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Comment by delichon | Hacker News Reader

If and when autopilot achieves level 3, the economic equation changes substantially. Whoever does it, I'd be in line demanding that they take my money. After years of false promises I understand the skepticism, but think that the industry is finally getting close. Tesla's large Cybercab bet depends on it so they are demonstrating their confidence in cash. From the beginning it has been Tesla's strategy to leverage the luxury market to fund their market-wide ambitions.

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Yeah, but there are actually autonomous cabs rolling out to my metro, and Tesla didn't build them...

So it won't be a monopoly. Which means you're right back to a cutthroat, low margin business.

Personally... I'm generally a "buy the whole market" kind of investor. But I'm actively looking to exclude Tesla. It's shaping up to be a complete and total bust.

> Yeah, but there are actually autonomous cabs rolling out to my metro

The economic difference is that a level 2 cab requires much higher remote labor costs than a level 3 cab to achieve the same productivity, almost by definition of "level 3". As long as a cab company has that advantage they can undercut the competition by price and still make a profit. That advantage is definitely not yet a given. It could even be achieved by open source models and go global for everyone at once. In that scenario Tesla still starts with a large advantage in cost per cab over everyone but BYD.

>In that scenario Tesla still starts with a large advantage in cost per cab over everyone but BYD.

They literally don't have a cab.

Waymo is driving people around right now.

> Tesla still starts with a large advantage in cost per cab over everyone but BYD

Waymo is way ahead of Tesla.

How would you exclude Tesla?

I looked into it, you need to do something called “direct indexing” if you want to specifically exclude a stock. Here is one example, Wealthfront can also do it.

https://www.schwab.com/direct-indexing

Calls on SPY, puts on Tesla.

You're exposing yourself to tracking error every time the index rebalances. If you want to show it to the man, just go to a protest while buying a cheap index fund.

I don't personally care enough, I made my point years ago when I bought my EV from a different manufacturer.

Not super relevant. The point is using puts to hedge out Tesla is a bad way to buy the market ex Tesla.

If you want to buy the market and bet against Tesla, it's actually a great way. It may not be the most profitable, but that's never been the point doing something out of protest or spite.

> If you want to buy the market and bet against Tesla, it's actually a great way

Nope. Certainly not in the long term. You’re better off direct indexing. If you don’t have enough money to direct index, you’re wasting money.

I'm not wasting any money, because I don't personally care enough to follow this strategy. Thanks for the info though.

There are probably ETFs that are something like "all of S&P except for Tesla".

Buy a broad-market ETF, and then short the exact amount of TSLA in that ETF's holdings?

Mercedes Drive-Pilot is level 3 and available now, apparently. Looks like recently updated to work up to 95km/h.

https://group.mercedes-benz.com/innovations/product-innovati...

> If and when autopilot achieves level 3, the economic equation changes substantially

The market is limited to America. Nobody is going to let Tesla develop a monopoly (or even commanding lead) in their country for self-driving cars after the way Musk has behaved with Starlink. (I suspect a ban on cameras-only self-driving cars would be popular in e.g. California and New York, too.)

Level 3 is not useful. Humans can't do the rapid task switch that's imagined, so in practice you're still supervising the car at all times even though notionally SAE says that's not what you're doing. Or, likely, you aren't supervising (e.g. you're looking at your phone) and so each such transition is incredibly dangerous.

> If and when autopilot achieves level 3, the economic equation changes substantially.

How so?

It kills me that no one else has an "autopilot" on par with Tesla's. All the competitors have very limited scope and tight constraints on conditions. Tesla is the only one you can take into a new neighborhood and it will drive around without saying "sorry not available here".

If you're doing that in my neighborhood, better watch out because I am prepared to defend my family and friends from your monstrosity with considered force and those vehicles are quite easy to "manage" for anyone who knows anything about it.

"Rocket man bad" at it's finest

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