Tesla Realism vs. Illogical Hate
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Several times in the past year, I’ve pointed out concerns with Tesla consumer demand and sales. That’s not to say Tesla isn’t an excellent company that produces superb electric cars and sells very large volumes of them. The height Tesla has risen to is amazing. I said for more than a decade it was doing amazing things and likely to find millions of buyers a year, which was a nearly unbelievable goal 15 years ago, or even 10 years ago for many people. The Tesla Model Y became the best selling automobile model in 2023, and it looks like it probably held onto its title in 2024. There’s no way someone could reasonably say the Tesla Model Y, the Tesla Model 3, or Tesla as a whole hasn’t been a stunning success. However, the future waits for no man, and for no auto company.
Tesla’s plan, as repeated by Elon Musk many times, was to achieve 50% growth per year up through 2030. That was further clarified to mean 50% on average, so some years might see more growth (say, 70%) and other years may see less (say, 30%). This was a big part of why the company was valued so highly on the stock market, or so it seemed. In the second half of 2023, it became clear Tesla was facing notable consumer demand challenges, something it hadn’t struggled with for quite a long time. I started highlighting and discussing signs of this, and I did so several times in 2024, as noted at the start. It seemed obvious to me several months ago that Tesla’s consumer demand challenges were getting more serious. I explained various potential reasons why — as part of my job trying to track, understand, and share with others the biggest stories in cleantech.
Many people have interpreted these discussions as anti-Tesla, anti-Elon, and illogical hate speech. Despite predicting the company’s rise and covering its success for more than a decade (enough so that Tesla once almost recruited me to work alongside Musk before deciding that I was more useful on the outside running CleanTechnica), many Tesla fans (and I would argue more importantly, Tesla stockholders) have attacked me as having strong bias against Tesla.
Again, I’ll repeat: I’ve been covering what’s been happening at Tesla, and what seems to be around the corner.
Despite all kinds of signs Tesla consumer demand was weakening, I still gave the company the benefit of the doubt because Musk had said a couple of times in late 2023 and early 2024 that they expected sales to grow in 2024, just not by as much as recent years. I covered the signs that Tesla was struggling to find sales, but I also repeated the forecast from Musk that they’d finish the year strong and have net positive sales growth despite digging a significant hole in the first half of the year.
As it turns out, Tesla could never turn things around enough to have more vehicle sales in 2024 than in 2023.
There are people who are unwilling to see what’s happening or accept what’s happening because it goes against what they believed in and/or goes against what’s helpful for them financially. They claim people like me who point out negative trends or issues at Tesla are filled with illogical hate. I contend, as I have several times, that I’m focused on seeing and sharing Tesla realism. Just as I ran across and was despised by many Tesla [NASDAQ:TSLA] short sellers for years because they didn’t like the story I was sharing, the story of Tesla, it feels like there are many Tesla shareholders now who similarly don’t like the story I’ve been sharing, the story of Tesla today and going forward. It’s not 2015 anymore, Toto, and we’re not in Palo Alto.
People are free to dislike or even hate on our coverage of Tesla, the biggest seller of BEVs in the world in 2024, but only the second biggest in the last quarter for the first time in a long time. But now that 2024 is a wrap, I think they should understand and accept that I was right in June, in July, in August, and in December that there were many signs indicating Tesla demand was not nearly as high as desired and Tesla may not hit its target of growing vehicle deliveries in 2024 (not to mention the older target of growing them by 50%). Despite what Elon said, despite what they hoped, Tesla is not able to find as many buyers as it has cars for sale. Tesla’s vehicles have become a little stale, Elon’s political involvement and antics have pushed many customers away, there’s growing competition that is legit and even exciting, Tesla doesn’t have enough model variety, and the Cybertruck is not the mass-market hit its very large reservation list implied (for obvious reasons). The fact is: Tesla sales are down, and some of us saw this coming and were hammered for talking or writing about it.
One can throw darts at the messenger, but that doesn’t change the reality in the letter the messenger is delivering.
It’s 2025 now. I have an open mind about what is going to come this year. There are many unknowns and many wildcards that could have a huge impact on Tesla’s consumer demand. We will cover all the big twists and turns we see — positive and negative. If there are signs Tesla’s buyer demand continues to be an issue, or even gets worse, we will cover it. If Tesla releases notable new or upgraded models and sales shoot through the roof, we will happily cover it. If Full Self Driving fails to deliver for the 7th(?) year in a row, we’ll point that out. If there’s a breakthrough and Tesla can roll out robotaxis widely, we’ll be sure to be right on top of that and writing about it in as thorough a way as possible.
You can hate on me, or us, for reporting on any notable stumbles in the evolution of the biggest or second biggest BEV producer in the world. We’re just doing our best to report Tesla realism.
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