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.
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
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
[deleted]
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.
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.
If Tesla's board of directors had any cojones, they would dump Musk and distance themselves from him and his actions.
Also the risk of their unproven approach of not using lidar for self driving, unlike every competing self-driving system.
> 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.
you're forgetting domestic political risks as he has chosen to fight the admin now
You forgot the software risks. Other companies already passed them.
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
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.
According to the article the broader market is expanding.
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
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)...
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.
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.
That "dark cloud hanging over Tesla" has a name.
Has a weird odor to it, wouldn't you say? A sort of musk, perhaps?
[deleted]
[deleted]
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.
> 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.
> 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.
If you're at a 180+ P/E and you're not growing, you're in big trouble.
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.
Is Tesla's stock priced like other "big" car companies experiencing down-trending sales?
> 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.
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.