If you go visit /r/askcarsales the salesmen there are saying that they won't take Teslas for trade-ins anymore, or they're getting stupid low valuations and going right to the auction house.
Let's not forget that Musk wants to take Tesla private, whether or not this is on purpose, it helps him achieve that goal.. and perhaps you should be warned if you want to buy some..
Low demand is the issue. I highly doubt he want this private, but I dont doubt he wants people to think he's so confident he wants it private.
Demand dropping and margins will go down like a normal car company. And thats if you believe the margins, some people starting to think they're hiding a lot of opex as capex
Data point of one, but I was interested in buying a Tesla for my next car until I learned more than I ever wanted about Musk as a person and a leader of a company through how he's handled Twitter.
I can only assume similar approaches to problem solving are applied at Tesla, though perhaps less publicized. But more to the point, I want to minimize the amount of my money that goes towards that man based on complete misalignment of beliefs.
There's probably a business school case study here. I can't name any executive leadership at any other car company in existence. And thus it does not influence my decision on whether to consider cars from them.
Shouldn't Tesla's margins still be improving as they reap the benefits of economies of scale in battery manufacturing they've been burning money on building out?
It's far too early for the thin-margins phase AIUI, Tesla's just getting competition and maybe taking too long with their "gigafactories". It's also a bit difficult to capitalize on your scaling investments when "production has outpaced demand".
There's a lot of goodwill getting burned up here.