Is Tesla’s Robotic Manifesto Merely An Funding Hail Mary?

September 4, 2025

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I’ve been masking Elon Musk and Tesla for 13 years. Musk has tweeted a whole bunch of our articles, and I’ve talked with him a number of occasions. Clearly, he’s not the identical individual with the identical areas of focus as he was a decade in the past. But, clearly, he is similar individual. I feel that is the conundrum many individuals discover themselves in. And I don’t simply imply individuals who used to suppose extremely of him and was Tesla buyers however have whipped the automotive round for a full 180. I feel there are various present Tesla followers — and positively buyers — who marvel how a lot the present Elon Musk has in widespread with the Elon Musk who drove the Mannequin 3 into existence and mass manufacturing a number of years in the past.

Maybe there isn’t any second within the historical past of the corporate that condenses this query greater than the present second, with the publishing of Tesla’s 4th “Grasp Plan.”

I began writing about potential client demand points at Tesla roughly two years in the past. It was an absurd factor to write down about on the time in accordance with many individuals, as a result of Tesla gross sales had been rising, rising, and rising at a fast tempo and had reached monumental scales. Having lined that rise about as carefully as anybody, I knew all about it — and the mindset of development, with all the inertia of the previous decade, was so sturdy that it was wild to contemplate a possible shrinking interval. To place it into higher perspective visually, right here’s what Tesla’s long-term quarterly gross sales developments seemed like two years in the past:

Regardless of the clear long-term developments, regardless of being liked and praised for greater than a decade for masking the Tesla story appropriately, regardless of the chance of fixing the narrative, I seen important modifications in Tesla’s incentives and advertising. For the primary time that I noticed because the very early days of the corporate, Tesla gave the impression to be going through challenges attracting sufficient consumers. That’s to not say it wasn’t promoting a ton of vehicles or that it wasn’t a tremendously profitable firm — or that it isn’t nonetheless. Nevertheless, developments had been altering.

Tesla, it appeared to me, is perhaps going from a rapid-growth firm to an organization struggling to develop, or to even preserve gross sales. So, I began placing that risk on the market and explaining why. Naturally, if you happen to take a look at the chart above, you may think about why individuals would suppose that I used to be being ridiculous, “hating on” Tesla, and baselessly scare mongering. However you don’t provide increasingly more incentives to shoppers, and maintain providing massive incentives after saying you had been solely going to take action for one quarter, for no motive. As we now know, that is how Tesla quarterly gross sales developments look if you happen to go all through Q2 2025 as an alternative of stopping at Q2 2023:

That fast, nearly fixed development — to the moon — roughly leveled off … after which gross sales truly declined.

It’s okay. Issues occur, the world modifications, and it’s laborious to attain perpetual development. Tesla can at all times restructure and rearrange itself if wanted, and so long as gross sales are roughly the place they had been two years in the past, the corporate can preserve its present stage of operations. With extra automobile and product introductions, the corporate can presumably even return to some extent of development once more in coming years.

There’s an issue, although. Tesla inventory is predicated round fast development, hypergrowth. It’s based mostly across the firm being a disruptive drive, attaining gross sales and monetary development far past the traditional auto business. Executives at Ford, GM, Toyota, Volkswagen, and — nicely, just about all of them — should at occasions be scratching their heads and questioning, “Why within the heck is Tesla’s market cap dozens of occasions larger than ours after we are literally seeing development and Tesla gross sales and income are shrinking?!”

Maybe that they had that query in Q3 2023, maybe in Q1 2024, however definitely by now in 2025.

As you certainly recall, going into the 2020s and within the early a part of the last decade, it was repeated time and again that Tesla was speculated to see development of about 50% a yr, on common, by to 2030. As gross sales stagnated and even waned, there was repeatedly a short-term excuse and promise of development once more within the not too distant future. In fact, as time went on, the 50% CAGR was dropped and forgotten. Being the center of 2025, Tesla wants a minor miracle to attain these targets from 2–5 years in the past. Nonetheless, the corporate’s inventory worth is about $100 larger in the present day than it was then.

Eventually, certainly, buyers have to have a look at the stagnating and declining auto gross sales and marvel if it’s actually sensible to carry onto the inventory. Promise after promise, hype after hype, can carry a model for a very long time. Nevertheless, in the end, the development has to sink in.

In fact, if the market accepted that Tesla’s development story was successfully over, that will be disastrous for the inventory. Why ought to Tesla have a market cap over $1 trillion when it doesn’t have a development story. Ford’s gross sales had been up 7% within the first half of 2025, and 14% within the second quarter. GM’s gross sales had been up 12% within the first half of 2025. Ford and GM market caps equal $46.25 billion and $55 billion, respectively, nothing near the $1,050 billion of Tesla’s.

However what do you do if effort after effort isn’t reviving the auto gross sales development? What do you do if all the pieces on the horizon tells you it’s not going to get a lot simpler, and will even get more durable for some time? What do you do if a lot of your small business and your life is constructed on Tesla’s inventory worth being the place it’s in the present day or larger? Can Elon Musk go on the market and say, “Hey, look, we truly don’t have a development story any longer. We’re doing superb, promoting greater than 1,000,000 vehicles a yr, making a revenue, and reworking the world, however we not have a transparent and viable development path — and we’re positively not seeing 50% development once more anytime within the foreseeable future.” Can he say that and simply finish with that?

That will be like an amusement park saying, “Okay, everybody, it’s time to shut up for the day — everybody out.”

Tesla completely, basically wants an enormous development story to uphold the present inventory worth.

So, despite the fact that Tesla has not completed Grasp Plan, Half Deux — and isn’t actually in a lot of a distinct place from the place the corporate was when it was printed — we now have Grasp Plan Half 4. There must be a story and a plan for large, unprecedented development. Proper? However I’ve to marvel, is all of this effort and hype round robots simply an funding Hail Mary? Is all of it simply an effort to search out one other fast development prepare? Is it successfully only a delay tactic to justify and rationalize investments whereas the corporate’s auto enterprise stagnates or declines?

That’s to not say Elon Musk hasn’t satisfied himself that is the best way ahead, and it’s to not say Tesla isn’t engaged on these items.

Nevertheless, give it some thought like this: Think about you see these gross sales developments at your organization; you see the hurdles to development within the US, in China (the place 50% of recent automotive gross sales are plugin vehicles however your gross sales and your share maintain declining within the face of quickly innovating competitors), in Europe; you see fixed delays in robotaxi functionality, going again 5–10 years now; and you recognize that your market-shattering firm valuation is predicated on monumental development. You’re managing a large world company with a market cap of greater than a trillion {dollars}, and also you see no clear path ahead for development in your core enterprise. What are you going to do? You’re extra possible than to not throw a New-Disruptive-Tech Hail Mary. That’s what this robotic grasp plan seems like.

Now, you may say that Musk and Tesla have been targeted on this for a few years now. Sure, and maybe it was a few years in the past that Elon Musk began seeing massive challenges to continued auto gross sales development and began feeling the stress to give you one other avenue for hypergrowth. Maybe previously two years he has continued to construct up the narrative — in his personal thoughts — that that is the perfect path ahead for Tesla, as a result of that is the solely path ahead for Tesla that will truly justify the inventory worth.

Some individuals declare he doesn’t care in regards to the inventory worth or being the wealthiest man alive. Possibly that was true for some time, or at sure closing dates. Nevertheless, based mostly on what has transpired along with his CEO pay package deal in Delaware (now moved to courts in Texas), and the way he has thrown his wealth and energy round, I feel it’s protected to say that Musk cares about Tesla’s inventory worth fairly a bit and thinks in regards to the firm’s long-term development in that regard. I feel it’s apparent that Elon Musk’s id is now extraordinarily tied up with the concept he is without doubt one of the most profitable businessmen in historical past. If Tesla’s story modified and Tesla’s inventory worth collapsed, it’s not as if Musk can be homeless, however his popularity and affect would change dramatically. An ego hit that massive is difficult to think about, maybe unimaginable to attempt to perceive, and if you happen to had been confronted with the likelihood — or likelihood — of that ego hit hanging your coronary heart and thoughts, would you not attempt to discover a resolution close by? Would you not attempt to attain for the obvious and most attractive instrument in your digital desk in an effort to maintain the expansion hype going? Maybe the chance and worry of that will drive you considerably mad and push you towards different matters solely (politics, gender, procreating obsessively, tradition wars, social media revolutions), however you’d additionally certainly cling to no matter concepts for hypergrowth you see close by.

I imply, is there any probability you would say “Our interval of hypergrowth is over” after which simply let the inventory worth go poof and pop like a bubble within the wind?

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