Tesla is in trouble for two reasons: first, Elon Musk entered politics and alienated half the nation’s voters. He didn’t just endorse Trump, he created the slash-and-burn DOGE, which is firing government workers en masse without cause. More people are trading in Teslas than any other brand. Protests are taking place at Tesla showrooms. Teslas are being vandalized by people angry at Musk and his destruction of federal agencies.
Second, a Chinese auto manufacturer recently announced that its electric car can be fully recharged in five minutes, as compared to the hours it takes to recharge a Tesla.
Instead of redesigning our government, Musk should have stuck to building better cars.
Liam Denning wrote about Musk’s woes at Bloomberg News:
Sometimes a chart is just a chart. Sometimes, when you’re looking at Tesla Inc. and BYD Co. Ltd. in early 2025, it’s a striking squiggly metaphor.
Tesla, the biggest US electric-vehicle maker, has shocked the world this year with its overt politicization and slumping sales and stock price. BYD, its great Chinese rival, just shocked the world by announcing its newest model can recharge in five minutes. The symbolism, capturing the lead that China has taken in EVs compared with a US still fighting with itself about the relative wokeness of EVs, could hardly be clearer.
At a Supercharger, you’ll typically be able to add 150 to 200 miles of range to a Tesla in less than 30 minutes—sometimes more, sometimes less. With a typical home EV charger, you can completely recharge a Tesla’s battery overnight, adding roughly 25 to 40 miles of range per hour that it’s plugged in.
Which do you prefer: a battery that recharges in five minutes or one that requires 30 minutes or even hours?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I had to go to the link to confirm that the article was not written by Liam Neeson. It was Liam Denning.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Sorry. I fixed the error.
LikeLike
No apology necessary, I enjoyed the idea that it was written by Neeson.
LikeLike
You can’t actually buy a BYD car in the USA. They aren’t sold here. Even if they were sold here, there is a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs. This 100 percent tariff is the one thing Biden and Trump agree on. Oh well, so much for the so-called “free market” that we’re all expected to revere with pseudo-religious devotion.
LikeLike
If BYD could produce a car battery that recharges in 5 minutes, others in the U.S. will too, even Tesla. But the Tesla brand is tainted. Even Trump’s endorsement doesn’t help, because Tesla is too expensive for most Trumpers. Ford and Chevy might bring out a 5-minute EV for half the price of Tesla.
LikeLiked by 2 people
We can always hope for something like that. I’m cheap when it comes to cars, and I don’t believe in having a car payment ever. I always buy used, but even a new BYD EV (sans tariff) is actually in my 100% cash payment range.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Let us look at the other side of TESLA’s China vs United States market.
February 11, 2025 – “Elon Musk’s Tesla on Tuesday opened an enormous $200 million battery plant in Shanghai, near its carmaking Gigafactory, …”
Gigafactory Shanghai is an automobile manufacturing plant in Shanghai, China, operated by Tesla, Inc. Construction of the plant began in January 2019, initial production started in October, and the first production vehicles rolled out of the factory in December 2019, less than one year after groundbreaking. 20,000 employees.
Tesla’s Gigafactory Shanghai, the company’s first factory outside the United States, cost approximately $2 billion to build.
In 2024, China accounted for approximately 36.7% of Tesla global deliveries, making it Tesla’s second largest market after the U.S.
TESLA sales in China TUMBLE 49% in February 2025.
https://cleantechnica.com/2025/03/05/tesla-sales-in-china-tumble-49-in-february/
Needless to say, I’m smiling as I write and post this comment.
LikeLiked by 1 person
:o)
LikeLike
Another smile.
In China all workers are members of labor unions and they are protected by laws backed by the CCP.
And Xi doesn’t seem to like billionaires that act like they are immune and better than anyone else.
The CCP has a special prison for them that’s at capacity, last time I read about it. Packed. I think that lock-up time includes programming to make them a better citizen so they don’t think they are better than anyone else.
I’ve read about wealthy, popular people who vanished into one of those camps and came back a different person who is very careful not to act so someone might think they are thinking that way.
China’s Constitution mentions freedom of expression in one clause and then in another clause it makes it illegal to criticize the government.
LikeLike
TESLA’S PROBLEM IS A BASIC BUSINESS PROBLEM: Gone are the days when Tesla was the only EV in town — today major manufacturers are flooding the market with better, more stylish, more practical, less expensive, safer, and higher quality EVs, and Tesla will continue to lose market share and profitability to the competition.
Tesla is the Model T of the EV vehicle market, and Tesla’s day is over. That’s just the way that competition works in the free marketplace.
And then, of course, there’s also Musk himself: He’s quite like oligarch-of-his-own-time Henry Ford in temperament. Ford invented the Model T and since he invented it, he viewed it as perfect, needing no basic changes. That’s how “genius” is: Stubbornly self-righteous. And Musk is the same: Although Musk has introduced some updates to the car’s systems and technology, it still remains the same oddly-shaped “turtle” that it has been since its introduction, just like the Model T never changed its body style. That was OK when the Model T was the only game in town, but when choices became available, people went for style as much as for technology. The misshapen Tesla will suffer the same fate.
Musk is like Henry Ford in other ways, too: Ford was a closet Nazi and a blatant anti-semite. Musk is more overt in his Nazi sympathy; is he a closet anti-semite?
Tesla cars are not going to fade away entirely, but Tesla market share and profit margins will greatly decline, along with the price of its stock.
Musk’s political misadventures notwithstanding, that’s just the way the free marketplace works.
LikeLiked by 1 person
quikwrit: I have often thought it looked like a tin can on wheels anyway. Reminds me of the “tin man” in that movie, One Flew Over . . . er . . . But you know what I mean. But anyway, that’s just me. CBK
LikeLike
Tesla is falling victim to what has happened to thousands of other businesses across the globe: technical obsolescence. That factor has nothing to do with anyone’s political beliefs. At any rate, the infrastructure for EVs – especially car charging stations – is still not economically feasible to justify large scale production of EVs.
While on the topic of Tesla, the Governor of Minnesota – who was celebrated ad nauseum by Diane Ravitch – recently made a fool of himself, again. He was cheering on the decline of Tesla’s stock price while forgetting – if he ever actually knew – that this decline means that Minnesota’s state public employee pension fund has therefore lost $400+ million in value. The linked essay has good fun with this topic, and the first two reader comments are comical to everyone not on the far, angy Left.
“Tim Walz seems like a woman’s image of what they’d make if they were asked to make a man.” In response: “If that woman was a lifelong Democrat, member of Code Pink who donates regularly to Planned Parenthood while tending to her 3 cats.”
https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/03/tim-walz-is-none-of-the-things-they-said-he-was/
LikeLike
“Tim Walz is a closeted gay communist…”
Sorry, I fail to see the humor that “Brad Countryman” does in that comment that sounds like an insult a 1980s 5th grade bully would shout at his victim.
I do think that “Brad Countryman” unwittingly revealed his own questionable values when he criticizes Walz for not trying to manipulate stock prices by lying about Tesla. Somehow “Brad” believes Walz should have refrained from criticizing Tesla to keep Tesla stock prices high for political gain – presumably the right wing politicians who do this for their billionaire pals are worthy of admiration in Brad’s book. Maybe he thinks Walz should have done a press event admiring a Tesla at the Governor’s mansion?
To save everyone the trouble of reading it, the National Review article basically reports all the facts that demonstrate that Tim Walz is just as authentic as we thought he was, and then the reporter – Becket Adams – nonsensically concludes that Tim Walz isn’t authentic. Which is pretty funny coming from a right wing journalist from the midwest who is apparently enough of a wannabe elitist that he carefully followed all the rules set out* to get his wedding announcement and wedding photo published in the NYT wedding section! Pretty sure “inauthentic” Tim Walz and his wife didn’t think that was worthwhile, but they probably weren’t trying to impress some elite beltway rich folks.
*From a NYT article from the same era about how to get your wedding announcement published: “Anyone can submit an application online, from which LeAnn Wilcox, the Weddings editor, and her staff choose…..One common problem, which may lead to her not choosing an announcement, is when couples include photos that don’t follow the required specifications. (“It’s astonishing how many 6-foot-2 grooms and their 5-5 brides can’t figure out how to get their eyes level in a photo,” she says. “Hint: Have him sit in a chair, or have her stand on a higher step — and go from there.”)”
LikeLike
NYCPSP,
Andy Borowitz agrees with you about the New York Times. He commented this morning on Substack:
“If I ever lose my fucking mind I want the New York Times to write about it because they’ve shown they can make a batshit crazy person seem normal.”
LikeLike
This is part of the syndrome I have dubbed Times Derangement Syndrome, whereby left of center people become hyper-fixated on the idea that the problem that deserves most of our attention and intellectual energy is the fact that the New York Times sometimes uses language in headlines and articles that is not the exact language that the TDS-sufferer would have preferred. There is currently no vaccine for this form of TDS.
LikeLike
Diane,
Thanks for the heads up about Borowitz. Once you see the NYT’s normalizing and sane-washing of Trump, you can’t unsee it. Unless you are willfully obtuse.
I think Borowitz’ point is reinforced by the fact that those who are so dedicated to defending the NYT news reporting as excellent reporting that is extremely biased against Trump can’t cogently defend the normalizing spin the NYT gives to Trump in all their stories. They simply do what Trump so frequently does and insult critics with epithets like “deranged”. We all have a “disease”.
Apparently (to them) the right wing’s decades-long assault on the “liberal” media, which picked up steam with Rush Limbaugh and Fox News in the 1980s, and now seems to have taken over most of the media sphere, was a waste of their efforts. It was meaningless. The Republicans have seized power with their brilliant candidates like George W. Bush and Trump and radical right wingers because of the many good and popular things they have done for working and middle class Americans, especially their outstanding trickle down, lower taxes for the very rich economic policies that always create the most fabulous economies. While the Democrats have given them nothing but failure after failure.
The NYT is anti-Trump because it published an editorial urging readers to vote for the Democrat to “save democracy” DESPITE the Dems being out of touch elitists who – as the NYT wrote in hundreds of news articles – offered absolutely nothing but more of their failing economic policies to the very, very good people who were suffering tremendously because of Democrat-caused inflation and because of the horrible economic policies of the elitist Dems, who only cared about trans people and letting in more undocumented violent gang members.
The NYT is anti-Trump because their editorial urged readers to vote against Trump, whom their news stories present as the cognitively fit populist who cares about the problems of hardworking Americans and who is motivated only by his desire to root out waste and fraud and have an efficient government that is no longer run by incompetent DEI staff but is instead run by highly qualified experts like the ones hired by DOGE.
The NYT is anti-Trump because they “bravely” report on the accidental mistakes made when the highly competent folks at DOGE who are motivated only by their desire to do good and are working 24/7 to root out waste and fraud to make America great again.
The NYT reporters and editors seem absolutely confounded that so many Americans are still supporting Trump, the guy that (according to the NYT) is motivated ONLY by his desire to root out waste and fraud, to make the government more efficient, who has kept his promise to get rid of the unqualified DEI hires and replace them with the (according to the NYT) outstanding, extremely qualified efficiency experts at DOGE whose mission is only to make sure taxpayers money is not wasted.
And that’s why – the laughable “Trump mad at NYT” cosplay aside – Maggie Haberman will always have a prime seat at the Trump White House instead of getting thrown out with the reporters who report the “inconvenient” facts that challenge the Republican big lie, which are nearly always missing from NYT news stories.
It is absurd that the NYT keeps giving unwarranted credibility to the Republicans’ self-professed good motives by (intentionally?) leaving out all the facts that make it clear their self-professed motives is a clear lie.
It has been devastating to the Dems that the NYT shreds their motives and reinforces the big lie that they aren’t trustworthy and do not care at all about the suffering of hard working Americans. Notwithstanding that the NYT did urge voters to support Harris despite her lack of any solutions instead of the guy who cared about their problems and promised to fix the supposedly disastrous economy that the NYT implied was the fault of the Dems in virtually every story.
LikeLike
I think Tim Walz is wonderful. He would not sell out Ukraine, stab our Canadian and Mexican neighbors in the back, threaten to invade Canada, Greenland, and the Panama Canal, spit on our European allies, and bow to the tyrant Putin.
Tim Walz has never been accused of crimes or convicted of 40 felonies. He is not a sexual predator. He does not have porn stars accusing him of cheating on his wife with them.
Tim Walz is a man of integrity. Trump and Vance are Putin’s puppets.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Tim Waltz? OMG–beats the hell out of anyone in Trumplandia. CBK
LikeLiked by 2 people
Would love to respond but the paywall stopped me.
Though I did notice the writer, while named “Liam”, did not sport a surname of “Neeson”.
LikeLike
What’s the big deal? Just send in a team of teenage and 20 something computer programmers who have absolutely no connection to Elon Musk and no knowledge of electric car manufacturing to “re-imagine” Tesla and make it more efficient. Those computer programmers – certified experts on how to make Tesla more efficient and get rid of waste and fraud due to their getting 5s on their AP Comp Science exam – will be given full access to all of Tesla’s private information on everyone’s computer – from Elon to the board members to every employee – because Elon Musk has said that any young person good at computer programming is the right person to root out waste and fraud and make an organization great again. These “experts” will be making wholesale firings of engineers and anyone else who doesn’t give them the full access they “need” to make the expert decisions on making Tesla more efficient.
To help make the decision to send in this team of “experts” into an excellent, very credible, and very popular solution to Tesla being in big trouble, the NYT will help manufacture consent with multiple daily stories about the problems at Tesla that refer to the excellent, very qualified computer programmers who have been working overtime to root out waste and fraud and are dedicated to making Tesla great again. In every story – especially in the “very, very negative” stories that report on the problematic errors made by this crack team of experts – the one non-debatable premise is that these computer programmers are extremely well-qualified to do this work and the only possible motivation they could have is to make Tesla great again. The NYT will intentionally exclude all of the following information as “not newsworthy: that these computer experts are subsidized by George Soros, they are rabidly anti-Tesla, they are utterly unqualified for the job they were hired to do, and that they were hired for their willingness to do what people who hate Tesla want them to do. All that information is banned from the “very negative” NYT articles about the “accidental mistakes” these efficiency experts make. In every article, the reporter will “NYT-splain” that the ONLY motivation of this excellent team of waste and fraud experts is to make Tesla more efficient and great again. Any information that might make readers doubt the motives of this team will be left out. Critics of this team of “efficiency experts” will be characterized as people who hate merit-based hiring and support nepotism.
Apparently, that kind of reporting would be characterized by some as the NYT being “highly critical” of the team of experts sent in to make Tesla great again. And not as the NYT manufacturing consent for the intentional destruction of Tesla.
When reporting looks like manufacturing consent and walks like manufacturing consent…..
LikeLike
Hello,I’m sure you’ve been contacted about this error by many others, but
LikeLike
Finish your sentence!
LikeLike
Elon Musk and Trump together, will cause the U.S. economy to slide down that slipper slope for sure, under the business-orientation of Trump’s what benefits me first, Uncle Sam will get SOLD for SCRAPS for sure, and, Trump’s own private agenda, putting all those, yes-men into the heads of departments, will only make he have the ultimate power over the country, and he only runs the U.S., based off of the “Make America Great Again”, but, how is U.S. great, as the country took away women’s right to reproduction, and how Trump is, tossing out the rule of citizenship, nullifying the natural-born citizen rule, which actually, INVALIDATES his own status of the president of the U.S., as his parents came from Ireland, and with Trump’s HUGE EGO, he can’t see anyone ELSE’s opinions beyond his own, he will, RULE the United States as a DICTATOR for the upcoming four years, and only does what benefits his own mean, as that’s how businesspeople, act, so, democracy, freedom are all, D-E-A-D, as Trump takes the “throne”.
LikeLike