We have dozens, if not hundreds, of posts on this topic, stretching back to 2022 or so.
Some that pop up on a quick search of the blog:January 2024 - "China could be on track to dominate the world’s EV market, even if not in the U.S."
Elon Musk, who seems to have some insight into the industry, says there will be 10 surviving manufacturers, 9 of them Chinese.*
Because their current business is being mandated and legislated out of existence the Western marques, barring some serious breakthroughs in small-scale hydrogen or methanol, will have to pivot to EV's.
And they won't be able to compete.It almost appears that the gifting of the electric vehicle and solar industries to the Chinese was deliberate.
First up, from Electrical Engineering Times, December 6....
And the headline story from Bloomberg via The Japan Times December 16/17:
The global transition to electric vehicles is beginning to unravel the way major changeovers often do: slowly at first, then all at once.
This week brought a cascade of signals that the EV era is entering a more uncertain, more contested phase. The European Commission backed away from what had been the world’s most aggressive timeline for phasing out internal-combustion engines, granting manufacturers and consumers more time to move off gasoline. A day earlier, Ford announced $19.5 billion in charges tied to the retreat from an electric strategy it vowed to go all in on eight years ago.
The pullback is no longer confined to a few laggards or skeptics. From relative newcomers to legacy giants, the signs of reckoning have been mounting for months.
Take Tesla, the U.S. company that did more than any other in the world to kick-start the EV uprising. The Elon Musk-led manufacturer was never going to keep up the meteoric rise pulled off at the beginning of the decade, but it’s no longer just slowing down — worldwide vehicle deliveries are poised to drop for the second year in a row. Musk’s interests have wandered from pursuing a $25,000 electric car to developing humanoid robots and driverless taxis.
China’s BYD will become the new No. 1 purveyor of battery-electric cars in 2025, though it too is now having growing pains, with total sales falling each of the last three months. The company is still producing one plug-in hybrid with a gas engine under the hood for every battery-only EV, and its momentum is stalling in part because authorities in Beijing are increasingly scrutinizing pricing practices.
Ford has had plenty of company in struggling to catch up with the electric leaders.
Its archrival General Motors recently incurred $1.6 billion in charges tied to paring EV production capacity, and flagged more such moves may be in the offing. Stellantis has scrapped plans for a fully electric Ram pickup and revived gas-guzzling V-8 engines that it will have no trouble selling in a U.S. market that has hollowed out fuel economy and emissions standards.
When Volkswagen — Europe’s carmaker that was once most motivated to chase Tesla — ends output of electric ID.3 hatchbacks this month in Dresden, it will be the first time in 88 years the carmaker will have ceased production at a German assembly plant. VW too has taken substantial financial blows, booking €4.7 billion ($5.5 billion) in charges tied to its subsidiary Porsche reversing from EVs.
For all the challenges the industry is having, the transition isn’t being abandoned....
....MUCH MORE
Tesla stock just hit its highest level ever and that investor enthusiasm is not based on electric vehicle sales. Musk saw something a bit over three years ago that scared him enough to reorient the company.
As Intel's Andy Grove famously said:
Mr. Musk has his blind spots but China sneaking up on Tesla probably isn't one of them. He knows that Western companies will eventually lose the battle for electric vehicle dominance and something that he saw sometime in the last couple years seems to have scared him into action on the fronts where Tesla has a competitive advantage: access to some truly brilliant people; artificial intelligence facilitated by a long history with Nvidia and autonomous vehicles.
So again, we wish him luck, and think he'll succeed but this stuff is serious business.
Here's the stock price action over the last year:
June 2024 - Morgan Stanley Analyst Adam Jonas Writes A Love Letter To Tesla (TSLA)
A confession of bullish bias up front, from April 24's "Tesla Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript (TSLA)":
In pre-market action the stock is up $17.47 (+12.07%) at $162.15.
Below are the words that are adding billions ($50+) to the company's valuation.
Personally I think Musk is going to pull it off, but that's just me—perhaps informed by posting on the company and its stock since before the June 2010 share flotation (which, adjusted for the 5:1 and 3:1 stock splits gives a $1.133 IPO price)—however, there are plenty of other opinions to choose from if one doesn't care for that one....
More from that post after the jump.
As noted July 8 with the stock at $249.07: "Chartology: Tesla Stock Now Has A Very Wide Range To Churn Through (TSLA)". And September 5 A Word Of Caution On Tesla's Stock (TSLA):
Now don't get me wrong, I'm as much into Elon's/Baidu's/Nvidia's vision of flying cars and robotaxis as the next person and haven't changed this opinion on the company from April 24's "Tesla Q1 2024 Earnings Call Transcript (TSLA)":
...In pre-market action the stock is up $17.47 (+12.07%) at $162.15.
....One quibble. The line "Tesla has relied on price cuts since late 2022..." reads like a bad thing but the fact of the matter is that the entire industry has been cutting prices and Tesla getting out in front of that reality has kept them competitive in the battery-electric-vehicle business.
As we've been saying for quite a while now, Mr. Musk saw something a couple years ago that led him to a) the price cuts and production efficiencies that are proving crucial to survival in not just EV's but in the wider automobile market as well. Volkswagen talking about possibly laying off 30,000 of their German employees was inconceivable five years ago. And b) whatever it was he saw also led to the emphasizing of things they been working on for a decade: robotaxis and AI and supercomputers and robots.
So, for patient reader, having read this far, here's my two cents worth:
Deliveries will be in-line this month and the next few months and the robotaxi unveil will be written up as a bust. The people who write the headlines hate Elon Musk and nothing he does will ever, ever change that. The financial question is: will the self-driving taxis be contributing to sales and earnings in two years?
Based on the fact that Waymo is now booking 100,000 rides per week I think the answer is yes but your mileage may vary. To repeat the comment on the April earnings call transcript:
Personally I think Musk is going to pull it off, but that's just me—perhaps informed by posting on the company and its stock since before the June 2010 share flotation (which, adjusted for the 5:1 and 3:1 stock splits gives a $1.133 IPO price)—however, there are plenty of other opinions to choose from if one doesn't care for that one....
In late pre-market action the stock is trading up $1.17 (+0.45%) at $262.80 after closing Monday at $261.63 also up $1.17 (+0.45%).
And on December 16 2025 the stock set both intraday and closing highs, $491.50 and $489.88 respectively. In pre-market trade the stock is down 39¢ (-0.08%) at $489.49.
