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Two things can be true simultaneously:

1. Musk committed a catastrophically huge unforced error with his right wing buffoonery.

2. Tesla was MASSIVELY overvalued and a huge drop in valuation was inevitable regardless of Tesla’s performance.



Sure. I think people don't claim Tesla's downturn is all because of Musk's behavior. But it contributes to the problems, unfortunately it's not very clear how much.


Exactly.


3. Teslas are still very popular and their owners are generally happy with them.

4. The terminally online crowd that hates Elon only seem large because they are loud online.


5. tesla share price is down 41% in 2024

6. the WSJ reports that tesla sales are down among democrats, who outnumber republicans 5:2 in EV sales: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/elon-musk-turned-democrat...


cybertruck is bombing hard and essentially any discussion about them is how crappy that turned out to be. apocalypse-proof truck that can't even handle a car wash.

big buys by Hertz, et al, have also been a disaster, with the company ditching most of their EVs due to higher costs.

most discussions about the other teslas have been mixed but generally positive, but that's mostly irrelevant to stock price unless they're going to buy new EVs every year; the average age of a car on the road is ~11 years. This means Tesla has now saturated it's potential market, is failing to grow it, and will likely start rent-seeking behaviors via subscription price increases to attempt make up for the losses; these will alienate a lot of current, mostly-happy users, and push others away. kia, ford, and chinese makers have good options, and they will win a lot of current and potential telsa customers.

in other words, musk has saturated, then alienated, his core market, and failed to expand into new ones.

to hit the real value of that stock price it's going to need to fall wayyyy more than 40%; we'll see if the market movers that hold a lot of tesla, like the saudis, will let that happen




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