Dafuq is up with Tesla?

Terrible earnings, disastrous sales figures, but the stock goes up? What the actual fuck?

Sorry buddy, you knew Musk was a twat when you took delivery of your $109K Founder’s Edition Cybertruck.

It has been an interesting week for Tesla Motors, and by interesting, I mostly mean baffling.

Some history is in order.

Tesla’s CEO, one Elon Musk, last year went full MAGA, and decided to go all-in on electing the Mango Mussolini, spending about $270M dollars¹. That is a princely sum, and certainly more than any single individual has ever spent on an election before.

For this, he proposed and was selected to run this insane vanity project, the “Department of Government Efficiency”, or to match Musk’s favorite meme-coin, DOGE.

And yes, that “coin” has been an inside joke for Musk for almost a decade.

Still, the purported goal of DOGE is/was to cut “waste, fraud, and inefficiencies” in the Government. Musk estimated that he could get $2T out of the annual budget with his careful, calibrated eye.

Instead, he seemed more focused on eliminating oversight for his commercial interests (i.e. firing the NHTSA inspector generals who were investigating the shittiness that is the Tesla FSD, and the various safety violations that have been piling up on Tesla’s record.

That is but one of many conflicts of interest that Musk brought with him into the government.

We are at about 100 days into the second Trump administration, and Elon Musk has been entwined into Trump’s orbit to a degree that few predicted prior to the inauguration. I expected DOGE to be in everyone’s shit, but the complete collapse of any resistance in the agencies has been surprising.

Ok, table set, Musk was on a trajectory of self-immolation prior to his acquisition of Twitter, but that was a turning point in his journey to complete mega MAGA troll douche nozzle.

Real picture of Elon Musk, un-retouched

The Find Out

There’s an acronym that many banter about — FAFO — that stands for fuck around, find out. Its meaning is that you can do and say stupid shit, but you shouldn’t be surprised when the “Find Out” phase begins².

Since the inauguration and the chainsaw/wrecking ball/demolition derby that the Incel denizens at the direction of one Elon Musk has wrought on countless agencies and organizations in the government has been over the top. As I mentioned above, I was expecting the agencies and their career civil service staff to be more effective in blocking the bullshit, but I was disappointed when the DOGE dweebs were able to waltz in, and exfiltrate terabytes of data.

But they have done some real damage. From the IRS, to USAID, and other departments, the damage is extensive, and what is happening at State is criminal.

So, what is this ‘find out’?

In parallel with this shit-show that is DOGE, there has been a fairly coordinated effort in public to boycott and to demonstrate outside Tesla dealerships³, there have been countless stories about how people are dumping their used Tesla’s on the market. Hell, my coworker bought himself the cheapest Model 3 in 2023 (almost two years ago) for $41K, and it is now worth less than half what he paid for it. He would dump it, but he would lose a ton of money (and he frankly likes the car.)

What we have been waiting for is the first quarter results from Tesla to see what the net-net results are.

And, spoiler alert, it’s not good:

The numbers: (from Barron’s, that notable liberal rag)

Sales, operating profit, and net income fell 9%, 66%, and 39% year over year. That belies how weak the EV business is currently. From peak quarterly levels, Tesla’s sales are 25% lower and net income is 77% lower. First-quarter operating profit is down 90% from a fourth-quarter 2022 peak of $3.9 billion.

In a nutshell, this is fucking disaster territory. It is “holy fucking shit, all hands on deck” action plans.

The net-net is that they earned $409M on their sales. But there was $400M of interest on cash and cash on hand equivalents, and nearly $600M of emissions credits that they got by selling their surfeit of zero emissions vehicles to companies like Stellantis and others that have a lot of polluters.

That is, had Tesla NOT sold any cars, but just reported their interest and credit sales, they would have been about 2.5X as profitable. We have a word for that, and it is OUCH.

And indeed, in the investors call, the first segment of the call was Musk whining about “professional” protestors being paid to target poor widdle Elon who is just doing his civic duty to cut fraud, waste and inefficiencies (that is remarkably a list of agencies and regulators that are a thorn in his side).

Here’s a de-mumbled Youtube of the call (H/T to the Common Sense Skeptics channel)

If you do listen to this, just get the first 10 minutes or so to hear the whiny bitch that Musk is. He can’t really grasp that he did this all by his ketamine soaked self.

Tuesday afternoon (evening in the east coast) we heard this absolutely terrible read out of the business of Tesla.

If that report came from literally ANY other publicly traded company, it would have led to a fucking rout the next day. But something odd happened instead.

Something that defies logic, and any prior experience in history. The after-hours trading showed TSLA rising by about $15 a share.

What the actual fuck?

The reason Tesla isn’t in the shitter

It’s not because they are going to fix their public perception, or that it is just a small course correction that will get them back to the solid black.

Two things happened during the call. First was Musk stated that while he would still work with the Trump administration, he would be scaling it back to “maybe one, or two days a week”. This was likely to happen anyway, as a Government Special Employee (GSE), he can work 130 days per calendar year without having to submit to ethics and disclosure of finances and other items that he sure as fuck wants to remain hidden.

Still, one has to think that with Trump in the White House and the compliant Republicans in congress, that he could thumb his nose at the rule, drop a deuce on it and smear it in the media’s face to a rapturous MAGA cohort.

But what he really needs, and what his ability to do well anything is that Tesla stock needs to remain high. On November 4, 2024, TSLA was at $244 a share. By mid December, in the post coital election glow, it had risen to a peak of $480 a share.

(here is the link to the chart: Tesla (TSLA) Stock Chart and Price History 2025)

It fell back a bit but stayed really high until after the inauguration on January 20, 2025. On inauguration day, it was at a lofty $426 per share.

That is nutty if you look at their business. The P/E ratio was upwards of 200, so frothy that the investor’s loins were a’ quivering.

Since then, it dropped way down, to the low $200’s and bounced about a bit.

But after the call it rose about 8%. Why?

Two things. First, the investors were HUNGRY to have Musk return to the embattled car maker. There was a perception that his Government duties were keeping him from his utility as a pioneering visionary that was leading the great evolution to fossil fuel free transportation future. Him bailing out on the bulk of this attention tuned to the government agencies.

The second thing is that he doubled down on the insane idea that robotaxis⁴ were going to start in Austin in June 2025, and that it will be a huge boon, that the Full Self Driving with an app-based hailing service with Tesla skimming a percentage of the revenue was going to be an inexhaustible stream of super-charged revenues for Tesla.

Added to this was his bet that the Optimus Prime humanoid robot would be manufactured in bulk, first to work in Tesla plants to build cars, and then to be sold to households for ~ $20K each, with a ridiculous prediction that households would have four or five of them to do all the tasks. (Why the investors believe any of this is beyond me)

In short, the main reason for the resurgence of TSLA shares is not any shift in the fundamentals, but instead it is the investors clearly grasping for straws that will hint that Tesla will return to a glorious trajectory, disregarding the hostility of the government to the transition to a fossil fuel free future for transportation.

Sidebar: I used to think that investors were rational, and that the market was self correcting. I gave that up a long time ago, and this is but one more nail in that coffin of the market being the bringer of normality.

The Dead-Cat Bounce

Regardless, the last week in the four days since the earnings were reported, TSLA has jumped to over $285 a share from $227 the day before the earnings, a rise of an astounding 25.55%.

I can tell you if my company reported that shit as earnings, we would not pop nearly 26%. But we are a real company, that build real products, and that powers a lot of other businesses to make money.

And this gets to the ultimate lesson of this whole ordeal. TSLA isn’t a normal company. It is the front and the monetization of the cult of personality that is Elon Musk.

Elon has built this facade of geeky competence and an air of genius that has his fans comparing himself to Tony Stark in Ironman. (I think that is right, I am not a comic book movie fan) In reality, he is a dorky nerd who wasn’t that smart, who got incredibly lucky early on, parlayed that money into rockets and cars (but really fucked the two true founders of Tesla Motors), who just executed on the founder’s plan (roadster to prove it was viable, Model S a luxury sedan, followed by a luxury SUV, and then a measured move into the mainstream with the 3 and the Y), where his own braggadocio and bold plans were the Semi, the second Roadster, and the Cybertruck that have all been, uh, trainwrecks⁵.

But what about SpaceX? They’re hitting on all cylinders, right?

Sure, they are pretty good at ferrying payloads into space on the Falcon and Falcon Heavy, but the “Starship⁶” in its 8 iterative test flights has not yet been inserted into orbit, and the one that did land in the ocean hit at a velocity above the speed of sound. That seems sub-optimal to this physics geek.

And without Starship, the moon missions that NASA has planned are going to be significantly delayed⁷.

So, what I am getting to by a roundabout post is that the investor community is clinging to the future for Tesla by their well-tended fingernails. But there are more shoes to drop, and I didn’t even get to the worst of it.

Will MAGA buy EV’s

If you are just cursorily knowledgeable about the EV transition, you may not be aware of how much the transition is driven by political leanings.

Liberals (Democrats in coastal areas) are the predominant purchasers of electric powered vehicles. They tend to live in denser populated areas, tend to be eco conscious, and want to help the environment, as the climate change is beginning to have a visible in-your-face effect.

Five years ago, if you profiled Tesla purchasers, they were left leaning, wealthy, and engaged in trying to course-correct the AGW that is happening.

You know what? They still are the demographic. But Tesla’s sales are in the shitter.

That’s because every major car maker has options. Ford, GM, Toyota, Hyundai, Kia, BMW, Volkswagen, Mercedes Benz, Nissan, Honda, and Subaru all have EV’s. And some of them are longer range, cheaper, and “fresher” in style than Tesla’s tired line up.

While Tesla sales are about at the level of the dog shit you might step on on a walk, the rest of the market is showing solid growth.

That tells me that the EV market is doing quite well.

And with these batshit insane tariffs, the rest of the world is likely to become more welcoming to the Chinese marques of electric cars. Because their scope and scale, their battery technology, and their efficiency in manufacturing (and yes, their government’s weighing in and helping this segment prosper) will flood the world with cheap EV’s that are feature rich, affordable, and in many ways better than anything Tesla has built.

Musk’s pivot to full MAGA, his turning Twitter into a curated hate-speech site populated by Nazis and right-wing trolls (and a shit-ton of porn), has indicated that he no longer cares about the target demo of his cars.

That means that his future is in convincing the MAGA core that they should buy Tesla’s to “own the libs”.

Somehow, I doubt that this is going to work. Sure, you might get them to buy shares of TSLA to own the libs. But to give up their Ford F150’s that clog the roadways spewing toxic gasses? Fuhgeddabootit.

And the Cyber Cab (or whatever the fuck he’s calling it now) is not going to be the be-all end-all.

Nope, TSLA is a dead man walking. One day, the corpse will rot into the ground.

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1. It is insane that we as a nation allow an individual to finance an election to the tune of nearly $300M dollars.

2. On social media, there is a subgenre that is just showing idiots getting their just comeuppances from their idiocy

3. I’ll add that there has been some vandalism, and crime against property. I neither condone nor cheer that on. Don’t be a dick about it.

4. Cybercab, Robotaxi, or whatever the fuck his ketamine addled brain is sharting out at the moment

5. Seriously, the Semi is a joke. You can google to find tons of images of them stuck, and being towed by diesel semi’s. The NG Roadster took 1,000 deposits of $250K each, and none have been built, and the prototype to demonstrate capability appears to be vaporware. Finally, the Cybertruck is like Musk read Snowcrash and some William Gibson Cyberpunk stories and drew it on a napkin. It is an embarrassment.

6. I had a typo here where I called it “Starshit” and I should have left it.

7. My bet is that the Blue Origin “flying penis” is going to get a second look. But the US government is about $5B into Starship already. That seems like a lotta waste and potential fraud to uncover… I am sure the DOGE incels are all over that shit.