Elon Musk during a news conference with President Donald Trump on May 30, 2025, inside the Oval Office (Tom Brenner/Getty Images)

black eye

Tesla’s sales are down 30% in China, and it’s not because of Elon Musk

Tesla’s problems in China have more to do with competition than controversy surrounding Musk.

Rani Molla

6/9/25 12:08PM

Tesla’s sales in China were down 30% to 38,588 vehicles in May compared with the same month a year earlier, according to new data from China Passenger Car Association reported by China EV blog CnEVPost. Out of the five months reported this year, four saw year-on-year declines. From January through May, Tesla sales were down about 8% in China compared with the same period in 2024. Analysts expect sales in China to decline for the full year, which would be its first year-over-year decline there.

As JPMorgan analyst Ryan Brinkman said on a webinar about the state of the auto industry late last month, CEO Elon Musk isn’t facing the same level of political blowback in China as he is in the US and Europe.

“We know [sales are] down in North America, we know they’re down in Europe because he’s upset half the population in the US and 95% of the population in Europe,” Brinkman said. “Musk remains a popular person in China.”

Rather, the company’s problems in China have more to do with competition from rivals like BYD.

“They’re down in China because the competition is ferocious,” Brinkman said. “They’re competing on price, but they’re also competing on design and technology and refresh rates because they’re coming out with new models every two years, whereas Tesla has never introduced a new model in China.”

Brinkman added that autonomous driving is table stakes in China: “They’re giving away autonomy for free.”

However, even without Musk’s political machinations it’s possible Tesla is facing a political branding problem in China, too.

As an independent analyst who goes by Troy Teslike recently wrote, Tesla, like all American brands in China, is facing “political tensions following U.S. Vice President JD Vance’s remarks, which many in China saw as disrespectful.” In April, Vance went on Fox News to talk about tariffs and said, “We borrow money from Chinese peasants to buy the things those Chinese peasants manufacture.”

Jon Keegan15h

White House releases AI legislative framework

The White House has released its policy wish list for AI legislation — and what it wants excluded.

Still, the odds of any actual AI regulation getting passed in Congress right now are very slim.

The “National Policy Framework” for AI lays out seven issues that the Trump administration wants to see reflected in any congressional action around AI.

The items listed in the framework include:

Child safety protections, age verification, and parental controls for AI.
Data center projects voluntarily pay their own way when it comes to power, but incentives should still be encouraged.
Copyright laws should allow for training models on copyrighted works, while protecting individuals’ voice and likeness.
Free speech should be defended for AI systems, preventing the government from pressuring companies to ban or alter content based on partisan agendas.
A light touch to regulation to encourage innovation, and no federal agency to regulate AI.
American workers vulnerable to AI job replacement should be retrained and supported.
Federal AI rules should preempt any state AI legislation to prevent a patchwork of laws that companies would hate.

The policy list is the latest in a series of proposals from the AI-friendly Trump administration.

President Donald J. Trump Unveils National AI Legislative Framework

The items listed in the framework include:

Child safety protections, age verification, and parental controls for AI.
Data center projects voluntarily pay their own way when it comes to power, but incentives should still be encouraged.
Copyright laws should allow for training models on copyrighted works, while protecting individuals’ voice and likeness.
Free speech should be defended for AI systems, preventing the government from pressuring companies to ban or alter content based on partisan agendas.
A light touch to regulation to encourage innovation, and no federal agency to regulate AI.
American workers vulnerable to AI job replacement should be retrained and supported.
Federal AI rules should preempt any state AI legislation to prevent a patchwork of laws that companies would hate.

The policy list is the latest in a series of proposals from the AI-friendly Trump administration.

SPACE

CASE

Rani Molla, Nate Becker15h

Jon Keegan17h

WSJ: OpenAI rolling everything into one desktop “superapp”

OpenAI is trying to eliminate distractions and focus on building AI that helps with enterprise productivity tasks like coding and organizing spreadsheets.

As part of that effort, the startup is consolidating some of its “side quests” into one “superapp,” according to a report from The Wall Street Journal.

The plan is to merge ChatGPT, Codex, and the Atlas browser together, as it seeks to focus its efforts as it competes with Anthropic and Google for lucrative enterprise customers.

OpenAI Head of Apps Fidji Simo told staffers in an internal memo that “we realized we were spreading our efforts across too many apps and stacks, and that we need to simplify our efforts. That fragmentation has been slowing us down and making it harder to hit the quality bar we want,” per the report.

Exclusive | OpenAI Plans Launch of Desktop ‘Superapp’ to Refocus, Simplify User Experience

The plan is to merge ChatGPT, Codex, and the Atlas browser together, as it seeks to focus its efforts as it competes with Anthropic and Google for lucrative enterprise customers.

Rani Molla

Semi charmed

18h

What we know about Tesla’s Semi truck as production nears

Musk says “high-volume production” will start this year. Wall Street thinks that’s more like 5,000 to 15,000 trucks.