zen222
20 minutes ago
Tesla is in deeper trouble than you think
Tesla’s troubles go far beyond CEO Elon Musk’s recent dust-up with President Donald Trump, who accused the former “first buddy” of going “completely ‘off the rails’” in a social media slap fight over the weekend.
But while the battles between Musk and Trump are getting all the attention, the outlook for Tesla’s revenue and bottom line have gotten notably worse. And the company could even be back to losing money, for reasons unrelated to Musk’s personal politics.
Musk was Trump’s largest financial supporter during the 2024 campaign, and was a mainstay at Mar-a-Lago and the White House at the start of Trump’s second term, with his role in slashing the federal workforce at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But Musk has since announced he was starting a new political party due to his displeasure with the tax and spending bill signed by Trump on Friday — and the barbs on their respective websites have only increased since then.
Shares of Tesla closed Monday down 6.8%, as investors were concerned about the implication of Musk’s latest political moves, despite his promises to re-focus on the company. It rebounded only 1.3% in Tuesday trading.
“Very simply Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that Tesla investors/shareholders want him to take during this crucial period for the Tesla story,” wrote Dan Ives, an analyst at Wedbush Securities who’s known for being optimistic about the company.
Ives put out a follow-up note Tuesday saying that the Tesla board should set ground rules to limit Musk’s political activities because the company is at a “tipping point” for its future.
“Tesla is heading into one of the most important stages of its growth cycle with the autonomous and robotics future now on the doorstep and cannot have Musk spending more and more time creating a political party which will require countless time, energy, and political capital,” he wrote.
Because even without the political stink, the Tesla’s financial outlook is suddenly looking notably worse.
Tesla did not respond to requests for comment. But when Ives posted his belief that the Tesla board should tie Musk’s future pay package to the amount of time he spends at Tesla and have oversight of his political “endeavors,” Musk responded with his own post on X, saying “Shut up, Dan.”
Tesla about to lose important profit driver
Blair’s note pointed out that Trump’s bill not only removed the $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle (EV) buyers, but also eliminated the financial penalties for automakers that fail to meet federal emissions targets. Emissions fines have historically forced automakers who still build primarily gasoline powered cars and trucks to buy “regulatory credits” from EV companies.
Removing those fines eliminates “market demand for Tesla’s credits,” said the note from William Blair analysts Jed Dorsheimer and Mark Shooter. The sale of those federal and state credits added $10.6 billion to Tesla’s bottom line since 2019 and often enabled the company to post a profit.
Without the revenue from those regulatory credits, the company would not have reported a positive annual net income until 2021, and it would have been back in the red again in the first quarter of this year, when its net income plunged 71% compared to a year earlier on sharply lower sales around the globe.
Musk has largely downplayed all the recent bad news, saying the company’s future rests on robots, artificial intelligence and self-driving taxis.
But the company’s taxi service is very limited to date, launching only in Austin, Texas, for a select group of customers – mostly Tesla fans – and with a Tesla employee riding in the front passenger seat to monitor the car’s performance. That puts Tesla behind the robotaxi service already offered in Austin and three other cities – San Francisco, Los Angeles and Phoenix – by Waymo, the self-driving car unit of Google parent Alphabet.
And Tesla’s rollout has had its shares of problems, including a video showing a robotaxi traveling on the wrong side of the road for about half of a block and another video of a robotaxi slowly turning its front wheels into a parked car.
While Musk has promised his robotaxi service will be expanding soon across many other cities, he has not given any further details. He also hasn’t said when the Austin service will be expanded to the general public, nor when the company’s human monitors sitting in the front passenger seat will no longer be needed.
Meanwhile, Waymo has definitive plans to expand its service to Miami and Washington, DC, next year in partnership with Uber.
“We expect that investors are growing tired of the distraction at a point when the business needs Musk’s attention the most and only see downside from his dip back into politics,” said the William Blair note. “We would prefer this effort to be channeled towards the robotaxi rollout at this critical juncture.”
Drop in demand likely to continue
Then there’s the problem of Tesla’s sales. Or rather, the lack thereof.
Global sales were down a record 13% in each of the first two quarters of this year, compared to a year earlier, even though demand for EVs overall continues to climb, a further sign of Tesla’s declining market share.
Part of the lost EV market share is due to increased competition, both from Western automakers rolling out their own EV offerings, and Chinese automakers that have made a massive push into the market. Chinese automaker BYD is poised to surpass Tesla in global annual EV sales this year for the first time, even though Tesla is a still a major player in China, and BYDs are not sold in the US.
Demand is likely to weaken further come October 1, when the $7,500 tax credit for electric car buyers expires. When a previous version of the tax credit was phased out for Teslas in 2019, the company had to cut the price of the car by about half the value of the lost credit.
But Tesla has also faced missteps of Musk’s own doing. There has been backlash against Musk’s political activity, which has had a significant impact on Tesla sales. That is likely to continue even as he moves to distance himself from Trump.
In the early months of this year, hundreds of protests were held outside Tesla showrooms in the United States, Canada and Europe. Worries about self-inflicted brand damage started the company’s shares on their downward slide.
It prompted Trump, who was still Musk’s ally at the time, to announce he was buying a Tesla for himself. In March, the president hosted an event at the White House urging others to buy the company’s cars. At one point, Musk and Tesla investors might have hoped that in a closely divided country, the lost sales to Trump critics might be at least partly made up for by sales to Trump fans.
But Musk seems to now face the possibility of backlash from both sides of the political spectrum.
“He’s been able to alienate everyone, which many thought was impossible, but he’s actually been able to do it,” Ives told CNN Monday. “And the problem is, this soap opera just keeps going on.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-deeper-trouble-think-110025611.html
zen222
39 minutes ago
Without government support, Tesla is unprofitable, period, case closed.
Reuters: Loss of EV credits 'will impact Tesla revenue,' says market expert
The dispute between Republican President Donald Trump and Tesla CEO Elon Musk escalated on Saturday when the space and automotive billionaire announced the formation of a new political party, saying Trump’s tax-cut and spending bill would bankrupt America.
The sweeping legislation approved by Congress and signed by Trump means $7,500 tax credits for buying or leasing new electric vehicles will end on September 30, as well as a $4,000 used EV credit that has helped boost green vehicle sales in recent years.
Sissel said Musk’s public feud with the administration "will have negative impacts on Tesla specifically. If you look at the 'big, beautiful bill,' the CAFE credits that incentivize fuel economy and that were positive and actually had a specific and measurable impact on revenue at Tesla are no longer in place, and this will impact Tesla revenue."
https://finance.yahoo.com/video/loss-ev-credits-impact-tesla-202228591.html
zen222
2 hours ago
J.P. Morgan Sees Over 60% Downside for TSLA
Tesla TSLA +1.32% ? investors were a happy bunch once Elon Musk waved farewell to his government duties, with his time as part of the Trump administration nothing short of a disaster for the EV giant. Musk’s controversial policies as the head of DOGE and embrace of far-right tropes were the cue not only for massive worldwide protests but also sent Tesla vehicle sales cratering in Q1.
However, any hopes that Musk’s return to the Tesla office might mark a turning point for the company have so far proven unfounded. As Tesla prepares to release its Q2 delivery numbers, the latest data points to another disappointing quarter, suggesting that the damage done during Musk’s political detour continues to weigh on buyer sentiment.
In fact, J.P. Morgan analyst Ryan Brinkman’s channel checks indicate that the weak demand seen in Q1 has persisted into the second quarter. Drawing on sales trends through May and early June – using public reports for Europe, third-party forecasts for the U.S., and insurance registrations in China – Brinkman now anticipates that the year-over-year drop in deliveries will only worsen, accelerating from a 13% decline in Q1 to a 19% decline in Q2. The analyst projects that deliveries will fall from 444,000 a year ago to just 360,000 this quarter – 8% below the consensus estimate of 392,000.
This downward trend casts a shadow over the remainder of the year. Brinkman sees “material risk” to the full-year delivery outlook, pointing out that Wall Street is counting on a sharp turnaround in the second half, despite looming cuts to EV subsidies and a challenging macro environment. While analysts surveyed by Bloomberg expect Tesla to deliver 922,000 vehicles in 2Q25 (432,000 in Q3 and 490,000 in Q4) – a substantial 32.3% increase from the 697,000 deliveries Brinkman expects in the first half – historically, Tesla has averaged a much more modest 9% second-half increase over the past two years (15% in 2024 and just 3% in 2023) after the chip shortage.
“While sales could potentially benefit from the introduction of a lower cost model before year-end, it likely would remain in launch mode (limiting the volume benefit) and affordability more generally seems just as likely to be challenged by the potential sooner than expected lapsing of the $7,500 federal Consumer Tax Credit (CTC) as called for in a recent Senate version of proposed legislation,” Brinkman went on to say.
Against this backdrop, Brinkman has trimmed his EPS estimate for Q2 from $0.48 to $0.42, now below the consensus of $0.45. For the full year, his EPS forecast falls from $2.07 to $1.75, also trailing the consensus estimate of $1.87.
All told, Brinkman is sticking with his Underweight (i.e., Sell) rating on TSLA shares, with a $115 price target that implies a steep 62% downside over the next 12 months.
https://www.tipranks.com/news/j-p-morgan-sees-over-60-downside-for-tesla-stock#google_vignette
zen222
3 hours ago
The Dawn Project Urges Legislators To Ban Tesla Full Self-Driving Over Critical Safety Defects Published in New Report to Congress
Tue, July 8, 2025
SANTA BARBARA, Calif., July 08, 2025 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Public safety advocacy group The Dawn Project has called on legislators to take action to ban Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software from public roads over the litany of critical safety defects uncovered by the group’s safety tests of the software.
Today, The Dawn Project shared a report of its findings with legislators and key regulators, including the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which has numerous open investigations into Tesla Full Self-Driving. The report comes amid Tesla’s rollout of its “Robotaxi” service in Austin, Texas, which has been plagued with safety critical errors such as the Robotaxis driving on the wrong side of the road, blocking intersections, and nearly colliding with other cars.
The Dawn Project recently held a live demonstration of its safety tests in Austin which proved that the latest publicly available version of Tesla Full Self-Driving will run down a child crossing the road while illegally blowing past a stopped school bus with its red lights flashing and stop sign extended.
The Dawn Project was recreating a tragic incident in North Carolina in which a child was run down by a self-driving Tesla as they exited a school bus. The self-driving Tesla had blown past the school bus’s red flashing lights and stop sign before running down the child, who suffered a fractured neck and broken leg and was placed on a ventilator.
The Austin test was run eight times, and Full Self-Driving ran down the child mannequin while illegally blowing past the school bus on every single test. Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software did not disengage or even alert the driver to the fact there had been a collision on any of the test runs.
The Dawn Project has catalogued thousands of safety critical errors committed by Tesla’s Full Self-Driving software on public roads and constantly updates this database with new errors as they are identified. The Dawn Project also maintains a publicly accessible database of safety critical and other driving errors committed by Tesla’s Robotaxis in Austin. NHTSA has reported 50 fatalities and 2,185 crashes involving Tesla’s self-driving technology.
The Dawn Project’s Report to Congress outlines the key findings from the group’s safety tests and demands that legislators take immediate action to protect road users from Tesla Full Self-Driving by banning the software until Tesla conclusively proves it is safe.
Dan O’Dowd, Founder of The Dawn Project, commented: “Self-driving software that illegally blows past stopped school buses and runs down children crossing the road must be banned immediately. It is only a matter of time before a child is killed while getting off a school bus because of Elon Musk and Tesla’s utter negligence and contempt for public safety.”
“The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration must step up and ban Tesla Full Self-Driving from public roads to protect children, pedestrians, and other road users. It is disappointing that the federal regulator in charge of road safety has taken no action to hold Tesla accountable. NHTSA must do its job and ban Tesla’s defective Full Self-Driving technology from public roads before more people are killed.”
“Legislators should protect their constituents from Tesla Full Self-Driving by calling for this dangerous and defective software to be banned immediately.”
A copy of The Dawn Project’s annual report can be viewed here:
https://dawnproject.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Dawn-Project-Annual-Report-2024-Washington-1.pdf
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/dawn-project-urges-legislators-ban-172100801.html
zen222
10 hours ago
Tesla China Sales Plunge 76% in First Week of Q3, Fall 23% Year-on-Year
8th July 2025
New registrations of Tesla vehicles in China fell 75.8% between June 30 and July 6, according to weekly insurance data published on Tuesday, marking the lowest level in two months and a sharp reversal from the prior week’s high.
Tesla registered 5,010 vehicles during the first week of the third quarter, down from 20,700 units in the final week of June — its highest weekly figure so far this year.
The decline followed a typical end-of-quarter sales push, with several carmakers also reporting lower registrations in early July — a period that often sees subdued activity as manufacturers adjust incentives and recalibrate for new quarterly targets.
Year to date sales in China are down 5.3% when compared to the first 27 weeks of 2024.
Tesla began the third quarter with minor updates to the Long-Range all-wheel-drive version of its Model 3 sedan in China.
The new variant offers 40km of additional range and faster acceleration — improving 0 to 100km/h performance from 4.4 seconds to 3.8 seconds.
The model’s price has been raised by 10,000 yuan ($1,400) to 285,500 yuan ($39,900).
From the total, 3,550 of the units were Model Ys. Sales figures for the best-selling SUV declined 76% from the prior week.
The company is currently offering a 0% interest loan on a 5-year financing plan for purchases of the refreshed Model Y Rear-Wheel Drive or Long Range All-Wheel Drive.
Customers must take delivery of the vehicle by July 31. The 0% APR financing plan also applies to the Model 3 Rear-Wheel Drive or Long Range All-Wheel Drive.
Tesla delivered 71,599 vehicles in the Chinese market last month, a nearly 1% increase from the same month last year, according to data released by China’s Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
The company reported 384,122 vehicles delivered globally in the second quarter, down from nearly 444,000 in the same period last year.
Tesla slightly missed its own compiled analyst consensus of 385,086 units, which was based on a survey of 29 analysts and released on June 27.
On Monday, Tesla shares dropped 6.79% as investors reacted to CEO Elon Musk’s announced plans to launch a new U.S. political party.
According to President Donald Trump, Tesla’s chief is going “completely ‘off the rails’.”
Investors are also concerned about the impact on Tesla of the “big, beautiful bill” signed by Trump last Friday.
The legislation eliminates both the $7,500 federal electric vehicle tax credit and Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) penalties, significantly weakening regulatory support for EV manufacturers.
In the Chinese market, Tesla was the best-selling company among EV makers. If considering new energy vehicle (NEV) brands, BYD has been taking the lead.
https://eletric-vehicles.com/tesla/tesla-china-sales-plunge-76-in-first-week-of-q3-fall-23-year-on-year/
jimr1717
10 hours ago
Based on the NHTSA’s data, Value Penguin determined that the following are the most dangerous/most unsafe cars in America:
Ford F-Series—fatal crashes: 10,845
Chevrolet Silverado—fatal crashes: 7,718
Honda Accord—fatal crashes: 5,079
Toyota Camry—fatal crashes: 4,734
Ram Pickup (all models)—fatal crashes: 4,734
Honda Civic— fatal crashes: 4,397
Toyota Corolla—fatal crashes: 3,430
Ford Explorer—fatal crashes: 3,332
Nissan Altima—fatal crashes: 3,267
GMC Sierra—fatal crashes: 3,245
Trade like a pro: Leverage real-time discussions and market-moving ideas to outperform.
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