[beAbU]

What is it about FSD that results in this valuation though?

If elon builds a time machine and goes to the future to get FSD tech from 100 years from now and rolls it out to all teslas tomorrow, what will change? Will every car driver get rid of their cars and get a tesla? Will that suddenly justify the stupid valuation?

Realistically, I don't think the majority of drivers will care that much. Sure, their sales will go up, but I can't see it going up by that much.

FSD will never be "achieved" suddenly. The tech will incrementally improve every year, across all manufacturers until one day we are manual driving only 1% of the time with FSD doing the rest. Like AGI, there is no moat in FSD. This is the natural outcome of the trajectory that we are on right now, and nothing about tesla is making me believe they will offer anything that other OEMs can't.

No, I think the market is much more cynical than that. Tesla is a meme stock similar to bitcoin or GME. Investors are degenerate gamblers, hoping that it will continue to rise because that's what it does atm, and hoping they won't be the one left behind holding the bag when it crashes one day. It's little more than a voluntary ponzi scheme that most big investors openly buy into knowing full well what's at stake.

[mcv]

Exactly. It's meme stock. There's no rational explanation for this ridiculous valuation.

Tesla has been overvalued for a long time, and not by a bit either; they're worth more than the next several car makers put together, yet sell less cars than any of them. Their high valuation could still be considered defensible when they were the fastest growing car company in the world and the only one selling electric cars. But none of that is true; everybody is selling electric cars now, and BYD is selling more than Tesla, I think. And instead of growing, Tesla is now shrinking in many markets. Even their self driving is not the best.

The share price should have collapsed, yet it remains high. How? It makes no sense to me.

[beAbU]

> It makes no sense to me.

Honestly, that's the easy part. Cynical, degenerate gambling.

[salawat]

>What is it about FSD that results in this valuation though?

Are you willing to accept the ugly answer? Because the point of FSD isn't what they pitch. The replacing human drivers to save lives yada yada... That ain't it. The point is creating a handful of leverage points through which the autonomy of the populace to move wherever they want can be controlled through. Once the tech is the majority driver, people can finally be properly managed as the little work units they are. That's the dark part of the valuation. The power aspect. The ones who own the means to locomote are the ultimate rent collectors. There's simply no arguing that can be done by a populace that can be prevented from showing up to any attempt at collective protest via geofencing. Or if they do show up, can be added to a comprehensive list for participating in disruptive activities.

Capabilities, ladies and gentlemen. We have to assess these things on the ground of what they enable. Delegating transport entirely to a third party necessarily creates a vulnerability of society to manipulation by the ones running the damn thing; and the ones running the damn thing want money, and security for themselves.

[ryandvm]

Why don't all the other automakers wise up and just start promising full self driving "next year" as well?

[beAbU]

Because their stocks aren't memes, their investors are serious, nobody really GAF about self driving and fully autonomous driving isn't actually the "killer app" many think it is.

[ggggffggggg]

How killer would FSD have to be for it to count as the killer app?

I’d pay at least double for a car with FSD. More if the car’s longevity could be established. Is that killer enough? (Real question).

[xnx]

> there is no moat in FSD.

Being a really really hard problem is a moat. Many have tried and given up already: Uber, Cruise, etc.

[beAbU]

There are so, so, so many companies operating in this space right now. You list two that have given up. A quick google brings back at least a dozen operations that appear to be still ongoing.

BMW Personal Pilot, Merc Drive Pilot, and Honda Sensing Elite are Level 3 automation tech you can buy right now. Tesla is still at level 2!!

Whether Tesla is going to be the first to achieve true autonomy or not is a toss-up. And and regardless of who achieves it, the rest will be very very short on their heels.

[Kirby64]

> BMW Personal Pilot, Merc Drive Pilot, and Honda Sensing Elite are Level 3 automation tech you can buy right now. Tesla is still at level 2!!

You need to put about 10 asterisks on those. MB Drive Pilot has been discontinued due to "low demand and high cost", and those other 2 systems appear to have substantial restrictions. Meanwhile, FSD today "works" on pretty much any road or highway. I can easily see certain folks see that as far ahead of competitors, since it physically can do more in more places and operate in more conditions.