What happens when TSLA speculation finally hits reality? It was understandable when growth was 50% yoy, but now its negative growth YOY and PE is 300. Would it take down the entire stock market with it because it unravels the many layers of leverage/margin or would money flow to other speculations?
I'm not sure how much of "the stock market" TSLA makes up, but at current valuation, it makes up 1.9% of VTI (so that's a good estimation). So it could blink out of existence and only take VTI down 2%. (2% is significant of course.) But more likely might be a slow erosion while other components grow, making index funds and "the entire stock market" quite resilient to such a shock.
It appears you're using a Vanguard total market fund. Nothing wrong with that, it's clearly broader than the SP500, but I suspect more folks are familiar with the latter. In that spirit folks might be interested to know it's not much different. If Tesla disappeared tomorrow with would be 2.4% of the SP500.
The financial engineering with the Twitter/X takeover was already pretty bold, but Tesla would probably still be a chunk an order of magnitude larger than that.
Solving autonomy is the hardest technical challenge right now, way harder than creating a frontier LLM AI. Tesla has basically solved it. So to argue sarcastically about Tesla is in my opinion being ignorant. I get the Elon hate, but he is usually correct in his predictions, albeit late
Waymo has solved it. Tesla and BYD probably will solve it. And then everyone else will solve it for the same reason everyone likes having car factories: jobs and tanks.
I say this as someone who was in a Waymo and used Tesla’s latest FSD less than a month ago. One of them still fails spectacularly ungracefully. In the other I can take a nap.
The question I ask every person pitching FSD is whether they would let the FSD take their kid to soccer/bball… practice - still waiting for first yes answer
We have a pretty good idea of what products Apple is likely to release next year.
We no longer have an actual product roadmap of revenue viable product releases from Elon and Tesla. It’s just irrational market exuberance but all the products are being abandoned.
That isn’t really sustainable.
I drive a Y. I’ve said before that Elon was peak Elon when they released the 3/Y and he sent the Roadster into space. Everything since has been a grift of diminishing returns, in terms of reality and actual hardline income.
Grok and xAi are a thing but they mostly cost money right now. I kinda wonder if he isn’t irrationally energetic enough to get something interesting out of Macrohard but he can no longer iterate product releases to save his life.
My other long bet is that Google will win a big chunk of AI (because TPUs and frontier and other income and enterprise sales) and Elon will mostly succeed in outspending OpenAI and plundering their chances (save the magical odds of their Jony Ive bet delivering some kind of post-moat income autonomy). xAI and OpenAI will sink into the deep together.
What exactly has Tesla solved, automation-wise? Not sure what you are specifically referring to? I am being everything except ignorant, I look at things with my own eyes and do not fall for car-salesman tricks. Perhaps I gave him the benefit of the doubt initially but after decade+ of overpromising and underdelivering (underdelivering might be the understatement of the century) forgive me if I do not believe what a car salesman is pitching. I do not hate Elon at all, actually think he's one of the greatest visionaries of our time and probably the greatest salesman in the history of mankind.
Maybe they're starting to realize that the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one? Feels safer to say "look we didn't do well and we're going to not do well for a bit, but we'll get back on our feet" because it could encourage a buying of the dip.
For the life of me I do not understand why the board of directors doesnt remove Musk. Their decline has been very pronounced in 2025 and his antics are largely to blame.
I don't think people have quite realized Cybercab is also a hedge against vehicle sales dropping. Musk can keep the factory at high utilization by pumping out cabs at cost and start collecting rideshare income.
Tesla just announced Cybercab is now in production.
I don't think you quite realize that Cybercab is a long, long way from scaling into a profitable business.
Safety and remote drivers are a huge barrier to achieving this. As is legal liability for accidents. Uber sidesteps this issue completely since it is the driver's responsibility.
Word is that Robotaxi is crashing at a higher rate than human drivers in Austin --- even with safety drivers.
Based on Tesla's stock price and P/E ratio, it would seem most people do believe what you're suggesting, right?
But I am curious what the end-to-end math looks like for all costs incurred in Cybercab rideshare services, maintenance, insurance, repairs, and so forth, and how that calculates out per mile. And of course the volume of rideshares, given the tepid pace most Tesla announcements come to fruition and scale.
The Model 3 / Y scaled better than many predicted, but since then, other promises have gone the other way.
What happens when TSLA speculation finally hits reality? It was understandable when growth was 50% yoy, but now its negative growth YOY and PE is 300. Would it take down the entire stock market with it because it unravels the many layers of leverage/margin or would money flow to other speculations?
I'm not sure how much of "the stock market" TSLA makes up, but at current valuation, it makes up 1.9% of VTI (so that's a good estimation). So it could blink out of existence and only take VTI down 2%. (2% is significant of course.) But more likely might be a slow erosion while other components grow, making index funds and "the entire stock market" quite resilient to such a shock.
It appears you're using a Vanguard total market fund. Nothing wrong with that, it's clearly broader than the SP500, but I suspect more folks are familiar with the latter. In that spirit folks might be interested to know it's not much different. If Tesla disappeared tomorrow with would be 2.4% of the SP500.
> What happens when TSLA speculation finally hits reality?
In all likelihood? xAI buys Tesla. That’s the functional floor.
> Would it take down the entire stock market with it
No.
How low could that floor be, in dollar terms?
The financial engineering with the Twitter/X takeover was already pretty bold, but Tesla would probably still be a chunk an order of magnitude larger than that.
Given that xAI only has a few billion in cash on hand? Very fucking low. It'd bankrupt Elon before reaching that stage though.
AI exuberance is ridiculous, but even xAI could not pony up enough real money to payout Tesla investors for anything but pennies on the dollar.
you wrote TSLA and reality in the same sentence :)
people keep forgetting that TSLA is not a car company! they are AI and humanoid and robots and … company and as such worth 100x current eval :)
...you forgot "terraforming Mars" :)
Solving autonomy is the hardest technical challenge right now, way harder than creating a frontier LLM AI. Tesla has basically solved it. So to argue sarcastically about Tesla is in my opinion being ignorant. I get the Elon hate, but he is usually correct in his predictions, albeit late
> Tesla has basically solved it
Waymo has solved it. Tesla and BYD probably will solve it. And then everyone else will solve it for the same reason everyone likes having car factories: jobs and tanks.
I say this as someone who was in a Waymo and used Tesla’s latest FSD less than a month ago. One of them still fails spectacularly ungracefully. In the other I can take a nap.
The question I ask every person pitching FSD is whether they would let the FSD take their kid to soccer/bball… practice - still waiting for first yes answer
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...
We have a pretty good idea of what products Apple is likely to release next year.
We no longer have an actual product roadmap of revenue viable product releases from Elon and Tesla. It’s just irrational market exuberance but all the products are being abandoned.
That isn’t really sustainable.
I drive a Y. I’ve said before that Elon was peak Elon when they released the 3/Y and he sent the Roadster into space. Everything since has been a grift of diminishing returns, in terms of reality and actual hardline income.
Grok and xAi are a thing but they mostly cost money right now. I kinda wonder if he isn’t irrationally energetic enough to get something interesting out of Macrohard but he can no longer iterate product releases to save his life.
My other long bet is that Google will win a big chunk of AI (because TPUs and frontier and other income and enterprise sales) and Elon will mostly succeed in outspending OpenAI and plundering their chances (save the magical odds of their Jony Ive bet delivering some kind of post-moat income autonomy). xAI and OpenAI will sink into the deep together.
> Tesla has basically solved it
What exactly has Tesla solved, automation-wise? Not sure what you are specifically referring to? I am being everything except ignorant, I look at things with my own eyes and do not fall for car-salesman tricks. Perhaps I gave him the benefit of the doubt initially but after decade+ of overpromising and underdelivering (underdelivering might be the understatement of the century) forgive me if I do not believe what a car salesman is pitching. I do not hate Elon at all, actually think he's one of the greatest visionaries of our time and probably the greatest salesman in the history of mankind.
Previous:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46433480 A Second Year of Decline for Tesla's EVs (electrek.co) 1 day ago (2 comments)
Original headline: Tesla (TSLA) does something unusual ahead of Q4 delivery results
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46436205 Tesla Compiles Downbeat Average Estimates for Its Vehicle Sales (bloomberg.com) ~1 day ago
stock will reach an all time high based on this news..
If they can just get down to 0 sales then costs will drop significantly, that should really boost the stock price.
TSLA going pre-revenue.
Maybe they will even invent post-revenue economics. Or, with the benefit of the doubt, between-revenues economics.
> … in a new “consensus” section on its investor website …
Why would they willingly start publishing numbers that are worse than 3rd party consensus, out of nowhere?
Maybe they're starting to realize that the first step to fixing a problem is admitting you have one? Feels safer to say "look we didn't do well and we're going to not do well for a bit, but we'll get back on our feet" because it could encourage a buying of the dip.
For the life of me I do not understand why the board of directors doesnt remove Musk. Their decline has been very pronounced in 2025 and his antics are largely to blame.
The ridiculous valuation depends on him. Firing him would cause it to plummet back to earth.
It is car comfort which is to blame
I saw 3 Chinese EVs in my mom's apartment complex parking garage. The rest were European. No Tesla's.
What Musk really excels at selling --- hype.
tesla stock: positive lol
The Tesla board should just put a bumper sticker on Musk that said "I bought this before Elon went crazy". Like, how did you not know.
The board doesn't care. They got theirs:
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/13/business/tesla-stock-sale...
https://www.afr.com/technology/life-changing-wealth-stopped-...
Its such a shame. The right CEO could really turn that company around.
I don't think people have quite realized Cybercab is also a hedge against vehicle sales dropping. Musk can keep the factory at high utilization by pumping out cabs at cost and start collecting rideshare income.
Tesla just announced Cybercab is now in production.
I don't think you quite realize that Cybercab is a long, long way from scaling into a profitable business.
Safety and remote drivers are a huge barrier to achieving this. As is legal liability for accidents. Uber sidesteps this issue completely since it is the driver's responsibility.
Word is that Robotaxi is crashing at a higher rate than human drivers in Austin --- even with safety drivers.
https://www.technology.org/2025/11/03/teslas-robotaxi-fleet-...
I don’t think you realize that Tesla has basically solved autonomy. you are obviously not using the latest Tesla version of FSD
Did you forget the /s
Based on Tesla's stock price and P/E ratio, it would seem most people do believe what you're suggesting, right?
But I am curious what the end-to-end math looks like for all costs incurred in Cybercab rideshare services, maintenance, insurance, repairs, and so forth, and how that calculates out per mile. And of course the volume of rideshares, given the tepid pace most Tesla announcements come to fruition and scale.
The Model 3 / Y scaled better than many predicted, but since then, other promises have gone the other way.
How many billions in revenue did cybercab do in 2025 or is it just elons promises that are worth the same as his previous ones?
And everything they've announced has come to pass before...
so we should expect to see it by 2065?