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It seems counterintuitive, but this helped Tesla which is why Musk championed it. Basically when that tax credit came out, a bunch of Tesla owners had their cars underwater - loans were more than new cars were selling for and depreciation thru the roof. Plus the tax credit helped their competitors. Now that the credit is gone, Tesla owners are closer to being in the black on their cars and it also caused Ford and GM to cut EV production by I believe 100%. Win win for Tesla.


> It seems counterintuitive, but this helped Tesla which is why Musk championed it. Basically when that tax credit came out, a bunch of Tesla owners had their cars underwater - loans were more than new cars were selling for and depreciation thru the roof. Plus the tax credit helped their competitors.

This makes sense if your business strategy is to get existing Tesla owners to trade their current Teslas to buy new Teslas, rather than to convert non-Tesla owners to buy new Teslas. The latter market is WAY bigger and the tax credit was a huge carrot enticing them to look at a brand they'd never try otherwise in a market where ICE vehicle prices were skyrocketing.

As it stands, there are a ton of Tesla owners who bought their cars with the tax refund, are underwater on them, bitter about it and/or dislike Elon personally, and will never buy a Tesla again. This is churn and brand destruction without a corresponding top of funnel increase.

In contrast, the supercharger network was significant not just for the convenience factor for Tesla owners, but also for the fact that it was a social signal that Tesla was serious about growing the addressable market of EV owners generally by not just making a decent car but making the "EV lifestyle" seem possible to non-EV owners.

If Tesla actually is happy that the tax credit is going away, that seems like they're acknowledging that they're satisfied taking shrinking share of a shrinking market, which is their prerogative, but it's a bad business.


You lost me, how does making previous owners whole help tesla sell new ones?


If your existing owners have made a "profit", or at least lost less to deprecation than normal, they're probably more willing to buy a new car from you (trading or selling their existing one) even if that new car is more expensive and they're actually paying just as much to upgrade as they would be anyway.


Of course, it's 4D chess. This was such a genius move that Tesla profits fell 46% last year and they are ending production of their highest-margin vehicles.

GM wrote down $4B when they reduced their EV production. Despite that, last year GM sold half the number of EVs as Tesla did. If THAT was reduced production by 100%, then Tesla would have been truly fucked had Harris won the election.

Tesla is suffering because Elon Musk was a genius at some point in the past. Then, he got into ketamine and fried his brain.

The cars are expensive, have QC issues, and are facing steep competition from the rest of the world. Tesla's attempt to build an F150 competitor was a disaster, Optimus is years away from being useful for anything, and after 15 years of "We'll totally release FSD this year!" the market seems to finally be realizing that it's not going to happen for a little while.

It really sucks to see a perfectly good company get blown to smithereens, but shareholders did choose to bet on the man.


It seems counterintuitive, but a 46% profit loss is good for Tesla and poised them perfectly to succeed.


Huh?


> Elon Musk was a genius at some point in the past

When he wrote the Hyperloop white paper? When he backdated himself as the founder of Tesla, then pushed the real founders out?...

He is a genius snake oil salesman, I give you that.


This seems bizarre. Only reason my family bought a Tesla is thanks to the ev tax credit. Without it there are far better options.


won’t killing the EV market hurt Tesla in the long run?

markets are healthiest when there are many healthy competitors


Messed with Remix for the first time after seeing Shopify's Hydrogen sites. Previously only used Next.js.


Not to go off topic, but this comment really spoke to me. Have also been hurt everywhere in life for being anti-tribalist.


46% of the Fortune 500 was started by immigrants or their children.


I don't think the "or their children" means a whole lot here, but the fact that immigrants start a lot of businesses on average than your average US citizen, which is actually important.


What is funny is that the H-1B "scheme" surpassed all expectations by selling the "American Dream" so well to the rest-of-the-world that they all actually lost due to "brain drain". It was a brilliant long-term strategy.

And yet you have people refusing to face the facts and see the data that the US has-been and is the clear winner in all this.


Yea, the United States is the original Meta but instead of having to pay a ton and recruit the best and the brightest, they just came to us. Imagine how much more powerful China and India would be if we didn’t get so many of their smart people.


a lot of international athletes come to the usa on athletic scholarships. Universities are also a gateway for about a million students a year. And then there are about a 100 million tourists a year who can head to a sanctuary city… And a lot of labor just walks over also via a daily limit upto 15k people per day depending on wage inflation. It’s not so much a drain as a centrifuge that concentrates the willing and able from every category.


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