[sgjohnson]

Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

For many people, the very term EV itself is still ubiquitous to Tesla.

And somehow Tesla is still worth more than every other non-Chinese automaker combined. $1.5T.

GM? $80B. Stellantis? $40B. Toyota? $280B. Mercedes-Benz? $60B. BMW? $55B. Volkswagen Group? Also $55B.

I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of others, but I could miss some 18 $50B automakers, and Tesla would still be worth more than all of them combined.

If Tesla was valued fairly, it would probably be at the tune of $5B. But I’ll never bet against it, because the markets can remain irrational for longer than I can remain solvent. And for some unbeknownst to me reason, the markets value Tesla as a hot tech company, not a 3rd rate automaker, which is what it actually is.

And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.

[gwbas1c]

> And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.

My Huyndai's Autopilot equivalent (I don't even know what they call it) is better than the enhanced Autopilot in the Model 3 that I traded in. It actually changes lanes when I put on the blinker, instead of only changing lanes 70% of the time, and the other time just sitting with the blinker on and a clear lane.

[not_ai]

I did not know this and explains why I see so many teslas with their blinkers on and not maneuvering despite having ample room and time. Ultimately this behavior makes them unsafe for their occupants as well as others around them.

Cars only work because we can predict driver behavior, if they break that prediction that’s when bad things are likely to happen…

Lately I’ve started to ignore Tesla blinker.

[jordanbeiber]

This is most likely due to the fact that it is really bad at resetting blinker when the steering wheel is straight’ish again. Extremely annoying as any other car is much more sensitive (and sensible).

In a tesla an on-ramp to straight highway is rarely enough to stop the blinker, something I’ve never experienced in any other car.

Couple this with, IMO, the best baseline speaker system of any manufacturer… I’ve been driving with the blinker on for several kilometers at times!

[smotched]

Autopilot doesnt turn on the turn signal or change lanes, what you are dealing with is humans.

[gwbas1c]

Enchanced autopilot and self-driving do.

[philistine]

Most probably because it has a radar that the Tesla lacks. That means your car has two sources of truth and can very efficiently and quickly make an informed decision about whether or not there's anything in the way.

[hbarka]

My Model 3 has radar. It’s no longer functional and just a useless appendage. Until 2020-21 all Tesla had radar but Musk directed Tesla to disable the radar from the software stack, nerfing this hardware on tens of thousands of cars. Why? Because he staked on camera-only and to find out there’s still radar fusion would be against that. The real truth is probably they were derisking the part cost (during Covid) and the development timeline to improve the radar integration (after dangerous false braking incidents). It was wonderful when it worked, especially the time-of-flight ability to sense a decelerating car ahead of the car ahead of the one in front of you. When it didn’t work the Navy Seal guy driving and watching a video was the first statistic.

The real Tesla engineers must be in all kinds of frustrations getting whipsawed by their chief engineer-designer-physicist-scientist-government economist-savant but probably the stock options assuage that.

Lastly Tesla still doesn’t have real birds-eye view / 360 surround view for parking. It’s year 2026 and even cheaper cars have this.

[philistine]

> The real Tesla engineers must be in all kinds of frustrations

That's a very Hacker News point of view, that *of course* engineers have the correct opinion and attitude and are merely suffering under the boots of the real incompetent and nefarious.

Engineers at Tesla are wholly complicit.

[theshrike79]

In this case the dude giving the order is the richest man in the world, hopped up on ketamine and a habit of just YOLOing stuff.

A single engineer telling him that LIDAR and radar is superior to camera-based systems isn't doing anything except getting said engineer fired.

[cogman10]

It's clearly not, but cameras are cheap and Tesla is excellent at cost optimizing their cars. Elon was pretty good at film flaming that somehow imprecise cameras were actually somehow superior.

There's a reason Waymo is doing actual level 4/5 driving while Tesla remains at 2.5.

[indolering]

They 100% make excuses for the guy and buy his bullshit. Nothing screams cognitive dissonance like believing that Elon had no idea that his Nazi salute would look like a Nazi salute!

[gwbas1c]

I don't think my 2018 Model 3 with enhanced autopilot ever used it radar for lane changes. As I noted above, it would just drive with the blinker on and a clear lane.

[groos]

My 8 yo M3 has radar and it still is active since the yellow radar symbols light up when passing by obstacles. It's also used to figure out obstacles in the front and back and if disabled, the relatively poor cameras on my car would not be able to figure out the distance to the next car in the front.

[hbarka]

That’s your ultrasonic sensors. The millimeter-wave-radar was front only and designed for far focusing out front.

[kube-system]

Yes, for parking obstacles. But their vehicle probably also has radar sensors in the rear corners of the bumper for cross-traffic alert.

[noboostforyou]

Kia Telluride here but I assume it's the same underlying system as Hyundai - I can attest that it's very good (and doesn't cost anything extra like Tesla charges lol) which makes sense considering they have the majority stake in Boston Dynamics since a few years ago.

[compootr]

I bought an IONIQ 6 with Hyundai Driver assist II, and it's not what the reviews cut it out to be.

On stretches of pretty straight highway and in traffic, it fares very well, only requiring minor interaction, but on larger curves, it completely disengages with no tone or warning, just a light on the dashboard that turns off.

I'm fully aware you're supposed to drive a car by paying attention to the road, but if the whole point of this feature is to make driving more chill, randomly disengaging makes me distrustful of it

[CRConrad]

So you're "fully aware" that you're supposed to pay attention, but you still think "making driving more chill" is somehow desirable (or at least supposed to be desirable, for marketing purposes)...

I think you -- and everyone else -- should not only be "distrustful" of these purported "autopilots" or "copilots" or WETF the marketeers call the contraptions, but actively avoid ever buyin any vehicle equipped with them. Just refuse, and do your own damn driving. For everyone's sake, including your own.

[gkfasdfasdf]

Tesla FSD will change lanes when you use the blinker. It will also accelerate and remain engaged if you press the pedal, e.g. if you want to coax it forward at an intersection.

[Traster]

I think you're totally wrong on this. Tesla didn't waste the first mover advantage. They benefitted from it whilst it existed, but Electric vehicles turned into a commodity, which was entirely expected and there's no moat.

You've explained yourself why it would be untenable for Musk to pursue becoming the biggest car manufacturer in the world - if he succeeded in that goal... he would have succeded in shrinking the value of the company significantly.

It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

[jordanb]

Tesla's original "secret plan" (published on their website) was to become a commodity car manufacturer faster than electric cars became a commodity. Such that the other manufacturers would find them selling obsolete vehicles and Tesla just becomes the new General Motors.

This was the justification for their stock price for quite a few years: "It's logical that Tesla is worth more than all other automakers combined because it will soon be the only automaker."

Then in 2022 Elon basically admitted that they couldn't win on production and had to continue to win on technology and they'd do that with self driving. [https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basica...]

But now Tesla is way behind on self driving (which was oversold by the whole industry tbh). So what's their new plan? Now they're no longer a car company and will make robots!

[whaleofatw2022]

Your take makes sense.

i.e. the GigaPress for frames but it just didnt scale like they hoped.

[misiti3780]

way behind compared to whom ?

[sgjohnson]

> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

But it's make-believe. Tesla is a car manufacturer. They haven't shipped anything else other than cars. And they even suck at making cars these days. Tesla Semi? All but dead. The new roadster? Also dead. Full Self Driving? Doesn't exist. Robotaxis? Even if they got them to work, at this point the brand is too toxic for widespread adoption of those.

They could have persisted at being a disruptive car manufacturer and still held a several hundred billion dollar valuation. Now they are a very mediocre car manufacturer, with their only actual success being conning everyone into believing that they are a bleeding-edge tech company so their $1.5Bn valuation seems justified.

[usaphp]

> And they even suck at making cars these days

Aren’t model Y and model 3 considered the best cars in their class by most motor journalists?

[Arainach]

No, not by a long shot, unless you define "class" so tightly as to only include those vehicles and no competitors.

[apublicfrog]

What would you define as better? I rent various EVs regularly, and I'm still yet to find something that beats it on performance, range and price. That's all before comfort and features, which again most seem to lack. There are a couple pretty close to Tesla, but nothing that clearly beats it that I've driven.

[Arainach]

In the US market, the Hyundai Ioniq 6 has better build quality, identical range in real world conditions, a ton of comfort, and no threat that their CEO will go off his meds and take away your driving assist features unless you pay a ~~ransom~~ subscription fee.

Internationally, BYD destroys it.

[theshrike79]

As a car? Anything. Hyundai Ioniq 5 for example.

As a computer? Not many to be honest. Dog Mode is an afternoon project for a junior programmer and still _ZERO_ car manufacturers have copied it.

[verzali]

Have you ever tried a BYD?

[bmitc]

No. They are consistently rated low, particularly in safety and reliability.

[testing22321]

I know it’s popular to hate on Elon and therefore Tesla, but you need to be accurate when doing so. They’re still chipping away.

> Tesla Semi?All but dead.

They’ve been running a pilot all this time, and the factory in Nevada to mass produce them is on schedule. Production ramp is second half of this year. The factory is ginormous.

> The new roadster? Also dead.

Elon said yesterday the unveil is in April “hopefully”

> Full Self Driving? Doesn't exist. Robotaxis?

Cars are driving passengers around Austin now with nobody in either front seat.

It takes automakers almost a decade to bring a new vehicle online, Elon just does it all publicly while everyone else doesn’t take the wraps off until the final 6 months.

Obviously everything is way behind elons hype timelines, but I do still think it’s all coming.

[SR2Z]

> Cars are driving passengers around Austin now with nobody in either front seat.

This is a good example of Tesla being sketchy: https://electrek.co/2026/01/28/teslas-unsupervised-robotaxis...

Musk made the announcement before earnings, put a few cars on the road, and now has pulled them all back because the earnings report is out.

This is a little more than doing it publicly - remember, Musk has been saying FSD will be functional every year for more than a decade.

[Zanni]

Fred Lambert at Electrek has become an unreliable reporter on Tesla. I don't know where his bias stems from, but it's unmistakeable.

Lambert claims David Moss couldn't find a Robotaxi ride without a safety driver. True enough, there aren't a lot of them on the road. That doesn't mean they don't exist or were "pulled back."

Here's Moss's latest tweet on the subject: "ANOTHER UNSUPERVISED:

2 in a row now here in Austin, TX of Tesla Robotaxi’s completely autonomous without chase cars.

You can see 2 cars in the clip with no one in it & anyone can book it!

Ride 59 complete." https://x.com/DavidMoss/status/2016939137031381487

Note also in that SAME ARTICLE, Lambert credits Moss with driving 10,000 miles on FSD v14 with zero interventions.

To paraphrase William Gibson: full self-driving is here, it's just unevenly distributed.

[kjs3]

They’ve been running a pilot all this time

So did Nikola.

Elon said yesterday the unveil is in April “hopefully”

Who could possibly argue with that.

Obviously everything is way behind elons hype timelines, but I do still think it’s all coming.

At least you've identified it for what it is.

[testing22321]

They have just finished a 1.7 million square foot factory to build the semi - aiming for 50k units a year.

I think comparisons to Nikola are not very even.

[kjs3]

aiming for 50k units a year

I'm aiming for being better looking and having more hair. Elon and I are even right now.

[alistairSH]

Cars are driving passengers around Austin now with nobody in either front seat.

Unless the reporting was wrong, they've moved the supervisor to a chase car. The hobo-taxi still isn't operating on its own.

[dannyfritz07]

A quick search verified they also manufactured batteries, solar modules, and solar shingles.

[gamerdonkey]

Ford Motor Company manufactured charcoal, but in the end it stayed a car company.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)#History

[breve]

Why is making humanoid robots a moat? Other companies have been making robots for longer, humanoid and otherwise, and doing it better.

Has Optimus signed up for any sports yet: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/02/china/china-humanoid-robo...

Is Optimus close to what Boston Dynamics is doing with Atlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIhzUnvi7Fw

[dstroot]

Anyone who owns a tesla vehicle with "full self driving" is probably chuckling to themselves about Tesla ever making useful general purpose robots any time soon. Disclaimer, I own two tesla's with FSD and it's far from "full" or "self". I am very sceptical of robotaxis unless they have the appropriate sensors & SW (e.g. Waymo) which Elon has not done.

Finally, I know lots of people who own cars, but none who own robots. Many friends will not have Alexa in their homes due to privacy concerns. How many people will trust Elon to have a robot in their homes and assume he's being benign and safe with your personal data?

[SideburnsOfDoom]

> Why is making humanoid robots a moat?

It really isn't. (1)

Also, what's the first billion dollar market for humanoid robots? Industry? "lights-out manufacturing" exists already, and doesn't require humanoid robots.

Hyundai and BYD (among others) say they're going to put humanoid robots in their factories (2). They won't be Tesla robots. Is this really such a huge use?

1)https://www.topgear.com/car-news/tech/here-are-nine-humanoid...

2) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgjm5x54ldo

[edmundsauto]

I want my laundry robot!

[SideburnsOfDoom]

Is that a billion dollar market, is it within reach, and does it require a humanoid? And if so, will any 1 company have a lock on it?

[omilu]

Yes I would easily pay 20k for a robot to fold and put away laundry.

[marssaxman]

Where I live, wash/dry/fold service costs ~$3/lb including pickup & delivery, so depending on how many clothes you wear in a week you'd be looking at 5-10 years before that robot even starts to pay for itself - without even accounting for the cost of the laundry machines it'll need to use or the water and power to run them. Laundry machines are expected to last 10-15 years; will the robot last so long?

[sosomoxie]

Pure logic would dictate that Tesla has a market cap of around $5B. It's actually fraudulent that it's not, and for some reason the SEC allows Musk to lie on every earnings call without repercussion.

[Mr_Minderbinder]

A 5B market cap would imply a P/E ratio of 1.3 and a P/FCF ratio of 0.8, which essentially would be saying “this business is only worth approximately what it made last year”. The corresponding multiples for other auto makers are typically in the high single digits. Even if you believed Tesla’s whole business would collapse tomorrow (i.e. revenue goes to zero) book value is ~83B and net cash is ~29B.

[sosomoxie]

Yes, I think that sounds about right.

[Mr_Minderbinder]

You may think that sounds right but I can assure you that convincing others that ~$29B of accessible pure cash or ~$83B of equity is really only worth $5B will be a more difficult venture. You can dispute the carrying value of Tesla's assets and liabilities but the cash is cash which is why I included that metric as a baseline. At the end of the day $29B is worth $29B and nothing else.

[sosomoxie]

Cool, so yeah I'd value them at $29B max (you have to account for all future lawsuits...). Far cry from $1.4T! Lots of downside yet to come.

[FuriouslyAdrift]

Seems low on a company that is profitable and consistantly has around a $100B a year in revenue with only $13B in debt...

[dmbche]

more like 12b in 2022 and less every years since down 30% in 2025

[bratwurst3000]

vw has over 300 billion revenue and way more profit then tesla. still not worth 1/10 of it.

5 billion sounds good for tesla

[FuriouslyAdrift]

VW is carrying $221B in debt and just closed their main plant in Germany because BYD is eating them alive.

[ahartmetz]

VW just closed a very small plant (165k cars in 24 years) in Germany, the one in Dresden. The largest ones are probably Wolfsburg and Emden, these are running. VW is in trouble, not in terminal decline.

[elzbardico]

Welcome to 2026:

Companies routinely, exaggerate, obfuscate and mystify investors. Most of investors don't care. The SEC is a joke.

[jcranmer]

Brand value is definitely a moat. Not the deepest of moats, but it is a moat nonetheless.

> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

Tesla is valued as if it is a tech company with a car business as a side gig. Its balance sheet is a car business, and I'm not even sure it spends enough on tech to have tech qualify as a side gig. And the other tech avenues it has been pursuing (autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots) are areas that other people have been doing for better and longer. Hell, Honda had autonomous (not tele-operated) humanoid robots working 20 years ago.

To be honest, at this point, I mostly consider the other bets that Tesla is pursing are just passion projects to keep the stock price artificially high. Were Tesla more realistically valued, it would lose probably 90% or more of its value, and Musk would be a much poorer man.

[Fischgericht]

If you do not want to run a car company, maybe do not... run a car company? Get an ice cream truck.

It absolutely makes no sense to convert a car manufacturer into an AI company. Or a robotics company after you have build CAR FACTORIES around the planet.

If you as a CEO don't like the business you are running for your shareholders, it is time to get a new CEO that does. There still are managers that really like running car companies.

I don't get the feeling that BYD management is bored about the EV business...

[freakynit]

Everything tends toward commodification in a hyper-competitive, hyper-connected world. The only variable is time... and this "time" keeps shrinking.

As commodification accelerates, consolidation follows. In the current landscape, where private capital and state power are deeply entangled under the banner of national security, this consolidation no longer stays economic. It becomes geopolitical.

The end result... it translates to not just corporate monopolies, but geo-monopolies... enforced not by markets alone, but by coercion, conflict, and control over resources.

[JumpinJack_Cash]

> > It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

You can pursue everything with words, even you can pursue Sydney Sweeney but then you have to show the receipts.

The receipts of Tesla (Factories, lines of production, expertise of people hired, 25 years of history...) are one of car company.

But of course, it's all narrative so people will keep outbidding each other to own a piece of this company.

The financialization of hope, that's what it is.

[CRConrad]

> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

Isn't this in reply to a post (or was that another reply just below it?) about how other, "traditional", car companies are valued at 55, 60, 80, and 280 billion dollars...? Seems being a car company and having a billion dollar valuation isn't all that incompatible.

[theshrike79]

The competition was this:

Tesla had a very good computer, they were learning how to put a car around it.

Traditional manufacturers (German mostly) had good or very good cars, but they sucked at the computer stuff.

---

And unknown to all, the Chinese learned how to make good cars with good computers built in as those two were trying to achiever their respective goals.

[outside1234]

Tesla's moat is constantly moving to the next thing and claiming it has a moat before moving on to the next thing.

Elon's business model is moving from one government subsidized thing to the next (see SpaceX now bribing for tax dollars to go to Mars).

[arbor_day]

It's not that EVs are a commodity. Competition and speculative production capacity buildouts combined with lower than expected consumer demand made the market less profitable.

[AtlasBarfed]

Yeah there's no margin in being a luxury car builder

And of course you're just going to pretend what the mission statement was.

[neogodless]

> Electric vehicles turned into a commodity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity

> a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them

Uhh.. not sure where you live or what your local / regional market is like. I'm in the United States, where what car you drive is a really big decision. Many people share on social media what car they bought, and tell people around them about the new car they bought. I've yet to witness a situation where someone said "I bought an electric car" and the response was something like "Why are you telling me you bought toilet paper?" (Even toilet paper has brand names and advertising.)

That isn't to say that the car market hasn't shifted over time.

Cars began as "engine to move wheels plus a few other things" and evolved so that the engine seemed less of the central reason why you bought a specific vehicle. An electric powertrain does take things a bit further, in that most EV buyers know very little about the motors, though they certainly know a thing or two about the battery.

Batteries are generally a commodity at smaller scales, but in a car, they matter significantly. Still, brand matters, too. Ask Lucid or Rivian or Porsche how they sell their electric cars for $70K - $160K. How is it that a commodity available to purchase for ~$30K can be sold for $130K additional? (That's not how commodities work.)

No, electric cars are not a commodity. It's just a difficult market with a lot of players, and a broad market with constantly evolving tastes. Ask Toyota why they have half a dozen different SUV models. Or why the Ford F-150 comes in 200 configurations. (That's not how commodities work!)

Just because the gasoline-burning engine was replaced with electric motors and batteries, the car didn't turn into a commodity overnight. I'm open to counterarguments and persuasion to the contrary.

[epolanski]

Bingo.

[gkfasdfasdf]

> And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.

Do you have any sources for that claim? I can attest that current iteration of FSD is very, very good, and very likely is a safer driver than I am. At least one major insurance company agrees [0]. I don't have any experience with Super Cruise though.

[0] - https://www.lemonade.com/fsd

[root_axis]

> Do you have any sources for that claim? I can attest that current iteration of FSD is very, very good, and very likely is a safer driver than I am.

That's a damning statement about your driving skills, and probably not true or you'd have had your license revoked by now. I've had FSD for five years, and even today it regularly makes dangerous mistakes. For example, left turns and roundabouts are the equivalent of Russian roulette, but just last week my FSD started driving through a red light because it interpreted a green left-arrow as a sign that it could proceed forward.

If you need to do 50 miles on the interstate it's pretty solid though.

[SOLAR_FIELDS]

> If you need to do 50 miles on the interstate it's pretty solid though.

So L2 is great, the issue is calling L2 "Full Self Driving"

[IncreasePosts]

If your Tesla is 5 years old aren't you getting a degraded FSD model due to weak hardware?

[root_axis]

I took it in for a HW update in 2023. I do believe there is an even newer hardware stack since then, but as far as I'm aware the HW doesn't impact the supported capabilities.

[iknowstuff]

You’re wrong. Your fsd12 is a very different beast from the current fsd14, so stop talking authoritatively about the latest fsd.

[gkfasdfasdf]

Congrats on the upgrade - what exactly did they upgrade and what version of FSD are you running? Hardware and software definitely matters. My FSD experience applies to 2026 Model Y, latest FSD (v14.x).

[pibaker]

"The computer is not beefy enough" is not an acceptable excuse for blowing a red. If your model cannot comply with the most basic law of traffic, it should not be sold to consumers as "full self driving."

[memish]

Do you think your anecdote is more likely to be true than an insurance company putting its money where its mouth is?

"Tesla Full Self-Driving is twice as safe, so Lemonade takes 50% off every mile driven with FSD."

[root_axis]

I don't know anything about Lemonade, so I can't comment on the logic behind that business strategy, but by definition all the dangerous behavior of FSD is excluded from the analysis since you have to shut it off to avoid the danger.

Beyond that, the effect size of my anecdotes assures me that it is not safer than a human driver. It's just obvious.

[enragedcacti]

Lemonade doesn't support your claim that FSD is a safer driver than you are. It just says that, most charitably, they believe FSD and a human operator are safer than just a human operator (The co-founder said exactly this to Reuters [0]). Further, the program has only been around for a week and their marketing copy specifically cites "Tesla's data" as the source for the 50% reduction rather than any sort of independent analysis.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lemona...

[digiown]

They are putting their money behind their words, unless there is some backroom deal we don't know about. If a human operator + FSD is twice safer than human operator alone, then FSD is still a large safety improvement. Considering how human operators behave with these systems, I'd also wager having the human operator (many don't even look at the road!) makes only a small difference.

[enragedcacti]

> They are putting their money behind their words, unless there is some backroom deal we don't know about.

Their product is dynamically priced and individualized, and there is no guarantee of what the base rate will be. I don't see any reason they can't keep offering the 50% discount and then adjust the base rates to reverse engineer a sustainable price regardless of FSDs real safety.

> Considering how human operators behave with these systems, I'd also wager having the human operator (many don't even look at the road!) makes only a small difference.

Lemonade will likely be getting driver monitoring telemetry and calculating rates accordingly, but in either case I'm convinced that we are still on the left hand side of the Valley of Degraded Supervision [0]. Operators may not pay full attention at all times but they likely still have pretty good heuristics for what situations are difficult for FSD and adjust their monitoring behavior accordingly.

Tesla could of course release detailed crash and disengagement data to prove FSD safety. That they do not is itself a form of evidence, and in lieu of that we have to rely on crowdsourced data which says FSD 14.x still has a very long way to go to be safer than the average driver [1].

[0] https://www.eetimes.com/disengagements-wrong-metric-for-av-t...

[1] https://teslafsdtracker.com/Main

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

> At least one major insurance company agrees

You mean the insurance company that has only existed for 10 years and I never heard of before this Tesla tie-in marketing gimmick?

[antiframe]

Also an insurance company that A.M. Best rates B+. Which is fine, but when buying insurance I want to make sure that my company can weather major catastrophes.

[xnx]

> At least one major insurance company agrees

Lemonade has <1% market share

[vladms]

> If Tesla was valued fairly

I think it's a wrong mental model to think of stock market value as "fair" or "unfair" (or maybe it's just me thinking of "unfair" when I see the word "fair").

My impression is that if Tesla would be valued based on quantifiable things it would be much much lower (production costs, competition, revenues, potential, etc.). Of course, you shouldn't value something only based on quantifiable things, but in Tesla the "wishful thinking" part seems to be much larger than for others.

[radlad]

I assume OP meant something closer to "fair market value" than "fair vs. unfair." Tesla is not priced according to its underlying assets or technical analysis (e.g. P/E ratio), but solely based on hype/sentiment.

Interestingly, retail investors and company insiders collectively own more of Tesla than institutional investors.

[marcusverus]

Fair market value: the price at which a thing would change hands between a willing and informed buyer and seller.

A company's market cap is, by definition, its fair market value.

> Tesla is not priced according to its underlying assets or technical analysis (e.g. P/E ratio), but solely based on hype/sentiment.

You're right that it's not priced according to underlying assets, but it doesn't follow that it is priced on vibes. Its price is based on potential future earnings; the expectation that Elon can pull off his plans for a robotaxi fleet or building an Optimus robot that might unlock the massive demand for household and/or general use commercial robots. Both offer the prospect of being the first mover into markets which could be worth trillions. It's speculation, sure, but not mere "vibes". The company is also led by a man who has made and delivered on massive, seemingly impossible promises, which adds credibility to the idea that Tesla might actually bring these markets into existence.

[radlad]

That's actually not quite what FMV is: https://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fairmarketvalue.asp

> Fair market value (FMV) is similar to market value, which is the price that the asset would trade for in the open market under current conditions. However, fair market value has the following additional assumptions: Both buyer and seller are reasonably knowledgeable about the asset, Buyer and seller are behaving in their own best interests, Both parties are free of undue pressure, Each is given a reasonable period for completing the transaction.

However that's why I said "something closer to FMV" as yes - what you described is generally how FMV is calculated for things like stock options.

> but it doesn't follow that it is priced on vibes. Its price is based on potential future earnings

To be clear, I also didn't use the word "vibes," but rather "hype/sentiment" which refers to things like "the expectation that Elon can pull off his plans for a robotaxi fleet or building an Optimus robot that might unlock the massive demand for household and/or general use commercial robots." I'm not sure where you got "vibes" that you quoted in your reply.

Technical analysis uses statistics (e.g. P/E ratios) and marketplace analysis to determine if future potential earnings are worth the price of the stock. TSLA's price is far in excess of any technical analysis I have seen.

> The company is also led by a man who has made and delivered on massive, seemingly impossible promises, which adds credibility to the idea that Tesla might actually bring these markets into existence.

We might have to agree to disagree on this one. (Are we FSD yet?)

[mancerayder]

Hold on - your link also says

Fair market value is different from market value and appraised value.

FMV makes a lot of sense in things like insurance payouts and private equity, cuz the assets aren't liquid and have to be assessed. If the thing is already being bought and sold on public markets, like Tesla, FMV is less useful to talk about. Now you enter the realm of financial analysis (like some analyst's report about a publicly traded stock) and even financial audits and such, it's orthogonal.

[Calavar]

Talk about market cap, especially meme stock maket cap, reminds me of that old XKCD comic on extrapolation. Market cap is what you get when you extrapolate the fair market value for the 1% of a company's shares currently on the market all the way out to 100%. But demand doesn't work that way - it doesn't scale linearly.

[Multiplayer]

GM Supercruise on my 2024 Silverado RST is a joke compared to Tesla FSD. It's not even remotely comparable. Supercruise only works on freeways/highways, does not understand ANY navigation. It's a better cruise control, that's about it. I own 2 Tesla model S of different vintages and FSD is a completely different animal. My 2017 model s can navigate from my house to, well, anywhere, with no intervention. I have been very disappointed in how long it took Tesla to get here based on the promises they made 10(!) years ago, but they are there now. Even a year ago FSD used to scare me frequently and cause me to disengage but that never happens now.

[pants2]

The only thing remotely comparable in the US is probably a Comma 4 with a forked OpenPilot build on a well-supported vehicle

[asah]

SpaceX will acquire Tesla and save the shareholders, just like Tesla acquired SolarCity.

[extraduder_ire]

Can they afford to do that? I would assume it would be the other way around unless the valuation of either/both changes drastically.

XAI acquiring twitter is probably a better recent example than solarcity.

[stinkbeetle]

> Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

I doubt that because Tesla was not a first mover, established automotive companies were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_R%27nessa#Nissan_Altra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger_EV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_EV_Plus

Etc.

The innovation/imitation/commoditization cycle is not really new or limited to Tesla, it applies to everything from robot vacuum cleaners to CPUs. Whether Tesla survives or not probably depends a lot more on boring things like economic and trade policies of large countries.

The much more interesting thing to study would be how ice auto manufacturers not only completely wasted their first mover advantages, but also their long established brand value, supply chains and distribution and sales networks when it came to EVs.

It was not many years ago, industry "experts" were still going on about how Tesla could never hope to build cars at scale, that their "build quality" would sink them, etc. Whereas many people have rightly identified this commoditization and threats from Chinese manufacturers as being one of the biggest risks to Tesla from the beginning. Surely it's more interesting to study the things that were not obvious or well predicted?

[dstroot]

And Elon canceled the S and X models but not the Cybertruck? C’mon…

[hnburnsy]

I wonder if they reconfigure it and tone down the look to something more traditional.

[vagab0nd]

I feel like there's this weird information gap that shouldn't be there in this day and age. FSD drives me around every day. 99% of the time, I don't touch the steering wheel for the entire trip, both city and highway. It's obvious to me that it is working well and has tremendous value. As far as I know, no other car on the market can do this. But apparently this info is not reaching a large number of people. I'm genuinely confused.

[NoPicklez]

How would GM Super Cruise be renowned as better when it is only compatible with highways? You can't use it around town or in the city.

Sure, it might be considered safer because it only allows itself to work when its on a controlled highway in a straight line.

[memish]

1. Tesla has $40B in cash and is profitable. To say it's worth $5B is beyond absurd.

2. The market determines what is a fair value, not rando haters on the internet. Even professional Wall Street consensus is that it's fair value at approximately $1.2T market cap.

[rkagerer]

$40B in cash/equivalents, minus some $13-20B in debt (depending what source you pick).

[hnburnsy]

Plus assets

[jmyeet]

> Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

It's a study in many things.

Tesla only exists because of the transfer of wealth from the government. DOE loans, EV tax credits and other incentives are the difference between existing and not existing.

That's not necessarily bad. The problem is the government really gets nothing for their money. Look at how China incubates their businesses.

As an example, imagine where we'd be if the government had insisted on standardized charging infrastructure instead of Tesla's originally proprietary Supercharger network.

> If Tesla was valued fairly, it would probably be at the tune of $5B.

I could see it as high as $100B but not $1.5T. Not even close.

And I, too, would never bet against it. Nothing fundamental is behind Tesla's valuation. It's just gambling.

[misiti3780]

I was with you until you compared super cruise to FSD. not even comparable

[bmitc]

> Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

Did they ever have a first mover advantage? They had first mover hype, but did they really have an advantage?

Companies like Kia and Hyundai had an advantage. They already had logistics, design, R&D, manufacturing, supply chains, etc. all figured out from decades of building and improving cars. Tesla had NONE of that. All Kia and Hyundai had to do to get into EVs was add another few models to their lineup with some iteration on all their existing processes. And immediately, these models became hot sellers.

Tesla had to literally reinvent (but to themselves invent) what it takes to design, build, and sell a car.

This writing has been on the wall for years. Tesla has less than a handful of models and can't even iterate on them in any substantial way. Other car makers make dozens of models and rev them every year and do a design refresh every five to ten years. Tesla never had any advantage or key selling point outside of hype.

[insane_dreamer]

I think these days you have to look at Tesla stock more like crypto -- you're betting on the hype and hope to ride the wave and exit before it crashes.

[esseph]

> And for some unbeknownst to me reason, the markets value Tesla as a hot tech company, not a 3rd rate automaker, which is what it actually is.

Cult. It's a cult.

There's a contingent of tech bros that think they're "smart" because they latched on to Tesla and have been riding its nuts through Elon's political stunts without a care in the world. Tesla failing would mean to them that they failed. They can't fail, they're too smart. If they just HODL for a little longer, then he'll get something magical out and validate their decision making. Sunk cost running wild.

[outside1234]

We are in a time when people are in cults. Trump is a cult. Elon is a cult. Tesla is a cult.

Cults do not operate on logic, but almost always result in a mass casualty event of some sort.

[notabee]

It's baked into the foundations of the U.S. While perhaps not a cult as we describe it today, even the first puritans that settled here were considered extremists not welcome in their home countries. For such a young country, we have always had a burgeoning industry in upstart cults, grifts, and religions (but I repeat myself).

[alex1138]

That valuation is sure interesting considering the people killed in crashes from Tesla's self-driving thing

Edit: I love making legitimate points and instantly accruing downvotes from 'Valley VC types. Look yourself in the mirror.

[jlongr]

Oh their self-driving thing...Full* "Self" Driving (supervised)(see notes)(not liable for anything)

[alex1138]

Sorry, I didn't remember what it was called. FSD, I think

[jacquesm]

Tesla benefited from tax payer subsidies.

[WarmWash]

Trust me, I hate Tesla and Elon as much as the next naysayer

But just to keep the story straight

Tesla received ~$3 billion in subsidies.

When Elon exercised his Tesla options in 2021, he paid $11 billion in taxes on it.

By all accounts those subsidies were an incredibly good use of taxpayer money, and similar subsidies should keep being handed out, even if the byproduct is another big troll on twitter.

[jordanb]

Dunno where that $3 billion comes from; tesla made 11 billion in regulatory credits alone: https://insideevs.com/news/767939/tesla-regulatory-credit-11...

[everfrustrated]

If you even read the article you linked, you'd be aware the source of the money there is from other vehicle manufacturers to Tesla not from govt/tax payers.

[whatshisface]

Other vehicle manufactuers are taxpayers...

[DennisP]

So are Tesla's customers but that doesn't mean car sales are subsidies.

[WarmWash]

Perhaps you are confused, the regulatory credits were sold by Tesla to other car makers so they could meet their emissions requirements. That $11 billion came from other automakers, not taxpayers.

[jordanb]

So you're saying Tesla made $3 billion directly from taxpayers and another $11 billion in cash transfers from their competitors required by the government?

[WarmWash]

I'm not saying that, it's strictly true.

Tesla was given $3 billion in government subsidies.

It made $11 billion selling regulatory credits created by government regulation.

I'm not interested in getting bogged down in how actually government regulation is the same thing as subsidy even though the taxpayer doesn't foot the bill (but does collect the tax on the backend of it.) There is a good reason why subsidy and regulation are not the same interchangeable word. I suppose that without glasses of nuance/understanding they blur together and look the same (government action -> money for someone), but lets wear glasses here.

[dpkirchner]

How should we calculate the enormous subsidy they received through high tariffs against their competitors?

[terminalbraid]

> Trust me, I hate Tesla and Elon as much as the next naysayer

But then you go to defend them as if it were something you're obligated to do. I think you demonstrably do not hate Tesla and Elon as much as the next naysayer.

[WarmWash]

No I hate disinformation that makes people on my side look uninformed and stupid.

On a deeper level, I hate bandwagons because they are invariably full of idiotic parrots.

Elon has done a enough demonstrably stupid and bad shit that we don't need to play deception to drum up resistance. Especially when that deception plays on "government subsides in the green sector have been a colossal waste of money".

[IncreasePosts]

I call this the 12 fingered hitler, frequently seen on reddit.

It goes like this:

Person A makes up some unsupported fact about a despised figure. For example, "Hitler had 12 fingers".

Person B comes in and says "I think Hitler just had 10 fingers like normal"

And then person A or some other person responds "holy shit dude, I can't believe you're defending Hitler!"

[WarmWash]

Exactly

And then neo nazis go around telling susceptible people "Look, Hitler's detractors think he had 12 fingers, just look at any picture of him, he clearly only has 10. You're gonna trust people that stupid to be honest about him? To know anything about him?"

Disinformation feels good in the moment, but is immensely damaging overall. Even the people who believed he had 12 fingers will feel betrayed and question everything else when they one day learn he actually had 10.

[andruby]

That's true for a lot of (most?) car manufacturers?

I fully agree that TSLA is madly overpriced as a car company, and too hyped as any other type of company.

[ben_w]

An important question is therefore: why didn't anyone else?

[relaxing]

Of course they did.