alt Hacker NewsTesla's stock price might be detached from reality, but is their actual business in trouble? I ask because anywhere I travel (Europe, UK, HK, NZ for example) there are just tons of Teslas, most of them the latest refresh models. There were more Telsas than BYD in Hong Kong!
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> Tesla's stock price might be detached from reality, but is their actual business in trouble?
I am not sure you can detach these two concepts. Tesla is currently valued around 3x the next top 5 auto companies combined, so to an extent you need to judge the company on these expectations. I happen to think they do have a pretty good business selling cars, and maybe a very good business selling autonomous cars, but there's so much uncertainty I think it is hard to see the current market cap as anything other than hugely inflated.
Yes their actual business is in trouble.
Why exactly do you think he keeps repositioning them as a robotics oh wait no I mean an AI company? Why is he clearly positioning Tesla to be acquired by SpaceX? Why is Tesla investing into xAI to be converted into SpaceX shares?
Tesla’s actual business, making cars, continues to degrade. The Roadster (obviously) is not going to help.
They have a huge balance sheet so it’ll take a while but Musk obviously sees the writing on the wall. The sheen is wearing off their shitty products and he doesn’t know how to add the sheen back or make the products less shitty.
The business is doing fine, they’re profitable and regularly beating various targets. Honestly I think Elon is more level headed than people give him credit for, his companies are consistently profitable and generally produce competitive products.
> There were more Telsas than BYD in Hong Kong!
This is historical artefact: HK with its short distances is very suitable to EVs, and the government initially supported EVs with tax breaks. In other words, people bought a lot of Teslas when it was the only game in town.
For new registrations, BYD overtook Tesla back in 2025 with a yoy growth of 67.8% vs Tesla -3.8%, and in the latest available month (June) had more than 4x as many registrations as Tesla.
It's not exactly market-dominating growth justifying a 300+ P/E ratio.
https://www.thestandard.com.hk/news/article/319010/EVs-make-...
https://kr-asia.com/pulses/155906
https://hkcarrank.com/jan-2026-private-car-registration-data...
https://www.td.gov.hk/en/transport_in_hong_kong/transport_fi... -> check table 4.1(e)