As someone working at the NIH, today has given me more schadenfreude than I have ever experienced in my lifetime. Today's 14% drop, the X outage, cancelled starlink contracts, protests at dealerships - the wax on his wings cannot melt fast enough for me.
Now he claims Ukraine doing it in an attempt to smear a country under severe distress.
It was instantly debunked by security professionals, rather claiming USA, Vietnam, Brazil first and foremost which also sounds like a more probable trio than a state sponsored attack from a country desperate to regain American support.
It was indeed probably rather a group; Dark Storm Team has already claimed responsibility.
Elon Musk says a lot of things. Is it really a cyberattack, or is the site just experiencing an outage due to an over-worked and understaffed team who were told to move fast and break things?
Well I asked him to provide any evidence at all to back up why his brain came to conclusion that it did. In the absence of any evidence, the natural conclusion is that he just made it up.
I did not make a claim; I asked a simple question: is the Twitter outage a result of a cyberattack or is it due to a technical failure?
I asked this question for a few reasons:
- Elon Musk is an inveterate liar.
- things often fail at his companies (see the most recent space x launch).
- he is a known tyrant of a boss, so his employees are unlikely to disagree with him publicly.
- he has demonstrated at the so-called doge that he will move fast and break things.
- he often looks to blame others when things go wrong. For example, just this weekend he said that 5 people (who just happen to be Jewish) are funding the Tesla Takedown movement, denying that it could be an organic movement.
These are just a few of the reasons that I’m questioning Musk. I assume everything he says is a lie until I get evidence to the contrary.
good rule of thumb is - when you hear/read something musk says, immediately assume the exact opposite is true and work from there. he is no longer capable of telling the truth even if it is to his own benefit :)
I don’t know, none of this looks like evidence to me, just a series of things he’s said that didn’t come true. I would interpret a lot of these as optimistic predictions that didn’t come true, not outright lies.
A lie is something you say that you know is false. You can predict you’ll be able to do something, try and fail, and I would consider it a lie.
You could also build a website listing tons of things he predicted that did actually come true.
But honestly man whatever. I am trying to discuss in good faith and all that happens is downvotes into oblivion. I am trying to provide substantive answers and discussion in good faith. This site obviously does not allow for unpopular opinions.
I just hope you know that you are not the good guys, you are not on the right side of history, and you are every bit as bigoted as the people you think you’re fighting against.
He said that it is true that the recent California wildfires were part of the "globalist plot to wage economic warfare and deindustrialize the United States". That demonstrates that he has become uncoupled from reality.
He threw two, not zero, Nazi salutes. You calling _me_ a bigot for refusing to believe anyone associated with that place? Okay, if you must. I can live with that.
In what ways have they shown to be a phenomenal team? Genuinely curious.
I've seen their embed break on pretty much every site that embeds Twitter feeds, accessibility of their site has taken a massive hit, Twitter's 2024 Q4 revenue is down to less than half of its 2021 Q4 peak,[0] and now this...
Are you referring to any specific accomplishments?
X has shipped way more new features on the past year than in the rest of its existence.
Musk famously reduced head count by like ... 80%? To me, that speaks of a very capable team. But yeah, downvote this one as well, the truth is evident anyway, lol.
I never downvoted you but it's clear you don't know what you're talking about. X has definitely not shipped way more new features in the past year than the rest of existence.
I don't even know how you would quantify that but features are only possible when you have a good architecture (incl. infrastructure and well-thought out interfaces) already in place. That kind of stuff takes years and was done by the team before Musk even took over.
I also feel you're completely discounting the regressions. Twitter has suffered search engine discoverability; the API has completely broken in their attempt to monopolize it; and the entire accessibility team was axed leading to a very broken user experience for those relying on screen readers. Maybe those features just don't matter to you but in an attempt to quantify "number of features shipped" they should definitely be accounted for somehow
Well Musk lied about exactly this sort of thing last year, blaming a non-existant DDoS attack that turned out to just be poor engineering on their part. Given his massive track record of lies on all sorts of topics anything he says on twitter should be assumed false unless proven otherwise.
Feel you, but, drop in Tesla stock caused quite a chaos elsewhere. Triggering mechanisms put in place causing systemic risks to be re-evaluated and what not. Probably tax payers world-wide will feel the effects long term, I must think directly of pension funds (over)reacting. Almost end of the quarter, just before portfolio’s rebalance. Did anyone overinvest in specific FAANG, you know the situation: skeletons and closets..
Brand damaged beyond repair. First mass production advantage lost. New buyers dried up and possibly more important previous buyers experiencing a devaluation of their car which will make them think twice. Less integrated than Chinese manufacturers when it comes to batteries. Model pipeline stale, last launch was not a bulletproof hit. Less able to support vehicles in the field than established car companies. FSD based primarily on vision a strategic and possibly deadly mistake. Hostile takeover of the US government regulator a really hard to quantify legal risk. What is there left to like.
I think ousting Musk would be a marketing win for Tesla, and likely the only path to staying in business at this point.
Most people I talk to about Tesla, some of whom were diehard Musk-can-do-no-wrong fans as recently as last year, tend to share similar sentiments with me today.
The problem, and it's a big one, is that getting rid of Musk, would mean that the stock craters 90% at least.
If that happens, Tesla will be sued into oblivion once Musk is gone and everybody realizes that they are nowhere near rolling out real FSD and Optimus.
One thing is sure - they are effectively done in EU, and the damage seems to be very substantial in the US too. In China, they just got outcompeted by cheaper and better alternatives. Let's see how a carmaker with installed capacity which exceeds sales by a factor of 3 or 4 manages to survive.
It's a medium sized car company with shrinking sales still valued like the rest combined. Without a prophet at the helm that makes them the obvious (to adherents) #1 autonomy company and clear personal robot monopoly, there can easily still be 90% drawdown from here
If you value it like General Motors, the share price should be around $20. If you value it like a "tech company" with the margins that entails, it should be around $60. If it craters 90% from its high around ~$400+, that puts it between those two numbers.
Its primary product is stock, and most of that comes from Musk's ability to just say things that aren't true and have people believe him. Without him, you need to value it more like a regular company.
Why? The company is insanely overvalued based on its fundamentals. Elon's hardcore investor fans are the only reason the stock is worth anything near what it is.
From my perspective, Tesla is at >100 P/E ratio based on last year. Next year they will probably be loosing money given how sales are cratering everywhere. Some people see it as a software company - in reality it's a carmaker, employing >100k people. These people will have nothing to do next year for half of their time.
Tesla fans themselves say that it's not longer a car company - it's AI / Robots company. Does this view will still stand without Elon ?
It seems obvious that elon hasn't even showed up for work in years. His only real tesla-related effort has been to try to strong-arm an illegal 50B pay package. The board should be replaced for negligence and he should be fired for malfeasance and fraud. I'll bet the stock would jump 10%+ overnight.
The idea that he's the richest man in the world is a joke. Half his rapidly declining wealth is based on SpaceX, a "360B" company with no profit and < 12B in revenue that blows up and burns up its own products more often than not.
Elon asked for $50 billion in pay. Tesla's TOTAL lifetime earnings as a company is $35.2 billion. $10 billion of that is selling 'credits'. $600 million of that was Bitcoin gains.
Tesla is a 'battery company' but at Gigafactory Panasonic makes batteries on Panasonic owned/operated lines that just lease space from Tesla.
> that blows up and burns up its own products more often than not
This false. SpaceX’s current product is Falcon 9/Heavy which “blows up and burns up” very rarely.
Starship isn’t actually a product yet, it is an R&D program. If 50% of the test flights on an R&D program fail, that doesn’t tell us anything about the reliability of the finished commercial product. Absolute worst case scenario, Starship never works and is cancelled-SpaceX will have wasted billions but still have a market-dominating product with Falcon. And, despite the recent setbacks, it seems unlikely the worst case scenario will actually happen. More likely outcome is Starship is delayed and burns up billions more in R&D but eventually they get it to work as promised.
Tesla is still up compared to where it was a year ago.
If you look at their chart, there was a massive election bump. An investor trying to be savvy maybe would have assumed his businesses would benefit from proximity to power. Now that it's pretty clear he is thoroughly disinterested and distracted from his businesses.
Does Musk even want to be CEO anymore? He hasn't seemed to care about Tesla ever since he had to settle with the SEC. He got his massive payout that he will be unlikely to repeat. Ostensibly he is only CEO on paper because the magic affect his name had on stocks in the past.
> Tesla is still up compared to where it was a year ago.
Sure, you're right, but for context we have:
2024-03-10: 177.77 (a year ago)
2024-11-04: 242.84 (election day)
2024-12-17: 479.86 (peak)
2025-03-10: 221.60 (currently)
It's rapidly decreasing. It's now only 24.5% up from a year ago. Just yesterday it was over 50% up from a year ago. It's now one of the most volatile stocks you can own. Not to mention the massive revenue hits its taking throughout Europe and even parts of the US. Sales last month were down 72% in Germany, 48% in Norway, and 42% in Sweden. Even though it's set to gain in the US (relative to competitors) because of US tariffs and gov't contracts it doesn't seem to be enough when its failing in every other market
Tesla is still "worth" more than all other auto makers combined. This is on robotaxi vaporware. There's still a long way to fall. It's going to be glorious!
Tesla has been the most heavily subsidized automaker in the US. Biden's historic investments in EV subsidies only increased that. It was leading the EV industry and it seemed impossible for it to fail even with the safety scandals that plagued it for nearly a decade
It's truly incredible that someone could fuck up such a favorable position
Publicly traded equity is only part of the value of a company though, especially when you are talking about a company that might have significant capital assets.
You know, right now, I sort of want to be an investor just so I could get on the investor/analyst call and have Elon Musk answer one question for investors: "Name 5 things you did in the past week for Tesla." Partially, just to throw his stupid stunts back at him, and partially out of the honest question of what exactly he is doing as CEO, given he's also CEO of like 5 other companies and shadow CEO of Twitter and DOGE and apparently spending all of his time on social media.
“I’m helping a coup of the US government and slashing spending so so we can get access to all the money I’ve “saved” and then I plan to award Tesla a bunch of grants and contracts we don’t deserve all while making sure tariffs don’t apply to us”?
Yeah, the idea that Trump won't try to make him whole somehow if the trends continue their downward trajectory seems hard to believe. I wouldn't be surprised if Trump mandates Tesla purchase quotas for GSA gov, which seems to manage the portal for vehicle purchases for fed agencies and/or employees. And then as the cherry on top mandate that the USPS use Cybertrucks to deliver mail. Or make up the difference by giving Starlink and SpaceX additional contracts to make up the difference.
I think Musk is going to be thrown under the bus soon. Perfect scapegoat. Committed crimes Already has a reputation for being crazy. Isn't really well liked and is labeled a Nazi.
Would be so easy for Trump to say he's done a bunch of evil, "corrupt" shit and "didn't tell me", maybe even take some of his money.
He has put himself in a stupidly precarious situation.
He still has his hooks into a wildly corrupt administration with all sorts of opportunities for graft, but he's going about it in a surprisingly incompetent and spiteful way. At least that's my best read of the recent stock movements. If/when he falls out with Trump there won't be much keeping the stock this overvalued given his recently shredded reputation. Of course the reverse could be true and if he quiets down and focuses on looting in the background Tesla might make out pretty well.
I don’t think he can afford to fall out with Trump. Every company he has is exposed to multiple serious regulatory questions, he has personally made serious false claims to investors (e.g. FSD), the DOGE stuff exceeds his authority as a SGE so he’s dependent on Trump saying he had approval, and if they wanted to give him the same treatment Trump has promised activists they could even try to revoke his citizenship on the grounds that he’d violated his earlier student visa by working.
I don’t know that Musk fully recognizes this. Trump was addicted to X but he doesn’t need it to get elected any more and has been boosting Truth Social enough that I don’t think it has the same hold it once did. Similarly, while he has put a lot of money into elections it’s not clear that this will work for crossing Trump if the FEC, SEC, and DOJ are a lot less concerned with scrupulously appearing non-partisan, and nobody else in Republican politics is going to thank him for making them less powerful.
I agree with all of that, Elon's downside risk is massive. Putting himself at Trump's mercy might turn out to be one of the biggest blunders ever. Trump seems happy with using Elon for now but he's the ultimate bully who loves to make powerful people grovel, and Elon won't like it if that focus turns to him.
Elon has been masterful at evading consequences for years so I won't be surprised to see him worm his way through this situation, although he does seem to be losing a step to say the least.
>Does Musk even want to be CEO anymore? He hasn't seemed to care about Tesla ever since he had to settle with the SEC
He recently got a contract with the State Department for 400 million to make armored Cybertrucks so he is still involved with Tesla. Musk wants to do whatever he wants without other people saying whether he can or can't. Every agency on his DOGE hit list was an agency that was investigating him. I'm sure he wants to be involved with SpaceX, Starlink, Tesla but these pesky things called regulations and investigations keep getting in his way so he has decided to tear it all down.
> He recently got a contract with the State Department for 400 million to make armored Cybertrucks
That doesn't appear to be the case - there (was) an entry on a spreadsheet about 'Armored Teslas' but Musk claims to know nothing about it, the State Department has stated it was just an estimate for a proposal they are no longer pursuing, and the ledger entry has been removed.
Tesla has gotten more than $13 billion in government contracts in the past five years. There's no reason to think this rate will decrease. At least not in the next 4 years
It's shocking. You do everything possible to alienate your core buying demographic, and they stop buying your product. And maybe doing so particularly in markets that provided badly needed and nearly 100% margin carbon credits to sell to other automakers was a particularly bad idea.
I'm sure self-driving cars and humanoid robots will be here any day now, though, just like the semi, or the previous self-driving cars.
I'm only surprised TSLA has held up as well as it has.
Michael Jordan famously said "Republicans buy sneakers too". This guy doesn't care about any of this and he's still the right guy to steer Tesla in the correct direction? Mind boggling.
Tesla is an interesting case, because it seems clear to me at this point that Musk is both a disaster for the company in terms of actively hampering its growth and an absolute necessity for the stock price. Given that Tesla's market value is (or maybe was now? not sure) more than all other carmakers combined, it's not really justifiable on any fundamental level, since "completely taking over the new vehicle market" is priced in, and Tesla's growth... hasn't been reaching that.
I think we have quite a ways to go before that. The price is still pumped pretty high compared to what it would be without the Musk hype that got it to where it is. I bet we’d see a 30-40% drop in share price if they fired him now. They’re in a no-win situation
Maybe. Current prices certainly include probability that Tesla is able to pull off major transformation into more than just a car manufacturer (batteries, supercharge network, self-driving software, etc). The implicit assumption is that Musk is helpful for that - which would certainly have been true some years ago. Getting rid of him would be an admission that the loftiest dreams won't happen as fast as some would like, but doesn't necessarily mean they're out of the picture.
At this point, there probably is not any price for at least the next 4 years. Angering Musk like that would risk retaliation against both Tesla, and any other company that the people who organized such a firing happens to own.
I'm holding various stocks, most of which I plan to hold for some decades until I retire and start drawing down.
For long term holdings volatility doesn't matter much - I'm generally happy to take more volatility in exchange for higher expected returns. (Or else, I wouldn't be in stocks at all, I'd be in GICs and treasury bonds.)
(That all said, I'm not long on Tesla; I have individual short positions to roughly neutral out my Tesla holdings within ETFs I hold.)
His point is that many shareholders, at least the most vocal ones, are in for >5 years, and hence are sitting on huge gains. From their perspective, recent year is just normal volatility.
As for stock pickers holding positions, well a lot of people do. As they should.
I didn't call for his outing, but they are below october levels. Despite Tesla expecting to have a competitive edge due to tariffs.
Being "at october levels" still wouldn't be a good way to judge baseline. We would expect a decent stock to at least keep up with the gains of the S&P500 or some other representative index
Ironically, CNBC thinks Tesla's drop is actually tied to actions taken by the Trump administration:
The downdraft in Tesla’s stock on Monday was tied to uncertainty surrounding President Donald Trump’s plans on tariffs. Canada and Mexico are key markets for automotive suppliers, and increased tariffs, with the potential for a trade war, will likely impact production and lead to higher prices.
But is there any reason to think it would have happened this fast (or at all) if not for his behavior/persona?
Isn’t the new model Y out? Shouldn’t that boost things? Sales are reportedly tanking all over the globe.
This isn’t a market correction where the price adjusts despite reasonable fundamentals. Something has gone seriously wrong and is seriously effecting things.
No, this is all your assumption lol. Sales are "tanking" due to the model Y rollout, which was best selling car in the world last 2 years at roughly double the cost of the 2nd best selling car.
I’ve seen other people say that and frankly I’m skeptical. Tesla is firmly past the “techie only“ crowd.
I suspect the majority of their sales are the kind of “normal“ people who aren’t looking to wait for the next refresh and just want to buy a car right now cause they need one.
Are some people waiting for the refresh to be available to them? Sure. Enough to take sales everywhere? I seriously doubt it. I suspect the vast majority of their buyers wouldn’t even know a refresh was coming.
But we’ll find out pretty fast won’t we. If sales pick up back to normal pretty quickly then maybe you’re right.
But if they keep slumping further and further then the refresh argument will start to lose a lot of credibility.
I hear this a lot but I've not heard any coherent explanation for how Musk's actions don't hurt the brand. Obviously as a billionaire being a big fan of the Republican party would hardly be a surprise, he could have supported them, even donated large sums to them without any significant backlash. But becoming a key part of the administration instantly alienates half of the country, and by extension the customer base. And that is before you get into his "Roman salute" antics.
It’s especially bad when you think about the people who bought Teslas early. I’m sure the CEO of Toyota has views which would annoy many Prius owners but they’ve been wise enough to make it easy for prospective owners to never once even think about them, whereas Musk seems determined to make it impossible to ignore.
I mean even if you just look at it from the point of view that having Musk as your "ideas guy" is a pretty good proxy for success. How can the fact that he's spending most of his time as some kind of political missionary rather than on developing the business be a positive thing?
If I look back to October 2021 it has lost value. Tsla stock was already struggling before the election compared to previous years. This feels like cope.
Have the vehicles build a virtual environment together. Even if it is crude, it should be possible to measure space behind you and break automatically if the car in front of you suddenly stops.
It seems much easier and more robust to build a virtual environment using road side cameras compared to just the vehicle pov. There is enough ___location data from accidents.
Tickets for speeding can come out of a prepaid account in real time displayed on the dash. No-claim insurance seem rather crude. If I was an insurance company I'd much rather see years of decent driving data.
What other fun stuff is there from an IT perspective?
Lets hope this will discourage many other oligarchs from tying themselves to one political party.
There was a time these people kept quiet when their person became president, all we need now is a law that lists who contributed to which politician. That means unraveling companies owned by other companies.
Tesla shares are now down over 55% in USD terms from peak, and easily crossing 60% down in other currencies (Trump isn't just tanking the stock market, also the USD. Hope you aren't planning any holidays any time soon)
I'm rather surprised at how many people there are talking about this seriously. I hope you aren't all role-playing as day traders. Short term price fluctuations are totally normal and have no effect on long term trends. This is clearly a response to the recent terrorism (politically motivated violence and vandalism) and will have no long term effect (unless you anticipate such terrorism to become legalized).
(I suppose I should point out that the price spike around the elections is also short term. You should ignore both and focus on fundamentals.)
