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by CamperBob2 501 days ago
Musk specializes at succeeding in fields where nobody else is seriously trying. He's never actually faced good old-fashioned market competition.

He's good at identifying ideas whose time has come, I'll give him that much credit. Ransacking the US Treasury wasn't on the radar, though, as far as I could see.
1 comments
ModernMech 500 days ago
"He's never actually faced good old-fashioned market competition."

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/03/scaling-waymo-one-safely-acro...

Note the date. Tesla still doesn't have a taxi.

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CamperBob2 500 days ago
Waymo is doing good work but it's still very much a science-fair project, just another side hobby of Larry and Sergey.

Self-driving taxis will be a "market" someday, but not yet, and when they are, there is no reason to think Musk will be a force to be reckoned with. (Well, no reason other than the regulatory capture that he's no doubt putting into place now, that is.)

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fragmede 500 days ago
https://waymo.com/blog/2024/12/year-in-review-2024

from their blog that GP linked to, which says they gave 4 million rides in 2024, which seems like more than a "science faire side project", whatever that's supposed to mean.

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CamperBob2 499 days ago
It means it's not the least bit responsive to my assertion that Musk has never faced any serious market competition.
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ModernMech 498 days ago
How so? I can give Waymo money and they send a driverless taxi to pick me up in SF. That's a market. Can't do the same for Tesla despite Musk saying they'd have robotaxis for years now, they're so far behind they're not even an option. How do you reconcile that with what you're saying here?
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CamperBob2 498 days ago
I can reconcile it by saying that I don't think he cares. He's being outcompeted in the self-driving taxi business, such as it is, but he has taken his eye off of that particular ball completely. People forget that he owns less than 20% of Tesla at this point.

If he does manage to outcompete Waymo, my guess is that it will be because he hosed them via regulatory capture somehow, thanks to his buddy in the White House. Or because Larry and Sergey got bored and folded their tent.

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