Uber has partnered with Google’s Waymo to facilitate robotaxi rides around Austin in advance of the city’s annual SXSW Festival. This development, occurring in Tesla’s own backyard amid a slowdown in sales, is quite interesting to me. Tesla has long enjoyed a huge first-mover advantage and an enormous amount of goodwill. First-mover advantages usually fade over time. Goodwill, in my experience, can disappear a lot faster.
I don’t love starting The Morning Dump with a question, but this is an important one and I don’t have a definitive answer to. It’s not that I think the market for Teslas will suddenly evaporate. The company could lose a huge percentage of its sales and still be the most popular electric car company in many markets. I’m just curious about how much of the company’s value is the hype and how much that hype is dependent on a never-ending string of good news and Musk pronouncements. Tesla, historically, gets a way higher valuation than other car companies and it’s not just because of the underlying business fundamentals.
Corvette is in a different situation. I don’t think esteem for the brand has lessened, but its original owners are aging out of the brand a little bit. What’s Corvette’s plan to keep itself fresh? Stellantis is a brand whose perceptions have definitely changed, and its big move is to become more American. That seems wise to me.
Oh, yeah, we’re in day two of tariffs. I don’t know how long they’ll last and there are some hints out there that, no matter what was said last night, the country might move past them quickly. Or at least modify them. Will this matter? I think the uncertainty is worse than any tariff right now.
The One Lever Tesla Can’t Pull Is The One It Might Need Most
Tesla CEO Elon Musk typically does some of his best work when his back is against the wall. I’m old enough to remember when it seemed like Tesla was going to have trouble delivering the company’s first production roadsters to customers and Musk had to rally customers, suppliers, and employees to get the product out the door.
It was hard then not to cheer for Musk. If you just started paying attention to the company and its leader, this enthusiasm for Musk might seem odd. At the time he was rich, but he wasn’t the richest man in the world. He was active on social media, but he didn’t own a platform. His politics were vague.
After years of hearing that American car companies were slow, old-fashioned, and unable to meet the demands of a new world, it was encouraging to see a company from the USA fundamentally alter the car industry forever.
Musk did have his own eccentricities. I remember covering his reaction to a questionable test from Top Gear and then a poorly planned road test someone at The New York Times did in a Model S. Musk’s response then was to refuse to budge an inch, threaten to sue, and otherwise get really mad. I remember writing at the time that I thought Elon Musk was turning a bit paranoid and Nixon-like.
None of this harmed Musk in the long run, as his was the only company in the world making truly great electric cars, and he benefited, both in esteem and in personal wealth, from getting there first. People were proud to be not just Tesla owners, but also Tesla shareholders. Even before Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X, he generated an almost cult-like adoration from a certain kind of extremely-online dude.
There are not enough of those online dudes to support a car company. Tesla’s goals have a lot more to do with driverless cars and other technology than they do with just selling a cars, so maybe that’s not a big deal, but Tesla still needs people to believe in the Tesla experiment or the high stock valuations that make him the richest man on the planet aren’t sustainable.
What if only the small segment of true believers are still on board? How long would it take to find out?
It’s hard to say if Tesla’s drop in sales in the United States, and especially in places like California, are explicitly because people take issue with any of the dozens of things that Elon Musk has done to make them upset. I don’t feel like I need to list them specifically because you’re getting your news from a blog so I assume you have the Internet, but just to pick the most recent thing: Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency is firing a bunch of people, and outlets across the country are pointing out that means he’s firing a bunch of disabled veterans. You might believe there’s a good reason for that, and perhaps there is, but it doesn’t feel good. Right? It’s hard to put that on a bumper sticker.
In Europe, where EV sales are exploding and Tesla sales are cratering, I think it’s much easier to draw a line between Musk’s politics and the sales drop. The support for the far right is growing in Europe, but it still represents less than a third of the population in the largest car markets, and talking to friends and relatives in Europe, it’s clear that those not associated with the far right absolutely despise the far right.
So what about China? Things can go poorly in Europe and the United States, but a big year in China could cover for a lot of it. Unfortunately for Tesla, things aren’t going well in China. In the first two months of the year, the brand saw a 30% decrease in sales from 132k cars to about 94K. Is this just the factory closing and the usual Chinese New Year Holiday as some suggest?
Not once did they mention the production transition from the old Model Y to the new Model Y, which temporarily results in fewer cars to sell. pic.twitter.com/2VAcszaQjG
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) March 4, 2025
It’s certainly part of it, but China celebrated Chinese New Year in 2024 as well (obviously). Plus, other automakers in China are doing just fine, and according to CNEVPost, NEV sales in the country are way up this year:
Retail sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs) in China continued to see a sequential decline in February, though the rate of decline narrowed significantly.
In February, retail sales of passenger NEVs in China totaled 720,000 units, up 85 percent year-on-year, but down 3 percent from January, according to preliminary data released today by the China Passenger Car Association (CPCA).
Chinese New Year always throws a kink in sales, but this year the kink wasn’t as pronounced as in the past. Granted, I don’t think people in China are anti-Tesla in any specific way, merely that the competition there is truly amazing and the company can only cut prices/hand out insurance deals for so long before its margins get so bad that it can’t uphold its high valuation.
Tesla says robotaxis are coming. Eventually. It’ll have to get approval in California to do it there and my guess is that California might not go out of its way to help, given that the company moved its HQ to Texas.
And what of Texas? Well, Uber and Waymo just linked up to start offering rides there as CNBC reports:
Austin is the first market in which Uber will manage and dispatch a fleet of Waymo vehicles. Riders in Phoenix can book Waymo rides through the Uber app, but the ride-sharing company does not manage the Waymo fleet in that market. The two companies’ partnership will expand to Atlanta later this year, where Waymo employees have already begun taking fully autonomous trips across the city, the company said Tuesday.
Uber sold off its autonomous vehicle, or AV, unit in 2020 after a string of earlier safety incidents including one fatality. The two companies have not disclosed how they split revenue for Waymo rides booked through the Uber app.
“With Waymo’s technology and Uber’s proven platform, we’re excited to introduce our customers to a future of transportation that is increasingly electric and autonomous,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement.
Now it’s Tesla that has ceded the first-mover advantage. It’s entirely possible that Tesla’s technology is way better than Google’s, that the cars will be nicer, and Elon Musk will come up with some genius marketing scheme to get people to buy the cars. Perhaps the idea of owning a car that you can allow to go do cab rides while you sleep is a great idea that people will love.
But here’s the thing that would scare me if I’m a Tesla investor: What if they don’t? What if Tesla is now toxic to enough people in big cities that you can’t get people to buy and/or use the cars? Then what’s the value of the company? People are already selling their Teslas in small numbers because they’re tired of being judged by their neighbors. There’s blood in the water.
Musk may not even be the most conservative or Trump-supporting CEO in the car world, but he’s made his brand so explicitly political that it’s now impossible to separate the two. How is Musk going to overcome that?
As I wrote almost exactly 12 years ago:
Tesla, in my opinion, has benefited from more goodwill and trust than almost any other automaker in the last decade. If that stops it’s not going to be the media’s fault, it’s going to be Musk’s.
There will always be a market for Teslas. It would be silly to suggest otherwise. The market has to be huge, though, for Tesla to be valued the way Tesla is. If sales fall to a low enough point, the company isn’t a unicorn, it’s just a horse. Horses are cool, too, but they aren’t as valuable as unicorns.
What Happens When Corvette Owners Are Too Old For Their Corvettes?
Oh, another question, fun. As was pointed out in our Discord, the short answer is: They get sold in an estate sale to some kid in their 20s. There’s a lot of conversation around the industry about the future of Corvette and this story in the Detroit Free Press addresses it pretty head on:
Corvette enthusiasts such as Detroit resident Mahlon Cooks, who retired from a Wayne County job after 30 years, may not be in the market much longer.
Cooks’ most recent purchase, an eighth-generation Corvette, may be his last, he told the Free Press.
“Heck, I’m 70 years old,” he said. “The car is about 4 inches off the ground.”
I think that’s reasonable, although the percentage of Corvette owners above 55 has dropped from 62% to 59% since 2019. This might both be a reflection of the introduction of a mid-engined Vette and also, maybe, some owners aging out of the brand.
These questions are also coming up because three of the executives closely associated with the brand have left the company. One retired by choice, and two seem to have been retired by GM. This has bothered some of the faithful, especially as it comes right as the company is about to roll out the 2025 Corvette ZR1.
I’m less bothered, to be honest. If Corvette is to remain America’s premiere performance brand, it’s going to have to change, which usually means an injection of new blood. This doesn’t mean that Corvette loses the core of what Corvette is. I’m pretty sure that GM President Mark Reuss is going to let that happen any time soon (he may eventually move on to head up the company’s F1 program, but he’s there now).
The youngest among us, Griffin, proudly drives a C6 Corvette. There’s still enthusiasm out there and it’ll just take a fresh look to make sure that Griffin wants to buy a new Corvette when he can afford one.
Stellantis To Become A Little More American
The Stellantis of Carlos Tavares, not pictured, was a very European company. People I knew involved with the automaker complained that the Tavares version of the company was a little too French. That’s no longer going to be the case as the Stellantis board moves to put two Americans onto its largely European board of directors.
Stellantis NV on Monday nominated two Americans, Alice Schroeder and Daniel Ramot, to join its board that currently includes a large membership of European business leaders.
The transatlantic automaker also proposed reelecting five other directors, as the terms of seven members of the 11-seat board come to an end.
The directors will serve two-year terms if approved at an April 15 shareholders meeting in Amsterdam.
Schroeder is a former Morgan Stanley managing director who sits on several boards, including HSBC North America, and was once Warren Buffett’s biographer. Ramot is an Israeli-American entrepreneur and scientist who leads Via — a public transportation and software company that has ties to Stellantis Chairman John Elkann and his family’s investment company, Exor NV.
This is almost certainly a big improvement for the board as America, last time I checked, is still the company’s most important market.
The Uncertainty Is Worse Than Any Tariff
President Trump seemed to double down on his tariffs in his speech last night, which seem mostly bad for the industry. He did add the idea of being able to deduct the interest from car loans, which the car industry would probably like to see happen, although it’s not a huge amount of money unless you’re buying a super expensive car. Probably not enough to push anyone above the standard deduction.
How long will the tariffs last? It’s anyone’s guess, though there are some signs that maybe cars will be exempted in some way according to Reuters:
President Donald Trump’s administration is considering granting relief from his 25% tariffs on Canadian and Mexican imports to products that comply with the trade pact he negotiated with the two U.S. neighbors during his first term, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick said on Tuesday.
Two sources familiar with discussions between the Trump administration and Canadian and Mexican officials said the talks are aimed at exemptions for companies that comply with the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement’s rules of origin, largely – but not exclusively – aimed at automakers.
That’s great if you’re a carmaker, but the whiplash from being told you’re going to have to build EVs to being told you shouldn’t build EVs is a lot. And then add on top of it that President Trump laid out the rules for building cars in the 2020 USMCA agreement only to toss them immediately upon being reelected.
How do you plan for that? Here’s a bit from Cox Auto’s Senior Economist Charlie Chesbrough that I think is key:
“Through much of 2024, many of the key metrics for the auto industry were returning to long-established norms. New-vehicle inventory had mostly recovered from the pandemic shortages; sales volumes and incentives were both increasing, as expected. And while new-vehicle prices are elevated compared to 2019, new vehicle price inflation was relatively tame in 2024, with transaction prices in January 2025 below levels measured in January 2023. But here we go again. Just as the industry seemed to be finding stable ground, new obstacles are thrown in place. How long higher tariffs are held in place is the industry’s big question right now. Higher prices and border disruptions could result in lower volume. Our forecast of 16.3 million new-vehicle sales in 2025, at least at this moment, is now in question.”
Building cars is hard, but it didn’t used to be this hard.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
Here’s French cover artists Nouvelle Vague doing their version of Echo And The Bunnymen’s “The Killing Moon” just so people don’t think we’re anti-French around here.
The Big Question
Would you consider buying a Corvette?
Photo: Waymo
To my eye, the C6 and C7s were the best-looking since the ’63 Stingray. I don’t hate the C8 as some seem too. But I’ve never been a Corvette guy.
A buddy has an Audi S4, and it was a little tough for 67-year-old me to get out of his car. And there exist speed bumps around Boston that his car scraped over even at a crawl. I can’t imagine anything lower.
Pitch for the new corvette. Like this, my granddad used to have something like it. Higher seats, soft and plush. Really quiet and smooth ride. Understated ya know. Target the older generation with the money.
Random observation on the not pictured here company. Driving out of Ann Arbor today, an early “merger of equils” Charger passed by on US 23. Normally, this would only be notable due to how clean and rust free the car was, but there was a manufacturer’s license plate bolted to it. No sound or exh. noise or even visible exh, outlets on the car and it was rather base spec. Development mule for a rear drive ICE?
You’re avoiding the Elephant in the Room. Tesla’s build quality has continuously been that of 80s Hyundai, and it certainly hasn’t improved at the speed, rate, or quality that Hyundai managed to do.
As far as the Vette goes, I’m 66 and if I was spending that money on a new sports car I would definitely road test the Z1R. I do like it. Enough to buy it would need some convincing.
I’m definitely Corvette-curious, but I think I’d have more fun renting or trying than owning.
After dreaming forever, I was able to snag a low-mileage C5 in 2017. It was near the bottom of the depreciation/appreciation curve for C5s. It was cheap enough to be my third vehicle, and it’s modern enough to be reliable. Still more power than I need. Eventually, I may have to upgrade to a C7 or I’d totally take a C8, but they’re not as affordable still. I’m hoping the Boomers hitting 70-75 years of age will cause a high supply in the gently-used market in the next few years.
“Musk may not even be the most conservative or Trump-supporting CEO in the car world”
I’m pretty sure he’s the only car world CEO to spend $250 million on getting Trump elected. Nobody else comes anywhere near there.
Bezos paid the same for the Washington Post…in 2013, no less.
“Would you consider buying a Corvette?”
I got my ’05 Pontiac GTO as a 50th birthday present to myself. A corvette was not out of the question with my budget. I started looking but it’s such a stereotype for someone my age I talked myself out of it. Of course, I got a car with the same powertrain as the Corvette so…
Things: Goodwill once trashed doesn’t come back. Visit Volkswagen and Dieselgate, Nissan and the guy in Lebanon, or any of the big 3 who sold shit cars, (Rollover Explorers, Pintos, Corvairs (even though I love them the bad press killed them), Most all the GM X cars, British Leyland, and on and on. The badwill likely to last probably decades.
Corvette reminds me of Harley Davidson. As an older I get it, gettin in and out of the Del Sol is not as easy any more, all the more reason for Corvette to create their own Cayenne, sell them by the brick load, having said that the girth and chrome and image of the Harleys is puke worthy and I’m from Milwaukee. They need to change and fast…
Finally Skum: I was never a fan, the stock valuation is the stuff dreams (Vaporware) are made of and will eventually become a nightmare for those holding on to the shit. The cars, save the original S model are fugly and the backlash from the 1/2 of America that didn’t vote for the orange merde, (who were the real buying pool for Tesla), will continue and probably accelerate.
1st gen explorers are fine. Even including the bad tires they are mearly average for midsized suv of the era. Without them is near the best. Suspension causes the front to wash out if you don’t get the body roll right. Cg is low too.
Corvette should be a product line. Have the normal badass one, make a smaller, cheaper, Miata-fighting one, and a fast CUV one.
Back when the rumor was that the mid engine C8 corvette was going to be the ‘Corvette Duntov’ halo model, and there would still be the front engine ‘normal’ Corvette on sale not trying to push into the hypercar market, I was on board with the idea of ‘Corvette as a product line’. But a re-badged Pontiac Solstice as a 4 cylinder ‘baby vette’ and some abomination of an Equinox as the ‘CUVette’? Nope. Nopety nope-o’clock.
It would be annoying like the Mustang Mach E is annoying, but I dunno, it could lead to more fun cars on the road.
The GPX had some oompf with the 260 HP 2.0L Ecotech.
And the Sky looked ∞ times better that the Solstice.
Turbo sky had awesome mpg. Dunno why the solstice was so much worse rated.
That would be a Mustake.
37 here. Corvettes are really cool. However, I don’t want my only car, the car I daily drive, to be anything like a Corvette
The kind of extra income required to have one as an “extra” car (not to mention the space) just isn’t in the cards for as much of my generation as it was for previous generations. Wages didn’t keep up with 55+ years of inflation. There’s also not as many of us as there were in our parents generation, so, unfortunately for GM and the Corvette, with the boomer generation aging out of Corvettes, they’re after a smaller piece of a smaller pie.
I own a Tesla. I’m not getting another one if Musk has anything to do with the company. I’m also telling anyone who’s interested to look elsewhere. Until the board wakes up and gets rid of Musk totally and completely, Tesla’s brand will be garbage. Boot him off and buy out his stock holdings. It’ll be painful but ultimately help the company survive.
I do feel bad for the people who genuinely believe in the original mission of Tesla. Accelerating the world’s adoption of sustainable clean energy is a worthy goal.
I’m not sure there’s a practical way to buy him out. He owns an enormous amount of the company and I’m not sure who could afford to pay for that. Plus, the second Musk leaves the stock price tanks because at that point it’s just a car company, so your overpriced shares are now also worth a fraction of what you paid for them.
I would say I have sympathy for their plight, but they let it get to this point in the first place and I’m sure they’re all so rich from it that even if the company goes down in flames at this point they’ll be just fine.
The institutional investors have to be getting pretty nervous right now. TSLA is a S&P 500 stock that a lot of retirement plans hold. Seeing that holding plummet in value over the CEO doing dumb stuff has got to be giving the managers heartburn. I’d certainly be calling the board members and telling them that my fund will vote its shares to remove Musk unless he steps down.
If I remember correctly from articles on the topic, Musk’s voting rights on his shares mean that it would take 80% of the shares not owned by Musk to vote him out.
Darn. That’s a darn shame since he needs to go.
Not all of us “let it get to this point in the first place” willingly.
I’m a Tesla stock owner but only because I am an index investor and I was forced to buy it when TSLA came into the S&P 500 as a meme stock. My choices were either to exit the index fund and spend significantly more to purchase the individual stocks outside of the index without Tesla or basically write off the value of the Tesla stock I was forced to buy.
Arrest him for fraud as a few hundred counts will last him a lifetime.
Things are turning for Telsa quick in my area (MA). People are torching Telsa chargers and vandalizing cybertrucks. Is it people that hate EVs or hate Musk? Who knows but Tesla is stuck in the middle and paying the price.
It is 100% Musk. His “brand” is now toxic to a large portion of the public, me included.
Here’s what many folks considering buying, or keeping, a Tesla may be thinking: do I want to opt into or remain open to harassment/vandalism? Not many folks do.
Tesla was never a unicorn, it was a horse that Musk duck taped a carrot to and told everyone was a unicorn, and then found some investors to back up his story. It’s a shame it took the downfall of an entire country to show people that, but here we are.
Corvette? *looks at profile picture*
I can tell you that kids still like Corvettes. Every time I drive through my neighborhood all the kids playing outside stop and stare. And I don’t think it’s just because I’m so weird. 😉
The big question is whether younger people will be able to afford them new. It used to be a perfect midlife crisis car because any middle-aged guy or gal with a merely decent job could save up to buy one. With car prices and the cost of housing (after all, you can’t buy a Corvette without a garage in which to wipe it down with a diaper every time you take it out 😉 ) skyrocketing I don’t know if that will still be true for the next generation.
I think Corvette has become too performance focused. Older Corvettes were overall GT focused. Good (for the time) handling cars with power and some luggage space. There were always more hard-core racing options available, but TBH most owners actually want the former.
I’d like to buy a late C3 (a style I loathed as a kid) with modern EFI.
Agree. I loved my 2011 C6. Plenty of storage space for 2 people’s luggage. It was a second car but I used as my daily most of the time.
Notable storage: my 50 lb Husky, a small frame mountain bike (at different times).
Also, manual or bust for my sports cars.
I love the C4 body, but OMG the hard plastic interior….
A new one? No.
Bit expensive for me and I still find it ugly even after it’s been on sale for a few years now.
If my eyesight continues to deteriorate I might buy a C8.
The more C8s that I see, the better the C7s look.
The china question is a hard one to answer with any certainty. There is a big economic downturn not being really talked about then tons of competition with really good cars.
The global market has been uncertain for 5 years with periods of it must be fine but definitely heading towards more uncertainty.
Gen z and zenials are often compared with baby boomers alot. The Corvette seems to be also a shared like. I have an uncle that had a lot of Corvettes in his 20s and 30s. He ended up keeping his 67 until he gave it to his son in the mid 90s. His son ended up buying a C5 in his late 20s as well. I thought it was a bit of rarity and never really saw anyone his age with them. With the prices of c4 c5 and C6 and the popularity of the C6 in formula drift now. It’s not surprising to see Corvettes go to younger people. I think the c8 was to try to bring back the people that went to euro cars. I’ve also heard 20 year olds talking about big miatas and pointing at a c5 so there is that.
Corvette: yes, and I’m under 40.
Current nice-weather daily driver is a 2007 BMW 335 convertible that I’ve had for 10 years, and it will be replaced in 0-5 years by another (used) convertible. C7s are high on the list, along with Mustang GTs and Merc C43/E53 if I find the right deal. C8: not even if it’s on firesale.