I am surprised to hear this from a long-term Tesla supporter.
FSD is a high priority because each EV with FSD would be capable of replacing 10 gasoline vehicles.
FSD can help increase demand for EVs.
Optimus is a high priority because it could reduce manufacturing costs and help scale car production down the road.
Every project's delay had valid reasons behind it.
Tesla said they will not stop until every gasoline car on the street is gone. I trust them.
Edit:
I will add my two cents to address your other points:
"The Semi being very SLOWLY introduced, a good 3 years late."
- If Tesla engineers have been sitting around doing nothing, then you have a valid point. You should know how hard Tesla engineers pushed themselves on all these projects. The Semi is a product that requires extreme reliability. They produced some, tested them in the real world, and are now redesigning some parts, including changing from a 2-axle drive to a 3-axle drive. If you think it took too long, try working on these projects and see how easy it is.
- Meanwhile, Tesla put in a crazy amount of effort to get the Cybertruck out. This will be a high-impact product.
"The Tesla Roadster 2 being some 4 years late (likely a good halo car)."
- This is a low-impact project but can take a lot of resources to make it perfect.
"The SuperCharger team being sacked with no explanation given. Especially after NACS became the standard, and has been Tesla’s crown jewel. But focus is gone before other manufacturers have modified their cars to use it."
- We don't know what Elon is planning. He did say they will continue to grow the Supercharger network and focus on 100% availability. Have Superchargers been a bottleneck? Someone who traveled 100k miles using Superchargers said he had never waited at a station. I never had to wait in line either.
"EV growth being walked back, significantly, way back."
- No, Elon said we are between two major growth waves. They are preparing for the next big wave.
"Model 3 losing the tax credit, resulting in a 20% price increase and likely a good part of the sales drop."
- Supply chains take a long time to plan. You should blame the government, not Tesla, for this.
"Dropped plans for a smaller value model."
- A cheaper model is coming earlier than planned.
- The Robotaxi could still be two models, one being a cheaper model.
"Strong walk-back on Tesla Solar."
- Running a business is like fighting a war; you have to deal with everything with limited resources. Solar industry itself is progressing well, even if Tesla completely pulled out of it, solar industry would continue to grow. On the other hand, Tesla put in a lot of effort to grow energy storage business.
"Mexico being slow-walked."
- At the moment, even the current lines are not fully utilized. Do you want them to add more production capacity right away?
"Twitter diversion, at a minimum a loss of focus."
- Elon said if we lose to the woke mind virus, we would lose everything—the Tesla mission, the SpaceX mission, the business, shareholder value—everything would be gone. I agree with him on this view. We are still not out of the woods yet.
For those of us who, like
@dhrivnak , have been active since near the beginning or even before with Zip2 or other early Musk-led businesses, it is a bit disingenuous to dismiss legitimate concerns with formulaic acidulous misunderstanding. It is difficult enough for those of us who invested very early to face directly the reality that present Tesla trajectory is no longer compatible with the TSLA we bought. To be factual, for all of us the capital gains are handsome anyway.
We signed up to help accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy. The present course is pursuing other objectives, perhaps laudable, perhaps profitable. The present course is seemingly systematic in destruction of TSLA financial prudence.
This Investor’s forum should be devoted to assessing those issues, And counter-issues with logic, evidence and analysis. Were that to have been the focus we would have far fewer bot issues, virtually no “I’m too lazy to look it up, but here is my ‘opinion’” entries.
Since there is active debate about our future as a useful source of insight I dare to express my views;
We have had, and lost, numerous people who actually knew the subjects about which they spoke;
1. We had several people who knew Elon Musk and knew his character, not from reading or skimming some biography;
2. We had people who actually participated directly in building solar systems, BEV’s, electrical infrastructure and more;
3. We had people who actually had done business in nearly every arena in which Tesla operates;
4. We had numerous people who had built companies from concept to maturity.
And many more.
What happened?
In the beginning one had to have unusual characteristics to buy a Tesla or TSLA. In the early days of Model S everyone who bought one was a distinct character. Many had never before bought a new car. Many had a sequence of supercars. Most had advanced educational and professional accomplishments.
That was then.
Now Model Y has been the best selling car in the world. The world has changed, and TMC has changed with it.
One thing we cannot and should not do is recreate the past. We now have a membership that reflects 2024, not 2014 and before.
People now blog and use visual media. Then people read and wrote. Some of us might not like the present world, but most NA TMC members today have never heard of Kate Turabian, although all the NA 2012 members probably still do remember her.
It tempting to try to recreate those early days when each of us had the ability to collaborate with knowledge other might not possess.
Now we have near-universal information access with excellent free translations. As recently as 2010 I had a staff of ~30 people doing research. Today I do the same work alone. The missing part, as you know, is editing!
Can we not devise a way to help transmit useful insight to the majority of TSLA investors today who have none of that background? Can we find ways to do that while eschewing obfuscation or condescension. Can we even understand that vocabulary lessons serve as entertainment and insight for linguistics aficionados but few others?
We need to find a way to be inclusive and helpful while fighting bots and avoiding the idle chitchat and irrelevancy that is rampant now.
While I have ideas, I am not one of our prime audience. We really need insight from the newer population of TSLA investors while avoiding descent more deeply to share speculation and market-making functions. We do have other excellent threads for those subjects including some very useful Technical Analysis threads, which do lack deep statistical rigor, but that is an entirely different subject.