When Tesla releases its first quarter earnings this afternoon, the company’s CEO Elon Musk will field the usual questions about new products, new factories, and progress toward its futuristic vision of self-driving cars and robot workers. But Musk will also face increasingly urgent questions about its current state of affairs — and why everything seems to be going to shit.
Earlier this month, the company reported its first year-over-year sales drop in four years, a sign of rougher waters ahead. Tesla’s stock has fallen more than 40 percent since the start of the year, including a 13 percent drop in the last week. The company laid off over 14,000 employees last week, 10 percent of its global workforce — which could end up being closer to 20 percent when all’s said and done, according to Bloomberg. Today’s earnings report is expected to include Tesla’s lowest profit margins in six years, a sign that rampant price-cutting continues to exact a toll.
Honestly, if another CEO steps in and Elon retires, the company might actually recover. Right now the image of Tesla is tied too closely to Elon who we know is an asshat.
They might finally develop the affordable, mass market car that Musk has been claiming is in the works for years, instead of idiotic and expensive passion projects like the cybertruck.
Musk thinks he already did that with the model 3, right? Billionaires have no concept of “affordable” after all.
It’s the Model 2, which he has being talking about for years but it’s not clear if it will ever happen.
“What could a banana possibly cost Michael? $10?”
Idk, I think the idea of selling trucks want bad. Americans love trucks. That being said, the execution seems very poor.
The idea of a truck EV isn’t bad market wise, look at Rivian for example. It was purely poor execution, no doubt attributed to Musk.
The execution is very poor, and I’d rather these dangerous monstrosities go away and be replaced by smaller, less dangerous, and more practical vehicles. And ideally, car ownership will decline over the long term with viable alternatives to driving hopefully being developed across the world (but that’s a whole other discussion).
Yes. Try living in DWF. The truck are the problem for all kinds of reasons.
Where?
Disney World France?
Dallas Worth Fort?
Musk instead is now going all in with AI and Robotaxis.
Probably realised that “full” self-driving the way people think of it is not likely to happen in our lifetimes. And Tesla’s existing system is an out and out scam.
But I expect he’ll try and combine it with his stupid tunnel idea, instead of, I don’t know, a train?
It’s funny how so many were confident FSD really was safer than human drivers 10 years ago. Some even said it’s irresponsible not to let these self driving cars drive on the street.
Some people are still claiming that.
That was the original idea. It was supposed to be self-driving buses to get a higher throughput. Then the buses went away and were replaced by normal cars, and then self driving was replaced with human drivers. The convenient lift to get to the tunnels was replaced by normal escalators and what was left from all those lofty plans was the underground taxi farce, with rgb lighting.
There’s no way in fucking hell ever that I would go into one of Muck’s underground death traps. It’s such an insanely dumb idea.
Relaxi-cabs
I’ve got coworkers who literally think Elon is humanity’s savior. This came up today (shared a pic of a tesla w/ a bumper sticker that said “I bought this before we knew Elon was crazy…” and they IMMEDIATELY started gargling his metaphorical balls).
There’s a tiny sliver of market that represents the overlapped portion of 1) hopeless rednecks, and 2) people interested in owning an electric vehicle… that’s Tesla’s target customer. It’s gonna saturate in a hurry, but it’s also a cult-like following of cash cows eager to be milked. My money’s on Tesla’s performance steadying out and maintaining a not-great but not-bad-enough-to-tank-the-company level of financial success.
Depends on what you mean by “recover”. It might recover in the sense that the entire company won’t go bankrupt and will find a sustainable way to continue existing, but it will never recover to the current stock worth. Tesla has been grossly overvalued as whatever huge potential it had has been squandered. The stock will drop regardless of what Tesla does and it’s highly unlikely it will ever reach such worth ever again.
It’s not just his image. He’s an awful manager and has made some atrocious decision in the last few years affecting Tesla employees, customers and shareholders… even people who don’t buy teslas due to the unsafe FSD. He’s made Tesla a financial and physical danger to the public.
It seems like it would be a good move to have him step down.
I’m not sure they will though, I think the board is probably still stuck in the mindset that their company is valued highly because of Musk.
Musk also owns the board, and they all know if he goes down, they’re going with him. They know he’s an idiot, but he’s wormed his way into every facet of the company.
It’s why they allowed him to buy a company that was weeks away from bankruptcy (Solar City) for a huge premium using Tesla funds despite it being very likely to bankrupt Tesla itself.
It’s why they allowed him to stay in his position, despite being sanctioned by the SEC for lying about taking the company private (at $420 because lol weed number) to pump the stock.
It’s why they’re pushing for his absurd $58bn pay package to be retroactively instated, even though the company just had an absolutely abysmal financial quarter.
Make no mistake looking at the official org chart. The board consists of Elon Musk, E. Musk, E. R. Musk, and Musk, Elon R. Any other names are merely a formality and entirely beholden to his whims. The only way Elon leaves Tesla is either in handcuffs or on a stretcher.