Tesla suffers worst quarter since 2022 as deliveries tumble
127 comments
·April 2, 2025connicpu
IgorPartola
There was a comedian talking about how Musk is now selling trucks after selling eco friendly sedans to anyone who will buy one. People who drive Real Manly Trucks in this country generally don’t jive with the eco friendly crowd so he has to act more like them.
Of course that’s a humorous take, not a serious one but I do wonder how much of that is a part of his thinking.
I do think there is a chance he just runs Tesla into the ground and there definitely is an opportunity for another company to come in and position themselves as quality electric vehicles without the politics.
square_usual
I don't buy the idea that Musk is doing this as some sort of branding play. I think he genuinely believes in what he says; his beliefs have just shifted over the past few years, notably after COVID.
toomuchtodo
His trans daughter Vivian is what flipped him. "Woke mind virus." For someone trying to have as many kids as possible (allegedly boys prioritized) and the controlling personality type, he takes great offense, as if this is a mortal sin against him. He also does not act in a healthy way when his attempts to exert control over others fails. Haven't heard much from him since his $25M in Wisconsin didn't buy him the election.
https://www.lemonde.fr/en/international/article/2024/08/13/e... | https://archive.today/LsqF9
https://www.wsj.com/tech/elon-musks-quest-to-make-men-great-... | https://archive.today/BgTwJ
morgengold
Speaking of COVID. There is a weird story about Musk betting $1 million dollars on low death cases of COVID against his former friend Sam Harris.
After Elon was spectacularly wrong he just canceled the friendship. Also forgot to pay the $1 million dollars.
FireBeyond
Excluding SuperPACs, Musk's political contributions are public. Like most of the UHNW types, he donates to both political parties. But going back to pre-Tesla days Musk has NEVER donated more to the Democrats than the Republicans. In fact, he usually donates at about a ratio of 10:1 towards Republicans.
Musk isn't interested in liberal/ecological/whatever agendas and never has been, it's a means to an end. Even his libertarian bent... go on shows/podcasts and smoke weed because hey, he's a libertarian. But work at Tesla? Better piss clean or you're fired.
beAbU
> there definitely is an opportunity for another company to come in and position themselves as quality electric vehicles without the politics.
Nissan Renault Hyundai Kia MG BYD
Honestly, there is no "opportunity" for an incumbent alternative to step in here, there are literal dozens of alternatives available right now for every taste and preference, sans any of the fascist political connotations.
palmotea
> That's what happens when a CEO associates themselves tightly with their brand and then publicly takes extremely polarizing political action that half the voter base considers antithetical to their values.
More generally: this is what happens when someone in power gets so arrogant they totally lose sight about what they can and can't do, and what the consequences of their actions will be.
I'm reminded of this (about Musk), which is probably the root cause of his arrogance: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/07/opinion/ezra-klein-podcas...:
> He has people around him who are just enablers. All these Silicon Valley people do. All his minions. And they are minions — they’re all lesser than he is in some fashion, and they all look up to him. They’re typically younger. They laugh at his jokes. Sometimes when he apologizes for a joke, which is not very often, he’ll say that the people around him thought it was funny.
usefulcat
This is by far the most believable explanation I've heard.
tzs
> [...] and then publicly takes extremely polarizing political action that half the voter base considers antithetical to their values.
It's worse than that. A significant fraction of the half that doesn't consider his political actions antithetical to their values consider EVs antithetical to their values.
toomuchtodo
There still remains substantial value destruction ahead of us.
actionfromafar
Half, or more, of their Total Addressable Market, even.
simonsarris
Note that Rivian deliveries (numbers came out today also) fell much more, percentagewise. Also worth pondering the scale.
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/02/rivian-reports-fall-in-first...
> Rivian reported a 36% decline in first-quarter deliveries on Wednesday, as the electric-vehicle maker grapples with weak demand, sending its shares down more than 2% at the open.
> The company delivered 8,640 vehicles in the quarter ended March 31, down from 13,588 a year earlier. The deliveries, however, exceeded analysts’ average estimate of 8,200, according to Visible Alpha.
neogodless
Meanwhile...
> General Motors' sales rose 17% in the first quarter of 2025
> Electric vehicle sales nearly doubled in the quarter, rising 94% to 31,887, making GM the second-largest seller of electric vehicles in the U.S. behind Tesla.
Of course GM still sells way fewer (EDIT: electric) cars than Tesla!
(But the gap is closing.)
> Toyota Motor North America (TMNA) today reported March 2025 U.S. sales of 231,335 vehicles, up 7.7 percent on a volume basis and up 11.8 percent on a daily selling rate (DSR) basis versus March 2024.
> Sales of electrified vehicles for the first quarter totaled 288,796, up 39.6 percent on a volume basis and up 43.3 percent on a DSR basis representing 50.6 percent of total sales volume.
(That includes hybrids, which they sell a lot of.)
zfg
> Of course GM still sells way fewer cars than Tesla!
GM sells more cars than Tesla, fewer EVs.
neogodless
Thanks, fixed!
jsight
It is a tough environment for selling $70k+ trucks and SUVs like that. As nice as they are, vehicles like the EV9 and Lightning aren't much worse and are much cheaper.
m463
Didn't lucid sales rise?
https://electrek.co/2025/02/04/lucid-lcid-ev-sales-climb-50-...
telotortium
The parent is talking about Rivian. Lucid sales are less than 10% of Rivian.
I guess it shows that not literally every electric car maker is suffering, but the applicability to the wider market is limited (Lucid delivered less than 1,000 units total, even after their increase).
pzo
Why this got flagged @dang ?
On the other side it's weird that stock of tesla today are up ~5% even with this news.
johnnyanmac
Been speculated for a while there's, at best, some very proactive Tesla defenders trying to flag any bad news. And at worst someone who made bots to automate such a process. If you're stalking new, you only need a dozen or so flags to trip off the auto-flagging.
Dang hasn't really commented anything supporting nor negating such a theory.
The stock up probably comes more from rumors (nothing explicitly stated except offhand by trump) that Elon is stepping down as head of DOGE. translation: they are making use of some contract terms for Musk to GTFO for both their sakes.
mizzao
I officially use https://news.ycombinator.com/active as a bookmark now, which is the same as the front page except shows all the posts hidden by the flag squads.
froggertoaster
Is this primarily because Elon has become an extremely divisive figure? Asking authentically. What other problems in the market might be causing this?
phillipcarter
It's likely a number of factors as well -- stagnant products, manufacturing issues, competitive pressure -- but it's hard to deny how omnipresent his figure has been, and that the primary audience for EVs doesn't like his efforts to dismantle the federal government and fire everyone.
Smeevy
Don't forget the spectre of economic uncertainty since nobody knows what anything will cost next week. People hold off on big purchases when they're scared.
rtkwe
That's the main explanation I can see, all other EV car sellers in the US are growing their sales [0] it appears it appears to be specific to Tesla and the main thing that's changed there is Musk and his plunge towards the far right of US politics.
[0] https://cleantechnica.com/2025/04/02/us-carmakers-crush-it-o...
jayd16
Tesla promises have not materialized. Beyond big promises there hasnt been much as far as new improvements to speak of. Other good, cheaper options hit the market.
dns_snek
Everything else aside, even if Tesla had the best & cheapest EVs, and the people behind it weren't politically abhorrent, I still wouldn't buy one because everything I've heard about their service has been terrible. People are waiting for months to get a part delivered and their car serviced.
MOARDONGZPLZ
More competition in the US market perhaps? A number of my coworkers and friends have purchased new EVs over the past year and all but one of them went with a car other than Tesla. Mostly Polestars, one Lucid.
jamalaramala
Chinese EV makers are very popular in Europe and Asia.
rm_-rf_slash
I understand a significant portion of Tesla’s sales are in China and there is fierce competition from homegrown firms like BYD.
TFA mentions this but doesn’t get into much detail.
redox99
China is actually one of the markets Tesla is performing best at.
NickC25
As someone who has done biz with China (specifically with Tsinghua University) - the key phrase is "for now". China's strength in economics is to take what works elsewhere, bring it to China to understand what about that product or service works domestically, and then China-fy / reverse engineer what's great about the product, and then get Party backing to scale it in order to beat the foreign competitor. This is their default strategy and no matter how many factories Tesla might have in China now, it's not a certainty that those factories or technologies will be in Tesla's hands in 3-5 years from now.
Specific to the automobile industry, remember what VW's mistake in China was. Long story short: they taught the Chinese how to really build and scale auto production. The Chinese learned, and then shut VW out of the domestic Chinese market once they had a strong Chinese competitor - they were able to scale and produce cars for significantly cheaper.
neom
Bloomberg Business TV said this morning it's structural and has been going on much longer than Elons involvement in politics. They spent at least 10 minutes discussing all the various market pressures, china, europe etc etc. I came away thinking this was going to happen regardless. (but imo he's silly for taking an eye off his business interests).
root_axis
Nothing is ever as simple as a single cause, but we can be sure thst negative PR is going to impact sales, as it's basically a form of reverse advertising, and unlike most car brands, Tesla relies almost entirely on word-of-mouth rather than traditional ad campaigns. Thus, I would expect an outsized impact from the backlash.
graycrow
This is largely due to the Model Y refresh. March numbers are pretty strong, even in Europe. Not that I support his behavior, especially his position on Ukraine, but facts are facts.
bryanlarsen
If Tesla was production constrained, this would be significant. ~3 weeks less production in a quarter is a lot.
However, Tesla is not production constrained. There is essentially no delivery backlog for the new Model Y; essentially everybody that wanted one got one. Being able to make more cars in the quarter wouldn't have significantly affected deliveries.
jsight
Despite an upcharge, there was virtually no inventory and the regular priced versions won't launch until tomorrow (probably). Lots of people with orders weren't able to take delivery in March. Model Y was clearly supply constrained for the quarter.
gamblor956
The facts are that Tesla sales dropped even more in Europe than they did in the U.S. even after the Model Y refresh hit local markets.
piva00
I can't find the March numbers, care to share a source?
m463
I think the older Model Ys with "normal" headlights were nicer looking, and they had turn signal and drive-select stalks.
josefritzishere
At a normal company, as CEO, Elon's behavior and performance would get him removed the the board. I suspect it will eventually. He's on a real Howard Hughes trajectory for loss of sanity. It's kind of sad really.
belter
The board? You mean his childhood friend, his accountant, his brother, and his divorce lawyer? :-)
"As Tesla tanks, Musk’s hand-picked board chair is doing just fine" - https://www.reuters.com/investigations/tesla-tanks-musks-han...
"Elon Musk's Divorce Lawyer Is His General Counsel at Tesla" - https://www.findlaw.com/legalblogs/in-house/elon-musks-divor...
johnnyanmac
Well even his family is pulling out: https://www.investors.com/news/tesla-stock-elon-musk-brother...
jsight
I get why people think this, but the comments of the protestors make it clear that this wouldn't help. They'd keep going for as long as he's a shareholder, as the intent is to personally hurt his financial returns.
Mere removal from the company doesn't change their stated objections.
johnnyanmac
I think he's majority shareholder or something, so that's hard to do. I think we'll simply see more top investors start to cash out over the year so they can profit before they make any big statements.
aftbit
>The US group, led by Elon Musk, delivered 336,681 cars in the first quarter, far fewer than the 390,000 forecast by analysts and the 387,000 it delivered in the same period last year.
That's a 13% decline in sales. They delivered 3740 cars per day (assuming 90 days in quarter), instead of the 4300/day they delivered last year or the 4333/day they forecast.
null
Mr_Bees69
gift link?
nanna
In the 1920s or '30s Henry Ford stopped or at least slowed with the antisemitic bile that he was spewing in his newspaper The Dearborn Independent, which put Hitler's Mein Kampf to shame and earned him the only favourable American mention in Hitler's book, because it was impacting sales of his cars. The question is whether the same might be the case for Musk, but his wealth seems decoupled from his cars, so it's not going to happen.
dzhiurgis
I'll remind only leftist media calls him nazi and he's been persecuted by "antifa" for at least a decade.
If you fail to see there's massive amount of propaganda then I'm sorry for you.
johnnyanmac
I see you subscribe to the "roman salute" huh? I guess my eyes are propoganda if we're in 1984 being told to not believe what we view.
He never rebuked it and in fact doubled down with jokes. So I'll call a spade a spade unless something changes.
dzhiurgis
He actually did in Rogans podcast. But also, why should he rebuke ridiculous claims?
And once again, he has been persecuted by antifa basically forever.
spacedcowboy
[flagged]
bryanlarsen
do you expect productive, meaningful commentary? A Musk pile on is lots of fun (I've contributed today and enjoyed it), but I don't think we're going to learn anything from comments from either side.
johnnyanmac
I learned Musk bros are going to flag even simple stock news these days. They must be desperate.
jlongr
Eeek, someone is critical of my fascist idol!! Better censor them!!!!!
That's what happens when a CEO associates themselves tightly with their brand and then publicly takes extremely polarizing political action that half the voter base considers antithetical to their values.