Isn't Tesla trying to be SpaceX's vertically integrated robotics division? My gut feeling says they are trying to move out of the EV business as crazy as that may seem to us normals.
matthewdgreen 22 minutes ago [-]
Being in the EV business means having to accept predictable revenues that then tie to more predictable stock prices. Being in the business of "some future technology" doesn't.
martythemaniak 24 minutes ago [-]
Not crazy at all. Tesla gave up being a car company a few years ago, but there's lot of inertia and the 3 and Y are still competitive products in the marketplace.
slowin 19 minutes ago [-]
Crazy that they have a $1.4T market cap while having given up their entire business (which was never worth a fraction of that anyway).
buran77 15 minutes ago [-]
Their charging network and carbon credits revenue were probably the more valuable parts of the company. Tesla's current promise and foundation for that valuation is that they'll deliver fully autonomous driving.
But Musk has enough avenues to spin things left and right and bury any losses in the process his DOGE assault helped a lot bury some things already) so he'll do that. He's a showman and he'll manage to steal the show for as long as it takes.
slowin 20 minutes ago [-]
It’s especially crazy since they sell cars and do not sell robots. Both of Musk’s public companies are little more than financial fraud. That the SEC allows any of this gives me zero confidence in the entire market.
mschuster91 12 minutes ago [-]
> That the SEC allows any of this gives me zero confidence in the entire market.
It will be truly nasty for the next President. All of this shit is going to blow up hard, even worse than 2007 was. With any luck, it will blow up during Trump's final months, but in the truly worst case it will collapse during the early time of whoever the next President is, which means no matter who gets the job will get smoked in the 2030 midterms - in turn ending up like Obama who didn't have a majority of his own for six years (or, in the even worse case, end up like Biden who didn't survive the reelection against someone as unlikeable as Trump).
parineum 6 minutes ago [-]
Obama didn't do much with his two years of majority anyway.
Plus, president's don't usually have more than two years of majority.
kraken_cult 10 minutes ago [-]
The cynic in me would say, "all according to plan", it will be right before the new house and senate are going to roll out universal healthcare or something equally good for the average person. Better to get head of it before that happens.
enaaem 8 minutes ago [-]
Hyundai has been making robots for decades. Imagine the hype if Tesla did half the things Hyundai is doing.
alpha_squared 23 minutes ago [-]
Pretending Tesla isn't a car company and SpaceX isn't a satellite services company (Internet, maybe mobile) is wild stuff. The only real profits are from those traditional industries. All the sci-fi hype is for investors and fanatics.
kevin_thibedeau 18 minutes ago [-]
Those are just side projects. SpaceX is now an AI company. All their phony future revenue projections are dependent on magic numbers cooked up by a drug addict who convinces people to believe his stream of lies.
jordanb 20 minutes ago [-]
Value the company by the sizzle not the steak. And before it fails completely fold it into the next grift. Sounds far fetched but it's been working for Elon for years.
malfist 18 minutes ago [-]
Anyone with half a brain can see him stacking his house of cards higher and higher, but yet the market and investors love him.
You can't tell me there's a rational reason there's a common headline of Tesla missing forecast and guidance but still going up after earning report
aNoob7000 14 minutes ago [-]
The problem I see is with focus. Elon/Tesla seems to go after the next big thing every couple of years without a real plan.
I'm surprised that the markets have given Elon the amount of slack he's gotten. Once you merge Tesla into SpaceX, what's the plan? Tesla can't seem to roll out new vehicles with different body styling. Is robotics or AI the next big thing? What will happen to their car business? Will it just be CyberCabs? Will they become a mobile phone carrier?
The list of questions goes on and on. All this feels like a YC company looking for a new line of business because they just figured out their current line of business isn't all that great.
__MatrixMan__ 2 minutes ago [-]
Musk's companies are good at entering a stagnated industry and proving that it can work better if radically changed. But once the new concept is proved, they seem kinda spent, a pivot makes sense to me.
It'll be interesting to see if they can do well in places where there aren't a bunch of stagnant incumbents to upset. Like I'm sure Musk would love to edgelord his way through a conversation where he offends a bunch of people by implying they have been doing asteroid mining all wrong, but there's just nobody doing that.
notatoad 23 minutes ago [-]
is this something that's actually happening, or just something elon told investors at his optimus event with the obviously fake robots a couple years ago?
mschuster91 17 minutes ago [-]
> My gut feeling says they are trying to move out of the EV business as crazy as that may seem to us normals.
It's not that crazy. The last new release of a truly mainstream car was the Model 3 a decade ago. Anything ever since has been facelifts and the ill-fated Cybercuck.
The major problem Tesla faces is that on the one side their brand image is in the gutters and has been for years and on the other side, "established" car companies finally have brought competitive cars to the market at relevant scale. They'll need to invest a lot of money to develop a new model from scratch with a high chance of not making back the money.
thinkingtoilet 23 minutes ago [-]
It's not crazy at all. Elon, in all his genius, built up an EV company and then alienated the core demographic for his product. They tried to salvage it with a wildly over-priced, virtue-signaling "truck" and that didn't work. There are literally millions and millions of Americans who would have other wise loved to buy a Tesla but will never buy one because of Elon. They have to pivot.
martincsweiss 14 minutes ago [-]
There's too many confounders to say that JB Straubel is the cause.
Examples: Covid controversies around musk in 2020, Twitter acquisition in 2022, Musk becoming the world richest person in 2021
0xy 21 minutes ago [-]
Cybercab seems to have had a very promising start, metrics are good. This seems far more of a political hate piece than one based on any data.
Levitating 19 minutes ago [-]
Isn't it completely overshadowed by Waymo? From what I've heard Waymo is more profitable and has substantially fewer accidents due to better technology.
mbajkowski 3 minutes ago [-]
Tesla has had a massive surge in cybercabs in Austin over the last few weeks. I would venture to say they have surpassed the number of Waymos over here. Don't have any numbers to back this up though. As for being profitable, it seems the cost of a cybercab should be much less than a Waymo.
DoesntMatter22 8 minutes ago [-]
Waymo isn't profitable at all. It's a massive money loser. And in some cities Tesla is nearly at parity
ftchd 11 minutes ago [-]
There always gonna be both Pepsi and Cola.
grandpajoey 3 minutes ago [-]
Except I can go to the store and buy a Coke and a Pepsi. Musk’s vaporware doesn’t actually exist in the market.
strulovich 12 minutes ago [-]
If a few things work out for Tesla they can do overshadow Waymo very quickly.
Waymo’s entire fleet is estimated at about 6000 cars.
Tesla produces this many cars in a little over a day.
The cybercab is also likely to end up costing 1/10th of a Waymo car
It’s not that Tesla is winning here. But the economics of their solution can totally tilt the entire market in the future.
ben_w 2 minutes ago [-]
> If a few things work out for Tesla they can do overshadow Waymo very quickly.
If.
I've been reading the same thing each year since basically the first version of Tesla's car AI.
grandpajoey 1 minutes ago [-]
The Cybercab has not had a promising start. Years behind schedule, available nowhere and Musk has negative brand value. Another DOA Tesla scam.
jazzypants 14 minutes ago [-]
There are millions of Americans like me who will never step foot in one because of their association with Elon Musk.
That's an insane negative attribute that Waymo doesn't have to worry about. I hate the Alphabet guys too, but not to the same extent of completely boycotting all their products (yet).
parineum 37 seconds ago [-]
> There are millions of Americans like me who will never step foot in one because of their association with Elon Musk.
You guys have to realize at some point that you're not a significant part of the market. There are a lot of people who don't particularly like musk but the amount that would never use a cybercab isn't a significant part of a 300m person market.
underseacables 17 minutes ago [-]
It was very strange, in the beginning people celebrated Tesla, they raved about it, the sales were great, but then as soon as the politics got involved, suddenly it's all turned negative.
MrBuddyCasino 11 minutes ago [-]
Almost as if journalists were paid partisan hacks.
lanstin 6 minutes ago [-]
The early Tesla fans are politically engaged woke people. Having to settle for new Leaf now but in some ways it’s nicer than Model 3. And more friendly to my kids networks of ethnically diverse trans and queer friends and partners. And less scary for the many immigrant communities in my neighborhood.
xqcgrek2 22 minutes ago [-]
Tesla is one china EV tariff away from bankruptcy
sowhat1 9 minutes ago [-]
Exceptional success is both timing and having an exceptional team. But yea, let's keep attributing it to great man theory, because that's more digestible and people like to mythologize a single person.
ckdarby 17 minutes ago [-]
Is this a paid piece behind the scenes by JB Straubel? It reads exactly as someone who was paid or got exclusive access to write something to over highlight someone.
troupo 26 minutes ago [-]
Elon had an insane talent of finding the right people with wild moonshot ideas to run his companies while he was getting the credit and the limelight.
Then he got older, got into politics and fully bought into the marketing about himself. He thinks he's a genius and that everything he touches turns to gold.
Well... Turns out stuff works as long as he is out of the loop and doesn't make any direct decisions.
swiftcoder 13 minutes ago [-]
> Turns out stuff works as long as he is out of the loop and doesn't make any direct decisions
This is not unique to Musk - many tech CEOs learn this the hard way when they start meddling in the day-to-day. Bezos built an empire, but the projects he took personal control of (like FirePhone) tended to be unmitigated disasters.
MrBuddyCasino 10 minutes ago [-]
He personally co-designed S3.
23 minutes ago [-]
tropolowikyu 19 minutes ago [-]
[flagged]
jdross 22 minutes ago [-]
FSD that actually works and the massively popular in live markets robotaxi service are the obvious answer to “big-deal things that came after this CTO left”
$2B cybertruck failure barely registers vs how impactful FSD has been on model Y / 3 sales. Tesla is supply constrained again, with multi-month waits for the model Y L edition
malfist 14 minutes ago [-]
So massively popular Tesla doesn't disclose how many rides it does?
myvoiceismypass 8 minutes ago [-]
Your massively popular robotaxi is years behind Waymo. Years.
Rendered at 16:42:43 GMT+0000 (Coordinated Universal Time) with Vercel.
But Musk has enough avenues to spin things left and right and bury any losses in the process his DOGE assault helped a lot bury some things already) so he'll do that. He's a showman and he'll manage to steal the show for as long as it takes.
It will be truly nasty for the next President. All of this shit is going to blow up hard, even worse than 2007 was. With any luck, it will blow up during Trump's final months, but in the truly worst case it will collapse during the early time of whoever the next President is, which means no matter who gets the job will get smoked in the 2030 midterms - in turn ending up like Obama who didn't have a majority of his own for six years (or, in the even worse case, end up like Biden who didn't survive the reelection against someone as unlikeable as Trump).
Plus, president's don't usually have more than two years of majority.
You can't tell me there's a rational reason there's a common headline of Tesla missing forecast and guidance but still going up after earning report
I'm surprised that the markets have given Elon the amount of slack he's gotten. Once you merge Tesla into SpaceX, what's the plan? Tesla can't seem to roll out new vehicles with different body styling. Is robotics or AI the next big thing? What will happen to their car business? Will it just be CyberCabs? Will they become a mobile phone carrier?
The list of questions goes on and on. All this feels like a YC company looking for a new line of business because they just figured out their current line of business isn't all that great.
It'll be interesting to see if they can do well in places where there aren't a bunch of stagnant incumbents to upset. Like I'm sure Musk would love to edgelord his way through a conversation where he offends a bunch of people by implying they have been doing asteroid mining all wrong, but there's just nobody doing that.
It's not that crazy. The last new release of a truly mainstream car was the Model 3 a decade ago. Anything ever since has been facelifts and the ill-fated Cybercuck.
The major problem Tesla faces is that on the one side their brand image is in the gutters and has been for years and on the other side, "established" car companies finally have brought competitive cars to the market at relevant scale. They'll need to invest a lot of money to develop a new model from scratch with a high chance of not making back the money.
Examples: Covid controversies around musk in 2020, Twitter acquisition in 2022, Musk becoming the world richest person in 2021
Waymo’s entire fleet is estimated at about 6000 cars. Tesla produces this many cars in a little over a day.
The cybercab is also likely to end up costing 1/10th of a Waymo car
It’s not that Tesla is winning here. But the economics of their solution can totally tilt the entire market in the future.
If.
I've been reading the same thing each year since basically the first version of Tesla's car AI.
That's an insane negative attribute that Waymo doesn't have to worry about. I hate the Alphabet guys too, but not to the same extent of completely boycotting all their products (yet).
You guys have to realize at some point that you're not a significant part of the market. There are a lot of people who don't particularly like musk but the amount that would never use a cybercab isn't a significant part of a 300m person market.
Then he got older, got into politics and fully bought into the marketing about himself. He thinks he's a genius and that everything he touches turns to gold.
Well... Turns out stuff works as long as he is out of the loop and doesn't make any direct decisions.
This is not unique to Musk - many tech CEOs learn this the hard way when they start meddling in the day-to-day. Bezos built an empire, but the projects he took personal control of (like FirePhone) tended to be unmitigated disasters.
$2B cybertruck failure barely registers vs how impactful FSD has been on model Y / 3 sales. Tesla is supply constrained again, with multi-month waits for the model Y L edition