The Tesla situation is like watching something out of a film about the fall of communism.
Parking lots full of Tesla vehicles are becoming impossible to ignore as the electric automaker seemingly can’t sell enough cars and trucks to match its rate of production. According to its own figures, the electric automaker produced 46,561 more vehicles than it delivered to customers during the first quarter of 2024. Where are all these cars going? Parking lots at its factories, malls and airports.
Remember, for example, how the Trabant was such a “hot” car claiming decades of demand until suddenly in 1989 (fall of the wall) centrally planned low-quality production was dumped into huge parking lots full of unallocated inventory?
It was like overnight Trabant demand went from a five year waiting list to… we gotta get away from car communism… to nobody wants one.
Tesla now has similar problems related to its centralized plans dispensing angry hate towards the dealers who serve local markets. It’s basically attempting to pretend it doesn’t need local dealers while renting huge parking lots to hold unsold inventory… like local dealers.
The difference versus other car brands that sell inventory through distribution and many communities, instead of depending entirely on fealty to one man, is resilience. Central planning of dictators tends to be full of such fraud that it abruptly falls, like the wall.
When dear leader no longer can fraudulently allocate inventory and hide the lies, it’s over. One signal has been that Tesla can’t seem to keep a lawyer in the job of overseeing the centralized lies.
Well known risk benefits of distributed systems make Tesla’s childish attempts to run an extreme centralization experiment look like unnecessarily high risk, especially now as the Elon Musk brand looks in danger of sudden collapse.
To put it simply, Tesla new model plans likely are cancelled due to capital shortages. Staff are being fired week after week, decimating entire departments and crushing morale, causing shortages that drive up cost of operations. Quality control was skipped to dump Cybertrucks on unwitting customers, which now pile up service debt. Price/rates of all models dropped, leaving bare minimum margins as global inventory piles up in parking lots; factories burn cash pumping out cars to cost money sitting in a rented lot.
And again, Tesla can’t seem to keep a lawyer in the job of overseeing the centralized lies.
It’s a death spiral, which is why Tesla just went to China for an emergency loan (selling customer data).
Where is Gorbachev when you need him?
How it started:
How it’s going:
