BYD took the global EV crown. Now Chinese rivals and local startups are taking over emerging markets.
- Tesla’s sales are dropping globally, with political headwinds and fierce EV rivals throwing up challenges.
- New frontiers beckon, but Tesla faces a showdown with savvy local and Chinese competitors vying for dominance.
- Pricing battles and rapid innovation are putting Tesla to the test, demanding a strategic jolt to regain its edge.
Tesla hasn’t lost it in 2025, but much earlier.
For example, when they stopped maintaining and improving their successful Model 3 and Model Y, because the ugly tinbox “needed” all research and development resources.
This is exactly it. Instead of focusing on refining and renewing their products, Tesla burned billions on self-driving, while simultaneously hamstringing themselves by removing radar and lidar. That’s before the cybertruck and roadster 2 interfered.
Lucid, from what I can tell, has done this work. Their new motors are the size of a carryon. The interior volume is enormous. That’s what the flagships should be like at Tesla, but they screwed up.
Unwanted features taking priority over quality improvements is a textbook enshittication move.
That’s because Tesla’s stock valuation was always based on “revolutionary new shiny thing!” rather than “making and selling cars”.
musk has to constantly come out with a new reason why the stock justifies a valuation so insanely high (was worth more than all other car companies combined). “Full self driving!” “Robotaxies!” “Fully automated manufacturing!”, etc….
That’s also why musk can extort $50B payoffs from Tesla. So much of their value is based on his BS powered reality distortion field that they’re terrified of what might happen if he leaves.
Now, there’s huge risk inherent in banking everything on the very stable genius musk as they’re learning.
Excuse me. It’s the best looking dumpster on the road.
Recommended by 9 out of 10 raccoons.
For sure.
A Model 3 from early 2024 really feels 5-10 years behind a 2026 Kia or Hyundai at this point.
They lost the plot big time somewhere around mid-2022 I think. Would be interesting to learn if Elon started some new designer drug or something around then.
Even the very conservatively designed Polestar at least has good build quality.
I’ll say it happen when Musk got involved with production as he thought he will disrupt manufacturing by heavily relying in automation, disregarding what every manufacturing expert had told him that it ain’t that easy.
He fumbled the ball hard and IMO that was the beginning of the end of Tesla’s hegemony, where they started making serious quality mistakes and dropped finishing quality as well.
That said, I’m not sure if they ever had any to begin with, but for a while customers valued that brand very highly, even being on waiting lists for months.
To me, this was the Jets’ Butt Fumble of car manufacturing.
Even before Musk got involved, the “disrupting car manufacturing” idea was there, and Tesla had already reversed course and was recruiting experienced auto-industry production engineers. Turns out all those “why don’t we just?” questions from the tech bros had already been tried in the car industry 40 years ago, and had almost all failed.
Cars are complex gadgets with nasty supply-chain issues, and design for manufacturability and maintainability aren’t the first things someone thinks of when trying to roll out a long list of new features.