James has modest expectations for Q1 earnings:-
There are a number of macro and one-off factors impacting on Q1 results.
But from my point of view anything Tesla was doing wrong in Q1 2024, they were also doing wrong in Q4 2023.
Some issues have been exposed, and areas where Tesla needs to do better are now exposed with more clarity.
All the "one-off" factors impacting on Q1 should not be a factor in future quarters.
The real world is more complex than many of the solutions posted here imply.
Advertising is one example, it hasn't been a silver bullet, in part because everyone does it, and a vastly larger sum of money is focused on spreading the opposite message on EVs.
So it isn't just advertising that is required, but the right kind of advertising, and a small advertising budget has to punch punch above it weight. IMO the most likely path to doing that is to leverage the fact that advertising is a "creative industry", many people who are good at painting and writing are also understandably good at advertising. And a good idea can cut-through and punch above it weight. So the right team of people need to be given the right brief. My suggestion is that humour is entertaining and memorable, but all really know is, Tesla is still searching for the right formula.
The other consistent theme here is that people seem to think that Tesla should invest a whole bunch of capex and build some new factories to build some new models. What would that do to the financials and sales of existing models in a challenging macro environment? The short term way forward is to balance supply and demand for their existing production capabilities.
Yet another theme is the race for EV market share isn't a race and that many people will foolish enough to buy an ICE when EVs reach price parity. Every sustainable price reduction unlocks some additional market share, there is sometimes a lag, and addressing that lag brings us back to advertising. But keep working on cost reduction and product improvements in parallel with attempting to sort out advertising.