Elon Musk is going on full propaganda mode to distract from Tesla’s delivery numbers with new Optimus robot content and misleading claims about Model Y’s popularity.
Tesla will release its delivery results for the first quarter of 2025 this morning, and it is expected to be its worst quarter in two years.
Update: Tesla has now released its Q1 delivery numbers.
CEO Elon Musk, who has mostly stayed away from Tesla in recent months to focus on his efforts at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), released a well-timed series of tweets about Tesla this morning, distracting from the upcoming release of the delivery results:
The posts include new images of Tesla’s Optimus robot walking, a repost of his claim that the humanoid robot will be “the biggest product of all time”, and a claim that Tesla’s Model Y was the best-selling vehicle in China.
While some of Tesla’s progress with the Optimus robot has been impressive, it is mainly related to robotics. On the AI side of things, Tesla appears to still be lagging behind, as all demonstrations of the robot so far have involved humans remotely controlling the robots—something Tesla hasn’t been super upfront about.
As for the claim about the Model Y becoming the best-selling car in China in March, it is meant to make people think that its recent redesign is a success, but that’s misleading.
March was Tesla’s first whole month of deliveries for the new Model Y after accumulating orders for weeks since January. A small backlog of orders helped Tesla achieve a good month of deliveries for the Model Y in China, but what Musk is not highlighting is that this backlog was already exhausted by the end of March as Tesla could deliver the new Model Y within a week in China and started to offer 0% financing, which is basically a $2,000 discount on the vehicle.
Electrek’s Take
As for Model Y, Elon can repost known misinformation spreader and paid propgandist Mario Nawfal all he wants, but the fact that Tesla’s most popular version of the Model Y, the RWD standard range, which accounts for 90% of Model Y deliveries in China, already needs to be discounted and can be delivered within 2 weeks proves that demand for the Model Y redesign is soft in China.
Tesla is being squeezed by competition in the country, and it’s becoming a real problem as the automaker is likely not making any profit in China right now while selling hundreds of thousands of vehicles.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s deliveries are expected to show that Tesla is starting the year down again after 2024 was its first full year without growth since it started ramping up the Model S.
Author: Fred Lambert
Source: Electrek
People have been quick to point out the Model Y sales in China for March as a success. I agree with Fred that zero percent financing and short delivery times are not a good sign for 2025 going forward.
This is a clear distraction. Elon has been promising the moon with Optimus, but the truth is that Tesla is entering a very competitive market in humanoid robots and it’s still way too early to tell who is leading at this point.