Name: Are Elon Musk And Tesla Giving Up on EVs?
Uploaded: 2025-04-21T09:19:06.000Z
Duration: 15 min 41 s
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Public backlash against CEO Elon Musk's political positions.

Sales are down 50 percent year over year.

In the last couple of months, though, the stock's just been obliterated.

Less than six months ago, Tesla's story was dramatically different.

Shares of the company rose 30 percent in a single week.

The once fledgling and often struggling EV maker was worth more than a trillion dollars and more than all the world's other major automakers combined.

But in 2025, the stock has plummeted, losing more than 35 percent of its value since the beginning of the year.

In most markets, including the U.S., China, Europe and Australia, sales are falling, too.

While 90 percent of company revenue comes from selling EVs, Tesla has changed its mission.

CEO Elon Musk has sunk billions into projects like self-driving cars and humanoid robots.

The future we're headed for is one where you can literally just have anything you want.

But feelings about the change in direction or what some call abandoning the company's original mission are mixed.

Tesla's mission is to advance sustainable transportation energy.

It was never to create robo taxis and and humanoid robots.

And that's Elon just changing Tesla's mission.

And now I think that Tesla needs a new CEO.

You can say Tesla's a tech company all you want.

And when you don't sell cars, those losses start to stack up.

I truly believe years from now, autonomous will define Tesla.

Half of Tesla vehicles are built in China.

He looks at left and right, north, south.

He's surrounded by Chinese competition that are driving costs down.

And he's saying, no, there's no way Tesla can win this war in China and probably not globally.

So let's take things in a different direction.

So why do some say the company has lost its way?

Tesla was founded in 2003 by Mark Tarpening and Martin Eberhard.

We changed the way the world thought about electric cars and we restarted the EV revolution in the world.

A year later, Elon Musk invested six and a half million dollars and joined Tesla's board.

In 2006, Musk published the Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan.

Tesla's overarching purpose was to move the world from fossil fuels to solar and electric power.

The plan didn't mention autonomy or robots.

In 2014, Tesla began outfitting its vehicles with hardware for a driver assistance system later called Autopilot.

That's also when Musk said Tesla vehicles would drive themselves within two years.

Master Plan Part Deux was released two years later.

It included an entire section on self-driving cars.

The plan said, among other things, that owners would be able to make money renting out their Teslas as rideshare vehicles.

The New Yorker asked, will the Tesla Model 3 be the first truly self-driving car?

We're now in 2025 and there's not one car on the road from Elon Musk that can do that.

Rollouts of Autopilot and full self-driving features have repeatedly hit delays.

Even then, the cars aren't truly self-driving.

The two systems require a driver to be able to take over at a moment's notice.

The Tesla Model 3 and Tesla Model 3 software have landed it in many lawsuits and federal investigations.

Neither the DOJ nor Tesla responded to CNBC's requests for comment or an interview.

While Musk was promising fully autonomous, rentable Teslas, the company was transforming itself into a high volume electric car maker.

Production of the Tesla Model 3, a lower priced sedan, began in July 2017.

Sales grew 60 fold over a 10 year period.

The Tesla Model 3 crossover became the world's best selling vehicle.

Well, we actually literally make the best selling car on Earth of any kind.

So that's it ends for two years in a row.

Tesla shares soared, too, although it's been volatile.

During Tesla's AI Day investor event, Musk announced that the company would be making a robot.

Tesla is arguably the world's biggest robotics company because our cars are like semi-sentient robots on wheels.

Master Plan 3 focused entirely on sustainable energy.

Master Plan Part 3 is a very long master plan because it's basically making all energy on Earth sustainable.

But since this, more and more attention has focused on robots and autonomous cars.

The company released a demo video of Optimus sorting objects.

At its We Robot event in late 2024, the company unveiled the Cyber Cab, a two passenger, fully autonomous car planned for production in 2026.

The Robo Van, a much bigger vehicle and a dancing robot.

Wall Street was underwhelmed and shares dropped 9 percent on the day.

We expect to be in production with the Cyber Cab that probably, well, I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames.

Just days later, the company abandoned its plan to make a low cost EV, calling it Pointless for Human Drivers.

And since, Musk has doubled down on his shift.

I've kind of described Master Plan 4 essentially, which is like autonomous cars, autonomous humanoid robots.

Combine that with like solar and battery storage and I think the future is going to be incredible.

Now, this year, he actually has to deliver FSD and let me let me be the first to tell you, he's not going to deliver.

If you go back to the history of Musk and Tesla, there's been many times no way they can do it.

I'm not saying it is going to be hard to get there, but I truly believe that years from now, autonomous will define Tesla.

Tesla is supposed to launch unsupervised full self-driving as a paid service in June 2025.