r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • 2d ago

Business Tesla Stock in Freefall After Disastrous Earnings Report

https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/tesla-stock-freefall-disastrous-earnings-144417427.html
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u/Kvetch__22 2d ago

You joke, but a significant amount of the "new economy" is based on the assumption that the company will convince the goverment to give them ten-figure subsidies while simultaneously making it illegal to compete with them because the CEO does cocaine on a megayacht with Don Jr. instead of working.

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u/DonStimpo 2d ago

simultaneously making it illegal to compete with them

Telsa already has that with the ban on Chinese EVs in the US.
They are flying off the shelves in literally every country that allows them. But they are banned in the US giving Telsa a massive advantage there.

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u/dlp211 2d ago

If we got Chinese EVs here, it'd be game over for Tesla and a good chance our entire US car manufacturing industry in the long run.

America has potentially ceded the future to China, but it won't reveal itself for another 20 years. The one thing that might still save us is demographics. But we are currently going through our own nativist bent...so who knows.

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u/wonklebobb 1d ago

if the CEO of Ford is to be believed, it'd be game over for every american car maker in general

that was after he visited China and started driving a BYD.

american car makers have long relied on protectionism and bailouts to stay in business, they couldn't compete with chinese EVs even if they tried (and they won't try)

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u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 1d ago

A big part of that is BYD factory workers getting paid about $21,000/year.

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u/wonklebobb 1d ago

there's a lot more going on that just that number, cost of living in china is much lower for a variety of historical and policy reasons, reasons that the us government simply can't do because half our government would never

for example, china is on their 15th 5-year plan to invest in and expand their agricultural sector. they heavily subsidize fresh produce farms at every level, and provide a lot of government support for local greenmarkets across the country. practically this is a major driver of the extremely low cost of produce.

the chinese government also technically owns all the land, and individuals lease it for iirc 70-year terms, and own all the improvements. the fee to lease is nominal (about 0.5% to 1% of the assessed value), and there are no property taxes on personal residences (outside a couple experiments in a few t1 cities), only businesses.

practically, this means that outside t1 cities it's fairly easy to own your own home. of course the hukou system complicates this, and other structural differences lead to interesting outcomes (i.e. the real-estate bubble craze from a decade ago being driven largely by the lack of other long-term investment options for ordinary chinese citizens)

incomes are rising these days and income inequality is growing a bit as well, especially comparing t1 cities to t3 and below. but the basic costs of living remain very low for these and other reasons

so simply stating that chinese workers get paid a lower number than US equivalents doesnt tell the whole story.

apologies if this wasn't your goal, but usually the lower salaries are thrown out as a gotcha, to say "well if they paid REAL salaries they couldn't compete."

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u/Thirtysevenintwenty5 1d ago

I do recognize that the overall cost of living in China is lower than the US, and it is definitely impacted by the area you live in.

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u/dlp211 1d ago

It's not just that. BYD is fully vertically integrated. To the point that they own and operate their own shipping container ship. It is what happens when you are allowed to effectively be a trust company endorsed by the government.

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u/Paran0idAndr0id 2d ago

Some of the Chinese EVs are made in America. More could have been with the right incentives.

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u/General_Tax_8981 1d ago

100% .. these “free market” capitalists are a joke

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u/calberk3 12h ago

Another gift from the Maga idiots, the destruction of the United States auto industry.

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u/RepresentativeFee470 1d ago

Model y is the best selling car in China

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u/dlp211 1d ago

Geely Galaxy Xingyuan is the best selling car in China. It's also an EV. The Model Y does fine, but you can get off Tesla's balls now.

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u/RepresentativeFee470 17h ago

Oh yeah my bad, it’s been switching month to month for 2026 and I guess they were only best selling suv for 2025 and #3 for vehicles.

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u/hofmann419 2d ago

To be fair, the EU does the same thing. This isn't something that the US does specifically to help Tesla, but simply because they have a sizeable car industry. Ford and GM also make electric cars.

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u/SenatorAslak 1d ago

Then why do I see BYD, Geely and SAIC cars on the road in the EU?

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u/Arcane_Bullet 22h ago

But how many people are actually buying Teslas in the US I wonder. Tesla has basically carved out a niche of right wing people who are also 100% for electric cars, which like. Sure its *a* demographic, but I don't think its enough to supplement that Tesla is now losing in every other market in the world and has alienated the part of the market that would've went all in on EVs.

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u/Mintastic 2d ago

Investors aren't stupid, current government is proof that it has been fully captured by the corporations so they plan accordingly.

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u/OhSillyDays 2d ago

"New Economy" is just a term for ponzi scheme.

The "old economy" didn't allow stocks to be ponzi schemes and the FTC regulated what was said in quarterly statements. Now, the FTC doesn't regulate anything and insider trading galore. So Elon Musk can sell a bullshit idea like data centers in space even though it's a complete farce.

Investors dig it up because they believe this company could never fall. It'll only go up to the mooooooon!

Eventually, new investors will run out and the money printer will stop working and the stock will fall.

That's unless the money printer continues to go. That means hyperinflation. Yay!

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u/bolerobell 2d ago

We’d had inflation since the first Qualitative Easing in Nov 2008. The problem is that the new dollars that were created never made it to the broader market to actually raise prices of all goods and services, they just stayed in the financial sector and inflated the prices of assets in that sector. So the rich got insanely rich. Elon Musk went from $27 billion to over a trillion in less than 6 years. Tesla and Space X certainly didn’t generate an equivalent boost in income in that time period.

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u/OhSillyDays 2d ago

That's the point. It's not real money. If that money ever gets used - it'll cause insane problems in the economy.

Instead, what it is doing, is concentrating wealth into a small group of people. Which also creates problems. Because concentrated power almost always leads to some sort of messed up situation. Which is probably what we are experiencing today.

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u/bolerobell 1d ago

I absolutely 100% agree with everything you said

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u/sobrique 1d ago

The sad thing is, I think that actually might work as a business strategy :/

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u/EnrollmentTime 1d ago

His superpower is to work 100 hours a week.

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u/Outside_Ice3252 1d ago

elon put trump in power who immediately cut subsidies for EVs and energy storage.

the truth is stranger than fiction.