Tesla's energy storage business gets sucked into the company's downward spiral

102 pointsposted 7 months ago
by rntn
(techcrunch.com)

106 Comments

BSOhealth

7 months ago

Not unfair coverage. If your company is trading with a PE of 181 and your YoY sales have been decreasing at greater rates YoY (and we’re literally only talking about 400k cars, equals a >trillion valuation?), you deserve more scrutiny than many others, at least.

teslaq

7 months ago

Perhaps the bad karma of DOGE/Elon being responsible for 14million impending deaths

https://www.cnn.com/2025/07/01/politics/us-aid-elimination-s...

xyst

7 months ago

[flagged]

slashdev

7 months ago

[flagged]

0cf8612b2e1e

7 months ago

Say the number is inflated. How many attributable deaths is sufficient to be angry?

adamhartenz

7 months ago

What if it was not 14 million, but 14,000 deaths? Would that be ok with you?

teslaq

7 months ago

The Lancet, which came up with the estimates, is an internationally respected publication https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6...

Also, ten separate global institutions co-authored this page -- is the conspiracy to inflate deathcount that wide-ranging? What factors on the Lancet's paper are you objecting to specifically?

a Institute of Collective Health, Federal University of Bahia, Bahia, Brazil b ISGlobal, Barcelona, Spain c Facultat de Medicina i Ciències de la Salut, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain d Paediatrics Department, Hospital Sant Joan de Déu, Universitat de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain e Fundação Ariel Glaser, Maputo, Mozambique f Centro de Investigação em Saúde de Manhiça, Maputo, Mozambique g ICREA, Barcelona, Spain h Institut Clínic de Medicina I Dermatologia, Hospital Clínic de Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain i CIBER de Epidemiología y Salud Pública, Instituto de Salud Carlos III, Madrid, Spain j University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

simondotau

7 months ago

Anyone investing in Tesla at its current stock price is not doing so because of the success (or otherwise) of its automotive business. It’s a long-term gamble on autonomy solutions. The company would be worth 10 times more if they pull it off, but I give it a 10% chance of succeeding

7e

7 months ago

Waymo is way ahead of them. I give them a 1% chance.

simondotau

7 months ago

It is true that Waymo are currently ahead. Waymo's fleet is presently 1,500 vehicles with future plans for an additional 2,000 vehicles.

Tesla's robotaxi solution uses a near-stock Model Y. Tesla has the manufacturing capacity to produce over 5,800 Model Y vehicles per day.

I give them a greater than 1% chance.

SR2Z

7 months ago

Waymo doesn't need to produce a million cars. They need to dominate rideshare in the top 10 US cities, which gives them 90% of the ridehailing market. Then they license their technology into long-haul trucking, then eventually personal cars (with a subscription fee, obviously) to starve out their competitors.

Even 20k cars in one city is likely too many for them.

passwordoops

7 months ago

Thing is, rational people have been pointing this out for a decade (at least). The spiral has much less to do with fundamentals than politics. And now that Elon and Trump are back at it, Tesla has both sides of the aisle suddenly scrutinizing the company

JumpCrisscross

7 months ago

> spiral has much less to do with fundamentals than politics

Tesla’s brand has become trash in a year. I have a neighbour who had PowerWalls installed a few years ago. He spray painted over the branding last year because it was embarrassing. (I live in Wyoming.)

cfloyd

7 months ago

[flagged]

trickyager

7 months ago

This isn't weird, really. Rational people tend to not like being associated with fascists, and with Elon at the helm Tesla is strongly associated with American Fascism at the moment.

JumpCrisscross

7 months ago

> Rational people tend to not like being associated with fascists

This is fair, but I don’t even think it’s that. They just don’t want everyone walking into their garage to immediately associate them with Musk. This is true for folks on the left, who call out his fascism. But it’s also true if someone with MAGA leanings walks in.

palmotea

7 months ago

> and with Elon at the helm Tesla is strongly associated with American Fascism at the moment

That's overblown. Telsa is strongly associated with an idiot who's so immature and stupid that he's managed to annoy pretty much everyone.

fooblaster

7 months ago

My personal favorite is the Tesla apology bumper sticker. I want to signal I care, but I only care about 20$. Love the virtue signaling while driving round a 50k$ donation to Elon.

stogot

7 months ago

I have people posting long apologies on LinkedIn about how they needed a new car but they disagree with (insert rant). It’s embarrassing they even post it. No one on LinkedIn even needs to or cares to know what car you drive, it’s just platitude virtue signaling

Marsymars

7 months ago

FWIW, I’ve covered the branding on everything in my house. I don’t need my home to be advertising corporate brands to me/family/guests.

JumpCrisscross

7 months ago

For what it’s worth, I was putting in solar panels with battery back-up, and PowerWalls were the least-bulky option, and I killed it last year because again, I don’t want to have something that partisan (and frankly toxic) so close.

XorNot

7 months ago

For a decade? The politics has been a recent problem. For a decade though Tesla has had serious production problems that were dismissable under "but they're ahead".

Except it hasn't happened - they still have trouble with QA and building enough cars cheaply enough, and now the market has caught up with them.

And then into this mix, Musk decided to publicly side with the political aisle which hates his core customer base and his core product line.

stevage

7 months ago

And more importantly his core customer base hates his chosen politics.

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

hermitcrab

7 months ago

I'm guessing there isn't much overlap in the venn diagram of people who buy green energy products and the people who want to be in any way associated with Musk.

Musk has:

-Alienated a very large part of his customer base.

-Wasted resources on the 21st century Edsel that is the Cybertruck.

-Picked a fight with the President of the USA.

-Consistently failed to deliver on his promises.

I can't see how this ends well for Tesla.

jmyeet

7 months ago

TSLA continues its years-long trend of not only defying fundamentals. Here are, off the top of my head, the current, serious risks to Tesla:

- Brand damage done to typical Tesla buyers and in countries that subsidize EVs;

- Downturn in sales in Q1 and likely future continued declines;

- Likely loss of the EV tax credit in the US;

- A likely upcoming recession with (currently) one quarter of negative GDP growth;

- Tariff risks;

- Competition, particularly from Chinese automakers;

- Supply chain risks; and

- Risks to the Tesla business in China as political and tariff fallout as the administration seeks to ratchet up a trade war with China.

Yet Tesla still trades at a P/# of 173.

TSLA is a bet on Elon. That's it. But it won't be because of any fundamental success in the business. It'll be a question of how much looting of government coffers it can do.

Elon has realized he needs to diversify the business, hence the robotaxis. My bet is that will never go GA and likely will kill or seriously wound someone and get sued out of existence.

rickydroll

7 months ago

If Tesla's board of directors had any cojones, they would dump Musk and distance themselves from him and his actions.

darth_avocado

7 months ago

They are in a tough spot re:Elon. While long term, distancing Tesla from Elon and focusing on developing better EVs that out compete BYD, Xiaomi and other Chinese competitors would be the healthy move, they also realize that the company’s unreal valuation is completely tied to Elon and his made up storylines that never get delivered (FSD, Semi, Roadster 2, 4680 battery etc.). Dumping Elon would wipe out hundreds of Billions in shareholder value and the lawsuits would be brutal.

tayo42

7 months ago

> his made up storylines that never get delivered

I don't get who is still out there believes him enough to put their own money into this company. But the stock keeps going up. I just don't get it?

XorNot

7 months ago

It's a memestock. People are just gambling not investing. You see TSLA in the news, the news is bad so you know a bunch of people are rushing off to bet it goes up anyway...so you do too.

tayo42

7 months ago

That's retail investors though? They're not really making the stock move?

rickydroll

7 months ago

What do they say in most commercials about investing? Oh yes, "Investing in securities carries the risk of loss."

They could sideline him, perhaps put him in an oubliette for a while, then make some serious improvements to the current product line and start cultivating a culture of working without Musk.

darth_avocado

7 months ago

I agree with the sentiment, however the board has fiduciary responsibilities towards the shareholders. If they make decisions that materially affect the company, in this case by destroying the valuation, then the shareholders can sue.

It will be extremely difficult for the board to justify that having Elon and letting him do whatever he wants is more damaging for the stock than kicking him out.

brohee

7 months ago

If they do so Tesla is a regular company and should trade at a regular automotive sector P/E ratio, so what, one fifteenth of its current valuation ? That's a hard sell to investors. They are likely better off keeping that plane flying as long as possible hoping for a miracle, then crash, than soft landing, so are Tesla insiders, each quarter passing means more stocks dumped.

https://www.nasdaq.com/market-activity/stocks/tsla/insider-a...

marcusverus

7 months ago

As the parent said, Tesla's PE ratio indicates that investors are betting on massive future growth, obviously because of Elon's track record of delivering on his promises of new tech (....eventually). If getting rid of Elon caused Tesla to be priced like other car companies, the price would go down by 90+%.

No sane board member would consider that a serious option.

sokoloff

7 months ago

Board members are also significant shareholders, so they’d be tanking their own position (and would be hard to argue if they sold out shortly before distancing him that they had no insider knowledge of it).

baggachipz

7 months ago

He owns them all, they would never even consider firing him.

LightBug1

7 months ago

That's the only way I'd even have a second thought about Tesla ... but this is the cost of being all-powerful ... the inability to give up that power.

Even then, Tesla's duck is cooked. They're facing strong winds, reputational and otherwise, at the exact same time as the competition have come of age.

The perfect storm. It will take time, but Tesla are done.

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

lemoncucumber

7 months ago

Also the risk of their unproven approach of not using lidar for self driving, unlike every competing self-driving system.

simondotau

7 months ago

What’s your definition of “unproven” which doesn’t cover what Tesla has achieved, but does cover what Waymo has achieved? Hint: one of those has driven at least two if not three orders of magnitude more miles unaided by humans.

Just to be clear, because a lot of people who don’t follow this closely may not appreciate it, the 3-D spatial awareness component of Tesla’s stack has been solved problem for a couple of years now. The long tail problem is path planning and decision-making. LIDAR doesn’t make that any easier, even in theory.

gamblor956

7 months ago

Hint: one of those has driven at least two if not three orders of magnitude more miles unaided by humans.

Yes we all know that Waymo has done this but this thread is about Tesla.

3-D spatial awareness component of Tesla’s stack has been solved problem for a couple of years now

A lot of people have died because their self driving Teslas did not have spatial awareness and crashed into stationary objects at full speed. Clearly we have different definitions of construction "solved".

simondotau

7 months ago

It's critical to note that Autopilot is not FSD, and has nothing in common with FSD, other than running on the same physical hardware. Autopilot is a brand name for lane centering / adaptive cruise control, similar to Nissan ProPilot and Ford Co-Pilot. Deaths attributed to the misuse of lane centering / adaptive cruise control features are commonplace among all makes of car, but deaths in Fords and Toyotas rarely make media reports, because the media is in the business of generating clicks.

A lot of people have died because their self driving Teslas

Two is not "a lot".

In the USA in 2023, the fatality rate of human drivers was 1.26 fatalities per 100 million vehicle miles in the USA.

Over the 60 million miles driven by Waymo vehicles, the number of fatalities involving a Waymo is one. This is a fatality rate of 1.67 deaths per 100 million miles. (It should be noted that this isn't a statistically meaningful number because Waymo vehicles have driven so few miles.)

Over the 3.8 billion miles driven by Tesla FSD, the number of fatalities involving a Tesla running the FSD software stack is two. This a fatality rate of 0.05 deaths per 100 million miles. If those 3.8 billion miles were driven by humans, you would expect 46 more deaths to have occurred.

tzs

7 months ago

One big difference is that those two fatal accidents involving Tesla FSD were both cases of the Tesla driving into someone (a pedestrian in one and a motorcyclist in the other).

The one fatal accident involving a Waymo on the other hand was an empty Waymo that was stopped at a red light along with several other cars when another car (a Tesla, BTW) going just under 100 mph slammed into that group of stopped cars from behind, killing a passengers and a dog in one of them, and injuring people in several of them.

SR2Z

7 months ago

> Two is not "a lot".

There have been zero from the current players.

> Over the 3.8 billion miles driven by Tesla FSD, the number of fatalities involving a Tesla running the FSD software stack is two.

Then why doesn't Tesla publish a full accounting of their crash reports?

gamblor956

7 months ago

All of your statistics are wrong.

Tesla advanced driving features (AP and FSD) have killed more people than every other automaker‘s comparable systems. Combined.

Tesla FSD killed 2 people this year alone. No other automakers self driving systems have killed or even seriously injured anyone.

Elon Musk isn't going to give you a job for shilling for him on HN so stop embarrassing yourself.

simondotau

7 months ago

All of your statistics are wrong.

Your first claim is baseless, as no statistics exist to make that claim. Tesla is the only major manufacturer which voluntarily provides all crash information to regulators. No other major manufacturer collects and discloses comparable statistics. Therefore it cannot be asserted that ADAS-involved deaths are more frequent in Tesla vehicles.

It's often said that Autopilot is uniquely dangerous because it gives drivers a false sense of confidence. This is a "feels true" claim. However, many other manufacturers have ADAS systems which exceed the technical AND subjective performance of Tesla Autopilot. On that basis, we should assume that ADAS-involved fatality rates are higher with those brands.

Your second claim exceeds the data published by both reputable AND biased sources. Even if true, that still places FSD well over an order of magnitude more safe than human drivers, with a supposed 3 deaths compared to the expected 48 deaths with human-piloted vehicles.

As for your last sentence, overuse of cutting comments makes them dull.

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

standardUser

7 months ago

> he needs to diversify the business, hence the robotaxis

The robotaxis are the biggest risk of all. It's not a "hence" that can be relied on for a win and to change the conversation. It's a huge embarrassment and a reminder of Musk's repeated false promises.

sneak

7 months ago

75% of the trips I take in my Model 3 across a standard US city (admittedly one without snow) are handled by FSD with no interventions on my part.

Waymo has of course been operating for some time now.

I think autonomous taxis are inevitable for Tesla and others.

standardUser

7 months ago

Automatous vehicles are absolutely inevitable and Waymo has completely lapped Tesla. It's not impossible for Tesla to catch up, but it's not likely. Their tech is insufficient, their public record is non-existent, and Musk is famously inept at working with the many local governments and bureaucracies he needs to appease if he ever hopes to start pilots in the biggest markets. Meanwhile, Waymo is maybe a year away from becoming the Kleenex brand of driverless taxis, with over 10 million rides sold and a truckload of bureaucratic good will already built up.

cfloyd

7 months ago

Waymo has not lapped Tesla. At all.

standardUser

7 months ago

No need for an in depth explanation? Waymo has sold 10 million rides with another 300k being sold every week. How many has Tesla sold, a few hundred by now? In one city, with paid staff in the car, only during certain hours, etc, etc.

martinpw

7 months ago

> 75% of the trips I take in my Model 3 across a standard US city (admittedly one without snow) are handled by FSD with no interventions on my part.

Is that meant to be making a case for Tesla's robotaxis? Because 25% of trips requiring interventions sounds dismal for a service that is rolling out now.

tverbeure

7 months ago

I shortly tried FSD during their May and November freebie month last year. There were times when an intervention wasn't strictly required, just like you can't intervene when your angsty teenager with learning permit is at the wheel, but it was still shockingly bad.

I have no doubt that there's a good percentage of FSD users out there who don't intervene to avoid lowering stats even if they rationally know that they should have.

sneak

7 months ago

Why would I care more about “stats” than my own car and my own safety? I am not penalized in any way for disabling FSD when the car does something dumb.

tverbeure

7 months ago

Many people, after spending a good chunk of money on something, become part of the tribe and feel the need to justify their purchase. It’s just human nature.

Not saying that you’re one of those, but as others have pointed out: 25% of rides with a force intervention is absymal and didn’t have the impressession that you thought so too.

25% puts it in party trick category, not something that should be allowed on the road.

sneak

7 months ago

FSD is only $100 per month.

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

gamblor956

7 months ago

Thats a 25% failure rate.

For comparison, that's many times worse than a drunk driver.

sneak

7 months ago

Ten years ago it wasn’t possible at all. Plot the line.

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

JumpCrisscross

7 months ago

> autonomous taxis are inevitable for Tesla and others

I agree. But I think the autonomously native are going to eat the legacy manufacturers, including Tesla, for lunch.

We haven’t even started seeing partisan regulatory backlash against Tesla’s autonomous taxis yet. I’d be shocked if they’re ever permitted in New York or California, for example. I wouldn’t be surprised if they wind up banned in Europe, China and India, too. And that’s before weighing how Trump could dick Tesla around.

lovich

7 months ago

you're forgetting domestic political risks as he has chosen to fight the admin now

nirav72

7 months ago

I'm not sure what Elon stands to gain by taking on the admin. Sure Elon has piles of cash to dump on various congressional races. But that's about it. On the other side, Trump currently has the full power of the U.S government to take apart Elon's empire. Including Elon. He is better off making amends and focus on his businesses. Even if he does lose out because of the BBB.

k8sToGo

7 months ago

You forgot the software risks. Other companies already passed them.

nico

7 months ago

The stock market is a joke

Yes, yes, I know it can stay irrational for longer than I can stay solvent

But TSLA jumping almost 5% on news of failing earnings, is just ridiculous

sokoloff

7 months ago

With all the noise and uncertainty around tariffs and resulting supply chain disruptions, I’m surprised it’s only down 0.8GWh (7.7%)

Maybe they’re running installs months behind sales and worse quarters are ahead.

tonyedgecombe

7 months ago

According to the article the broader market is expanding.

sokoloff

7 months ago

The way I read that paragraph is that Q1 (the prior quarter) set a record overall, but it’s not clear whether tariffs hurt others in Q2 as it was in Q2 when Tesla’s installs fell 7.7% QoQ despite having slight growth YoY in Q2.

malshe

7 months ago

Tesla's installs fell in Q1 too: For the second consecutive quarter, deployments of its Powerwall and Megapack stationary storage products have declined, according to stats released by Tesla.

sokoloff

7 months ago

For Q1, Tesla installs were down 5.5% quarter-on-quarter but up 156% (to 2.56x) versus the same quarter a year prior.

foxglacier

7 months ago

This article really needs to be a graph. From what I can make out:

2023 average quarter 15.7 GWh / 4 = 3.9 GWh [1]

2024 average quarter 31.4 GWh / 4 = 7.85 GWh

2024 Q4 11 GWh

2025 Q1 10.4 GWh

2025 Q2 9.6 GWh

So I guess it's up from the same time last year but down from the peak Q4 2024? Maybe it's seasonal and it's actually growing not shrinking?? The numbers also don't distinguish between residential and utility installs. Maybe they had one huge utility customer in Q4 2024 that distorted everything?

[1] https://www.energytrend.com/news/20250115-49006.html

kkfx

7 months ago

Well... A personal take as someone who build his own domestic p.v. power plant with storage:

- 99% of what's available on the market is NOT meant to be integrated, and that's a big break. I have and EV with a 400V battery and there are on sale p.v. inverters supporting 400V batteries with BMS canbus comms. There is NO DAMN REASON why my car can't be a powerful and big extra battery for my home, just no one have done so, because grid operators dislike semi autonomous people...

- despite having many open stuff Tesla is a self-contained ecosystem, which is in general a bad thing and in particular if they do not offer nothing really complete in their own garden. I do want V2L and V2H for my EV, at least many EVs offer the former. Not Tesla.

- heat pumps and cold/hot water storage could enable a big energy savings well integrated with p.v. so far only Toyota have announced an experiment of car+home p.v.+heat pump project and I still see nothing on sale. Tesla offer none as well, even if "they evolve the concept of heat-pump in cars"...

So well... Why buy a PowerWall? A Victron MultiPlus/Quattro and Chinese batteries offer more power, more storage, more modularity at a cheaper price... Victron also offer an EV domestic charging station BADLY integrated with home p.v. (sometimes does not star charging even if there is plenty of p.v. available, charging settings are awfully limited, for instance you can't say "go full power with Sun, but keep going from the grid as needed at maximum X amps till a certain time" and similar not that strange nor complex logic)...

blipvert

7 months ago

Go fash, lose cash.

devjab

7 months ago

It's wild that the aristocracy has to re-learn that rule of law, equality and liberalism are sort of great when you don't want the king to be capable of taking your toys at a whim.

thordenmark

7 months ago

Wanting the government to spend within its means is hardly fash.

dyauspitr

7 months ago

Is that why we’re spending $170 billion on ICE and increasing the deficit by $3.5 trillion?

blipvert

7 months ago

Supporting the guy that in his last (single) term put the deficit up by $8trillion(!) doesn’t really support your thesis. Sorry ‘bout that.

mindslight

7 months ago

Sure, it's the support of fascism that's fash - fascist leader, fascist gestures and dog whistles, fascist bringing the bureaucracy to heel under one autocrat. If Musk manages to somehow help sink the big ugly spending bill, it could be the start of a long redemption arc. But I'm not holding my breath.

stevage

7 months ago

But that does not describe Musk's politics.

didip

7 months ago

Too bad. It's the booming part of the business.

PW3 not compatible with PW2 is another bone-headed decision. I would have bought one if I can daisy chain PW3 to PW2.

jeffbee

7 months ago

Being a white-label outlet for Panasonic batteries in North America is not an amazing business, especially if you set your own brand on fire.

chankstein38

7 months ago

That "dark cloud hanging over Tesla" has a name.

asteroidburger

7 months ago

Has a weird odor to it, wouldn't you say? A sort of musk, perhaps?

SlowTao

7 months ago

It hangs around for a while, like far longer than it should, almost Elon-gated.

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

user

7 months ago

[deleted]

Alupis

7 months ago

The "downward spiral" of Tesla is greatly exaggerated - almost entirely by those who hate the CEO's politics and therefore irrationally hate anything near him.

Most of your other "big" car companies are also experiencing down-trending sales. Perhaps not the the same percentage as Tesla, but as soon as people are told to hate something/someone else, sales will go back like they always have. People have a short attention span - and only a minority of people wear their politics around as some sort of identity. An even smaller minority of the people cheering on the "downward spiral" of Tesla were ever going to be a Tesla customer (ie. a luxury brand car buyer).

The "downward spiral" of Tesla is greatly exaggerated.

verteu

7 months ago

> Most of your other "big" car companies are also experiencing down-trending sales.

But they're priced at P/E of 7, while TSLA is P/E of 170.

Negative growth at 170 P/E is... Much, much worse than negative growth at P/E of 7.

bradfa

7 months ago

Honda Q2 sales are up year over year, and not just slightly. Figures came out today: https://hondanews.com/en-US/honda-corporate/releases/release...

erulabs

7 months ago

Well to be fair the new civic hybrid is a really fantastic car at a great price and exactly what most car buyers need. And additionally their model Y competitor the Passport is very nice and well priced.

I’d consider Honda a bit of an outlier considering the quality of their offering this year.

yongjik

7 months ago

> only a minority of people wear their politics around as some sort of identity

I think you accidentally hit the nail on the head here. Yes, only a minority of people do that, and Musk is one of them! Which is a problem when your job is selling cars to people.

matthewdgreen

7 months ago

If you're at a 180+ P/E and you're not growing, you're in big trouble.

cfloyd

7 months ago

My thoughts exactly. I don’t care for the CEO’s politics but I don’t tie my morals of owning a vehicle to it. That’s just silly. Imagine if we did that with all other companies. Stocks rise and fall. Hell, Tesla’s has a ton. Ignore the noise.

ASinclair

7 months ago

Is Tesla's stock priced like other "big" car companies experiencing down-trending sales?

mr_toad

7 months ago

> only a minority of people wear their politics around as some sort of identity

A minority perhaps, but not an economically insignificant one. The sales of MAGA hats show that a significant number of people literally wear their politics as a form of identity.

9283409232

7 months ago

It is and isn't. Tesla's downward spiral gets more media traction than other companies but that doesn't change the fact it is in a downward spiral. I may be one of the few people that read Tesla's recent financials and they are completely propped up by two things: Tesla holds a lot of Bitcoin which increased in value and other companies buy carbon credits from Tesla which is a large source of revenue for them. If either of these two things were to change, Tesla would be in a very bad situation. Rumor is that Trump is trying to kill the entire carbon credit thing. This would be a disaster for Tesla.