Sales tank as investors get ready to decide whether to make Musk a trillionaire.
Tesla’s shareholders are ready to vote tomorrow on whether to give Elon Musk an even more vast slice of the company in an effort to keep him focused on selling electric vehicles. Currently, the trolling tycoon appears a little obsessed with the UK, a place he appears to conflate with Middle Earth, which investors may or may not take into account when making their decision. What they ought to take into account is how many cars Tesla sold last month.
Although Tesla only publishes quarterly sales figures and does not divide those up by region, slightly more granular data is available from some countries via monthly new car registrations. And the numbers for October, when compared year on year to the same month in 2024, should be alarming.
The 90s gave us some of the most aerodynamic cars (or lowest CoD cars) of all time. We’ve been going backwards since then because styling for aggressive grills and SUV heights makes it impossible to be highly efficient. EVs need very advantageous they can get to increase range in order to sell in the US, so flowing 90s designed are a necessity and a form following function that I can’t deny. I like the new Prius for the same reasons.
I like the new Model Y refresh in person (the 3 less so), because front fascia were never very good looking IMO. The new light bar thing makes it less bulgy and slightly Ramsian (I guess, I can’t remember Dieter Rams making anything aerodynamic though, or really even curved for that matter!). The touchscreen bullshit and Nazi owner will keep me from ever buying one though.
The cyber truck is of course excluded from all this, and should go rot in a scrapyard of bad ideas along with the rest of Elon’s ideas.
You can have airflow friendly design without the flat single color body, plastic interiors and a tablet on a plastic pedestal.
Agreed that the whole SUV trend was a massive step back in so many ways, but being in Europe I’m not even comparing Tesla’s design with SUVs, I’m comparing it with other cars in the same category since they are still most of the cars in Europe.
Even something like a Mini Cooper EV looks downright daring next to the stale styling of Tesla’s offering.
The cars that I notice on the roads which leave me with the same overall impression in terms of looks as Teslas (minus the ugly tablet on a plastic pedestal look) are BYDs, which are way cheaper.