That said, for Tesla this is only a bandaid, since they have absolutely nothing in the consumer pipeline beyond the current increasingly uncompetitive offerings. Chinese brands like BYD, on the other hand, are laughing all the way to the bank.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-03-17/kitchen-pollutants-st...
It is somewhat complex subject. Taking in account actual use, cost of fuel and maintenance and then comparing it to purchase price and depreciation is bit of a work. And I don't think too many people do that when they should.
Mhhh, makes sense.
The tariffs though is a great point. Definitely a boon for Tesla from good old Papa Trump. It's grotesque.
Obviously it's always been latent in Elon, but he was a pretty bog standard lightly-if-apolitical silicon valley startup guy for most of his adult life. The free speech erosion under the Biden admin is what really started to "red pill" him and eventually led him off the cliff. It's a sad story really, but an important one because I think there are a lot of people in the same boat, and understandign them is important if we want to correct the trajectory of our country's ship. It's a damn hard problem though.
What caused Elon to lose his ability to manage it is subject for debate, I personally believe he discovered drugs in 2019 and the rest is history.
He just took a wrong turn and seems hell bent on staying on it.
The tendency was probably always there given the serial lying about self driving started circa 2015, or the weird ego trip of ousting the founders and getting himself called co-founder, but if we’re looking for a point event the removal of his long time PA in 2014 still stands out to me.
Is it his politics? He seems to have reasonable beliefs there. It's not like he's been supporting Trump unconditionally. He doesn't always agree with Trump. Is it because of his stance in favor of free speech? How is that a bad thing? As someone who doesn't like any side of politics, I don't get it.
The labor/environmental costs of car manufacturing is relatively low and more than made up in the cost of shipping cars. One example of this was the number of foreign car manufacturers that were relocating manufacturing to the NAFTA region to serve the U.S. car market even before the tariff nonsense.
The area where China might have an edge is batteries cost. I’m not convinced that’s the case but even if we assume it is, it’s irrelevant because Chinese battery companies are largely not vertically integrated with the automakers and have been selling those batteries to non Chinese automakers at the same rates in an open market.
The reason Chinese EVs are cheaper is plain and simple competition. Some of those price advantages will disappear as Chinese companies need to start showing profits, but a lot of those won’t because they were the result of genuine innovation driven by the tremendously competitive market and the economies of scale that were rapidly created.
Keeping that in mind, while a lot of Tesla’s missed opportunities are self owns, the larger problem ultimately was the lack of govt support in developing a competitive ecosystem in the US.
The problem is that we often attach a company or a larger idea to a single person, even when it is much much bigger than that individual. People started boycotting Tesla because of Elon Musk, without considering that Tesla is actually thousands of engineers, workers, and managers. And majority of decisions are not done by Elons.
But people tend to think in terms of heroes and anti heroes. Cesar Chavez is another example of how this dynamic plays out.
When reality finally sets in it will not be pretty.
Source: At the End of https://asymco.com/2026/03/31/melius-highlights-fcf-while-re...
Edit: typos
The rest of will just buy Xiaomi SU 7's....
kubb•1h ago
testfrequency•1h ago
“You don’t understand the vision” “This is actually a good thing” “HODL”
PowerElectronix•56m ago
rvnx•35m ago
Ekaros•34m ago
rvnx•18m ago
(article from today)