Episode summary
Tesla Surrenders EV Crown to BYD After 8.6 % Sales Decline | Bloomberg Intelligence
Bloomberg Intelligence
· · Hosts: Paul Sweeney, Matt Miller, Vonnie Quinn · Guests: Craig Trudell, Ed Ludlow, Bill Shufelt, Dakota Smith
Summary
Tesla’s weaker deliveries and its lost momentum in electric vehicles set the tone for the discussion. The guest said Tesla’s year-end figures came in below even the company’s own lowered expectations, and argued the stock’s stumble reflected concern that Elon Musk is spending more attention on Optimus, robo-taxis, and other future bets than on the core auto business. He also said Tesla remains years behind Waymo on driverless commercialization, with supervised vehicles in Austin and the San Francisco Bay area but no scaled robo-taxi business.
The conversation then shifted to DeepSeek, where the analyst said the Chinese AI company is again trying to pressure the sector with a paper on more efficient model training. He framed the key issue as whether China’s AI companies can keep improving without access to leading-edge Nvidia chips, and said the market is bracing for the next model, expected in February or March, because of what it might show in performance tables.
Later segments focused on consumer trends. Bill Shufelt argued Athletic Brewing has helped turn non-alcoholic beer into a mainstream category, and Dakota Smith said travel demand is healthy, with credit-card and loyalty programs driving a growing share of online bookings. Both guests emphasized younger consumers and better value as major forces shaping 2026.
Key takeaways
- The guest said Tesla fell short of its own delivery guide and remains more valued for Elon Musk’s future bets than for car sales.
- The guest said Waymo is clearly ahead of Tesla in commercialized driverless service, and Tesla is still supervising vehicles rather than scaling robo-taxis.
- The analyst said DeepSeek’s new paper could preview R2, a model expected in February or March that may again challenge American AI leaders.
- Bill Shufelt said Athletic Brewing expects the U.S. non-alcoholic beer market to grow from about a billion dollars to five times that size over 10 years.
- Dakota Smith said about 20% to 25% of U.S. online travel is now booked through credit-card loyalty programs, with Gen Z leading usage.
Notable quotes
“Whimo is ahead of Tesla and it's not at all close because we've not seen Tesla actually commercialize that”
“We expect it to 5x in the next 10 years with athletic being 25% of that market”
How the episode opens
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Let's bring in our global autosar right now. Craig Trudeell joins us out of London. uh he covers all the car makers and has around the world but uh focus is in because he also is the editor of the uh hyperdrive newsletter on on EVs and we're seeing really um a a changing a changing sea here in terms of EV demand uh Craig certainly in the US and that uh reads out well in the drop in Tesla sales doesn't it?
It absolutely does. I think, you know, it was interesting earlier this week to see Tesla come out with its own company compiled consensus for these delivery figures. Uh, you know, it sort of turned a lot of heads because the average estimate that they put in in their release, uh, was much lower than the Bloomberg compiled, uh, average estimate.
Uh, it turns out that Tesla came up short even of their their own lower uh, expectations that uh, that they pulled together. uh it wasn't by much and so we're not seeing a huge move in the shares at least for the moment but uh we did see the the company's uh stock price kind of stumble in the last few sessions of the year uh perhaps in in anticipation of the fact that these numbers were going to be a bit soft. How do what's the view out there in the marketplace Craig about how committed Tesla is to its core auto business visa v some of the other uh businesses that Tesla's involved in uh that seems to have attracted Elon's real attention and the attention of the marketplace in general.
From the episode’s captions: roughly the first two minutes, lightly cleaned. Keep watching on YouTube →
Topics
- ev sales
- byd vs tesla
- ai research
- non-alcoholic beer
- travel outlook
Companies and tickers mentioned
- TSLA
- BYDDY
- Tesla
- BYD Co.
- DeepSeek
- Athletic Brewing Company
- Hopper
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Summary, takeaways and quote selection by Octagon. Quotes are short excerpts; the full conversation is in the episode.
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