Tesla Is So Screwed

No, really, you don't realise how bad it is.

Photo by Paul Steuber on Unsplash

While Musk has stayed busy perpetrating a coup under the transparently false guise of “efficiency,” Tesla has been having a bit of a rough time. Public backlash to Musk has been, rightfully so, pointed squarely at Tesla, causing sales to dip and its stock to slide. However, no one is talking about the big picture. The sales and stock issue is a far bigger problem than anyone appears to be willing to acknowledge, but there are other, entirely separate company-crushing factors that threaten Tesla’s very existence. As such, I don’t think you understand just how screwed Tesla is.

Let’s start with those sales figures because, oh boy, are they juicy!

Tesla sold just 9,945 vehicles in Europe this January, which is a massive 45% decline compared to its sales in January 2024. However, the EV market in Europe has grown by 37% since then. That means Tesla sales in Europe have effectively fallen more than 60% below where they should be. In fact, Tesla sold so few cars in the UK that its main Chinese competitor, BYD, actually outsold them! I believe this is the first time a Chinese EV brand has outsold Tesla in the West, marking a pivotal shift that will likely haunt Western automakers for years to come.

News of these horrific sales wiped more than $100 billion off Tesla’s value practically overnight, resulting in Tesla stock being down 36% from its peak in December 2024. And, as I have covered before, there is still plenty of room for Tesla to fall even further.

This brings me to the other issues plaguing Tesla because everything that was once seen as its advantage is now a poisoned chalice.

Take Tesla’s 4680 battery. This was meant to be a revolutionary battery with high specs and industry-crushing low prices. Tesla has sunk billions upon billions of dollars into its development, yet five years since it was announced, it has yet to meet the target specification or price. Naturally, it has slipped miles behind the curve, given that there are now battery packs that are simultaneously safer, far cheaper, and charge much faster than the 4680. This was meant to secure Tesla’s future, yet the project has totally failed (read more here).

The same is true of the Cybertruck. It was meant to be a sales hit, with Musk aiming for a production capacity of over 500,000 this year or next and solidifying its place as king of EVs. But, after a dismal year of sales, Tesla is already scaling back Cybertruck production capacity to only a few tens of thousands of units per year. This isn’t surprising, as they are terribly built, practically useless, and reports have found they are more deadly than the infamous Ford Pinto (read more here).

But Tesla is a tech company, not a car company, right? Their self-driving technology and Cybercab will rescue their failing EV sales. Right?

Well, no. Tesla’s FSD is still wildly dangerous. Not only is their AI painfully lacking, but because they dogmatically use a camera-only sensor suite, FSD has a serious lack of redundancy. This means that even if Tesla’s AI was good enough to self-drive the car, the system itself wouldn’t be reliable or safe enough to be legal (read more here). On top of that, even after the Cybercab demonstration, we have yet to see a Tesla safely drive itself on public streets, even when its competitors have been achieving that for years. Then there is the fact that Tesla has admitted that the current hardware installed on its cars isn’t good enough for self-driving, even though they previously stated that it was, meaning that to sell fully-fledged FSD, Tesla will have to do one of the most expensive recalls in history to retrofit new hardware into millions of cars. Not to mention the fact that Tesla clearly has no business case for the Cybercab, as they plan to sell it rather than run it as their own business. Which makes no sense, as operating it would make all the money, not selling it, right? Unless Tesla is selling the cars to avoid liability when they inevitably crash (read more here).

Just a reminder that Tesla stock is so wildly overvalued because investors have been speculating that the 4680, Cybertruck, FSD, and Cybercab would be the revolutions Musk promised and would dominate the automotive world. As such, Musk should see the fact that Tesla’s stock has only shrunk by 36% as a miracle. But, as time goes on, and Tesla abandons the 4680, Cybertruck sales continue to disappoint, and FSD and Cybercab demonstrations are either delayed or it becomes painfully obvious to everyone how abysmally perilous they are, these investors will realise they made a bad bet and pull their money out, crashing Tesla even further.

So, for Tesla to even have a hope in hell of retaining even a shred of its former value, it needs to bolster its sales ASAP, as that is currently the company’s only valuable venture. This is why Tesla’s slipping sales figures are so devastating.

However, it seems Tesla knows this, as they recently announced that they will revive their “Model 2” from the dead. This was a $25,000, 250-mile range budget Tesla based on the Model 3 platform that was set to launch with the Cybercab, but Tesla scrapped it to focus on the Cybercab. Now, Tesla says they are going to revive the project and bring it to market. This U-turn is an apparent reaction to Cybercab’s failure to stimulate interest in Tesla and to try to bolster sales. Unfortunately, there is a problem: this budget end of the market is already dominated by EVs that are cheaper than the Model 2 and have better range and specs. Take the MG4, BYD Dolphin, Citroën e-C3, Hyundai INSTER, and others. With dwindling demand and a highly competitive market, it’s not even certain that Tesla can sell enough Model 2s to make the effort profitable.

The house of cards is falling down, and the hollow promises that bolstered Tesla are now withering. The planet’s reaction to Musk’s love of techno-fascism is just speeding this process up. No matter which way the EV giant looks, it faces devastation, all thanks to Musk’s moronic leadership. Honestly, the only way Tesla can continue like this is if Musk manipulates one of the largest and most powerful governments in the world to pour money into the company, removes all of the safety regulations protecting the public from their driverless death machines, ruins the media that would make the public aware of such dangers, and then cripples the judicial system that would hold Tesla accountable…

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Sources: This Is Money, BBC, The Guardian, Will Lockett, Notebook Check, Will Lockett