Chinese EV buyers are cooling on Tesla and BYD
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Ooh, agentic middle managers will be in humanoid shells. They'll even get the chance to wear suits instead of polos when they have special meetings. How droll, a room full of robot executives governed by LLMs deciding how much glue to put in their frozen pizzas, speaking their own secret language to each other and there are donuts even though none of them eat, just because 72% of business meetings involve donuts
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Hyundai is probably more worried about their own aging population at home in South Korea
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I'm sure there's a significant share of investors who have long been able to piece together the picture but suffer from FOMO and have convinced themselves that they'll be able to get out in time by selling to a Bigger Fool.
It's a strategy that's certain to lead to disaster in the long run, but the longer it works (and for TSLA it has worked spectacularly well for almost a decade by now), the harder it is to give up.
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That 197 makes it sound better than it really is too, as it takes in the past 12 months earnings at $1.73 per share. Q3 2024 EPS was $0.62, Q4 2024 was $0.66. For H1 2025 they're at just $0.45 (for an entire 6 months). Those are the worst two quarters since H1 2021 for the company.
The new model Y might pump things up a bit, but presumably Musk running around yelling that cars aren't the future means he's just seen the results for the first two months of Q3 and is in panic mode.
I reckon it's just a question of who moves first. Vanguard, Blackrock and State Street own almost $200b in stock in Tesla between them, once one of them moves the rest will surely follow. Granted, with $30t in assets under management, they're going to come out of it fine (unlike Musk).
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What about leaving the doors open if you want the robot to go there?
Let me rephrase that: given the option would anyone replace their robovac with a far bulkier, heavier, more expensive and potentially dangerous one for the added benefit of it autonomously opening doors?
Besides a door opening robot doesn’t need to be humanoid either. A blob with motorized wheels, a single arm with “eyes” on it, a three fingered hand, would suffice and be cheaper.
But if automated doors are so important to someone, why not just install them now rather than wait for a humanoid robot that will likely be far more expensive and won’t come in their lifetime?
What’s the advantage of the humanoid robot using human tools? Give it a broom, making it more cumbersome and ineffective than a robovac? Maybe it will use your shower to self clean? Do you want that? Does it need the ability to sit on the couch for some reason? Or to handle the TV remote rather than using a wireless connection?
Let’s be honest, the real reason people want an humanoid robot is they desire and imagine it being a companion at some level. Same as with LLMs talking friendly and as confidente rather than tools.
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AFAIR Tesla had issues in 2018, in their Fremont factory, when they underestimated number of tasks that have to be performed by humans. If Musk is really a humanoids robots believer he would announce when that plant is ready to go back to original "no humans required" idea.
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One of the other things he doesn't ever account for is that a LOT of people hate him and Tesla now. Not everyone, but a non-negligible number of people. And these people are not going to buy these robots even if they are in a position to buy one and can afford one and have a legitimate use case for one. They won't because of the name on them. Of course... by the time they are actually useful and/or affordable (or even FUNCTIONAL), who knows what the company will look like
It's the same problem I keep thinking about with the stupid robotaxi thing. Zero of it makes any sense. Sure, there's a huge market for Tesla fanboys and influencers to ride around in these things (that aren't even "robotaxis" to begin with), but the rest of the market? Not as big as he continues to think it is.
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Musk bailed on hyperloop upon unveiling his white paper. He claimed he didn’t have time to pursue it… even as he was founding companies left and right.
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ColdWetDog
Ars Legatus Legionis
Yes, but they aren't selling them at $30,000. Of course, Tesla won't be either but that is a different part of the story. If they could sell Spot or one of the humanoid versions for that they would walk off the shelves after a backflip or two. Yes, there are Chinese versions at that price point but they are much less performant.
Seems like there is a common thread here.
There is a market that, although not as broad as Musk's current hallucination, is large and robust and that is personal care robots for the elderly. Japan has been working on that for quite some time with what appears to be limited results. They have to be strong, very safe, gentle, able to adopt to various positions and body styles, very easy to use and cheaper than minimum wage humans. For some reason, I don't think Optimus is there nor will it get there.
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Watched the Optimus Gen 3 video - truly Muskian.
- Takes out the trash (picks bag up from floor and puts it in bin)
- Mows your lawn (no demo)
- Does your laundry (no demo)
- Cleans counters (circular motions with rag)
- Mops floors (circular motions with wet mop on floor)
- Visually maps your entire house
- LEARNS FROM YOUTUBE VIDEOS (
Massive breakthrough in high-speed visual recognition systems coupled with a complex understanding of real-world elements ranging from dishwashing liquid to tail-light bulbs, along with massive memory, the ability to map observed 2-D actions to self-generated 3-D actions, sophisticated understanding of cause and effect - AGI, or an approximation thereof) - Grok-enabled (not sure what that means - does it talk? Or ask for info on how to keep cheese from sliding off a pizza?)
- Runs 22 hours on a 2-hour charge (unless it’s working - then it may only last an hour)
- Available in November
- Price starts at $20,000
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BYD doesn't have falling sales. They had a fall in profit due to a price war. Given that revenues were up despite lower prices, that means actual unit sales must have been significantly higher. The article is quite misleading in conflating BYD's increased sales at a lower profit margin with Tesla's collapsing sales.
Yes, as explained in the article that was probably supposed to be linked, the 30% drop in profit was the result of the price war. China's Ministry of Industry called for an end to the price war on 31st May, which could reasonably be described as the start of summer but isn't likely to have had much impact on sales running from April to June.
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What about you're an elderly person and you've gone into the bathroom, shut the door and you've fallen down and can't get up. Meanwhile your home help robot is sitting there on the other side of door listening to your yelling, all the while wondering what is this doorknob thingy, and how do I use it?
But why would I retrofit my house with automatic doors now, when the home help robots don't yet exist? That's a complete waste of money.
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Putting the elderly in robocare is insensitive at best, using robots designed to resemble humans is an abominable parody of human care.
“Sorry we don’t have interest in you anymore, don’t want to pay for someone that could be of company either, spend your last years talking to the smiling doll”. I could wish that to the people I hate.
We have motorized reclining beds and wheelchairs, what’s the point of designing future tools in human shape? Fake emotional connection for the people we find unworthy of our attention?
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Funny thing, I wrote my above reply to someone else before reading your reply to me right above it, but it actually fits as an answer there too.
Also, why did the elderly person shut the door if she is alone at home?
Robovacs exist. I suggested leaving the doors open, but apparently that wasn’t good enough … if someone is so obsessive about closing doors maybe automating them would be useful?
I did put automated lights in my bathroom and garage, a few $ on Amazon and they are so advanced I don’t even need an expensive humanoid robot to operate the switches anymore!
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with tesla, I'd worry about the baby taking a trip through the garbage disposal more than the clothes. Or washing the baby's dirty clothes without taking them off the baby
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Fully robotic warehouses (AS/RS - automated storage and retrieval systems in the jargon) have been available from material handling vendors since the 1970s. One company I worked with looked at taking it a step farther: no human touch from container ship arrival at port to resorted loads arriving at local distribution centers. There are a lot of such systems in use but what warehouse management eventually finds is that maintenance costs go up exponentially as you move from 50% automated toward 100% - and there aren't that many qualified maintenance techs in the world.
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Well I mean, it is Tesla Inc., not Tesla Automotive. In theory he could spin-off Tesla Automotive Group and use Tesla as an umbrella. Musk often doesn't give the full picture of how something will work since he has an organic method to his madness. Tesla Automotive could become a loss leader and tax write-off while money gets poured into Tesla Robotics.
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thats a missunderstanding. Hyperloop existed to derail a public transpiration project in cali. THAT was the purpose, after that nothing else mattered.
Tesla is just as anti-environmental as a coal mine
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The future is in self-driving flying humanoid robots. Billions of them! Be sure to buy the stock now!
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If hyperloop were doable, Musk would have been doing it. The fact that he shat out a white paper and then claimed he didn’t have time made clear he was just wanking in public.
Why? Sure, could have been HSR opposition, doesn’t change my point.
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TheWerewolf
Ars Scholae Palatinae
1. If Tesla wants to get its sales to go up, it's easy: dump Musk. That's the #1 reason people are avoiding Tesla right now.
2. Only an idiot thinks a humanoid robot is a better solution for any industrial problem than a 'for-task' designed one. Humans are actually terrible at doing most tasks without tools. The development of for-task tools is what propelled us to the top of the food chain and inspired technology. Replacing for-task tools with human-like general purpose machines is a literal step backwards.
3. No one has any idea of how to build a general purpose humanoid robot for general consumers that would be anywhere near useful enough to justify the cost. And to be fair, companies like Unitree HAVE autonomous humanoid and canine robots under $5000 - but you still look at it and think "other than a rich person's toy - what the hell would I DO with this?"
2. Only an idiot thinks a humanoid robot is a better solution for any industrial problem than a 'for-task' designed one. Humans are actually terrible at doing most tasks without tools. The development of for-task tools is what propelled us to the top of the food chain and inspired technology. Replacing for-task tools with human-like general purpose machines is a literal step backwards.
3. No one has any idea of how to build a general purpose humanoid robot for general consumers that would be anywhere near useful enough to justify the cost. And to be fair, companies like Unitree HAVE autonomous humanoid and canine robots under $5000 - but you still look at it and think "other than a rich person's toy - what the hell would I DO with this?"
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Haven't read all the comments, but in case no one has replied to this, the EV market in China has not declined, it's expanded:
https://cnevpost.com/2025/09/02/cpca-estimates-china-aug-nev-wholesale/
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"Selling billions of humanoid robots" is just a slang they used in South Africa's schools back in the day, meaning "hi" or "see you" or "the dog ate my homework". Everybody should know that not actual billions of actual robots or actual sales were implied. /s
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I can't speak for what's going on at BYD, but it should be really quite obvious to us that sales of foreign cars, even if built in China, are going to go down as Chinese companies slowly master building half-decent cars. It's all a part of having a national identity for a lot of people. Look at France - French cars cover the top 10 sales list, and they're awful. Tesla's sales problems in other countries might be due to Musk, but no-one in China cares about Elon - they just want to buy Chinese brands, now that they make a decent car.
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Who needs self-driving cars when we can put a humanoid robot behind the wheel of a regular car? Maybe that's the Tesla plan.
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Quite honestly Medical and Government alone would easily hit this if they were a few thousand dollars each.
They both have countless tasks that have a shortfall of workers or would be augmented. Search and rescue, orderlies, janitors, maintenance workers, someone to open the door for you.
And now of course Agriculture would greatly benefit.
Even if they cost $20,000 each, if they last longer than a year they are cheaper than a human.
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There's equal chance that they are able to do $20k worth of nursing work, and that they cost only $20k.
Namely, zero.
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Unfortunately, Tesla is behind Chinese competitors in robotics of every type. It probably won't be difficult for Musk t get them banned from sale in the USA, so there is that, but multiple anthropod robots for various application are already being mass-produced in China so he won't find much market there.
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