Tesla Deliveries Weak

November 11, 2025

As a reminder, Tesla is the 9th largest stock in the market – larger than Berkshire, JPMorgan, or Walmart.  Yesterday, Wells Fargo Research said that Tesla vehicle deliveries showed a “large drop-off everywhere” in October.   According to their data, deliveries fell -23% for the month.  (That’s due to the expiration of the EV tax credit and rising EV competition.)  And the stock reaction?  It barely moved.  And why is that?  Because the Tesla story is not really about selling cars anymore.  

You might have read about Elon’s “$1 trillion” pay package recently.  

To achieve that payout, he has to hit some lofty goals over the next 10 years.   Two of those goals are especially striking:  first, 1 million robotaxis deployed; and second, 1 million Optimus robots deployed.  That compares to today: roughly 250 Tesla robotaxis in operation, and zero robots.  

In the far future, there is also the possibility that he forces a merger of Tesla with his AI company – xAI.  There are obvious overlaps between xAI and the Tesla initiatives (Optimus robots in particular).  But xAI is a black hole of cash at the moment.  And there’s a decent chance that Tesla turns cash flow negative in ’26.  (So better to keep those two issues separate for now, I suppose.)

So anyway.  The point of this story is: Tesla stock is not so much about cars anymore.  It’s about the future -- robotaxis, robots, and (maybe) AI.   If you remember last week, we cited Tesla’s Price/Earnings ratio is 206x (compared to 29x for the 8 companies ahead of it in the index).   That multiple is much higher not because the market assumes that growth of electric cars will suddenly skyrocket again — it’s because the market believes there is a pot of gold way out in the future from robotaxies, robots, and things.