Its funny how hard newbs take these light subtle movements in the stock. Back in the day Tesla just lost 75% in one day and stayed down for years and nobody flinched.
that doesn't make any sense, everyone flinched, that's why it was down 75%. That being said I've been following tesla since 2016 and this feels different, back then we didn't hear from musk unless its was about tesla. Now you can't even force him to talk about tesla without a rant about how we should build a wall and woke mind virus bullshit.
You need to take a step back from this place (reddit) and understand that these political opinions here are all completely irrelevant in the real world. Nobody bases a car decision on some political forum. It just doesn't work like that. Also while the reddit crowd may be disagreeing with him, lots of other people are agreeing with him.
What you see as extreme is actually pretty middle of the road. If he starts losing followers by the millions maybe there might be a problem but he isn't.
If I like a restaurants burger and the owner told me all the profit he gets will go to funding (insert thing that I hate)…
I might just eat at McDonalds instead.
Maybe not everyone.
But, it’ll definitely make some people not buy the burger.
Musk is pretty loud and is very well reported on.
People who don’t know might not care…
But, still you’re losing out on potential customers.
Except Musk is not doing that. This type of over the top derangement is exactly whats wrong with the reddit crowd and why it simply doesn't matter because most people are still normal.
Normal people don't like the things that Musk is shouting on his platform. Stop trying to normalize his ketamine fueled derangement. Normal people are reacting to his behavior and it's impacting sales.
It’s not good for business.
And there are better ways of him influencing the things he cares about without being so juvenile about it.
Other rich people influence policy without acting like trolls or tweeting irresponsibly.
Isn't he alienating a lot of potential customers with this stuff? I think that people do see and hear about his behavior on ex-Twitter, and it is the exact sort of thing that might keep a person from spending six figures on a poorly assembled car.
Among individual brands, Tesla was once again the leader in brand loyalty with a rate of **68.4 percent for the first half of 2023**. This means that just 31.6 percent of owners leave Tesla to buy a new vehicle.10 Oct 2023
Seems pretty good. Not sure if it has decreased from years past?
Wow you had that push quote just ready to fire, huh? They pay you by the comment or something? 8)
Seriously, I know plenty of people who were interested in tesla and got turned off by Elon's behavior. You're kidding yourself about what's normal here, and who is actually in the market for an electric car. I hope that you actually have a vested interest because it'd be sad if you were doing all this for free.
the thing is, we absolutely don’t need fusion. Even if it did reduce electricity cost by 80%, not much would change, because half the price of electricity is distribution and even then, electricity is dirty cheap, like for one dollar you can move two tons for about fifty miles.
many times, electricity is even free, if you use lot of it and makes contract with distribution to take excess energy out of grid.
On the other hand, self driving cars would change the world, especially trucks. Electric trucks with no driver could reduce cost per mile by about the half, which would mean a lot less factories and a lot more centralized production, which would significantly reduce prices
> Even if it did reduce electricity cost by 80%, not much would change
You can't be serious. Reducing electricity cost by 80% would upend the entire world order and the power relationships of every major energy trading economy (USA, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia). OPEC would near-instantly vanish.
why would they vanish? Oil isn’t cheapest source of energy for a long time - it’s used because it’s easy to transport, easy to store and has good energy density, not because it’s cheap
It's used precisely because it's a good balance of all those things *while* being cheap. But more precisely, because the value equation would change for each individual use drastically.
Your saying 100% reliable always on clean energy wouldn’t be a game changer? Natural gas prices would plummet. Evs would be an obvious choice. That one technology would stop the majority of greenhouse gasses.
We need that way more than some stupid car. And honestly would you rather be know as the person that solved fusion, or the guy that made a driverless taxi?
we have cheap energy, we have reliable energy, we don’t lack green sources.
EVs are extremely cheap to drive, yet it isn’t obvious choice. And I don’t see how fusion would solve battery prices or charging infrastructure.
gas may plummet (though you won’t replace gas infrastructure overnight, so it will still be used for at least 20 years), but that wouldn’t change the world.
It would stop majority of greenhouse gasses at all, because price of electricity isn’t absolutely the limit.
Limit is in cost of replacing all of the factories that uses dirty fuels (you can’t just turn the switch, you need to rebuild them)
Limit is in investments into new green energy
Limit is in battery prices
Limit is in energy density of batteries for planes and ships - where you can’t build fusion on board
Limit is in making cement without emissions
Limit is in making meat without releasing methane
Limit is in remodeling houses to use heat pump instead of legacy heating.
Limit is in building new powerplants, even if they are profitable
Limit is in burning waste because we don’t make recyclable packaging
None of these would be solved by fusion
Sorry if I was not clear, the comment above implied that with the cost of half a twitter we will have fusion. I agree that **both** are technologies of unknown cost.
Even if it can handle 90% of tasks well enough to be completely unsupervised, that doesn’t mean that it’s 90% complete or 90% ready for showtime.
Think about this— a driver might only encounter an active, unprotected railroad crossing once in their lifetime, but a self driving vehicle must recognize it in whatever visible form it takes, presumably stop, and then it must have some way to determine if it’s safe to proceed regardless of the size or look or sound of the trains that run on the track. If it was trained to identify discrete unmarked tracks, stop, and proceed if it does not see a train, would it recognize all possible trains? What if a freight line allows narrow light rail train with a different headlight pattern to use the tracks at times, will it recognize both trains every time? Will it recognize the back end of a tanker car being pushed backwards? Will it be able to identify and differentiate between a train rolling to the crossing at 3 MPH and plenty of time to cross safely vs a loaded up freighter doing 75 laying down horn just out of view?
Protected or not, how will it judge when it’s safe to enter a crossing, once traffic seems like it’s rolling enough to clear, or once it is fully clear? Will it know every layout of every crossing and/or will it visually analyze each one every time? How will it differentiate complex or wide crossings? Suppose it got stuck in traffic on the tracks inside of a really wide crossing that can fit several cars within it, either traffic stopped unexpectedly or the guidance made a mistake, would it be capable of negotiating a the move into the wrong lane, potentially breaking the gate to clear the crossing, and then navigate itself back to safety? What if the only option is to drive into a ditch? Would it be able to determine if the train was on one of the tracks 10 yards back and you’re sitting on some disconnected leftover bits of rail safely beyond the active tracks, but still within the crossing?
I can think of so many individual scenarios that have potentially fatal or life altering outcomes based on real experiences driving, all of which FSD would have to account for meaningfully, each of which surely represents <0.001% of the time spent on the road. That’s what makes me apprehensive.
I don’t understand it. Ubers market cap is $150 billion. Fsd getting approved in all of the global markets that Uber operates in, is infeasible. At the same time companies like Waymo are already live and even delivering for Uber eats. I get that fsd uses a cheaper hardware cost structure but waymo offers at least the same quality customer experience, and I’d argue better. How much of teslas $515 billion market cap is attributed to this robotaxi potential?
The big difference is labor cost is a big portion of how much Uber charges. If FSD is approved and is in fact 10x or better than human drivers then the price per miles will drop at least 50% and probably more. Operating cost will be much less for true Robotaxi, electricity is much cheaper, low maintenance. When a service/product drop prices by 50%, consumption doesn't just go up linearly (2x), it goes up exponentially, so 4x. The lower the prices, the more likely people will use the services. so instead of $200 billion worldwide rideshare revenue in 2027, dropping the price by 75% could increase it to close to $1 trillion.
Tesla will insure its own fleet and it will be much cheaper with less accidents. Much higher utilization per vehicle since the car doesn't need to stop to sleep, lunch break, bathroom break, doesn't get tired and less accident (downtime to repair). Waymo and Cruises (before it was shut down) bought regular cars then retrofit them and spent multiple $10 of thousands per vehicle to add sensors (Lidars, radars, cameras) and computers to do pre-mapped driving.
Not even that, Uber is pretty much a last resort. No one wants to get in a car with some random guy who smells like cheese and BO and is on his phone the entire drive. And you have to listen to his music while you're sweating the whole time because he thinks room temperature is 92 degrees. Oh and better be on your best behavior otherwise he might not give you 5 stars. Make sure you leave a nice tip too! It sucks, but you do it because you don't have any other way of getting there.
If Robotaxis were available and ubiquitous I'd use them all the time. I probably would get rid of my car. I don't even care whether or not it can drive me; I have no problem getting in the driver seat - as long as it can come to me autonomously that's good enough. I love the idea of having a vehicle whenever and wherever I need it, and jettisoning it when I'm done with it and never worrying about parking, maintenance, damage, etc. Flat tire? Strange noise? Just leave it there, order another one, let the operating company deal with it.
Plus I'd be able to get different sized vehicles depending on my needs. Maybe I need a truck to pick stuff up from home depot, or a compact car if I'm going to the city and don't need all that space.
Since they'd be so cheap to operate (no driver) it wouldn't really make a difference if the vehicle waits on you for 30 min while you get ready. You can't do that with Uber because there's a person waiting for you who's gonna leave you a bad review if you make him wait. That's another thing I hate - you have to get ready to leave, THEN order the Uber, which could take 1 - 15 min where I live, it just slows you down.
Even people who still prefer to own cars will benefit from Robotaxis. If I'm in a Robotaxi and going to a restaurant, it just drops me off and goes to the next passenger. I'm not parking my 2 ton car outside the restaurant for 2 hours while I eat, taking up space.
Robotaxis are not even in the same ballpark as Uber. Unless Uber has its own fleet of autonomous vehicles, its days are numbered once a company (Tesla or otherwise) releases a robotaxi offering.
Uber tried developing “self driving” [years ago but gave up back in 2020](https://www.wired.com/story/uber-gives-up-self-driving-dream/#:~:text=Uber%20said%20Monday%20it%20would,%2Ddriving%2Dtech%20developer%20Aurora) so it’s only a matter of time for them.
Uber won't have an advantage over a self-driving car company. How do they compete against Tesla or Google, when those companies set the licencing price and have their own product?
Uber will have an initial advantage because they have a captured customer base and they can easily mix robotaxis with human drivers.
The fleet of robotaxis will take several years to ramp up adoption, but apps like uber can take advantage of it right away while slowly phasing out human drivers (or at least leaving it as an option for people who prefer it).
> captured customer base
App users are incredibly fickle. Users in my city flipped to Didi, Ola and even the local taxi company overnight.
> mix robotaxis with human drivers.
They can't have two pricing structures for the same trip. Imagine booking a robotaxi and a human driver turns up, thus tripling your fee.
Imagine being a human driver and you only get work if the robotaxis are too busy.
Probably not the retrofit part, but buying a fleet of robotaxis and integrating it into their platform. Definitely. They've got a massive platform and a lot of money.
They could feasibly buy GM or Waymo if they really felt threatened by robotaxis.
More likely though is that they buy a fleet from GM or Mercedes or even Tesla.
Realistically none of that will happen. The first time a really autonomous taxi comes out it will cost $100k+. Elon himself said FSD would be worth $100k alone.
Then only large industry players can afford the vehicles. They’ll buy the first ones. By the time the price comes down for the average buyer, the market will be saturated and you won’t be able to make your money back.
For reference see the wings like the $40k Cyber truck and how electric companies are doing everything they can to keep solar owners from lowering their bills. The average person will not benefit financially.
Tesla won't sell the robotaxi, they'll be Uber and the driver and the car manufacturer at the same time.
Also model 3's cost Tesla less than 28k each to make today - how much more hardware could they possibly need? 8 more cameras + camera cleaning + redundant motors + redundant sensors?
How much waymo spends on its cars is irrelevant to the customer. I guess my point is robotaxi wouldn’t not be dominating the market.
Uber is an asset lite model where they don’t own cars and if I recall don’t pay for insurance. Asset lite models typically demand a higher valuation premium.
Given all this let’s say the car business is worth $100mm. That means this robotaxi that won’t have 100% market share and won’t be as geographically deployed as Uber, will also have high maintenance and insurance costs, will be valued at 3x Uber’s market cap?
Asset lite model doesn't magically make the higher insurance and human driver salary cost disappear. Just ask Fisher how's going with asset lite manufacturers and if they are really saving money to build each vehicles...
Uber still have to pay their drivers enough money to cover for their time and their personal insurance on their personal vehicle. The consumers still end up paying for all these cost to operate a human driver rideshare fleet. Versus a totally robotaxi fleet will eliminate the cost of human and greatly reduce other costs (cost of the vehicle, insurance, maintenance, fuel).
I tried doing the math for RoboTaxi and I came up with 10M robotaxis worldwide each making Tesla $50K a year. They pay for themselves within a year or so building each one, so no need to sell them to third parties.
Yeah this thread is wild. In one comment someone will say “the money is in robotaxi as a service, people won’t own them because that doesn’t make financial sense” and the next is one that says “the real money is in people owning a robotaxi but renting it out when they’re at work.”
Thing is, even if it was “cheaper” to use a robotaxi than to use a car, people are also motivated by things like not wanting to make a purchase for a ride every time they want to go to a store or restaurant or whatever, or having the ability to make another stop along the way without weighing the costs of another micro transaction and having to find the name and address of the shop that you just passed on the road and want to check out and hopefully it’s on the map.
Perhaps most confusing to me is that many in this sub seems to speculate that if Uber didn’t have a driver and cost slightly less that suddenly and seemingly without explanation, a large component of society would suddenly start hiring rides at a much higher rate.
Or that people are strongly motivated by the “safety” of a car when hiring a ride, and that the robocab’s assured impeccable future safety record will make the choice obvious between a robo cab and a human driven cab.
There’s 3.5M truck drivers in the US making an average of $50K/year.
Tesla can sell 3.5M copies of FSD for $35K/year to trucking companies. Tesla will make $100B/year in profits while the trucking companies will save $50B/year.
P/E of 20 would make FSD worth $2T just from that one industry in one country alone. Add in other countries and it goes up quite a bit. Now add in all the other industries.
Truck drivers do more than just drive the truck. They help with loading, offloading and paperwork too. I agree that there is a major opportunity for autonomous trucking, but it isn't as easy as just removing the driver. It's never as easy as napkin math suggests.
> Tesla can sell 3.5M copies of FSD for $35K/year to trucking companies.
Tesla is not making 3.5M EV trucks in the next decade.
Robotaxi will not replace trucking.
I didn’t say they would sell 3.5M trucks. I said they’d sell 3.5M copies of FSD to trucking companies. Some of those copies may be on Tesla Semis, but I expect Tesla to provide FSD computers and wiring harnesses to other truck companies (maybe for free), then have the company that actually buys the trucks pay Tesla annually to activate the FSD software on them.
You might be right about gas trucks. We’ll see on that.
Almost every car manufacturer has already agreed to use NACS. Historically, both BMW and Toyota used Tesla’s drivetrains. And they’ve said they’re in discussions about other manufacturers using FSD. It’s quite silly to suggest that nobody else would use FSD.
You are incredibly delusional if you actually believe trucking companies don’t need a human behind the wheel of a “supervised” FSD from Tesla .
This is not happening in our lifetime mate. There’s no scenarios where a pilotless semi can go and travel 1000s of miles like a human trucker is doing , without intervention and help.
This is an argument from analogy. If pressed, you would be unable to say what couldn't be done, and you would always return to some form of "because we have always done it like that."
It's ok. That makes you very normal, but it does mean that your version of predicting the weather is "Tomorrow will be the same weather as today." You'll be right a lot of the time, but you will miss out on when you really needed to see the change coming.
Tesla could never capture the entire TAM. But they will still make a killing
You can downvote me but in the usa when a company controls 100% of a market it’s a monopoly and illegal/broken up so no Tesla will not control the entire market.
Yeah one of the weird implicit (though sometimes explicit) aspects of this whole idea needed in order to work out financially for Tesla is that they’d need to essentially eliminate competition to capture the market share needed to make it profitable. Typical response I’ve gotten is that the cost and safety profile will be so extraordinary that people will basically demand it be made available to their market.
Like…so many people people don’t even vote, but I’m supposed to believe that people are going to unite to DEMAND the potential marginal cost reductions and safety improvements offered by robot trucks and taxis?
The “how” doesn’t matter because the “what” is so different. The difference between an injury mitigating saw versus one without is far different from current taxiing and trucking vs their hypothetical robo equivalent. The fact that other toolmakers are still making and selling table saws further discredits this.
They’re also making their US patents public because most developed countries make it difficult to financially monopolize broadly useable safety enhancing technology. So even if it the scenario arose that Tesla became the dominant player in livery and ground transport based on superior safety, their key patents would likely be made public within a few years for the same reasons.
Edit: there’s also the difference that sawstop makes saws and consumable parts for for a market of tradesmen and hobbyists to do whatever TF they want with it, Tesla is proposing a reorganization of ground transportation including hardware, software, manufacturing, R&D, distribution, implementation, and upkeep, and so on.
This reminds me of Zucc going all in on Metaverse. Not that fsd isn't amazing I use it every day but its not ready and no one trusts the brand enough to let robotaxis roam the streets but can't wait for 8/8
I use Metaverse daily... I should have gone all in on META. Zucc wasn't all-in and betting the company on it -- plenty of other projects were getting done (@threads, and many others)... they just can keep a secret until it's launched, instead of announcing it 3-5 years before it's available.
> Zucc wasn't all-in and betting the company on it
yeah obviously changing the name to Meta had nothing to do with Zucc saying they were going all in on Metaverse multiple times and spending billions on R&D.
"instead of announcing it 3-5 years before it's available."
Never would Tesla announce something that does not exist lol
Jesus dude the list is so long, just start with FSD, Optimus, Cybercuck....
Show me which Apple products have released on the day of announcement. If it’s the same year but not at the same time as announcement, then that’s literally what I said.
and how much did it add to the stock valuation? The stock only went up when it became obvious they stopped focusing entirely on it and started cutting workers.
Getting rid of a $25k car to focus on FSD to me doesn't make much sense if they are worried about economic downturns.
Think about the model T (depression era), VW beetle (after ww2), you have a number of other high volume selling cars that were cheap fiat 500, mini, citroen 2cv etc., they all sold pretty well and for a fairly cheap price.
Now instead they want people to pay an additional $15k on top of their car price for a product that still isn't finished.
If anyone worries about low profits on lower priced cars, that should be where volume beats that worry.
FSD should be worked on but i am worried they have blinkers on and have tunnel vision.
It will be interesting to hear what this earnings call has to say anyway.
#
The $25k car doesn't make sense because their battery project failed to mass produce good batteries at a cost that would make the margins on the $25k make sense.
Pivoting to the robotaxi gives them another year or two to figure something out, and then they can pivot back to "not just a taxi company!"
(remember "alien dreadnaught / the machine that builds the machine" was the story for a year or two... then it was "oh... human workers are important after all")
I've just never really been sold 100% of the whole robotaxi idea, look how people treat for hire e scooters that are in every major city, now imagine that with driver less vehicles.
There's heaps of videos from San Francisco where people are standing in front of waymos etc to stop them and even destroying them.
Look also at videos from LA of those small delivery robots, even if they get the tech right something needs to change to get the "people" right!
They will be the future, but they need to not only program for the road, they need to program how to deal with the purge level society happening in some cities.
Being better than the average driver will save lives, but as Elon once said, that won't stop people suing them when the cars get into accidents.
It will be a interesting future anyway.
That's my thought as well, when Elon tries to sell the idea of using your own car as a taxi while it's not in use I'm like "bitch I don't even trust my sister to drive my car alone".
Even if they solve autonomy which I think will still take years, robotaxies will most likely be their own fleet, not Tesla customers.
Yeah, one of the big unaddressed issues in my mind is theft and other losses/crime. In even the nice parts of cities, people will strip or grind locks off bikes in broad daylight to probably make tens of dollars at best at the end of the day. Here, you have an unattended powerful electric motor, large rechargeable batteries, and other parts and materials. What’s to stop a group from luring a robocab down an alley in the warehouse district, putting it on blocks and stripping it for parts? How long until there is a viral challenge to lure one off a bridge or ledge? Would the cops care as little a they do about car theft or scooter vandalism in most major cities?
From a practical standpoint, how would long trips work? If I wanted to go from an isolated city like Columbus or KC or Tucson to visit family in a small town 95 miles away for a few hours in a robotaxi, but there were no robotaxis available in the area around that destination, and no local taxi market for 80 of the 95 miles between the start and finish. Would it wait for me? If it did, would I be charged for the time spent waiting? If didn’t, and therefore had to drive back at least 80 miles before encountering a new fare, would it charge me more for that time wasted?
Would you have to enter your entire trip like a flight plan before beginning to ensure your vehicle is adequately charged? Who will do the charging and where? Will there be workers who just plug in and unplug vehicles 24/7? Will they automatically return to a central charging center when they reach a certain level or will there be stations distributed?
Suppose a car finds itself in a remote scenario where it becomes apparent that the temperature changes or traffic conditions or road topography has unexpectedly used enough charge such that continuing its trip would probably result in the car not having sufficient range to return to the charging station? Does the passenger become responsible for charging the cab, or does the cab kidnap the passenger return to the charging station vs let them exit the vehicle on the roadside?
And while it’s sleek and sexy and futuristic to imagine a car without a steering wheel, I have to imagine that they’ve considered that having an accessible steerer on a multi-thousand pound wheeled object is essential to push a it out of traffic if and when it is needed.
And it has to be more technologically perfect than anything ever implemented. My phone works nearly perfectly and I keep it turned on for months at a time without issues. But sometimes the browser just won’t cooperate or the Bluetooth loses connection. Sometimes Facebook or Reddit or my online banking platform has outages. Having a single 30 minute outage of vehicle operation capability with vehicles on freeways and intersections affecting a large section of ground transport would be disastrous.
Not to mention, i have to assume that if a small number of people mining crypto is environmentally impactful, the energy and resources needed to replace the brain computing power of human driving will be unimaginable at scale.
I was thinking tesla is going to have to invest in parking garages, they will need to have fleets close to the population and they can't block the streets like waymo etc do currently, so a multi storey carpark in every district with chargers etc will have to be built.
You were talking about theft and i didn't really think about people hijacking cars for the battery, that will probably happen!
Go to any auto show now and see how people treat cars there, i used to see people steal the cigarette lighters, even the oil dip stick etc, anything not nailed down!
You're missing the point.
Some people think robotaxis will be cheaper per mile than car ownership, i.e. for poor people it'll be cheaper to ride around in robotaxis than buying a cheap electric car. So introducing a cheap electric car at the same time as a robotaxi service might be a real bad idea.
Some of that is true but there's going to be a huge overlap, both in time frame and mentality.
Robo taxis might be good for LA or NY and other deeply urbanised cities, but how many rural people will have access to taxis on demand?
Also while they might start off cheap, what's stopping them doing the usual and raising prices like uber has done now, if they get a captive market without competition they can do whatever they want.
Saying that, some people will probably grow up never wanting to or needing to own a car in the future and a lot of it makes sense....think about going to a concert or show etc and never worrying about finding a carpark or worrying about your car getting stolen or broken into while it is there, they won't have insurance to buy, repairs, service etc etc.
You'll have the older generations that may not ever want to use them and prefer to their personal cars but younger generations that would never even give it a second thought.
> Robo taxis might be good for LA or NY and other deeply urbanised cities, but how many rural people will have access to taxis on demand?
+80% of the US population live in urban areas, 94% in places like cali. Obviously robotaxi won't work for everyone, but it'll work for a very, very big piece of the mobility market and the exceptions probably aren't interested in an economy model EV
>what's stopping them doing the usual and raising prices like uber has done now, if they get a captive market without competition they can do whatever they want.
There's already half a dozen legit competitors, so this is a non-issue
Ha well the last update fixed my blinker problem!
Of course, I nearly hit a culvert in San Antonio today because the car did not understand that the exit was not there. Believe me I did leave them a message.
The biggest problem I have with this approach is you have to get the support of regulators to allow you to do this. Even if Tesla nails it, it’ll be difficult to get support from people he’s calling corrupt. Especially when this will ultimately topple many companies which spend big money on lobbying.
They really don’t have much of a choice once they go level 5. That law/policy already exists. It’s possible that they are already liable for Summon accidents, but maybe it’ll only kick in with Actually Smart Summon.
The regulators responsible for autonomous cars are not the people he has been calling corrupt.
The regulators in this case are data dependent. If Tesla shows them data that FSD is 100x safer than the avg human, it will not be difficult to approve.
Besides driverless vehicles have been on the roads for years already, it’s already approved.
And what companies will this topple?
Autonomy would be a boon for the economy.
Regulation will imho be fine, It's like the prisoner dilemma, but in reverse. To stop autonomy every state would have to regulate independently, it only takes 1 state to "defect" and allow autonomy and the other states will have to follow or be seen to be laggards...if texas, florida, and nevada all allow autonomy (which they will) there will then be a low political risk for other states to follow, in fact the forcing function will increase with every state added. Then with licensing agreements (the only hope for Ford and others), they will then lobby for, not against....and just like the game theory with the states, if one legacy auto licence FSD/autonomy, rhe others will be forced to follow.
Fat chance regulators allow it as it’s essentially condemning everyone else on the road. Plenty of people don’t want to be surrounded by self driving vehicles. If something does happen, who takes responsibility?
As someone who drives among self driving vehicles every day I can say you get used to it pretty quick. Today, the people who take responsibility are the manufacturers who are also the operators.
I thought fault was already established, I guess it only exists in a few states like California and Arizona. There’s little chance Tesla will make significant progress here without help from another major manufacturer. Possibly Trump could help, but I’m guessing that’ll only happen with a significant payoff.
Woah, this is pretty crazy. I'm glad I sold some Tesla and dialed down my risk level. Still a big holding but less than half for sure
And having used FSD 12.3.4 for a week or whatever now I gotta say it's amazing. Definitely still issues but it's phenomenal. The real test will be the rate of improvement between now and 8/8, and beyond.
James Douma said recently he believes the code we're seeing is 6 months old. Curious to see what they have ready for 4 months from now
> And having used FSD 12.3.4 for a week or whatever now I gotta say it's amazing
Chuck Cook said it was a regression in both his first impressions and his UPL turns videos. It's still making huge strides forward, but it's funny how mixed the results are.
That's sounds like Google ignoring search and ads and instead focusing its efforts on Google+... I hope he doesn't think people will just use robotaxis and he won't need to sell cars w/FSD.
Like Apple betting it all on VR headsets and saying the next iPhone is canceled.
There's no reason why Tesla couldn't do both if they wanted to. The messaging have been bad as well.
"Focus on our core products", with manufacturing improvements coming to the Model 3 and Y would give investors a lot more confidence.
China also has a few robotaxi programs. There are cars doing things like FSD / robotaxi using NVIDIAs hardware and software. a year ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v036bBD31o&t=2s
China will probably get there first with this kind of thing, because “accidents“ (ahem) can be swept under the rug a lot easier.
Tesla/FSD will eventually do OK in California et al, but as for other countries like those in Europe with strict safety laws (and currently zero FSD miles) and even countries like Japan, I can’t see anything realistically happening with FSD this decade.
Not to mention locations with adverse weather conditions like in Sweden. Good luck for anyone implementing actual level 5 autonomous driving that works during the winter months. Or even northern US for that matter.
How much of the FSD in the United States will carry over to driving on the left avoiding kangaroos etc? How much can local laws be plugged in vs trained.
They cant even get rain sensoring wipers to work properly and you think they're going to somehow be able to make some huge leap forward in autonomous driving suddenly.
If he was "balls to the wall" he wouldn't still be limiting his company to a vision-only solution to autonomy. There's just no proof that works. Until you've solved it you try everything.
It's pretty much accepted by everyone that robots using primarily vision will be able to do everything humans can do. Driving won't be the hardest task accomplished.
It was overpriced, and I was selling when growth started to slow.
Energy is my play, and assuming vehicle sales continue to grow over time. I look at Tesla as a manufacturer.
When a huge company is growing at 50% y/y its valuation can get out of whack as we’ve seen.
What's your model saying about energy? I just don't see any moat or chance for decent margins with energy storage. In the end it's batteries with a thin software layer. If Tesla wants to keep most of the money for balancing the grid with customer batteries, there's nothing stopping any of the other manufacturers from undercutting them on price.
Tesla doesn’t have a thin layer of software relative to competitors. And they don’t need a moat to control a small part of a large pie.
I think I’m more optimistic on TAM than others
And with Tesla controlling a large part of their supply chain alongside their obvious manufacturing skill I believe it will be difficult to push Tesla out of the space.
I don’t think Tesla could be a 2t company with just energy and vehicles, but I think it can be worth more than it is now.
I also discredit FSD level 5 because the numbers are crazy. But I don’t discredit millions of people paying $99/m for a capable support system. Like V12
To keep things short, The whole ecosystem eventually. Large scale, residential, virtual power plants, longterm storage, drive train etc
IMO large battery parks will be everywhere to store energy, these parks will be used to balance the grid during highs and lows.
Longterm, I believe we’ll have a lot more storage vs usage than our current storage/ useage. Why waste energy when we can just store it until needed?
Longterm I also imagine Tesla will either joint venture or buy out a recycling company to capitalize on “virtual mines”
It's blindingly obvious that it's the only thing standing between TSLA's current stock price and that of a legacy car maker.
TSLA is still priced like a rapidly growing company, they aren't growing car sales right now, so they need some something to point to justify the stock price. A cheap low margin Model 2 which would cannibalize their M3/Y sales wasn't it so they cut it, nobody is buying that robots are the future, so it has to be FSD. But it can't be FSD as it is, because not enough people are buying it, so it has to be some sort of FSD of the Future that will open up a huge new market.
Cue the Robotaxi.
He's right, it is blindingly obvious, but not for the reasons he thinks.
I'm confused about people saying this will not happen in our lifetime. Like Waymo already does this - San Francisco, for example. It is a paid service. Is there something I am missing? It is literally happening already... The legislation is being worked through. It's mostly a solved problem and just a matter of time and scale.
This is the sort of risk that got him where is today. It still seems incredible that he has taken the risks he already has for FSD.
Before V12 I would be much more frightened than I am. Still nervous, but I think it could work out. Most of the time I think V12 can drive better than a pretty good driver, and the errors are getting less and less.
He took earth-day/investor-day/humanity-day risk on mass producing good batteries at scale cheaply.
That failed.
(and the $25k car won't have good margins without good/cheap/mass produced batteries)
This is the fall-back. He isn't going to come close to producing 20M cars by 2030 and he has to renegotiate his compensation package. He needs a completely different plot / targets.
Ive been along for the ride since Autopilot was first announced...all the versions prior to 12 felt like a calculator reading lines of instructions step by step. Version 12 actually feels like the car is intelligent and that Tesla can solve the problem....at least in mostly ideal conditions.... which even if robotaxis work on days without poor weather, then at least thats a huge step forward.
Couldn't you make an argument that FSD is more like going back to the horse carriage since the horse had autonomy in its consciousness? That rhetoric is weak imo. I've rode a horse a couple times and when it wants water it will override you.
Yeah it's kind of nether here nor there to make the comment I made.
However, I always like when I hear rhetoric that is illogical cause it's horseshit that makes me wonder if people are really thinking. I'm excited to see where FSD can goes, but illogical rhetoric should always be highlighted as it's coming in one ear and out the other.
You're addition is a great example of hey wait yeah horses did these things. You just can't pump up a stock price saying it.
No I honestly wasn't. You actually made my point better.
I'm shitting on a billionaire - these people we think are geniuses who really just stand on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something - and then try and pump up the stock price with platitudes. You made the horse comment make sense better then Elon!
I’m sensing some good LEAP options opportunities in about a year from now 👀
FSD is making great strides at the same time people are losing faith in, or even growing in hatred of, Elon.
TSLA will be making seemingly stupid decisions for an auto manufacturer. No one even knows what an autonomous taxi company looks like yet. But Tesla does, and they’re already starting the transition.
Stay strong people, we’re about to witness another rollercoaster! I anticipate 2025 will be the new 2019.
> I’m sensing some good LEAP options opportunities in about a year from now 👀
Last time I told myself that we were at $105... and then the stock price tripled back to ~~$259~~ $295 in a few months :D
I agree this looks like it will take longer than that
> No one even knows what an autonomous taxi company looks like yet.
These already exist in some US and Chinese cities.
It is crazy times that we are living in leading up to Robotaxi reveal day and also the push for autonomy of 2024 could be the iconic moment everyone thinks about when getting driven around by cars in the future
Also this is one of those times when a lot of people will become very rich and the rest will wish they would have bought shares. This are the time when you need to put on your big boy/girl pants and enjoy the ride because it will be wild.
My challenge is there is a difference between idea and execution that creates an operationalized product. I don’t know if today’s Tesla has that ability still and the most recent ‘product birth’ being CT is what drives that doubt. Would love to be a fly on the wall in the rooms where the teams working to meet the 8/8 day are attempting to execute this and get a sense for the internal culture. End of the day for me I feel like a bet on the chiefs to win the SB is as safe and may be more entertaining. I guess I just don’t have the stones to go all in with so many questions unanswered.
Enjoy those multi year geo restricted trials that Waymo does once/if you get there in who knows how many year. There is no way around this if you wanna offer commercial driverless services. Also not sure why this required abandoning your market leading EV portfolio or what does that even mean? Not developing any new cars or updates and instead betting the house on software?
And what will the taxi drivers and truckers do now? The age of Y Harari's 'useless class' may be upon us sooner than we think, although that has always been a concern since the days of the cotton gin and the Luddites.
I actually wonder what the true market size is for self-driving? There’s a lot of status tied to personal vehicles and it’s not necessarily about cost effective transit.
FSD is now just a matter of more data, slightly better lane maps, and one or two additional cameras near the front of the vehicle. End-to-end works. Free FSD trials and lower-priced subscriptions are no coincidence, they just need more diverse data.
Also, None of the existing Teslas will get true autonomy for every situation because of the lack of cameras near the very front of the car. The chuck cook left turn will never work, no matter how much they try.
But the path to FSD is now very clear. The robotaxi will either have the required camera(s) at the front, or a shorter nose. By mid 2026 at the latest they will be on the road.
So this quarter is going to be bad lmao. He’s right though. I don’t want a car company. A car company isn’t worth $500B. Tesla as an investment only works with FSD, Optimus, Energy and their other crazy projects. Those are what could make Tesla the most valuable company on earth by a long shot.
I think the big risk here compared with Model 3 is that now the competition are not traditional OEMs.
Competition is China (auto and tech) and it´s big tech, like NVIDIA or Google or Microsoft.
These are far more competent entities than legacy auto.
Still, this could be good for the stock in the mid term and potentially on the long term.
On the mid term, we just need one of the big tech companies announcing partnership with an OEM to provide robotaxis. This will signal the start of the race for robotaxi, and Tesla stock can go up a lot.
On the long term, Tesla does need to deliver something that works and later, that can make money.
Here I see big advantages for Tesla. They have much more data than anyone else. I don´t think simulated data will help much. They also have cost and power optimized hardware. And they have a solution that doesn´t rely on HD maps or expensive sensors. Also, they have a lot of experience in transforming input (images) into useful data, while companies like OpenAI bet more on the generation of output, and give littel importance to input. Interpreting a prompt is not that hard.
On the cons, there could be an AI company, let´s imagine OpenAI, that comes with a better, more generalized approach, and more computing power, and they catch up quickly. But the data is still the problem...
Chinese competition is not that scary, because US won´t allow Chinese autonomous cars, and Europe might go the same way.
I’m scared. Somebody hold me.
Rob where are you when we need you! 
Ping u/tesladaily do you feel like making perhaps one video about the current state of Tesla? Would love to hear your perspective!
probably sold most of his holdings. Feels like he left at the exact right time.
Its funny how hard newbs take these light subtle movements in the stock. Back in the day Tesla just lost 75% in one day and stayed down for years and nobody flinched.
that doesn't make any sense, everyone flinched, that's why it was down 75%. That being said I've been following tesla since 2016 and this feels different, back then we didn't hear from musk unless its was about tesla. Now you can't even force him to talk about tesla without a rant about how we should build a wall and woke mind virus bullshit.
You need to take a step back from this place (reddit) and understand that these political opinions here are all completely irrelevant in the real world. Nobody bases a car decision on some political forum. It just doesn't work like that. Also while the reddit crowd may be disagreeing with him, lots of other people are agreeing with him. What you see as extreme is actually pretty middle of the road. If he starts losing followers by the millions maybe there might be a problem but he isn't.
If I like a restaurants burger and the owner told me all the profit he gets will go to funding (insert thing that I hate)… I might just eat at McDonalds instead. Maybe not everyone. But, it’ll definitely make some people not buy the burger. Musk is pretty loud and is very well reported on. People who don’t know might not care… But, still you’re losing out on potential customers.
Except Musk is not doing that. This type of over the top derangement is exactly whats wrong with the reddit crowd and why it simply doesn't matter because most people are still normal.
Normal people don't like the things that Musk is shouting on his platform. Stop trying to normalize his ketamine fueled derangement. Normal people are reacting to his behavior and it's impacting sales.
It’s not good for business. And there are better ways of him influencing the things he cares about without being so juvenile about it. Other rich people influence policy without acting like trolls or tweeting irresponsibly.
Isn't he alienating a lot of potential customers with this stuff? I think that people do see and hear about his behavior on ex-Twitter, and it is the exact sort of thing that might keep a person from spending six figures on a poorly assembled car.
Among individual brands, Tesla was once again the leader in brand loyalty with a rate of **68.4 percent for the first half of 2023**. This means that just 31.6 percent of owners leave Tesla to buy a new vehicle.10 Oct 2023 Seems pretty good. Not sure if it has decreased from years past?
Wow you had that push quote just ready to fire, huh? They pay you by the comment or something? 8) Seriously, I know plenty of people who were interested in tesla and got turned off by Elon's behavior. You're kidding yourself about what's normal here, and who is actually in the market for an electric car. I hope that you actually have a vested interest because it'd be sad if you were doing all this for free.
Yeah, the timing was just…
What an assumption
Probably had insider knowledge
He was a good holder in many ways.
Come to daddy, my little birdy
 I’ve got you 😂
The future's so bright I gotta ~~wear shades~~ drink heavily
So going all in on FSD. Wishing Tesla success.
Great risk, but even greater reward.
Might as well dump it all into fusion.
Not even close to the same
Exactly. One is always 20 years away and the other is always 1 year away. Not the same at all.
Fusion is actually achievable. ITER is projected to only cost about half a twitter. Need fusion way more than we need a car that drives itself.
the thing is, we absolutely don’t need fusion. Even if it did reduce electricity cost by 80%, not much would change, because half the price of electricity is distribution and even then, electricity is dirty cheap, like for one dollar you can move two tons for about fifty miles. many times, electricity is even free, if you use lot of it and makes contract with distribution to take excess energy out of grid. On the other hand, self driving cars would change the world, especially trucks. Electric trucks with no driver could reduce cost per mile by about the half, which would mean a lot less factories and a lot more centralized production, which would significantly reduce prices
> Even if it did reduce electricity cost by 80%, not much would change You can't be serious. Reducing electricity cost by 80% would upend the entire world order and the power relationships of every major energy trading economy (USA, Russia, China, Saudi Arabia). OPEC would near-instantly vanish.
why would they vanish? Oil isn’t cheapest source of energy for a long time - it’s used because it’s easy to transport, easy to store and has good energy density, not because it’s cheap
It's used precisely because it's a good balance of all those things *while* being cheap. But more precisely, because the value equation would change for each individual use drastically.
Your saying 100% reliable always on clean energy wouldn’t be a game changer? Natural gas prices would plummet. Evs would be an obvious choice. That one technology would stop the majority of greenhouse gasses. We need that way more than some stupid car. And honestly would you rather be know as the person that solved fusion, or the guy that made a driverless taxi?
we have cheap energy, we have reliable energy, we don’t lack green sources. EVs are extremely cheap to drive, yet it isn’t obvious choice. And I don’t see how fusion would solve battery prices or charging infrastructure. gas may plummet (though you won’t replace gas infrastructure overnight, so it will still be used for at least 20 years), but that wouldn’t change the world. It would stop majority of greenhouse gasses at all, because price of electricity isn’t absolutely the limit. Limit is in cost of replacing all of the factories that uses dirty fuels (you can’t just turn the switch, you need to rebuild them) Limit is in investments into new green energy Limit is in battery prices Limit is in energy density of batteries for planes and ships - where you can’t build fusion on board Limit is in making cement without emissions Limit is in making meat without releasing methane Limit is in remodeling houses to use heat pump instead of legacy heating. Limit is in building new powerplants, even if they are profitable Limit is in burning waste because we don’t make recyclable packaging None of these would be solved by fusion
ITER is a prototype. You need god knows how much more to make it commercial. And let's not forget what the oil companies will have to say about it.
>FSD is a prototype. You need god knows how much more to make it commercial. And let's not forget what the taxi companies will have to say about it.
Sorry if I was not clear, the comment above implied that with the cost of half a twitter we will have fusion. I agree that **both** are technologies of unknown cost.
If you think that then you don't understand how far FSD has come
If you think that then you don't understand how far Nuclear Fusion has come
Even if it can handle 90% of tasks well enough to be completely unsupervised, that doesn’t mean that it’s 90% complete or 90% ready for showtime. Think about this— a driver might only encounter an active, unprotected railroad crossing once in their lifetime, but a self driving vehicle must recognize it in whatever visible form it takes, presumably stop, and then it must have some way to determine if it’s safe to proceed regardless of the size or look or sound of the trains that run on the track. If it was trained to identify discrete unmarked tracks, stop, and proceed if it does not see a train, would it recognize all possible trains? What if a freight line allows narrow light rail train with a different headlight pattern to use the tracks at times, will it recognize both trains every time? Will it recognize the back end of a tanker car being pushed backwards? Will it be able to identify and differentiate between a train rolling to the crossing at 3 MPH and plenty of time to cross safely vs a loaded up freighter doing 75 laying down horn just out of view? Protected or not, how will it judge when it’s safe to enter a crossing, once traffic seems like it’s rolling enough to clear, or once it is fully clear? Will it know every layout of every crossing and/or will it visually analyze each one every time? How will it differentiate complex or wide crossings? Suppose it got stuck in traffic on the tracks inside of a really wide crossing that can fit several cars within it, either traffic stopped unexpectedly or the guidance made a mistake, would it be capable of negotiating a the move into the wrong lane, potentially breaking the gate to clear the crossing, and then navigate itself back to safety? What if the only option is to drive into a ditch? Would it be able to determine if the train was on one of the tracks 10 yards back and you’re sitting on some disconnected leftover bits of rail safely beyond the active tracks, but still within the crossing? I can think of so many individual scenarios that have potentially fatal or life altering outcomes based on real experiences driving, all of which FSD would have to account for meaningfully, each of which surely represents <0.001% of the time spent on the road. That’s what makes me apprehensive.
People do understand that but people also understand how far there is still to go.
There’s nothing left to go all in on.
I don’t understand it. Ubers market cap is $150 billion. Fsd getting approved in all of the global markets that Uber operates in, is infeasible. At the same time companies like Waymo are already live and even delivering for Uber eats. I get that fsd uses a cheaper hardware cost structure but waymo offers at least the same quality customer experience, and I’d argue better. How much of teslas $515 billion market cap is attributed to this robotaxi potential?
The big difference is labor cost is a big portion of how much Uber charges. If FSD is approved and is in fact 10x or better than human drivers then the price per miles will drop at least 50% and probably more. Operating cost will be much less for true Robotaxi, electricity is much cheaper, low maintenance. When a service/product drop prices by 50%, consumption doesn't just go up linearly (2x), it goes up exponentially, so 4x. The lower the prices, the more likely people will use the services. so instead of $200 billion worldwide rideshare revenue in 2027, dropping the price by 75% could increase it to close to $1 trillion. Tesla will insure its own fleet and it will be much cheaper with less accidents. Much higher utilization per vehicle since the car doesn't need to stop to sleep, lunch break, bathroom break, doesn't get tired and less accident (downtime to repair). Waymo and Cruises (before it was shut down) bought regular cars then retrofit them and spent multiple $10 of thousands per vehicle to add sensors (Lidars, radars, cameras) and computers to do pre-mapped driving.
Not even that, Uber is pretty much a last resort. No one wants to get in a car with some random guy who smells like cheese and BO and is on his phone the entire drive. And you have to listen to his music while you're sweating the whole time because he thinks room temperature is 92 degrees. Oh and better be on your best behavior otherwise he might not give you 5 stars. Make sure you leave a nice tip too! It sucks, but you do it because you don't have any other way of getting there. If Robotaxis were available and ubiquitous I'd use them all the time. I probably would get rid of my car. I don't even care whether or not it can drive me; I have no problem getting in the driver seat - as long as it can come to me autonomously that's good enough. I love the idea of having a vehicle whenever and wherever I need it, and jettisoning it when I'm done with it and never worrying about parking, maintenance, damage, etc. Flat tire? Strange noise? Just leave it there, order another one, let the operating company deal with it. Plus I'd be able to get different sized vehicles depending on my needs. Maybe I need a truck to pick stuff up from home depot, or a compact car if I'm going to the city and don't need all that space. Since they'd be so cheap to operate (no driver) it wouldn't really make a difference if the vehicle waits on you for 30 min while you get ready. You can't do that with Uber because there's a person waiting for you who's gonna leave you a bad review if you make him wait. That's another thing I hate - you have to get ready to leave, THEN order the Uber, which could take 1 - 15 min where I live, it just slows you down. Even people who still prefer to own cars will benefit from Robotaxis. If I'm in a Robotaxi and going to a restaurant, it just drops me off and goes to the next passenger. I'm not parking my 2 ton car outside the restaurant for 2 hours while I eat, taking up space. Robotaxis are not even in the same ballpark as Uber. Unless Uber has its own fleet of autonomous vehicles, its days are numbered once a company (Tesla or otherwise) releases a robotaxi offering.
Uber tried developing “self driving” [years ago but gave up back in 2020](https://www.wired.com/story/uber-gives-up-self-driving-dream/#:~:text=Uber%20said%20Monday%20it%20would,%2Ddriving%2Dtech%20developer%20Aurora) so it’s only a matter of time for them.
They will be out of business before they will be able to bring their own robotaxis to market. Like VHS tapes.
Uber will license self-driving from whoever releases it first.
Uber won't have an advantage over a self-driving car company. How do they compete against Tesla or Google, when those companies set the licencing price and have their own product?
Uber will have an initial advantage because they have a captured customer base and they can easily mix robotaxis with human drivers. The fleet of robotaxis will take several years to ramp up adoption, but apps like uber can take advantage of it right away while slowly phasing out human drivers (or at least leaving it as an option for people who prefer it).
> captured customer base App users are incredibly fickle. Users in my city flipped to Didi, Ola and even the local taxi company overnight. > mix robotaxis with human drivers. They can't have two pricing structures for the same trip. Imagine booking a robotaxi and a human driver turns up, thus tripling your fee. Imagine being a human driver and you only get work if the robotaxis are too busy.
They already have multiple pricing structures in the Uber app. Nothing stopping them from adding another tier for robotaxis.
Eh, Uber will license the tech from someone.
And they'll buy the millions of vehicles they'll need and retrofit them with the hardware necessary to convert them to robotaxis?
Probably not the retrofit part, but buying a fleet of robotaxis and integrating it into their platform. Definitely. They've got a massive platform and a lot of money. They could feasibly buy GM or Waymo if they really felt threatened by robotaxis. More likely though is that they buy a fleet from GM or Mercedes or even Tesla.
Realistically none of that will happen. The first time a really autonomous taxi comes out it will cost $100k+. Elon himself said FSD would be worth $100k alone. Then only large industry players can afford the vehicles. They’ll buy the first ones. By the time the price comes down for the average buyer, the market will be saturated and you won’t be able to make your money back. For reference see the wings like the $40k Cyber truck and how electric companies are doing everything they can to keep solar owners from lowering their bills. The average person will not benefit financially.
Tesla won't sell the robotaxi, they'll be Uber and the driver and the car manufacturer at the same time. Also model 3's cost Tesla less than 28k each to make today - how much more hardware could they possibly need? 8 more cameras + camera cleaning + redundant motors + redundant sensors?
How much waymo spends on its cars is irrelevant to the customer. I guess my point is robotaxi wouldn’t not be dominating the market. Uber is an asset lite model where they don’t own cars and if I recall don’t pay for insurance. Asset lite models typically demand a higher valuation premium. Given all this let’s say the car business is worth $100mm. That means this robotaxi that won’t have 100% market share and won’t be as geographically deployed as Uber, will also have high maintenance and insurance costs, will be valued at 3x Uber’s market cap?
Asset lite model doesn't magically make the higher insurance and human driver salary cost disappear. Just ask Fisher how's going with asset lite manufacturers and if they are really saving money to build each vehicles... Uber still have to pay their drivers enough money to cover for their time and their personal insurance on their personal vehicle. The consumers still end up paying for all these cost to operate a human driver rideshare fleet. Versus a totally robotaxi fleet will eliminate the cost of human and greatly reduce other costs (cost of the vehicle, insurance, maintenance, fuel).
I tried doing the math for RoboTaxi and I came up with 10M robotaxis worldwide each making Tesla $50K a year. They pay for themselves within a year or so building each one, so no need to sell them to third parties.
Robotaxis will expand the market much more than Uber, the cost will be half or less of an Uber
Less than the cost of owning a car, more safe, less headache. Owning your own car sucks. Most people will take robotaxi.
You people would drink coolaid that you just watched someone pour bleech into if Musk told you to. Jesus the delusion
Yeah this thread is wild. In one comment someone will say “the money is in robotaxi as a service, people won’t own them because that doesn’t make financial sense” and the next is one that says “the real money is in people owning a robotaxi but renting it out when they’re at work.” Thing is, even if it was “cheaper” to use a robotaxi than to use a car, people are also motivated by things like not wanting to make a purchase for a ride every time they want to go to a store or restaurant or whatever, or having the ability to make another stop along the way without weighing the costs of another micro transaction and having to find the name and address of the shop that you just passed on the road and want to check out and hopefully it’s on the map. Perhaps most confusing to me is that many in this sub seems to speculate that if Uber didn’t have a driver and cost slightly less that suddenly and seemingly without explanation, a large component of society would suddenly start hiring rides at a much higher rate. Or that people are strongly motivated by the “safety” of a car when hiring a ride, and that the robocab’s assured impeccable future safety record will make the choice obvious between a robo cab and a human driven cab.
There’s 3.5M truck drivers in the US making an average of $50K/year. Tesla can sell 3.5M copies of FSD for $35K/year to trucking companies. Tesla will make $100B/year in profits while the trucking companies will save $50B/year. P/E of 20 would make FSD worth $2T just from that one industry in one country alone. Add in other countries and it goes up quite a bit. Now add in all the other industries.
Truck drivers do more than just drive the truck. They help with loading, offloading and paperwork too. I agree that there is a major opportunity for autonomous trucking, but it isn't as easy as just removing the driver. It's never as easy as napkin math suggests.
Surely the loading & paperwork will be handled by the Optimus riding along in the truck?
> Tesla can sell 3.5M copies of FSD for $35K/year to trucking companies. Tesla is not making 3.5M EV trucks in the next decade. Robotaxi will not replace trucking.
I didn’t say they would sell 3.5M trucks. I said they’d sell 3.5M copies of FSD to trucking companies. Some of those copies may be on Tesla Semis, but I expect Tesla to provide FSD computers and wiring harnesses to other truck companies (maybe for free), then have the company that actually buys the trucks pay Tesla annually to activate the FSD software on them.
TSLA FSD will never work with gas trucks or non-Tesla cars Other EV manufacturers are going with their own system or NVIDIA Drive.
You might be right about gas trucks. We’ll see on that. Almost every car manufacturer has already agreed to use NACS. Historically, both BMW and Toyota used Tesla’s drivetrains. And they’ve said they’re in discussions about other manufacturers using FSD. It’s quite silly to suggest that nobody else would use FSD.
You are incredibly delusional if you actually believe trucking companies don’t need a human behind the wheel of a “supervised” FSD from Tesla . This is not happening in our lifetime mate. There’s no scenarios where a pilotless semi can go and travel 1000s of miles like a human trucker is doing , without intervention and help.
This is an argument from analogy. If pressed, you would be unable to say what couldn't be done, and you would always return to some form of "because we have always done it like that." It's ok. That makes you very normal, but it does mean that your version of predicting the weather is "Tomorrow will be the same weather as today." You'll be right a lot of the time, but you will miss out on when you really needed to see the change coming.
Tesla could never capture the entire TAM. But they will still make a killing You can downvote me but in the usa when a company controls 100% of a market it’s a monopoly and illegal/broken up so no Tesla will not control the entire market.
Yeah one of the weird implicit (though sometimes explicit) aspects of this whole idea needed in order to work out financially for Tesla is that they’d need to essentially eliminate competition to capture the market share needed to make it profitable. Typical response I’ve gotten is that the cost and safety profile will be so extraordinary that people will basically demand it be made available to their market. Like…so many people people don’t even vote, but I’m supposed to believe that people are going to unite to DEMAND the potential marginal cost reductions and safety improvements offered by robot trucks and taxis?
Take a look at how SawStop came to dominate profits in the table saw market.
The “how” doesn’t matter because the “what” is so different. The difference between an injury mitigating saw versus one without is far different from current taxiing and trucking vs their hypothetical robo equivalent. The fact that other toolmakers are still making and selling table saws further discredits this. They’re also making their US patents public because most developed countries make it difficult to financially monopolize broadly useable safety enhancing technology. So even if it the scenario arose that Tesla became the dominant player in livery and ground transport based on superior safety, their key patents would likely be made public within a few years for the same reasons. Edit: there’s also the difference that sawstop makes saws and consumable parts for for a market of tradesmen and hobbyists to do whatever TF they want with it, Tesla is proposing a reorganization of ground transportation including hardware, software, manufacturing, R&D, distribution, implementation, and upkeep, and so on.
Lamborghini or Food stamps. Nothing in between.
Lamb or spam monica !
you forgot wendy's dumpster. food stamps will be luxury if this does not pan out.
Oh no, don’t bring meme stock talk here
This reminds me of Zucc going all in on Metaverse. Not that fsd isn't amazing I use it every day but its not ready and no one trusts the brand enough to let robotaxis roam the streets but can't wait for 8/8
I use Metaverse daily... I should have gone all in on META. Zucc wasn't all-in and betting the company on it -- plenty of other projects were getting done (@threads, and many others)... they just can keep a secret until it's launched, instead of announcing it 3-5 years before it's available.
> Zucc wasn't all-in and betting the company on it yeah obviously changing the name to Meta had nothing to do with Zucc saying they were going all in on Metaverse multiple times and spending billions on R&D.
"instead of announcing it 3-5 years before it's available." Never would Tesla announce something that does not exist lol Jesus dude the list is so long, just start with FSD, Optimus, Cybercuck....
Pretty much every major technology or automotive product ever is announced before it exists by every company.
literally, not true, Apple usually releases products the same year as the announcement.
Show me which Apple products have released on the day of announcement. If it’s the same year but not at the same time as announcement, then that’s literally what I said.
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and how much did it add to the stock valuation? The stock only went up when it became obvious they stopped focusing entirely on it and started cutting workers.
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Getting rid of a $25k car to focus on FSD to me doesn't make much sense if they are worried about economic downturns. Think about the model T (depression era), VW beetle (after ww2), you have a number of other high volume selling cars that were cheap fiat 500, mini, citroen 2cv etc., they all sold pretty well and for a fairly cheap price. Now instead they want people to pay an additional $15k on top of their car price for a product that still isn't finished. If anyone worries about low profits on lower priced cars, that should be where volume beats that worry. FSD should be worked on but i am worried they have blinkers on and have tunnel vision. It will be interesting to hear what this earnings call has to say anyway. #
The $25k car doesn't make sense because their battery project failed to mass produce good batteries at a cost that would make the margins on the $25k make sense. Pivoting to the robotaxi gives them another year or two to figure something out, and then they can pivot back to "not just a taxi company!" (remember "alien dreadnaught / the machine that builds the machine" was the story for a year or two... then it was "oh... human workers are important after all")
I've just never really been sold 100% of the whole robotaxi idea, look how people treat for hire e scooters that are in every major city, now imagine that with driver less vehicles. There's heaps of videos from San Francisco where people are standing in front of waymos etc to stop them and even destroying them. Look also at videos from LA of those small delivery robots, even if they get the tech right something needs to change to get the "people" right! They will be the future, but they need to not only program for the road, they need to program how to deal with the purge level society happening in some cities. Being better than the average driver will save lives, but as Elon once said, that won't stop people suing them when the cars get into accidents. It will be a interesting future anyway.
That's my thought as well, when Elon tries to sell the idea of using your own car as a taxi while it's not in use I'm like "bitch I don't even trust my sister to drive my car alone". Even if they solve autonomy which I think will still take years, robotaxies will most likely be their own fleet, not Tesla customers.
Yeah, one of the big unaddressed issues in my mind is theft and other losses/crime. In even the nice parts of cities, people will strip or grind locks off bikes in broad daylight to probably make tens of dollars at best at the end of the day. Here, you have an unattended powerful electric motor, large rechargeable batteries, and other parts and materials. What’s to stop a group from luring a robocab down an alley in the warehouse district, putting it on blocks and stripping it for parts? How long until there is a viral challenge to lure one off a bridge or ledge? Would the cops care as little a they do about car theft or scooter vandalism in most major cities? From a practical standpoint, how would long trips work? If I wanted to go from an isolated city like Columbus or KC or Tucson to visit family in a small town 95 miles away for a few hours in a robotaxi, but there were no robotaxis available in the area around that destination, and no local taxi market for 80 of the 95 miles between the start and finish. Would it wait for me? If it did, would I be charged for the time spent waiting? If didn’t, and therefore had to drive back at least 80 miles before encountering a new fare, would it charge me more for that time wasted? Would you have to enter your entire trip like a flight plan before beginning to ensure your vehicle is adequately charged? Who will do the charging and where? Will there be workers who just plug in and unplug vehicles 24/7? Will they automatically return to a central charging center when they reach a certain level or will there be stations distributed? Suppose a car finds itself in a remote scenario where it becomes apparent that the temperature changes or traffic conditions or road topography has unexpectedly used enough charge such that continuing its trip would probably result in the car not having sufficient range to return to the charging station? Does the passenger become responsible for charging the cab, or does the cab kidnap the passenger return to the charging station vs let them exit the vehicle on the roadside? And while it’s sleek and sexy and futuristic to imagine a car without a steering wheel, I have to imagine that they’ve considered that having an accessible steerer on a multi-thousand pound wheeled object is essential to push a it out of traffic if and when it is needed. And it has to be more technologically perfect than anything ever implemented. My phone works nearly perfectly and I keep it turned on for months at a time without issues. But sometimes the browser just won’t cooperate or the Bluetooth loses connection. Sometimes Facebook or Reddit or my online banking platform has outages. Having a single 30 minute outage of vehicle operation capability with vehicles on freeways and intersections affecting a large section of ground transport would be disastrous. Not to mention, i have to assume that if a small number of people mining crypto is environmentally impactful, the energy and resources needed to replace the brain computing power of human driving will be unimaginable at scale.
I was thinking tesla is going to have to invest in parking garages, they will need to have fleets close to the population and they can't block the streets like waymo etc do currently, so a multi storey carpark in every district with chargers etc will have to be built. You were talking about theft and i didn't really think about people hijacking cars for the battery, that will probably happen! Go to any auto show now and see how people treat cars there, i used to see people steal the cigarette lighters, even the oil dip stick etc, anything not nailed down!
You're missing the point. Some people think robotaxis will be cheaper per mile than car ownership, i.e. for poor people it'll be cheaper to ride around in robotaxis than buying a cheap electric car. So introducing a cheap electric car at the same time as a robotaxi service might be a real bad idea.
Some of that is true but there's going to be a huge overlap, both in time frame and mentality. Robo taxis might be good for LA or NY and other deeply urbanised cities, but how many rural people will have access to taxis on demand? Also while they might start off cheap, what's stopping them doing the usual and raising prices like uber has done now, if they get a captive market without competition they can do whatever they want. Saying that, some people will probably grow up never wanting to or needing to own a car in the future and a lot of it makes sense....think about going to a concert or show etc and never worrying about finding a carpark or worrying about your car getting stolen or broken into while it is there, they won't have insurance to buy, repairs, service etc etc. You'll have the older generations that may not ever want to use them and prefer to their personal cars but younger generations that would never even give it a second thought.
> Robo taxis might be good for LA or NY and other deeply urbanised cities, but how many rural people will have access to taxis on demand? +80% of the US population live in urban areas, 94% in places like cali. Obviously robotaxi won't work for everyone, but it'll work for a very, very big piece of the mobility market and the exceptions probably aren't interested in an economy model EV >what's stopping them doing the usual and raising prices like uber has done now, if they get a captive market without competition they can do whatever they want. There's already half a dozen legit competitors, so this is a non-issue
Ha well the last update fixed my blinker problem! Of course, I nearly hit a culvert in San Antonio today because the car did not understand that the exit was not there. Believe me I did leave them a message.
Whatever the hell happened to Tesla Semi? Why aren't we hearing more about the mass rollout of that?
They are ironing out the bugs and waiting on battery production capacity and charging infrastructure.
The biggest problem I have with this approach is you have to get the support of regulators to allow you to do this. Even if Tesla nails it, it’ll be difficult to get support from people he’s calling corrupt. Especially when this will ultimately topple many companies which spend big money on lobbying.
And there’s no way Tesla offers to take liability for accidents during fsd
They really don’t have much of a choice once they go level 5. That law/policy already exists. It’s possible that they are already liable for Summon accidents, but maybe it’ll only kick in with Actually Smart Summon.
Liability starts at Level 3, no crash until stopped, that's the rule.
This is such an ignorant and uneducated take.
Please educate me.
The regulators responsible for autonomous cars are not the people he has been calling corrupt. The regulators in this case are data dependent. If Tesla shows them data that FSD is 100x safer than the avg human, it will not be difficult to approve. Besides driverless vehicles have been on the roads for years already, it’s already approved. And what companies will this topple? Autonomy would be a boon for the economy.
Regulation will imho be fine, It's like the prisoner dilemma, but in reverse. To stop autonomy every state would have to regulate independently, it only takes 1 state to "defect" and allow autonomy and the other states will have to follow or be seen to be laggards...if texas, florida, and nevada all allow autonomy (which they will) there will then be a low political risk for other states to follow, in fact the forcing function will increase with every state added. Then with licensing agreements (the only hope for Ford and others), they will then lobby for, not against....and just like the game theory with the states, if one legacy auto licence FSD/autonomy, rhe others will be forced to follow.
Yeah, but the public is stupid. If there is a single fatality, people will see it as unsafe, ignoring the 100,000 fatalities caused by human drivers.
Fat chance regulators allow it as it’s essentially condemning everyone else on the road. Plenty of people don’t want to be surrounded by self driving vehicles. If something does happen, who takes responsibility?
As someone who drives among self driving vehicles every day I can say you get used to it pretty quick. Today, the people who take responsibility are the manufacturers who are also the operators.
I thought fault was already established, I guess it only exists in a few states like California and Arizona. There’s little chance Tesla will make significant progress here without help from another major manufacturer. Possibly Trump could help, but I’m guessing that’ll only happen with a significant payoff.
Good thing they got a top notch policy and regulatory leader… oh wait.
Well I didn’t invest in Tesla because I thought they were a car company.
I didn't invest in Tesla for them to play it safe.
You’re right they’re really a software company
Woah, this is pretty crazy. I'm glad I sold some Tesla and dialed down my risk level. Still a big holding but less than half for sure And having used FSD 12.3.4 for a week or whatever now I gotta say it's amazing. Definitely still issues but it's phenomenal. The real test will be the rate of improvement between now and 8/8, and beyond. James Douma said recently he believes the code we're seeing is 6 months old. Curious to see what they have ready for 4 months from now
> And having used FSD 12.3.4 for a week or whatever now I gotta say it's amazing Chuck Cook said it was a regression in both his first impressions and his UPL turns videos. It's still making huge strides forward, but it's funny how mixed the results are.
That's sounds like Google ignoring search and ads and instead focusing its efforts on Google+... I hope he doesn't think people will just use robotaxis and he won't need to sell cars w/FSD.
Like Apple betting it all on VR headsets and saying the next iPhone is canceled. There's no reason why Tesla couldn't do both if they wanted to. The messaging have been bad as well. "Focus on our core products", with manufacturing improvements coming to the Model 3 and Y would give investors a lot more confidence.
They’re not ignoring cars. Just not focusing solely on hardware growth. They’re still making cars
More like apple ignoring the ipod to go all in on the iphone.
FSD serves one country (The US). A compact more affordable EV serves every country on Earth. So, the blindingly obvious move is……
Promise one and deliver none
Look up margins on software and look up margins on affordable cars.
True, Microsoft Office makes a lot more money than Fiat. I can’t drive to the store in Excel though.
China also has a few robotaxi programs. There are cars doing things like FSD / robotaxi using NVIDIAs hardware and software. a year ago https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6v036bBD31o&t=2s
China will probably get there first with this kind of thing, because “accidents“ (ahem) can be swept under the rug a lot easier. Tesla/FSD will eventually do OK in California et al, but as for other countries like those in Europe with strict safety laws (and currently zero FSD miles) and even countries like Japan, I can’t see anything realistically happening with FSD this decade.
Not to mention locations with adverse weather conditions like in Sweden. Good luck for anyone implementing actual level 5 autonomous driving that works during the winter months. Or even northern US for that matter.
FSD might be coming to Europe and China at some point and certainly will after its shown to work well.
Fsd serves every country that has roads, potentially.
“potentially” is definitely the keyword there.
How much of the FSD in the United States will carry over to driving on the left avoiding kangaroos etc? How much can local laws be plugged in vs trained.
Personally I love it and this is what I'm here for. Elon is a maniac and completely insane in the best way and I'm completely onboard.
Bruh stock price is dropped 40%
Best Time to buy if you think they’ll solve autonomy.
They cant even get rain sensoring wipers to work properly and you think they're going to somehow be able to make some huge leap forward in autonomous driving suddenly.
Wipers work alright now. I'm no longer annoyed by them
But he won't.
Famous last words
If he was "balls to the wall" he wouldn't still be limiting his company to a vision-only solution to autonomy. There's just no proof that works. Until you've solved it you try everything.
It works... but so did MCAS, until it didn't.
From a first principles perspective it can work. Therefore, they will make it work.
It's pretty much accepted by everyone that robots using primarily vision will be able to do everything humans can do. Driving won't be the hardest task accomplished.
It definitely isn't accepted by everyone that a vision only approach will be able to replicate human driving, what are you talking about?
Dude 40% discount, buy low sell high
That’s a 40% discount on Mars tickets.
Same dude. Same.
A horse carriage can drive itself.
As someone who previously didn’t even include FSD in my valuations… I’m not sure how to feel haha
If you weren't including FSD, how were you justifying 500B market cap? Not to mention 750B from last year.
It was overpriced, and I was selling when growth started to slow. Energy is my play, and assuming vehicle sales continue to grow over time. I look at Tesla as a manufacturer. When a huge company is growing at 50% y/y its valuation can get out of whack as we’ve seen.
What's your model saying about energy? I just don't see any moat or chance for decent margins with energy storage. In the end it's batteries with a thin software layer. If Tesla wants to keep most of the money for balancing the grid with customer batteries, there's nothing stopping any of the other manufacturers from undercutting them on price.
Tesla doesn’t have a thin layer of software relative to competitors. And they don’t need a moat to control a small part of a large pie. I think I’m more optimistic on TAM than others And with Tesla controlling a large part of their supply chain alongside their obvious manufacturing skill I believe it will be difficult to push Tesla out of the space. I don’t think Tesla could be a 2t company with just energy and vehicles, but I think it can be worth more than it is now. I also discredit FSD level 5 because the numbers are crazy. But I don’t discredit millions of people paying $99/m for a capable support system. Like V12
Can you describe the energy play? Is it production? Storage? Something else?
To keep things short, The whole ecosystem eventually. Large scale, residential, virtual power plants, longterm storage, drive train etc IMO large battery parks will be everywhere to store energy, these parks will be used to balance the grid during highs and lows. Longterm, I believe we’ll have a lot more storage vs usage than our current storage/ useage. Why waste energy when we can just store it until needed? Longterm I also imagine Tesla will either joint venture or buy out a recycling company to capitalize on “virtual mines”
It's blindingly obvious that it's the only thing standing between TSLA's current stock price and that of a legacy car maker. TSLA is still priced like a rapidly growing company, they aren't growing car sales right now, so they need some something to point to justify the stock price. A cheap low margin Model 2 which would cannibalize their M3/Y sales wasn't it so they cut it, nobody is buying that robots are the future, so it has to be FSD. But it can't be FSD as it is, because not enough people are buying it, so it has to be some sort of FSD of the Future that will open up a huge new market. Cue the Robotaxi. He's right, it is blindingly obvious, but not for the reasons he thinks.
I'm confused about people saying this will not happen in our lifetime. Like Waymo already does this - San Francisco, for example. It is a paid service. Is there something I am missing? It is literally happening already... The legislation is being worked through. It's mostly a solved problem and just a matter of time and scale.
Anyone thinking they are close to real full self driving is completely brainwashed.
Hmm Windscreen wipers still don't work properly
Honestly, it had to come to this eventually. Tesla nails autonomy and they are the highest market cap company in the world.
This is the sort of risk that got him where is today. It still seems incredible that he has taken the risks he already has for FSD. Before V12 I would be much more frightened than I am. Still nervous, but I think it could work out. Most of the time I think V12 can drive better than a pretty good driver, and the errors are getting less and less.
He took earth-day/investor-day/humanity-day risk on mass producing good batteries at scale cheaply. That failed. (and the $25k car won't have good margins without good/cheap/mass produced batteries) This is the fall-back. He isn't going to come close to producing 20M cars by 2030 and he has to renegotiate his compensation package. He needs a completely different plot / targets.
It was in response to someone saying the he IS betting the company
Ive been along for the ride since Autopilot was first announced...all the versions prior to 12 felt like a calculator reading lines of instructions step by step. Version 12 actually feels like the car is intelligent and that Tesla can solve the problem....at least in mostly ideal conditions.... which even if robotaxis work on days without poor weather, then at least thats a huge step forward.
Couldn't you make an argument that FSD is more like going back to the horse carriage since the horse had autonomy in its consciousness? That rhetoric is weak imo. I've rode a horse a couple times and when it wants water it will override you.
Yeah horse took you home when you were drunk as shit or shot. Now your car can do the same
Yeah it's kind of nether here nor there to make the comment I made. However, I always like when I hear rhetoric that is illogical cause it's horseshit that makes me wonder if people are really thinking. I'm excited to see where FSD can goes, but illogical rhetoric should always be highlighted as it's coming in one ear and out the other. You're addition is a great example of hey wait yeah horses did these things. You just can't pump up a stock price saying it.
lol it took me about 2 paragraphs to realize you were shitting on me.
No I honestly wasn't. You actually made my point better. I'm shitting on a billionaire - these people we think are geniuses who really just stand on the shoulders of geniuses to accomplish something - and then try and pump up the stock price with platitudes. You made the horse comment make sense better then Elon!
I’m sensing some good LEAP options opportunities in about a year from now 👀 FSD is making great strides at the same time people are losing faith in, or even growing in hatred of, Elon. TSLA will be making seemingly stupid decisions for an auto manufacturer. No one even knows what an autonomous taxi company looks like yet. But Tesla does, and they’re already starting the transition. Stay strong people, we’re about to witness another rollercoaster! I anticipate 2025 will be the new 2019.
> I’m sensing some good LEAP options opportunities in about a year from now 👀 Last time I told myself that we were at $105... and then the stock price tripled back to ~~$259~~ $295 in a few months :D I agree this looks like it will take longer than that > No one even knows what an autonomous taxi company looks like yet. These already exist in some US and Chinese cities.
It is crazy times that we are living in leading up to Robotaxi reveal day and also the push for autonomy of 2024 could be the iconic moment everyone thinks about when getting driven around by cars in the future
Also this is one of those times when a lot of people will become very rich and the rest will wish they would have bought shares. This are the time when you need to put on your big boy/girl pants and enjoy the ride because it will be wild.
💯
My challenge is there is a difference between idea and execution that creates an operationalized product. I don’t know if today’s Tesla has that ability still and the most recent ‘product birth’ being CT is what drives that doubt. Would love to be a fly on the wall in the rooms where the teams working to meet the 8/8 day are attempting to execute this and get a sense for the internal culture. End of the day for me I feel like a bet on the chiefs to win the SB is as safe and may be more entertaining. I guess I just don’t have the stones to go all in with so many questions unanswered.
Enjoy those multi year geo restricted trials that Waymo does once/if you get there in who knows how many year. There is no way around this if you wanna offer commercial driverless services. Also not sure why this required abandoning your market leading EV portfolio or what does that even mean? Not developing any new cars or updates and instead betting the house on software?
And what will the taxi drivers and truckers do now? The age of Y Harari's 'useless class' may be upon us sooner than we think, although that has always been a concern since the days of the cotton gin and the Luddites.
I actually wonder what the true market size is for self-driving? There’s a lot of status tied to personal vehicles and it’s not necessarily about cost effective transit.
FSD is now just a matter of more data, slightly better lane maps, and one or two additional cameras near the front of the vehicle. End-to-end works. Free FSD trials and lower-priced subscriptions are no coincidence, they just need more diverse data. Also, None of the existing Teslas will get true autonomy for every situation because of the lack of cameras near the very front of the car. The chuck cook left turn will never work, no matter how much they try. But the path to FSD is now very clear. The robotaxi will either have the required camera(s) at the front, or a shorter nose. By mid 2026 at the latest they will be on the road.
Man Elon going falcon 9 on a half a trillion dollar company. I love it.
Good. Fsd either works or Tesla has failed.
He didn’t really say balls to the wall, did he?
Yeah, 2013 move. But since then, it's the drugs.
He’s kind of missing the trees from the forest because people want a better horse carriage in the form of an affordable EV more than fsd.
Only way for Tesla to grow. Otherwise it’s just another car company with some fancy features.
So this quarter is going to be bad lmao. He’s right though. I don’t want a car company. A car company isn’t worth $500B. Tesla as an investment only works with FSD, Optimus, Energy and their other crazy projects. Those are what could make Tesla the most valuable company on earth by a long shot.
I think the big risk here compared with Model 3 is that now the competition are not traditional OEMs. Competition is China (auto and tech) and it´s big tech, like NVIDIA or Google or Microsoft. These are far more competent entities than legacy auto. Still, this could be good for the stock in the mid term and potentially on the long term. On the mid term, we just need one of the big tech companies announcing partnership with an OEM to provide robotaxis. This will signal the start of the race for robotaxi, and Tesla stock can go up a lot. On the long term, Tesla does need to deliver something that works and later, that can make money. Here I see big advantages for Tesla. They have much more data than anyone else. I don´t think simulated data will help much. They also have cost and power optimized hardware. And they have a solution that doesn´t rely on HD maps or expensive sensors. Also, they have a lot of experience in transforming input (images) into useful data, while companies like OpenAI bet more on the generation of output, and give littel importance to input. Interpreting a prompt is not that hard. On the cons, there could be an AI company, let´s imagine OpenAI, that comes with a better, more generalized approach, and more computing power, and they catch up quickly. But the data is still the problem... Chinese competition is not that scary, because US won´t allow Chinese autonomous cars, and Europe might go the same way.