Seems like another way to avoid the death spiral trap Elon has set up for himself.<p>- Bought Twitter with Tesla stock as collateral<p>- Tesla faces falling EV sales and external competition<p>- Unionisation pressures, declining product quality, Elon losing his reach and audience's good graces<p>- Stock price falling too low can trigger a margin call on his loans<p>- Starts actual marketing, price cuts<p>- Price cuts chew into profits, stock falls<p>- Announces "real FSD" for 100th time<p>- Announces "robotaxis"<p>- Layoffs happening<p>While this might end up with a small bump in the price to avoid the margin calls, it might also end up being part of a downward spiral for Tesla in the end, depending on where and what they are cutting.<p>It would be unfortunate to see Tesla crash after everything due to his wish to buy Twitter and I think we might see him ousted in the following year or so. Before it was "Elon is Tesla's marketing driver so we can't kick him out", nowadays it seems way less so with him being more of a detractor.
The coming Chinese EV storm will cause Tesla to struggle. All car manufacturers will struggle.<p>I wonder if the Chinese will pull a Toyota (high quality, and cheap) or if they’ll end up being a different flavor
It's a shame, it feels like we're moving backwards in some ways. Like in Europe, Tesla sales are down and we are introducing huge tariffs on electric vehicles from China, meanwhile the German Greens are happy pushing for more coal and lignite burning (since they opposed nuclear power, and now Russian gas).<p>It's hard to believe that the self-driving tech will develop well at this rate.
If this had happened to a company on the other side of the culture war, Elon would have responded with "Go woke, go broke"<p><a href="https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aelonmusk%20woke%20broke&src=typed_query" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3Aelonmusk%20woke%20broke&...</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770118906318856513" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1770118906318856513</a><p><a href="https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1768713092693721230" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1768713092693721230</a>
No Datadome Javascript:<p><a href="https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-lay-off-more-10-094817820.html" rel="nofollow">https://uk.finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-lay-off-more-10-0948...</a>
Electric car market seems to have shifted somehow, even seems we’re seeing some backtracking regarding ICE cars as demand for EVs seems a bit stagnant. I’m still holding out, luckily I don’t need a car as buying an EV seems like a great way to burn money now (but I guess that applies to new cars in general, prices are ridiculous).