Replies to post #77138 on Tesla Inc (TSLA)

[Scumbag Fraudsters]

Tesla tanking

Tesla Starts Q2 With More Worldwide Margin-Slashing Price Cuts

Tesla kicked off April (and thus Q2) with even more worldwide margin-slashing price cuts (for the fifth and sixth time so far this year in the U.S!) on top of the massive, margin-destroying cuts it made in both January and March. (And those cuts were on top of large cuts made in Q4 2022!)

Yet despite all those cuts, Tesla managed to deliver only around 4% more cars in Q1 2023 than it did in the previous quarter (Q4 2022), and due to the aforementioned price slashing its earnings were atrocious—despite booking a massive amount of emission credit revenue, they were down 23% vs. Q1 2022 and 32% sequentially.

In other words, Tesla is no longer a “growth” company unless you define “growth” as declining earnings, declining revenue and declining free cash flow.

Meanwhile the incumbent auto companies can better afford (earnings-wise) to slash prices on their EVs, as those prices can be cross-subsidized by their 95% of volume that comes from highly-profitable ICE vehicles, while Tesla now has nothing that’s “highly profitable.”

So while Tesla may “win” an EV price war against other pureplay EV makers, it will lose that war against the incumbent OEMs. Goodbye “story-stock tech company” and hello “low-margin, cyclical car company” in an industry with single-digit PE ratios, and for Tesla that could mean as little as 8x $2.50/share in 2023 GAAP earnings = a stock price of $20/share vs. April’s close of $164.31.

Tesla has objectively lost its “product edge,” with many competing cars now offering comparable or better real-world range, better interiors, similar or faster charging speeds and much better quality.

(Tesla ranks near the bottom of Consumer Reports’ reliability survey.) And Tesla is opening its U.S. charging network to everyone (which it already does in much of Europe), eliminating the last reason to buy its now trailing-edge EVs.

In fact, Tesla is likely now the second, third or fourth choice for many EV buyers, and only maintains its volume lead though a short-lived edge in production capacity that will disappear over the next 12 to 36 months as competitors rapidly increase the ability to produce their superior EVs.

Tesla’s poorly-built Model Y faces competition from the much better made (and often just better) electric Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Ford Mustang Mach E, Cadillac Lyriq, Nissan Ariya, Audi Q4 e-tron, BMW iX3, Mercedes EQB, Volvo XC40 Recharge, Chevrolet Blazer EV & Equinox EV and Polestar 3.

And Tesla’s Model 3 now has terrific direct “sedan competition” from Volvo’s beautiful Polestar 2, the great new BMW i4, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 and upcoming Volkswagen ID.7, and multiple local competitors in China.

And in the high-end electric car segment worldwide the Porsche Taycan outsells the Model S, while the spectacular new BMW i7, Mercedes EQS and EQE, Audi e-Tron GT and Lucid Air make the Tesla look like a fast Yugo, while the extremely well reviewed new BMW iX, Mercedes EQS SUV and Audi Q8 eTron (as well as multiple new Chinese models) do the same to the Model X.

And oh, the joke of a “pickup truck” Tesla first previewed in 2019 (and still hasn’t shown in production-ready form) won’t be much of “growth engine” either, as by the time it’s in meaningful mass-production in 2024 it will enter a dogfight of a market vs. Ford’s hot-selling all-electric F-150 Lightning and GM’s fantastic 2023 electric Silverado (which already has nearly 200,000 reservations), while Rivian’s pick-up has gotten excellent reviews and Ram will also be out with a great electric truck in 2024.

Meanwhile, the NHTSA has initiated the first of what will likely be multiple recalls of Tesla’s fraudulently named “Full Self Driving,” and in January it was revealed that Elon Musk personally directed its fake, fraudulent promotional video (something extremely similar to what Theranos did with its blood machines and Nikola with its truck), and that the DOJ is investigating him for it and so is the SEC.

The refund liability potential for Tesla for this is in the billions of dollars, and possibly even the tens of billions if a class action lawsuit proves that the cars involved were purchased solely due to the (fallacious) promise of “full self-driving.”

And, of course, there will be a massive “valuation reappraisal” for Tesla’s stock as the world wakes up to the fact that its so-called “autonomy technology” is deadly, trailing-edge garbage that Consumer Reports now ranks just seventh vs. competitors’ systems (behind Ford, GM, Mercedes, BMW, Toyota and Volkswagen) and Guidehouse Insights now rates dead last:




Want to see another Elon Musk/Tesla deception summarized in a simple bar graph? In this recent Consumer Reports test, note which of these cars never comes close—in any environmental conditions—to meeting its claimed EPA range:




Another favorite Tesla hype story has been built around so-called “proprietary battery technology.” In fact though, Tesla has nothing proprietary there—it doesn’t make them, it buys them from Panasonic, CATL and LG, and it’s the biggest liar in the industry regarding the real-world range of its cars.

And if new-format 4680 cells enter the market, even if Tesla makes some of its own, other manufacturers will gladly sell them to anyone, and BMW has already announced it will buy them from CATL and EVE.