Tesla annual sales decline 9% as it’s overtaken by BYD as global EV leader

Declining sales in a growing market segment.

I mean, aside from the Cyber Truck, its cars are all aged. The Model S is 14 years old The Model X is 11 years old The Model 3 is 9 years old The Model Y is 6 years old. Any other manufacturer would have completely replaced the Model S and Model Y, sure they have had a couple of refreshes but they both feel old. The Model 3 would have been replaced about now, most manufacturers run a model for around 8 years The Model Y should be replaced completely within the next 2 years. Again the 3 and Y have also had updates but are still the same car, but its normal for sales numbers to drop as models age. additionally, outside the US, we get Chinese made EV's, these are mostly newer cars, with improved technology.

I think they have run out of ideas, either that or all the good ideas people have left. They do seem to be just treading water ideas wise.

Which Chinese EV do you drive?

Basically abandoning cars altogether and shifting to “sustainable abundance”. Robots and AI

This! All they have is being fast. All price points get you more tech and convinces as a base level packages in competitors. And they don’t fund the named wealthiest person on earth pushing extreme views and politics destabilizing the global geopolitical landscape for his self gain.

This happened years ago. Plug in hybrid electric vehicles are EVs.

Nothing to do with ideas, rather than chronic lack of product development in order to show artificially higher financial metrics that juiced the stock price and unlocked Elon / the Board's share packages. If Tesla had been piling back revenues into the multi-billion dollar development cycle of today's typical new auto design, then they would not be facing these problems (but then they also would be valued as an automaker and TSLA would be a fraction of its current levels). I actually think Tesla has a more insidious product development problem, one rooted in their tech background. Every new generation of vehicle is a ground up rewrite done by a different team who seem intent on using none of the components of the new team. Roadster vs S/X vs 3/Y vs Cybertruck. The lack of parts sharing across Tesla's line-up is something that would have VW, Toyota, Stellantis, all firing their CEOs not giving the multi-billion dollar payouts.

Doesn't seem like parts sharing is a big issue for Tesla. I think the elephant in the room is a very poor down the line strategy with new models and replacements for the existing ones. Setting aside all the Tesla Semi, Roadster and Cybertruck fiascos. They also lost the opportunity to launch the model 2 before the chinese expansion. Now, they've lost that market probably forever.

I would point to VW here, they have had the MEB platform out around the same time as the Model 3, but now have 13 different vehicles ranging from the Seat Cupra Born (arguably a Model 2 equivalent) through to the ID Buzz at the large end. The MEB also directly competes with the 3, S, X & Y This "platforming" is nothing new in the sector (I picked the MEB just because it's EV focussed), but it does depend on solid product roadmaps thought out years in advance, but critically sharing as much as possible between each of the vehicles as possible to reduce development cost overall. A friend recently took delivery of an ETron GT - there are more than a few bits of trim that VW haven't even bothered to remove the Porsche branding from (plastics in the frunk, toolkits, etc. etc )

P/E 300 justified!

In 8 years, Mazda went from the FB RX-7 with a carbureted, naturally aspirated 1.2L rotary (100hp), live rear axle and drum rear brakes through the FC with a 1.3L EFI rotary available with a turbo (180hp), independent rear suspension, 4 wheel disc brakes, to the FD with the first production sequential twin turbo system in the revised 1.3L rotary (255hp) and a chassis still considered stellar almost 35 years later.

The fact that Tesla is just now getting overtaken by a few competitors with such an aged lineup like you mentioned is a miracle in and of itself. You have a 6 year old model that is the number 1 selling EV on the planet is a flex.

But they are a taxi ai robotic chip making company. I mean who cares about the things that generate revenue. Stock up 7 trillion percent by Tuesday.

Tesla has a deeper problem than just not spending on R&D, and that is that what they pursue projects that will never pay off. Their vehicle R&D has been going into the CT and Semi, two vehicles that will never pay back the investment that’s been put into them. Then there’s FSD/s, which gives the impression of being an endless money pit that only a small minority of their customers likes enough to pay for. And I nearly forgot about Dojo! They spent a ton of money on developing a chip that they will never use. I have to imagine that at this point they’re having a lot of difficulty in recruiting talent. Would you, as an engineer, want to go work for a company with such a pathetic track record in getting product to market?

When you sell minimalism as the holy grail your run into problems once you have removed everything. It's so funny to seem them all crying at the new ID Polo with all the buttons while the car community loves it.

On it's way to a trillion dollar valuation. A move in the right direction.

They're not really doing anything with their lineup because they don't actually have any long term interest in selling traditionally owned vehicles. Elon thinks that in the near future almost no one will own cars and almost everyone will rely on fleet owned robotaxis exclusively for ground transportation. It's ridiculous but that's what he thinks. He even outright said that the idea of selling an affordable vehicle with a steering wheel would be "silly". I honestly think they could straight up discontinue all of their current models outright and the stock still wouldn't take that much of a hit because investors have fully bought into the robotaxi hype. But despite this they're still releasing laughable projections claiming a big increase in 3/Y sales year over year over the next five years.

Have you actually compared them? German brands easily demand 10k or even more for something equal to a Model Y. For 50k euro you have a car with 600 km wltp, heat pump, heated and ventilated leather seats, awd and one which is spacious. A comparable Volkswagen, ID 7, is about 65k euro for that…

These numbers include tesla selling its shitty cyberturds and model y to SpaceX. Its actual consumer sales numbers are even worse. This is what happens when you make shit products with the cheapest material possible.

The 3 got a refresh about a year ago. The Y got a refresh last year. They look similar, but a lot has changed. They’ve been tweaking the S all along, including things like the Plaid, but a big refresh is expected this year.

What improved technology that the Chinese EV manufactured have over Tesla?

Other competitors have FSD?

It’s not just the 300 P/E, that alone can be seen in other companies (e.g. Safeway right now has a P/E of 300) — it’s the $1.5T market cap on top of that absurd ratio.

Imagine what it would be if he wasnt selling Cybertrucks to.companies....that he owns.

Tesla hasn’t produced an economy car, I don’t know if it ever will. But that’s a big market in the rest of the world. There is a lot of competition in that space though. If Tesla could produce a competitive cheap car, then hen it could expand its sales in that area. I guess it was going to try to do that in Mexico, but I haven’t heard much news about that factory.

Europe and conscious buyers will never forget Elon going full Nazi doing salutes. Tesla will crash and burn in the next 5 years.

ayup, 2M/yr was stressing Elon's actual business model. He wants to sell miles not cars.

I'm not going to bother checking but no doubt the share price rose on this news!

The only to be fair I can even attempt to come up with about this not being the case for all manufacturers is the Ford Super Duty trucks. They had essentially the same truck from 1999-2016, with 2 suspension changes, 4 engine changes and 3 (sorta 4 depending how you look at it) front end changes. And they still have a few common parts afaik in the 2026 trucks

Better batteries and charging speeds, displays in front of the driver, heads up display etc. things real people want.

It doesn't matter to Elon Musk as SpaceX will be the biggest IPO in history. Elon will make money on SpaceX as Tesla will become trivial for him.

Tesla’s design language feels old in general. Their minimalist tactic is played out, feels cheap and broken. For example, the Cybertruck is relatively new, but the truck itself looks and feels 5 years old.

Just wait until Leon has a ketamine delivery delay and he spouts off in an Archie Bunker rant about chinks and Taiwan.

Only? O_o

>Tesla annual sales have fallen for the second year in a row, a drop fueled by the removal of the federal tax credit in the U.S. and competition from Chinese automakers. This is the first sentence in the article. It neglects another significant factor. Musk is channeling fascism every day. I know a lot of folks (myself included) who canceled orders because Musk is so frightful.

Replaced? Does Honda replace the Accord? Does Ford replace the F150? No and your wording is dogshit. They "redesign" their vehicles and so does Tesla. All your aged numbers are incorrect. Tesla makes more modest changes here and there and more frequently compared to legacy manufacturers who do more of a full redesign in what is traditionally called a "generation or gen".

Yes, they are replaced by an all new model. It may have the same name but it’s a new car. I had a mark 6 golf and replaced it with a mark 7. They were different cars. The mark 7.5 was a facelift. The Honda accord is on its 11th generation. The light duty ford F series is in its 14th generation.

I can tell by your comment you aren't getting my comment...

I can tell from your comment that you never were going to listen to mine. Even Tesla refer to them as refreshes.

I'm going to be honest, I generally saw this as a positive selling point for Tesla as a company. They have found a way to sell lots of cars with a super small lineup. If you look at the shareholder report I think like 90% of their sales are the model 3 and y, which is honestly very impressive. I don't know of a single car company that can pull such sales with only 2 models.

the pitch i keep hearing when i say anything pro-waymo is that Tesla is better because you'll own your own self-driving car, is that not what Tesla are planning?

Stock soars to all new highs

The lack of parts sharing is a strange one, even the same models can have different parts only months apart. I am not sure how "easy" it would be, but just having the one set of castings for all models with cutouts in the "firewall"for left and right hand drives should be a goal shouldn't it? Also I agree with lack of R&D spend, they did seem to lower the spend or spend less than they should. And finally they seem to worry about saving cost per part rather than quality per part. Cost should be a factor, but quality should be the priority, like how many issues did they have in the suspension, control arm bushings, lateral links, and ball joints etc. And adding on, the testing seems to be limited or not as thorough, not as much as you'd think. Some examples are all the issues with the early cybertrucks, glue coming off, pedal issues etc, why wasn't that picked up with a few months of engineering testing? And also i know they have winter testing areas, but they still seem to engineer for Socal conditions not any other, the wiper controls are an example.

I agree with you that you don't need to have a heap of different models, VW beetle, model T ford etc. But i was thinking more along the lines of stuff like Octovalve, AI day, battery day etc. They always used to have a lot more things developed and announced to me anyway, it either seems to be plateauing, stagnating or regression in levels of achievement from what i see. Like the last few vehicle changes they spend more time talking about the spoiler changes etc.

They have fart mode. Surely someone would next think of shart mode?

Good. Tesla is a pump-and-dump scam pretending to be a car company.

That's what they've claimed in the past but like with a lot of things Elon there isn't a coherent and stable long term vision behind their plans. They're definitely transitioning to emphasizing fleet owned vehicles now and it may not have been stated outright but it's pretty clear they've lost interest in end user owned vehicles if you read between the lines. Cybercab (and Rub oven - sorry "Robovan") are the only things they're known to be working on and nobody makes bespoke taxi platforms intended for private ownership.

Yes this is impressive until market saturation and a stagnant line up mean sales run into a wall. When 85+% of a company's revenue comes from 2 products it's fine for a short time but after years of that situation it becomes a pressing issue.

His Political stance is why the sales are down. All other 'reasons' on here are valid enough, but the big picture is his Support of Trump!! His "Nazi" salute. His mockery of the working Americans, and People in general. Musk and Trump are out of touch with reality, and the world has noticed! We were a Tesla family, but now we'll bike before we ever buy another Tesla!

The vision just keeps changing. The original vision was: we have to invest in Tesla to save the world from global warming, and also go to Mars to escape global warming. Now I guess global warming is not real and its all about autobots. Not sure why History's Greatest Genius couldn't figure out global warming was fake earlier, or skipped right to the infinite autobot plan.

Elon is constantly going from thinking things are existential threats to no big deal depending on how much something appeals to whatever passing interests he has (or his bank account) Remember when he talked about how AI was a super serious risk that needed to be heavily regulated? Now he may well be the most world's biggest pro-AI hype man. In a rare and probably unintentional moment of candor he even admitted that although he now thinks AI is probably not an existential threat he doesn't actually mind if it is if he gets to be a major contributor to it. He is a total megalomaniac who sees the whole universe as a video game where he's the only player.

He couldn't even commit to the sustainable part, instead changing it to the ridiculous "amazing abundance"

There is absolutely no reason to have not updated the 3 and Y to have 800v architecture. They added it to the Cybertruck. The new BMWs and Mercedes have it. Hyundai and Kia have it. Lucid has 900v. This greatly decreases DC charging time. If I’m looking for a small SUV and I see that the BMW iX3 has a NACS port and can add 200 miles in 10 minutes plus has 400+ miles of range, I won’t be tempted by a Model Y

What's SO compelling about Tesla's FSD? Ford's Blue cruise has come a long way. Lots of alternatives

BMW iX3

Agreed. They have arguably saturated a good portion of their market. Imo it's better than prematurely expanding, but the time had certainly come to add to the Lineup.