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Tesla's Wild Ride About to Get Even Bumpier? [1]
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Date: 2025-02-10
As most of us here probably know, the Tesla Electric Vehicle Company forms the largest portion of the fortune that makes Elon Musk the World’s Richest Man. Trump’s election win certainly turbo-charged its stock price — rising from $243 a share on Nov 4 to nearly $480 by Dec 17; and while it subsequently backed off a bit from that peak to $426.5 just prior to his second inauguration, the last three weeks have not been kind at all, with the current price sagging to $350. This is also in complete contrast to the overall NASDAQ which remains within 2% of its all-time high, or the S&P500 that is less than 1% off its record.
So what seems to be the problem? Quite simply it’s the increasingly negative perception of its increasingly erratic and politically reckless CEO. Sales of its products in Europe were down an astounding 50% in January compared to a year ago. As enumerated in Autoblog:
Earlier this week, Electrek published Tesla's slumping European sales figures. Not a single market recorded any positive growth, with the best outlook being in the United Kingdom, which only saw an 18.2 percent drop year over year. If that doesn’t exactly sound like good news, it’s because the numbers only get worse the longer you look. Only 380 new Tesla vehicles joined drivers on Portuguese roads, representing a 31 percent decrease from last year. The Netherlands saw a 42.5 percent decrease, where the automaker was unable to crack 1,000 units sold. Sweden saw a 44 percent decline, where Tesla struggled to sell just over 400 cars. It gets even worse. France saw a 63.4 percent drop, and the entire country of Spain moved just 269 units, representing a 75.4 percent drop year over year. Then, Reuters gave us German registration numbers, which fell 59.5 percent compared to last year.
That last number in Germany is largely driven by Musk’s ill-considered support for the far-right AfD, which is not going down well with the vast majority of German voters who are also drivers. Likewise in China (a larger EV market than all of Europe thus far), Barron's reports Tesla’s sales were down 11.5% year-over-year in January, even while its Chinese rival BYD was increasing its sales by 48%. And in California (by far the biggest market in the US), electrek reports that Q4 2024 sales were down by 11.6% relative to Q4 2023 — even while its rivals were up by an average of 20%.
Sagging sales aren’t the only problems Tesla is suffering from. Raw Story has a disturbing analysis from the automotive site FuelArc indicating the overall safety record of their new CyberTruck is far worse than even the notorious Ford Pinto from the 1970s:
We now have a full year of data for the Cybertruck, and a strange preponderance of headlines about Cybertrucks exploding into flames, including several fatalities. That’s more than enough data to compare to the Ford Pinto, a car so notoriously combustible that it has become a watchword for corporate greed. Let’s start with the data summary, then we’ll do a deep dive. TL;DR: The CyberTruck is 17 times more likely to have a fire fatality than a Ford Pinto
As the author readily acknowledges, one of those fatalities was actually a suicide by gunshot in front of the Trump property in Las Vegas rather than a fire fatality, but even excluding that the CyberTruck still comes in at nearly 14 times worse than the Ford Pinto in terms of basic fire safety. What’s even more disturbing is the reaction of at least one CyberTruck troll to that report:
A note from the Chief Towing Officer: This is a story that nobody wants to write. The subject matter is grim, and we’ve done our best to honor the dead. We tried to deliver this as straight-faced news without the jokes, unlike our typical fare. I’m CERTAIN that my inbox will be filled with entirely reasonable replies after I hit publish. OK, maybe that’s wishful thinking. But, reporting news is important work, and we do work. Near as I can tell, you heard it here first. – Kay A second note from the Chief Towing Officer: We got our first bonafide death threat over this coverage. Ha, I called it. Here it is in full, since it is now part of the story… less the IP address: “You guys are a lying piece of [redacted] rag that purposely spreading false information about cybertruck .. which by will be the best selling truck in the world —- go eat [6 swear words in a row, all redacted] You purposely skewed data to make it sound bad just for your purpose of hurting Tesla. Get ready we plan on suing your [redacted]. You don’t know who we are, but we’re coming after you. go suck a tailpipe get your quickest way out.” For the record, we do not skew any data for any purpose. We cover the news here. It’s honest work and we’ll keep getting it done. – Kay
Interestingly, there are now reports starting to accumulate about various Tesla dealerships being vandalized with anti-Musk graffiti, and some first-generation Tesla owners trying to protect their vehicles with stickers reading “Sorry, I bought it before the CEO went bonkers!”
And then there is the whole question of just how safe Tesla’s vaunted Full Self-Driving mode really is (as illustrated by the headline photo), which is increasingly being seen as the path to the future for the company, from Fortune:
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