Tesla has about 600K orders for the Y Juniper in China. That's total, cimulative, orders. They made some of the old model in early January but they are looking at not much over 600k, so far, for the new Y in 2025. More orders will come in but I will be surprised if they close the year above 1M Y. Model 3 sales are well off in China, far below Y sales. Those numbers are fine but not great. The factory is built to produce 2M vehicles per year. As for the future, I believe the model 2 (AKA: $25K car) will boost sales a lot. This might be a buy opportunity. I dont expect to buy Tesla again in my life, inckuding this market cap cycle, but you never know.
I have a lot of respect for what Musk did with TSLA, he pushed forward when nobody else was, but for the brand itself, there is a problem due to his politics now more than ever. Maybe its a good thing, if he can squeeze in better performance, features and beat on price, then Telsa could still come out ahead?
Per https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-board-search-replace-elon-musk-ceo/: "It's unclear if the board's succession planning has continued with Musk's plans to re-focus on Tesla." Either way, I am not surprised. You can only drag a company's image through the mud and not expect blowback from others in the company, even if it is Musk. I am not seeing the focus on Tesla from Musk like it used to be. His baby is SpaceX now, as he badly wants to return to his home planet. I am not bullish on Tesla.
This thought is probably a little out there but this came to me after noticing that if anyone mentions Elon Musk, a few people will be triggered and will absolutely freak out with an irrational response. At one time, Elon was a massive draw. He was perhaps the biggest influence on building Tesla into the height of what it became. Now Elon is an influence of repulsion. Thoughts on Elon caused me recall this 1976 interview with Frank Zappa. The thought will make sense, if you watch this 90 second video. Please consider that Alice Cooper has sold over 50m albums.
As W preaches, that's what happens when you mix politics with business. Don't piss off your base. Conservatives to not buy EVs. Elon is his own worst enemy.
The odd conservative does buy an EV, if it's cool. I dare say Cyber Truck's primary audience is not Sierra Club members. I understand it's just a trickle of Republicans compared to the real audience of Democrats. The point is, he should be fostering interest in both communities. The goal should be to build up sales to non-traditional buyers. Anyone in sales should be apolitical.
According to the Tesla chairman, Robyn Denholm, the Tesla CEO search is not real. When I read the report, my first thought is that Tesla is about to go to crap like every other automaker. For all of Elon's faults, and there are many, he has continued to make viable products that are free from epic poor quality scandals. I don't believe Elon is the only person who can be a good CEO but I also believe boards make a habit of selecting terrible CEOs who ruin the company while the board watches and does nothing. If the board acted in the best interest of the company, they would simply get JB Straubel. Whatever it takes, he is the correct guy. The next in my fantasy CEO line is probably Tom Zhu, although I must confess to being less familiar with Tom. Anyone external will ruin the company. At some point, Elon will be more of a liability as CEO than he's worth. That point could be now but I am not making that claim. For my part, I don't know or have a good feel for the situation. He genuinely repulses people and has clearly lost his mind but he is still brilliant and has also built an epic company. Elon Musk is the premier entrepreneur of our time. The problem with CEO change is, the replacement comes in with grand promise of glory that almost never comes to reality.
I'm happy for people who own Tesla. I expect the company will treat them well in the coming years and decades while legacy auto goes out of business. I'm also happy to not own it. Elon shows strong signs of bipolarity and he is drifting further from reality. I would not have a good life if I owned Tesla. I would watch Elon continue to struggle while damaging Tesla and doing confounding things.
There is a ton of interesting Tesla news but nobody cares so I haven't bothered sharing. Still, there are a couple of things so interesting that I will drone into the bit bucket.... Tesla is ramping solar power production in Texas. This matters because Tesla has turned into a power company of significance. Texas has some areas that could use improvement and Tesla appears to be en-route to take over. This is totally speculative but I would guess they are at 6.5 to 7GW of power production globally. This number is Tesla, not Tesla implemented projects for other people. To put that into perspective, peak power production in Texas is about 77GW. Meanwhile, Tesla energy is currently deploying about 40GWh per year. GigaTexas is shipping a very reasonable number of model Y. While not record breaking, Tesla demand appears to be returning after Elon's latest cycle of melt down and public embarrassment. The RoboTaxi service is scheduled to launch on June 12 (two days). We are just starting to see the cars loafing around Austin. With everyone busily ignoring Tesla, this is going to catch a whole lot of people out. I expect a price bounce on Thursday or Friday of this week when people realize the world is about to change. A lot of Tesla activity is not subject to Elon's social and political indiscretions. Power companies are unlikely to change energy storage vendors because of Elon's politics. This is not to say Elon's conduct has not damaged Tesla; it has. I'm just saying Tesla is very, very hard to kill by now. Bet against them at your peril.
This is the kind of stuff that most casual Tesla followers or retail investors don't know about. They hear "Tesla sales down 85% in Europe" or whatever it was and are like "well that company will be dead in a year". They don't understand that car sales are a small part of Tesla's business at this point.
FWIW, I believe that Tesla semi production will come online at the end of this year with volume in 2026. Tesla semi won't be all that much of a money maker but it will have a captive charging audience. Forget Ford. Exxon is where the money is. I expect Tesla to put solar powered MegaChargers in the desert, mid span to long haul Semi runs, on nearly free land. The Tesla MegaCharger network could be the next massive cash chow. I apologize for being so negative but the the average Tesla investor is a damn moron. They think they're way ahead of the curve because they figured out in 2021 that Tesla wasn't about to go bankrupt. It only took them four years after those of us paying attention knew. Now, this same group of people have no idea what it would mean if a company could produce a fuel to take over long haul diesel sales. Flying J is a truly great company and it will continue to be but Tesla will likely ramp quickly to be similar with substantially fatter margins. I can imagine a MegaCharger station with showers, a cafe, and convenience store. I shall call it: Flying T. They'll make $500 per semi that stops. If 10 trucks stop per hour, that's a profitable power outlet. What's more, there will be zero trouble financing MegaCharger network expansion. Everyone will want to get in on it. Tesla might self fund. It would take a confluence of factors for the charge network fail and they have absolutely no competition in sight, including hydrogen.
