So setting aside selling credits to other car companies and interest earned on reserves, Tesla is a money losing company again. Interesting.
In other news the stock is up almost 8%, lol.
-W
I don't think selling credits is that big of a deal. Who cares how you make your money as long as the checks cash, right? One thing that hasn't been as widely reported is the margins, which are now down to 2%. Which is not good, even in an industry known for its crappy margins. Losing sales, market share, and margin at the same time is officially Real Bad.™
Musk doesn't seem to have any plan to right the ship. Cars are fashion statements, and all manufacturers do a refresh every four or five years. The Model Y refresh doesn't quite count, IMO. Their other models are getting long in the tooth.
Tesla's low cost entries apparently will be stripped down models Y and 3 instead of a new platform. Typically manufacturers add features to older models to make them more attractive, not remove them.
The robotaxi will not roll out with the cybercab we've seen previously. Instead it will be a geofenced Model Y. Tesla released a video demonstrating the robotaxi with a safety driver in the car. Musk says that by mid-next year there will be "millions" of fully autonomous Teslas and will have a 99% market share.
These claims do not sound plausible.
You lost out on huge gains over those same years, but congrats I guess?
"Line go up" is a thought stopping phrase design to avoid thinking about the actual topic.
I get the sense Musk ordered resources into the Cybertruck and magic taxi/bus against expert advice, as his own version of the Schwerer Gustav, Hindenburg, or Bismark. Concentrations of wealth and power can lead unrestrained megalomaniac leaders to ignore their engineers and generals and direct resources into groundbreaking, vain, and "biggest" things that are not practical.
Perfect analogy. The Cybertruck might have worked
if they were able to sell it at the originally advertised price and specs. The preorder base Cybertruck list price was $40K, about the same as a base F-150 or Silverado. But by delivery time, it was $80K. The median US car price is $48K. So the price moved from affordable to high end.
Somebody should have told Musk they couldn't make this thing for $40K. Or maybe they did, but he didn't believe them. Regardless, they plowed all these resources into a high end luxury-type vehicle and the market will always be small for something like that. They were never going to sell 250,000/year, ever. In the meantime, they didn't develop a low end, consumer friendly model, which is where the market is (and was Tesla's stated master plan, by the way).
Musk seems to be making a similar wild bet on the Cybercab. His statements seem to indicate the autonomous driving problem will be solved by this time next year. I find that very unlikely.
