For the last few years on my visits to family in Silicon Valley, I’ve used my Teslometer to gauge one admittedly vague measure of how the Valley is changing over time: assessing the gradual infiltration of the Muskmobile into Valley life.
This glaringly unscientific metric involves counting the number of Teslas that zoom past me on the stretch of Highway 280 from the point where I merge my (non-Tesla) rental car on to it after travelling west from San Francisco’s airport, and when I exit 30 minutes later on to Sand Hill Road to drive to Palo Alto.
Sand Hill Road, famously, is the street address for most of the Valley’s venture capital firms, and its shifting role provides a Valley evolutionary snapshot. When I grew up in the area, Sand Hill featured a number of US book publishers. Then VCs started to land in the early 1970s, with the original VC enclave close to the 280 exit. But even by the early 1990s, when I was teaching in the region and would stop by those publisher’s offices to get information on their latest coursebooks, the phrase “venture capital” wasn’t in most people’s vocabularies and Sand Hill Road wasn’t immediately associated with this key area of tech funding.
That’s all changed. Sand Hill Road runs alongside Menlo Park (named by early Galway-region Irish immigrants) then down to Palo Alto, well known cities to anyone who even casually follows tech news. So, as a notable Valley exit, I figure Sand Hill Road makes a good end point for my Teslometer measurement.
This time my Tesla count was 18, more than I’ve ever seen stream past me (the Tesla people were apparently in a hurry). It would take weeks to spot that many Teslas on the M50. The vast majority, maybe two thirds, were a boring white.
That prompted me to reflect on the mystery (to me) of the car’s attractiveness, at least in terms of appearance. From the back, they look like an awkward 21st century attempt to Make the Volkswagen Beetle Great Again. They’re quite a luxurious ride on the inside, of course. But the latest model of the Toyota Prius, once the awkward-looking socks-and-sandals vehicle of the automotive world, to my mind is more sporty and sleek.
None of this has deterred buyers from making the Tesla an extremely popular car in Silicon Valley – and the bestselling. Perhaps I should have been surprised that I didn’t see more of them on my 30-minute drive. Tesla dominates the electric car market in California, the state with the highest electric car sales, and San Francisco Bay Area buyers purchase most of them. Last year Tesla Model 3 and Model Y cars were the two top-selling cars in the state, even surpassing petrol cars from brands like Toyota.
But more recently, Elon Musk has been forced to drop prices significantly to boost falling sales. Company results reported in July showed Tesla profits down 45 per cent year over year, and manufacturing has fallen by close to 5 per cent. Why sales are dropping remains an open question though Musk’s own increasingly right-wing public outbursts on his (also struggling) X platform is viewed by many as damaging the brand and share price. Under Musk, X has plummeted in value to only half its purchase price, dragging down major investors too, the Washington Post noted last week. Perhaps potential Tesla buyers are deciding they don’t want a Musk-affiliated vehicle.
Or maybe they just have more options from other car makers, as used Tesla sales are buoyant. “The US manufacturer hasn’t substantially updated its four-year-old Model Y sport utility vehicle, and its refresh of the Model 3 didn’t drastically alter the look of the sedan introduced seven years ago,” noted a recent Bloomberg article on some of the factors potentially limiting new sales, but driving used Tesla purchases.
One thing that hasn’t changed is the spate of Musk and Tesla controversies and confusion. Tesla continues to delay model launches. The planned early August debut of its new self-driving robotaxi has been pushed to October after Musk decided to work further on the prototype. Amid continuing concern about driver misuse and the general safety of Tesla’s auto-drive (“advanced driver assist”) feature, questions also arise as to how willing people will be to use a Tesla self-driving taxi, or regulators to permit them.
There’s more Musk-associated whiplash, too. Lay-offs at Tesla were announced this summer but then partially reversed. In his continued snit over various things Californian – this time, a new gender identity law – Musk announced he would move the headquarters of X (currently in San Francisco) and his SpaceX rocket company to Texas, where he’d already moved Tesla. Musk has also endorsed Donald Trump for president, done a soft interview with him live on X, and is reportedly fishing for a role in Trump’s administration if he wins in November.
We’ll have to wait until Tesla’s 2025 company results to see if any of this seriously dents the Tesla brand, at least enough to put off buyers in progressive California.
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