Tesla Was Doomed Before Elon’s Antics—And It’s All Bad Design

For years, Tesla has been riding the wave of hype, stock market insanity, and a cult-like fanbase.

But underneath all the headlines, the real reason Tesla is in trouble isn’t just Elon Musk’s Twitter meltdowns, baffling business moves, or bizarre political takes.

Tesla has been collapsing under its weight for years because of bad internal design decisions—long before Elon started making headlines for anything other than electric cars.

His antics just accelerated what was already inevitable.

Forget the Cybertruck for a second.

Tesla’s design problems started long before that angular monstrosity rolled off the line. The company has a history of prioritizing flashy marketing over basic, reliable engineering.

Want some examples?

Shoddy Build Quality: Panel gaps big enough to shove your fingers through. Paint jobs that peel off in months. Steering wheels that fall off mid-drive. These aren’t just minor complaints—they’re symptoms of a company that never figured out mass production.

Overcomplicating Everything: Tesla doesn’t believe in buttons. Or physical controls. Or redundancy. Everything is dumped onto a single touchscreen, making basic tasks like adjusting the air vents an exercise in frustration. That’s not innovation—it’s arrogance disguised as minimalism.

Autopilot Fantasies: Tesla pushed its self-driving capabilities as revolutionary, but in reality, they’ve been half-baked from the start. The system is unpredictable, prone to sudden phantom braking, and nowhere near the sci-fi dream Musk keeps selling.

This isn’t just a handful of bad decisions—it’s death by a thousand cuts.

Every quality issue, every frustrating design choice, every overpromised feature that doesn’t deliver adds up.

And while Tesla stumbles, competitors are closing in, ready to eat its breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

While Tesla's team was busy piecing together the Cybertruck’s oversized stainless steel panels, why weren’t they focusing on an EU-friendly Tesla supermini?

The car that could have sold in the hundreds of thousands was ignored. Now, that same type of vehicle is helping legacy automakers gain market share.

Legacy automakers and new EV startups aren’t just catching up; they’re learning from Tesla’s mistakes. If they can offer reliability without the gimmicks, Tesla’s head start won’t mean much in the long run.

The Cult of Speed Killed Tesla’s Reliability

Tesla’s whole model has always been "move fast, break things." That might work in software, where you can patch bugs remotely. But in car manufacturing, cutting corners means literal lives are at stake.

Other automakers spend years refining new models, testing them to exhaustion before production. Tesla, on the other hand, rushes half-finished products to market and lets customers find the problems.

Take the Model 3.

It launched with massive production issues, and years later, early buyers are still dealing with cracking roofs, battery degradation, and misaligned body panels.

Tesla treats its customers like beta testers—except they paid full price for the privilege.

The Cybertruck should have been a wake-up call. Instead, it’s just more proof that Tesla is imploding from within.

The Stainless Steel Disaster: Stainless steel might sound cool, but it’s a nightmare for manufacturing. It’s hard to shape, hard to repair and adds unnecessary weight. Every other car company abandoned it for a reason.

Pointless Design Choices: No side mirrors? Weird single windshield wiper? Windows that still crack after Musk's infamous "shatterproof" glass failure?

The Cybertruck isn’t built for real people. It’s a toy for Tesla superfans willing to overlook glaring flaws.

Production Chaos: Despite years of hype, Tesla still can’t deliver the Cybertruck in meaningful numbers. When they do, early buyers are discovering a new set of quality control nightmares.

Elon Musk Is Just Pouring Gasoline on the Fire

Musk’s public behavior is a disaster for Tesla, no doubt. His constant distractions—firing half of Twitter, platforming conspiracy theories, and picking fights with advertisers—are tanking Tesla’s brand.

But his political antics might be doing even more damage than his corporate chaos.

In the U.S., Musk has drawn backlash for allegedly breaching the Treasury Department's payment systems in an effort to support Trump’s attempt to defund certain government agencies—an action many legal experts argue is outright illegal.

In Germany, his vocal support for the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) has put off EV buyers, and a similar sentiment is growing in the UK.

This shift in Musk’s politics is alienating Tesla’s core audience: affluent, urban, progressive-to-centrist buyers who have historically been more inclined to buy EVs.

A report from the EV Politics Project suggests Tesla is bleeding support from its traditional base faster than it's gaining interest from conservative buyers—many of whom remain skeptical of EVs altogether.

In other words, Musk’s political shift isn't translating into new sales; it’s just repelling existing customers.

Tesla's stock initially jumped post-election, driven by investor optimism about Musk’s ties to Trump possibly smoothing regulatory hurdles for self-driving cars. But that boost was short-lived—recent sales reports paint a grim picture.

The biggest test of Tesla’s standing will come with the updated Model Y. On paper, a refresh of the world’s best-selling EV should reinvigorate demand. But if buyers have already written off Tesla because of Musk, no amount of hardware tweaks will save it.

Tesla’s growth is slowing. Sales are slipping. Investors are getting nervous.

Musk’s behavior might be the final nail in the coffin, but Tesla’s collapse was written into its DNA from the beginning.

A company built on half-baked engineering rushed production, and overpromised tech was never going to last forever.

The only question left is how long before the whole thing comes crashing down.