Tesla’s Greatest Threat Is Being Boring
A new threat: Musk with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
Photographer: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg
For a company that sells cars, Tesla Inc.’s $1.5 trillion valuation puts it in a league of its own. The stock is seemingly immune to bad news, even a growing cacophony of competitive threats. The more insidious challenge could be something more, for lack of a better word, boring.
The most glaring example of Tesla losing its edge is the decline of its main business, electric vehicles. Sales of these have now fallen for two years in a row. China’s BYD Co. Ltd. overtook Tesla in sales of battery EVs in 2025. New figures from Cox Automotive show fourth-quarter sales in the US were down 15%, despite Tesla’s attempt at a post-EV tax credit reboot with stripped down trims of the Models 3 and Y.