Tesla Is Getting Truly Desperate

This is just embarrassing.

Jul 30, 2025

Tesla is worth more money than every American automaker combined. Why? They don’t sell more cars, make more profit, or have some huge technological advantage over any of their competitors. Well, it’s because at the beginning of the decade, Musk promised Tesla would achieve ridiculous sales figures and be the first to unlock self-driving cars, turning the entire automotive market into a virtual monopoly. Back in 2020, this promise didn’t seem wildly unreachable. Tesla went from a tiny, unprofitable outfit to a hugely profitable industry giant in just a few years with the launch of the Model 3 and Model Y — all while industry experts predicted they would fail and fold, and the rest of the industry had barely started their EV transition. The hype surrounding Tesla was always out of touch with reality, but this previous success propelled it into the stratosphere, given that every investor wanted a slice of the pie. Now, half a decade later, these promises not only ring hollow, but it’s starting to look like Tesla will never be able to make good on them as sales plummet and their robotaxis lag light-years behind the competition. So, Tesla’s value, and the majority of Musk’s wealth, are predicted to collapse, and they are both growing desperate to prevent this inevitable fall from happening.

Take Tesla’s Robotaxi “roll out.” A few weeks ago, Tesla launched a limited self-driving robotaxi service in Austin, Texas. But, because Musk had gone against his own engineers’ advice and made FSD (Full Self-Driving) a vision-only system (read more here), the system is wildly unsafe, thanks to a total lack of redundancy. In fact, if you run the numbers, FSD is 99.87% less safe than Musk has previously claimed. So it wasn’t a surprise that within a few days, a tsunami of videos hit the internet showing these robotaxis driving dangerously and illegally.

It’s funny that Musk started with Austin, given that the city has by far the least stringent self-driving regulations in the US, allowing FSD, with its terrible track record, lack of checks, and total lack of redundant systems, to operate. But to meet the investor hype and prevent Tesla’s value from plummeting any further, robotaxis must be seen to be rapidly expanding across the US. The only issue is that FSD doesn’t meet the self-driving safety expectations for all the other cities this robotaxi service could expand into. So, in its current unsafe guise, it is resigned to Austin and can’t be used to bolster the share price.

To solve this, Musk is launching a “chauffeur-driven” robotaxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area, which is a very fancy way of saying “a taxi driver who tries to use FSD as much as possible.” But this isn’t new. This service has existed for years, as Uber and Lyft drivers have been using Teslas to transport their passengers since the very beginning. Well, I say that, but the vast majority of taxi drivers actively avoid FSD. It drives so poorly that managing the system and preventing it from randomly crashing or violating traffic laws, particularly in cities, is more stressful than simply driving the car yourself.

So, what is Tesla doing here? This isn’t a robotaxi. It isn’t novel. It won’t advance the FSD system. Likewise, it won’t help them receive regulatory approval in the area, as we won’t know how frequently the “chauffeur” is compelled to take over. It makes zero sense. The only way this works is as a PR stunt to generate widely misleading headlines like “Tesla expands Robotaxi service,” which, sure enough, have flooded the internet.

It’s the veneer of progress. It’s utterly pathetic and shows how desperate Musk and Tesla are to make their self-driving turd look even vaguely appealing.

However, just as those engineers begged Musk not to switch FSD to a vision-only system, he was warned of this.

Tesla’s former Head of Business, Rohan Patel, told Musk that even if the Robotaxi worked, it wouldn’t make them a single dime for years, and so he advised dropping the project and focusing Tesla on developing smaller, cheaper EVs — which makes sense, as that is the sector of the EV industry that is experiencing huge growth, and Musk nuked FSD from the very beginning. But, after drinking gallons of his own Kool-Aid, Musk believed that automation would make access to EVs cheaper, rendering cheap EVs unnecessary. So, he essentially fired Patel and scrapped Tesla’s affordable “Model 2” project.

Then, in 2025, Tesla’s sales figures plummeted. This was partially due to Musk giving a faux “Roman salute” on national television and supporting a fascist subversion of the US government through DOGE. In response, the people gave Musk the “Roman middle finger” and stopped buying his crap. But that is only half the story. In 2024 and 2025, other EV manufacturers have not just caught up to Tesla but leapfrogged them. Since then, Tesla is no longer the best value proposition in the EV world, and realistically, that was the only reason people bought them. It was a perfect storm, and Tesla’s sales have declined so heavily that they are now functionally unprofitable.

Musk’s solution? To half-arse Patel’s advice and launch a cheaper version of their best-selling car, the Model Y. This isn’t the stand-alone $25,000 “Model 2” we were promised; it’s just a stripped-down version of the Y. And this reduced price tag is supposed to revive Tesla sales, particularly in Europe. But that makes no sense.

A current base-spec Model Y costs £44,995 here in the UK. For that price, you get 311 miles of WLTP range, a 10% to 80% charge time of 24 minutes (though that is very optimistic; in the real world, it’s more like 30 minutes), a reported 0–62 mph time of 5.9 seconds, and a decent-sized boot.

Okay, so what can Tesla strip out to reduce cost?

Well, not much…

The FSD hardware (the computer and cameras) only costs Tesla around £1,000 to install. FSD was optimised to be cheap, after all, not to be effective. Likewise, the interior is already minimalistic and uses comparatively cheap materials. They could use steel wheels and unpainted bumpers, as well as strip out things like heated seats in favour of cloth seats, but that will only save a few thousand pounds overall. Even switching to a smaller 50 kWh battery will only save around £700, as batteries are now significantly cheaper than they used to be. And switching to a less powerful motor won’t save much either, as proven by Tesla’s offerings in Singapore. Singapore has a Category A COE, which means cars under a certain power will be taxed less, and rather than meeting this limit by swapping out the motor of the Model Y and offering a substantially cheaper EV, Tesla just uses a software limit, which makes the car only moderately cheaper. Tesla also can’t just reduce its profit margin to make the vehicle less expensive, as its profit margin is nonexistent right now.

So, in reality, this cheaper Model Y will likely cost £40,000, look even uglier than it already does, and have a range of less than 300 miles.

Fortunately, there are already plenty of EVs on the market that are cheaper, way more capable, far better built, and come from legitimately trustworthy brands.

Take the Kia EV3 Long Range. It’s about the same size as the Model Y and costs £9,000 less than the current base spec Model Y at £35,995. For that price, you get 376 miles of WLTP range, which is 65 miles more than the Y, and a comparable 10% to 80% charge time of 33 minutes (which has been verified as realistic). Sure, it is a little slower to accelerate, with a 0–62 mph time of 7.7 seconds, but that still isn’t slow, and who wants to spend £9,000 more for this tiny increase in performance? The Kia beats the current cheapest Model 3 in specs and price by a huge margin. The only way for Tesla to compete would be to slash the current Model Y RWD’s price by 25%.

And it isn’t just Kia. Škoda (a subsidiary of Volkswagen) has also created a vehicle designed to annihilate the Model Y. Their Elroq is slightly more compact than the Model Y and slightly more expensive than the Kia at £38,660. But for that, you get a 360-mile WLTP range, a 10% to 80% charge time of 28 minutes, and a 0–60 mph time of 6.6 seconds. Again, this beats the current cheapest Model Y in specs whilst being more than £6,000 cheaper. There is simply no way a reduced Model Y can compete with this.

Cars from MG, BYD, Renault, Volkswagen, Cupra, and Hyundai also have models with similar specifications and prices to the EV3 and Elroq. All of these companies designed platforms optimised for this cheaper end of the market, allowing them to achieve more using less. Meanwhile, Tesla is attempting to modify a mid-market EV to be cheaper, which is substantially less effective, given that there are built-in costs that can’t be engineered out.

This is why Patel advised Musk to focus on making Tesla its own cheaper stand-alone EV platform, as this is the only way they can compete in this space.

To top it all off, Tesla was one of the few EV makers whose market share in Europe declined this year (-38% in Q1 2025 compared to Q1 2024), while its competitors saw significant gains. Kia’s market share increased by 59%, and Škoda’s increased by a considerable 93%. The momentum in the market is also working against Tesla, which means they will have to offer something borderline earth-shattering in order to increase sales, which we know they can’t do.

Musk and Tesla are aware of this. They know a cheaper Model Y will barely nudge the sales needle. They know the industry is leaving them behind. They know they missed their shot at launching a competitive, cheap EV, and that ship has now fully sailed. So why bother?

Again, it’s the veneer of progress. The problem hasn’t been solved, but this method of play keeps the investors temporarily satisfied.

If Musk didn’t rule Tesla like an egotistical self-proclaimed “genius,” none of this would have happened. He would have listened to his engineers, and FSD would at least be competitive. He would have acknowledged his investors’ worries and avoided diving headfirst into extremist politics. He would have heeded Patel’s poignant warnings, and Tesla would have already launched a well-specced affordable EV, and sales and profits would still be healthy. But no, hubris and insecurity have gotten in the way, and now Tesla is pathetically trying to save its own arse.

It’s almost like being egotistical and selfish is a sure-fire way to lose, and empathy and collaboration are the best recipe for success… Who could have guessed?

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Sources: Reuters, Electrek, InsideEVs, Autocar, EV Database, EV Database, EV Database, EVXL, BSC, Will Lockett, Will Lockett, Will Lockett, Will Lockett, Tesla