> EV sales share in the US is down to 6% (and falling every quarter).

It's not every quarter, but it's steady and that spells absolute disaster for US car manufacturers:

https://www.coxautoinc.com/insights/q3-2026-ev-sales-report-...

US car companies have been protected and bailed out too many times and are now not only completely uncompetitive on the global market, but set up to be completely demolished as EVs take over.

Their bad leadership and overall inefficiency mean that either investors are going to pay a massive price, or US consumers are going to pay a massive price. If we keep on pushing up consumer costs by propping up bad manufacturers with protectionism and bail outs, the US's entire economy is drug down by that.

There needs to be some creative destruction, ruthless culling of the least efficient manufacturers, so that their best workers can go to the better manufacturers, if the US is ever going to be a top tier car manufacturer again.

I hadn't followed just how bad US manufacturers were failing at EVs the past two years, what with all the other disasters unfolding, thanks for the wake up call. Two years of wasted time, of the US falling even farther behind... such a massive fail and yet not the most massive.

> - Chinese EVs are dominating every market outside the US.

Not so in Europe, where the top 10 EVs sold in 2025 [1] has not a single Chinese car.

[1] https://autorai.nl/tesla-van-de-troon-gestoten-als-populairs...

I think they have a future as a "normal" car company, but in order to do that they'd have to manage to deliver a new "normal car" model at some point, and accept normal stock prices.

That EV market share direction in the US, though .. really bad compared to non-petrostates (except Norway)

Wikipedia maintains a list.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

It's more likely he'll merge Tesla with SpaceX.

I live in SE Asia and travel regularly for work in this region. Chinese EV's are everywhere and completely dominate the market, except perhaps a few fans in Singapore, it's living driving in the future (Denza D9 anyone?) compared to Western countries (tech-wise, not the questionable production and market flooding)

> - EV sales share in the US is down to 6% (and falling every quarter).

Wow. Compare with 41% in France (in October), 37% in Germany, 60% in China.

> unsupervised autopilot

They are running a fleet of taxis around the Bay Area. It's kind of scary because they aren't that safe, given the lack of LIDAR. But they are doing it anyway.

>The stock is still surviving on Elon hype

I wish people would stop saying stood things like this and consider the structural and technical reasons why TSLA share values might be disconnected from the company's performance. (No one wants to do that because it might point to misbehavior by market participants.)

Hundreds of billions of dollars do not move because of "hype"; someone, somewhere is making a calculated decision.

From what I've heard, the autopilot is very good and getting better. It is hard to distinguish the haters from the hype.

> unsupervised autopilot

Robotaxi is live in some markets. I've used it twice here in Houston. Works quite well.

> Manufacturing costs haven't come down

That’s not true in general but the Cybertruck in particular is stupid expensive to manufacture. And then there’s the 4680 fiasco. I think it’s more of a personal political design than a realistic product.

I’d say Tesla’s charging network remains a very strong suit for them. Problem is it’s nowhere near strong enough to justify their current valuation. But we’ve been saying this for years and the stock price still stays irrationally high.

It’s slightly amazing how persistent the Elon hype is. Quite a few of those problems are at least partially due to own goals that Musk himself has been scoring.

I realize that some of it is just a cult of personality, and that part will be unusually sticky because of things like cognitive dissonance. But that can’t be all of it. My next best guess is a bunch of it is a whole bunch of institutional investors are privately thinking these companies are way too risky, but keep it to themselves because it’s not their money they’re putting on the line and taking a contrarian position would risk angering a presumably vocal subset of clients of unknown size. Which isn’t a great way to make yourself popular with your boss.

There’s a severe lack of focus and the only endgame that still makes sense to me for Tesla is basically turning into a cab service like Waymo. Perhaps you own the car perhaps not.

The proliferation of over-the-top EVs around 2019-21, not just from Tesla, did make me think something was wack with the subsidies. Gas was insanely cheap for part of that too.

> Federal EV tax credits are over.

It's crazy that Democrats were the pro EV party because of the environment, and half the reason liberals bought Teslas, but Elon's white supremacy overrode his business interests and he went all in with the fossil fuel party. And Tesla shareholders rewarded him with an insane pay package for this genius move.

They already pivoted to AI.

He'll just fold Tesla into SpaceX to cover up the ashes.

> It's hard to see where Tesla goes from here as a company.

Probably will get acquired by SpaceX to hide the poor financials

Federal EV tax credits are over partly by Elon's hand. Masterclass level foot-gunning.

He seems to suggest that the future is Cybercabs and Optimus.

But if Optimus ends up with a HW3 problem (current manufactured Optimus bots aren't autonomus yet because the software isn't finished) he'll have a pile of Cybertrucks and early-model Optimus units rotting in a field.

Personally, I just don't see it. If he merges Tesla and SpaceX it won't really be about cars or vehicle autonomy.

Their current stock valuation can't ride this uncertainty forever. At some point he has to have new products that work, no caveats.

Elon leaves the company, maybe they focus more on quality, good UX, and a lot of people not currently buying Teslas because they are owned by a nazi and have bad UX and quality issues might start.

He's also looking at an incoming congress that is going to give him a colonoscopy that he didn't ask for.

The only people I've seen driving cybertrucks tend to be asian or older white guys that likely think Elon is great. Yes, this is a generalization, but an observation over thousands of miles between the Bay Area and Vancouver, BC.

I think Tesla is in for more hurt over the coming years, which I don't think is necessarily a bad thing in my opinion on how Musk has handled himself in the public arena with Tesla and Starlink.

He'll trigger the sale of Tesla to SpaceX so he can get his tranche before that happens.

Don't forget, they built a truck that's near impossible to sell outside the US due to the fact it's way too big and deadly for other road users.

Elon made this into something cool, but creating a whole model line for a single country is risky. Especially if that model is already in a small niche and has an incredibly controversial design.

Not sure why you didn't mention Elon Musk zeig heiling at the inauguration he helped buy which led to a mass boycott.

Also, the truck was ugly, awkward, and not good at being a truck.

Elon resigning from Tesla and just letting it run as a reasonable car company making just regular incremental quality and price and new model improvements on normal vehicles people want to drive could be the best thing for the company. The Model 3 is a huge success. That they didn't follow that up with just a regular pickup truck in a similar niche, and instead got distracted by this cybertruck nonsense is an indictment of Musk's poor leadership at this point.

They should just be the Toyota of EVs -- mass produce quality vehicles people want to drive -- instead he's trying to be Tony Stark and keep pumping it as a meme stock.

Tesla remains excellent at engineering and manufacturing. They need not seek the exotic.

He's a liability to that company, not an asset, at this point. And his name has become a brand liability.

My wife took an overhyped Moonshot for a ride when she was on holiday in Texas last month and sent us all a video - just saying

>The stock is still surviving on Elon hype but has been stagnant for 5 years.

People may actually start buying Teslas again if they're no longer associated with a fascist trillionaire. The number of "I bought this before Elon went crazy" bumper stickers is very high. The people who would buy an electric car are turned off by his association with the brand. He's more of an albatross on the brand than a hype machine.

Throwing his first-mover advantage into the dumpster to get in bed with the political party who despises not only his core customer base but the very premise of his business is forever baffling.

[dead]

Hundreds of Cybercabs are driving around cities right now with no steering wheel or pedal making money and growing 20% a week, Model Y is the best selling car (of any type) in the planet. European sales are going through the roof, they are doubling production.

Cybertruck was a mistake but rest of the business is printing cash hand over fist.

- When it released, people were lighting Tesla stores and charging stations on fire, flipping off drivers, spitting on the cars even when kids were inside, and defacing them. This was generally supported, and for some reason a lot of people sided with the vandals in an effort to still be considered a Democrat and show hatred of The Other Side.

Elon's honestly their biggest problem. Can't focus on finishing one thing to save his life and alienated the shit out of the European market with his fascist beliefs.