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Discussion (125 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews
Tesla's product line is narrow and aging rapidly.
They want to be valued as a ~~scifi~~ tech company.
Which is fair, given that the market (and by extension we) chose to brutally punish boring car companies that make reliable high volume cars.
I'm arguing that the fair value of boring companies making reliable things should be much higher. We don't do that, you have to promise hot air based growth to prevent your valuation from crashing.
The behavior we incentivize is the one we'll get.
The total market cap of all the Chinese car companies combined is about 300B.
Tesla alone is worth ~5x that, because the market rewards this behavior of chasing new things.
If Tesla suddenly pivoted to 'caring about cars' and tried their best to produce low cost reliable EVs, the market is going to punish them by valuing them at less than 300B. That is, if they succeed at that. If they fail, which would be more plausible, they go bankrupt.
Why would they voluntarily do that?
We could do that by changing public opinion or regulating what public companies must do/report, but that seems somewhat unlikely. It's so much easier to claim that autonomous driving will be solved in six months :)
Why so long? Six months? According to God-King Trump who apparently knows everything better than anyone, we're already well past "AI" into Super-Intelligence. Just ask the Machine-God to bestow autonomous driving upon us and we're good to go, yeah? Time to bring on those flying cars in every garage we was all promised decades ago!
[1] https://www.autotrader.co.uk/cars/used/citroen/grand-c4-pica...
Tesla may be getting belted from pillar to post elsewhere in the world by the Chinese but they a) still have a near-monopoly in EVs in the US, and b) have a cost-competitive EV manufacturing operation in China from which they can supply other parts of the world.
That still doesn't help their image problem, which is still very real for many left-leaning affluent consumers around the world, but that's less of a problem for commercial vehicles.
But having an electric car doesn't make salt and potholes magically disappear, unfortunately.
Is that even possible in modern EVs? Without breaking critical functions like maps, etc.
More than a few times my mechanic has found something pending failure (like a leak) during regularly scheduled ICE maintenance and alerted me to keep an eye on it.
Are you being sarcastic, perhaps?
From direct experience.
Also worth noting that the fuel on a second hand petrol car cost less than the depreciation on the EV for me.
But yes, if you don't drive much at all, an EV might be more expensive for now. Assuming stable fossil fuels prices.
Even if it prevents like ten deaths, the LiDAR will have paid for itself.
The statistical value of a human life (for US government purposes) is between 7 to 14 million USD depending on department etc. (Unless there's anything to do with nuclear, then it's pretty much infinity.)
I'm not quite sure how much LiDAR would cost extra?
Of course, in addition to lives saved, you have other benefits. Eg you can conceivably drive more aggressively and faster, when you have more scanners, because you can exploit more situations where a lesser system has to act conservative when it can't be quite sure.
And if Musk cared at all about deaths, he would not have taken a chainsaw to USAID.
Tesla should be building something like the Slate pickup. Or like BYD's midrange models. Things that would actually sell.
One of the lessons of the electric car industry is that when gas car companies build electric vehicles, the vehicles suck. They're usually adapted versions of gas cars, which means too much structure and cost in the wrong places. This usually comes out as a $5000 price penalty for the electric model. Tesla was well placed to avoid that.
But they blew it.
If anything makes it more expensive it's the habit of certain manufacturers to nickel and dime buyers over every option.
- chinese companies are now exporting with 25% discount for similar quality - premium brands occupy the $80'000+ car segment with better comfort and quality - Tesla sells as many as Renault, a local European player, except the later built a strong alliance network to get scale economics.
I won't even mention the failure of the Cybertruck, which cannot even be exported to Europe due to its dangerous design.
In short: they'd rather merge now with a traditional car company while they have a high valuation, much like US West did with QWest at the end of the Internet bubble. Or else...
Seeing it happen now too with college jobs is funny, because all those same people making fun of your community for complaining about lack of jobs after the factory they built their city around leaves, now are complainjng abiut the same thing. H1B yourself. Love those Indians. Anyway, everyone loses no class solidarity, the poors fighting amongst themselves like animals.
Really good listen:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/rivian-rj-scaringe/id1...
Also, Musk getting into politics and alienating most of its consumer base, of course.
The Cybertruck, or what it should have been, was never meant to be an entry-level truck like the Slate, and the market for trucks clearly shows people are wanting to spent money on big trucks.
In any case, just because the legacy incumbents might also be incompetent, doesn't excuse Tesla.
But Optimus is a fair play. Don't grub for scraps in an efficient competitive market. Make a new market, go big or go home.
At some point, the reality of being in a highly competitive market must set in and valuations need to come down to Earth.
Henry Ford was the original Elon Musk. He was obsessed with efficiency, minimalism, and just a smidge of Nazism. They only offered the Model T in one color. Tesla doesn't paint the damn Cybertruck at all. A Ford Motors that goes back to its roots (without all the weird white supremacist stuff), would be a strong auto maker indeed.
"Tesla lines up $30 billion credit lines as capex, AI push accelerate"
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/tesla-...
Electrek's full time job is to dunk on anything Elon Musk touches.
Valuation +420%. Easily.
Is it? Regardless of how revolutionary a company was, they don't get a free pass on criticism.
I had a positive sentiment towards Tesla when the mission was basically "make EVs sexy" and "promote clean electricity." Although they didn't have a perfect record (QC, proprietary charging, RtR), at least they were disrupting a stagnant industry, with a noble enough goal.
Now when I think of Tesla, I think of their deployment of "Full Self Driving (Beta) [keep your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road]", "Robotaxi (with human driver)," "Humanoid robot (why?)," and of course the glorious leader who bought Twitter so he could "protect free speech" by banning people he disagrees with.
Tesla itself made a turn for the worse over the years and there are a lot of things to criticize honestly
If you hold the same opinion forever, even when things obviously changed, you are just a fanatic.
I was a huge fan of Google when "Don't be evil" was still their motto. That opinion changed the moment that motto went the way of the dinosaur.