Quoted from rubberducks:IMO it still has a long way to fall.
If the impact on the first quarter results by the reduced tax credit are anything to go by, second quarter will be as bad if not worse, and 3rd and 4th quarters will be an absolute massacre as it drops to $1,875 and then stops entirely at the end of the year. That whilst competing models simultaneously continue to enter the market, all of which apart from GM's will still qualify for the full subsidy for quite some time.
Panasonic's obvious uneasiness about the weak demand (and probably Tesla's financials too), and then Musk compounding it by publicly blaming them tells a story IMO. Looks like they now want to spend money on battery facilities in Japan rather than the JV with Tesla.
This ace in the hole of a fully autonomous taxi fleet that Musk is harping on about now would either come way too late, or end the company entirely if it's pushed out too early and regulators actually allowed it. The technology isn't good enough yet, and the repercussions would be fatal. Pretty sure he knows that, but he needs to give investors hope.
The subsidy is maybe an issue, but at the end of the day there's no viable competition; all other manufacturers are years behind in design and battery production. They are still trying to retrofit ICE cars with batteries and pawn them off, whereas Teslas are designed from the ground-up as electric vehicles, which is why their safety ratings are off-the-charts.
I think analysis like you offer are a good example of people too busy looking at the flowers to see the forest. At any given point in time there will be highs and lows, but the bigger picture is that Tesla has the largest battery production in the world, the most electric cars on the road, and an entire worldwide network of superchargers already in place. Their cars are faster, safer, sleeker, and longer-range than anyone else. The big picture isn't about sales, it's about innovation -- and they are leading innovation like we haven't seen in decades. The media should be gushing every day about how amazing it is that a 100% American car company is defying all odds and has built car manufacturing plants from the ground-up... How they have proven, against all odds, that electric cars not only can compete with ICE vehicles, but are capable of far surpassing them on virtually every level. But, nope -- every possible bit of news about Tesla is bad, because all people care about are fluctuating stock prices to exploit. They can't keep up with demand? Their failing! They have too much demand? Their failing! They release an expensive car? They can't make an affordable car! They release an affordable car? They must be losing demand!
It's so tiring. The incentives are all backwards, and it's sad. And what's happening? They are being incentivized to start manufacturing in countries that actually care about innovation, like China. Because what Tesla cares about is pushing the world forward in a positive direction, and all people in the US can see are numbers on a spreadsheet. So they will do what they have to do to maintain that momentum, even if it means finding other countries that actually care about investing in the future.