> Man has bigger ambitions. Teslas were just a stepping stone
His Tesla stock is personally levered. I don't know at what point he gets margin called, but a sharp drawdown in Tesla's stock price could force him to sell stock in his crown jewel, SpaceX. (Or just extract money from it somehow. Either way, diminish it.)
I see this repeatedly stated, but have never seen it substantiated in detail. How much stock collateralized debt does he have? Is any of it tied to SpaceX?
He took on 13 billion of debt for Twitter, but it seems like dreaming to think this would be enough even if Tesla went bankrupt.
> How much stock collateralized debt does he have?
As of 2023 Musk had 238,441,261 "shares pledged as collateral to secure certain personal indebtedness [1].
I have not seen any great reporting around what prices he borrowed at (and thus when his margin calls may come).
> Is any of it tied to SpaceX?
Not directly. My point is if Tesla goes bankrupt he has to sell something to make good on those loans. (After, presumably, a year of court fights.) If Tesla is under there will be litigation around an xAI disposal. So that basically leaves Twitter and SpaceX, and one of those is more marketable than the other.
I realize you qualified your statement with words like could and diminish. My point is simply that people shouldn't get too excited about the possibility without real details about his debt or level of diversification.
I wish English had better language to distinguish possibility arising from limited observer information about the world versus possibility arising from uncertain future. I'm not saying you did it, but people tend to conflate the two.
Which is why X's investors re-valued X to $44bn recently even though just last September Fidelity valued it at $10bn. Seem to recall Trump's friends the Saudi's are big investors. Sure seems like billionaire deep state stuff when you get financially rewarded for your proximity to the prez.
History shows us that things actually go pretty well for the money man you just gotta remember to bring extra water rations when you march into Asia. I always liked to imagine him rallying his troops by telling them that Parthia meant virgin in greek or something like that Παρθία/παρθένος
> Berezovsky, who elevated Putin to power from behind the scenes, was soon exiled and replaced with more compliant oligarchs. He also met a grisly end—found hanged at his Berkshire mansion at 67—a precedent that might give pause to anyone thinking of risking his business empire to play that gray-cardinal role for the likes of Trump and J. D. Vance.
I did not understand it that way. Putin is probably smarter than Trump (though he does not deserve to be regarded as a mastermind IMHO). The parallel I find interesting is that both are authoritarians who were helped to power by billionaires who thought it would serve their interests. We know the fate Russian “oligarchs” later met.
I have a different idea. He just doesn't give a fuck.
Imagine you're one of the richest people on the planet. What are you going to do? Keep chasing more and more money, like a drug addict chasing more and more high? Nah, that's not sustainable, surely not when you're already virtually at the top, and you can have everything you want. Run a charity? Why? Starving children in Africa weren't your problem when you were poor, why should they be now?
Dick around and do dumb shit, that's what you're going to do. Because you can. You have enough money to buy popular social media and turn it into shit because it's fun and why not. And your best buddy who's on board with doing dumb shit happens to be the president of America. Dream come true.
To me, it's pretty funny. It's like we're being told "hey, don't worry, this is the world's smartest guy, and he's going to, in a heartbeat, examine every dollar of spending and tell us what to cut. And oh yeah, he didn't anticipate that Tesla might be hurt by his actions."
You don't get lucky building both Tesla and SpaceX. Bezos spent the same amount of time and money on a rocket company and they haven't got far. Elon does have something going, it's just unlikely the competence carries over to national and international politics.
I have a feeling that if Einstein, Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Churchill or really any of the great historical figures had access to Twitter, there legacies (or lack thereof) would be very different today.
Churchill was known to be very problematic and his career outside of the war wasn't exactly stellar as he had some dubious opinions: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-29701767
I don't know much about da Vinci, though he designed machines for war and he must have performed a lot of macabre work on cadavers for his research into anatomy (not that studying anatomy is a bad thing).
I think Twitter is partly responsible for destroying his mind, with the rest of the job being done by drugs.
It's an inherently toxic format. It promotes incoherent, contradiction-ridden, emotionally-driven, short-attention-span meme-think.
IMHO Bluesky is no better, which is why I'm not there. It's the same format, an incoherent soup of sound bites competing to emotionally trigger you into amplifying them. This format is the kind of thing a mad scientist would design with the explicit goal of rotting the human mind.
The good thing about books and longer-form works... even things as long as Reddit and HN comments... is that they can encapsulate complete thoughts that are connected to other thoughts. Building systems of thinking is how humans reason coherently about the world. Meme soup reduces us to some kind of animal level of grunts and short-horizon reactions but with language. It's gross.
I've been calling "social" media companies in general "the tobacco companies of the mind" for years.
I get where you're coming from (and I've rolled my eyes at the "video games cause violence" line of reasoning myself).
However, there is much wisdom in McLuhan's "we become what we behold" -- and consuming too much "social media" turns one into a performative puppet. Twitter is the distilled version of this (Jaron Lanier called it "Twitter Poisoning").
If Elon Husk huffing Twitter 24/7 while owning Twitter isn't a case of "getting high on your own supply", then I don't know what is.
He's definitely gone a bit wackier sounding since buying twitter. His idea of free speech is anything goes with the idea it leads to truth, but it allows people to post any old made up nonsense which seems to lead to weirdness.
I strongly agree with this argument. Both sides are equally guilty of fueling a culture of baseless accusations. While it's a broader issue across the Western world, it's especially pronounced in the U.S. It's reached a point where words have lost their weight and meaning.
Saying “both sides” is free PR for the worst side. They’ve never been close since the turn of the century when the right-wing reaction to 9/11 included people rationalizing vile smears against their political opponents and it’s just become more and more unbalanced now, especially when you consider the power disparity.
Was just pointing out a general issue, not taking sides. Can we stick to the topic—rage-bait memes on Twitter and Bluesky—and leave politics out of it for now? It’s an awful drag especially when we get into these dull statements “the other side is worse!!!”
So people joined blue sky because of an algorithm? My point is that the content on these various platforms are low quality and fuel the fire and has ultimately created low quality arguments and ideas.
I think the case with Elon Musk was skill issue than toxicity, like how pre-TV person would find modern cable TV infomercials irresistible.
Are infomercials toxic? maybe? Is banning them useful? maybe - can you find them addictive, as a post-TV individual? I can't, and I can't get schezophrenic like those perpetually enraged Twitter users, either.
I think it's just that those people, including Musk, didn't have the new form or literacy, a stronger grounding to the reality, required to be online. Twitter/Bluesky architecture itself, IMO, is about 10^2-5 less toxic than anything before it.
I'm not using it for the same reason. It tailors the content to trigger emotional reactions-usually negative ones. I'd often leave X feeling like people are just evil, idiotic creatures. That's not healthy. Kinda ironic that the so-called prodigy of our generation is letting himself get manipulated by his own platform's algorithm-promoting garbage to himself just to better manipulate others.
And it is not even the intent of his actions, it is the haphazard, chainsaw slash-&-burn, "move fast and break things" way he is doing them.
The same thing was done by Al Gore in the 1990s, cutting 250,000 federal jobs, eliminating 100+ programs, and consolidating over 800 agencies [0], all without creating these kinds of programs — specifically because Gore CONSIDERED all the issues and players and worked with congress to get it all done in a rational, and more importantly effective way. And that effort is respected decades later.
In Musk was using a similar approach, he'd earn respect, which indicates he is not making changes for efficiency for the government or people, but to slash-&-burn for his specific goals, e.g., gutting regulators requiring him to behave responsibly in his businesses.
I don't think it is his DOGE antics that are affecting the european sales though, I think it was the Nazi salute. That went down very badly this side of the Atlantic.
The Nazi salutes, the repeated commentary on individual European countries politics, his explicit support of far right parties in various European countries (at the time) upcoming elections. The related spread of misinformation at best and disinformation at worst via his x account regarding individuals in Europe he opposed, and so on and so forth.
I get you. It's still amusing to see the increasingly creative ways his fanboys come up with to cope. In the end, it all turns into blind belief in him, just because they see him as part of their tribe. Just another reminder that deep down, we're still just a bunch of unga bunga monkeys.
I don't think Tesla in China will amount to much, given the local competition has spun up their factories and is outproducing anyone else on the market. Just look at the numbers from last year [0], BYD was outselling Tesla 7:1, with Tesla barely doing any better than other manufacturers. "Full self-driving" won't fix that, and the competition will be offering similar features themselves.
Tesla lost their innovator / first mover advantage years ago, choosing to spend their R&D on dead ends and vanity projects like autopilot and the cybertruck while not delivering on projects that might have merit if they would actually listen to their target audience like the semi. They would've remained pretty successful had they iterated on their existing offerings, improving range, quality and reducing production costs of their existing lineup.
It’s probably more stable as it caters to larger established entities like governments, large businesses, etc. Although he’s simultaneously undermining the US government so if there’s no taxes to pay for his contracts or agencies who need the function of anything modern because they’re so hobbled… Not entirely sure what the end game is here. So far he has mostly protected his interests in terms of government attacks I’d say, at least in the US. Outside the US I doubt any state would take him seriously other than maybe providing one time services like satellite delivery for less essential infrastructure if it’s competitive.
Revenue is less important than profits, and car manufacturing is generally a low-margin business. Meanwhile SpaceX' Falcon 9 is the cheapest rocket (something like $70m/launch), while the cost to SpaceX is $10-20m per launch. So there's 200%+ profit margin. Starlink doesn't have any real competitors now, and fast internet access in sparsely populated areas is a big market (also with big money from military uses). Most of SpaceX revenue is from Starlink.
The cynic says that the US government is the main buyer of launch capacity and pays top dollar and if a launch provider had an 'in' with the government then it could be very lucrative...?
Especially when the competition dies off leaving spacex the only one standing.
Generally, when someone reaches 80, they tend to live another 7 or 8 years.
Whether he declines before then, to a point of uselessness for the republicans, is a different question. Also I'm assuming someone is pumping him full of every drug available to prevent his decline as much as possible.
vance seems to think he's next in line, having been anointed by the billionaire class, but he's all hatred and no charisma. Although saying that, he may just shuffle into the top spot when it's impossible to dislodge him. Or he may just get accepted by whichever bot farms drive the rightwing social media frenzy.
I'm personally hoping that their general fascist incompetence will fuck their chances of an everlasting reich.
Starlink's international prospects are getting trashed. Meanwhile, its competitors have basically free money from foreign governments to compete with SpaceX.
Idc about him, but I’m curious about the board. Why don’t investors care? Doesn’t the CEO have fiduciary responsibility to not tank the company in a worldwide market?
If Sundar or Tim reduced market penetration across EU by 43% they’d get recalled in a quarter.
They do have a duty to look after the health of the company but in this case it’s complicated because the time to do something was years ago (say, when it was first obvious he’d been lying about FSD). Tesla is wildly over-valued as a car manufacturer or even a large tech company, and that’s all due to Musk’s ability to talk it up. If they act against him, the share price will drop significantly and stay there, because there are a lot of car makers and Tesla just isn’t a standout in 2025.
That’d be best for the company long-term but they’d have to survive the inevitable lawsuits first, not to mention the high likelihood of physical violence if Musk tweets about it. I think the board are basically sitting around praying that the horse learns to sing before they’re forced to act.
And this is currently the official stance of the courts in Delaware. He got denied his 50 Billion bonus because he was effectively "negotiating with himself" and so looting from the other shareholders.
Why china? Did he finally realize that it's probably the one jurisdiction that will let him get away with his cars running people over or crashing into fake tunnels painted on a wall?
Lol, I agree about name-calling others (or saying that someone must be thinking something, as if the author can read minds), but you definitely aren't earning any good will with "btchsky". Maybe stay away from the social media you seem to not care for?
During ww2 in italy (and I guess elsewhere) some intellectuals participated in the war as well. Some on the side of the fascists, some on the side of partisans. And I doubt the ones in partisan groups would have discussed about mussolini in a respectful way
He’s a drug addict who goes around sig heiling, promoting seemingly every European fascist party he can find, and rambling about something called a ‘woke mind virus’. Like, it seems like a reasonable description.
dont blame hacker news for the abysmally sorry state of political and tech leadership right now. lots of people dont know this but there was a time when the statements of the President of the United States and his cabinet members / advisors were looked upon with some degree of reverential formality. now they are gutter trash on a daily basis.
Absolutely appalling that our precious Elon is being criticized on this holy bastion of tech, HN. Truly this is a sign of a total cultural collapse. Perhaps our ilk is better suited not participating in social media at all.
My guess is that the backlash was factored in. Even prior to his government role, Elon had stated plans to quit Tesla and take all their ML tech and engineers to xAI (if they didn't give him the 55b pay package), so he has at least one backup plan we know about. He also has more ownership over SpaceEx than Tesla which gets its money from the government, so backlash from customers doesn't really matter to him in the grand scheme of things. However, that's just a worst-case scenario, more likely is that sales will recover as the news-cycle wanes and new subsidies entice MAGA buyers.
> This is so weird, did he miscalculate how intense the backlash would be? or he truly doesn't care?
Personally, I don't think he is some genius mastermind, he just took some risks with business strategy and tactics and ended up being really lucky. Eventually, luck runs out.
Also, success and sycophants have probably caused him to get a lot more arrogant and less careful.
Tesla a meme stock though, it's more about the Elon cult of personality than any real market fundamentals. Its performance is only loosely coupled with the actual car business.
Honestly it's surprising that it's still so high. Compare it to any other car manufacturer and its valuation seems ludicrous. A lot of people are somehow still persuaded that the company is going to have some kind of amazing breakthrough Any Day Now.
>we haven't seen quarterly results showing the sales dip since.
Which are caused by the retooling of the Model Y production lines which took 3-5 weeks. Y represents 2/3 of the sales globally and all factories where down simultaneously.
Deliveries are back up in China and at current trends, they might achieve ~130,000 sales - just like Q1 2024, even though they had to close down their most production factory lines. China is the first to get back to speed but it says a lot about the "sales dip" which is actually a planned production dip.
>we haven't seen quarterly results showing the sales dip since.
Which are caused by the retooling of the Model Y production lines which took 3-5 weeks. Y represents 2/3 of the sales globally and all factories where down simultaneously. They started 2025 with only 12 days of inventory worldwide.
Deliveries are back up in China and at current trends, they might achieve ~130,000 sales - just like Q1 2024, even though they had to close down their most production factory lines. China is the first to get back to speed but it says a lot about the "sales dip" which is actually a planned production dip.
Yes, but that's insane, isn't it? Whi's going to buy a Tesla now? Eco conscious left wingers hate Musk with all their heart, and right wingers hate electric cars or any mention of climate change. Who's left?
I have seen at least ten of the new model Teslas in Portland Oregon (one of or most liberal city in US) the last month. At least SOME people are still buying them.
People have been saying Tesla is wildly overvalued for a decade now. Which logically I can't really dispute but at some point you can't logically continue to ignore how the market values it either.
I'm rooting for Musk to fall on his face as much as the next guy. But I'm not delusional enough to substitute my desired reality for actual reality. By any measure Musk has had a remarkably successful year or so. He's much richer and wields more influence over the government than any non-president in history that I can think of.
It would be funny, but a vehicle with an extended range generator would solve a lot of people's complaints about electric vehicles, so I wouldn't be surprised as I laugh at such an announcement.
There are still other issues that I have with Tesla vehicles, but I am looking forward to see how RAM's upcoming Ramcharger will do (all electric drivetrain with built-in generator for extended range).
I think it was a roughly 50/50 sales mix with a slight win for the range extender up until the point they discontinued it as an option in later revisions (with larger batteries).
They had some mechanical issues with the fuel line that was a fire risk and they software locked it to reduce the tank capacity by 20% in the US so it wouldn't be classed as a plug in hybrid, but even with those problems I've generally heard positive things about it. Basically acting as reserve to avoid range anxiety on early small battery EVs when it was all quite new.
Musk has always been an opportunist. All of his companies are things he's jumped on because they offered him a chance at a huge payout. He was acquired by PayPal, and he forced his way into Tesla. Likewise with Twitter, he was willing to burn huge piles of cash for what it offered him. He's a master of picking up a new project and amplifying it through the hype cycle.
The Tesla hype cycle is either nearing its end or peaked and I'm sure he knows this. The valuation for this company is ridiculous by any standard. So he's on to his next thing. By joining ranks with MAGA and he's purchased himself a driver seat for the most powerful country and strongest economy.
Obviously he still cares about Tesla, but it's not his primary focus anymore. He's moved on to his next big thing which I'm sure he expects to be many times more lucrative than Tesla was.
Can you name me any billionaire who isn't an opportunist? How can you become super wealthy without being opportunistic? Do you think by being kind and law abiding gentlemen, massive wealth just lands into your lap while your competitors let you by? This entire platform is full of opportunists. You don't get anywhere in life by not being opportunistic, life is just too competitive the higher up you go.
Tesla needs to develop an affordable car for emerging economies (LATAM, EMEA), and their stock will increase faster than before. China is dumping its cars on these markets like crazy and even then most people are reluctant to buy them.
I'm sure this is how they lost their first mover advantage, by choosing to reinvent the proverbial wheel of car manufacture instead of partnering with e.g. VAG, Ford, or even a Chinese company.
I think they could have pulled that off with a full-time CEO. The quality-control problems didn’t seem intractable, but they didn’t have the equivalent of a Shotwell providing the sober engineering execution which a hype-chasing CEO was never going to deliver.
Elon Musk is mostly out of his Tesla position. He doesn't need that contribution to his net worth any more, and getting status with the Trumpian right was worth it. His Tesla holding is worth only $70B right now, and like the rest of the executives, he has been dumping stock as fast as possible onto whoever wants to hold the bags.
He's still suing to be paid $55 Billion by Tesla, which is far more than they've generated as profit and will be for years even if it weathers this particular storm.
I've yet to see any good writeup on how this recent trouble would affect the legalities of that lawsuit.
He’s thinking much bigger. I believe the major push will be around self-driving cars. My bet is that he’s in government because he wants to help shape comprehensive federal regulation for autonomous vehicles — which I think is the missing piece right now.
I'm guessing it's a sacrifice he's willing to make towards his goal, especially since he has other ventures such as SpaceX which if I had to guess has more potential value than an electric car company when there are a bunch other car companies getting into the game. There are a lot less rocket companies with comparable experience.
This implies it's intentional, that there's some sort of master plan. I don't think that's it. I think he's just intoxicated by the prospect of basically unlimited power and is unable to think rationally about the entire situation.
See I don't believe that per se, he could have had both; were he to stop putting all R&D into infeasible money sinks like autopilot (which he had promised / upsold people to, so scrapping it would've led to multi billion lawsuits) and meme / prestige projects like Cybertruck and instead pushed more into making electric cars affordable, AND if tesla expanded and opened up / expanded the supercharger + solar panel + battery network, it would've been a fine multi billion dollar company with longevity - especially the infrastructure stuff would be long term revenue.
SpaceX is narrow; specialized, high revenue per launch, but not that many launches (although they're doing more than any other company), whereas tesla is broad, no longer unique but potentially big volume of car sales and recurring revenue from infrastructure and maintenance, could have been a competitor to GE and the like.
Soonish he will own one of the biggest ISPs in the world (Starlink). Hes going to have a consumer monopoly on cube sats and a lot of the worlds bandwidth in places that dont have other options (much of the world). I thibk Tesla eas just a scam or means to an end to acconplish his other goals.. One app for everything/mega corp or whatever.
Will he? From reading some sources it looks like as more customers are added the bandwidth just isn't there. Part of that is apparently not enough earth stations, but there's a saturation point where they can't add more satellites.
They already limit signups in oversubscribed areas, and as good as starlink is, it's still a technology that has higher latency, and higher ongoing costs from what I can see.
Meanwhile, once fibre is in the ground, with PON there's very little maintenance required. And upgrading speeds is a case of upgrading the OLT and ONT's - I'm going out on a limb and guessing that's much cheaper to do than launching thousands of upgraded satellites.
I didn't even get onto the power requirements for end user equipment - according to Jeff Geerling, it looks like about 80-90 watts.
My FTTP ONT is using less than 2.
That's 788kWh per year ((90 * 24 * 365) / 1000) and at 25p per kWh that's an extra £197.10 of energy usage per year. Compared to £4.38 for my FTTP ONT.
It's cool tech, no doubt, but it's not a replacement for a fibre connection by any stretch of the imagination, and so the positing that it'll be the, or one of the, bigget ISP's in the world seems off base, most likely by an order of magnitude or more.
In what sense is it one of the largest ISPs in the world? It would appear to have revenue of about 8bn, which would put it towards the bottom of the top 50 telecoms.
Well they came into the top 50 in 5 years with half their infra in space. They claim their v2 sats will increase network capacity 10x (who knows if this is true) but they are moving with extreme velocity. They are also insuring their own regulatory moat via the Trump administration, they have no real competition in the constellation space, all this combined with Elon having an extereme ambition to control the levers of society... I dont think my predictions is unwarranted, however, we will see.
>The shift to the new Model Y design is certainly having an effect, but it cannot account for the 43% drop in deliveries.
Why? Model Y already accounts for 2/3 of the sales in Europe. And the production lines were down for 3-5 weeks, they take time to ramp back up and Tesla started the quarter with only 12 days of inventory.
>With deliveries of the new Model Y having started this month in Europe, we can see Tesla is still suffering in markets that report registration daily.
But who knows in which countries did Tesla prioritize the "Junpier" deliveries. If they picked the markets with no public daily numbers, then their arguments collapse. I doubt Norway and Sweden are the easiest to reach from Berlin, for instance.
> I doubt Norway and Sweden are the easiest to reach from Berlin, for instance.
Do you mean for delivering cars? A quick search suggests they used to be moved by road, but are now moved by rail.
I don't see why Norway and Sweden are any more difficult to deliver to than anywhere else. Over 150 freight trains cross the bridge from Denmark to Sweden every day.
I guess you’re right. February was very last month to deliver last old model Ys. Obviously you don’t buy old model when the new model is announced. New model Y affected January sales for sure too. Careful people will also wait for a while and let Tesla iron out the initial quality issues. Comparison of Q3 and maybe Q4 will be more realistic.
Personally I think, that Cybertruck was badly timed experiment for Tesla. Model 2 would bring market domination and long term stability instead.
These are figures from Europe. Musk's credibility was significantly damaged in Europe from early 2024, when he became an outspoken supporter of Trump.
Two people I know were holding off from purchasing Tesla cars last year, thinking that if Trump lost then the political views of Musk wouldn't really matter any more. As Trump won, one has bought a VW, and the other is continuing to wait.
Musk is not a fascist. Fascists don't follow neoclassical economics. Fascism is a very clear and well defined philosophy. None of what is going on fits that definition. He's not even Hegelian.
He is an active, high-level, participant (formally an adivsor, clearly practically exercising directive influence) in a fascist, kleptocratic regime. There may be some definition of personally being a fascist where this is consistent with him not being a fascist, but I would suggest that any such definition is inconsistent with what the bast majority of people you might speak to mean by “being a fascist”.
> Fascists don't follow neoclassical economics.
Neoclassical economics, like Newtonian mechanics, is an approximate descriptive model, not a normative system; to the degree that it is accurate, everyone follows it, regardless of ideology.
He, and Trump, do not meet the definition of fascism. He is not pushing the supremacy of the State. He is not stating the State must control all aspects of society. He is not forcing businesses to close because they don't support the State. He is not banning other political parties. He is not Anti-Democracy. He is not Anti-Liberalism. They do not practice Hegelian Dialectic. These are the requirements for Fascism.
Musk and Trump - are well within the bounds of Liberalism. They may not be John Rawls. Trump is a Neo-Liberal protectionist. Musk tends to be more classical liberalism.
They’re saying that organizations which do not support his politics should lose federal funding. He’s blackballing law firms based on their employees having represented the other side in his cases. He’s arguing in court right now that he doesn’t need to follow laws which conflict with his plans.
Ok - cool. He's acting political within the bounds of precedence and a liberal democracy. It still doesn't meet the definition of fascism. Wake me up when he bans political parties, centralized power to the federal government, installs political officers in the public and private sectors, and bans capitalism.
You may not like it - but his constituents elected him to defund, or try to (congress is really the only people who can), those politically bias programs. This is how democracy works.
> Ok - cool. He's acting political within the bounds of precedence and a liberal democracy.
That is not true in any sense in which it was not equally true of Adolf Hitler in 1933 Germany.
Fascist regimes don't usually spring from the head of Zeus as fully formed unelected autocracies, they are a failure mode of other systems, very commonly representative democracies.
Fascism does not care about ethnicity. Fascism is Anti-Capitalist Anti-Socialist. It cares about the collective. It thinks some capitalist mechanisms are important but it must be under the state control.
Nazism may function similar to Fascism as is also Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Socialist but it requires German Mysticism. German Mysticism pins the idea of Aryanism to rule.
This is all besides the point - it is not 1933 - what is happening is nothing like 1933 - Their policies are not even close to 1933 - your failure to recognize that prevents you from seeing the actual issues and offer real solutions. This is why Trump won the majority vote. Stop using thought stopping clichés
> Nazism and Fascism are definitionally different.
Nazism is a specific instance of fascism the way the latter is used as a general political term; it is, of course, distinct from Fascism in the narrow sense of the particular Italian movement of Mussolini.
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism
2. Disdain for the importance of human rights
3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause
4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism
5. Rampant sexism
6. A controlled mass media
7. Obsession with national security
8. Religion and ruling elite tied together
9. Power of corporations protected
10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated
11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts
12. Obsession with crime and punishment
13. Rampant cronyism and corruption
14. Fraudulent elections
By my count, Trump and his movement score 14 out of 14.
A political squabble in the media is still not fascism...
Once again - wake me up when they ban political parties, centralized power to the federal government, install political officers in the public and private sectors, and ban capitalism.
Yes - wake me up when there's real fascism and a not political opposition using rhetoric to scare monger their base. You're misrepresenting your political opponents views to justify feeling morally superior. I bet you've never even tried to understand you opposition's point of view in good faith.
A core feature of historical fascism is a significantly expanded government. For example, under Mussolini’s regime (1922–1943), the Italian state dramatically increased its control over the economy — by 1939, it controlled over 80% of shipping and shipbuilding, and around 75% of iron and steel production. He also significantly expanded the state bureaucracy to enforce fascist ideology — from education to the media.
I’m not defending Musk’s behavior or suggesting anything, but labeling him “fascist” doesn’t seem historically accurate.
Would you agree to calling him and Trump authoritarian or in support of moving towards an authoritarian regime, then? It is "characterized by the rejection of political plurality, the use of strong central power to preserve the political status quo, and reductions in democracy, separation of powers, civil liberties, and the rule of law." Musk's role is in "Ill-defined executive powers, often vague and shifting, used to extend the power of the executive." (Juan Linz, An Authoritarian Regime: Spain, also yes I'm quoting from wikipedia because why not).
Before calling something authoritarian, ask: who’s actually in control?
If a regime can’t control education, is shrinking the size of government, and is expanding individual rights (e.g., gun rights), can it truly be called authoritarian?
The issue with much of the modern left is that it often misidentifies the problem. The left should be focused on advocating for the working class and the poor. After all, figures like Trump and Elon Musk clearly align more with the wealthy elite.
But the current left seems dominated by affluent, highly educated people, and instead of class-focused politics, it often resorts to dramatic labels that don’t reflect reality.
Step one in solving any problem is understanding it. And that starts with asking harder questions, not just repeating slogans.
Fascism explicitly includes an economic component.
> […] strong regimentation of society and the economy.
> "Fascist goals" – the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure […]
> Paxton argues: “fascism redrew the frontiers between private and public, sharply diminishing what had once been untouchably private. […] It reconfigured relations between the individual and the collectivity, so that an individual had no rights outside community interest.
> The Fascist Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage, worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of profits.
Tesla Y numbers jumped quite up lately in Norway. But due to how delivery of it works here, it might be lots of backorders finally getting into the country and registered at the same time, so the data is always a bit hard to gauge for a short timeframe. (Edit: so I guess the problem is we report delivery, and not sales)
For your hypothesis to be true you'd see falling Model y numbers but somewhat steady Model 3 numbers, since that was refreshed only in 2023 and is in no danger of getting a new refresh.
That is not the case. I took a look at the German numbers for Januaries 2025 and 2024 and Model 3 fell proportionally the same as Model Y in the YoY numbers:
Do tell, what is the rational way to discuss a company whose only visible top officer rants about about a "Woke Mind Virus" and simulatenously runs 3 other companies and an entire government department?
Yes, the author of the fucking article was the first to acknowledge that. There's a lengthy section on it. It starts with this relevant statement: "Tesla fans are holding on to the idea that this is not a real problem because it is mostly due to the Model Y changeover"... and continues "but that’s simply not true."
I would bet the SpaceX investors would heavily protest taking on the level of indirect debt associated with that company (Elon's shares and the ongoing SEC payout fight there), though he may have a controlling interest in SpaceX.
Even with controlling interest it likely would result in a class-action from shareholders... But he's defanging all the federal organizations that have been keeping his double handed dealings in check and the judiciary that would oversee the cases sooo... Oligarch can do no wrong?
I'd wait for March / April numbers. Sales went down mostly because people were waiting for the new model Y. Over the years the pattern has always been the same. News reports say that something bad happens to Tesla, but when the actual results come up it's the opposite.
Most of the backlash / protests you are hearing about is manufactured i.e. not based on any rational cause. This kind of protest doesn't hold for long term.
I would guess the +31% in Europe is also due to the stricter emissions standards, Euro 6d, and government subsidies are driving that figure in my opinion along with climate change fears. Elon already made, played, and won the EV market, and he has a lot more going on, so the devaluation of Tesla stock, the world's number one car predominantly an American-made car (more so than Ford) bumped back up recently, only hurts US pension funds, other investors, and owners. I wonder how Europe's energy production is fairing with the war in Ukraine, and what the total cost of ownership of an EV, Tesla or otherwise, is going to be to own an EV there. After all, they lost 40% of their gas supply. France and Germany have nuclear, but Germany has cut back due to Green party and green initiatives. France is bringing reactors online that were in maintenance and service periods, and they are building new ones by 2035. US gas prices and domestic energy production will ensure that will not be an issue here in the US.
That chart is showing all cars (not just electric); BYD is too small a part of the market to show up right now. Same with GWM/Ora, possibly due to calling their first Europe-targeted car the "Ora Good Cat" (sadly, they eventually hired someone who had at least heard of marketing, and it's now called something boring). SAIC is there.
Chinese electric cars are available here, but not, as yet, particularly popular.
Tesla sales have been down since 2024, but share price hold steady pre-election price because they are still going to sell huge amounts, just not as much as post Covid because of Chinese competition and removing old stock for the older Y model face.
Unsure if its a new issue but I've checked the used car market and these things are dirt cheap, 2 year old cars are about as much as a modest Golf, 4-5 year olds match the price of a Polo.
If you can handle the occasional funny guy chucking you a heil as you drive past and tech that tries to murder you about once a month they look highly affordable. Probably not what they were going for but hey ho.
Living in a place with cheap hydroelectricity I see a surprising number working as taxis and ubers. I doubt anyone is buying them new for that kind of job and the drivers would know a good deal when they see a used one for sale.
I own two Teslas. The loss in sales isn't mainly Elon Musks outspoken politics:
Back when Tesla was the only long-range EV you could buy, well, Tesla pretty much had the market cornered. Now, with other manufacturers offering long range EVs, Tesla just isn't standing up to the competition.
Here are some non-political reasons why, IMO, Tesla sales are down:
1: They do not justify the price premium, because they do not feel like a luxury vehicle. The interior is basically a mass market vehicle with pleather. (And the Cybertruck is just too expensive.)
1a: They severely dropped the price of the Model Y right after people bought it, with no goodwill. (This happened to me.) Ford dropped the price of the Mustang Mach E shortly after, and then offered goodwill to people who recently purchased it.
2: They have weird quirks:
2a: The yoke (square) steering wheel in the Model S should have always been optional.
2b: The automatic windshield wipers work very poorly, and there is no wiper speed control on the stalk. The "just push the button and spin the dial on the steering wheel" is not a solution. (Either use the same kind of sensor that other car manufacturers use, or bring back the old fashioned dial on a stalk.)
2b: The heat/AC and radio turn on when you open the door. (I hate this.)
2c: On newer Teslas, shifting happens on the touchscreen instead of a physical shifter.
2d: The general lack of physical buttons. The car doesn't need a button for everything, but even some programmable physical buttons would be a huge improvement.
3: The Model 3's driver's seat is too uncomfortable. (The Model Y's driver seat is better.)
4: They should have a wider range of vehicles by now. For example, they should have a Cyber SUV based on the same platform as the Cybertruck, but with 3 rows. They also need to have a lower-end vehicle.
5: They can't "ship." They've had pre-orders for the roadster forever. In contrast, Chinese EV makers come out with new models much faster.
6: They are sorely behind on Autopilot. Other manufacturers allow hands-free. The promise of full-self-driving was never met, people who paid for full-self-driving in their 2018 Model 3s will never get a true hands-free self-driving car while they own it.
> Back when Tesla was the only long-range EV you could buy, well, Tesla pretty much had the market cornered. Now, with other manufacturers offering long range EVs, Tesla just isn't standing up to the competition
There's also more competition than just other long range EVs. I plan on getting a new car sometime in the next year or two and had been planning on an EV. But lately I've been thinking that a PHEV might be the right approach.
In the last 10 years I think that there are only 3 days on which I drove more than 40 miles, and only 1 day where I was away from home overnight. If I had a car with a lower energy cost per mile than my current car (a 2006 Honda CR-V) I would probably drive more than I do now, but still would be under 40 miles most days.
A PHEV with a 40+ mile range on battery would be on battery most of the time for me. It would only need to use the ICE on the occasional long trip plus whenever its software decided to use it to keep it in good condition (ICE engines need to run occasionally to remain in good share).
It would in effect be an EV for me most of the time. And on the occasional long trip it would be more convenient than an EV due to gas stations being more widely available and faster than EV charging stations while still being economical.
I went down that path. Don't. I ended dumping my PHEV at a massive loss (2018 Pacifica PHEV) due to all the mechanical and electronic problems in the vehicle.
The problem with PHEVs is that they are super-complicated, mechanically; and much more complicated than a conventional vehicle. It's hard to find a mechanic who will work on them when they get old. If they have problems, like mine did, even the factory / dealer mechanic will struggle, because they are all low-volume cars.
Then, you still need to get oil changes. The only thing you need to do with an EV are tires, washer fluid, and air filters.
> And on the occasional long trip it would be more convenient than an EV due to gas stations being more widely available and faster than EV charging stations while still being economical.
That's really not the case. On long trips I take bathroom breaks at Superchargers. It's enough:
I drove from MA to Washington DC, and there were so many Superchargers I just didn't think about charging. When I left the hotel, I went to a Whole Foods with a supercharger, grabbed lunch at the buffet, and was ready to go.
I drove from MA to Montreal. I stopped twice to pee on the way up, and that was long enough. The hotel had chargers. On the way home I charged at a grocery store to buy stuff for a picnic, and then charged again at a bathroom break.
At most Superchargers I now see non-Teslas, too, so don't feel like you have to buy a Tesla if you want to use a Supercharger.
#6 is big, they basically sold a feature that they didn't deliver on; this can be considered consumer fraud or false advertising, and the lawsuits like [0] will keep coming in. That one is based on sudden emergency stops, false advertising on range, and that the hardware won't be able to ever support autopilot. These lawsuits will / should happen in every country that Tesla sold / advertised in.
(I'm not singling out Tesla specifically btw, Apple is also getting a lawsuit for selling the iphone 16 but not delivering on Intelligence like they advertised)
It's a little bit of inside baseball, but it's been interesting to watch the article's author, Fred Lambert, change his tune about Elon Musk over the years.
I'm a car guy so I've been following automotive electrification for a while, and in the earlier days, Electrek was a shameless Tesla fan blog. I occasionally followed a link and ended up there and felt like I was reading the thoughts of someone fully enveloped by Musk's reality distortion field. Lambert was an early investor in TSLA from the sound of it and just raved about Tesla cars and gushed about Musk.
Anyhow, I think it was the repeated moving of the goalposts for Full Self Driving, or maybe it was the Roadster 2.0 delays, or maybe it was the unhinged Twitter rants ... but anyhow, Lambert slowly became more critical of Musk (until the 2 had a falling out on Twitter), and Lambert now writes things like:
> Call me crazy, but I think the company would fair better with a competent full-time CEO instead of an egomaniac wannabe oligarch who consistently lies to shareholders, engages in resource tunneling with his private competing company, and is deeply lost in one of the worst cases of social media addiction that I’ve ever seen.
Just for what it's worth, the whole speech is a fairly insightful and approachable talk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nj9BZz71yQE, were it not the gaffe it'd have been viewed very positively.
Heliogabalus? That guy managed to be Roman emperor and was condemned to damnatio memoriae after his death. He did some very unpopular things such as trying to change the pantheon to a singular, sun-god entity. Didn't end well. And we're talking about him 2k years later
This much? Hard to say. I'd say Kanye had a steep fall. Joe Rogaine is on his way, but a much slower trajectory. The ex-PM of Canada, Trudeau, definitely did some damage to his popularity over time.
But these are all kind of dime a dozen examples of brand destruction compared to how much Elon has hurt the Tesla brand, IMO.
It's beyond Tesla. The thing that really worries me is that he's linked the concept of space exploration and settlement to himself in many peoples' minds, discrediting the idea by linking it to inane 4chan /pol politics.
The human future in space is important and needs a better champion.
He's massively empowered the worst elements of the left and the right, which of course feed on each other. On the right he's reviving fascism and race science, and on the left he's giving tremendous ammunition to the "anti-everything" crowd. "See! human ambition is fascist! stop everything now!"
He was, for a time, the antidote to that, a liberal who built things and seemed to believe in a better future.
“One of the unfortunate things about the ‘Osborne Executive’ was that the owners were unaware of marketing strategies. The ‘Executive’ was a computer that was a bit outdated, so Osborne decided to make an announcement of a future unit that was IBM compatible. The announcement caused a chill on the sales of this particular computer which eventually caused the company to go under. The Osborne Executive came out in 1982 and the company filed for bankruptcy in September of 1983.”
I'm not sure he could have. He operated almost entirely on hype. I think the reason he's so addicted to terribly stale memes is that memes carried his popularity during his peak but none of the "real life Tony Stark" comparisons were ever really justified beyond mundane superficialities.
He stylized himself as "founder" of PayPal and Tesla, and "chief engineer" at SpaceX, but he's none of the things and even the specifics of his supposed university degrees seem dubious upon investigation. He has also repeatedly demonstrated a lack of basic practical knowledge in domains he publicly talks about while allegedly having deep technical knowledge from committing entire sections of text books to memory. He knows how to seem like a genius without actually having the hands-on experience to back it up.
He has been widely successful as a hype man and somehow managed to keep things going while continuously ovepromising and underdelivering. But I find it difficult to imagine that resulting in a positive as long as the purposes are ultimately entirely self-centered. He seems to be desparately trying to look "cool" and be admired - even going to the lengths of pretending to be world class at a number of challenging video games by paying people to boost his accounts and by widely exagerating his real participation in competitive e-sports. He's extremely insecure and unable to handle challenges to his qualifications or authority.
I find it plausible that at one point he did have the aspiration to be the man who put the first man on Mars but it wasn't driven by the motives he has claimed (multiplanetary species etc) because that would require acknowledging the global requirements to sustain such a project over the long term. Instead it seems to have been entirely about creating a legacy and a perception of himself. I guess if his desire was to be mentioned in future history text books he has achieved that - but not for landing reusable rocket boosters.
Well they had a lot of people on the payroll claiming they were literally chosen by God so they generated a similar amount of positive PR. There's suckers born every century.
No, not particularly. Aung San Suu Kyi, possibly? Went from martyr to democracy to defending genocide (and has since been detained by another military coup, but is getting somewhat less sympathy this time round).
It's difficult for people to comprehend in hindsight, but monarchies in Europe had a quasi-religious hold on the population. So not precisely good will, but definitely a cachet that can be burned down.
While her infamous quote "let them eat cake" seems to be falsely attributed to her and many stories about her seem to have been fabrications, she did contribute to the downfall of the French monarchy through her high personal expenses and hardline stance against reforms. I'm not sure her role in the collapse of the monarchy can be compared to Elon Musk's role in tanking Tesla though - views of the monarchy were and would have been unfavorable without her already and her behavior wasn't much of a deviation from before, just made more significant because of the poor financial state of France at the time.
The French monarchy also bankrupted France with lavish spending, and financing the American Revolution. France then had a massive drought and couldn't pay back their debts so they increased taxation across the board and caused the French Revolution...which then caused Napoleon to step in and kill it...so-lets pay off our debt so we can afford our social systems.
Yes, because the drop in sales relates to the retooling of the Model Y production liens in all 4 factories at once: Fremont, Austin, Berlin and Shanghai.
In Europe, deliveries re-started on March 10 after the official launch in mid January.
In China where they move faster, the sales are picking up as expected. They might end the quarter with stable sales YoY despite the factory downtime. https://x.com/Tslachan/status/1904464265303699919
Contrary to some opinions here where the easiest thing is to criticize Trump and his administration (including amazing Elon Musk), I will give a different point of view: Many of us European citizens love the Trump administration and we envy Americans for the big step you've given against the globalist tyranny. The EU is totally controlled by them and we are literally living in a dictatorship (in Spain with the dictator Pedro Sánchez is one of the worst). The EU is implementing laws for full control of its citizens, censoring all the contrary opinions. Freedom is almost non-existent anymore. And the worst part is the forced Islamization of Europe. This with the sole purpose of riding us of our culture and identity. They know people without identity are people with nothing to fight for, people easily enslaved. You Americans wake up! Trump is the best thing that's ever happened to you.
Or he's completely deranged and the drugs have irreversibly damaged his mind. Both scenarios, or some intersection therein, are plausible.
His Tesla stock is personally levered. I don't know at what point he gets margin called, but a sharp drawdown in Tesla's stock price could force him to sell stock in his crown jewel, SpaceX. (Or just extract money from it somehow. Either way, diminish it.)
He took on 13 billion of debt for Twitter, but it seems like dreaming to think this would be enough even if Tesla went bankrupt.
As of 2023 Musk had 238,441,261 "shares pledged as collateral to secure certain personal indebtedness [1].
I have not seen any great reporting around what prices he borrowed at (and thus when his margin calls may come).
> Is any of it tied to SpaceX?
Not directly. My point is if Tesla goes bankrupt he has to sell something to make good on those loans. (After, presumably, a year of court fights.) If Tesla is under there will be litigation around an xAI disposal. So that basically leaves Twitter and SpaceX, and one of those is more marketable than the other.
[1] https://ir.tesla.com/_flysystem/s3/sec/000119312523094075/d4...
I wish English had better language to distinguish possibility arising from limited observer information about the world versus possibility arising from uncertain future. I'm not saying you did it, but people tend to conflate the two.
Or, more likely, to institute some kind of perpetual monarchy passed down through his 14 kids.
Lots of examples from American history too though where things turn out better like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Girard
lose -> lost
loose -> loosened
> Berezovsky, who elevated Putin to power from behind the scenes, was soon exiled and replaced with more compliant oligarchs. He also met a grisly end—found hanged at his Berkshire mansion at 67—a precedent that might give pause to anyone thinking of risking his business empire to play that gray-cardinal role for the likes of Trump and J. D. Vance.
No, one is a cruel fox and another one is a stupid monkey.
Their skills lie mainly in adaptability to the situations they found themselves in and using them, but neither is a mastermind.
It is rare for Oligarchs to be in electable position. They do not need for that.
Imagine you're one of the richest people on the planet. What are you going to do? Keep chasing more and more money, like a drug addict chasing more and more high? Nah, that's not sustainable, surely not when you're already virtually at the top, and you can have everything you want. Run a charity? Why? Starving children in Africa weren't your problem when you were poor, why should they be now?
Dick around and do dumb shit, that's what you're going to do. Because you can. You have enough money to buy popular social media and turn it into shit because it's fun and why not. And your best buddy who's on board with doing dumb shit happens to be the president of America. Dream come true.
Seems unlikely to me that his long term goal was to lead the Republican Inquisition in a great crusade against the libs.
It's probably the drugs. That or he just got bored with the nerd CEO shtick and now his new passion is epic pwning teh libs.
Thing is, people just put up stupid stickers about purchasing their Teslas before he went nuts, but he has never been centered.
Or going further back, he got pushed down some stairs as a kid because he was bullying someone whose father had killed himself.
Est-il habile où est-il heureux [1]?
[1] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jules_Mazarin not Napoleon
Was that before or after he started over-promising/lying about Tesla's full self driving capabilities?
I don't think he was ever likable, it's just that back then his reputation hadn't caught up with his hype.
I have a feeling that if Einstein, Newton, Leonardo da Vinci, Churchill or really any of the great historical figures had access to Twitter, there legacies (or lack thereof) would be very different today.
Newton was known to be very egotistical and his grudge with Hooke was well known: https://culturacolectiva.com/en/history/isaac-newton-dark-si...
Einstein was generally considered a very kind and generous man, outside of his marriages: https://www.grunge.com/264270/the-dark-side-of-albert-einste...
I don't know much about da Vinci, though he designed machines for war and he must have performed a lot of macabre work on cadavers for his research into anatomy (not that studying anatomy is a bad thing).
It's an inherently toxic format. It promotes incoherent, contradiction-ridden, emotionally-driven, short-attention-span meme-think.
IMHO Bluesky is no better, which is why I'm not there. It's the same format, an incoherent soup of sound bites competing to emotionally trigger you into amplifying them. This format is the kind of thing a mad scientist would design with the explicit goal of rotting the human mind.
The good thing about books and longer-form works... even things as long as Reddit and HN comments... is that they can encapsulate complete thoughts that are connected to other thoughts. Building systems of thinking is how humans reason coherently about the world. Meme soup reduces us to some kind of animal level of grunts and short-horizon reactions but with language. It's gross.
I've been calling "social" media companies in general "the tobacco companies of the mind" for years.
However, there is much wisdom in McLuhan's "we become what we behold" -- and consuming too much "social media" turns one into a performative puppet. Twitter is the distilled version of this (Jaron Lanier called it "Twitter Poisoning").
If Elon Husk huffing Twitter 24/7 while owning Twitter isn't a case of "getting high on your own supply", then I don't know what is.
Are infomercials toxic? maybe? Is banning them useful? maybe - can you find them addictive, as a post-TV individual? I can't, and I can't get schezophrenic like those perpetually enraged Twitter users, either.
I think it's just that those people, including Musk, didn't have the new form or literacy, a stronger grounding to the reality, required to be online. Twitter/Bluesky architecture itself, IMO, is about 10^2-5 less toxic than anything before it.
And it is not even the intent of his actions, it is the haphazard, chainsaw slash-&-burn, "move fast and break things" way he is doing them.
The same thing was done by Al Gore in the 1990s, cutting 250,000 federal jobs, eliminating 100+ programs, and consolidating over 800 agencies [0], all without creating these kinds of programs — specifically because Gore CONSIDERED all the issues and players and worked with congress to get it all done in a rational, and more importantly effective way. And that effort is respected decades later.
In Musk was using a similar approach, he'd earn respect, which indicates he is not making changes for efficiency for the government or people, but to slash-&-burn for his specific goals, e.g., gutting regulators requiring him to behave responsibly in his businesses.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Partnership_for_Reinv...
Also, Tesla just jumped bc Musk said that there’s going to be full sell driving in china…. Next year…
We’re back to 2017-era strategies but in china this time.
Tesla lost their innovator / first mover advantage years ago, choosing to spend their R&D on dead ends and vanity projects like autopilot and the cybertruck while not delivering on projects that might have merit if they would actually listen to their target audience like the semi. They would've remained pretty successful had they iterated on their existing offerings, improving range, quality and reducing production costs of their existing lineup.
[0] https://autovista24.autovistagroup.com/news/which-brand-won-...
Look at the TSLA price since the announcement.
Like if he didn't sell a ton of Tesla to buy Twitter he'd have more in Tesla?
Especially when the competition dies off leaving spacex the only one standing.
Honestly I don’t see trump living through this term, let alone another.
No other republican has his cult of personality, so idk what they’re going to do when he keels over.
Whether he declines before then, to a point of uselessness for the republicans, is a different question. Also I'm assuming someone is pumping him full of every drug available to prevent his decline as much as possible.
vance seems to think he's next in line, having been anointed by the billionaire class, but he's all hatred and no charisma. Although saying that, he may just shuffle into the top spot when it's impossible to dislodge him. Or he may just get accepted by whichever bot farms drive the rightwing social media frenzy.
I'm personally hoping that their general fascist incompetence will fuck their chances of an everlasting reich.
This seems very similar to claims I heard from Republicans about Biden a year or two ago.
Starlink's international prospects are getting trashed. Meanwhile, its competitors have basically free money from foreign governments to compete with SpaceX.
If Sundar or Tim reduced market penetration across EU by 43% they’d get recalled in a quarter.
It’s because musk is the Tesla stock price. The entire valuation of that company is based of the force of personality that musk has.
If they ousted musk, the Tesla shares would be worth less than any other auto maker instead of more than all of them combined.
> Doesn’t the CEO have fiduciary responsibility to not tank the company in a worldwide market?
I don’t think this is necessarily true in a legal sense
That’d be best for the company long-term but they’d have to survive the inevitable lawsuits first, not to mention the high likelihood of physical violence if Musk tweets about it. I think the board are basically sitting around praying that the horse learns to sing before they’re forced to act.
Full sell, indeed!
The US is a smaller EV market than Europe.
Personally, I don't think he is some genius mastermind, he just took some risks with business strategy and tactics and ended up being really lucky. Eventually, luck runs out.
Also, success and sycophants have probably caused him to get a lot more arrogant and less careful.
Honestly it's surprising that it's still so high. Compare it to any other car manufacturer and its valuation seems ludicrous. A lot of people are somehow still persuaded that the company is going to have some kind of amazing breakthrough Any Day Now.
Which are caused by the retooling of the Model Y production lines which took 3-5 weeks. Y represents 2/3 of the sales globally and all factories where down simultaneously.
Deliveries are back up in China and at current trends, they might achieve ~130,000 sales - just like Q1 2024, even though they had to close down their most production factory lines. China is the first to get back to speed but it says a lot about the "sales dip" which is actually a planned production dip.
Which are caused by the retooling of the Model Y production lines which took 3-5 weeks. Y represents 2/3 of the sales globally and all factories where down simultaneously. They started 2025 with only 12 days of inventory worldwide.
Deliveries are back up in China and at current trends, they might achieve ~130,000 sales - just like Q1 2024, even though they had to close down their most production factory lines. China is the first to get back to speed but it says a lot about the "sales dip" which is actually a planned production dip.
I'm rooting for Musk to fall on his face as much as the next guy. But I'm not delusional enough to substitute my desired reality for actual reality. By any measure Musk has had a remarkably successful year or so. He's much richer and wields more influence over the government than any non-president in history that I can think of.
There are still other issues that I have with Tesla vehicles, but I am looking forward to see how RAM's upcoming Ramcharger will do (all electric drivetrain with built-in generator for extended range).
They had some mechanical issues with the fuel line that was a fire risk and they software locked it to reduce the tank capacity by 20% in the US so it wouldn't be classed as a plug in hybrid, but even with those problems I've generally heard positive things about it. Basically acting as reserve to avoid range anxiety on early small battery EVs when it was all quite new.
The Tesla hype cycle is either nearing its end or peaked and I'm sure he knows this. The valuation for this company is ridiculous by any standard. So he's on to his next thing. By joining ranks with MAGA and he's purchased himself a driver seat for the most powerful country and strongest economy.
Obviously he still cares about Tesla, but it's not his primary focus anymore. He's moved on to his next big thing which I'm sure he expects to be many times more lucrative than Tesla was.
Can you name me any billionaire who isn't an opportunist? How can you become super wealthy without being opportunistic? Do you think by being kind and law abiding gentlemen, massive wealth just lands into your lap while your competitors let you by? This entire platform is full of opportunists. You don't get anywhere in life by not being opportunistic, life is just too competitive the higher up you go.
100% tax for wealth over $100M, problem solved
if people were really so reluctant to buy a cheap, high quality car, BYD wouldn't be selling millions of them.
(anecdotally, Chinese cars are pretty popular here in Ecuador, but they're fossil fuel cars, not EVs)
Right … it’s a “calculated move” to cater to far right, and Neo Nazi groups abroad (ie, AfD).
It’s a “calculated move” to not only do one but two Nazi salutes on national television.
Let’s stop treating this guy as some sort of genius. That Potemkin village/illusion was dispelled long ago.
I've yet to see any good writeup on how this recent trouble would affect the legalities of that lawsuit.
just look at all the batshit conspiracy theories he greenlights on X if not states directly
And then there’s SpaceX…
SpaceX is narrow; specialized, high revenue per launch, but not that many launches (although they're doing more than any other company), whereas tesla is broad, no longer unique but potentially big volume of car sales and recurring revenue from infrastructure and maintenance, could have been a competitor to GE and the like.
They already limit signups in oversubscribed areas, and as good as starlink is, it's still a technology that has higher latency, and higher ongoing costs from what I can see.
Meanwhile, once fibre is in the ground, with PON there's very little maintenance required. And upgrading speeds is a case of upgrading the OLT and ONT's - I'm going out on a limb and guessing that's much cheaper to do than launching thousands of upgraded satellites.
Which they are not even close to yet. Starship is about launching the suckers in bulk.
My FTTP ONT is using less than 2.
That's 788kWh per year ((90 * 24 * 365) / 1000) and at 25p per kWh that's an extra £197.10 of energy usage per year. Compared to £4.38 for my FTTP ONT.
It's cool tech, no doubt, but it's not a replacement for a fibre connection by any stretch of the imagination, and so the positing that it'll be the, or one of the, bigget ISP's in the world seems off base, most likely by an order of magnitude or more.
>In fact, Model 3 is down 29.4% in Europe so far this year despite plenty of inventory.
Sedan sales have been down for a while so Model 3 isn't trendy. Also, last year Q1 had the new "Highland" Model 3 in full-volume delivery from Shanghai (https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-highland-deliveries-...) after the launch in October.
It's all about the new Y now and it was only launched in mid January and deliveries only started on March 10 https://www.electrive.com/2025/03/10/tesla-hands-over-first-...
>The shift to the new Model Y design is certainly having an effect, but it cannot account for the 43% drop in deliveries.
Why? Model Y already accounts for 2/3 of the sales in Europe. And the production lines were down for 3-5 weeks, they take time to ramp back up and Tesla started the quarter with only 12 days of inventory.
>With deliveries of the new Model Y having started this month in Europe, we can see Tesla is still suffering in markets that report registration daily.
But who knows in which countries did Tesla prioritize the "Junpier" deliveries. If they picked the markets with no public daily numbers, then their arguments collapse. I doubt Norway and Sweden are the easiest to reach from Berlin, for instance.
Do you mean for delivering cars? A quick search suggests they used to be moved by road, but are now moved by rail.
I don't see why Norway and Sweden are any more difficult to deliver to than anywhere else. Over 150 freight trains cross the bridge from Denmark to Sweden every day.
Personally I think, that Cybertruck was badly timed experiment for Tesla. Model 2 would bring market domination and long term stability instead.
Two people I know were holding off from purchasing Tesla cars last year, thinking that if Trump lost then the political views of Musk wouldn't really matter any more. As Trump won, one has bought a VW, and the other is continuing to wait.
He is an active, high-level, participant (formally an adivsor, clearly practically exercising directive influence) in a fascist, kleptocratic regime. There may be some definition of personally being a fascist where this is consistent with him not being a fascist, but I would suggest that any such definition is inconsistent with what the bast majority of people you might speak to mean by “being a fascist”.
> Fascists don't follow neoclassical economics.
Neoclassical economics, like Newtonian mechanics, is an approximate descriptive model, not a normative system; to the degree that it is accurate, everyone follows it, regardless of ideology.
Musk and Trump - are well within the bounds of Liberalism. They may not be John Rawls. Trump is a Neo-Liberal protectionist. Musk tends to be more classical liberalism.
You may not like it - but his constituents elected him to defund, or try to (congress is really the only people who can), those politically bias programs. This is how democracy works.
That is not true in any sense in which it was not equally true of Adolf Hitler in 1933 Germany.
Fascist regimes don't usually spring from the head of Zeus as fully formed unelected autocracies, they are a failure mode of other systems, very commonly representative democracies.
Fascism does not care about ethnicity. Fascism is Anti-Capitalist Anti-Socialist. It cares about the collective. It thinks some capitalist mechanisms are important but it must be under the state control.
Nazism may function similar to Fascism as is also Anti-Capitalist and Anti-Socialist but it requires German Mysticism. German Mysticism pins the idea of Aryanism to rule.
This is all besides the point - it is not 1933 - what is happening is nothing like 1933 - Their policies are not even close to 1933 - your failure to recognize that prevents you from seeing the actual issues and offer real solutions. This is why Trump won the majority vote. Stop using thought stopping clichés
Nazism is a specific instance of fascism the way the latter is used as a general political term; it is, of course, distinct from Fascism in the narrow sense of the particular Italian movement of Mussolini.
1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism 2. Disdain for the importance of human rights 3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause 4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism 5. Rampant sexism 6. A controlled mass media 7. Obsession with national security 8. Religion and ruling elite tied together 9. Power of corporations protected 10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated 11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts 12. Obsession with crime and punishment 13. Rampant cronyism and corruption 14. Fraudulent elections
By my count, Trump and his movement score 14 out of 14.
Yep, so liberal, doesn’t sound like a fascist even a little.
Once again - wake me up when they ban political parties, centralized power to the federal government, install political officers in the public and private sectors, and ban capitalism.
A core feature of historical fascism is a significantly expanded government. For example, under Mussolini’s regime (1922–1943), the Italian state dramatically increased its control over the economy — by 1939, it controlled over 80% of shipping and shipbuilding, and around 75% of iron and steel production. He also significantly expanded the state bureaucracy to enforce fascist ideology — from education to the media.
I’m not defending Musk’s behavior or suggesting anything, but labeling him “fascist” doesn’t seem historically accurate.
If a regime can’t control education, is shrinking the size of government, and is expanding individual rights (e.g., gun rights), can it truly be called authoritarian?
The issue with much of the modern left is that it often misidentifies the problem. The left should be focused on advocating for the working class and the poor. After all, figures like Trump and Elon Musk clearly align more with the wealthy elite.
But the current left seems dominated by affluent, highly educated people, and instead of class-focused politics, it often resorts to dramatic labels that don’t reflect reality.
Step one in solving any problem is understanding it. And that starts with asking harder questions, not just repeating slogans.
Not because of fascism, because it needed to ramp up for war.
> […] strong regimentation of society and the economy.
> "Fascist goals" – the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure […]
> Paxton argues: “fascism redrew the frontiers between private and public, sharply diminishing what had once been untouchably private. […] It reconfigured relations between the individual and the collectivity, so that an individual had no rights outside community interest.
> The Fascist Manifesto supported the creation of an eight-hour work day for all workers, a minimum wage, worker representation in industrial management, equal confidence in labour unions as in industrial executives and public servants, reorganization of the transportation sector, revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance, reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55, a strong progressive tax on capital, confiscation of the property of religious institutions and abolishment of bishoprics, and revision of military contracts to allow the government to seize 85% of profits.
Etc.
All quotes taken from:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
If even HackerNews can't have a rational discussion about Tesla then we're all doomed!
That is not the case. I took a look at the German numbers for Januaries 2025 and 2024 and Model 3 fell proportionally the same as Model Y in the YoY numbers:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43027039
Numbers are rational, are they?
Not something I want to see but if it's possible I am afraid something like this may happen.
At that point it would be the US government via contracts keep Tesla afloat. An even bigger conflict of interest then already.
Even with controlling interest it likely would result in a class-action from shareholders... But he's defanging all the federal organizations that have been keeping his double handed dealings in check and the judiciary that would oversee the cases sooo... Oligarch can do no wrong?
Most of the backlash / protests you are hearing about is manufactured i.e. not based on any rational cause. This kind of protest doesn't hold for long term.
The only EV market where that looks to be true is the US, which has a protectionist policy of 100% tariffs in place to keep out the competition.
Chinese electric cars are available here, but not, as yet, particularly popular.
If you can handle the occasional funny guy chucking you a heil as you drive past and tech that tries to murder you about once a month they look highly affordable. Probably not what they were going for but hey ho.
I don’t know enough about cars to know what the trend is.
Back when Tesla was the only long-range EV you could buy, well, Tesla pretty much had the market cornered. Now, with other manufacturers offering long range EVs, Tesla just isn't standing up to the competition.
Here are some non-political reasons why, IMO, Tesla sales are down:
1: They do not justify the price premium, because they do not feel like a luxury vehicle. The interior is basically a mass market vehicle with pleather. (And the Cybertruck is just too expensive.)
1a: They severely dropped the price of the Model Y right after people bought it, with no goodwill. (This happened to me.) Ford dropped the price of the Mustang Mach E shortly after, and then offered goodwill to people who recently purchased it.
2: They have weird quirks:
2a: The yoke (square) steering wheel in the Model S should have always been optional.
2b: The automatic windshield wipers work very poorly, and there is no wiper speed control on the stalk. The "just push the button and spin the dial on the steering wheel" is not a solution. (Either use the same kind of sensor that other car manufacturers use, or bring back the old fashioned dial on a stalk.)
2b: The heat/AC and radio turn on when you open the door. (I hate this.)
2c: On newer Teslas, shifting happens on the touchscreen instead of a physical shifter.
2d: The general lack of physical buttons. The car doesn't need a button for everything, but even some programmable physical buttons would be a huge improvement.
3: The Model 3's driver's seat is too uncomfortable. (The Model Y's driver seat is better.)
4: They should have a wider range of vehicles by now. For example, they should have a Cyber SUV based on the same platform as the Cybertruck, but with 3 rows. They also need to have a lower-end vehicle.
5: They can't "ship." They've had pre-orders for the roadster forever. In contrast, Chinese EV makers come out with new models much faster.
6: They are sorely behind on Autopilot. Other manufacturers allow hands-free. The promise of full-self-driving was never met, people who paid for full-self-driving in their 2018 Model 3s will never get a true hands-free self-driving car while they own it.
There's also more competition than just other long range EVs. I plan on getting a new car sometime in the next year or two and had been planning on an EV. But lately I've been thinking that a PHEV might be the right approach.
In the last 10 years I think that there are only 3 days on which I drove more than 40 miles, and only 1 day where I was away from home overnight. If I had a car with a lower energy cost per mile than my current car (a 2006 Honda CR-V) I would probably drive more than I do now, but still would be under 40 miles most days.
A PHEV with a 40+ mile range on battery would be on battery most of the time for me. It would only need to use the ICE on the occasional long trip plus whenever its software decided to use it to keep it in good condition (ICE engines need to run occasionally to remain in good share).
It would in effect be an EV for me most of the time. And on the occasional long trip it would be more convenient than an EV due to gas stations being more widely available and faster than EV charging stations while still being economical.
The problem with PHEVs is that they are super-complicated, mechanically; and much more complicated than a conventional vehicle. It's hard to find a mechanic who will work on them when they get old. If they have problems, like mine did, even the factory / dealer mechanic will struggle, because they are all low-volume cars.
Then, you still need to get oil changes. The only thing you need to do with an EV are tires, washer fluid, and air filters.
> And on the occasional long trip it would be more convenient than an EV due to gas stations being more widely available and faster than EV charging stations while still being economical.
That's really not the case. On long trips I take bathroom breaks at Superchargers. It's enough:
I drove from MA to Washington DC, and there were so many Superchargers I just didn't think about charging. When I left the hotel, I went to a Whole Foods with a supercharger, grabbed lunch at the buffet, and was ready to go.
I drove from MA to Montreal. I stopped twice to pee on the way up, and that was long enough. The hotel had chargers. On the way home I charged at a grocery store to buy stuff for a picnic, and then charged again at a bathroom break.
At most Superchargers I now see non-Teslas, too, so don't feel like you have to buy a Tesla if you want to use a Supercharger.
(I'm not singling out Tesla specifically btw, Apple is also getting a lawsuit for selling the iphone 16 but not delivering on Intelligence like they advertised)
[0] https://electrek.co/2025/02/27/tesla-is-hit-with-a-fresh-cla...
2e: No center dashboard in the Model 3 and Y
I'm a car guy so I've been following automotive electrification for a while, and in the earlier days, Electrek was a shameless Tesla fan blog. I occasionally followed a link and ended up there and felt like I was reading the thoughts of someone fully enveloped by Musk's reality distortion field. Lambert was an early investor in TSLA from the sound of it and just raved about Tesla cars and gushed about Musk.
Anyhow, I think it was the repeated moving of the goalposts for Full Self Driving, or maybe it was the Roadster 2.0 delays, or maybe it was the unhinged Twitter rants ... but anyhow, Lambert slowly became more critical of Musk (until the 2 had a falling out on Twitter), and Lambert now writes things like:
> Call me crazy, but I think the company would fair better with a competent full-time CEO instead of an egomaniac wannabe oligarch who consistently lies to shareholders, engages in resource tunneling with his private competing company, and is deeply lost in one of the worst cases of social media addiction that I’ve ever seen.
(from https://electrek.co/2025/02/04/theres-finally-some-tesla-tsl...)
It makes me really sad when I think about it. We needed, and still need, the person Elon Musk was at least pretending to be when he founded SpaceX.
There were quite a few of these; Elagabalus is probably the best-known for it, but about 30 emperors received _some_ form of damnatio memoriae.
> And we're talking about him 2k years later
Well, clearly the damnatio memoriae didn't work very well, then, did it?
But these are all kind of dime a dozen examples of brand destruction compared to how much Elon has hurt the Tesla brand, IMO.
The human future in space is important and needs a better champion.
He's massively empowered the worst elements of the left and the right, which of course feed on each other. On the right he's reviving fascism and race science, and on the left he's giving tremendous ammunition to the "anti-everything" crowd. "See! human ambition is fascist! stop everything now!"
He was, for a time, the antidote to that, a liberal who built things and seemed to believe in a better future.
Today, he spends his time empowering the worst habits of the ultra right and ultra left.
We need modest centrists with no egos driving us towards things like space exploration. Not whatever dystopian space-time trajectory we're on today.
“One of the unfortunate things about the ‘Osborne Executive’ was that the owners were unaware of marketing strategies. The ‘Executive’ was a computer that was a bit outdated, so Osborne decided to make an announcement of a future unit that was IBM compatible. The announcement caused a chill on the sales of this particular computer which eventually caused the company to go under. The Osborne Executive came out in 1982 and the company filed for bankruptcy in September of 1983.”
https://vintagecomputer.com/osborne-occ-2-executive.html
He stylized himself as "founder" of PayPal and Tesla, and "chief engineer" at SpaceX, but he's none of the things and even the specifics of his supposed university degrees seem dubious upon investigation. He has also repeatedly demonstrated a lack of basic practical knowledge in domains he publicly talks about while allegedly having deep technical knowledge from committing entire sections of text books to memory. He knows how to seem like a genius without actually having the hands-on experience to back it up.
He has been widely successful as a hype man and somehow managed to keep things going while continuously ovepromising and underdelivering. But I find it difficult to imagine that resulting in a positive as long as the purposes are ultimately entirely self-centered. He seems to be desparately trying to look "cool" and be admired - even going to the lengths of pretending to be world class at a number of challenging video games by paying people to boost his accounts and by widely exagerating his real participation in competitive e-sports. He's extremely insecure and unable to handle challenges to his qualifications or authority.
I find it plausible that at one point he did have the aspiration to be the man who put the first man on Mars but it wasn't driven by the motives he has claimed (multiplanetary species etc) because that would require acknowledging the global requirements to sustain such a project over the long term. Instead it seems to have been entirely about creating a legacy and a perception of himself. I guess if his desire was to be mentioned in future history text books he has achieved that - but not for landing reusable rocket boosters.
While her infamous quote "let them eat cake" seems to be falsely attributed to her and many stories about her seem to have been fabrications, she did contribute to the downfall of the French monarchy through her high personal expenses and hardline stance against reforms. I'm not sure her role in the collapse of the monarchy can be compared to Elon Musk's role in tanking Tesla though - views of the monarchy were and would have been unfavorable without her already and her behavior wasn't much of a deviation from before, just made more significant because of the poor financial state of France at the time.
In Europe, deliveries re-started on March 10 after the official launch in mid January.
In China where they move faster, the sales are picking up as expected. They might end the quarter with stable sales YoY despite the factory downtime. https://x.com/Tslachan/status/1904464265303699919
What did you expect?