Hacker Newsnew | past | comments | ask | show | jobs | submitlogin

To me it seems to have very little to do with his antics. Surely inflation, market saturation, and increased competition is more probable?



Tesla is a very very nice computer with a decent car attached to it.

In the best of times Musk's leadership brought us stuff like "Joe Mode" just because he saw someone complain on Twitter.

Now he's completely unhinged and we can't trust him even as much as before. He might just decide something crazy and force the factories to change it just because.


He said “partly” — seems reasonable that throwing nazi salutes around might have a partial impact on declining sales?


sales were trending down significantly in Europe even before the salute though.


That doesn’t mean Musk’s gesture didn’t accelerate the downward trend. But I agree with the general sentiment. Overall Teslas can’t compete with other EV makers because as soon as there’s a real market Tesla isn’t that attractive anymore outside of a brand loyal niche. Musk appears to have lost his magic, or perhaps his mind too. Dude looks quite disheveled these days..


because as soon as there’s a real market Tesla isn’t that attractive anymore outside of a brand loyal niche.

can't be further from the truth. if you drive tesla and then drive all of the competitors tesla is faaar superior car. cars are great. the core issue here are margins - before competition tesla's could retain the huge margins on their vehicles. feels like in order to compete now they will have to drop the prices and hence their margins and with the forward p/e ratio of 1,000,129 that won't go well for the company's financials. and of course elon being a tool isn't going to be helping with this :)


Many people will NEVER buy a Tesla because they don't like Musk's politics or behavior.


perhaps but I was not commenting on elon or his politics and repercussions from him going full-on insane, I was specifically commenting on because as soon as there’s a real market Tesla isn’t that attractive anymore outside of a brand loyal niche.


If they drop price tesla still can’t compete because they are lacking the capacity to increase production


they'd be just fine if they sell all the cars they currently have capacity to make with their current margins... not to satisfy the insane evaluation but in general :)


Have a model Y. Had a vw ID.5 before (leased), his assessment is correct. Tesla is a decent car with a NICE infotainment system. VW's Android system is not wow'ing anyone, but the car is quieter, handles better, turns on a dime, suspension is way more comfy etc - Volkswagen Group knows how to make a car. (And yea, as a European, this will be my last US oligarch/Nazi car)


Oh no, it's in great part due to his antics. Owning a Tesla used to be about a positive future, the transition to sustainability, and with great engineering and making it sexy. Now owning a Tesla seems to be about kneeling to Moloch, paying for plutocracy, gleefully cutting basic food aid for the world's poorest starving children, undermining democracy around the world, and yes even doing a fascist salute. So, you want that as your brand? And yes, there's now much better competition, but unlike what one might gather from certain "conservative" news sources, the EV market has grown and continues to grow. [1] My guess is Tesla sales will continue to collapse.

The robo-taxi attempt is fraught and Musk's mind seems elsewhere -- swinging a wrecking ball on government, turning Twitter into his microphone (with great damage to its value and creating a real opening for competitors), posting videogame results reminiscent of the old North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung-style, where the newspaper would report on his games of golf in which he swung 18 hole-in-ones.

By hitching his wagon to political movements most despised by the consumers of EVs he's alienated Tesla's audience. By his further actions he's shocked and disgusted them so that driving a Tesla is becoming an embarrassment. The brand is kaput.

There's maybe a separate China story but it's no better. Tesla taxis in China, really?

[1] Global electric vehicle sales up 25% in record 2024 - https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/global...


I'm actually shocked in such a media and marketing driven society that absolutely, nobody brings up the fact that the Tesla brand has been completely destroyed in the US and EU.

Companies simply do not survive this in the long run unless very specific inelastic demand (I'm thinking bp oil spill as the only example) exists, and even then BP wasn't as international or charged or so ... Nazi.

Tesla is musk. Musk is a Nazi. Musk was a progressive environmental future in the previous media construction.

That radical shift means no brand, no customers. How many people want to drive a car that basically has a swastika on it? 4% of the population?

On top of this, musks absent leadership since the model Y, in addition to Tesla's general problems getting new designs out the door, and his marketing ignorance in the good days, means Tesla has no badge diversification a luxury marque, no extensive model diversity for all the markets of the world, no cabin options for their extreme design, no trims and body style variations.

It's just the 3 and Y basically.

Tesla should have bought another car company to gain engineer, design, oem relationships, and manufacturing capacity.

Too late. Tesla is now a pump and dump scheme, musk wants his 60 billion that Delaware is holding up and then he'll sell off just like the board is doing now.

China will seize teskas assets on a whim from a trade war or a hot war with Taiwan.

The energy sector is not one I look forward to, Tesla doesn't have any advantage in battery packaging or battery technology("battery day" is now officially a dud), and lfp lmfp and sodium ion chemistries are far more suited to grid storage and home storage.

We all know AI driving at Q4 isnt happening under musk. It's a long slog and musk fires software teams too quickly, because he treats them like hardware. That's basically all the hype.


EV sales are generally growing in Europe

Tesla sales are static or shrinking

Take January YoY in the UK, EV sales rose 24%, Tesla's sales dropped 8% ish


> To me it seems to have very little to do with his antics.

For your hypothesis to make sense, first you would have to establish that Musk's antics have no negative impact on Musk's public opinion or public image.

In the meantime, you've started to see a global wave of both Tesla stores and Tesla cars being vandalized in protest over Musk's public support for Nazism. In some cases such as Germany you even had public protests against the neonazi party that Musk supports and promotes.

So you establish the fact that throughout the world people started protesting Musk due to his public actions. Do you think this change in public sentiment brings with it a neutral impact on sales?




Consider applying for YC's Fall 2025 batch! Applications are open till Aug 4

Guidelines | FAQ | Lists | API | Security | Legal | Apply to YC | Contact

Search: