The US firm faced a difficult year with unease over chief executive Elon Musk’s political activities and stiff overseas competition.
Since he removed “sustainable” from Tesla’s mission then, regardless of his appalling ideology, this is definitely a GOOD thing.
I confess when he took over Tesla (which he didn’t found) with the goal of democratizing electric car by making them cheaper I was excited. I don’t like cars and believe they are genuinely a terrible purchase, both at the individual level AND at the societal level, and yet I thought this would be helpful for a transition away from fossil fuel, at least.
How wrong I was… so yes I remember this personal mistake a warning tale : do NOT trust a mission of a corporation, only trust it’s past actions.
I’m sure this didn’t help.
I didn’t know he did it twice. Christ, these sycophants do everything in such a tone-deaf but deliberate fashion.
Look at his face when he did it the first time, it’s so forced and everything. It’s about as tonedeaf as Alex Jones sitting there with a stupid fucking look on his face, with a hitler moustache.
The dishonesty where right wingers cropped pics from other politicians and tried to liken it to this is the most infuriating.
Anyone honest seeing this immediately understands what the fuck he’s doing. HE KNOWS what he’s doing.
I’m confused. I was explicitly told he didn’t do this.
Don’t trust your eyes and ears, you stupid person. /s
Good thing they voted to give the nazi a trillion dollars
In america it probably did.
To Conserv卐tives, yes.
Glad to see Tesla is getting a good return on the $1 trillion pay package they gave Musk.
He hasn’t received it, and it’s very unlikely he’ll get all of it
Which he hasn’t got and won’t get unless he reaches targets?
There’s so much misunderstanding about this… like people think he’s just going to get it all, but to get it all, the company would seriously need to execute well.
However.
I think its easily overlooked because of the big number if he gets it all which gets all the headlines, a lot of the earlier goals aren’t as hard to reach and still pay a very large amount, more than any other pay package as well.
Also, inflation over 10 years is going to really narrow the gap on any dollar based target. Selling another 11 million cars between now and then isn’t going to be hard either unless he tanks the company further. That goal should have been a high yearly output over X years, like 4mil/y for 3+ years.
And also, there’s so much misunderstanding about how he gets paid. It’s shareholder dilution. Tesla shareholders are paying him this if it gets it, and in exchange they get something like a 5.5x return before dilution. Still overpaying, but it’s an exchange between them.
I do wonder internally if they really think he’ll meet all the goals, or if it’s a smokescreen to get him the smaller tranches with less fuss because everyone is going on about the total number.
And so many people seem to forget another simple, yet easy to grasp thing:
Tesla must actually make reliable cars that people want and sell them at a price that enough people can afford.
Sounds easy, or at least the concept is simple. This is from a quantitative insights company’s outlook about TSLA:
According to the most recent financial reports and market analysis for January 2026, Tesla is indeed navigating a significant “correction” period. The company has transitioned from the explosive hyper-growth of 2021–2022 into a phase of margin compression, slowing vehicle demand, and a shifting regulatory environment. The following analysis tracks Tesla’s Adjusted EBITDA (the metric most preferred by analysts to gauge core operational health) and the specific factors driving the “trouble” narrative.
Tesla EBITDA Performance Analysis (2021–2025)
Year Adjusted EBITDA YoY Growth Key Financial Driver 2021 $9.43 Billion +120.8% Global Model Y ramp-up; high demand. 2022 $17.24 Billion +82.7% Peak profitability; record production; low competition. 2023 $13.56 Billion -21.3% Start of “Price Wars”; aggressive discounts to maintain volume. 2024 $13.03 Billion -3.9% Stagnating growth; high interest rates hitting auto affordability. 2025 (Est) $14.50 Billion ~+11% Recovery in Q3/Q4; offset by the loss of regulatory credits. Analysis of the “Trouble” Narrative
While the absolute EBITDA remains high compared to most automakers, the quality of these earnings is under fire for three main reasons:
- The “Regulatory Credit” Cliff For years, Tesla relied on selling regulatory credits to rivals like Ford and GM. In Q2 2024, this was still a $890 million revenue stream. However, by late 2025, this “pure profit” effectively vanished. Under the “Big Beautiful Bill” passed in mid-2025, the US government ended emission penalty enforcement, destroying the market for these credits almost overnight.
- Impact: A ~$2.5 billion annual hole in Tesla’s high-margin revenue.
- Eroding EBITDA Margins Tesla’s EBITDA margin—a key measure of efficiency—has dropped from a peak of 23.9% (Q1 2022) to a steady 15.0% (Q3 2025). The company is now spending significantly more on CapEx (billions on H100 GPU clusters and AI R&D) while earning less per vehicle sold due to global competition from BYD and others.
- Stagnating Delivery Growth 2025 marked the first time Tesla faced serious “demand saturation.” Q1 2025 deliveries were only 323,800 units, a 13% decline year-over-year. While sales recovered in the latter half of the year, the “50% annual growth” promise is considered permanently over by most institutional analysts. Enumerated Sources The data provided in this analysis is synthesized from the following primary and secondary financial records:
- Tesla Investor Relations (IR): Q3 2025 Update, Q4 2024 Financial Summary, and Q4 2023 Financial Summary. These provide the definitive Adjusted EBITDA and delivery figures.
- Macrotrends: Tesla EBITDA 2012–2025 Charting. Used for historical year-over-year percentage comparisons and GAAP vs. Non-GAAP reconciliations.
- Finbox Financial Intelligence: EBITDA Margin for Tesla Inc (TSLA). Used to benchmark Tesla’s 11.3%–15% margins against the broader Consumer Discretionary sector.
- Electrek / Nasdaq: “Tesla’s Regulatory Credit Cash Cow Is Fading Fast” (August 2025) and “US Officially Ends Emission Credits” (August 2025). These detail the legislative impact on Tesla’s ancillary revenue.
- IG / Bloomberg Financial: Tesla Q1 2025 Earnings Preview. Used for analysis of the “weakest delivery performance in three years” recorded in early 2025. Would you like me to analyze how Tesla’s “Energy Generation and Storage” segment performed in late 2025 to see if it is successfully replacing the lost automotive revenue?
So dumb, they could save a trillion dollars and up there sales with one easy trick…
That’s not how it works…
They create new shares which dilutes everyone. The shareholders are paying Elon.
To get a trillion dollars they’d need to sell 68% of the company to someone else today, or over 10% of the company at the planned end goal of the compensation plan.
Giving that % of the company to someone else would have a real impact on how the company is run, and who even has that much money to buy into Tesla other than other bad large companies / private equity.
Edit: also, they’re flush with cash as it is already. They’ve claimed for years they can’t spend it any faster without being wasteful. They got somethings like 45b in the bank.
Everybody with a bit of sense predicted this would happen.
It’s also why anybody with a bit of sense knew the EV subsidies were important if we wanted American car companies to be competitive in the future. Instead our “America First” president handed China the future of automotive manufacturing.
Those who forced free market capitalism on other nations don’t like free market capitalism anymore lmao
It’s never been free market capitalism. Subsidies and anti trust have been around for a very long time. That’s also because free markets would never work without regulation.
Well, Venezuela will be forced to have free market capitalism so Chevron can exploit its natural resources.
Also the oil industry is still heavily subsidized, so now you have American OEMs fighting a subsidized oil industry, and a subsidized Chinese EV industry.
Their EVs are gonna get fucked at both ends.
The end result is the US auto industry as a whole being left behind by the rest of the world as other countries expand EV infrastructure and limit or even eliminate fossil fuels across the board.
if we wanted American car companies to be competitive in the future.
I’d rather it not be Tesla at the forefront. They did some admittedly good things in the beginning to help normalize EVs and build out charging infrastructure.
But I’m not a fan of their vehicle design (interior or exterior), have concerns about their QC and after-sale service, and I won’t buy one as long as Musk is at the helm.
That’s not a reason to nuke the EV industry as a whole though. Removing the tax incentive for all EVs did exactly that.
My apologies if that is what my comment implied.
I actually think the EV tax bonuses were at least attempting to level the playing field, with tax credits being limited per manufacturer.
Tesla and the American EV industry was already very heavily subsidized. At least up until near the end of 2025.
To claim Tesla wasn’t heavily subsidized already when they made model S is very ignorant.I didn’t claim they weren’t. I in fact just did the opposite and said they were in order to try to secure American manufacturing in the future and instead Trump pulled the plug.
OK then we are in agreement.
Well, stock holders don’t believe this will affect TSLA share price. Robotaxi and Optimus will replace the revenue stream lost on Tesla EVs.
I’ll invest all my savings, my wife’s savings and kids college funds in TSLA. 😉
edit: added emoji.
TSLA share prices never had a real correlation to their EV sales. Tesla sells promises, EV cars are a byproduct.
There was actually a super brief window that it did. When they started successfully making the model3/y and everything was growing and profits were high, they actually caught up to their insane PE ratio to a reasonable tech multiple.
It was a very small window though, like 1 or 2 quarters and then it became evident the growth was not going to continue and profits started coming down.
It’s insane, the crazy high PE ratio was predicated on the idea that Tesla would be the only game in town for EVs or self-driving cars worldwide, but now both of those are obviously not happening I can only conclude there’s some sort of sunk cost fallacy at play.
I’ll invest all my savings, my wife’s savings and kids college funds in TSLA.
That’s decidedly reckless, you are investing in unproven products that demonstrably don’t work yet, and neither Robotaxi or Optimus will ever get anywhere.
That… that was the joke.
I suspected that might be a joke, but there was no indication, and there are actually a lot of people who are that crazy.
So even without invoking Poe’s law, that was far from obvious.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poe’s_lawPersonally I would have put a /s after such a comment.
I wish people would continue the window breaking and car burning at Tesla dealerships, that was an awesome time.
And Tesla had a helping hand in making China the leader in EVs. It’s why China let Tesla operate in the country in the first place. Tesla’s presence accelerated the growth of every domestic business that is part of the EV supply chain. Since Tesla was required to use local businesses. So when Chinese EV competitors opened business the entire supply chain was already in place and up and running.
Same thing happened with smartphones thanks to Apple’s investments and training new Chinese phone makers were able to design, produce and launch a new phone in record time.
You’re not wrong they helped by being there which set up a supply chain, but Tesla wants to use a hyper localized supply chain regardless of requirements. Localized supply chains get costs down, which is partly how they managed higher margins than other legacy OEMs
They do it in the USA and EU as well.
Edit: also I’m sure China was able to spy on them once there and share info with other Chinese OEMs
… but gain title of having worlds biggest knobhead
Further proof of “If you go fash, you get no cash”.
Hang on, Musk is gonna turn this around, any second now…
I wonder how Muskrat will twist this to his advantage. Verbally I mean.
The traditional conservative way: he’s a victim. If the evil Dems and their voters hadn’t vilified him, Tesla would be the biggest and bestest.
Is BYD cars any good? I think Americans can buy it south ofbthe boarder.
I’ve test driven all of the popular models recently and yeah they are nice cars. Hard to tell how well they age though but BYD is establishing a really strong support network to the point where I’d say taking a risk is reasonable. The “air road assist” is quite bad but that’s on par with all current cars tbh.
My only issue is design and interior as it’s so tacky and just not well thought out. One of the main models is literally gym themed lmao
For an equally priced EV like what you’d get in the USA, like the equivalent of a Tesla Model 3, by the time you get it to the USA they’re not bad. But their super cheap ones are just that, and I’m not sure they’d be so cheap after being brought up to US standards.
UP to US standards?
My dude, they are already well above US standards.
not necessarily about quality, rules and regulations.
They couldn’t sell them all here without changes, and those changes can/will add costs.
Entering different markets can be expensive.
Edit: Like it could be compliance/rule requirements for supply chains. To sell in the USA they might need to pay workers more as an example, or source X amount of parts from USA tied countries. That changes their manufacturing requirements / pricing. Or maybe they need to guarantee no slave labour, which BYD was using in Brazil.
Na, na, na, na, boogie! You’re a bad businessman. You can’t jump and make an “X” if your life depended on it! C’mon Elon! Use your great genius to sell me something!
Na, na, na, na
About the only raction I can muster.
