California: Tesla Sales Totally Collapsing as Company on the Verge of Becoming Nonviable

Tesla was always doomed because it was never a good company and EVs were always inevitable.

I’ve changed my views on EVs slightly given that I’ve seen the Chinese models, where you basically have the car version of an electric bike.

China replaced old 90-110 Honda-style motorcycles with electric bikes in every major city within like a decade for the sake of fresher air, but no one complained about it because the electric bikes were 70% cheaper and did the exact same thing. Because of traffic, you don’t really need the real motor on the bike.

What’s more, people who couldn’t afford motorcycles (at least not for every member of the family) all of a sudden had cheap, reliable transportation.

Electric cars can effectively do the same thing – provide ultra-cheap reliable transportation for urban areas where you don’t really need a lot of power anyway. This is something actually useful. It’s more useful in the Third World, where they still have air pollution problems (the West really doesn’t have those problems anymore due to emissions laws), but if Americans can get a brand new car that serves all their needs for under $10,000, then this is a really good thing.

The Tesla pitch was “pay much more for much less because it will change the weather or whatever and that’s fashionable.” That is basically nonsensical. I don’t care about trying to change the weather (and I don’t think anyone actually cares; global warming is a social pressure machine enforced by childless women), but providing everyone with cheap, reliable urban transportation is actually a good thing.

Here’s a list of the “cheapest new cars” in the US:

As we know, those MSRP prices are not the real prices. You add like at least 10% to those prices. So China is offering something that is probably on par with any of those for about half the price. In the next 2-3 years, those prices aren’t going down any, while BYD will probably be able to get their low-end model down to below $7,000.

Anyway, that’s not what’s driving Tesla’s downfall in the US yet, because the US has blocked import of the very cheap Chinese options. In America, people just realized Tesla is grossly overpriced garbage. I suppose a fair amount of people in California are also upset that Elon has gotten involved in right-wing politics.

Reuters:

Registrations of Tesla cars in California fell 24% in the April to June period, marking the third consecutive quarter that the company posted a sales drop in its key market, indicating mounting challenges for the EV maker, according to industry data on Thursday.

High interest rates and stiff competition have softened demand for electric vehicles as consumers opt for less-expensive hybrid cars.

From January to June, Tesla saw its registrations in California slump 17%, even as distant rivals such as Hyundai Motor, Kia Motors, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Ford, and Rivian increased sales by double-digit percentage points.

The electric-vehicle maker’s Model Y crossover continues to be the best-selling model in the state, but its market share in the first half of the year fell to 53.4%, from 64.6% in the year-ago period.

This is a freefall collapse. There is literally no future for this company.

Eventually the global warming people are going to demand they be allowed to import Chinese cars. Also, when people who paid $25,000 for a Kia find out they could have gotten the same thing for $9,500 if it wasn’t for a pointless trade war, they’re going to be pissed.

The EU is trying to stop the import of Chinese EVs too, though they’ve not gone as hard, and Tesla is having an even harder time there.

You’re watching the end of this company.

It is now fully unsustainable.

I don’t know if the Cybertruck will be looked at by historians as the death knell of the company, but that would be funny.

It’s so nuts that Elon released such a piece of shit at that price. There is literally no reason he couldn’t have just made the car he said he was going to make, other than incompetence and stupid greed (the greed is stupid because he would have made more money not trying to pump a 50% profit margin or whatever insane number he came up with).

The fact that Elon still hasn’t been able to figure out full self-driving is also unbelievable. This is not hard. If he wouldn’t have sold his stake in ChatGPT, he could just use that. I guarantee it can safely drive a car. Instead he just lashes out viciously at ChatGPT for beating him. It’s no different than begging the government to keep Chinese EVs off the market. Elon fails and then fails again, over and over, and then uses dirty tricks against everyone.

The guy sits around playing Diablo 4 for 14 hours a day, smoking weed and eating snacks.

This is not the Tony Stark you were looking for.