To be such a smart guy, Musk does some really dumb stuff --- like alienating most of his customer base. Like investing billions to build an auto manufacturing academy for the Chinese --- now his primary competition.
The article highlights Tesla marketplace trouble --- but it ignores the other half of a "double whammy" that envelopes Tesla.
While Musk was busy shooting his company in the foot, investors were buying his stock like crazy. And not just the "dumb money" retail investors but also the "professional" institutional investors who do this for a living. They now hold 70% of TSLA stock.
The P/E of TSLA is around 130. The P/E of GM, Ford and Toyota are all less than 10. In other words, TSLA is outrageously overpriced --- by a factor of at least 10. If TSLA was valued like other car companies (90% of TSLA revenue is from auto sales), would Musk look like a business genius? I don't think so.
Tesla's stock price and Musk's business persona are dangling by a thread being held up by these "professional investors". In my opinion, out of fear for their upcoming performance bonuses.
Once this thread is cut, Musk will own one of the worst self inflicted financial disasters in the history of business.
>If TSLA was valued like other car companies (90% of TSLA revenue is from auto sales), would Musk look like a business genius?
Yes? In that world he built tesla into only a 60 billion dollar company, along with his work at X/paypal and SpaceX. That's still incredible. (Obviously that skill hasn't transferred to government work though.)
In that world he built tesla into only a 60 billion dollar company
Only $60 billion??? You're selling him way short.
At it's peak earlier this year, Tesla market cap was $1.5 TRILLION --- valued at more than all the world's major auto manufacturer's COMBINED. All while commanding only about 4% of unit sales.
Can you say O-U-T-R-A-G-E-O-U-S-L-Y over priced?
Since then, TSLA has lost almost half it's value --- and by any sane measure, it is still OUTRAGEOUSLY over priced.
It's really hard to say how much was meme valuation and how much was people actually believing his statements about Full* Self-Driving, cars becoming an appreciating asset (!), humanoid robots. Plenty of people believe his ~lies~commercial puffery.
"Plenty of people believe his ~lies~commercial puffery."
Plenty of these "believers" don't have money to invest in TSLA stock.
Most of those who have invested are so-called "professionals" whose job it is to avoid falling for "puffery". These "professionals" will eventually be forced to own the fact that they have been bamboozled by a con artist. And once this starts, the wheels are going to fall off the Tesla car really fast.
Its really distressing that there's seemingly zero enforcement over the incredible campaign of lies Musk has used to sell Tesla and SpaceX, HyperLoop, and others.
Musk keeps getting away with dumping the investors, with saying whatever crazy shit he wants. And so far, the market regulators havent once bothered to care.
Meanwhile, National Labor Board has been investigating Tesla for firing employees who complained online about sexually despairing comments. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has investigating Tesla factories for racism including slurs, racist graffiti, and nooses. uS Transportation Board has been investigating accidents caused by Actually Smart Summons and self driving modes. FAA has been investigating illegal rocket launches in Florida, & reviewing requests to turn the once experimental star base launch site into a much busier production site. CFPB would have been involved in regulating X's move to become a banking app. FEC has been investigating Musk offering $1M/day to voters who sign up for his PAC. SEC has been investigating failure to give timely notice in the Twitter acquisition, costing investors billions. EPA has been investigating multiple Tesla sites (very) improperly disposing of hazardous waste. All agencies have recent seen cuts from Musk's DOGE, with many of these investigators forced out. https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2025-03-27/elon-musk-...
Imo the stockmarket has long since detached itself from any sort of fundamentals as a main engine. Elon is a personality cult, and cults defy economic physics, until they don't.
That cultishness extends itself well into the world of tech stocks as well. How many tech stocks are also proced similarly? Companies with negative profits still worth billions...
The post I responded to estimated it was 13x overpriced, so I divided the current market cap by 13. I'm sure Ford and GM were at one point above 10x PtE also.
I understand his shares are collateral for his various other ventures ( and most likely personal expenses ) - a Tesla stock crash might have other consequences
Tesla stock buyers are buying it for future promise, thus the value. The other car makers aren't innovating as much so there isn't any perceived future to pull forward and buy.
The disaster you are expecting is just your wishful thinking, if you look around the web, there is an alternate reality that says the direct opposite from you.
The reality is that nobody knows what the future will be. Not the person you're replying to, not the investors, not you, not me.
But my gut tells me it's more likely to be the speculative investors who are engaging in wishful thinking. I haven't seen any real reason to suspect otherwise, even before the events of the last couple of years.
Technically, sure, it's not possible to tell what the future will be, yet other automakers somehow haven't managed to innovate as much and here is a new carmaker from the US that ships actual products en masse. Also, apparently Elon is able to do more than one difficult thing at the same time and succeed. The stock bubbles may burst and fall but it's unlikely an end to anything.
> yet other automakers somehow haven't managed to innovate as much
Sure, but that's a bit orthogonal to the question of whether the wild speculative valuations of Tesla stock will end in tears or not. Innovation, all by itself, is not sufficient or a good indicator of total value.
> apparently Elon is able to do more than one difficult thing at the same time and succeed
He's far from the only one, though, and he only appears exceptional if you ignore his much larger list of abject failures. This mythologizing of Musk is just as accurate and cringe as claims that he is terrible at everything.
Stock bubbles pretty much are due to a promise for the future, i.e, innovation, what else do you think people would be buying?
Who are the many others succeeding at this scale? And it's not really mythologizing, it's just that the naysayers seem to not count his achievements to their proper size, yet they themselves probably have little to nothing to show for on that scale.
It seems more like he simply doesn't care very much about the money side of things. I.e. he simply values what he's doing ("fixing" government, championing the current tone of the right, etc), and believes the business-side impact is worth it. He also may believe that the long-term impact isn't as bad as it seems because this all might enlarge the right-wing part of his customer base.
Conservatives by definition are not prone to paradigm shifts.
I own an EV truck and I simply cannot comprehend the animus from “truck guys”. Here is a vehicle made in a U.S. factory, powered by 100% US energy, no foreign oil, with towing capacity, torque and top speed that puts legacy vehicles to shame.
But for reasons that only make sense inside their political bubble, these trucks are threats to their way of life.
Musk’s concept vehicles with nothing but flat screens that promise to take the burden of driving away from us entirely are never going to catch on with heartland Americans.
IMO if Musk serious about going to mars, being mere richest 100 billionaire from wildly overhyped meme Tesla stock simply isn't enough. The smart play IS what he's doing right now... go for government power and get trillions, not just any government, but US government with trillions to extract. Of course that assumes he can secure his influence medium-long term, but dumb execution = doesn't look like he can survive next 4 years with how many enemies he's making.
The US, for all its "free market" pretensions, doesn't really do capitalism very well.
What people are now seeing in China, with the rise of more than a half-dozen EV companies in competition with each other, would be impossible in the US. We've got nascent protectionism, total non-enforcement of anti-trust laws (and a very slow and very cowed judiciary,) a complex+selective regulatory environment, and industrial policies that shift with the weather. American manufacturing firms like Tesla and US Steel no longer know how to compete on the merits. And big tech, like big pharma, is a game where small firms are inevitably bought before they can possibly threaten the entrenched major players.
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“China had a plan when they let Tesla have a fully owned factory. They wanted the technology and the knowledge and experience. With that came a risk China would take that technology and build better stuff,” said shareholder Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. “That’s exactly what they’re doing. Now they’ve got really competitive vehicles, really competitive technology and the vehicles are cheaper.”
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This is what Beijing government did on high speed railway system. Global railway manufactures were asked to hand over their technology, then they can begin to build, ship, and run their rolling stocks on Chinese railway. Beijing did this in early 2000s, and now they dominated the high speed railway standards in many countries.
Is there a chance BYD would be willing to share its 5 minutes battery technology with other makers? I feel that could bolster the EV market, especially where people don't have charging capabilities at home.
sight another mainstream article pointing how Tesla will fail, they've been against him since 2017 even before he was somebody, now his track record is undeniable and still they are painting this cynical picture. I'm tired of mainstream media.
A lack of compelling new products is also a problem. Tesla’s most recent addition, Musk’s hard-edged Cybertruck that’s become a favorite target of anti-Elon vandals, has been a flop, selling about 40,000 units last year–a fifth of the annual volume Musk predicted. The vehicle has a shockingly bad record for quality, with eight recalls...
> “China had a plan when they let Tesla have a fully owned factory. They wanted the technology and the knowledge and experience. With that came a risk China would take that technology and build better stuff,” said shareholder Ross Gerber, CEO of Gerber Kawasaki Wealth and Investment Management. “That’s exactly what they’re doing. Now they’ve got really competitive vehicles, really competitive technology and the vehicles are cheaper.”
They seem to allege that BYD somehow mushroomed on the Tesla secret sauce. But really? It seems to surpass it on all angles.
I'm sure they wouldn't be beyond IP grabbing, but let's give credit where it is due. BYD cars just seem better than Teslas, regardless of subsidies, labour costs and price comparisons.
I definitely have heard a frazzled shift in tone from the fine folks at donation-centered talk-oriented journalism folks which I have listened to obsessively for years.
I think it's OK, if there's a lion hollering you might need some gravity and momentum to hear it and they are certainly trying to find the new polarity.
I’m seeing a huge upswell in organic hate for Musk over the last little while across a bunch of forums online, as well as people making jokes about him in real life (this is in Australia), and the dropping Tesla sales seem to be confirming the trend.
So the simplest explanation is not anyone ‘steering’ anything, but just that he’s absolutely trashed his own reputation outside what is a fairly narrow political persuasion internationally…
(The kind of pro-Trump style conservatism is fairly large in the US but a much smaller minority in much of the rest of the world, and of course the overlap of that and people who would buy EVs is even smaller)
This even under sells it a bit. Trump style conservatism has turned toxic and Musk is heavily associated with its worst aspects (think the "salute"). I think a lot of Americans just don't get how angry the constant threats of tarrifs and attacks is making people. For a mental exercise they should try imagining how mad people were about egg prices, then imagine how much angrier they'd be if on top of that their largest partner started talking about wanting to explicitly ruin their economy if not outright invade them. It's insanity.
The article highlights Tesla marketplace trouble --- but it ignores the other half of a "double whammy" that envelopes Tesla.
While Musk was busy shooting his company in the foot, investors were buying his stock like crazy. And not just the "dumb money" retail investors but also the "professional" institutional investors who do this for a living. They now hold 70% of TSLA stock.
The P/E of TSLA is around 130. The P/E of GM, Ford and Toyota are all less than 10. In other words, TSLA is outrageously overpriced --- by a factor of at least 10. If TSLA was valued like other car companies (90% of TSLA revenue is from auto sales), would Musk look like a business genius? I don't think so.
Tesla's stock price and Musk's business persona are dangling by a thread being held up by these "professional investors". In my opinion, out of fear for their upcoming performance bonuses.
Once this thread is cut, Musk will own one of the worst self inflicted financial disasters in the history of business.