What changed is he took the mask off. He was always the sleaze that he is today, but a lot of us were fooled into believing he wanted to do something good.

2018 (tham luang cave rescue) is when the cracks really started showing up, so the trajectory was probably set a while earlier.

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.

He really managed to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

Really? What was it you liked about him before, but not now?

And yet he's only about 500B richer than the second richest person in the world:

https://www.forbes.com/real-time-billionaires/

What did he do specifically to crater his reputation?

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.

There is no reason Chinese EVs couldn’t have been beaten on cost.

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.

Chineese phonemakers exist yet Apple pulls in a significant portion of profits due to their _halo_ allowing them to sell at a higher price point.

Tesla had that, all Musk had to do was refrain himself from waving his hand around in that certain fashion.

New registrations in Sweden for the past 3 years, Sweden alone would've probably absorbed about 14000 cars of that unsold stock.

  2023  20388  341835  0,0596428101276932  (5.96%)
  2024  21894  314485  0,0696185827622939  (6.96%)
  2025   7254  314426  0,0230706112089967  (2.31%)
  2026   2849   72525  0,0392830058600483  (3.93%)

The worst news for Tesla isn't the sales though, with "Texas-like" distances in Sweden (and Norway and Finland) there was a perception that only Tesla cars could properly handle the distances without getting too much battery angst.

When people started looking around they realized that the other carmakers were getting their shit together and could actually deliver cars that handled distances well enough.

Yeah, EVs are completely mundane now. Not sexy enough of a story to justify the high PE ratios anymore.

I think this is the reason for the weird pivot to humanoid robots and for taking SpaceX public even though he originally said he wouldn’t. Better story for the investors than EVs.

> I think Tesla as a company is doing the right moves. The management (excluding Elon) seems solid and smart.

How can (generally) dropping sales and having 50,000 unsold cars on stock be the right move?

The Model Y is going on 8 years old, S and X are being shutdown. That leaves you with the 3 and Y. Cybertruck will be shutdown soon. What new models have they announced?

The amount of apologia exists for Musk actions is just mind boggling. It seems to me that people want all the good from the hype Musk brings, but if things go wrong - Why don't people think of the poor workers?

You live by the sword, you die by the sword. If people were so smart where were they when Musk was hyping autonomous vehicles being just around the corner for years? Or the fact that the board of directors kept raising his compensation to insane levels because he kept threatening them that he'll walk out? The company chose to do this. People didn't. Now that he is tanking the valuation, we don't need to separate out Tesla and Musk. They are one and the same.

Elon has always been the face of Tesla since he acquired it from the founders. Early he was a brand asset, but tying one's identity so strongly to a company is a brand risk when that person's image is tarnished.

Just look at Martha Stewart Living during her incarceration.

Celebrities are great at building brands, but they need to back away from their personal successes have bootstrapped the new brand before something they do becomes a liability.

Subway made their own celebrity spokesperson (Jared) and hitched their wagon to him for far too long. One or two years is understandable, but Subway had him so long it merged its identity with Jared until the truth about Jared was revealed.

The best pronoun joke, ever.

This war is going to push oil prices up, which means more EV sales. On top of that, make sure to sprinkle a bit of tariffs in order to block BYD.

Mhhh, makes sense.