I think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China.

The products aren’t “done.” They’re stagnant.

Where is their proper 3 row SUV, not a hacked together half-effort like the YL?

Where is their passenger premium van product for China?

Remember that this is a company with a huge factory and presence in China, and they were the first mover in that market, but they’re getting eaten alive by competitors.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.

And I haven’t even brought up the Cybertruck selling a couple hundred thousand units below company expectations, that is kind of a low blow cherry on top.

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plqbfbv 10 hours ago | parent [-]

> I think this opinion fails to explain why Tesla is faltering so badly in China.

Apparently not so much, the restyle and a consolidated assistance and charging network make people prefer it over the homemade products lately, which keep innovating but you essentially need to re-learn from scratch every time (my original source article is in Italian - https://www.vaielettrico.it/troppa-scelta-poca-fiducia-i-cin... ; this is the closest I could find in English: https://paultan.org/2026/01/21/tesla-model-y-again-best-sell... )

> They’re stagnant.

To some degree, I agree. Esp. on the 800V part which could make charges a bit faster. But I think they're overall stagnant: they pushed a ton of boundaries in the first 10-15y because they had to make something people could buy and use, but now that innovation push has diminished greatly: the cars work for most people, and the range is acceptable and not such a big inconvenience that pushes people to other brands. So no sense in going axial flux motors (that everyone is experimenting with) or bigger battery capacities, or even 48V + Ethernet instead of 12V + CANbus (the CyberTruck has these, but I don't think it has trickled down to the other models).

> Meanwhile, in Europe, the Volkswagen Group is outselling Tesla in EVs. The #1 EV in Europe is a Skoda, and on top of that Tesla doesn’t make a European style city car. Small sedans like the Model 3 are really not popular in Europe, you need a hatch.

Yes, but the Model Y remains the single unique best-selling car. VW needs to put together a few vehicle models to get to the same numbers. And I think the reason is the same as with China: Tesla has always been EV only, and built assistance and infrastructure for it, while VW doesn't have a very clear direction and makes products which are perhaps slightly mechanically superior, but feel inferior on the software and UX side. A car with hardware equivalent to Tesla (which now has 2 trims and 2 battery picks) costs anyway more than the base Tesla (you need to add a few optionals to the VWs). What Tesla is lacking in Europe are smaller models with ~450-500km range.

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ben_w an hour ago | parent | next [-]

> Yes, but the Model Y remains the single unique best-selling car. VW needs to put together a few vehicle models to get to the same numbers.

This is why I'd say Tesla's stagnating. They don't have brands to fill in those gaps, other car makers don't feel the need to say "best selling model", they just go for the total sales.

Similar thing happened to Apple with the original iMac: it was the (world's? USAs?) "best selling model" of personal computer. The entire company was still struggling and had like 5% of the total personal computer market, but they had only one model of consumer-focused personal computer and everyone else had loads of models.

I think Apple are still only around 10% of the personal computer market today, their money is from branching out to phones and so on.

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Grombobulous 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Judging by single model is going to make Tesla look better than it is when compared to badge engineering and/or whole platform sales. The MEB platform/ID.4 cross brand cousins outsell the Model Y.

BYD is likely moving a few hundred thousand more pure BEVs than Tesla each year, although it’s hard to gauge the exact mix given that they have hybrids and ICE vehicles.

I am not saying Tesla is in doomed in China or anything like that, they’re a top brand. But they should be definitively the #1 brand and their product lineup is short 2-3 models.

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Danox 6 hours ago | parent [-]

They are doomed in China. It’s over for Tesla in China and it’s not just China. It’s the rest of the world outside the US doomed.

	▲	ben_w an hour ago \| parent [-]
		IMO that depends on if they're financially dependent on Musk's reality distortion bubble. They're stumbling and wasting a lot of money on Musk's pet project (Optimus), but if you cleared out that rot and put the same teams to work doing car stuff, I think they'd be a nice dull car company doing nice dull car company things. However, a nice dull car company with Tesla's sales would be worth 1-10% of Tesla's market cap, and I don't know what happens if Musk is e.g. sentenced to prison time, or even just stripped of US citizenship and deported, or even just the SEC gets their teeth back and bans him from serving as CEO of publicly traded companies like they almost did for the "$420" tweet. That bubble popping may reveal financial shenanigans whose unwinding cause a fire-sale that ends the company.