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I fully divested from Tesla (TSLA), selling all my shares. I’m going to try to explain why. At Electrek, we like to be clear about our biases rather than claim we have none.

I’ve followed Tesla since 2008 and invested in the company after it went public in 2010. I started writing about EVs, and especially Tesla, full-time in 2015.

I invested in the stock mainly because I fully supported Tesla’s mission to accelerate the advent of electric transportation. I thought then, and still do today, that a combination of battery-powered vehicles, with the ethical sourcing of raw battery materials, battery recycling, and renewable electricity production to power electric vehicles, is the only solution to making the transportation sector long-term sustainable while decarbonizing it.

Over the years, I had become a fan of electric vehicles, but I was clueless about how they could become mainstream until I read Elon Musk’s 2006 ‘Tesla secret master plan’. The plan made sense to me: make a high-end electric vehicle that is uncompromising against its gas-powered counterparts. Once you prove that it can be done, make increasingly cheaper and higher-volume EV models with the same approach.

That sounds simple, but it was a difficult task from an engineering perspective. Either way, it seemed to be the only way to meaningfully move the industry toward battery-electric vehicles.

On top of Musk’s blog post, which Tesla has recently removed from its website, I was also convinced by lectures given by Tesla’s original two co-founders, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning.

While these guys have been forgotten by many as part of Tesla’s history, partly due to Musk’s own effort, I credit them as early pioneers of the electric revolution. They were great early communicators of the feasibility of electrifying the auto industry and the necessity to do it.

Not without hurdles, Tesla did it. I am not going to recap Tesla’s entire incredible history, but the company was successful in convincing the world and the auto industry that electric vehicles are here, here to stay, and the future of the industry — something that most were denying less than a decade ago.

Tesla engineered and designed several highly competitive and attractive EV products, managed to ramp them up to millions of units, and forced the rest of the industry to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in electric vehicles.

This was possible due to a lot of different factors. A lot:

  • The vision of Tesla’s early leadership
  • Elon Musk’s early funding and leadership
  • The incredible talent that the mission attracted, including many early employees that became critical to Tesla, like JB Straubel, Drew Baglino, Deepak Ahuja, Franz von Holzhausen, and many more
  • The support of early investors like Antonio Gracias, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, Jeff Skoll, and Steve Jurvetson, among others
  • The support from other automakers, like Daimler and Toyota, who both invested in Tesla at a critical time
  • Government support was a big one, especially California’s support. California regulations, which spread to other states in the US known as ‘CARB states’, were critical in Tesla’s early success and were also factors in Daimler and Toyota’s investments as the automakers made deals with Tesla to help them produce EVs to comply with the state regulations. Later, the federal EV tax credit helped, the IRA helped, the solar tax credit, and more also helped.
  • The support from passionate owners
  • The support from passionate retail investors

I’m most likely forgetting some factors, but these are some of the most important ones, in my opinion.

Many will say that they weren’t equally important, and that might be true, but I seriously doubt that Tesla would have survived if you removed any of these factors.

If you contributed to any of these factors, it’s my personal opinion that you should be proud to have contributed to the electrification of the auto industry.

The Shift

In the last few years, Tesla has become a widely different company. My main issue with this shift is that I no longer feel like the original mission to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport or renewable energy is a priority.

Now, it’s all about AI, self-driving, and robots.

I’m not saying that those things are wrong or that they will not happen. I think all these technologies are important and will transform the world, but it’s simply not what I invested in.

I would also argue that Tesla is not the same company, which makes sense since the company is no longer about its mission.

That’s my main issue. It can’t be more evident than Tesla’s EV deliveries tracking down year-over-year for the first time in a decade, Musk canceling EV programs in favor of Robotaxi, and even the CEO going as far as saying that “Tesla is worth nothing without self-driving.”

My other issue is the leadership. I don’t trust Elon Musk anymore. I think a combination of social media addiction and the cult of personality around him has broken his feedback loop and set him on the wrong path.

I think he disqualified himself from running Tesla or any public company when he started threatening to breach his fiduciary duty to shareholders if he didn’t get 25% control over Tesla.

On top of my distrust of the CEO, I think that his own changes in the last few years, combined with the shift away from the mission, have driven a lot of the rest of the leadership away:

As part of my job, I track the comings and goings of top talent at Tesla very closely, and in the last few years, I’ve seen tons of high-level departures and very few new top hires.

There’s still a lot of great talent at Tesla, I’m not denying that, but I think it’s also clear that there has been a significant talent exodus at Tesla, especially over the last year.

Despite these issues becoming clear to me over the last few years, I remained a shareholder because I naively thought things could go back to normal. I thought maybe Musk would wake up from his social media-fueled madness, or shareholders would give him the boot.

This brings me to my next issue: I am becoming unaligned with the majority of Tesla shareholders.

It couldn’t have been clearer when 73% of them voted to reinstate Musk’s ~$50 billion compensation package without any change after a legal discovery process showed that the board and the CEO didn’t follow due process in getting the original shareholder vote.

Some greedy lawyers and a courageous judge gave Tesla shareholders an opportunity to tell Musk and Tesla’s board that the company deserves proper governance and not be “run like a family business,” as Tesla’s largest independent investor said.

The timing was incredible. The opportunity came right after:

  • Musk threatened shareholders to not build products he himself claimed were critical to Tesla if he didn’t get 25% of the company
  • He sold tens of billions of dollars worth of Tesla shares to buy Twitter, said he would stop selling and yet kept going
  • He entirely lost his mind for a while and challenged Mark Zuckerberg to an MMA fight, then chickened out (I thought this was all a joke at first, and it might have been at first, but it undoubtedly became not a joke)
  • Musk seemed completely uninterested in Tesla for about a year, when he was running Twitter, SpaceX, Neurallink, the Boring Company, and xAI – with many of those companies recruiting from Tesla. Then, he returned and fired 15-20% of the company, including the entire charging team for no good reason.
  • Finally, he canceled the stock options of Tesla employees

The last one was a big one for me. Musk had just canceled the stock options for Tesla employees just a month before the judge’s decision to rescind his own stock option package. Right after the judge’s decision, Musk got interested in Tesla again, started talking about the company more, and, of course, started to fight to get his own stock options back.

In his view, his stock options are essential, but those of Tesla employees? Less so.

I thought that Tesla shareholders would see the hypocrisy in this. They would see that Musk has become a burden at Tesla more than an asset.

Instead, despite all those factors, Tesla shareholders convinced themselves that it was “the right thing to do” to give more money to the wealthiest man in the world. Not only that, they made “lists” of shareholders who said they were voting against the package and told them to go ‘f*ck’ themselves and that they wouldn’t be part of the Tesla community anymore.

I don’t want to be a part of that anymore. I still love many of Tesla’s products and I will keep reporting on them, but I am completely unaligned with the investor base, so I don’t think it makes sense for me to be a shareholder anymore.

Finally, and for full disclosure, the last reason why I sold has nothing to do with Tesla. I see a lot of signs that we are entering a recession. I prefer to be more liquid in those situations, and Tesla is up 10% in two days for seemingly no reason, so it felt like a good time to get out since I don’t feel aligned with shareholders.

I sincerely hope the best for them, though. I know that many of them are well-intentioned people. That said, I recommend caution as I think you are also in the company of low-moral individuals who are poisoning the TSLA community.

FSD side note: what if Tesla does solve self-driving? I am mentioning it because I know this is something that keeps a lot of people in, but there’s no FOMO for this MOFO. If it happens, it happens. I’ll celebrate it and shed a tear for my wallet.

I’m the first to admit that if Tesla can solve self-driving with its approach, it would result in unprecedented value creation, but I am simply not convinced that this will happen anytime soon or before others can solve it.

Why? As a Tesla shareholder, you have two options: take Elon at his word or trust the data.

For the reasons mentioned above, I don’t trust what Elon says, so we can forget about the former.

As for the latter, despite Tesla now openly using miles between interventions as a metric to track FSD progress, the automaker has never released this data. This is a giant red flag.

For the data, we have to rely on our own experience with the system and the experience of others. I’ve had Tesla FSD for years and I’ve been impressed at times and unimpressed other times. The only thing I’m certain of based on my experience is that it is currently nothing close to an unsupervised self-driving system.

We can also use the crowdsourced data, which is limited, but the best we have since Tesla refuses to release its own:

The average of the v12.5.1 versions, the latest to be released, is 32 miles between disengagement and 128 miles between critical disengagement.

This compares to 30 miles between disengagement and 189 miles between critical disengagement for v12.3.6, which is the last FSD version that went into a wide release earlier this year.

Elon is talking about 3x that this month and maybe 6x that next month. He has been consistently wrong about these predictions, but even if he was right, most experts are talking about 400x to 1,000x needed to achieve an unsupervised robotaxi service.

Even with exponential growth, this will take way longer than what Elon is claiming right now. Then, it needs to make that work on the current hardware and the HW3, which is already running a smaller model than HW4.

If the Tesla investment thesis relies on this program to work, which is what Elon himself is saying, it’s a pass for me.

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CNBC Daily Open: Most people don’t start a political party after separation

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CNBC Daily Open: Most people don't start a political party after separation

US President Donald Trump, right, and Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Inc., during a news conference in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, US, on Friday, May 30, 2025.

Francis Chung | Bloomberg | Getty Images

When they find themselves without a significant other, most men finally start living: They pay attention to their personal grooming, hit the gym and discover new hobbies.

What does the world’s richest man do? He starts a political party.

Last weekend, as the United States celebrated its independence from the British in 1776, Elon Musk enshrined his sovereignty from U.S. President Donald Trump by establishing the creatively named “American Party.”

Few details have been revealed, but Musk said the party will focus on “just 2 or 3 Senate seats and 8 to 10 House districts,” and will have legislative discussions “with both parties” — referring to the U.S. Democratic and Republican Parties.

It might be easier to realize Musk’s dream of colonizing Mars than to bridge the political aisle in the U.S. government today.

To be fair, some thought appeared to be behind the move. Musk decided to form the party after holding a poll on X in which 65.4% of respondents voted in favor.

Folks, here’s direct democracy — and the powerful post-separation motivation — in action.

 — CNBC’s Erin Doherty contributed to this report.

What you need to know today

Trump confirms tariffs will kick in Aug. 1. That postpones the deadline by a month, but tariffs could “boomerang” back to April levels for countries without deals. Trump on Friday said letters with “take it or leave it” offers will go out to 12 countries Monday.

U.S. stock futures slipped Sunday. Despite the White House pushing back the return of “reciprocal” tariffs, some investors could be worried trade negotiations would result in higher-than-expected duties. Europe’s Stoxx 600 index dropped 0.48% Friday.

OPEC+ members to increase oil output. Eight members of the alliance agreed on Saturday to hike their collective crude production by 548,000 barrels per day, around 100,000 more than expected.

Elon Musk forms a new political party. On Saturday, the world’s richest man said he has formed a new U.S. political party named the “American Party,” which he claims will give Americans “back your freedom.”

[PRO] Wall Street is growing cautious on European equities. As investors seek shelter from tumult in U.S., the Stoxx 600 index has risen 6.6% year to date. Analysts, however, think the foundations of that growth could be shaky.

And finally…

Ayrton Senna driving the Marlboro McLaren during the Belgian Grand Prix in 1992.

Pascal Rondeau | Hulton Archive | Getty Images

The CEO mindset is shifting. It’s no longer all about winning

https://www.cnbc.com/2025/07/06/the-ceo-mindset-is-shifting-its-no-longer-all-about-winning.html

CEOs today aren’t just steering companies — they’re navigating a minefield. From geopolitical shocks and economic volatility to rapid shifts in tech and consumer behavior, the playbook for leadership is being rewritten in real time.

In an exclusive interview with CNBC earlier this week, McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown outlined a leadership approach centered on urgency, momentum and learning from failure. 

— Spriha Srivastava

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Honda now has an electric Ruckus. Will they bring it to the US?

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Honda now has an electric Ruckus. Will they bring it to the US?

The Honda Ruckus has earned cult status thanks to its minimalist styling, exposed frame, and seemingly endless customizability. The scooter, also known in international markets as the Honda Zoomer, has spent years being seen as a blank canvas for scooter tuners, urban commuters, and anyone who just wanted something simple, small, and kind of weird to zip around town. A few years ago, Honda finally answered the call for an updated version by announcing and producing the “Zoomer e:”, which was an electric version of the Honda Ruckus. So where is it?

When Honda launched the all-electric version of the Ruckus, the Zoomer e:, back in 2023, many fans hoped it was only a matter of time before we saw it quietly glide onto U.S. streets.

But two years later, there’s still no sign of a stateside release, and no indication that Honda plans to change that anytime soon.

The Zoomer e: was first introduced in China in early 2023 alongside two other retro-inspired electrics: the Cub e: and Dax e:.

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The Zoomer e: keeps the stripped-down, industrial look of the classic gas-powered Ruckus, but swaps the 49cc engine for a 400W rear hub motor and a 48V 24Ah battery (around 1.15 kWh).

It was originally given a top speed of a mere 25 km/h (15.5 mph) to keep it street legal as an electric bicycle in its first market of China, where it also came with functional but stubby pedals so riders could pretend it was actually pedalable.

The first version of the electric scooter claimed a range of up to 80–90 km (50–56 miles) from its removable lithium-ion battery, depending on conditions.

An advertisement for a Honda Zoomer e: in the Philippines via Facebook

We’ve since seen the performance bumped up to 40 km/h (25 mph) top speeds when the scooter was introduced into the Philippines market, where the local L1B classification allowed for higher speeds. It’s fairly obvious that the performance can be software-tweaked by Honda depending on the market, though likely to a limit. To achieve speeds much higher than 25 mph, a motor and controller swap may be required, though neither would be complicated.

In other words, the electric Ruckus’ debut revealed an ultra-lightweight, street-legal runabout designed for countries with expansive low-speed e-bike laws. But in the U.S., these types of quasi-e-bikes that are actually scooters are few and far between. The same performance can be had from a $1,000 electric bicycle, and in fact, Class 3 e-bikes in the US can go nearly twice as fast as the original electric Ruckus.

So Honda obviously hasn’t been in a rush to bring its low-spec version of the bike to the US market, where it would be a slower and heavier competitor to the wide range of cheap imported electric bicycles. However, its iconic design and cultural legacy have kept enthusiasm up for riders who have managed to privately import their own models. One Redditor appears to have imported two Honda Zoomer e: models in parts to assemble in the US, while someone else posted a YouTube video of his completely assembled Honda Dax e: model that was launched along the Zoomer e:.

Despite clear consumer interest and a growing market for low-speed electric vehicles, as well as Honda’s own proven interest in growing its electric scooter market, the company hasn’t made any moves to release the Zoomer e: in the US. That’s not surprising since America still lacks a robust electric scooter culture (or even a gasoline scooter culture, for that matter), and anything motorcycle-shaped that doesn’t hit 30+ mph tends to get passed over by mainstream buyers.

But perhaps that could change one day. Technically, bringing the Zoomer e: to the US wouldn’t be a monumental task for Honda. The U.S. is a self-certify country, meaning Honda could design a version that meets federal vehicle safety standards, beef up the motor and controller for higher speeds, and sell it as either a Class 2/3 e-bike, or perhaps more appropriately, as a low-speed motorcycle with a top speed in the 35-45 mph range (55-70 km/h).

With the rise of micromobility, electrification, and growing frustration with car-centric cities, now might actually be the perfect time for a reborn electric Ruckus to hit US roads. But until Honda decides to take that step, American riders will have to keep dreaming – or start importing.

A private import of a Honda Zoomer e: to the US

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BMW ups the ante with the fastest, most powerful electric maxi-scooter

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BMW ups the ante with the fastest, most powerful electric maxi-scooter

BMW Motorrad’s futuristic electric scooter just got its first real refresh since beginning production in 2021. The BMW CE 04, already one of the most capable and stylish electric maxi-scooters on the market, now gets a set of upgraded trim options, new aesthetic touches, and a more robust list of features that aim to make this urban commuter even more appealing to riders looking for serious electric performance on two wheels.

The BMW CE 04 has always stood out for its sci-fi styling and high-performance drivetrain. It’s built on a mid-mounted liquid-cooled motor that puts out 31 kW (42 hp) and 62 Nm of torque. That’s enough to rocket the scooter from 0 to 50 km/h (31 mph) in just 2.6 seconds – quite fast for anything with a step-through frame.

The top speed is electronically limited to 120 km/h (75 mph), making it perfectly capable for city riding and fast enough to hold its own on highway stretches. Range is rated at 130 km (81 miles) on the WMTC cycle, thanks to the 8.9 kWh battery pack tucked low in the frame.

But while the core performance hasn’t changed, BMW’s 2025 update focuses on refining the package and giving riders more options to tailor the scooter to their taste. The new CE 04 is available in three trims: Basic, Avantgarde, and Exclusive.

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The Basic trim keeps things clean and classic with a Lightwhite paint scheme and a clear windshield. It’s subtle, sleek, and very much in line with the CE 04’s clean-lined aesthetic. The Avantgarde model adds a splash of color with a Gravity Blue main body and bright São Paulo Yellow accents, along with a dark windshield and a laser-engraved rim. The top-shelf Exclusive trim is where things get fancy, with a premium Spacesilver metallic paint job, upgraded wind protection, heated grips, a luxury embroidered seat, and its own unique engraved rim treatment.

There are also a few new tech upgrades baked into the options list. Riders can now spec a 6.9 kW quick charger that reduces the 0–80% charge time to just 45 minutes (down from nearly 4 hours with the standard 2.3 kW onboard charger). Tire pressure monitoring, a center stand, and BMW’s “Headlight Pro” adaptive lighting system are also available as add-ons, along with an emergency eCall system and Dynamic Traction Control.

BMW has kept the core riding components in place: a steel-tube chassis, 15-inch wheels, Bosch ABS (with optional ABS Pro), and the impressive 10.25” TFT display with integrated navigation and smartphone connectivity. The under-seat storage still swallows a full-face helmet, and the long, low frame design means the scooter looks like something out of Blade Runner but rides like a luxury commuter.

With these updates, BMW seems to be further cementing the CE 04’s role at the high end of the electric scooter market. It’s not cheap, starting around €12,000 in Europe and around US $12,500 in the US, with prices going up from there depending on configuration. However, the maxi-scooter delivers real motorcycle-grade performance in a package that’s easier to live with for daily riders.

Electrek’s Take

I believe that the CE 04’s biggest strength has always been that it’s not trying to be a toy or a gimmick. It’s a real vehicle. Sure, it’s futuristic and funky looking, but it delivers on its promises. And in a market that’s still surprisingly sparse when it comes to premium electric scooters, BMW has had the lane mostly to itself. That may not last forever, though. LiveWire, Harley-Davidson’s electric spin-off brand, has teased plans for a maxi-scooter-style urban electric vehicle in the coming years, but as of now, it remains something of an undefined future plan.

Meanwhile, BMW is delivering not just a concept bike but a mature, well-equipped, and ready-to-ride electric scooter that keeps improving. For riders who want something faster and more capable than a Class 3 e-bike but aren’t ready to jump to a full-size electric motorcycle, the CE 04 hits a sweet spot. It delivers the performance and capability of a commuter e-motorcycle, yet with the approachability of a scooter. And with these new trims and upgrades, it’s doing it with even more style.

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