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Comment by cowthulhu | Hacker News Reader

Tesla has proven to be very good at lying, moving goalposts, and insisting that this time [x] is right around the corner. I don't know what would be different this time. They might launch it with, like, 5 cars total, or have it be 100% teleoperated, or limit it to side roads.

They might require the passenger to sit in the drivers seat and take liability, or push it back a few more months, or only run it at 3AM when there is no traffic.

I don't think any of these would tank the stock price, since historically Tesla has gotten away with similar skulduggery. I learned the hard way many years ago to not bet against Tesla, and I don't see anything here that would override that lesson.

Fingers crossed for you though - I definitely think Tesla is irrationally priced, and there would be a certain justice in that overinflated valuation sinking down to reality.

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Tesla has lost a lot of their lustre this year. Sales plummeting is incontrovertible. Just based on that alone is devastating. But this robotaxi lack of success will not be treated the same anymore.

Totally possible this time is different... but I'm more making the point that if I'd bet against Tesla each time it looked like they would tank, I'd be very broke.

At least historically, Tesla stock has shown a consistent ability to defy reality.

No pressure, but if you feel comfortable with it... would you share the specific contracts you bought? I'll be interested to see how it works out.

> Totally possible this time is different

Sure, it's possible. However, all signs are that it is exceedingly unlikely.

I'll hold you to that in a couple months :)

If the market was actually rational the stock would have tanked already. The small number of people who hold the most stock have every incentive to keep the price high.

Tesla stock isn't based on whether they are a successful company, it's based on whether or not Musk is good at convincing people to put money into anything that's near him.

People who want to hold stock aren't the ones who set the price at which it trades. People who want to actively buy or sell it do.

You got Keynes's admonition against shorting right. But Tesla stock is impervious to reality not because of a small number of shareholders, but because an unusually large number of retail shareholders are in the cult of personality. It's a meme stock.

It should have lost a lot of lustre, but it hasn't. I see no justification for the stock being even $30 right now, but it is 10x that number.

> They might launch it with, like, 5 cars total, or have it be 100% teleoperated, or limit it to side roads.

All of these things. On a previous investor call, he said "10-20 Model Ys" would be deployed in Austin.

And that they'd all have remote operators.

And that fully autonomous would be geofenced (or in his words, "with some limitations", because he's allergic to that word).

It's "fully autonomous, driverless self-driving" that's actually heavily Mechanical Turk-ed.

>Tesla has proven to be very good at lying

Not Tesla. Musk was, but that ship sailed together with his nazi salute.

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