Bulwark Takes - Elon is Destroying his Tesla Empire!

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Tesla sales are tanking, stock is plummeting and resale value going down. Their market share is falling and getting more competition from BYD. Tim and JVL discuss the mess that Elon made.

Hey guys, it's Tim Miller from The Bulwark here with brand expert, author of the Triad newsletter, The JVL. What's happening, JVL? Hey, buddy, it's a great day. Tesla's diving again. Yeah, when you got a brand in crisis, especially one that is run by one of the most loathsome people on the planet, we got to pop on and chat about it. This is what caught my eye. There are two stories that peaked to my eye about Tesla over the last 48 hours. I want to get your take on. The first one here comes from an analyst report from JP Morgan. And again, this is not some political take.

It's not some hot take. This is finance guys trying to assess the health of a company. And they wrote this about Tesla. We struggled to think of anything analogous in the history of the automotive industry in which a brand has lost so much value so quickly. And I think we're coming up here on a report that's going to show Tesla sales down unprecedented levels. So what do you make of that? It's amazing. I mean, if you remember the before times, Tim, brands used to freak out if there was any perceived bias. Michael Jordan famously was asked, why don't you participate in politics? And he was like, Republicans buy

sneakers too. And Elon Musk's basically gone on a tear where he is told at least half of America that he hates them. Like he really, really hates them and believes they need to be subjugated. And what's really weird is that that half of America also happens to be the half that is most predisposed to buying electric vehicles. And so this has turned out to be very, very bad for Tesla sales. In Europe, where he has been monkeying around European politics and boosting the AFD, the neo-Nazi party, Tesla sales fell off a cliff. In America, the largest market is California. Tesla sales there are down, I want to say it's 40% over the last three months uh tesla i'll just pop in with you on a couple steps yeah go ahead yeah so the germans there's a poll in germany was like 94 percent of germans said that they will that they are not

interested in buying a tesla they're so hostile to his brand now so you know the biggest uh european market gone here's the jp mor going further. So there were initial estimates like last year when Elon was campaigning for Trump, but it wasn't clear that he was going to be the co-president, like randomly firing veterans and ending the AIDS program overseas, et cetera. And their estimates at the time were that they would deliver about 444,000 new vehicles in the first quarter. That's down 20% to 355,000. So like almost 100,000 fewer cars in three months. I mean, just like think about how quick that dip is.

It's so fast. You're seeing the collapse of Tesla. And here's the real thing. As one of my favorite YouTubers, Mr. Regular from regular car reviews likes to say, depreciation reveals all. And when you look at the depreciation numbers on Teslas right now, holy shit. You go to cars.com or any of the used car marketplaces and search for EVs. It's just Tesla, Tesla, Tesla, Tesla, Tesla. Everybody is getting rid of them.

I mean, this is a real thing that you see happening. And as a result, the prices on the secondary market, which are absolutely the truest indicator of where a brand is, are in the toilet. And on top of this, the stock price is in the toilet. Tesla's down almost half. Half! I'm thinking about the old eddie murphy

routine from its its high under joe biden back when it was at an absurd it was like the stock price was an absurd level before but even still so like it looks like the high 52 week high is 488 and it's at so more than half 228 now yeah 228 so uh this is a brand in utter free fall with basically the only possible out that exists is for tesla to be turned into a republican badge where you gotta you know it's your duty your civic duty to buy a tesla to to trigger the wokes or something and trump tried this trump tried this. Trump tried this. It's helped the stock like this much for one day. But the problem with that is that there is already within the,

you know, the manosphere and the world of Fox news, the idea that anybody who drives an electric car is a cuck and a weenie. Yeah. Right. And so like, it's, you know,

is Tesla going to outdo the Fordd f-150 for you know as the marker of a cultural marker of like hey i gotta i'm a salt life guy and i'm pulling my bass pro shop out to the lake boat out to the lake and i no they're not so uh i think the real ad for them actually is government contracts right i mean I mean, Elon has got hold of the government. And here's why Tesla is important, Tim. Because Tesla's stock is the primary reserve of Elon Musk's wealth. Right. And as the stock price of Tesla goes down, his net wealth explodes, which makes it harder for him to throw his weight around.

And he's still the richest guy in the world, but by less than he used to be. And this is good. All this is good. All the Tesla take down stuff has worked. And also eventually at some point, there should be a shareholder revolt, you would think. And it might force him to spend more time doing other things. Like, right?

I mean, at some point, isn't he going to be forced to like go to work? Maybe not. But here's the problem, right? I mean, if you believe the insider accounts elon musk's presence at his companies has always been like a wash you know can he does he motivate people i mean i guess but like at spacex they have a whole division of people whose job is to just keep him away from the people doing the important work right and i'm not convinced that elon showing up to tesla is going to make tesla's cars better like you know like they've just done a brand reef model refresh for the y

i think and it's already sort of doa it's it's a very dated already um the problem is that he's turned himself into a cultural marker and that doesn't go away just because he goes back to tesla right it's a good point and this the other element to this about just like the actual car And that doesn't go away just because he goes back to Tesla. Right. It's a good point. And the other element to this about just like the actual car business, the car business, we had Mike Murphy on the pod a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Go find him in our YouTube archives. He was so good because he does some advising in the electric vehicle space and something that he brought up that i just wasn't aware of because i don't i don't pay that close of attention to the industry is like the coming chinese supremacy in the electric car space and how like tough the competition is about to be and sure you can maybe

tear off the chinese out of existence and maybe that's going to end up being part of the plan here but but so he he kind of revealed that to me at great length about two weeks ago and then this other news story that caught my uh interest the other day is uh is china's byd uh they they came out with a claim that they can charge the electric vehicles in about five minutes now so just like slightly longer than it takes to fill up your gas tank uh this is yeah just like a big practical difference for ev folks you know that like that you know particularly if you're like not going to be in your garage if you're on a road trip or something like it's a pain in the ass to charge the ev still uh they chinese maybe

have solved this uh while while the tesla stock has tanked uh byd's shares jumped to a 52 week high and so like there are other right competitors in the marketplace in addition to right like there's the there's the political problems the brand problem but then there's just like the innovation and the real life yeah so there's the real life problem which is the tesla stock was wildly overvalued because its market share keeps shrinking so tesla has you know incrementally increased the number of cars it sells, but its market share of the total EV market in the US keeps going down. And one of the things that the EV industry watchers have noticed is that EV startups can go from zero to one pretty fast. It really isn't like the internal combustion engine where there's so many parts, such a huge logistics train that the legacy makers

have a giant advantage. You can have a startup like Rivian, like BYD. In China, they're subsidized by the government. It's a little different. But with fewer parts and fewer components, there just isn't, you know, the moat for Tesla in the EV space is nothing like the moat that Ford and GM and Toyota enjoyed in the ICE space. So everything about this combines to a car company which is in free fall. And it couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

The only people I feel sorry for are the people who bought Teslas five years ago, seven years ago, who are driving around these things that are now hard to unload. You know, they don't want to be driving a Nazi mobile. They they you know, they don't want to have people, you know, thrown up seagulls at them. My buddy lives around the corner, my bestie. He like, you know, he's a good just a normal Democrat, but like doesn't care. I guess not like a politics junkie. It's not watching our youtube feed right it's just kind of a normal nice democratic guy doctor good person trying to help

the world bought a tesla about five years ago he's just like you know cars aren't he didn't buy it because it was like the npr tote bag you know he's like he's not a car guy you know he's like i didn't buy this as some sort of like virtue signal. I just bought it because like I wanted an EV and it was like the best one on the market at the time. And now he's stuck with this thing. And, you know, when I asked about it the other day, you could just tell how annoyed he is because he's getting asked about it all the time. You know, so it is kind of it is a burden for for poor Tesla owners. Yeah.

And again, because the secondary market for them is such crap, you're taking a huge loss if you unload your Tesla now, which is too bad. The other thing is they really have fallen behind. I mean, Tesla really is not state of the art right now. And they're pretty good on charging times. They do lead the industry on charging times. They're good about that, depending on what the Chinese breakthrough really is. But in terms of everything else, when you look around at the car reviews and people who are into this, the Hyundai Ioniqs are very, very good. Even the Cadillac Lyric is well-regarded.

The Polestar, people love the Polestars. Polestar has given away a deal for people who want to trade in their Teslas. They're trying to jump onto this right now. Yeah, yeah. It's really something. And you know what, Tim? It couldn't happen to a bigger dealer. couldn't the biggest douche honestly well i guess you can't even say that

because he's not even like the biggest douche in his current place of employment and jd vance is just so far ahead of him but like one of the top just like elite elite s tier douchebags in the entire world history, really. And it's really a shame. So we'll keep monitoring it. JBL, thank you for bringing your expertise on here. As a gay, you know, also not really a car guy. So I know enough to be dangerous, but we needed your value add here. So thanks for jumping on with me.

Elon, suck on an egg. Listeners, viewers, subscribe to the feed. Tell your friends. We'll be back soon.