Now the landscape has changed and TSLA lacks innovation. Personally, i still enjoy fanboy talk from first-gen Tesla drivers while they try to dream of a come back once Elon‘s wonder weapons finally arrive to turn the war.
That said, Tesla is still selling plenty of vehicles and anecdotally I see plenty of new ones driving around my American city, although more than a few have anti-Elon bumper stickers which is usually not a great sign for a brand. But I suspect a lot of that is momentum and the Elon problem is going to get worse and worse for the company as time goes on. His brain seems unlikely to get less melted over time and his politics and company direction seem unlikely to improve Tesla's prospects.
We won’t know this until the end of January [1]. (Tesla turned a $1.4bn profit in Q3.)
[1] https://finance.yahoo.com/news/prediction-elon-musk-reveal-t...
There's plenty to puzzle over: Why not spend part of the cash pile to make robots or semi's or a new model or... less vaporous? I don't suppose we'll know until the stock price prompts Elon or his board to ask that question.
Tesla has a decent supercharger network. And now Chinese manufacturers are building theirs. AFAIK none of the European brands has anything even remotely like that. I heard people buy hybrids due to this problem.
Most people live in apartments without access to personal chargers, combined with high electricity cost you end up not even saving money for the inconvenience.
And this is main problem. The thing is that most of people does not drive some big gas guzzling trucks like in USA, but hatchbacks like VW Golf which can run from 5l~8l/100km (20km/l ~ 12,5km/l) so it is very competitive with superchargers + it is much faster and more convenient than electric charger. There is nothing better than figuring out why my car does not want to talk to this charger when there is -5 deg C outside and I am losing touch in my fingerprints.
- Solar power is already starting to make so much surplus during the days, and it needs battery power to store. Cars are an ideal object to use surplus energy. Cost will continue to sink.
- Creating additional charging infrastructure costs very little, because power lines are available everywhere. Fuel stations might be currently broader available, but even maintenance on fuel stations is likely more expensive than building new charging infrastructure. If more electric cars are available, more charging infrastructure will be built.
- Europe has very little oil / fuel reserves and is heavily dependent on other countries. As we have seen in recent years this is a major long term problem.
If it works well, Tesla's strategy of keeping the car minimal/cheap to produce but with enough sensors and an upgradable hardware may become extremely useful as new techniques are coming to tackle the long tail of self-driving cases to handle.
I'm sure Tesla will soon copy Nvidia and put a reasoning model in its cars as well.
nikanj•3w ago
timmg•3w ago
bigbadfeline•3w ago
Not really. "Subsidizing everything" is an oxymoron, if you subsidize some production it must be at the expense of other production that is providing the subsidies.
> It may cancel out (or maybe more than cancel out) those tariffs.
The opposite is true, tariffs reduce demand for Chinese products and thus for Chinese currency, which leads to lower yuan.
If you want higher yuan, remove the tariffs.
qcnguy•3w ago
bigbadfeline•3w ago
One of the fundamental equations of macroeconomics: savings == investment
The high speed of Chinese industrialization is made possible by the high level of savings which are fueled into investments, and that doesn't leave much room for subsidies.
Moreover, even if subsidies do exist, they can be structured in a way that maximizes the bang for the buck of investments and in that light, they assure max productivity - that's not "stealing people's savings" - that's utilizing them in the best way possible for their real purpose: investment.
I don't know why so many people without basic understanding of economics imagine themselves to be experts in it. Yes, mainstream economics is a mess but thinking that you'd fix it with a few shortcuts is hubris.
qcnguy•3w ago
That's not a "fundamental equation", that's merely the hope savers have. Sometimes the hope turns out to be futile and you get bank runs or financial crises.
Chinese investments aren't investments as would be understood in a free system. They have private investors, but when the government subsidizes industries they're force feeding money to things private investors passed up (or they rig the market so private investors pile in even though it doesn't make sense to do so absent the manipulations).
Think about it like this: imagine the government stole your savings and then gave it all to Sam Altman to spend on OpenAI. You might object on several grounds:
1. It's morally wrong to steal people's money.
2. OpenAI probably isn't a viable business.
3. OpenAI will use those savings to give random strangers free chats.
4. If OpenAI implodes or becomes a zombie firm that makes losses forever, the government won't hold itself accountable.
5. In the likely event of negative RoI you won't have any ability to retire anymore.
It's obvious why this scheme is bad and why people who actually do understand economics want governments to stay well away from "investments" of any kind.
PearlRiver•3w ago
Glass stone houses etc etc.