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Cont: Musk, SpaceX and future of Tesla II

arthwollipot said:
Unless you go to https://www.tesla.com/en_au where you'll find plenty of them.
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We already mentioned upthread that yes. Tesla has a ◊◊◊◊◊◊◊◊ of them new sitting around unsold lol
Or you can if you are so inclined, go to any of the secondhand car sites, there's tons more of them sitting there too lol

And that their sales are well down on 2024 and even more on 2023, despite the new models and slashing the price to boot....

The whole 'the owner is a fascist AH' thing is unsurprisingly a major turnoff for many, plus they are easily the most expensive to buy in any class, and repairs are both expensive and take a LONG time to complete (or even start lol) with delays of six months or more not uncommon before repairs are done....

In 2025 Tesla were well down in the new cars sales overall, at 13th, while BYD came in at number 6... (and considering that BYD only sell BEV and a hybrid 4wd Shark 6 ute or Sealion 6 SUV.... no pure ICE at all, coming in at number 6 overall is pretty bloody good indeed....)
1765516967308.png
In the pure EV sales, they were very close, with Tesla ever so slightly in front (by about 3000 cars), but including the sales of the hybrid's and BYD slaughtered Tesla, moving 42 thousand BEV and PHEV against Teslas total sales of just over 25 thousand....
 
Dabop said:
Same with Australia (hell its the same worldwide) the US sales drop is less than most other countries though- outing yourself as a fascist racist prick in the US is these days 'so what' while in TROTW, its still a big thing to be one....
In Australia their sales are down in 2025 for the yearly total 25% compared to 2023...

And thats with both 'new and updated' models being released in 2025, as well as substantial price drops for both the new and the old models!!!! with the new ones down 10% in price or more compared to the old ones price in 2023...
And yet their sales numbers are still plummeting....

Who knew outing yourself as a far rightwing fascist could be so expensive lol
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This was far from the ONLY thing that he was doing that was fascist, it was just the most noticeable....
People were saying it long before he did his 'salute'...
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I know they refreshed the model 3 Y but I was unaware that Tesla had released any new models in 2025.
 
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jeremyp said:
I know they refreshed the model 3 Y but I was unaware that Tesla had released any new models in 2025.
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No new models per sè , still just the S, 3, X, Y and CyberTruck.

Just variations on those models - stripped versions and a mildly stretched Y for China.

They’re all decent cars, save maybe the CyberTruck, but starting to feel a little stale. Such that current owners like myself, see little reason to purchase a newer model, even after almost 4 years and over 87,000 miles on our 2022 Model 3.
 
it’s a more basic base model. which imo is more sensible to buy, as a guy who has never bought new or for luxury. but i’d also never buy a tesla, purely because i think musk is a crook and a bad guy
 
Well in Australia, forget the dumpstertruck- it hasn't passed the Australian safety standards testing on at least two attempts (and I doubt it ever would without a ground up rebuild/redesign...)- theres very few countries it will ever be sold in...
The only available Tesla models here are the Model 3, Model Y, Model S, and Model X. The Model 3 and Model Y are the only ones that are sold in any numbers however, with the 3's sales well down compared to 2024, down by over 60% with them selling only 6030 for 2025!!!!
The Model Y did better with just under 18000- still well down on the previous year where they sold just over 21000...
The S and X did very poorly this year indeed- with none sold at all....- at least they sold a handful in 2024 lol
 
jeremyp said:
Agreed.



Well no. The Tesla board recommended the package to the shareholders and they voted for it. That suggests that the thing they are uneasy about is Musk losing interest in running Tesla.



The problem is that his wealth is not liquid. It mostly consists of shares in Tesla and SpaceX. If he tries to sell Tesla shares, the price gores down which reduces the value of the rest of his holding and that is important because he uses his stock as collateral for bank loans. If the price goes too low (about $100 according to some estimates) he will be subject to margin calls i.e. the banks will ask him to put up more collateral or pay down some of his debt. He can't sell his SpaceX shares, at least not on the open market because SpaceX is a private company. So he doesn't have as much money as it might seem looking at his headline valuation.

From Musk's point of view the IPO has a couple of downsides: it slightly dilutes his control (they are only selling 2%, so not much) and it makes SpaceX subject to the rules of a public company. They have to publish their accounts and obey tedious rules that Musk doesn't like. I don't think SpaceX would be doing this if they didn't need the money.

I think this is purely about developing Starship. They have a $3 billion contract with NASA to build the HLS and I think they have used all that money up. I don't think SpaceX's other projects (Falcon 9 and Starlink) produce nearly enough - if any - profit to cover the expenses incurred on Starship so far.
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My guess is either a) the VC money for Space X has dried up (quite likely given so much of this money is tied up in AI and not performing) or b) Musk has been told the writing's on the wall for Tesla and to get out while the going's still (relatively) good.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
My guess is either a) the VC money for Space X has dried up (quite likely given so much of this money is tied up in AI and not performing) or b) Musk has been told the writing's on the wall for Tesla and to get out while the going's still (relatively) good.
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I'm pretty sure it's the former. I think Starship is sucking all the spare cash out of SpaceX and they can't cancel it because they'd have to give the HLS money back to NASA which they haven't got anymore. Also, I don't think Starlink is long term viable without a cheaper launch system than Falcon 9.

One of the positive things about this is that we might get to see some P&L figures.
 
jeremyp said:
I'm pretty sure it's the former. I think Starship is sucking all the spare cash out of SpaceX and they can't cancel it because they'd have to give the HLS money back to NASA which they haven't got anymore. Also, I don't think Starlink is long term viable without a cheaper launch system than Falcon 9.

One of the positive things about this is that we might get to see some P&L figures.
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The main reason for Starlink's existence is to fabricate a market for the Falcon 9. If the Falcon programme hadn't been started there would have been no need to create a company that shoots a lot of small and short-life satellites into space.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
The main reason for Starlink's existence is to fabricate a market for the Falcon 9. If the Falcon programme hadn't been started there would have been no need to create a company that shoots a lot of small and short-life satellites into space.
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In fact, Starlink has been extremely successful at bringing Internet connectivity into remote areas where satellite coverage was previously expensive and unreliable.

Astronomers hate it though. Too much clutter in the skies.
 
Gulliver Foyle said:
The main reason for Starlink's existence is to fabricate a market for the Falcon 9. If the Falcon programme hadn't been started there would have been no need to create a company that shoots a lot of small and short-life satellites into space.
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It is also going to need Starship hitting its goal in costs for launching satellites to maintain the network and make money, it's too expensive to keep using Falcon launches. Although Starlink is apparently now profitable that's only after very, very expensive capital costs that probably will never be recouped.
 

patrick boyle breakdown on how badly of a failure doge was. it’s a shame this just happened and how readily it was swept under the rug.

musk is a grifting con man, and idk how many times he needs to show that for everyone to get it. again and again.
 
dirtywick said:
patrick boyle breakdown on how badly of a failure doge was. it’s a shame this just happened and how readily it was swept under the rug.

musk is a grifting con man, and idk how many times he needs to show that for everyone to get it. again and again.
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My really, really short summary for those who don't feel like watching - DOGE destroyed lots of value, lied like crazy about the amount and nature of the tiny "savings" that they actually accomplished, caused large numbers of deaths and extreme losses of national soft power, and was generally (ridiculously) bad enough in enough different ways that it could be used to write a textbook on how not to do its stated good goal of increasing government efficiency with lots of actual examples of how they did things that anyone with even a hint of common sense can easily see to be ridiculous.

◊◊◊◊ Musk, the murderous conman. ◊◊◊◊ all his enablers, too.
 
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arthwollipot said:
In fact, Starlink has been extremely successful at bringing Internet connectivity into remote areas where satellite coverage was previously expensive and unreliable.

Astronomers hate it though. Too much clutter in the skies.
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It depends what you mean by "successful". It works on a technical level but we don't know if it is sustainable i.e. if it covers its costs. Because Starlink is launched on rockets owned by SpaceX, there is plenty of opportunity for creative accounting and Musk himself said in an email to SpaceX staff in 2021 that if they didn't get Starship operational next year (2022), Starlink might drag the company down.

Of course, it was Elon Musk who said that and he was trying to bully his employees into giving up their Thanksgiving holiday, so it might have been a lie, but Starlink has other problems, not least of which is that they effectively have to replace the satellite constellation every five years or so. Also, it can't be made competitive in areas which have reasonable broadband, so the market is limited and shrinking all the time as more people move to urban areas and the reach of ground based fibre and 5G increases.

Anyway, we'll find out if Starlink is sustainable when SpaceX goes public.
 
dirtywick said:
patrick boyle breakdown on how badly of a failure doge was. it’s a shame this just happened and how readily it was swept under the rug.
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Nonsense! DOGE's chaos goblin antics might seem random and ineffectual but it accomplished exactly what it set out to do: provide cover for large scale theft of government data, burn down every active investigation into Elon Musk's business practices, then evaporate like a fart in the wind without leaving a paper trail to anyone important. Twenty year old patsy douchebags who get their ass kicked by children don't count.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
Nonsense! DOGE's chaos goblin antics might seem random and ineffectual but it accomplished exactly what it set out to do: provide cover for large scale theft of government data, burn down every active investigation into Elon Musk's business practices, then evaporate like a fart in the wind without leaving a paper trail to anyone important. Twenty year old patsy douchebags who get their ass kicked by children don't count.
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i agree that he 100% had an underlying agenda with doge (which was covered in the video as well), but i also think it’s useful to highlight how badly it failed to live up to its stated purpose as well.
 
dirtywick said:
i agree that he 100% had an underlying agenda with doge (which was covered in the video as well), but i also think it’s useful to highlight how badly it failed to live up to its stated purpose as well.
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I disagree. To call them incompetent is more credit than they deserve. Incompetence implies sincerity. I don't think they were sincere even for a moment, despite their "stated purpose." You don't have to bite at vranyo just because it's offered to you.
 
Beelzebuddy said:
I disagree. To call them incompetent is more credit than they deserve. Incompetence implies sincerity. I don't think they were sincere even for a moment, despite their "stated purpose." You don't have to bite at vranyo just because it's offered to you.
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i didnt call them incompetent but ok, do what you feel.

edit

idk why you putting “stated purpose” in quotes bothers me as well. seems unnecessary
 
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actually having sat on it a minute, i do think they were incompetent, which is an important element of this story. their job was to provide cover for their ulterior motive, and the cover was so laughably bad that they botched it in mere months. now it's almost completely forgotten about, which i find bizarre.

but the only way to highlight any of that is to understand how badly they failed at their cover. which, for some reason, has been met with some resistance. oh well, to each their own i suppose.
 
dirtywick said:
actually having sat on it a minute, i do think they were incompetent, which is an important element of this story. their job was to provide cover for their ulterior motive, and the cover was so laughably bad that they botched it in mere months. now it's almost completely forgotten about, which i find bizarre.

but the only way to highlight any of that is to understand how badly they failed at their cover. which, for some reason, has been met with some resistance. oh well, to each their own i suppose.
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Some people are liars and many are also bad liars. Dishonesty and incompetence are not mutually exclusive.
 
dirtywick said:
i didnt call them incompetent but ok, do what you feel.

edit

idk why you putting “stated purpose” in quotes bothers me as well. seems unnecessary
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As unusual as non-sarcastic uses of quotation marks may be these days, I put it in quotes because I was quoting you. I didn't quote incompetent because you didn't call them that directly, so I wasn't. I'm sorry to come off as argumentative, I'm not trying to be.

I'm trying to point out that "efficiency" is a red herring. It's vranyo. It's a joke at our expense. When Musk (was forced to) buy Twitter, he carried a kitchen sink into the building with him, JUST so he could make someone there say "let that sink in!" Same humor here. Musk just wanted to make the federal government officially reference a doge meme. It's a flippant joke to dunk on people with serious jobs who still have to put up with it. Any E would have worked. Ethics. Effectiveness. Employment. Doesn't matter, DOGE would have pulled exactly the same ◊◊◊◊. It's a victory to them to get you to pay attention to the smokescreen at all, because they weren't. Pointing out that they did a bad job at what they never attempted in the first place may be cathartic, but it's not likely to be effective.
 
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Beelzebuddy said:
As unusual as non-sarcastic uses of quotation marks may be these days, I put it in quotes because I was quoting you. I didn't quote incompetent because you didn't call them that directly, so I wasn't. I'm sorry to come off as argumentative, I'm not trying to be.
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no problem, i misread your intent.

Beelzebuddy said:
I'm trying to point out that "efficiency" is a red herring. It's vranyo. It's a joke at our expense. When Musk (was forced to) buy Twitter, he carried a kitchen sink into the building with him, JUST so he could make someone there say "let that sink in!" Same humor here. Musk just wanted to make the federal government officially reference a doge meme. It's a stupid joke to dunk on the people who have to put up with it. Any E would have worked. Ethics. Effectiveness. Employment. Doesn't matter, DOGE would have pulled exactly the same ◊◊◊◊. It's a victory to them to get you to pay attention to the smokescreen at all, because they aren't. Pointing out that they're doing a bad job at what they never attempted in the first place may be cathartic, but it's not likely to be effective.
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well, i'm not so sure about that. i think a lot of people at the time, and even now, trusted that musk was some kind of ultra genius capable of putting together a crack team of geniuses that'll fix the government with an algorithm. i think those people would be surprised to think he treated it as a joke, and they'd be surprised at how badly he failed at what they assumed he came into with good intentions.

i know better, i've hated musk for quite some time. a lot of people don't feel that way about him even still.

in any case, musk controls quite a bit of media and appears in a lot of really friendly softball interviews. but if you do watch him in interviews, he flounders pretty badly when his kitchen sink style jokes don't land and he needs to actually answer a question. i think he needs to be grilled in front of congress about doge.
 
I don't want to give Musk any real credit. Nor do I want to be insensitive to the real issues that trans people face daily. But a lot of people, maybe even a sizeable majority of people resent being asked what their pronouns are. I'm of the opinion that the more this is forced on the majority, the more the trans community will suffer. It guarantees a backlash. I'm the biggest believer in live and let live. As long as you don't harm me and mine, why the ◊◊◊◊ should I care about your gender identity? If I identify you wrongly, correct me and I'll try and respect you as a person and refer to you as you want me to.

But the need to proactively asking every new person you encounter about their preferred pronoun comes off as unnecessarily absurd. We take our cues from appearances. When someone looks at me and asks me my pronouns, I can't help but think, "are you stupid?" It comes off as a needless redundancy. And more importantly, many people resent the hell out of it.

From my perspective, this only gives straight, average people a reason to hate this group of people they don't understand.
 
acbytesla said:
I don't want to give Musk any real credit. Nor do I want to be insensitive to the real issues that trans people face daily. But a lot of people, maybe even a sizeable majority of people resent being asked what their pronouns are. I'm of the opinion that the more this is forced on the majority, the more the trans community will suffer. It guarantees a backlash. I'm the biggest believer in live and let live. As long as you don't harm me and mine, why the ◊◊◊◊ should I care about your gender identity? If I identify you wrongly, correct me and I'll try and respect you as a person and refer to you as you want me to.

But the need to proactively asking every new person you encounter about their preferred pronoun comes off as unnecessarily absurd. We take our cues from appearances. When someone looks at me and asks me my pronouns, I can't help but think, "are you stupid?" It comes off as a needless redundancy. And more importantly, many people resent the hell out of it.

From my perspective, this only gives straight, average people a reason to hate this group of people they don't understand.
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I'm entirely willing to agree with this take. His complaint does poke a spot that right-wing propagandists have been trying to make as sore as possible out of the mild and very real annoyance that it is at base as part of their misleading narratives. Its relevance to Musk's complaints is fairly limited, though. Musk's complaints have far more to do with trying to court and con right-wing suckers, after all, with throwing his kid who he neglected anyways under the bus being a price he's quite willing to pay.
 
Aridas said:
I'm entirely willing to agree with this take. His complaint does poke a spot that right-wing propagandists have been trying to make as sore as possible out of the mild and very real annoyance that it is at base as part of their misleading narratives. Its relevance to Musk's complaints is fairly limited, though. Musk's complaints have far more to do with trying to court and con right-wing suckers, after all, with throwing his kid who he neglected anyways under the bus being a price he's quite willing to pay.
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I agree entirely. He's pushing a button to accomplish his ends. A button that has little to do with what actually matters to him. A button that triggers a reaction and deflects people from paying attention to what is really important.

My position is not to give jerks like him buttons to push. It's political correctness that causes political wrongness. Why give them a reason for their hateful rhetoric to succeed?

I was bullied severely in elementary school and Jr high. And I had no idea how to deal with it until about 9th grade when I started to learn the best weapon against it was to laugh at their jokes they made at your expense. It's stops being funny or it's not funny the way they thought it might be. In effect, I took away their button. I stopped getting mad about their teasing and derision. Might have been the best lesson I learned in school.

Musk and Trump are bullies. We need to disarm them when we can.
 
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acbytesla said:
I agree entirely. He's pushing a button to accomplish his ends. A button that has little to do with what actually matters to him. A button that triggers a reaction and deflects people from paying attention to what is really important.

My position is not to give jerks like him buttons to push. It's political correctness that causes political wrongness. Why give them a reason for their hateful rhetoric to succeed?
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As a limited counterpoint to that sentiment, though, if it wasn't that button and the other main ones, it would just be several others that they push at hard. They're constantly searching for and trying to manufacture such buttons to hide their real agendas behind, after all, with no regard to actual truth or the good of either the country or individual. At some point, stands against falsehood and harm do need to be taken.
 
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i've personally never had any pronoun stuff happen to me.

not giving them buttons is a fine position to have, but if a bunch of people on twitter want to put pronouns in their bios, idk how you're supposed to stop them. or whatever thing the right wing is going to decide to propagandize into a freakout. you'll never win imo
 
dirtywick said:
i've personally never had any pronoun stuff happen to me.

not giving them buttons is a fine position to have, but if a bunch of people on twitter want to put pronouns in their bios, idk how you're supposed to stop them. or whatever thing the right wing is going to decide to propagandize into a freakout. you'll never win imo
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Nor really to me that I actually recall (though I could have forgotten out of sheer lack of caring, I suppose). At most, I've heard people ask in my vicinity, generally when it wasn't actually clear which were preferred, though. I fully admit to eye rolling a little to some of the more pointless online and political displays of support that just came across as performative, but I do support the general concept of respecting such preferences when they're expressed.

ETA: Either way, from the start, I think that I mostly considered it to effectively be a well meaning fad. The sentiment was good, but it never seemed likely to end up as more than a niche thing for those with reason to care after a wave of public recognition.
 
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dirtywick said:
i've personally never had any pronoun stuff happen to me.

not giving them buttons is a fine position to have, but if a bunch of people on twitter want to put pronouns in their bios, idk how you're supposed to stop them. or whatever thing the right wing is going to decide to propagandize into a freakout. you'll never win imo
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That's different. But I absolutely have been asked my pronouns preferences. I guess it depends on where you llive.

And yes, I agree, they'll use anything they can in their division politics.
 
acbytesla said:
I agree entirely. He's pushing a button to accomplish his ends. A button that has little to do with what actually matters to him. A button that triggers a reaction and deflects people from paying attention to what is really important.

My position is not to give jerks like him buttons to push. It's political correctness that causes political wrongness. Why give them a reason for their hateful rhetoric to succeed?

I was bullied severely in elementary school and Jr high. And I had no idea how to deal with it until about 9th grade when I started to learn the best weapon against it was to laugh at their jokes they made at your expense. It's stops being funny or it's not funny the way they thought it might be. In effect, I took away their button. I stopped getting mad about their teasing and derision. Might have been the best lesson I learned in school.

Musk and Trump are bullies. We need to disarm them when we can.
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I also have a problem with some people's take on this. In a sane and reasonable society, a person whose gender is not obvious ought to be able to volunteer a pronoun, or correct an initial missed call, and for everyone else to have the decency to observe them, while the default applies to the majority without explanation. On the other hand, in certain situations, such as on line where one's gender is not clear, I suppose it makes a little more sense in forums and the like where one's identity is not clear, though even here, I don't see why anyone should be made to specify unless they care to. But I don't think it's a great big deal either, and I've never been asked for my pronouns. I think the idea that it's a horrible trend that threatens moral society, or anything more than an annoyance is pretty dumb.
 
acbytesla said:
I don't want to give Musk any real credit. Nor do I want to be insensitive to the real issues that trans people face daily. But a lot of people, maybe even a sizeable majority of people resent being asked what their pronouns are. I'm of the opinion that the more this is forced on the majority, the more the trans community will suffer. It guarantees a backlash. I'm the biggest believer in live and let live. As long as you don't harm me and mine, why the ◊◊◊◊ should I care about your gender identity? If I identify you wrongly, correct me and I'll try and respect you as a person and refer to you as you want me to.

But the need to proactively asking every new person you encounter about their preferred pronoun comes off as unnecessarily absurd. We take our cues from appearances. When someone looks at me and asks me my pronouns, I can't help but think, "are you stupid?" It comes off as a needless redundancy. And more importantly, many people resent the hell out of it.

From my perspective, this only gives straight, average people a reason to hate this group of people they don't understand.
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This is why I offer mine upfront.
 
acbytesla said:
I was bullied severely in elementary school and Jr high. And I had no idea how to deal with it until about 9th grade when I started to learn the best weapon against it was to laugh at their jokes they made at your expense. It's stops being funny or it's not funny the way they thought it might be. In effect, I took away their button. I stopped getting mad about their teasing and derision. Might have been the best lesson I learned in school.
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Oh, you're lucky. I didn't work that out until much later.
 
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