The Tesla (TSLA) dilemma: company is cooked with Musk, but stock crashes without him
Tesla currently finds itself in quite a dilemma: the company’s core business is in free fall, with Elon Musk at the helm.
However, now that Tesla’s stock is firmly in the “meme stock” category, it would likely crash without him pumping it.
Nothing can prove that Tesla is a meme stock that trades on vibes more than the stock going up 20% this week after it reported its worst earnings in years and came in way below expectations.
Tesla’s earnings trends point to a company in a difficult situation:
Tesla’s vehicle deliveries have been declining since 2024, along with its automotive gross margins, despite a rise in EV sales globally.
Last quarter, Tesla would have lost money if it weren’t for the sale of regulatory credits, despite energy storage sales surging.
Energy storage is Tesla’s only silver lining. Still, the company has warned that it could become problematic since it relies on inexpensive Chinese battery cells, which are now subject to tariffs. Furthermore, the competition is intensifying with companies like CATL and BYD, which supply battery cells to Tesla’s energy storage products, having launched competing products.
With Tesla’s EV sales dropping, in part due to Musk alienating half of Tesla’s customer base, and in part due to his leadership pushing for autonomous driving rather than a more diverse vehicle lineup, the automaker is in clear need of new leadership.
Musk is becoming too political and controversial to be the face of a consumer product company, and he is splitting his time with six different projects, making significant mistakes in the process.
Under Musk, Tesla has launched a single new vehicle in the last 5 years, the Cybertruck, and it has been a total commercial flop. He has been consistently wrong about when Tesla would solve self-driving for the last 10 years. Most CEOs would have been fired by now.
At this point, it is difficult to argue that Tesla’s business would not benefit from new leadership.
However, there is one aspect of Tesla that would not benefit from Musk leaving: Tesla’s stock. It currently trades at an insane 165 price-to-earnings ratio amid declining earnings.
That’s unheard of in the auto industry, and it is also extremely rare in the tech industry, in which Musk attempts to position Tesla to justify such a high P/E even though most of its earnings are still tied to selling cars.
The only reason Tesla is currently able to maintain this is the fact that there are a surprising number of people who believe Musk when he says that Tesla is on the verge of solving “real-world AI”, which refers to self-driving vehicles and humanoid robots.
That’s it.
Tesla’s stock price has basically become an index of how much investors trust Musk’s claims about Tesla’s self-driving and robotic efforts – because no one can argue that it has anything to do with Tesla’s core business and fundamentals since those are in free fall and would justify Tesla trading at about a fifth of its current valuation.
Therefore, the stock price relies on people believing that Musk, who has been consistently wrong about Tesla solving self-driving and never releasing any data to prove otherwise, is right this time about Tesla being on the verge of solving the problem and ahead of the competition.
If Musk leaves, those people would likely take the stock with them, resulting in a potential crash.
Electrek’s Take
That’s quite the conundrum.. for some. For me, you save the business and not the stock. The stock will eventually come down at some point anyway. The business of selling millions of EVs is actually good for the world and employs about 100,000 people.
Musk has been able to keep things going for a long time, to his credit, with the hope that Tesla will eventually catch up to his hype, but it looks like the most likely outcome is that he can only keep things going until other companies start to scale their autonomous driving efforts.
Waymo is already completing 250,000 autonomous rides per week in the US. Musk has been able to make his cult ignore that by claiming that it’s not scalable, even though those weekly rides have more than doubled in the last year.
In China, Baidu, WeRide, PonyAI, and others are already becoming mainstream.
As those efforts become more popular and the number of people who use them regularly reaches the millions, it will become harder for Musk to present Tesla as a leader in autonomy while carrying a decade of missed deadlines.
I think Tesla has a real shot at solving general autonomy, but I believe it will happen closer to 2027-2028, with a new hardware suite. By that time, Tesla will have plenty of established competition, in addition to Waymo, and it will carry the significant liability of having promised self-driving capabilities on millions of HW3-4 vehicles that it cannot deliver.
This is not a great situation, and it’s entirely because of Musk.
However, he has his position at Tesla secured. Even Tesla shareholders who have serious doubts about Tesla’s self-driving efforts don’t want to oust him on the off-chance that he might be right. This points to most of Tesla’s value currently lies in the mystique of Musk being a “super genius.”
You often see it on social media. When someone criticizes Musk or Tesla, instead of providing a counterargument to the criticism, Musk fans will simply attack the messenger and ask: “Who are you to question Musk? How many rockets have you landed?”
This is cult behavior. You can’t question the leader. It’s a perilous situation that rarely has a happy outcome.
Musk is smart, and his companies have achieved incredible things under his leadership, but that doesn’t mean he is a super genius who can’t make mistakes.
He has been wrong many times and has lied on numerous occasions. He has proven himself willing to lie and mislead people for his own benefit. That’s not someone you should put your trust in. People, especially in the US, tends to assign a ton of value to someone who has amassed wealth.
I am not someone who automatically thinks someone is bad because they are a billionaire. However, I also know that if you are somewhat intelligent, connected to wealthy individuals, and have low morals, it is fairly easy to accumulate wealth. I think Musk fits this category with a messiah complex on top of it.
I am curious to know if anyone sees a way out of this conundrum for Tesla at this point. As a fan of Tesla’s original mission to accelerate the advancement of electric transportation, I believe Tesla can still contribute to that goal, but not with Musk at the helm.
Yet, the only people who can kick Musk out are Tesla shareholders, and as described above, they are incentivized not to push him out because it would likely lead to a significant decline in Tesla’s stock price.
What can be done? I’ll hang out in the comments to see if you have ideas.
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Tesla is now pulling on all the demand levers in the US with new discounts and incentives as sales are crashing due to brand damage.
Over the last few days, Tesla has introduced a series of new discounts and incentives in the US.
Previously, Tesla had a program to offer a $1,000 discount for US military personnel, but the automaker has now extended it to “students, teachers, first-responders, military veterans, retirees, active-duty members, their spouses, and surviving spouses.”
The update incentive applies to Tesla’s entire lineup of new vehicles.
Tesla also introduced a new incentive for Lyft drivers. They are eligible to $1,000 in Tesla credits when taking delivery and $1,000 from Lyft if they complete 100 deliveries by July 13.
The automaker wrote on its website:
Eligible Lyft drivers who purchase a new Tesla vehicle can receive $1,0001 in Tesla Credits upon taking delivery and a $1,000 incentive from Lyft after completing 100 trips on or before July 13, 2025. Tesla Credits can be used toward Supercharging, a new Tesla vehicle, service appointments or select Tesla Shop or upgrade purchases. Offer available to active Lyft drivers in good standing.
Tesla also started reaching out to Cybertruck reservation holders to let them know that they only have a month before they can’t take advantage of lower FSD prices.
The automaker wrote in the email:
As an early reservation holder, you have access to a reserved Full Self-Driving (Supervised) price of $7,000. To keep this price, you’ll need to take delivery by June 15, 2025. After June 15, 2025, FSD (Supervised) will be available at the latest price, which is currently $8,000.
When Tesla started taking Cybertruck reservations in 2019, Tesla said that by reserving the truck, reservation holders were locking in the then $7,000 price for its ‘Full Self-Driving’ package.
It looks like Tesla is now putting a deadline to take advantage of this deal to boost orders of the Cybertruck, which has proven to be a commercial flop.
On top of all these incentives, Tesla is also subsidizing interest rates to offer 0% financing on Model 3, and 1.99% financing on Model Y.
All those incentives in place point to Tesla having significant demand issues in the US.
Tesla’s global sales came about 50,000 units below expectations, which the company blamed on the production changeover of Model Y, its most popular model by far.
However, production is now back up to normal in Q2, and Tesla is clearly having issues selling the updated Model Y.
The automaker has no backlog of orders for the new Model Y and vehicles are already piling up in inventory:
We reported last week that Tesla employees wrote an open letter calling for Elon Musk’s removal as CEO due to the damage he has caused to the brand.
In the letter, the employees confirmed Tesla’s demand issues, saying that thousands of new Model Ys are now sitting unsold on lots in the US.
Electrek’s Take
This is not a great sign for Tesla. These are end-of-quarter level incentives when we are just about halfway through the quarter.
And that’s just in the US, where Tesla’s sale performance is more opaque.
In Europe and China, where we know for a fact that Tesla is struggling with sales, the automaker is virtually offering 0% financing on its entire lineup.
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The electric box van experts at Harbinger announced a new, EREV version of their medium-duty van that pairs a big battery with a small, gas-powered ICE engine to offer fleets that are hesitant to electrify a massive 500 miles of autonomy on a single charge + tank.
The American truck brand is putting its latest $100 million raise to good use, developing a cost-competitive EREV chassis that marries a low-emissions 1.4L inline four-cylinder gas engine with a close coupled 800V generator sending power to a 140 or 175 kW battery for up to 500 miles of fully loaded range. More than enough, in other words, to meet the needs of just about any fleet you can think of.
That’s a good thing, too, because medium-duty trucks are put to work in just about any circumstance you can think of, as well – a fact that’s not lost on Harbinger.
“Medium-duty vehicles serve an incredibly diverse range of applications, just like the fleets and operators that rely on them, ” explains John Harris, Co-founder and CEO, Harbinger. “There are some fleets whose needs simply can’t be met with a purely electric vehicle—and we recognize that. Our hybrid is designed for use cases and routes that go beyond what an all-electric system typically supports. The series hybrid delivers the benefits of an electric drivetrain, along with the added confidence of a range extender when needed.”
In addition an up-front cost that should make it an attractive prospect for fleet buyers, the new Harbinger EREV pack performance that should made it attractive for its drivers, too. The new chassis’ electric powertrain delivers 440 hp and 1,140 lb-ft of tq for quick acceleration into traffic and smooth running, even under load. Charging performance is also quick, with the ability to get the big battery from 10-80% charge in just under an hour on a 150 kW port.
You’ve heard all this before
If that sounds familiar, that’s because it is. This medium-duty chassis was first shown last year, making its debut under a Thor Class A motorhome concept that we covered in September. That vehicle promised the same great EREV range and capability to a market that values independence and spontaneity more than most, and bringing those values to a medium-duty commercial market that’s lapping up “messy middle” propaganda from Shell NACFE is just smart business.
The new Harbinger chassis’ batteries are manufactured by Panasonic. No word on who is making the 1.4L ICE generator, but my money’s on the GM SGE four-cylinder last seen in the gas-powered Chevy Spark. You guys are smart, though – if you have a better guess who the supplier might be, let us know in the comments.
SOURCE | IMAGES: Harbinger.
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Environment
Trump wants coal to power AI data centers. The tech industry may need to make peace with that for now
President Donald Trump wants to revive the struggling coal industry in the U.S. by deploying plants to power the data centers that the Big Tech companies are building to train artificial intelligence.
Trump issued an executive order in April that directed his Cabinet to find areas of the U.S. where coal-powered infrastructure is available to support AI data centers and determine whether the infrastructure can be expanded to meet the growing electricity demand from the nation’s tech sector.
Trump has repeatedly promoted coal as power source for data centers. The president told the World Economic Forum in January that he would approve power plants for AI through emergency declaration, calling on the tech companies to use coal as a backup power source.
“They can fuel it with anything they want, and they may have coal as a backup — good, clean coal,” the president said.
Trump’s push to deploy coal runs afoul of the tech companies’ environmental goals. In the short-term, the industry’s power needs may inadvertently be extending the life of existing coal plants.
Coal produces more carbon dioxide emissions per kilowatt hour of power than any other energy source in the U.S. with the exception of oil, according to the Energy Information Administration. The tech industry has invested billions of dollars to expand renewable energy and is increasingly turning to nuclear power as a way to meet its growing electricity demand while trying to reduce carbon dioxide emissions that fuel climate change.
For coal miners, Trump’s push is a potential lifeline. The industry has been in decline as coal plants are being retired in the U.S. About 16% of U.S. electricity generation came from burning coal in 2023, down from 51% in 2001, according to EIA data.
Peabody Energy CEO James Grech, who attended Trump’s executive order ceremony at the White House, said “coal plants can shoulder a heavier load of meeting U.S. generation demands, including multiple years of data center growth.” Peabody is one of the largest coal producers in the U.S.
Grech said coal plants should ramp up how much power they dispatch. The nation’s coal fleet is dispatching about 42% of its maximum capacity right now, compared to a historical average of 72%, the CEO told analysts on the company’s May 6 earnings call.
“We believe that all coal-powered generators need to defer U.S. coal plant retirements as the situation on the ground has clearly changed,” Grech said. “We believe generators should un-retire coal plants that have recently been mothballed.”
Tech sector reaction
There is a growing acknowledgment within the tech industry that fossil fuel generation will be needed to help meet the electricity demand from AI. But the focus is on natural gas, which emits less half the CO2 of coal per kilowatt hour of power, according the the EIA.
“To have the energy we need for the grid, it’s going to take an all of the above approach for a period of time,” Kevin Miller, Amazon’s vice president of global data centers, said during a panel discussion at conference of tech and oil and gas executives in Oklahoma City last month.
“We’re not surprised by the fact that we’re going to need to add some thermal generation to meet the needs in the short term,” Miller said.
Thermal generation is a code word for gas, said Nat Sahlstrom, chief energy officer at Tract, a Denver-based company that secures land, infrastructure and power resources for data centers. Sahlstrom previously led Amazon’s energy, water and sustainability teams.
Executives at Amazon, Nvidia and Anthropic would not commit to using coal, mostly dodging the question when asked during the panel at the Oklahoma City conference.
“It’s never a simple answer,” Amazon’s Miller said. “It is a combination of where’s the energy available, what are other alternatives.”
Nvidia is able to be agnostic about what type of power is used because of the position the chipmaker occupies on the AI value chain, said Josh Parker, the company’s senior director of corporate sustainability. “Thankfully, we leave most of those decisions up to our customers.”
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said there are a broader set of options available than just coal. “We would certainly consider it but I don’t know if I’d say it’s at the top of our list.”
Sahlstrom said Trump’s executive order seems like a “dog whistle” to coal mining constituents. There is a big difference between looking at existing infrastructure and “actually building new power plants that are cost competitive and are going to be existing 30 to 40 years from now,” the Tract executive said.
Coal is being displaced by renewables, natural gas and existing nuclear as coal plants face increasingly difficult economics, Sahlstrom said. “Coal has kind of found itself without a job,” he said.
“I do not see the hyperscale community going out and signing long term commitments for new coal plants,” the former Amazon executive said. (The tech companies ramping up AI are frequently referred to as “hyperscalers.”)
“I would be shocked if I saw something like that happen,” Sahlstrom said.
Coal retirements strain grid
But coal plant retirements are creating a real challenge for the grid as electricity demand is increasing due to data centers, re-industrialization and the broader electrification of the economy.
The largest grid in the nation, the PJM Interconnection, has forecast electricity demand could surge 40% by 2039. PJM warned in 2023 that 40 gigawatts of existing power generation, mostly coal, is at risk of retirement by 2030, which represents about 21% of PJM’s installed capacity.
Data centers will temporarily prolong coal demand as utilities scramble to maintain grid reliability, delaying their decarbonization goals, according to a Moody’s report from last October. Utilities have already postponed the retirement of coal plants totaling about 39 gigawatts of power, according to data from the National Mining Association.
“If we want to grow America’s electricity production meaningfully over the next five or ten years, we [have] got to stop closing coal plants,” Energy Secretary Chris Wright told CNBC’s “Money Movers” last month.
But natural gas and renewables are the future, Sahlstrom said. Some 60% of the power sector’s emissions reductions over the past 20 years are due to gas displacing coal, with the remainder coming from renewables, Sahlstrom said.
“That’s a pretty powerful combination, and it’s hard for me to see people going backwards by putting more coal into the mix, particularly if you’re a hyperscale customer who has net-zero carbon goals,” he said.
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