I really hope other EV brands are picking up the lost sales, rather than demand being displaced back to ICE vehicles. Hating the owners of Tesla stock is one thing, but the owners of oil & gas stocks are far worse.
It seems to me, being the kind of person to want an EV and being surrounded by people who do, that the recent downturn is very much about Musk. There are other contributing factors like less competitive offering, much stronger new rivals, price, build quality issues etc. But at it's heart it seems to really be very much because everybody buying EVs thinks Musk and what he stands for awful. He has directly upset his core customer base. I can't think of anyone I know with a Tesla who just brought an EV because it was a car. Teslas weren't utility, they were a statement.
The problem is that we believe this opinion-driven effect is proved by the dip in sales, but the numbers can easily be explained by a simpler reason: the Model Y, which accounts for 2/3 of the company sales, was refreshed in mid-January. Tesla had only 12 days of inventory at the beginning of the quarter. It took 3-5 days for the production lines to get back online and even more time to ramp up. Deliveries of the Model Y started in week 2 of March (at least in Europe). And it takes time to reach out most states/markets. Tesla moves the fastest in China, and we're seeing very good sales trend: close to full volume and they should reach ~130,000 sales, as much as Q1 2024 despite the production lines being down for weeks.
It's one (good) thing to oppose Musk and his disregard for Tesla's mission (accelerate the transition to renewable energy) but it's a mistake to explain a drop in deliveries a sales issue when the missing cars just couldn't be produced due to planned downtime.
It's a convenient theory, but if the refresh were the only reason for the dip in sales, Trump wouldn't be on the Whitehouse lawn begging people to buy Teslas, like the corrupt car salesman he is.
> While their European production lines were down because of the switch to the new Y "Juniper" version?
Prediction: the new cars will sell worse than the current ones. With an old Tesla model, you can plausibly deny your connection to Musk. With a new one you can't.
The most popular car colours are black, white and grey. People generally don't buy opinionated cars, even if we like looking at them. Teslas are a politically-opinionated car. That restricts their market.
