the quality of the product doesn't matter", to "the product existing doesn't matter". Quite a big leap.
I doubt there are many TSLA investors that actually believe that the company is well positioned to dominate ANY market at this point. They just believe that there are _other_ people that believe it. Greater fool and all that.
Meme stocks have a way of defying normal economic gravity and irritating traditional investors up until they don't, and when that happens their demise is usually rapid and complete.
So, fresh from angering virtually every government in the world, Musk will move on to introducing a service that utterly requires government approval and licensing, while costing a lot of jobs. To do this he'll have to get approval from politicians that are taking a leftist turn just to avoid being associated with either him or Trump (or didn't and are very angry at him and Trump for costing them a LOT of votes) ...
Makes you want to ask, "say, Elon, how's that full-self-driving going?"
> worldwide robo taxi market and personal robots
Wait until those investors find out what China is investing in and actually succeeding in with automation, personal robots, and making self driving cars with affordable LIDAR (negating Tesla's camera bet).
Not worldwide I guess... But I see so, SO many Teslas driving around, it's bizarre how far they got in such little time.
Tesla has been in business for over 20 years.
Last year, roughly 90 million new light vehicles were sold worldwide. 1.8 million of these were Tesla --- about 2% of the total.
Earlier this year, Tesla's market capitalization was $1.5 TRILLION --- more than virtually all the major auto manufacturers in the world COMBINED.
Can you say, "Ridiculously over priced"?
This type of stuff makes me feel so uneasy with our entire economy. I mean, is anything real or are we just making stuff up and then making more stuff up to justify why it's okay?
How can a company's valuation have seemingly no tie at all to how they're doing as a company? Just on the surface that seems absurd. But that's not even my concern - my concern is that this happens and nobody seems to care. As if there's very real exploits in our financial markets and nobody seems to bat an eye.
Just the fact Tesla has somehow managed to do this should be making us uneasy! But then again, I don't understand the stock market, and nobody understands the economy, so I guess it's fine.
It's not overpriced for a meme stock.
> Tesla has been in business for over 20 years.
The model 3 didn't come out until 2017. Before that, Tesla only made niche Model X/S cars. That was a huge run up in just 8 years, who knows if that would have kept going if Musk didn't make the mistake of binding himself to Trump.
Most of the teslas I see have a sticker on them “Vintage pre insanity Tesla” or simply an anti “Elon” with a red strike through. It’s interesting that Bloomberg makes no mention of the intense backlash to Elon’s Nazi salute and other recent antics.
Mentioning it would make them "hostile and political."
They’re in for a rude awakening when they realize that Tesla robotaxi is a lie. I dunno, maybe musk can keep the ponzie scheme rolling forever by continuously moving the goalpost.
Tesla has already admitted their robo-taxi won't be "autonomous" but instead will rely heavily on "tele-ops".
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2025/05/17/tesla-...
How many billionaires are willing to bet their life on a cell tower connection? How many people would be bold enough to ask them to?
Can confirm anecdotally, I am seeing way more Chinese made cars on the streets of Copenhagen. Just this morning I did a literal head-turn to check out an XPeng sedan I hadn't seen before. One of my partners drives a Chinese SUV and gotta say the massaging seats were pretty sweet. me: American, used to own a Tesla Model S.
> I am seeing way more Chinese made cars on the streets of Copenhagen
Also, a lot of European car brands' EV models are also rebadged Chinese models or the brand is Chinese owned. MG, Volvo, Dacia Spring
Dacia Spring is fully a Renault model (Kwid/City K-ZE) based on a Renault-Nissan platform (the CMF-A) and just manufactured in China.
MG, Volvo/Polestar/Lynk & Co, or Lotus are brands owned by Chinese automotive groups SAIC and Geely.
Unsurprising.
Tesla were always a weird fit for the European markets. They are too big and especially too wide. The finish is haphazard. At their price point, which is high for all the segments they compete in, they don't really compare favorably to European brands. They used to be able to compete on battery performance and drive trains but that's hardly the case anymore. It was always pretty clear that Tesla is entirely driven from the USA and has no idea of how and what to sell to European in a way not too dissimilar to other American car makers which could never really succeed in Europe either.
Meanwhile, BYD is genuinely competitive in Europe. Their cars are well positioned in the middle of every segments they are in. They would actually be on the more accessible side without tariffs. Their design is nothing to talk about but they blend well with other cars. Their size is great. They do ok confort-wise, nothing extraordinary but not too shabby either.
Basically, they are ok cars at an ok price, something which can't be said of Tesla.
Tesla is mad popular in Ireland. They are everywhere. In my town alone there are two Model 3 taxis, out of a total of about 10 taxis locally.
Might be just sampling error? (10 taxis isn't a lot of taxis). Most electric taxis I see in Dublin are VW id3/4. (Though Toyotas seem to be on the rise now that Toyota has grudgingly released an EV; taxi drivers have always loved Toyota.)
EDIT: Yeah. So far this year, the id.4 is number 18 overall, Kia EV3 is 26th, Tesla Model 3 is 27th, Tesla Y is 86th. So Telsa's... not quite irrelevant, EV-wise, but kinda getting there (note that Hyundai, Kia, VW, BYD etc all have a bunch of models vs Tesla's two models, and Tesla's still trailing). https://stats.beepbeep.ie
Small towns are more likely to give sampling errors, would suggest looking at national or even county level statistics to confirm your feeling.
Another source of sampling error I've run into is that Tesla only makes EVs which makes them easier to count.
I live in the US state (Washington) where energy prices on average are most favorable to EVs (for people who can charge at home) and I'm in the part of the state where gas prices are particularly high.
I'd expect then to see a fair number of EVs. For the maybe three when I'm out driving I've tried to count the EVs I see.
At first I'd see 2 or 3 Teslas per 100 cars (I excluded vehicles that were obviously commercial vehicles), and an occasional Rivian. More recently it is 3 to 5 Teslas and still the occasional Rivian.
The only other EVs I've counted in the last month or so are 1 Hyundai IONIQ 5, 1 Kia EV6, 1 Nissan Ariya, 1 Nissan Leaf, a couple or so Chevy Bolts, and a Ford Mustang Mach-E.
I suspect that there are a lot more than that but I'm missing them because all of those companies make non-EVs too. With a Tesla all I've got to do is see the "T" and I know it is an EV.
Say I see a Chevy SUV. I need to get a close enough look to identify the model. If it is a model for which they have both EV and ICE versions, such as an Equinox or Blazer, I then have to look for details to decide if I'm looking at the EV version of the ICE version. Let's say it is an Equinox. The EV has those weird flat pop out door handles whereas the ICE (I believe) has normal handles. The EV has the charge port on the front driver side, the ICE has the gas intake on the back driver side. The EV has a different grille design (but for some colors they look quite similar if you don't get a close look).
Or say I see a Hyundai Kona. Open these [1][2] in two different browser tabs and flip between them. It looks like just minor stylistic differences.
You can rotate them to look from different angles. If you see a Kona on your left the differences are just a slightly different fender, different wheel design, and slight profile differences in the grille and rear bumper. Easy to miss.
Heck, I have a Kona SEL Electric and if I hadn't just flipped between those two pages looking at them from the right side I would not have been able to tell if another Kona SEL next to me was gas or electric, because those are difference in features of the car that I've simply never noticed.
I only spotted the IONIQ 5, EV6, Ariya, Leaf, and Bolts because they happened to be going in the same direction as me and so when we passed I has able to see the model name, and those particular models are only available as EVs. If they had been going in the opposite direction I probably only would have got the make.
I only spotted the Mach-E because I saw the Mustang logo and the car was one of the ones where the grille does not have a bunch of openings that look like air intakes so I knew I was probably looking at an EV version. If it had been one of the Mach-Es whose grille does have those openings I probably would have missed it.
[1] https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/kona/sel
[2] https://www.hyundaiusa.com/us/en/vehicles/kona-electric/sel
"There's no exceptions."[1]
[1]: https://fortune.com/2025/05/21/elon-musk-fears-tesla-demand-...
He is such a slimy bullshitter:
> The Tesla CEO asserts he’s seeing a major rebound in customer interest for his EVs despite persistent evidence to the contrary. “The stock wouldn’t be trading near all-time highs if things weren’t in good shape,” he said.
> Tesla’s return to the elite club of trillion-dollar market cap stocks is all the evidence Elon Musk needs to convince him the worst of the blowback over his political activism is over.
Like a conman losing its grips on the victims' confidence, he entered the phase of "do not believe your eyes and ears" phase of the swindle.
Last earnings showed a steep decline in sales, just around my house in Sweden I've seen 3 neighbours with a new BYD the past 3 months, the one right across my house used to have a Model 3 which I haven't seen in a while.
I can only definitely call him a liar on the next earnings report so there's some 2 months before we can see actual figures and not just his words...
It's a curious own goal by Musk. I would imagine that Tesla have pretty detailed profile data on the average Tesla customer.
Surely there were pretty clear signals that a significant number of those people would vote with their wallets based on his politics.
Tesla was having very serious difficulty long before the election. For Musk the choice was probably to join the democrats, and get the tiniest amount of power, or help Trump and be the unofficial vice president.
And as everyone was saying last year "Trump can't be THAT bad", you know, before the stock market dropped 3.66 trillion dollars.
> you know, before the stock market dropped 3.66 trillion dollars.
And the disappearing people, threats against allies, stripping of hard fought rights, siding with Putin, airbrushing women and non-white men from the history books, declaring Gaza should become a holiday resort and spreading FUD about white genocide etc etc etc
https://archive.ph/NkYpk
Musk's Nazi salute is going to go down in history as one of the stupidest things a businessman has ever done. There's still plenty of people in Europe with a personal connection to WW2, family members who died fighting or died in the camps or bombings. There are relatives I never met because of the Nazis.
It's unthinkable for me to give any sum of money to - let alone purchase a car from - a company associated with neo-Nazism.
I couldn't care less about DOGE or anything Musk is doing with US domestic politics, it's really just that salute that would prevent me from buying a Tesla.
Totally agreed. And do note this is an opinion coming from EU. We really, really, really don’t understand _anyhting_ about US internal politics and most people here in EU countries who _think_ they do really don’t. And vice versa - europolitics are mostly non-sequitur in US context.
It seems inconceivable to some in US how some ”tropes” are not just ”harmless larping” but actually in a specific environments deeply insulting gestures.
I do realize the deep wounds nazism caused are plusibly hard to understand if one is not european.
But that does not really excuse someone who clearly signals he strives to be a thoughtleader.
In general it’s Pauling and Vitamin-C again. You are great at something and thus presume those intrinsic strengths serve equally well in some other context.
Human failures aside, hurtfull things are hurtfull and they cannot be reasoned away. Forgiven - sure, in right circumstances. Forgotten as well.
Not sure why this is downvoted. Even if you dispute if that have gesture was a Nazi salute, or think that people shouldn't consider the behavior of a CEO when making a purchase, this is the reality.
My thinking as well. Regardless of intent, trolling or otherwise, the fact that he did that is a huge miss and the most irrational behavior, not something you want in a leader.
It's wild to see this being downvoted while explanations based on build quality are going to the top. I'm not sure if it's a coordinated effort to suppress criticism of him from the Nazi perspective or that I was just wrong to assume the anti-fascist feeling that's so strong here in Europe must also exist in the US and the rest of the old Western world.
Musk's Nazi salute is going to go down in history as one of the stupidest things a businessman has ever done.
The second stupidest thing he did was build a huge EV manufacturing academy for the Chinese.
I always thought this was odd --- he could have farmed out select parts and pieces to China manufacturing with the final assembly in Europe but he went all in --- and helped accelerate China surpassing him.
It reminds me of a line from a movie, "Look at you now, you stupid fvck".
If you take Musk for his word massive expansion of EV automotive was his main goal all the time regardless who makes the cars. In that narrative BYD expansion is a win - validation&healthy competition.
Ofc the impact to Tesla-as-a-business is a different matter.
BYD absorbed everything it could from Tesla and then surpassed them on just about every front --- units sold, revenue earned, overall value, quality, battery tech, even self driving capability.
Instead of the teacher, Musk is now the student.
https://www.automotivemanufacturingsolutions.com/electrifica...
https://eletric-vehicles.com/byd/byd-rolls-out-in-house-self...
It’s probably a pricing thing. I can imagine BYD is aggressively pricing now in Europe and Europeans in general have less disposable income.
It’s probably a pricing thing.
It really isn't or at least not just price. BYD, at least in Sweden, are not cheap cars in an absolute sense. Many car brands have cars that are cheaper than the cheapest car BYD sells in Sweden. MG, Peugeot, Citroen and others all have smaller and cheaper EVs if what you mainly care about is price. BYDs focus is much more on value for money at the mid level.
> It really isn't
Right? Surprised to see speculation about something easily disprovable on this forum.
Nah; BYD are subject to tariffs, and they haven't brought their lowest-end stuff to Europe. They're not particularly cheap, and don't as far as I know compete on at all in the sub-30k space. This is really a story of (a) BYD rising from a low base and (b) Tesla plummeting; the biggest manufacturer at the moment isn't either of them (it's VW AG).
BYD just announced the "Dolphin Surf" with a 20k introductory price for Europe.
Uh, huh, they've actually launched it vs just talking vaguely about it now, apparently, yeah. Yeah, okay, that'll be a big shakeup.
It's really a shame you literally can't buy a BYD car in the US because they're great vehicles. They're "boring" electric cars— not trying to redefine the driving experience, not trying to be luxury cars. Just your Honda Civic Toyota Corolla of EV. They've got a smooth ride, pretty nice faux leather trim, and a decent stereo.
They're "boring" electric cars— not trying to redefine the driving experience, not trying to be luxury cars.
That's not the image or the cars they're pushing in Europe. Their cheapest car, at least in Sweden, costs more than the VW id3, and their flagship SUV that they're pushing hard starts at around the same price as a BMW iX with all the 'luxury' frills to match.
Subtract the ~30% of that which is tarrifs
Honestly, why? The only cost I care about is what I have to pay to drive it off the lot. How much of that price is tariffs, sales taxes, road taxes, markups or whatever is really quite irrelevant.
That's selling them way short. Yes there are plenty of cheap/economy cars in the lineup but higher end BYD models are significantly more luxurious than anything Tesla can put out.
It does seem that for the average person, an EV is only going to be an "add-on". You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip so the EV should just be a little, low cost, grocery getter. Maybe once we start seeing 1000+ km ranges that will change. The rate of improvement in terms of range has been glacial however so that might be a long way off.
The rate of improvement in terms of range has been glacial however so that might be a long way off.
Current range is more than adequate. The missing piece is public fast recharge stations.
A 30 minute recharge on a 600 mile trip is not a real issue. You probably take a break anyway for food, rest and bathroom. Most people can't last 10 hours without it.
Like or not, electric is not only viable now but also inevitable --- mainly due to economic forces, some of which remain to be fully developed. And Walmart and BP/Waffle House are leading the charge with plans to add public recharge stations to their locations.
https://theevreport.com/bp-pulse-waffle-house-boost-ev-charg...
https://insideevs.com/news/757648/walmart-ev-charging-networ...
Modern EV ranges are in the ballpark of 350km which charging time under one hour. That's more than enough for most nowadays especially in Europe where long trips are not the norm and well past grocery getter.
You can cross most European countries with one stop.
So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time. I don't think that works at scale. Charging stations would be like event parking at a Taylor Swift concert.
Gas cars are still objectively better which is sad and unexpected. I never would have predicted this insanely low rate of improvement 10 years ago. In terms of trucks / tow vehicles, it is even further off. The Cybertruck laughably has 250km of tow range. Disconnecting every 2 hours to charge for an hour is absurd. Until we see a step change in battery technology, EVs are grocery getters in my books. So, might as well double down and make them super cheap with 100km range.
There's no "objectively better", just "objectively better given some set of constraints".
If my commute is less than 100km, I can charge at home, have free solar energy, and only go on long trips once or twice a year, would you still say that gas cars are "objectively better"?
If you regularly go on 400km+ trips or have nowhere to charge an EV overnight then by all means, avoid EVs.
From some objective function a hot wheels car is superior. It all just depends on everything else - my mental model for the universe is a marble rolling on an impossibly flat surface.
> So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time
That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed. Someone who takes long trips is going to get something that charges fast like in IONIQ 5 or 6. The IONIQ 6 long range RWD model charges from 10 to 80% in 16 minutes at a 250 kW charger. That would be about 350 km of range at freeway speeds in Europe.
On a long trip then, once you've used up the charge you started with and have make the rest of the trip on energy from charging breaks that would be a 16 minute break every 350 km. 350 km is about 2.8 hours of travel, so about 8% of your remaining trip time after you reach your first stop would be spent charging.
> That's way off, because the person above you gave a way too low charging speed.
To be fair, 20 minutes for an L3 charge from 20 to 80% is technically under an hour.
I typically recharge my Model Y every 200 miles for about 20 minutes. Which is similar to how I drove in an ICE car: I like a break every 200 miles so I stop for gas, spend 5 minutes refueling and then 15 using the facilities and having a snack.
The difference is that in the Tesla the refueling takes place in parallel to me using the facilities and having a snack. The car refuels itself unattended and it will notify me on my phone when it has enough charge to continue.
how often do you have to wait around for a charge station to be available? This is the one thing that I can see if we were to have very wide scale adoption of EVS with current battery technology this would essentially become intractable.
Never. The car routes me to the nearest charge location with free space.
I have heard this can be a problem in California but I rarely go there.
> So all EVs on a 400km+ trip will be at the charging station 1/4 of the time.
... How many people _regularly_ make 400km trips, though? Like, the vast majority of the cars on the road at any given time are not making 400km trips, or anything like it. Some countries in Europe are not 400km across.
(Also that's probably ~4 hours driving; most people are probably stopping for a bit after that anyway).
Why then is the range of a basic car (like a Camry) 700+ km even with extensive refuelling network. If 99.9% of drivers never need this range they have smaller tanks.
Because increasing the range of a petrol car is practically free (and in many cases the tank sizes were kind of notionally set 50 years ago when engines were far less efficient; as engines got more efficient no reason to make them _smaller_). Like, virtually no-one is driving 700km non-stop (that's going to be probably eight hours unless you have excellent roads the whole way; it's arguably _unsafe_, and certainly most people would want to at least eat in that time), but, really, there's no downside.
For electric cars, there _is_ a serious downside to having huge range; it makes them expensive (and heavy). So manufacturers will tend to stop at "sensible for most use cases". I'm sure there are some people for whom electric car range is still a problem, but it's a niche market, especially in _Europe_ (again, you can drive across many countries in Europe in 400km).
Yeah ya, EV range is just fine as is. No need to improve that at all.
I mean, sure, more would be better, but it's _fine_ for the vast majority of users at this point.
People dont want to go to the gas station. Advantage of EV is you can charge at home
> You still need a gas car for any kind of road trip...
In the US, I've traveled about 50k miles on long road trips in a Tesla and I haven't used my ICE car for a road trip since I got the Tesla. Long range and Tesla's excellent network of superchargers made that possible.
I would imagine it's even more doable in Europe since "long distance" road trips there are on the order of 100 miles, while in the US they're more like 1000 miles.
The US is an interesting case because there is so much variation state to state (or even county to county within a state) of both gas prices and electricity prices. The ratio of gas prices in $/gal and electricity prices in $/kWh range from around 9 to around 34. (This is for residential electricity).
Does Europe have that much variation?
In areas where the ratio is low a non-EV can be cheaper than an EV, especially if that non-EV is a hybrid. In about 1/3 of the states a Prius beats an average EV in highway driving and in around 1/6th the Prius wins in city driving. In around 1/6th the Prius will even beat the most efficient EVs in both highway and city.
It's opposite in places with a higher ratio where even a Prius cannot come near the low energy costs of an EV. In roughly 1/5th of the states gas would have to fall to below around $1.70/gal for the Prius to match a typical EV for highway driving, and to around $1.50/gal to match the most efficient highway EVs. Those are gas prices that even Trump probably can't fantasize about.
Note that the above was all using residential electricity prices. Commercial EV chargers usually charge quite a bit more. I'm in one of the states with a high gas/electricity price ratio and I think EVs still win here with commercial charger prices but not by much. Without having run the numbers, my guess is that for most road trips that span several states, especially if the are going east/west, a Prius is going to be the energy cost champion.
I'm curious if there are any road trip planners that can take all this into account? Say you've got an EV and a non-EV. Are there any where you can give your destination, places along the way you want to see, what cars you have available, and how much extra time you are willing to spend to save money, and it will figure out which car can do the trip for with the least energy costs?
This is why I'm hoping that bare-bones short range EV truck catches on because I would love for my "hauling" vehicle to be an EV.
And they still didn't launch the new Dolphin Surf in Europe, which will cost 16k euro I believe.
I believe it is a security threat to allow Chinese cars in Europe.
Of course it is. But as the ICC just found out, it's a security threat to use USA tech in Europe too.
The worlds global, you have to import a lot of tech from elsewhere, and now both major suppliers (China and the USA) are cuddling up to a rogue nation that is invading a neighbor. They are between a rock and a hard place right now.
Meanwhile Trump and Elon's "business buddy" was flying nuclear capable jets over Poland ... last month [1]. Also yesterday the government Elon is part of refused to implement further sanctions against Russia, that would be a problem for "business opportunities" [2]. And, in order to help fix his image Elon Musk ... makes two Nazi salutes ...
Oh and today DOGE is being blamed for the biggest rise in unemployment in years [3], which caused yet another stock market heart attack yesterday.
Who is the bigger security threat here?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2025/apr/20/raf-fighters...
[2] https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/20/us/politics/trump-ukraine...
[3] https://nypost.com/2025/02/27/business/jobless-claims-post-l...
the speed with which china is making crucial things affordable (photovoltaics, EVs) makes you think about the utility of the patent system ...
For all its marvels, Tesla giving away so many of its discoveries, combined with a deeply Tesla-unfriendly local environment and a China willing to plough a huge amount of money into crushing a genuine manufacturing rival, it doesn't look too good.
I hope they get back on top, though. I just don't see how.
I just don't see how.
Simple. Musk steps away and the company issues a full statement distancing themselves from Musk and his politics. Tesla negotiates an end to its fights with the unions in Europe. Stop focusing on the Cybertruck and start making an updated Model 3 and a lower priced Model 2. Maybe push out a new Model S to take on the high end market while you're at it. Perhaps do some sort of marketing campaign to highlight that they're now just a cool car company again.
People in Europe still like Tesla the car, and would happily start driving them again given some incentives.
> Musk steps away and the company issues a full statement distancing themselves from Musk and his politics.
I'll tell you right now: the stock will plummet. That's my prediction.
But sales would go up. What a mixed up muddled up world we live in, eh?
> I hope they get back on top, though
Why? As someone terrified by recent political developments it's unfathomable to me that anyone could have any well wishes for them as long as Mr Musk profits from their success.
The boycott of Tesla isn't related to the quality of the cars but the political overtures of the CEO.
A little bit of column A and B and C.
Quality is fine (except their rust protection, last I checked), but not making a new mass market car in 5 years, and just 2 lackluster refreshes to pretty milquetoast cars, and no technical updates is a bit baffling with tens of billions of cash in the books (hopefully non-cooked). Their 1.5 models on offer feel quite dated, even with the refresh.
Makes you wonder if, perhaps, doing small incremental updates and spending time on fart apps and light shows is perhaps less successful in the long run than doing bigger updates every 3-5 years.
The rest is a bunch of broken promises.
> A little bit of column A and B and C.
You think sales would be declining anywhere near as rapidly if it weren't for the nazi salutes, DOGE, and white genocide stuff etc.? Talking about comparatively small strategy errors in a company that was such a big force in the market seems like painting over the elephant in the room when the CEO is going off the rails and talking about exporting his personal brand of neo-facism via threats to "Make Europe Great Again," openly funding far right groups who are later declared illegal extremists etc.
There's bad business and there's BAD business.
Just disagreeing that the sales performance is _solely_ about that.
Tesla yearly sales stopped growing in 2024. Also declining in China, where they don't care about what Musk is doing. Musk is still well-liked there, in fact.
Competition is heating up and Tesla have been focusing on stock pumping stratagems instead of their core product line, and continuing to dig their own grave, but Musk's megalomania surely has accelerated that a ton.
The customers noticing the quality been not great is just consequence
That is interesting rhetoric. All external factors except the "giving away" thing, which is also strange. Are you thinking of the poisoned patents?
Maybe Tesla can do something about their "deeply Tesla-unfriendly local environment"?
>Tesla giving away so many of its discoveries,
What "Discoveries"?
>Tesla-unfriendly local environment
It is Musk who is unfriendly to Europe.
> I just don't see how.
Split the hype part of the company from the profitable but dull part.
Robots + FSD + Elon Musk -> hype part. Merge with xAI for full effect.
Cars + Utility Storage + new dull CEO -> profitable dull part.
> I hope they get back on top, though.
... I mean, why?