Tesla Is Getting Absolutely Creamed In Europe

From Inside EVs 

Tesla is getting shellacked. Toasted. Wrecked. Destroyed. Choose whatever synonym suits you, the result is the same: The company's European business is collapsing.

That is not an exaggeration. Sales fell a whopping 49% last month in Europe, according to data from the European Automobile Manufacturers’ Association (ACEA). Don't blame an EV slowdown, either, as purely electric cars are on a bit of a tear in Europe. Sales increased 27.8% in April, to 184,685 units across the European Union (EU), European Free Trade Agreement (EFTA) countries and the United Kingdom.

EVs accounted for 15.3% of the new vehicles registered in those markets, a new high-water mark for an April report. It's a good reminder that, as the U.S. waffles back and forth on EV policy, many other markets are charging ahead.

Now, they're doing so with less reliance on Tesla. Elon Musk's company used to be the biggest name in EV sales, but increased competition and the boss's political meddling have proven to be a toxic combination. Tesla is still the EV sales leader in the U.S., but it's also struggling here. Buyers in Europe have been quick to abandon the brand, too, while Chinese buyers are ditching Teslas for home-grown brands.

It's not clear if Tesla has a solution to this problem. While the company pinned its hopes on the refreshed Model Y, that strategy clearly didn't work. First, Musk tried to blame the sales slump on factory downtime during the transition from building old Model Ys to new ones. Now that inventory levels are up and the factories have been running normally for some time, that excuse isn't holding water, so it looks like the new Model Y hasn't moved the needle.

That means any growth we see from Tesla is going to have to come from either price cuts or new models. The company has already cut its prices repeatedly in recent years, leaving it less room to move down. Plus, with U.S. tax credits on the chopping block, Tesla's products are already about to get $7,500 more expensive in its home market. Just mitigating that change will chew into Tesla's margins, and that's before you account for the increased production costs thanks to new tariffs on auto parts.

New products seem like a better way out, but I'm skeptical they can fundamentally reset the trend here. Elon Musk has repeatedly said that Tesla's value is in AI, not in car-making, and his relentless focus on full self-driving has taken up most of the company's resources. Its products are old—the Model S debuted in 2012 and the Model 3 in 2017, and while both have received refreshes, they are no longer world-beating EVs. Its lone truly new product, the Cybertruck, is a flop. And its next three products seem to be a moderately updated Model Y, a Cybercab with only two seats and, eventually, large-scale production of the Semi.

The gamble, it seems, is that true self-driving technology will reset the value proposition of these vehicles. An even less luxurious, more drab Model Y strikes me as an unappealing offering. But if you can deliver a self-driving car that fits plenty of passengers and cargo and can go 300 miles on a charge for like, $35,000, I can see it working.

The problem is that being a self-driving car company requires one thing above all: Trust. Consumers need to trust that companies offering autonomous driving products have fully validated the safety of the technology. After years of using the public as beta testers, then a year of live-tweeting the destruction of all regulatory bodies, I just don't know if Elon Musk can still inspire that trust among buyers.

Still, it may be the only option he has left. As the European sales collapse shows, this is not the time to keep calm and carry on. Tesla has become a toxic brand in many corners of the world, and its products are less exciting than they used to be.

The company needs a reset, but it may not be getting one soon.

What did you do last week?

By Nick Anderson 

Drill, baby, drill. Or not.

 This is an interesting video.  The author discusses the cost of producing oil, and how it varies a lot between different oil producers.  Among the most expensive oil is shale oil in the USA.  And new oil from shale deposits is 50% more expensive than existing oil.   However, China, which has been responsible for much of the growth in global oil demand, and is the largest buyer of oil, has reached peak oil demand this year.  Analysts assumed that as China got richer, it would buy more cars, adding to oil demand.   And so it did.  Only they were EVs.  

The first oil producers to lose market share as oil demand and the oil price slide, will the most expensive.  These are, in order, the UK, Brazil, Canada, United States.   

There is little Trump/Musk can do about this.  I suppose Trump can issue an executive order banning EVs outside the USA, a modern-day King Canute.  How we laughed.  

Tariffs can protect the US car market.  But in South America, SE Asia, Africa, Mexico and China, in fact almost everywhere outside the USA, EVs are going to go to reach 100% of sales in short order.  Meanwhile, in the USA, the car industry is going to be left further and further behind the world car industry, because it will not be forced to adapt, and the programs that the Biden administration introduced, which subsidised local EV manufacture, to force the auto industry to modernise, have been rescinded. 

Fishies!

 By Matt Wuerker

No more free lunch

 By Mike Luckovich

The GQP guard dog

 by Mike Luckovich

Blow it up anyway

 By David Horsey

United we stand

By Patrick Chapatte 

Trump and Musk have launched a new class war

(Source: The Pros and Cons of Oligarchy)

By George Monbiot at The Guardian.

Seldom in recent history has class war been waged so blatantly. Generally, billionaires and hectomillionaires employ concierges to attack the poor on their behalf. But now, freed from shame and embarrassment, they no longer hide their involvement. In the US, the world’s richest man, Elon Musk, will lead the federal assault on the middle and working classes: seeking to slash public spending and the public protections defending people from predatory capital.

He shares responsibility for the Department of Government Efficiency with another billionaire, Vivek Ramaswamy. They have been recruiting further billionaires to oversee cuts across government. These plutocrats will not be paid. They will wage their class war pro bono, out of the goodness of their hearts.

Musk, with a fortune of more than $400bn (£330bn), has warned: “We have to reduce spending to live within our means.” But he doesn’t mean “we”, he means you. Trump and Musk want to cut the federal budget so they can slash taxes for the ultra-rich. This benighted class needs all the help it can get. Since 2020, the wealth of the 12 richest men in the US has risen by a mere 193%. Collectively, the poor dears now own only $2tn.

Musk’s stated aims may be impossible to realise. When he took the role, he claimed he would cut the $6.75tn in federal spending by $2tn, which is actually more than the entire discretionary budget. But the intention is clear: a contraction whose consequences would be devastating for most Americans. Trump’s election was a response to the cruel failures of neoliberalism, but it will also be their ultimate expression. It was a response to the corruption of the political system by private money. And it will be the system’s ultimate corruption.

If Musk’s programme succeeds, we hardly have to imagine its impacts on human life and the living world, because for the past year a similar plan has been enacted in Argentina. There, Javier Milei has been waging his class war on behalf of international capital. The results include a horrifying surge in poverty; a collapse in the number of people with health insurance, coupled with critical underfunding of the public health system; proliferating hate crimes; a coordinated assault on science and environmental protection; and a free-for-all for the foreign corporations hoping to seize the country’s minerals, land and labour.

In the US, the motherfrackers will be released to do as they please. Trump’s nominated energy secretary, Chris Wright, runs a fracking services company and claims: “There is no climate crisis.” Already, banks and corporations are gleefully tearing up their environmental commitments.

The massive programme of cuts and deregulation that Musk and Ramaswamy seek extends the sadomasochistic politics now ascendant on both sides of the Atlantic. Demagogues have found that it doesn’t matter how much their followers suffer, as long as their designated enemies are suffering more. If you can keep ramping up the pain for scapegoats (primarily immigrants), voters will thank you for it, regardless of their own pain. This is the great discovery of the conflict entrepreneurs, led by Musk himself: what counts in politics is not how well people are doing, but how well they are doing in relation to designated out-groups.

There are plenty of willing executioners. One of the convicted ringleaders of the Southport riots in the UK, which were encouraged by Elon Musk, was described after his sentencing as “a man so consumed with hate and violence that he could find little satisfaction in activities that did not immediately quench his desire for harming others”. MAGA fanatics, whipped up by the frenzy of hatred on X and other pro-Trump media, might gain nothing from Trump’s presidency except the satisfaction of inflicting pain. But this small prize is sufficient to ensure their absolute loyalty. It will induce them to commit any atrocity Trump demands.

Why has the class war been unleashed now, not just in the US, but in much of the rest of the world? Because the democratising, distributive effects of two world wars have worn off. We fondly imagine that the semi-democratic era (exemplified in rich nations by the years 1945–1975) is the normal state of politics. But it was highly atypical, and made possible only by the wars’ erosion of the power of the ruling classes. The default state of centralised societies, to which nations are now reverting, is oligarchy.

In the 20th century, we called this reversion fascism. Fascism possessed some grotesque and peculiar features of its own. It used new tools and modes of organisation. But in key respects it represented a revival of the pre-democratic order: a world in which absolute power was vested in kings and emperors and their courts. We can endlessly debate whether or not Trump and his acolytes are fascists, as if that somehow solves the problem. It is more useful to recognise them as representatives of a much longer tradition, of which fascism was just one iteration. The emperors are back.

Because Trump and Musk are such volatile characters, it’s tempting to imagine that their grip on power will be chaotic and contingent. But the billionaire class will move swiftly to consolidate the oligarchy, and will meet almost no resistance. US institutions, the established media and foreign governments are completely unprepared. Despite copious warnings over many years, they know only how to appease oligarchic power, not how to resist it.

I started using the term “anticipatory compliance” in 2008 to describe the media’s kowtowing to undemocratic forces. The man who coined the phrase, Bruce Dover, explained to me that “an emperor who inspires fear in his followers need not raise a hand against them”. Now, wherever in institutional life we might hope to find resistance, we see obedience, even before Trump has taken power. Almost everyone instinctively accommodates the new dispensation.

In nations that have not yet fully succumbed to oligarchy we need to recognise, and recognise fast, that democratic politics do not emerge spontaneously. Our systems achieve a quasi-democratic character only with an active citizenry, whose engagement is largely defined by protest, and an independent media. But, at the direct behest of capital, governments are criminalising peaceful protest, while many independent media, such as the BBC, shut out dissenting voices.

If governments like the UK’s are to invest in their own survival, they must free their citizens to rebuild democracy, and we must seize every opportunity to do so. There is no demilitarised zone in this class war. We must all decide where we stand.

Indeed.  

Tesla sales have peaked

 From Inside EVs

One other factor:  Tesla And Musk used to be cool.  Now they're not.

Puppet Master

 By Ann Telnaes

The mask slips

 Elon Musk looking at Trump.

President Musk

 

He thinks he's steering!

 By Mike Luckovich