Use a 365 day rolling average. You'll arrive at the same absurdity.
(The 30% is just an arbitrary number)
There's many companies that have their revenues flat or falling from quite some time which are still priced for insane future growth. Go figure.
Haven’t run the numbers, but I assume that you could take the S&P 500 over whatever timeframe you want, remove all the stocks that didn’t outperform bonds, and be left with a basket of stocks that wildly outperforms the actual S&P 500.
For this market cap to make sense, Tesla would have to eventually become the dominant car manufacturer worldwide. And that just doesn't seem like a reasonable prediction, given that legacy car manufacturers are starting to figure out EVs, and newer EV-focused manufacturers are making huge strides.
I don't know when (or even if) Tesla's stock price will fall back down to Earth. The old saying is that the market can remain irrational longer then you can remain solvent. But I do know that Tesla's stock price is not a good indicator of how well they're doing as a car manufacturer.
Elon is too toxic, and they got distracted with the whole cybertruck nonsense and kicked the model 1/smaller more euro-focused one into the long grass
This is the risk when you tie your brand to a single person, especially someone who loves being in the spotlight. Whenever that person does something controversial, that reflects poorly on the brand.
I own a Tesla (2023 Model Y Long Range 7-seat), and I do enjoy my Model Y; I have some complaints, but overall I'm happy with the safety features of the vehicle. I do not and will not enable the FSD or Auto-steer; but otherwise I am happy with it, and want other car manufacturers to take note of the vertical technological integration possible when they put their minds to it.
However, in pursuit of a better bottom line, Tesla has made some affordance changes to their post 2023 models; and even their camera vision in the 2023 model is a poor substitute for ultra-sonic sensors for parking.
Combine that with their gutting of the Tesla Supercharger team; and the subsequent decline in quality of their supercharger experience, and then combine that with the macro-economic issues that are surrounding EV range and EV experiences in real world conditions; and you have a decline that can be attributed to the non-Musk effects as well.
I don't doubt his political machinations have contributed to Tesla's decline. If I could sell my Tesla, I would; (I am way underwater due to its steep drop in resale value), but I think a substantial percentage of this drop can be attributable to the hype of the EV not living up to the reality of owning an EV.
I think the political complaints are dumb and people over index on stuff that doesn’t matter because of partisan politics. HN has hated on Tesla and musk for years despite continued success across multiple difficult industries.
If the robotaxi work in Austin succeeds they’ll have a massive advantage. There’s really nobody close to what Tesla is doing.
I had a 2018 M3P and now a 2025 Model S Plaid, the vision stuff works better, the quality is a lot nicer, there are a lot more superchargers and more are v3 or v4.
The quality of the comments on this thread suggest there’s still value here to buy. When people dismiss stuff for dumb reasons it’s easy to make money. It’s been the story of Tesla from the beginning.
I think these complaints are just outdated - it has improved rapidly over the last two years. If you never use it why would you think you have an accurate model for how good it is in different environments?
SF is also hardly a simple environment to drive in, it’s more complicated than most east coast driving.
To avoid the winter weather (which a Tesla finds problematic), one presumes?
With the latest Tesla Updates I can tell it thinks there's a grade or curve issue that is causing it to brake; but before the latest update it would just randomly brake in certain places (coming down from 70 to 40 very quickly) and that is just dangerous in the DC area.
It needs to be probably 1-2 orders of magnitude better than what the vast majority of people would actually experience as "zero interventions ever".
One intervention every 80 miles ("basically zero") is 178 interventions per year for the average American driver. Let's say conservatively that 10% of those avoids an accident, you're looking at 17 accidents caused by each driver per year, never mind the accidents they're just victim to due to misfortunate of being near someone else's 17 annual accidents.
For supervised minimal intervention is fine and 99% of the time I’m just sitting there watching. It’s still extremely valuable and useful and something nobody else is close to. It makes driving a lot simpler and safer. I already think it’s better than most people and would rather have a driver use it than not if I’m a passenger.
Unsupervised will be amazing if they can pull it off generally and will have major market effects, but obviously it’s harder for the reasons you describe.
DOGE wasn't incidentally and accidentally breaking things in their effort to save money, they were yammering about saving money as they systematically gutted the regulatory agencies investigating Musk.
FAA laid off 400 employees out of 45,000.
National Highway Traffic Safety Administration laid off 4% of their employees
CFPB was responsible for probing Tesla for any customer complaints around auto-financing loans but they had not yet ever formally fined or sued Tesla. They were closest attempt at being 'gutted' with around 90% reduction, but all layoffs were halted by a judge.
So if he did try to gut them he failed.
Can you make practical examples of this vertical technological integration?
Note that Tesla learned a lot of their vertical integration and manufacturing expertise from the Chinese. Their first factory in Fremont produced low quality product at a high price. Then they built a factory in China using a lot of local expertise which produced a much higher quality product much cheaper. Their German factory is a clone of the Chinese factory.
Reports are that Ford is in panic mode after analyzing the quality and performance of recent Chinese cars. If other companies are similar perhaps positive changes will be made in at least some of them.
The Tesla App allows me to lock, unlock the car, pop and close the trunk, check the cameras, schedule it to warm itself up, input destinations, see its real-time location, and see charging issues.
The app isn't clunky to use. It's wonderful, and it's really well made.
The car's infotainment system is vertically integrated; all of the features are available in one common interface and work well with one another. The car will automatically turn down the fans when I'm on a call, as just one example.
The cameras turn on and show me the blind spots when I'm changing lanes (my only complaint there is that the side-view mirrors do not physically allow me to position them as recommended by NHTSA).
The integrated maps also include charging station availability; and the maps automatically update (I don't need to buy an SD Card from a manufacturer with the updated maps). The software team is able to push updates to my car; so if there are bugs with their bluetooth, it gets fixed without me having to go to the dealership and hoping they care enough about their technology stack to fix it.
If there are bugs, they get fixed; and since they're not dealing with different third-party modules, they own the entire stack that is in the car.
My only complaints are that I can't use Waze on my Tesla, which shows where cops are, and sometimes their navigation routes are wonky and aren't practical (like driving through the middle of DC to avoid going around the beltway), but otherwise the technical experience of owning and operating a tesla an using their infotainment system is lightyears ahead of any other car I've driven.
Contra that with the Volkswagen I just rented where its Carplay crashed and crashed the whole infotainment system; or the bug where its rearview camera stayed on until I manually closed it when I shifted into drive;
But (and I'll note you didn't claim this specifically) a lot of these are things others do.
My Audi app lets me lock and unlock the car, check fuel level/range and oil, need for service, see its location, etc.
Cameras with indicator usage is across multiple manufacturers.
I do not need to buy map updates, they come over cellular. As do software updates.
I realize that software is a different beast, but if you're comparing VW based on a rental, then the Teslas I've rented at times were garbage, too. Poor sealing so the cabins whistled at freeway speeds, non-updated software that played havoc with the cars world view, showing cars and trucks around me constantly vanishing and reappearing, phantom vehicles. Not to mention a plethora of "sensor/camera/etc blocked" even though the vehicle was clean.
My parents have a 2021 Hyundai Santa Cruz (First model year!) and the design is baffling to me. The AC controls are on a capacitive touch display below the main one so you have no idea what you're doing unless you're looking at it. There are also multiple controls with almost no tactile feel at the base of the drive select lever and seat climate controls mounted to the front of the center divider that just a few raised bumps on would go a long way to helping quickly identify them while pawing around there to turn the seat heat/cool. The infotainment does OTA but the maps updates require using a USB drive. You can do it at home though it is an incredibly clunky and antiquated process.
To be perfectly honest the only things about the Santa Cruz that I wish my car had as far as the electronics go is blind spot/camera feeds and modern media support (carplay). Other than that I strongly prefer my incredibly aged dash. My front and center is just a tachometer with a small dot matrix display that shows the current speed digitally with one more below that for a couple other things (I leave it on real-time fuel consumption.) That is it. I'd rather use my phone for maps (Standalone or via carplay) over anything built in to any vehicle I've ever driven.
If this were true, the market for EVs would decline in entirety. But it doesn't, or at least, not by 14%. For many people, EVs are ok, despite their real-world drawbacks: https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
Slight drawbacks can be attributed to ending of subsidies for EV purchases, not necessarily because EVs are inherently worse than ICE cars.
I was just reading a different article[1] that pointed out 4 of the top EV sellers in the US (Tesla, Ford, Kia and Hyundai) have announced Q2 drops in sales. BMW is the another top EV seller whose sales dropped in Q2[2]. Of major sellers, only GM has risen.
It's probably too early to say that "the market for EVs" is declining, but this doesn't seem great.
[1] - https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tesla-sales-q2-2025-e2087...
[2] - https://www.theautochannel.com/news/2025/07/01/1549392-bmw-r...
But we bought anyway -- it was like buying computers 20 years ago -- yes, you could buy a lot more computer for less money in a few months, but if you were always waiting you'd never buy a computer.
The difference is that we expected the same thing to happen to gas cars. If you can buy a good electric car brand new for $30K, any used car gas or electric is worth substantially less than that.
And that's what would happen if we had access to Chinese cars and prices. $8K for a pretty good small car. $15K for a model 3 competitor. $25K for a model Y competitor. $35K for Porsche Macan competitor.
Not if they believed the CEO of Tesla, he was out there telling them they would be buying an appreciating asset. And now, that might sound dumb (and in hindsight very clearly is), but there were a lot of people who did believe.
I don’t know anybody who would go back to ICE after owning an EV. But I know a lot of people including myself who wouldn’t buy a Tesla because of Musk’s behavior. For me it started with the Thai cave rescue and Musk’s stupid submarine.
I'm pretty sure his political playing around has had an effect, though I think other issues such as well documented quality problems and bad comparisons to other EVs has had a greater effect. The joke that is the cybertruck is a large part of the problem too, some people don't want to be associated with that and wouldn't even if it were not for the other matters, and and its quality problems (how many recalls have there been now?) are far more well known than the issues in the rest of the product range (those products are on the whole a lot better, but is the average reasonable buyer going to take that risk?).
What is the "hype" of owning an EV? I've owned one, I now have a hybrid. It wasn't because the EV didn't live up to some imagined hype, it was actually one of the better cars I've ever owned at its job, but my requirements changed an an EV didn't fit.
On a per mile basis it was cheap, the performance was exceptional, and the infotainment was light years ahead of most other vehicles. Is there someone out there expecting it to walk the dog and cook and clean too?
Just to make this concrete: I keep spreadsheets for all my vehicles, and I enter every single fuel up. My family's CRV costs $0.161/mile to drive.
I bought a VW ID.4 in January, and I also track its recharges. That car costs $0.030/mile. I don't know yet about maintenance, but just for the daily driving, gas costs 5.36x that of an EV. What would be a $45 fill-up of gas is an $8.40 electric bill.
I just (like an hour ago) sold the car that I’ve been driving for the past 12 years. I paid $11k in cash for it, and sold it for $3k. Unless you do a lot of driving, it’s tough for an EV to make up that kind of difference based on cheaper fuel.
- Range is vastly overstated, especially in adverse weather conditions (like cold, snow, or even heat) As an example, in spring, when conditions are perfect (70 degree weather, not too sunny, not too cloudy), my Tesla Model Y LR that is supposed to get 330 miles from a 100% charge gets ... 250. That's not even close to accurate. In winter or in adverse weather conditions it can drop down to as much as 180. That's close to a 50% drop.
- Taking an EV on a long trip is not a simple prospect; and even now in 2025 Tesla still hasn't made it convenient to put in a destination and get there. Somehow the tesla navigation assumes (and up until this latest software update you had to do it yourself) that somehow when you get to where you're going a charger will be within x% of you, for whatever percentage of "x" is when you arrive at your destination. Until the latest update, we had to trick the Tesla by making our destination a round trip affair, to get it to give us a super-charger that would hopefully be close to where we're going, so it wasn't a matter of getting to our destination and manually figuring out where the nearest supercharger is. (We use it for Hockey, so we are frequently driving up the East Coast from the DC Area).
- To keep on the Super Charger issues, it is common to arrive and find undocumented issues with Superchargers (their latest updates also seem to have tried to deal with that problem, though it's not 100% fixed), or entire Supercharger stations literally being out of service but not documented on their side.
- Outside of First party charging; the thirdparty charging, like through Chargepoint et. al. is even worse. As an owner of a Tesla, it's more likely that any third-party charger I try to use will have a problem where my car doesn't actually charge. It's super annoying and at a recent visit to Hershey Park PA, I didn't find out until I came back two hours later that no charging had occurred. I don't blame Tesla for this (though it'd be nice to have a push notification warning me after 5 minutes that nothing is charging), but this is a larger EV Problem. - Overall, taking an EV somewhere still means planning your trip carefully to ensure your destination has charging, how you're getting there has charging, and a back-up plan in case that charging doesn't work.
- Like recently, my spouse took our Tesla to Massuchusetts to pick up our daughter from Soccer camp; and to where we were going there was literally a route that was backed up for 4 hours, and another route that had no superchargers for about 100 miles. So we could either deal with the fact that she was in traffic for four extra hours, or we could deal with the fact that no first-party chargers were in the other route and hope the third-party chargers were up to snuff.
- Wear and tear on the car tires. I got 30,000 miles out of my tires and the tire technician said that was pretty good. They regularly deal with Teslas and other EVs that eat through tires much more quickly than the tires are rated for (and these are Tesla approved tires) due to the weight of the vehicle and the braking dynamics.
- Supply chain for repairs. There's lots of collision centers in the Washington DC area. There are lots of vehicles hanging out, waiting for parts. By far the most vehicles that stay out there the longest (both from my conversations with folks that work at the collision centers and my own eyeballs, I pass two every day) say that EVs, especially Teslas, have a much longer lead time than non-EV vehicles for parts, and that there are not as many OEMs for those parts. So that means if you get in a wreck with a Tesla, you can be waiting weeks or months when someone else might only wait a week or two for a part. As the supply chains improve for EVs that will get better, but that's still a concern for now, and a reason why you can't go "all EV" if you do any serious driving (like we do).
- Charging is not yet as easy as finding a Gas station and taking five minutes to pump gas. It's 15-30 minutes at a Supercharger depending on what you're charging to. Luckily most of the super chargers I used have good amenities close by, but some don't. Some are random mall parking lots with nothing nearby.
These are things the hype cycle doesn't tell you about and you don't realize until you've actually owned an EV and tried to make it your day-to-day vehicle. It's wonderful for short commutes to work; but there are real drawbacks, especially using it for long distance trips or trips that include winter weather.
So instead of my household having one EV and one gas car, we’ve got two gas cars.
If I was a Tesla shareholder I'd be much more worried about that, as news cycles move on pretty fast while competition will only get stiffer.
Tesla is just lucky BYD is banned in places like Canada because the domestic car companies know they can't compete.
So now it's off to new fantasy --- robotaxi.
The problem with this fantasy --- ride hailing isn't nearly as profitable as auto manufacturing.
Half the world isn't going to ditch their autos in favor of robo rides any time soon. This is what it will take to justify Tesla's current outlandish stock price.
Uber P/E is about 20. Tesla P/E is around 170. Can Tesla ride hailing be 6 times bigger/more profitable than Uber in the near future? I personally don't think so.
It feels good to support American-made sustainable technology that has revolutionised the electric car and battery storage markets.
I struggle to understand those who would short-sell Tesla, unless they have some kind of emotional hangup against Elon Musk or government efficiency?
It’s objectively clear that the company is in a bad market condition, and you don’t need to have an “emotional hangup against Elon Musk or government efficiency” to know it’s bad business to alienate your potential customer base and deliver shockingly bad public appearances.
If Ford’s CEO was stumbling-down drunk or higher than a kite at a presser, I’d short Ford too.
That didn't stop him from raising the value of $TSLA from a penny stock to one of the largest companies in the world.
With his initial investment, and with him as the product architect of the first Tesla vehicle (the Roadster), he transformed an academic project with no products to the world's most valuable automaker.
An automaker so valuable, it's worth more than Toyota, BYD, GM, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Ford and Honda COMBINED.
People have shorted $TSLA before because they underestimated Musk, and let their own personal affectations cloud their understanding of Tesla's potential, and Musk's singular genius.
This doesn't give you the slightest bit of pause?
Poor explanation since ~50% stock is owned by institutions.
I think retail holds 38% of ownership.
Rest of ownership is mostly Elon ~13%.
indexed fund ownership doesn't explain institutional holdings. Tesla is 5% of NASDAQ 100 by market cap. Vanguard owns 7.7%, BlackRock owns 6.4%.
Disclaimer: not a financial analyst and I might have numbers wrong (mostly from Tiger Trading App).
Yes. Wildly overvalued for an automaker that it has never accounted for more than 2% of light vehicles world wide --- and instead of the wild growth projections they sold to investors, sales over the last 2 years have actually declined.
Any "potential" here remains largely unrealized.
Wait, do you have an emotional hangup FOR Elon Musk ?
> or government efficiency?
Is this satire ?
I don't know. Take cities like Bangalore (India) for example. I don't live there but do occasionally visit family every couple of years. And I consistently hear a general sentiment of "I just take Uber because the traffic is insane. But the traffic is insane because of too many Ubers"
But in all of that sentiment, nobody's saying "I wish I could drive instead" – they're more than happy to have someone drive them around if it's cheap enough. That was true with Auto Rickshaws, and it's even more attractive in an air conditioned car.
If taxis get cheaper, people will use them in even more situations, like daily commutes. Why not?
And what do you mean by "EV Fantasy" – I get if you meant Robotaxi or self-driving fantasy. But there are hundreds of thousands of Teslas (maybe a million?) driving around the world isn't there? Are all these people imagining that they're driving a Tesla EV? Which part of it is a fantasy?
The fantasy that any of this nonsense is a sustainable business, especially when the charismatic leader completely FUBARed his government hobby project and is biting the hand that feeds him. Tesla's biggest source of revenue is the US government.
Even a US city of 100,000 people, it can be really tough or impossible to get an Uber - good luck getting a ride from the airport at 12:30 in the morning
This is just driven by partisan anti-Elon sentiment.
The reality is Tesla has never accounted for more than 2% of light vehicle sales worldwide. And over the last 2 years; instead of spectacular growth, sales have actually declined.
And of course, Tesla isn't even in the top 10 for top selling brands of cars. Only about 1 in 50 new cars being sold is a Tesla.
Their valuation is largely based on hype.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-worlds-best-selling-car-is...
Sure --- if roborides are cheap enough and safe enough, more people will use them.
The immediate question for Tesla and their investors --- can they really provide "safe" robo rides using their current approach?
This is far from being proven since Tesla is only rated as Level 2 autonomy which according to Tesla itself, requires constant supervision. Placing passengers and the public in danger with inadequate technology is a textbook legal definition of negligence.
The longer term question; assuming they solve FSD --- is can they make tons of money from cheap rides? Enough to justify their current outlandish stock price.
They recently launched their Robotaxi service in Austin, and it seems to be as good as Waymo or better. https://youtu.be/RcaBZenrCCs
They also recently autonomously delivered a car to a customer’s apartment straight from the factory line. https://youtu.be/lRRtW16GalE
https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/chip-design/autonomous-drivin...
I bought a model Y dual motor in 2021 is it’s been hands down my best car ever. Almost zero maintenance. Yet more proof of never take stock advice from HN, in fact do the opposite in most circumstances. Elon derangement syndrome at its finest.
> If taxis get cheaper, people will use them in even more situations, like daily commutes.
This seems straight out of the Uber pitch from its early days. "Our total addressable market is the entire auto industry because people will prefer taxis over driving themselves". And a decade later where are we? Most ridesharing apps are shrinking day by day.
The unit cost of a taxi isn't sustainable in a long term. People might want to pay for someone to drive them around but that is an expensive proposition.
Robo taxis now seem to be selling the same dream. Cut out the driver and that will make rides cheaper. But deploying taxi is going to be a huge expenditure. This might be doable with VC money upfront and even cheap just like the early days of Uber. But in the long run same thing is going to happen. Once all competition is gone robotaxis are not going to be any cheaper. It will be back to square one.
That was my life in Beijing until I moved back to the states 8+ years ago. Forget about even buying a car, where would you park it? The subway was an option, especially after line 10 opened which was basically one line to work but...it was always really crowded and I didn't like standing for an hour (loop lines aren't very direct).
But there were too many cars, to make it work I had to shift my working hours, so I would leave super early (~6 AM) and come home around 3PM. It definitely didn't feel sustainable but it worked out (now I WFH...and in LA I lived right next to my lab...so I still avoid driving).
Robotaxis can't deal with insane traffic, and would be disadvantaged when aggressive drivers learn how to trick robotaxis to give way submissively.
Some countries have highly developed road systems that are more predictable, and where drivers are more likely to cooperate rather than aggressively defect.
2. It's not about "different political opinions", it's far beyond that and to suggest so tells anyone reading your comment everything they need to know about you.
Tesla is still one of a handful of trillion dollar companies. Maybe it will be a bust, but it isn't one today.
> Uber P/E is about 20. Tesla P/E is around 170.
So the expectation is tesla will continue to grow at a significant rate while uber "stagnates".
> I personally don't think so.
Investors do. I'm surprised how well the stock is doing given the all the distractions. It certainly isn't trading like it is about to bust.
I guess historically, lots of companies have operated by selling dreams.
The real estate industry sells dreams of suburban utopias.
The fitness industry sells dreams of sexy good times.
The cola industry sells dreams of likability and friendship.
Apple sells dreams of in-crowd later-day eco-hipsterism.
Tesla sells… dunno. Maybe dreams of billionaire crypto-bro futurism?
As long as the company is worth $900B+, you're never going to convince its fans that they're wrong.
Even if the stockholders all lost everything, I think a significant portion will still think they were following the messiah, the same way that old ladies give their last three pennies to tele-vangelists while eating cat food off of paper plates.
God, I would love to see an AMA from one of these guys that have to sit in a seat with their hands folded staring at the road 8 hours a day.
You knock out a factor of 10 and the PE is 17 which is much more in line with other companies have.
I'm not sure how this goes in the long term though, likely to worse. For example BYD sold almost twice the number of cars in the same period and they don't seem to be slowing down.
> The woman says Musk asked her friend to perform sex acts in exchange for him buying her a horse. Earlier, the flight attendant had reportedly been encouraged to learn how to give massages.
> The flight attendant filed a sexual misconduct claim against Musk, and SpaceX paid her $250,000 in 2018 as part of a settlement that's bound by non-disclosure and non-disparagement clauses, Insider reported.
I ended up selling the Model 3 last November and getting a new Model Y when they had a 0% APR + FSD transfer promotion running. If you're interested in FSD try to find a newer Model Y (mid 2023ish) or any refresh Model 3 for HW4.
Tesla sales drop for fifth month in a row in Europe
Analemma_•14h ago
On the other hand, last quarter Tesla (and its online defenders) insisted the reason for the previous drop was that people were waiting for refreshed models. Now that the refreshes have been available for a full quarter and sales are still declining, we can rule that possibility out.
sorcerer-mar•13h ago
lesuorac•13h ago
TSLA has a 14% decline in deliveries but 19% increase in stock price. The direction of the company should be clear, decline deliveries by 100% for a sweat 2000% stock appreciation.
ksherlock•13h ago
"The final quarterly tally of 384,122 missed analysts’ expectations of 387,000 deliveries"