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Tesla deliveries drop 14 percent amid Musk backlash
Tesla deliveries drop 14 percent amid Musk backlash

Engadget

time10 hours ago

  • Automotive
  • Engadget

Tesla deliveries drop 14 percent amid Musk backlash

Tesla says it delivered 384,122 electric vehicles in the April-June timeframe, which is a 14 percent drop compared with the same period in 2024. It's also the second quarter in a row that sales have fallen year-over-year (YoY). The company produced 410,244 vehicles in Q2, which is very close to the 410,831 it made during the equivalent period last year. However, the company delivered more vehicles (443,956) than it produced in Q2 2024. That's not the case this time. The number of vehicle deliveries in Q2 2025 plummeted by nearly 60,000 YoY. The line has been trending downwards for a while now. The company saw a dip in annual deliveries for the first time in 2024. For the first quarter of 2025, Tesla reported 336,681 deliveries, which is a drop of 13 percent from the same three-month period in 2024. Multiple reports over the last several months suggested that Tesla sales had been falling in several markets . CEO Elon Musk reportedly fired Tesla's head of manufacturing and operations, Omead Afshar, last week as the numbers continued to sink. Various factors have played a hand in Tesla's declining sales numbers. For one thing, the company (which is focusing more on autonomous driving efforts such as the Robotaxi ) is facing tougher competition, particularly from Chinese manufacturers that are making less-expensive models. And then there's the Musk factor. So much of Tesla's success has been pegged to the public persona of its chief executive. But there's been a significant backlash against Musk in recent years, particularly after he became a major financial backer and advisor to President Donald Trump during the 2024 election campaign. After Trump's inauguration, Musk became the head of the administration's Department of Government Efficiency program, adopting a similar slash-and-burn approach to cost-cutting within the government to the one he undertook at X. Musk formally left his government role in May . In recent weeks, Musk has become an ardent critic of the Trump administration's major tax and spending bill. The proposed legislation — which is no longer officially called The One Big Beautiful Bill Act — passed the Senate on Tuesday and is set for another House vote. The bill includes provisions that could harm Musk's businesses, such as removing incentives for consumers to buy EVs. Trump has threatened to end contracts that Musk's companies have with the government amid a spat between the two men.

Tesla Sales Fall as Elon Musk Focuses on Self-Driving Cars
Tesla Sales Fall as Elon Musk Focuses on Self-Driving Cars

New York Times

time11 hours ago

  • Automotive
  • New York Times

Tesla Sales Fall as Elon Musk Focuses on Self-Driving Cars

Tesla's global car sales fell sharply in the second quarter, continuing a decline that began last year, as the company puts a greater emphasis on autonomous driving instead of new models aimed at attracting car buyers. The company said it delivered 384,000 vehicles from April through June, down from 444,000 a year earlier. Tesla's limited and aging lineup has not been able to withstand growing competition from relatively young Chinese carmakers like BYD and established Western companies like General Motors, Volkswagen and BMW. Elon Musk, Tesla's chief executive, has been seemingly indifferent to slumping vehicle sales, saying that the company's future lies with technology that will allow Teslas to operate autonomously and function as driverless taxis. Significant numbers of investors have bought into that vision and pushed up Tesla's stock market valuation to more than $940 billion. Last month Tesla began a closely watched test of Mr. Musk's ambition. Specially equipped Model Y sport utility vehicles, which it calls Robotaxis, began offering paid rides to handpicked guests in Austin, Texas. The guest riders, mostly Tesla enthusiasts with many social media followers, posted almost uniformly glowing reviews online. However, videos they shot betrayed some flaws in the technology, including instances when the cars braked suddenly, dropped off passengers in the middle of intersections, or required intervention from safety monitors who rode in the front passenger seats. Last week, in another milestone, a Tesla with nobody inside drove itself from the company's factory in Austin to a customer about half an hour away. 'There were no people in the car at all and no remote operators in control at any point. FULLY autonomous!' Mr. Musk wrote on X. Critics noted that videos posted by Tesla showed the car parking at the destination along a curb painted red and marked, 'No Parking Fire Lane.' Want all of The Times? Subscribe.

Tesla's First Driverless Delivery Ends In A Fire Lane
Tesla's First Driverless Delivery Ends In A Fire Lane

Yahoo

timea day ago

  • Automotive
  • Yahoo

Tesla's First Driverless Delivery Ends In A Fire Lane

Despite Tesla's recently launched Robotaxi service clogging up roads in Austin and drawing the attention of federal regulators, the electric automaker threw caution to the wind yet again and took another step into the unknowns of autonomous driving. Tesla posted a video on Saturday showcasing a Model Y delivering itself from the factory to a customer's apartment complex with a 15-mile drive across Austin, Texas. However, the drive itself wasn't entirely legal. Tesla posted the 30-minute drive in its entirety online, but the monumental finale fell flat as the electric SUV came to a stop along a curb painted bright red with lettering that read "No Parking, Fire Lane." Elon Musk claimed that the Model Y completed the first-ever driverless delivery without any remote assistance. The claim could be accurate, but Tesla was also monitoring the vehicle throughout the entire drive. A Cybertruck with a bed-mounted camera rig followed the SUV to record exterior shots, and a Tesla representative waited with the customer at the destination. Read more: These Are The Most Forgettable Cars The delivered Model Y was equipped with the software used by Robotaxi's Model Ys and downgraded back to the commercially available code once it reached its customers, according to TechCrunch. While the feat of driverless delivery is impressive at first glance, it's not replicable unless Tesla is going to send an employee to every customer to prepare its vehicles for consumer use. At that point, you might as well just have the employee drive the car. The drive appears to be a marketing stunt aimed at fueling the excitement among investors about the company's future, despite flagging sales. Even if the Robotaxi self-driving software is better than what's available, it's still not bulletproof. Footage has circulated on social media of a Robotaxi driving at 35 miles per hour in a 30 mph zone. Other videos show a hired Model Y weaving across a double-yellow line into the opposite lane and passengers struggling to get their hired Model Y to pull over. In one case, the SUV simply stopped in the middle of the road. Musk promised that his so-called driverless cars would be better than us squishy humans behind the wheel. Tesla continuously promises a better tomorrow to distract from the failure to deliver exceptional vehicles today. Want more like this? Join the Jalopnik newsletter to get the latest auto news sent straight to your inbox... Read the original article on Jalopnik.

Tesla Bros Who Bet on Polymarket That Tesla Would Successfully Launch Full Self-Driving by July Are Now Screwed
Tesla Bros Who Bet on Polymarket That Tesla Would Successfully Launch Full Self-Driving by July Are Now Screwed

Yahoo

timea day ago

  • Automotive
  • Yahoo

Tesla Bros Who Bet on Polymarket That Tesla Would Successfully Launch Full Self-Driving by July Are Now Screwed

Betting on Elon Musk fulfilling one of his promises is one hell of a risky venture. But that's what users did on the crypto-based prediction hub Polymarket anyway — and now they're on the verge of losing millions of dollars after Tesla's Robotaxi service failed to live up to its CEO's sky-high assurances. With over $8,800,000 worth of total bets placed, the prediction, titled "Will Tesla launch a driverless Robotaxi service before July?" is now at a less than one percent chance of success, seeing that it is now no longer the month of June and that the service has turned out to be a glorified beta test. In an especially ironic twist, Electrek points out, Musk himself highlighted the bet several weeks ago, when Tesla had a still unlikely 14 percent chance of success, encouraging his fans to cash in. "Money-making opportunity," Musk said in tweet, reminiscent of how he used to casually pump his favorite crypto. The prediction is still awaiting a final decision: the proposed outcome of "NO" has been disputed twice, with Musk fanboys raging at the site admins in the comments, adamant that "YES" will prevail. "Should resolve to yes," wrote one user who bought over 21,000 shares in favor of Tesla. "If not, cabal trying to scam." Technically, Tesla has been operating robotaxis in Austin, Texas, since June 22. But with only ten to 20 cars in operation, it's at best an extremely limited test, and does not meet the Polymarket bet's definition of a full-blown, driverless service. In the rules section, it stipulates that a "program that is restricted to Tesla employees, invite-only testers, closed-beta participants," will not qualify. Nor will a program in which there is a human in the vehicle positioned to take control, it states. Tesla's service is currently invite-only — the recipients overwhelmingly being pro-Tesla "influencers" — and the vehicles are all supervised by a human "safety monitor" who rides in the front passenger seat, and who've already had to make several interventions. Notably, the service doesn't live up to its creator's own promises. In an earnings call in January, Musk was unequivocal that Tesla robotaxis would launch fully "unsupervised" with "no one in the car" in June — hence the nature of the Polymarket bet. The conspicuous inclusion of the "safety monitors" wasn't revealed until just days before the launch date. That should've been a sign for the Tesla bulls to pull out, but many were clearly inspired by Musk's tweet. On the day that Musk declared the robotaxi bet a "money-making opportunity," the market odds spiked to a 40 percent chance of success as the billionaire's fans piled in, bringing what was then less than the $500,000 total money on the line to the nearly $9 million that it is today. One user, Electrek found, is set to lose $50,000 for believing in Musk's robotaxi vision. Don't worry, though. There's plenty of dubious Musk promises to bet on in the future. Such as: having over 1,000 robotaxis roaming the streets of Austin "within a few months" of launching, or having a staggering one million robotaxis on American roads by the end of 2026. With the cars still requiring safety monitors to babysit them, seemingly breaking traffic laws, and frequently driving erratically — and all this while being limited to a tiny "geofenced" area where driving conditions are as ideal as possible, something that Musk once said wouldn't count as real self-driving — it's looking like the real "money-making opportunity" is betting against any of the above ever happening. More on Tesla: Tesla's Robotaxi Program Is Failing Because Elon Musk Made a Foolish Decision Years Ago

Tesla's Robotaxi Hype Fuels Bullish Price Targets to $500
Tesla's Robotaxi Hype Fuels Bullish Price Targets to $500

Globe and Mail

timea day ago

  • Automotive
  • Globe and Mail

Tesla's Robotaxi Hype Fuels Bullish Price Targets to $500

Considering how much pain investors of Tesla Inc (NASDAQ: TSLA) had to endure during the first quarter of the year, there are perhaps not many on Wall Street who thought they'd manage to gain the better part of 50% in less than three months. However, that's exactly what they've done, largely thanks to CEO Elon Musk's stepping back from White House duties, increased hype around their Robotaxi launch, and a sense that the worst-case scenario has already been priced into the stock. As they continue to consolidate with mostly sideways action since the first week of June, it's a good time to take stock of what the summer might look like for the shares of the automotive giant. While the stock has undoubtedly received its fair share of negative headlines in recent weeks, there are still many reasons to like Tesla for the long term. Getting Involved in Tesla For investors on the sidelines weighing up an entry or an exit, two very interesting and unusual things took place last week that should be closely watched: Tesla received both a pair of Sell ratings and a pair of Buy ratings. For a stock that the bulls and the bears have closely fought over, this hardly clarifies things for investors trying to make a call. But upon close examination, there's actually a pretty solid opportunity opening up here, and these calls might even make it easier. Let's jump in and take a closer look. Bears Reiterate Their Case Starting with the bearish updates, which came first at the start of last week, we saw the teams from both Guggenheim and UBS Group reiterate their Sell ratings on the stock. Unconvinced by Tesla's nearly 50% gain in just a few weeks, the analysts there were happy to overlook the potential upside from the company's much-awaited Robotaxi launch, which took place on Monday. With its price-to-earnings ratio around the 175 mark, Guggenheim's Ronald Jewsikow also sounded the alarm on Tesla's valuation, which has repeatedly been flagged as a reason to be cautious. Potential 50% Downside Even though Tesla's shares have always shown signs of not caring about the underlying PE, Jewsikow's price target of $175 must have raised a few eyebrows. Considering that Tesla closed out last week trading just above $320, it implies that a loss of close to 50% is around the corner. This would result in shares trading back at 52-week lows, which is an extreme forecast for someone who didn't provide much justification beyond stating that the company's fundamentals are "deteriorating at an alarming rate." It's true that Tesla's post-April recovery seems to have run out of steam, and it might well be worrying that shares have failed to kick on since their peak in late May, but the stock has still been setting higher highs throughout June, all in the face of their most recent earnings report which was indeed one of their worst updates to their fundamentals in quite some time. But the fact that the stock has remained consistently higher since then suggests the market doesn't care quite as much about that as the bears might want it to. Bulls See Big Upside On the other hand, by the end of last week, Tesla had received two fresh bullish updates: one from Canaccord Genuity Group and one from Benchmark. The latter boosted its price target to $475, just marginally below Tesla's street-high price target of $500, which came from Wedbush earlier this month. The teams were unanimous in their optimism around the company's Robotaxi launch, which they see as a key milestone in Tesla's journey to offer the most cost-effective driverless cars. Echoing much of what his peers have shared in recent months, Benchmark's Mickey Legg wrote that "in our view, the company is undergoing an evolution from a trailblazing vehicle OEM to a high-tech automation and robotics company with unmatched domestic manufacturing scale." As Tesla stock has shown time and again, it has a stronger tendency to be bought for these kinds of reasons than to be sold due to valuation concerns, as flagged by Guggenheim. The fact that the stock is up close to 50% since missing analyst expectations in its May earnings report by a wide margin tells you a lot about how Tesla investors view the longer-term opportunity. As July approaches, it's expected that Tesla will keep generating mixed opinions, as it has historically. However, the ticker tells the story, and so far, at least, it's telling us that the stock wants to, and will, go higher. Where Should You Invest $1,000 Right Now? Before you make your next trade, you'll want to hear this. MarketBeat keeps track of Wall Street's top-rated and best performing research analysts and the stocks they recommend to their clients on a daily basis. Our team has identified the five stocks that top analysts are quietly whispering to their clients to buy now before the broader market catches on... and none of the big name stocks were on the list. They believe these five stocks are the five best companies for investors to buy now...

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