[banjomet]

The only way to justify the valuation of Tesla is to assume that they do something that doesn't depend on individual customer sales, because those aren't ramping up at the right rate. I think they are about to launch an autonomous taxi service.

Here is a good example of Elon Musk talking about how robotaxis are going to push up the price[0]. So far nobody has talked about Tesla operating their own robotaxi service.

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/07/08/elon-musk-self-driving-robot...

[gamblor956]

Anyone who thinks they are going to use their private car as a robotaxi doesn't understand how much they're going to spend on maintenance and insurance.

EVs may cost less to maintain their ICEs, but they still have moving parts that need to be replaced.

And taxi insurance is quite expensive; it's one of the reasons that driving for Uber/Lyft is a losing proposition for most of their drivers even before they take vehicle wear-and-tear into account. For autonomous driving, for a company with the worst safety record for AI-driving in the industry, that insurance may cost more than their combined insurance costs for everything else combined (i.e., house, healthcare, other cars, etc.).

[wutbrodo]

Their strategy hasn't been L5 at all, and they can't have invested in it so secretly that even those in the AV space (like me) wouldn't know about it, through talent exchange at the very least. AV is a pretty small world at the moment.