Tesla Plunges: End of an Era!

The era of Tesla has come to an end.

On the evening of October 11th, Tesla's stock plummeted by 8.78%, wiping out $67 billion in market value, equivalent to approximately 470 billion yuan. Meanwhile, as the three major U.S. stock indices closed higher, Tesla stood out as an anomaly.

Some might argue that this is not the first time Tesla has experienced a sharp decline, and there is no need for alarm. However, this time might indeed be different.

It all begins with a press conference that Musk described as "historic."

The highlight of this event was undoubtedly the "Cybercab Autonomous Taxi."

To be fair, the Cybercab Autonomous Taxi, which lacks a steering wheel and pedals, is indeed quite cool. However, there are several issues with it.

Firstly, the market launch is scheduled for 2026 or 2027, and given Tesla's consistent history of delays, whether it can hit the market on time is uncertain; secondly, according to Musk, the cost of the autonomous taxi will be below $30,000, which is not as low as one might have imagined; thirdly, the press conference did not disclose more technical details, giving the impression that there is not much substance, but rather a lot of empty promises. For a company like Tesla, which prides itself on being a technology company, this is somewhat disappointing.

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The key point is timing.

As early as 2016, Musk introduced the concept of "autonomous taxis." At that time, this concept was definitely very advanced. However, by 2024, it is no longer a novel idea, with Google and General Motors already in operation, and domestic companies like RoboTaxi and Pony.ai are also gradually implementing their services.

So the question arises, if Tesla's autonomous taxi has to wait until 2027, won't it be too late? Moreover, there is a possibility of further delays.Let's talk about the Optimus humanoid robot again.

Musk claims that the humanoid robot will be the "greatest product ever," bringing about significant social changes. However, judging from this press conference, it's hard to say that it brought enough surprises.

At the press conference, there were multiple Optimus robots dancing and interacting with people, but it seemed not particularly smooth and was limited to playing rock-paper-scissors.

Does everyone remember the robots from Boston Dynamics that were very popular a few years ago? As early as 2005, the company developed the "robotic dog," which was far ahead of us in terms of time. However, at this year's International Robotics Conference, Boston Dynamics' robotic dogs were outperformed by Chinese companies.

Most importantly, although the Boston robotic dog made its global debut much earlier than us, it still cannot achieve mass production to this day, while we have already equipped our military on a large scale.

What does this indicate?

The United States indeed has strong scientific research capabilities, especially in software, which is far ahead of us, but it lacks strong industrial manufacturing capabilities and industrial collaboration capabilities.

Back to the Optimus humanoid robot.

According to Musk's revelation, after repeated delays, the mass production time for Optimus is set for 2026, almost five years after the initial release. However, note that Musk introduced that the cost of Optimus is $20,000-$30,000. Is there a possibility that such cost control has no competitiveness in front of Chinese companies?

In addition, several highly anticipated models of cars have been postponed again.Before this, the market had unanimously believed that Tesla would release or disclose the Model Q as well as new versions of the Model Y and 3. However, regrettably, there was none.

In the third quarter of this year, Tesla's global sales volume was 463,000 units, which, despite a year-on-year increase of 6.4%, still fell short of market expectations, and it is highly unlikely that the annual target will be met.

Although Tesla's sales volume in the Chinese market remains high, there are two inescapable facts. First, due to the increasing competition in the Chinese market, Tesla has been forced to offer more discounts, which has affected its gross margin; second, with more and more models targeting Tesla, the pressure it faces is growing; third, the Model 3, released in 2016, and the Model Y, released in 2019, have a slow update cycle.

Tesla's reluctance to enter the new energy vehicle market above "300,000 yuan" and below "200,000 yuan" is somewhat perplexing. People wonder whether it's because Tesla is so strong that it doesn't need to update its models or release new cars to worry about sales, or if Tesla has already fallen behind the market's pace.

In fact, Tesla's performance has already changed.

In the first half of this year, Tesla's operating income was $46.8 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 3%; net profit was $2.607 billion, a year-on-year decrease of 50%. Therefore, with both revenue and net profit declining, and without any concrete measures to reverse the downturn, how can Tesla tell its story with a price-to-earnings ratio of 60 times?