[knowriju]

I don't quite understand the robotaxi angle. So in future, a person A's Tesla would go around autonomously and ferry around people. I am guessing the only reason Tesla shares would be up since they would take a cut from the earnings?

1. Won't Tesla need to get permission city by city to drive around autonomously ( like Waymo, Cruise )?

2. I am not well aware of US laws, but where I am from personal vehicles have different registration from commercial registration. Expectation is every Tesla owner does the leg work to upgrade their registration?

3. Who cleans up the car if a passenger has made it dirty ?

4. I would guess that most people want to go to work around the same time in the day and come home the same time as well, including the Tesla owner. Which leaves the Tesla to become a taxi only during the non-peak demand times ? Won't there be a supply-demand mismatch?

I could go on and on. Can't really fathom what potential did the market see to have their shares go up post-market. Anything I am missing?

[meyum33]

I don’t get how personal cars can be rented out to reduce idle time and maximize utilization. By the same logic we should be making our homes ultrashort WeWork spaces while we travel or go to work. Cars are somewhat like an extension of our home. For some it’s a highly private space. If this analogy is true then they will never be rented like ultrashort cabs.

[pjc50]

So the interesting thing that happened with AirBnB is not that people started renting out fractions of their home in large numbers, but the average house price went up so much that people simply cannot afford to have "spare" space.

I suspect the plan with cars is similar: subscription-only or on-demand vehicles.

[fragmede]

Turo? GetAround?

[Ekaros]

And lot of people buy car to get utility at short notice. I don't think many people would like if their car was with empty battery at very end of what ever max range they set. And they were in hurry to get somewhere...

[DilettanteQuant]

People literally do this, it's called Airbnb. I don't understand, this is supposed to be a tech news site and you guys are acting like you haven't heard of any of these massively successful peer 2 peer companies.

It seems that you don't like Tesla for other reasons, so you're bringing up easily dismissed business challenges that have already been solved.

[WA]

Last time I went to an Airbnb that was actually the home of someone else was in 2016 or so. I assume most Airbnbs are apartments made explicitly for using them as Airbnb rentals. Same logic applies to Robo taxis. This won't happen. The "private space" argument is quite strong imho.

[DilettanteQuant]

what does it matter if that ends up being the case with the transportation p2p networks too?

You are imagining one way for this to work and then claiming it wont make good business sense, when that is clearly not the only option.

[nolok]

Airbnb has long since turned into commercial renting. People short renting their actual home when they're not there is now a minimal part of their activity.

[mkipper]

The difference is scale.

Airbnb isn't trying to revolutionize home ownership. They can have a successful business even if 99% of homeowners have no interest in renting out their place to strangers.

But when Musk talks about robotaxi, he doesn't describe it as a feature that some small percentage of Tesla owner will take advantage of and that Tesla will use to pull in some extra revenue. Instead, it's used as a justification to treat Tesla as a tech company rather than a car company, since robotaxi is going to completely change how society looks at transportation.

Even if Tesla successfully delivers robotaxi (a hard task in itself), there's no reason to assume it's going to cause the seismic shift that Musk seems to assume it will.

[DilettanteQuant]

I feel stupid even responding to this. I'll take your comment on the assumption of good faith.

If the vehicles can generate revenue people will buy them looking to make money for themselves. Tesla makes money on the sale and the recurring ride hailing revenue. If 1% of consumer vehicles sold are autonomous robo-taxis that alone makes a significant bump in Tesla's bottom line.

Just did a quick search for ride sharing TAM ~100 billion. If Tesla can capture some of that at high margin (bc no driver). It's a lot of money.

[jpgvm]

> I am guessing the only reason Tesla shares would be up since they would take a cut from the earnings?

Tesla shares are actually up because the earnings call seemed to deprioritize the pie in the sky robotaxi plan in favor of shipping a cheaper car ala Model 2, much to the relief of every investor listening to the call.

If Tesla doesn't release a cheaper model they have no hope of competing in China, especially as BYD is completely relentless with both their pricing and their internal efficiencies (they are selling EVs for 10k USD and turning a ~20% profit according to last BYD earnings).

Technology wise Tesla still has a lead on non-battery components, especially in terms of simplified wiring harness/better vertical integration of electronic components and software but none of those are important if they can't translate into operational efficiency. My theory is they actually do translate very well but other fuckups Tesla has made means that on net they are still losing ground.

China is the world's biggest EV market by far, not just in terms of volume but also by $ amount. Tesla's very strong valuation for the last several years was based on their strong market position there (and the growth it implied) which has now quickly eroded (and their future revenue potential with it).

Unless their market share numbers get back on track in China expect the stock to continue to decline.

[bryanlarsen]

China is less than 10% of the worldwide vehicle market (5M / 60M). The big difference there is that they are second only to Norway in the fraction of their vehicles that are electric (60%). Which means that about half of all electric cars are currently sold in China. There's little room for growth in China -- overall demand is flat, and EV share will probably top out at 90% or so.

It'll hurt if Tesla can't keep selling ~600,000 cars they sell in China in a year, but they almost certainly can't grow that number.

EV growth for all brands will come from increasing the share outside of China.

[DilettanteQuant]

1. Yes some cities allow self driving cars and others don't. It's widely believed that as the technology proves itself, the patchwork regulation will be replaced with a national regulation.

2.Not true in the U.S. No special registration needed to drive an Uber.

3.Obviously the owner like with existing ride sharing networks.

4.Yes, existing ride sharing networks handle this with surge pricing.

There aren't a lot of problems. Ride sharing exists and some of them even operate autonomously, all be it with extreme geo fencing.

[id00]

> 2.Not true in the U.S. No special registration needed to drive an Uber.

Depends on the state/county, the driver and/or the vehicle may need additional paperwork

[guax]

Surge pricing is not handling it. It's exploiting it. Which is not bad. But it's not a solution to the problem, is an opportunity.

[DilettanteQuant]

The point is just because there are times of day where it's more difficult to hail a taxi, doesn't mean taxis are an unviable business practice. It's likely most of these p2p vehicles will be owned by people who use them exclusively for ride hailing.