[taylodl]

Given that Robotaxis are currently crashing at a much higher rate than human-driven vehicles, it seems risky to put a large majority of your company's future earnings and growth in that basket.

On the Optimus front, I spent years in manufacturing. This industry is conservative and deeply relationship driven. Plants prioritize uptime and proven reliability, and they're slow to adopt newcomers. ABB is the 800-pound gorilla here - just as they have been in the PLC space for decades. ABB's long-standing relationships and deep integration support make it incredibly hard for newcomers to gain traction. I should know - I worked for one of their competitors!

Bottom line: Tesla's strategy hinges on two moonshots in industries where incumbents are entrenched and adoption cycles are slow. If these bets don't pay off, Tesla needs a fallback - energy storage, grid solutions, or advanced EV platforms - before the narrative collapses. They'd be wise to leverage their EV business to launch these initiatives, but waning consumer confidence and declining sales make that increasingly difficult.

[JumpCrisscross]

> Given that Robotaxis are currently crashing at a much higher rate than human-driven vehicles

Robotaxis/cybercabs or whatever are not currently self driving. They’re Level 3, given the requirement for human monitors. To my knowledge, they’re doing fine safetywise as Level 3 systems.

[stackghost]

>If these bets don't pay off, Tesla needs a fallback

Good news! No matter what Tesla does, Musk's orbiters will tell you that Tesla isn't a <thing they currently do> company, it's actually a bet on <future, tangentially-related thing>.

[valianteffort]

Well it kind of is. Tesla are not coy about their plans of moving away from selling consumers personal vehicles. If you think cybercab can eat any significant percentage of Uber/Lyfts lunch there is value.

It takes a lot of hubris to throw away ostensibly worldwide EV dominance. And selling Americans on giving up car/independence culture when compared with Europe or Asia will be tough.

They will undoubtedly crush in the robot and energy space though.

[stackghost]

>It takes a lot of hubris to throw away ostensibly worldwide EV dominance.

This was never a possibility to begin with and only Musk cultists thought it was.

[peacebeard]

> Given that Robotaxis are currently crashing at a much higher rate than human-driven vehicles

Citation needed

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

https://electrek.co/2025/12/15/tesla-reports-another-robotax...

>Last month, Tesla confirmed the fleet had traveled roughly 250,000 miles. With 7 reported crashes at the time, Tesla’s Robotaxi was crashing roughly once every 40,000 miles (extrapolating from the previously disclosed Robotaxi mileage).

>For comparison, the average human driver in the US crashes about once every 500,000 miles.

[peacebeard]

Ah, I misunderstood "Robotaxis" to be referring to autonomous taxis in general, not Tesla's Robotaxi's specifically. Thank you for clarifying.

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

The capitalization the parent poster used on Robotaxi may have been intentional to assist with interpretation. While it can be a generic term, I believe only Tesla uses it as a brand name: https://www.tesla.com/robotaxi

[JumpCrisscross]

Wait, is Cybercab deprecated in favour of Robotaxi now?

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

I think it's this...

Robotaxi: Tesla's autonomously driven ride hailing service. Currently using Model Y's or whatever, maybe using Cybercabs once those actually exist, maybe eventually also leveraging Tesla vehicles owned by others (lmao no one who has though that through for more than a minute or two actually wants to risk their vehicle like that)

Cybercab: A Tesla vehicle explicitly built for the Robotaxi service, containing no driver controls whatsoever because they're expected to operate without any (local) human oversight