Bus Tesla isn’t in anything looking like a growth phase
2025 total deliveries: 1,636,129
8% decline YOY, Tesla shut down production of Model S & X. Eventually, they will become a pure speculation as a service stock, with zero production. But its cheaper to produce than bitcoin, no energy needs to be expended, runs on pure Musk energy!
Tesla grows in large steps. Next big step is Robotaxis, which is well on its way. After that, robots, for which they have the best real-world AI platform for.
You could say Tesla is a speculation stock as well when they had released the Roadster. Tesla shorters always lose.
Isn't that true more often than not no matter what company you try to short? It's a tough game to play.
> Tesla shorters always lose.
Which Tesla models sell more than the S and X?
I think the mature part of their business is 3/Y, energy storage, and maybe cybertruck, although I also think it's too early to call it because it depends on lower cost cell in house cell production and they only started that recently.
In the near term, the growth part is Semi, cybercab, FSD, lithium cell production, and maybe cybertruck.
In the long term, it's potentially Optimus, more general autonomy, and gigafactories.
https://www.wired.com/2009/10/audi-etron/
That doesn't mean they can't make a mess of things all by themselves. But comparing their infra investments/growth strategy to snake oil when they've gone from nothing to $100 billion/year in 15+ years might be short sighted.
https://www.wired.com/2009/10/audi-etron/
They might might fail, but I wouldn't bet on it. Also cybercab isn't out yet, so any discussion is premature at best.
Cybertruck has been disappointing, but I think a big part of that is cost. They started in house dry 4680 cell/pack production a couple months ago, so we'll see how that goes over the next few years.
Even with China subsidizing cell production and being dominant in the world market, Tesla is still at 150gwh/year compared to 200gwh/year from BYD.
The big question is how the dry cell 4680 packs will perform and how well they can scale production if performance is adequate.
FSD is always a year away, but that's generally OK as long as it keeps improving and there isn't a comparable product in their cost bracket. If someone leapfrogs them, they're done. If not, they might be able to roll everything up all the way through Optimus.
Before finishing this reply, I checked for recent news about the Tesla Semi. I learned that they have a new separate factory (1.7m sq feet!) that has started production and has capacity to produce 50,000 Semis annually. It is next door to the original Gigafactory.
They started producing and selling the Semi in 2022 (after its unveiling in 2017, when they started taking pre-orders) and from everything I've dug up with a bit of Googling it seems they have shipped fewer than 200 trucks by 2025.
We'll see if this new 50k per year factory will actually have customers to ship to, but I wouldn't hold my breath given the current track record.
> The economics of diesel vs electric for heavy haul trucks is a no-brainer. Diesel is much more expensive per kilometer compared to electricity.
The economics you need to look at are dollars/hour/kg delivered. If the battery is too heavy or the charge time too long, the economics turn out much worse. We'll see once real world experiences start being published what it actually does.
> Volume production of the Semi started on April 29, 2026.
You wrote: "If the battery is too heavy". The 2026 version of Tesla Semi is 450kg lighter than 2022 model because they switched the internal voltage from 12W to 48W, which reduces required wire gauges.
You wrote: "The economics you need to look at are dollars/hour/kg delivered." The original idea for a heavy haul electric truck came from within Tesla. Senior execs wanted to know how they could reduce transport costs for parts manufactured in Fremont, Calif to the Gigafactory in Reno, Nevada. They were using heavy haul diesel trucks to move these parts.
> the charge time too long
Note that they never announced that the original run of the Semi would be just tiny. When they unveiled it in 2022, they explicitly said that this was the production version, as opposed to the 2017 concept. They even had a few more (still small 100-200 count) contracts where they kept delaying because they couldn't deliver enough - again suggesting that they were having problems, not intentionally running a pilot program.
> Everything that has actually happened so far with the Semi is that it didn't work as advertised and was deeply unpopular.
> no subsidies for electrification
We're certainly not as far along with the electrification of heavy duty trucks as we are with light duty cars, but the Semi seems fairly popular where it's suitable.
What are you basing this on? Again, they have sold 200 trucks in 4 years. There are some hundreds of thousands of trucks being used in the USA alone. Tesla themselves are claiming they are going to produce (and presumably try to sell) 50k trucks per year. So, by any possible measure so far, Semi has basically 0 adoption. Maybe this is strictly based on production issues and there is huge un serviced demand - I admit this is a possibility, theoretically. But I don't see any reason to actually believe it, and certainly neither the current sales, nor the link you provided, in any way show that this demand will materialize. We'll see soon enough, I guess.
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-massive-order-semi-370-units...
2026 production is estimated to be 5k-15k.
https://sherwood.news/tech/what-we-know-about-teslas-semi-tr...
IIRC, 50k is full production, but it'll take a year or few to ramp up to that.
I think all signs keep pointing to another huge flop by the end of the year, and that Semi will remain a small niche product that various companies order a handful of and never go on to get more.
370 trucks is also still a tiny order, for a truck that supposedly is cheaper to operate than any other on the market, in the midst of an oil crisis no less.
Drone footage shows new builds, but they obviously need to get volume up.
https://youtu.be/WjkCKODoEjM?t=464
Like I mentioned, I think dry cathode 4680 production is key, and I think an earlier video from the same person discuses what they believe is equipment for a dry cathode line that will be set up inside the semi factory.
It took Tesla a year just to get Model 3 up production from nearly nothing over the first few months to 4k+ units/week, and the semi is larger/more complex. I'd be surprised if we saw 500+ units/month by December.
https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-model-3-production-surpasses...
While high oil prices are attractive in terms of investment, if oil companies aren't very confident about making large/fast investments in this climate, I don't EV manufacturers are going to be.
My guess is that Tesla will gradually ramp production in a cost effective way, like they have in the past. It's better to miss a timeline and deliver a cost-effective/competitive product than the other way around.