Tesla has been testing a robotaxi service in the Bay Area for most of the year
theverge.com
theverge.com
If you believe any of Musk's bullshit, do yourself a favor and listen to past investor calls from Tesla. And then check how these statements and predictions turn out in reality.
"1000 times better than human driving by the second quarter of 2025". We're yet to see any reliable number from Tesla about those claims. Every single new version of FSD is "mind blowing" and looks like they "solved autonomy", for the past 4 years. And yet, they did unveil a concept Robotaxi in a ... Hollywood studio. Autonomy was solved in Hollywood studios and Theme parks 30 years ago.
Tesla is not a bad company. As an EV maker, it's as good as it gets (although it's still bad as a business). But if it was just that, it would be valued at 10% of what it is today, at best.
But it's promoted by Musk, and priced by the market, as a revolutionnary one. And if you look at the history of it, you see it's all smoke and mirrors. In the process Musk cashed out > 40 billion USD.
As for the cars quality, you're absolutely right.
* I also believe Tesla is pretty much cooking their books to show profits.
Tesla has more range per dollar than almost any others. Many have antiquated, unusable infotainment systems designed for legacy cars. Some get marked up by $10,000 or more by dealers. None have the simplicity of charging.
Tesla is still selling most of the EVs on the road. Slowdowns attributed to Musk's shit behavior are never compared with their peers, who are having even worse slowdowns. Having driven nearly all of them, I understand why.
They don't - they inflate their estimated mileage across the board. Lucid runs circles around them dollar for dollar.
>Many have antiquated, unusable infotainment systems designed for legacy cars.
They pretty much all have carplay and android auto which runs circles around Tesla's antiquated interface. It was revolutionary a decade ago, it now looks like a tired android skin. Have you tried youtube music? You can't even properly like or dislike a song, much less properly navigate playlists.
>Some get marked up by $10,000 or more by dealers.
This literally isn't a thing. I don't know of ANY EV that you can't get at cost if you spend even 30 seconds looking. The dealers marking up cars ridiculous amounts during COVID hasn't been a normal thing for quite some time.
>None have the simplicity of charging.
Huh? You can drive a Ford Mach-E up to a Tesla charger, attach your adapter, plug it in, and it starts charging. The very first time you ever charge a given car, you do need to start it from the app to tie a tesla account to the car itself, after that it's plug and charge.
>Tesla is still selling most of the EVs on the road. Slowdowns attributed to Musk's shit behavior are never compared with their peers, who are having even worse slowdowns. Having driven nearly all of them, I understand why.
Having driven nearly all of them, I think I'm questioning if you have. Literally every other car I have driven has a nicer interior, a better technology system, and basic functionality that actually works like: auto wipers, cruise control that doesn't phantom brake for no reason, things you just take for granted in any modern car that Tesla decided wasn't worth spending a couple dollars per car to have work reliably.
Tesla is absolutely compared to peers, and no their peers aren't having "even worse slowdowns".
https://electrek.co/2024/10/22/gm-outpaces-us-rivals-q3-fewe...
I think the Hyundai is getting close and the Mercedes lineup is nice but a little $$$. Tesla still is a nice sweet spot.
When I made a service appointment through the app I got a message that it would cost me ($180 I think?) to have it inspected to determine where the noise was coming from.
I got FSD for $2k back then and while I only had the car for 3 years and drove mostly the 101, I found it helpful in traffic jams. However I didn’t trust it much at higher speeds because it would phantom brake or swerve randomly especially around bridges or when I was in lanes that intersected. Really scary!
I got a Mazda CX-30 after selling the Tesla and it had no interior rattles and felt more premium even though it was $26k. The steering wheel felt more like a sports car than the P3D.
Just my opinion.. I do miss the crazy acceleration. I don’t miss the rattles and poor interior quality.
Not sure if I’ll get another EV until Mazda or Honda make a nice reliable car. I’m a little scared to buy any car from companies that are burning money like crazy lol. I don’t mind moving fast and breaking things on the browser, but not on the road!!
But you aren't wrong, Kia has nailed it where it matters.. their latest are extremely popular, there are tons in the Bay Area. Yuck, but it's true*. May be worth a shot if you're in the unfortunate position of needing new transportation.
* I have no vested interest in any car company, I drive very few miles per year and my cars are old AF. I have a lot of friends, though. Only want the best for you, Internet friend. Cheers.
P.s. Combustion Kia's suck ass, trash trying to move upmarket, lol. Hello humanity.
I’ve also heard Kias EVs are great cars.
And is overall better at charging (270kw max).
Also BMW has seen strong EV growth: https://www.press.bmwgroup.com/global/article/detail/T044372...
I am in admirer, but my entire collection of multiple automobiles is worth less than 25 grand. Yet they're actually pretty nice and cool, one is comfortable.
Please tell us which model it is as this could shake up the industry.
The Macan does share a similar design to the Audi Q5, but is also heavily modified for performance over the Q5, and it isn't similar to any of VWs models. That also seems like hardly an insult as the Q5 is also a high end SUV with great performance and handling.
Both of the Porsche SUVs I mentioned are sold with all 3 drivetrains BTW: electric, plug in hybrid, and pure EV.
As a longtime Porsche fan that was exactly my first thought also when Porsche started making SUVs, but I couldn't have been more wrong. They're not just very much in the spirit of Porsches history- I find the SUVs to be more impressive and interesting than any of their sports cars.
The Porsche SUVs are really unique and impressive performance vehicles in their own right, each in different ways- especially the Cayenne. The Cayenne is indeed very similar to a VW Touareg, but the Touareg itself is nothing like other VWs and started out as a crazy expensive Piech era offroad supercar with V12 and V10 engines that is also the basis for the modern Bentley and Lamborghini SUV supercars. Look at YouTube videos you will see these same vehicles posting sports car worthy lap times on a track, as well as easily doing some of the most technical offroad trails. To me it's a mind blowing feat of engineering to make a single vehicle that can handle such opposed things, and do them both extremely well.
You can also find a lot of nice older Porsches for much less than 25 grand- 10 grand will get you a nearly perfect condition low mileage first gen Boxster or Cayenne these days.
On paper Tesla dominates in range and performance specs, but they seem to be lying, while the older brands are under-estimating, as real world range and track lap time specs don't reflect the supposed higher specs of Teslas cars. Tesla seems to be a fundamentally dishonest company, whose claimed technical advantages are all lies/hype.
For example, Mercedes advertises their EQS at 350 miles range, but car magazine tests have gotten 400-500 miles on them[1]. Tesla claims 405 miles range on the Model S long range, but car magazines only get ~320.
[1] https://www.autoguide.com/manufacturer/mercedes-benz/2022-me...
> actual software controlling the cars hardware, like the traction control and stability systems, which work much better on those cars, especially VW/Audi/Porsche
im gonna need a source on that lol how do you even quantify that
It isn't the fastest accelerating. It doesn't charge the fastest. It doesn't have the longest range. It isn't the cheapest.
But the balance of all four of those still manages to be better than basically anything else out there, though the Ioniq 6 is extremely close.
Either way I suspect it now doesn't really matter because this is becoming the "Trump-mobile" which makes it a non starter for a lot of politically conscious peoples.
His companies make some great stuff, but he also overhypes everything they do. Both things can be true.
In Tesla’s case, it might be more of a problem because they sell to consumers: https://electrek.co/2024/10/15/tesla-needs-to-come-clean-abo...
But besides that, it only really affects investor outlook.
this reminds me of a common political tactic. "Mr. SoandSo couldn't be lying, look at his donation records and philanthropy! Look at the jobs he produced! The profit he has generated!"
Well, the matter-of-fact is that there is no need to reconcile the two states. He's a highly effective individual who has had great success in certain fields -- he's also a huckster con-man that over-promises and under-sells.
One could argue that his effectiveness on one sided is aided by his willing to take ethical shortcuts with his portrayed opinions and 'honesty' on the other side.
There are no pure shades of color in the human psyche.
I think fans of his would just call it '4D chess' and refer to his genius. Whatever floats your boat.
Taking your idea into straight non-sense : how many days does this space mission add to our expectation on FSD delivery? Are there grounds for a class-action lawsuit against Boeing originating from Tesla owners that are unhappy with the additional stress to the time-line? Sounds ridiculous from the other side...
Easy - they aren't "his spaceships". He funded a bunch of other really smart people doing incredible things with rockets. That doesn't really exonerate him from continually spewing bullshit. If you want to go with Space-X bullshit - in 2016 he said there would be manned missions to Mars in 2024. He did it again in 2017, and multiple times after that. If there's one thing you can be sure of, whatever date Elon tells you something is going to happen, you should promptly throw into the trash where it belongs and try to find someone else at the company in question that isn't a pathological liar to give you a realistic timeline.
p.s) For those misinformed about state of Neuralink. Currently in beta with quadriplegic patients.
A complete grifter.
Whenever you don't know which way to go, you consult someone more senior. Those people do the same with their seniors. And so on.
There are many stories from people who have worked with Elon scattered across books and interviews. He makes wild decisions, tells people to do it, and somehow the sum of these wild ideas works out.
Remember, the idea of landing a reusable rocket was abandoned long ago by many nations because it was deemed impossible or financially infeasible. Yet here we are with SpaceX dropping LOE launch prices per kg by 90-98%.
You can call Elon many things, but a grifter he is not.
It's almost like revisiting the wildest ideas turns into feasible ones thanks to steady progress all around (science, manufacturing, better pricing).
I guess what's key is being lucky to re-attempt something at the right time. Just look at how long things from the mother of all demos took to become successful products, hell, we are finally getting the hang of collaborative editing and video conferencing was awful still 40yrs after in 2008.
the man got into Stanford for Physics, and there are more than enough anecdotes from his biography done by Walter Isaacson that confirm his technical prowess.
So government bailouts followed by cultivating a breathless cult who throw money at making your stock the most overvalued asset in history?
Feel free to put your money where your mouth is by shorting TESLA if you feel like it's so overvalued. and get crushed like everyone that did just that along the way.
As a smart man once said: "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent".
https://www.quora.com/Was-Tesla-bailed-out-by-the-US-governm...
No, Tesla did not receive any funds under the 2009 auto industry bailout.[1] The $80.7 billion went to Chrysler and GM.
Tesla did receive a government loan of $465 million under the Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturing program, a program signed into law by Bush in 2008. Tesla subsequently repaid that loan.
Selling put options on TSLA has been one of my more profitable plays for a long while, so maybe not.
Long positions have a completely different risk profile than a short position. One has unlimited upside and a capped downside. One has unlimited downside and a capped upside.
Saying "put your money where your mouth is and short" is asinine because they have completely different risk profiles.
Did that help?
> Can you stop and think for a minute?
Depends who you ask tbh.
> Selling puts and profiting from TSLA is not a vindication of your view that the company is trash.
Selling puts is a long position -- a bullish position -- not a short position. You would only sell puts if you were optimistic about the company. The fact that you don't know that tells me you're not ready to trade options and vindicates my statement that you don't fundamentally understand stock trading. So maybe stop going around and telling people to "put their money where their mouth is by shorting."
I just said I use selling puts as a bullish strategy, do you lack basic reading comprehension skills?
Many people don't know this but the vast majority of the money that was spent in 2008 was actually given out as loans, and those loans have been repaid with interest, netting the Treasury over $100B in profit, with billions more in quarterly dividends continuing to this day from Fannie and Freddie.
Do you think the 2008 TARP package was "not a bailout" also, because it was repaid with interest?
https://projects.propublica.org/bailout/
Or would you define it more by business outlook if they hadn’t received the funds in the first place?
The elephant in the room is that this was all done during ZIRP. There was an incredible amount of money sloshing around, and due to Elon's great ability to market, it ended up at Tesla.
> the man got into Stanford for Physics, and there are more than enough anecdotes from his biography done by Walter Isaacson that confirm his technical prowess.
This is Elon sympathetic. Where someone got into school has nothing to do with their business acumen. There are many people who actually went to Stanford for Physics with no business acumen. There also plenty of people who didn't go to school at all who have built great companies.
There are also many critiques of the accuracy of the Walter Isaacson biography. A definitive tome, it is not.
He is a grifter, and I believe he's going to prison for fraud soon.
But it's also true that he's / was incredible at attracting top talent, pushing seemingly impossible projects and delivering.
We can agree that he is an asshole and also acknowledge the fact that he has a statistically significant success rate for big engineering tasks.
b) SolarCity has been unquestionably a failure.
c) America PAC which handles most of the field operations for the Trump campaign has been in the news for how poorly it has been managed.
Then (a) perhaps keep your mouth shut until you can deliver it, and (b) don't take people's money for something that you say is "only X years away" when it's actually X+3/4/5.
When people can buy your product, tell them that they can buy it.
If you don't have a product that people can buy, keep your mouth shut.
Then why is he doing it in the Bay Area, then? Do it in Texas. Tesla has plenty of employees there.
He said they'd be building 50 thousand semis by now. He said they'd have 1 million robotaxis in 2020. Who cares what he says any more?
Probably so he can blame in on politics when it fails spectacularly.