So you bring it back to my question... What exactly upsets you, that his timing is always off or that he is pursuing various forward thinking endeavors? Right now you sound like a pouting child who didn't get his present on time
If the present is coming from Elon, it will never come! Listen, its just not happening. Everything now from Elon is just a distraction. He can't deliver FSD, so he promises robots. Remember how sure he was in 2017? Then all of a sudden a year or two ago, they completely abandoned the code they wrote up to that point and went the AI route. Now they can't even explain why it does what it does. I think this proved far more complex than he initially thought. He figured that since humans just use their eyes and brain that he could make it work. But sadly, this isn't the way forward. He can't give up on it now and admit that the system at least needs lots of expensive sensors because he knows it will kill the stock price. Nobody will ever have a cybercab they own that will make money for them. But these are all lies that need to be perpetuated in order to keep it going. The only reason cybercab go introduced, if you remember, is because of the article about the death of the Model 2. He needed to come up with something quick, and he did. Then the cybercab was pushed back by 2 months since it was crap, and that gave just enough time to wow everyone with a robot. We clearly saw the stock price dump after the event. The only reason its up now is because the market perceives that Tesla will be safe given the Trump relationship. Tesla sales are declining all over the world from the stats I see, and EV in general is dying for now. Rolling back EV mandates and fuel regulations will only increase the case for ICE and BEV. The growth days for Tesla are far behind them... just the stock price doesn't know it yet.
You're obtuse.. I refer you to my post #661 which factually shows that 1. There's no slowdown in EV growth in the world and 2. Tesla models Y and 3 are in the top 3 models sold globally. Your impression is the consequence of a deliberate campaign by those opposed to the growth of EV and transition to green energy to dismiss them as a fad. FSD is extremely complex, far more than Musk had anticipated. But he's not a quitter and in the face of adversity he doubled down on the effort by 1. Switching from coding to AI and 2. From adding a gazillion compute power. It's a mistake to dismiss his resolve in mastering FSD. So far, his fail is only to sell a product far too early in its development. Personally I think FSD should have been given for free until it is approved as a level 5 product. Beta testers shouldn't have to pay to test. Regardless, most people today who buy a Tesla aren't buying it because of FSD. In fact, the take up rate is far lower than expected, single digit level. Only techies, groupies and content creators bought into it so far. Once the solution reaches level 3, when the responsibility of FSD failures transfer from the owner to Tesla, the take up rate will significantly increase and, when it reaches level 5, it will only be sold with the cars. As for the Robotaxis, Tesla won't get the approval to operate them until FSD reaches level 3 at minimum and probably level 4. That's at least 3 years away, whatever Musk says. I'm ok with that.
All of this clearly comes down to what each of us believes. Some of the numbers that I've seen out of Germany, Norway and Australia are that Tesla is drastically dropping in sales but I don't follow this enough to know conclusively. I think Tesla goes bankrupt before they solve FSD.
To those who repeat that without EV credits Tesla would go out of business: https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/15/business/musk-tesla-trump-ev-tax-credit/index.html Trump may end the $7,500 EV tax credit. Elon Musk and Tesla would reap the rewards Chris Isidore By Chris Isidore, CNN New YorkCNN — The $7,500 tax credit for buyers of electric vehicles could be vanishing early in the new Trump administration, but that might actually be good news for Tesla and its CEO Elon Musk, one of President-elect Donald Trump’s most prominent backers. While the US tax credit goes to EV buyers, not to the automakers themselves, it allows higher pricing for EVs as they compete with traditional gasoline-powered cars. When an earlier version of the tax credit phased out several years ago, Tesla was forced to cut prices on its vehicles by roughly half of the amount of the credit its buyers were no longer getting. Tesla, the world’s largest maker of EVs, is the only automaker making a profit on its US EV sales. Legacy automakers such as General Motors and Ford admit they are losing money on every EV they sell, partly because they are selling only a fraction of Tesla’s EV volume. When Tesla sold a relatively small number of EVs back in the last decade, it also lost money – but it is now among the most profitable automakers. So if the EV tax credit goes away, the price of all EVs might come down. But that would only reduce Tesla profits, not increase losses the way it might at established automakers trying to get into the market. Some of those automakers might even pull back on their EV production and sales in order to limit the losses, which would mean less competition among EV buyers for Tesla. Even with the EV tax credit in place, Tesla and Musk have used this greater profitability to cut prices on his EVs in order to support demand in the face of greater competition and to put pressure on his established automaker rivals. ‘It will only help Tesla’ Musk signaled during the campaign that he would support ending the EV tax credit, even if raised the cost of Tesla purchases for American buyers. “Take away the subsidies, it will only help Tesla,” he posted on his social media platform X in July. But the rest of the auto industry wants to keep the tax credit in place. The Alliance for Automotive Innovation, an industry trade group which represents all of the major global automakers other than Tesla, wrote a letter to Congress in October, ahead of the election, urging that the tax credit remain in place. The letter says US manufacturers rely on the credit to compete with the EV production and advancements by Chinese automakers. Global automakers have invested billions of dollars in a transition from gasoline powered cars to electric vehicles. As legacy automakers have introduced more of their own EV models to American car buyers in recent years, Tesla’s sales have slowed. It also is seeing increased competition from Chinese EV makers in the Chinese and European markets. Tesla’s sales for the first nine months of this year trail sales for the same period in 2023, the first time it has ever posted a decline over that long of a period. Musk, who donated $119 million to a political action committee supporting Trump’s campaign according to Federal Election Commission filings, is the world’s richest person, with a net worth of $307 billion based on Bloomberg’s Real Time Billionaire Tracker. While the 715 million shares and options to buy Tesla stock that he holds took at $13.6 billion hit from the drop in Tesla shares Thursday, those shares and options shot up in value the day after the election. Even with Thursday’s decline they are still worth $42.7 billion more than than where Tesla shares closed on election day. Ending the tax credit During his campaign, Trump continually promised to kill what he called President Joe Biden’s “EV mandate,” although no such mandate exists in federal law. The Inflation Reduction Act passed under Biden restored the tax credit for many EV purchases, and it also provided low interest loans for automakers building things like EV and battery factories. Reuters, citing two sources with direct knowledge of the matter reported Thursday that Trump’s transition team is planning to kill the $7,500 credit as part of broader tax-reform legislation. And representatives of Tesla have told a Trump-transition committee they support ending the subsidy. CNN has not confirmed those plans or discussions. The Reuters report sent shares of Tesla and other automakers lower in trading Thursday. But several analysts who follow Tesla agree that the end of the credit would be a positive for the EV leader. Tesla (TSLA) shares rebounded a bit in premarket trading Friday. The end of the credit “will widen Tesla’s competitive moat by making competing EV models even more uneconomic, as we believe TSLA is the only profitable manufacturer of EVs,” wrote Garrett Nelson, analyst for CFRA Research, in a note to clients the day after the election. “For these reasons, we now view Tesla shares as deserving of higher multiples, but acknowledge challenges in the near term.” He raised his recommendation on the stock to “buy” from “hold,” and raised his 12-month price target to $375 from $265. Nelson also said Trump’s election could speed approval for Tesla’s plans for self-driving vehicles. “Tesla has a scale and scope that is unmatched and while losing the EV tax credit could also hurt some demand on the margins in the US, this will enable Tesla to further fend off competition from Detroit,” wrote Dan Ives, tech analyst for Wedbush Securities, in a note Thursday. He said that Tesla’s pricing and scale in the EV space “is an apples to oranges when compared to the rest of the auto industry once the EV tax credit disappears.”
From what I read, of course he wants this because his credits were hitting the upper range of the threshold. I think there is a cap to how much any one manufacturer can claim, but I'm not sure if this is based on model type or a dollar figure. At any rate, once you're done reaping the rewards, of course you want to cancel this program so that nobody else can use it. When you used up your share, the next best thing is to make sure your competition doesn't have this advantage.
Lol... Either way Tesla is a loser, right? There's no threshold to the number of vehicles sold to get the EV credits, only price point. Tesla has had to cut its retail prices in order to meet the credit thresholds, then further reduced its prices to stay competitive in competitive markets (the US isn't one of them). Its margins were significantly affected but remain the highest in the industry. Musk is for removal of all subsidies for EVs and oil and gas, all of which distort the market. Those that will suffer most if this goes through are the start ups like Rivian. The big manufacturers are losing money on all their EVs already so that may push them to challenge the EV mandates further. That, and Trump's trade barriers keeping Chinese cars out of the US market will leave Tesla as the sole viable EV maker in the US. Without EV mandate consumers won't be obligated to switch from ICE to EV and Tesla could lose potential sales, but to date no one is required to buy any EV, yet sales are continuing to grow in the US. Musk is betting that demand will continue to grow based on the quality of his products. Europe will likely be different. As a billionaire right winger, many consumers will refrain from buying Tesla for fear of populist retaliation like vandalism, and the diversity of EV brands will offer many more options than in the US. The mandatory 2035 deadline to end ICE sales in Europe may be pushed back, but either way Tesla will lose ground there.