Investor Gary Black says that Tesla Inc.‘s (NASDAQ:TSLA) dominance over the U.S. domestic EV market could be attributed to a scaling down of EV efforts by legacy automakers, among other reasons.
Model Y Rejig Drove Higher Sales
In a post on X on Sunday, the Future Fund LLC co-founder quoted a post by Tesla investor and influencer Sawyer Merritt, which referenced a Wall Street Journal article about Tesla’s market share in the U.S. EV sector. “Correlation is not causation,” outlining “two main reasons” for Tesla’s market share growth.
“ICE manufacturers significantly scaled back their EV investments in 2025 to reduce losses,” Black said, while saying that the “complete redesign of Model Y” in early 2025 was the second reason. He pointed to the scaling back of EV efforts by manufacturers like Ford Motor Co. (NYSE:F), General Motors Co. (NYSE:GM), Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (NYSE:HMC) and more.
Black pointed out the Ford F-150 Lightning EV’s sunsetting by the Michigan-based automaker, while also saying that Tesla’s Model Y Juniper launch in early 2025, which was the “first comprehensive update since the original Model Y launched in 2020,” also played a role.
FSD Has No Role
“Through August 2026, TSLA U.S. sales are -2% YTD vs overall TSLA -16% YTD and overall U.S. EVs -30% YTD,” he said. Black also reaffirmed that Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (FSD) system had no role in helping the EV giant’s market share. “It’s implausible that FSD is driving $TSLA share gains when no one other than TSLA bulls on X are aware of FSD,” he said.
The investor then said that if Tesla were to advertise FSD, “it would drive TSLA U.S. EV and overall market share meaningfully higher,” reaffirming his calls for the automaker to invest in a marketing strategy instead of relying on CEO Elon Musk‘s relevance in pop culture.
According to Benzinga Edge Rankings, Tesla scores moderately on the Growth and Quality metrics, but offers poor Value and Momentum. TSLA also fails to provide a favorable price trend in the Medium and Long term.
Price Action: TSLA shares slipped 1.34% to $360.48 during overnight trading.
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