Ignoring feedback from the Chinese market, Musk has long since "lost interest in cars." Can Tesla still produce a blockbuster model?
Tesla is under siege in the Chinese market, but Elon Musk doesn't seem to care at all.
According to foreign media "Cryptopolitan", the sales performance pressure on Tesla's Chinese employees has been gradually increasing. They have repeatedly reported to the US headquarters that the products are out of touch with the needs of Chinese consumers, but they rarely get a positive response.
Screenshot: Cryptopolitan
Sales data shows that Tesla sold 61,000 vehicles in the domestic market in June, a month-on-month increase of 59% and a year-on-year increase of 3.7%, setting a new record for the highest single-month domestic sales in the second quarter. Tesla's Shanghai Gigafactory delivered 191,000 vehicles in the second quarter, a quarter-on-quarter increase of 10.98% compared with the first quarter.
The seemingly steadily growing sales data is actually just the brand's last line of defense.
On the one hand, Tesla is being besieged by domestic brands such as Xiaomi and BYD, and the dominance of the Model 3 and Model Y is gradually weakening.
On the other hand, looking at the global auto market, Tesla's global deliveries in the second quarter were only 384,122 vehicles, a year-on-year decrease of 13.5%, setting the largest decline in history.
Tesla China's repeated feedback to the headquarters is an internal "self-rescue" action.
The throne of the pure-electric market is no longer exclusive to Tesla
The competition in the domestic new energy vehicle market is far more intense than in any overseas market, so the "crisis awareness" of Tesla's Chinese team has always existed.
Foreign media "Cryptopolitan" reported that in 2021, when competitors began to focus on vehicle intelligence, Tesla's Chinese team proposed to the headquarters to install more smartphone software and local applications. However, the proposal was rejected on the grounds that "entertainment and localization are not priorities." In 2023 and 2024, Tesla's Chinese team made the same feedback to the US headquarters again, but there was no response.
When Tesla first entered the Chinese market, consumers were impressed by the unique sense of the future of Tesla's products: the completely different driving experience from fuel vehicles and the technological sense brought by a single screen on the center console, which formed a sharp contrast with the "fuel-to-electric" models of other brands.
Source: Tesla's official website
Moreover, Tesla was very active in building Supercharger stations, which helped it win a large number of loyal customers in the early days. Coupled with the gradually more affordable Model 3 and Model Y, Tesla quickly achieved success in the Chinese market.
New forces such as NIO and XPeng took Tesla as their main learning target and launched models with a very similar style to Tesla. At this time, these new forces began to focus on the intelligent cockpit and mass-produced various software and cockpit linkage functions, which put pressure on Tesla's Chinese team.
However, these new forces have not yet formed a complete system. The one that really makes Tesla sit up and take notice is BYD.
With the support of blade batteries and DM-i hybrid technology, BYD's total sales of new energy vehicles exceeded Tesla's for the first time in 2022 and continued to expand its lead in 2023. In the first half of this year, BYD's pure-electric vehicle sales reached 1.023 million vehicles, far exceeding Tesla's 720,000 vehicles, and it achieved the first place in global sales in the pure-electric field for the first time.
However, in Tesla's view, BYD's ability to surpass itself is mainly due to its large number of volume-selling models, and there is no new energy vehicle that can surpass the Model 3 or Model Y.
Source: Shot by Electric Vehicle News
Xiaomi Auto is the first automaker to "knock Tesla off its pedestal".
Data shows that the Xiaomi SU7 sold 155,692 vehicles in the first half of this year, while the Tesla Model 3 only sold 91,919 vehicles. Moreover, the Xiaomi SU7 outperformed the Tesla Model 3 every month, and the once-dominant position has long since changed hands. There's no need to mention the newly launched Xiaomi YU7. It received over 200,000 orders just three minutes after its launch, and customers now have to wait until next year to pick up their cars.
If Xiaomi Auto delivers all these 200,000 vehicles to customers this year, it means that the monthly sales of the Xiaomi YU7 in the second half of the year will exceed 30,000 vehicles. Data shows that the Tesla Model Y sold a total of 171,491 vehicles in the first half of this year, with an average monthly sales of 28,581 vehicles. The possibility of the Xiaomi YU7 surpassing the Tesla Model Y is very high.
Source: Shot by Electric Vehicle News
More importantly, FSD, the black technology that Tesla has always been proud of, was introduced into the domestic market but suffered a "setback", which shows that Tesla's ability to adapt to the Chinese market is far from meeting expectations.
The current new energy vehicle market is very different from before. Traditional brands such as BYD, Changan, and Chery have started to equalize driving technology, and new energy brands such as Hongmeng Zhixing and XPeng continue to bring more new technologies to the market. It seems that every important new car has the opportunity to become a hit.
In such a situation, Tesla, which has a slow product iteration speed, naturally feels the pressure. Moreover, the Chinese market is still one of the regions where Tesla's sales are steadily growing. If Tesla still fails to make breakthroughs in local R & D and ecological cooperation, the road ahead will only become more and more difficult.
Is Musk "no longer interested in cars"?
On the surface, the US headquarters' neglect of Tesla China's suggestions is to adhere to the brand's concept of extreme minimalism, but the main reason is that the automotive field is no longer Musk's business focus.
According to official financial report data, Tesla's R & D investment in 2024 was $4.7 billion, and the focus of investment was not on vehicle R & D but on AI training clusters, FSD autonomous driving, and the robot project Optimus.
At the "WE, ROBOT" press conference held in October last year, Tesla placed autonomous driving technology in a very important strategic position, including the ultimate product Tesla Cybercab that "eliminates human intervention" and the driverless van Tesla Robovan equipped with the full-version FSD autonomous driving system.
There was a lot of "pie-in-the-sky" talk at this press conference, but at least on June 22 this year, Tesla's Robotaxi started trial operations, officially entering the field of autonomous driving taxis and taking the first step towards the driverless vehicle field.
Source: Tesla's official website
Meanwhile, the humanoid robot Optimus was also one of the protagonists at this press conference. Musk didn't spend much time explaining it at that time, but this year he announced that the humanoid robot Optimus will be sold to the public in the second half of next year, with a target sales volume of 50,000 units, and predicted that it will be "the product with the highest production and sales volume in human history".
Leaving aside the possibility of the humanoid robot Optimus becoming a reality, what Musk wants the industry to see are highly automated and intelligent products, and the carriers of these technologies are no longer limited to cars.
Not to mention that Musk is also simultaneously implementing other projects such as SpaceX, the Neuralink brain-computer interface project, and Grok3, which is comparable to GPT - 5.
Musk is a "madman" who dares to dream, but the biggest characteristic of a "madman" is that he doesn't play by the rules. His multi - line commercialization concept may allow him to gain in more fields, but it is destined to make Tesla gradually lose its leading edge in the new energy vehicle market that it has accumulated over the years.
Tesla's new cars are about to be launched, but it's hard for them to become hits
Reasons such as the slow iteration speed of existing products and the founder's shift in business focus have made the outside world question Tesla's future. The only thing that may stimulate Tesla's activity in the automotive market may be the launch of new products.
The low - cost Tesla model has been exposed on the Internet for a long time. A low price is indeed easy to attract consumers, but judging from the quality and configuration of the current Tesla Model 3, this low - cost Tesla will have an even stronger "bare - bones" style.
Consumers with a car - buying budget of less than 200,000 yuan value brand awareness but also pursue a hassle - free car - using experience, so they won't ignore the product's configuration. Therefore, Electric Vehicle News is not optimistic about this low - cost Tesla model.
Another one is the seven - seat version of the Tesla Model Y. There are currently some spy photos that seem to have been exposed, and it is very likely to enter the domestic market.
Source: Tesla's official website
However, Electric Vehicle News has doubts about this new car: The seven - seat version can meet the demand for "multi - passenger travel", but analyzing from the current shape of the Tesla Model Y, it may be difficult to meet the comfort and practicality requirements of adult passengers in the third row.
For users who need more space in the third row, there are many large - sized SUVs to choose from with a car - buying budget of 300,000 yuan. Electric Vehicle News has doubts about whether the seven - seat version of the Tesla Model Y will be recognized.
Tesla is currently in a state of "internal and external troubles". The key now is whether Musk still wants the Chinese market. If he still doesn't want to give it up, he might as well think more about how to make Chinese consumers happy.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Electric Vehicle News", author: Electric Vehicle News. It is published by 36Kr with authorization.