Tesla Hit Refresh on Its Electric Vehicles, But It Has Not Worked

It's got a serious problem beyond Elon Musk's political diversions

- LIAM DENNING

Forget Tesla for a moment. Just imagine an anonymous company with the following characteristics: Sales of its main product suddenly stopped growing over a year ago and are down 13% so far this year. Its last big product launch bombed. It reiterated plans for new lower-cost versions of its product as recently as three months ago, and they then didn't materialize. The chief executive dove head-first into divisive political activities that alienated customers and then picked a fight with the US president and his party. Having promised a revolutionary new automated product for a decade, missing repeated deadlines, the company finally launched a limited, somewhat automated pilot that looks years behind the competition.

Would you pay 140 times earnings to own a sliver of that?

Tesla Inc. is in trouble. It just reported another dreadful set of electric vehicle (EV) sales numbers, once again missing a much-reduced consensus forecast. Tesla has now reported two sub-400,000 quarters in a row. The excuse given for the prior quarter's collapse, a temporary shutdown of production lines to refresh the Model Y, was never all that convincing, and these second-quarter figures discredit it utterly.