I will never understand two things:
1. Why Musk made such a hard-right turn politically, alienating most of his customers. People on the left were always far more likely to buy an EV than those on the right.
2. Why traders continue to buy Tesla stock even as sales nose-dive. Because of the promise of Robotaxis? Tesla's P/E is so high that the Tesla Robotaxi would have to sell more rides than Uber, Lyft, and traditional taxi services combined in order to get anywhere NEAR justifying it.
What really saddens me is the side effects of Tesla beginning to fail. EVs are so synonymous with "Tesla" that I would sometimes see people criticize EVs in general when they mean to criticize just Tesla. And with Tesla sales falling, some people are interpreting that to mean "Nobody wants to buy an EV" rather than "Nobody wants to buy a Tesla" and other car makes are slowing down or cancelling EV developments.
I'm bummed that Chevy has effectively cancelled the Corvette EV.
https://ourworldindata.org/electric-car-sales
https://ember-energy.org/latest-insights/the-ev-leapfrog-how...
Same reason people play musical chairs or gamble. In both cases they know there has to be a loser holding the bag, they're just hoping it won't be them.
The sales didn't materialize plus they were forced to do so by governments and short term investors that saw Tesla's stock shoot up. Now GM is writing off ~7 billion dollars. Whats worse is when Dems take back the white house, they will force the automakers to go back to green again. This back and forth is going to lead to disaster.
Only to US automakers are doing that, and that’s thanks to Trump gutting the EPA emissions regulations (I.e. V8s are back in everything!!!!)
All the US automakers are dead in 5-10 years anyway, it’s just prolonging the inevitable.
Yeah, makes no sense. Also anecdotally, I bought their EV out of concern for the environment and the thought that oil should be consumed as little as possible for geopolitical reasons.
Philip Low, a long-time peer and friend of Elon Musk offered one theory shortly after the nazi salutes: https://old.reddit.com/r/samharris/comments/1ibajmf/philip_l... (sorry about the format, couldn't find a better source)
He claims that Musk is just attracted to power and trolling, and will do both cynically instead of from any kind of principles. He guesses that Musk was worried at the time of losing the support of some actual nazis in the actual US government and wanted to signal them publically.
I'm not sure if a cynical nazi supporter is better or worse than an actual nazi. Could be worse, because those are the people who could and should be making better choices.
I believe a couple of things happened over the last few years that basically broke him. One factor may have been his daughter coming out as trans, and I have a feeling that another factor was a realization that his ambition to start a Mars colony wasn't going to be possible in his lifetime. Being forced to give up a major life goal hurts deeply no matter how much money or influence you have.
He started engaging in irrational, erratic behavior circa 2019-2020, such as getting into the pissing match with Unsworth, offering and then being being forced to overpay for Twitter, and pivoting towards full-blown Trumpism and neo-Nazi-adjacent politics. Before then he was just known as a hard-driving Bill Gates-style nerd CEO. By now, I don't think he cares about any role except that of cult leader.
2. Why traders continue to buy Tesla stock even as sales nose-dive.
See above. It's not a car company. It's a robot company^W^WAI company^W^Wenergy company^W^Wtaxi company^W^W personality cult.
Additionally, I think, social-darwinistic libertarianism is not exactly the best ideological foundation for a Mars colony :D
None of them can compete with BYD.
BYD are huge in _China_, and in some other parts of the world, and they are growing in Europe, but the media focus on them is slightly excessive.
I've gone past it a few times on train (nearly said "driven" past, which at least shows my grasp of the German language is improving), and development there has very obviously stalled at the half-way point.
Maybe that will be the lasting impact of Millenials and Gen Z: being a transition generation that finally kills this "unchecked capitalism" virus for enough time for humans to enter the next era successfully.
China may be a giant but those demographic issues will catch up to them so its really just the US thats the issue.
By the actual numbers, social spending and so on, the US isn't that incredibly different from Europe. And Europe is by any definition capitalist.
And the US has plenty of regulation, so its not really unchecked, its just differently checked.
> finally kills this "unchecked capitalism" virus for enough time for humans to enter the next era successfully.
This is just incredibly simplistics marxist 'stages of history' thinking and almost completely useless. If the US adopt European regulation we wouldn't 'enter a new era'.
USA is on the path to oligarch run fiefdoms and not capitalism in its original sense.
