The Tesla conundrum

outline

• The world's most valuable carmaker's market value lost 72%.
• market'recalibration of Tesla's prospects, but he still regarded his company as a tech firm.
• Tesla's mundane tribulations as a car business.
• Ev-buyers less willing to overlook Tesla's question.
• Tesla no longer the only game in town but still looks impressive.

main

• Tesla's market captalisation swept past that of Toyota. Devoted fans and incredulous sceptics deploy a new unit of measurement. Tesla's worth was couched in terms of the combined value of five or ten biggest carmakers in the world and year ago surpassed $1.2trn, even more than most other car firms put together. However, since then it lost about 72% of that. Though, it's sum likewise excedding the value of most other industry. Elon Musk, this mercurial boss, his fortune shrivelled by more than $200bn as a result.

• Tesla missed analysis's expectations for deliveries for third quartet in a raw and reported that the gap betweem production and deliveris had expanded, suggesting softening demand for its EVs. Even bullish investors now doubt that Musk will fulfil his promise of achieving the production of cars 20m a year by 2030, or that Tesla's "autopilot" is close to becoming a world-changing fully automation driving system. Yet the main reason for the market recalibration of Tesla's prospects is dawning realisation that the company is chiefly a carmaker and it's boss is not a superhuman. But Elon Musk always regarded his company as tech firm, a peer of digital giants like Apple, Alphabet or Meta, not of old-economy metal-bashers such as Toyota or Volkswagen.

• For a time, so did the market—— first as tech shares soard amid the pandemic-era boom in all things digital, then as they slumped last year. and do did the Tesla. It's share price has suffered a sharper correction and this has coincided with its more mundane tribulation as a carmaker. Its big factory in Shanghai has been hit by virus-related shutdowns and it has been caught up in China's chaotic retreat from its zero-covid policy.

• Having set the course for the EV transition of car industry, it now faces plenty of competition from established adversaries and a host of newcomers it inspired. EV-buyers, for their part, are becomeing less willing to overlook Tesla's questionable build quality and the interior. And natural Tesla-owners among the wealthy progressive set are less prepared to overlook Mr Musk's libertarian antics at Twitter which he bought and has mismanaged with gusto. Especially now they have plenty of conscience-salving EV alternatives to choose from.

• As EV-makers go, though, Tesla still looks impressive, however, having through this, Tesla no longer the only game in town and certainly not tech behemoth.

reference

Electric vehicles: The Tesla conundrum丨Economist (qq.com)

[新英文外刊]

Investors conclude that Tesla is a carmaker, not a tech firm | The Economist

[The Economist]