Tesla’s death is “not close” says Musk, as operating margin drops to 2%
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Fair, but it’s also a look to dismiss relevant facts just because they complicate the headline narrative.
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Nobody asked me to provide it. You are perfectly capable of looking it up yourself. Stop being so disingenuous, or it may come across as trolling.
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You're the only one who thinks that tidbit is relevant, and every argument you've brought to support its relevance has been thoroughly debunked by everyone else, repeatedly. Your continued insistence that not only should your preferred info be considered, but also that it should be the only thing considered, is proving to be a waste of time for all involved, and yet, despite the fact you quite clearly are not convincing anybody of the validity of your position, you seem determined, if not desperate, to continue your efforts; numerous posts across multiple days, filling several pages. Most people would, at this point, just take the "L" and move on, but not you, for whatever reason.
That is a look.
That is a look.
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The OP straight up asked you for it. Why would you call it a “request” initially otherwise?
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“DAAAAAAAAD! THEY‘RE ASKING ME MEAN QUESTIONS! MAKE THEM STOP!!”
Christ, the absolute state of you.
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Your numbers are completely wrong, by the way.
Tesla delivered 471,930 Model 3s and Model Ys in Q4 2024 and made 436,718 of the same.
For 2025, the numbers are 323,800 and 345,454 respectively.
Even if we take into consideration that all four Model Y production lines were stopped, you’re ignoring that Tesla sales have been cratering in Europe and cooling in the US. (Because who wants to buy a car from an unhinged white supremacist permanently falling through a k-hole?) Sure, they didn’t make as many… but people also don’t want Teslas as much as before either.
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Plus of course, any shortage of Model Y, should increase Model 3 sales, not tank them to a similar amount.
The tanking sales of Model 3, completely deflate the Model Y production shutdown argument.
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Who asked me to provide the price? Please link. I made a standalone comment not responding to anyone. You are out of your element Donny.
https://meincmagazine.com/civis/threa...rgin-drops-to-2.1506972/page-15#post-43687529
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Why would you bring this up again, when all it does is highlight your disingenuous behavior?
Here is the text/link of Resolute asking you directly, and you answered half his post, but not this Part:
Since you clearly won't answer that and choose to play silly games, here is the YTD :
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Reality check: Q1’25 global BEV share: Tesla = 19%, BYD = 17%, everybody else split the crumbs. You can call that “cratering” only by standing on your head and reading the chart upside-down. And a three-week retool of the world’s top-selling vehicle is more than enough to erase 80-90 k units, precisely the gap between Q4 ’24 and Q1 ’25. (Math; stubborn stuff.)
You can’t blame the respondent for whiplash when the muppets keep driving the conversation in circles.
If the bakery closes the oven for renovation, croissant sales drop, baguettes don’t magically double themselves out of sympathy. Tesla re-priced the 3 worldwide precisely because Y supply would be tight; buyers waited. This is called elasticity, not a conspiracy. When the refreshed Y hits full clip, watch the “tanked” numbers levitate faster than the narrative can keep up (it's already happening).
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That is a bizarre set of rationalizations.
Like a bakery that has more than one oven, Tesla has separate production lines. One reason is for efficiency, and the other is, so you don't have to kill over all production when you are updating one line... I wasn't looking for sales to double, but it makes sense that they certainly would NOT also go down. And there would be definitely room to increase production slightly over the previous quarter.
So in light of falling sales, Tesla increased model 3 prices to lower them more. Sure, that makes total sense.
Do you perhaps have links to this Model 3 price increase?
Because I can only find cuts:
Tesla Already Dropping Prices on Model 3 & Cybertruck in 2025
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Price cuts and hikes aren’t ideological mood swings; they’re demand throttles. Tesla trimmed U.S. Model 3/Y stickers by $2k in April ’25, right after four Model Y lines went dark for the Juniper re-tool and global deliveries sagged. In China, the very same quarter, Tesla nudged Model Y prices up in 2-to-3k-yuan steps because Shanghai output was already recovering and local backlog was swelling. When your baker shuts the croissant oven for maintenance, you don’t discount baguettes into oblivion, you slow orders until butter and capacity realign, then restore margin. Battery allocation is the shared chokepoint; no extra 4680s, no sudden Model 3 boom.That is a bizarre set of rationalizations.
Like a bakery that has more than one oven, Tesla has separate production lines. One reason is for efficiency, and the other is, so you don't have to kill over all production when you are updating one line... I wasn't looking for sales to double, but it makes sense that they certainly would NOT also go down. And there would be definitely room to increase production slightly over the previous quarter.
So in light of falling sales, Tesla increased model 3 prices to lower them more. Sure, that makes total sense.
Do you perhaps have links to this Model 3 price increase?
Because I can only find cuts:
Tesla Already Dropping Prices on Model 3 & Cybertruck in 2025
The bigger picture: Tesla is intentionally walking ASP down toward a sub-$25k (I doubt the cost will be that low personally) compact and a leaner Model Y variant that Reuters pegs at roughly 20% lower cost and 250 k/yr U.S. volume, with Shanghai and Berlin to follow. Lower price unlocks an exponentially larger addressable market, fuel for the real prize, fleet robotaxis and Optimus.
People here badge-waving about “Level 3” misses that Audi’s celebrated Traffic Jam Pilot was cancelled pre-launch , while Mercedes’ Drive Pilot only drives ≤40 mph on laser-mapped highways in good weather (turns out, it doesn't work well even under ideal conditions) Tesla’s “mere Level 2” system has logged more than two billion vision-only miles in 42 countries and rolls out unsupervised in Austin this month. When reality outruns the label, clinging to the label is just comfort food.
So yes, prices go both directions, sales ebb during a global re-tool, and labels lag capabilities. That isn’t “bizarre rationalisation,” it’s Econ 101 plus a dash of manufacturing. Feel free to keep scoring on the spec sheet; the market (and increasingly the highway) will keep moving without waiting for the badge-checker’s approval.
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A bunch of blather but no Model 3 price increases like your previously claimed...
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Price bumps, as requested, each one public, each one on Model 3:
- China, Jan 12 2024 – RWD & Long-Range Highland up ¥1,500 (≈$210).
- U.S., Apr 4 2024 – Performance trim up $1,000 after the March cut.
- China, Feb 28 2025 – Long-Range up another ¥2,000 the week Shanghai Juniper testing wrapped.
Tiny moves, deliberately surgical; that’s the point. Tesla ratchets prices both ways to meter backlog while factory cadence whipsaws. If you only “find cuts,” you’re cherry-picking the down-strokes and ignoring the counter-punches.
So the receipts are on the table. The question now is whether the goalpost follows the evidence, or gets its wheels greased for one more roll downfield.
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I seem to remember asking for links. "Do you perhaps have links to this Model 3 price increase?" Yes, my memory is still working.
If you went through the trouble to find some exact info, why not link it?
Just assuming your above is true, and in light of price cuts (one of which I linked) also taking place in the quarter, do you really think these slowed model 3 sales?
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It’s interesting that the only videos I’ve seen online about Tesla cyber cab testing ONLY show cars with blacked out windows.
In addition, in order to run a true cyber cab, Tesla would need to be at level 5. Yet FSD is stuck at level 2.
But if the cyber cab can actually run at level 5, why can’t FSD run at level 5? And if it can, why isn’t Tesla announcing it?
In addition, in order to run a true cyber cab, Tesla would need to be at level 5. Yet FSD is stuck at level 2.
But if the cyber cab can actually run at level 5, why can’t FSD run at level 5? And if it can, why isn’t Tesla announcing it?
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I’m naturally suspicious of people who post long screeds without links to questions that could easily be answered in far simpler terms.
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The first announcement video clearly showed a guy standing in the shadows with a remote control like you on an RC toy car.
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Oh yeah, I remember that one. It was of the same quality as the robots.
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Wrong. He claimed I had already played the part of Google answering questions, and tried to imply I was purposely not providing similar Google services to his question. That was a lie. There is no "suddenly so shy", I never provided an answer to a dumb question someone can perfectly answer themselves.
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Because (a) “I can only find cuts” already revealed a search allergy, and (b) pasting URLs for numbers that live on every EV-blog ticker feels like stapling Google to the comment. The yen and dollar bumps are in Reuters, Electrek, Teslarati, pick your poison; they’re one query away.
As for “did tiny bumps slow Model 3 sales?” No, the three-week Model Y shutdown throttled batteries and logistics for both platforms, while consumers sat on their wallets waiting for refreshed Y. In elasticity terms: supply shock first, price nudge second.
Links provided upon evidence of follow-through; until then, I’ll keep the training wheels off your browser.
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Are you kidding me, guv? Who the hell wants or needs an Optimus? Which doesn't exist anyway? But I mean, for real even if it did who the hell wants one? There aren't enough Musk-aligned folks with 50 million plus dollars to buy one. Or lease. Or rent.
Industrial robots aren't humaniform for good reasons: we're a stupid form to get real work done.
Citing Musk's alleged android army makes your argument worse, not better.
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At least the man in the Optimus suit was entertaining in a weird way.
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They're also underwater having made more units than they sold, again (they reduced unsold inventory in Q4 but they had the same issue in other quarters last year of selling fewer than produced. So given that they have inventory on hand in excess of their sales the retooling is absolutely a false flag for explaining their slumping sales, they have cars to sell but not enough buyers
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The 3 week shutdown primarily served to reduce the 22 day backlog of inventory, so that they didn't have to issue additional embarrassing price cuts on units that were now outdated, since Tesla has no clear cut customer facing way to distinguish those models, unlike traditional automakers who have model years, beyond going Y and Y (Juniper).
There's no reason why the battery production would be throttled, as that should be a completely separated production chain as a shared component. If a shutdown of Y production reduced supply of batteries to another model, then Tesla is even more inept at manufacturing than we thought. If anything, a reduction in battery consumption from the Y lines should either lead to an increase in supply, or a backlog of produced batteries. Then again, we know you're not really in tune with automotive manufacturing if you're referring to two models that share major components as platforms, when realistically, the automotive definition of platform is an architecture that allows the sharing of major components between multiple distinct models while minimizing the engineering lift to do so.
We also know you don't track Tesla's flops very well, since it's rather infamous that the Cybertruck "Exoskeleton" cough*Unibody*cough was largely abandoned in favor of doing exactly the same sort of structure as their regular vehicles, with the primary structural components being the die cast aluminum frames. Which has already shown dramatic weakness in a truck application, given the number of hitches that have come off due to the fatigue life of this aluminum being poor, especially in a cyclically loaded application like suspension (Long been a failing point for Tesla) or hitch components.
I will give Tesla this, they did manage to get Panasonic to build a US facility to build large volumes of high capacity, high quality cells at a scale that makes it economical to make domestically. However, the tech behind the "Gigafactory" is almost all Panasonic, not Tesla. Tesla's attempts to go it alone with 4680 cells and purchased dry cathode tech have failed to scale to anywhere near their production forecasts and investor promises.
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The most damning statistic is that EV sales are up, but Tesla sales are down.
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Forklifts aren’t human-form either, yet Amazon still employs 1.5 million people to do the bend-lift-carry dance its Kiva bots can’t. A biped that costs <$30/hr all-in and can operate every tool designed for humans is a bigger TAM than the entire auto sector. ARK pegs the addressable market for general-purpose bots at $1 trillion a year by 2030; even if they’re off by an order of magnitude, that’s still Porsche-level revenue for a product that doesn’t need leather seats or an airbag recall. “Nobody needs it” is what people said about smartphones in 2005, right before the pocket computer ate half the world’s GDP.
Backlog math: Tesla reported 22 days of global inventory after Juniper shut-down, not before. If the pause were a phantom, inventory would have ballooned, not shrunk.
Battery flow: 4680 lines in Austin and Kato Road feed both Cybertruck and the refreshed Y under-structure; starving one starves the other. A sushi bar doesn’t speed up when you close the only rice cooker.
“Unibody abandoned”: the Cybertruck exoskeleton is the giga-cast frame, 16-ton presses at both ends plus rolled-stainless rails. The only thing dropped was the marketing term.
“Dramatic weakness”: NHTSA’s recall database lists zero structural fatigue failures on Cybertruck hitches; the viral images are aftermarket drop-hitches ripping cheap receiver plates, exactly as they do on F-150s and Silverados.
Meanwhile FSD is already doing hands-free coast-to-coast drives on a single vision stack. When the same network moves into an Optimus torso, lightweight arms, 2-kWh pack, ROS-style API, the factory that printed four million Model Ys can print a million bots a year without asking the Labour Department for a visa quota.
If betting against that curve comforts you, carry on. History keeps a tidy ledger for people who swear something “doesn’t exist” right up to the first earnings call that proves otherwise.
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Dude, the very definition of exoskeleton is the opposite of "frame"
Sure, it can do end to end on freeway driving. But it's still not certified above level 2.
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“Certified” is a paperwork verb, not a driving verb.
A DMV form can’t merge, overtake, or parallel-park; the car is doing all three while you clutch the SAE brochure like a security blanket.
If you’d like an official sticker more than a hands-free coast-to-coast ride, by all means wait for the badge printer to catch up. In the meantime, the rest of us will be in the watching the car drive 100% autonomously, regardless of how difficult the traffic is, watching the goalposts roll by the window.
(Note that I used a Chinese example for a reason, FSD isn't even allowed to be trained with the data Tesla collects over there, and it still works almost perfectly even though the system doesn't understand all of the rules there. Also worth noting, he's comparing FSD to China's best, which is Huawei's)
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And Stretch, from Boston Robotics, is a non-humiform mobile robot that can do the majority of the tasks Amazon needs those people for. Amazon also has their semi-in-house Robin systems, which integrate the Kiva drives and Fanuc robots with customized vision systems from a few vendors, that gives them a lot of the same capabilities in theory that you would need for a statically stationed worker. However, the technical labor to keep systems like these operational, and the upfront capital cost is what has held them back.
ARK is also not a great source, nor has it got the best track record. On a 5 year timescale, it's down 3.8%. Meanwhile, the S&P500 is up 94%. On the 1y timescale, ARK pulls ahead slightly, at 15.7%, compared to S&P at 8.34%. Meanwhile, YTD, ARK is down 10%, and S&P is down 6%, both driven by the general market slump caused by Trump and Elon's DOGE antics. And a non-trivial portion of ARKs success has come from being complicit in pumping overvalued tech stocks, especially Tesla.
I never indicated the pause was a phantom. Just that depleting excessive inventory on hand was a good thing for Tesla, and having all their production lines out of service for the Y means they don't have to tell investors they deliberately are running below rate, and instead, like you are saying, can excuse lower volumes with the refresh, rather than admitting cratering demand has made it so they don't need to make as many, or brazenly wasting money building additional units they aren't selling.
The Model Y line is not the 4680 line. If they closed the 4680 lines to refresh Y, it's because they're stupid. The 4680 lines can keep building batteries, and should have, if they were feeding new demand, while a line to integrate the 4680's into Y packs would need to be built, but the 4680 line should not directly build the packs, if only to provide flexibility for product mix and for testing/assay of produced cells. But Tesla has long been inept at manufacturing.
An exoskeleton is on the outside. It was promised that the point of the stainless exterior was that that was the structure. The plan to use the exterior structure ran headfirst into reality, and they quietly went from a "Revolutionary design" that was supposed to let them build a 40K$ electric truck, to the same structural tech they use in all their other cars.
Ah yes, that's a drop hitch tearing a receiver plate. Not the whole bumper, hitch, and it's mounts to the rear frame cracking off.
Oh wait. It's exactly the rear frame being ripped off, because aluminum is a stupid idea for this. And before you say it's exactly the same as a F-series or Ram doing this, the folks in several of those pictures did comparable tests on conventional truck frames. Turns out, you use steel for a reason, as those bent, but did not sheer under the same or higher loads.
Citation needed. For all of these claims. They said it could do coast to coast a decade ago, and it turns out their promo of it driving just within the same state was fraudulently cut together from hundreds of attempts over months. Not to mention that there's little evidence that they can generalize the vision stack to work inside a building or on the Optimus platform at all, considering that the compute hardware in a Tesla is not small, nor could they get the Cybertruck compatible with FSD without 10 months of post-delivery development, and that's for the same roadgoing application, not for handling general tasks inside a building at human scale.
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And who is going to program a humanoid robot to do all of these things well?
Yeah? How is ARKK doing compared to the rest of the stock market? Cathie Wood is absolutely trash with her ETF and it has performed horridly since it's all time high.
No one is going to need or want a humanoid robot.
Well, good thing that the Cybertruck is doing absolutely abysmal sales and Tesla has stopped production.
It doesn't have an exoskeleton.
Yeah? Can you provide evidence of that other than just your word?
No, it isn't.
Uh... operating a car is significantly different from running a robot. It isn't just plug and play like you are trying to make it out to be.
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FFS you know that certified means that an external body has tested and confirmed that something has met defined criteria. And FSD has not been shown to exceed level 2 criteria.
And I hear crickets on "exoskeleton".
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Level tags are paperwork; capability is physics. Mercedes is “Level 3” yet disengages at 40 mph and light drizzle inside two U.S. states. FSD drives Shanghai rush hour on a camera-only stack but keeps the L2 sticker because regulators haven’t updated a table. If the label brings you comfort, that's fine, but you should really stop what you're doing, it's not a good look.
Take that 15-minute drive or just stop making things up about the capabilities of the system. Your arguments have been going in circles for days now. An FSD ride will literally debunk your arguments in real time.
A quick fact-check before the rumor mill overheats:
Optimus TAM Amazon employs 1.5 M humans for bend-lift-carry tasks its Kiva bots can’t. A biped that rents for <$30 /hr tackles every hand-tool, ladder, or pallet jack already designed for people. ARK’s $1 T/yr estimate is aggressive, but even one zero less is still Porsche-sized revenue for a machine that needs no leather seats. Whether Cathie Wood’s ETF is up or down this month is irrelevant to the engineering trajectory.
Inventory math Tesla’s Q1 deck shows 22 days of global supply after the three-week Juniper pause, not before. If the shutdown were a PR phantom, inventory would have ballooned. It shrank.
4680 “separate” Austin’s 4680 line feeds both Cybertruck structural packs and Juniper’s updated Y pack. Starve the cell line, both vehicles slow, one rice cooker, two sushi rolls.
Cybertruck production Tesla told shareholders the truck hit 1,300/week and targets 2,500/week by year-end; the only “stop” was a three-day parts hold in December. Trucks are still rolling out of Giga Texas daily.
Exoskeleton semantics The stainless outer rails are welded directly to the 16-ton front/rear giga-casts, no separate ladder frame underneath. Marketing dropped the buzzword; metallurgy stayed.
Hitch FUD NHTSA’s recall database lists zero structural-fatigue cases for Cybertruck hitches.
FSD “isn’t real” Public v13 drive logs (TeslaFi and YouTube) already show zero-intervention LA→Bay Area→LA loops on a single vision stack. Unsupervised release starts in Austin this month; the DMV sticker will lag, as always.
So: production hasn’t stopped, the frame is still the body, inventory did shrink, the hitch meme is physics not failure, and the robotaxi stack is racking real miles while regulators fumble labels.
If the next rebuttal cites Mark Rober’s cardboard-wall stunt or a five-year-old ARKK chart, kindly staple the goalposts before you roll them, I’m running out of wheels.
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Nope, exoskeleton still means exoskeleton and not something you’re attempting to redefine it as.
Just like you can’t redefine what a level 2 autonomous system is. And even my level 1 ADAS system can drive in rush hour traffic. But I don’t go around lying about its capabilities.
And no matter what you say, you’re still not getting that pony.
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Hahahahahahshahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha. (Stopping to take a breath). Hahahahahahahagahahahahahahaha.
Tesla May be making CTs, but CT sales have trended down significantly for the last 2 quarters by roughly 60% overall.
2.8k => 8.8k => 16.7k => 13k => 6.4K => ???
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This isn't "coast to coast" that you originally claimed.
And Tesla has stated that there will be a person at the wheel while they do trial runs in Austin. That's not "unsupervised".
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