Summary
Tesla’s European sales plunged 45% in January, while the EV market grew 37%, with rivals like Volkswagen and Renault gaining ground.
Production changes for the Model Y is claimed to contribute to lower sales, but Elon Musk’s political controversies also sparked backlash.
Musk’s support for far-right parties and attacks on European leaders have made him unpopular, as polls show negative perceptions in Germany and the UK.
Tesla’s struggles come as European automakers face stricter emissions targets, increasing competition in the region’s growing EV market.
I’ve been saying this for years, Tesla will not remain #1 on electric cars once they become mainstream.
Tesla has declining sales in ALL major markets, and they have only half the profitability of the average for the industry!!
Tesla is not a competitive brand anymore, and unless something is done, Tesla will be gone in 10-20 years.
This is not just because of Musk, it’s also because the alternatives are getting better than Tesla now. Musk is absolutely accelerating the decline of Tesla, both by making stupid decisions for Tesla, and by being an unpopular figure.
But Tesla is not developing at the same cadence as other makers, 5 years to make an updated model Y is a very slow development cadence, the average is about 3 years, and currently in China for EV it’s allegedly half that!!
For a new type of car, where developments are constant on better technologies like batteries, 5 years is horrendously slow, and cutting prices hard kind of makes it worse, devaluing the entire fleet of existing cars.
Something Musk also promised wouldn’t happen, as he claims a Tesla holds value better than any other brand, which is now obviously false.
I moved out of Tesla to BYD stocks couple months ago just based on the output and price of their cars and feeling that tariffs aren’t going to keep them out forever. Looking good so far.
Most likely the profitability will come from DOGE funneling.
Not uh bro, just give them another 5 years and their build quality will improve…
It’s almost like manufacturing vehicles takes skilled labor or something. I’ll be happy when their valuation finally reflects something approaching realistic numbers. Just comparing simple metrics like employee retention should have been enough to tip off investors that Tesla was massively overvalued.
I mean there’s a reason the other major manufacturers haven’t killed off unions completely. You can’t just keep replacing your entire workforce every couple years and expect any kind of quality control.
China updates car models every 1.5 years? That’s kinda cool.
Yes, and this is a very important factor if you want to get or stay ahead.
Intel had their famous Tik-Tok strategy up until 2016, and when that broke, Intel broke.
Nvidia had a similar strategy churning originally out new GPU models at twice the speed of competitors. And Nvidia is now the most successful chip making company ever.
This article is a bit more modest than twice the speed, stating only 30% faster development cycle in China, but there is no doubt the Chinese market is extremely competitive:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/companies/how-china-is-churning-out-evs-faster-than-everyone-else/ar-BB1jhlzH
Yeah and their battery tech is just far beyond other countries. Was the main driver in convincing me to sell off Tesla and move to BYD couple months ago.
It took me an unreasonable amount of time to realize what you meant
Oh sorry, I shouldn’t have assumed that everybody knows.
For others that may not know, the Tik-Tok strategy was having dual development teams to increase the pace of development. 1 team worked on making designs for new production processes. The other worked on improving that design while the next new process was being developed. The new process and design was called Tik, and the improved design on the same process was called Tok.
Right, right, but wasn’t it tic-toc? Not that it matters.
E: We’re both wrong! Tick-tock. Seems obvious now.