[awesome_dude]

I know there's a risk when Musk's name comes up that everyone takes "all against" or "all for" approach - very polarising figure.

But I see a lot of that announcement, and the others someone else pointed to as his "aspirational, but ultimately never going to happen" goals - whether he believes the claims are achievable, or not, he says these things to energise people to working/paying for him to try

It costs him little to nothing to say, and other people's time, effort, and capital to try (and succeed/fail)

Tesla is falling to pieces now, and SpaceX is getting loaded up with completely unrelated projects (xAI) in order to try and make it look saleable (I guess) - it's very difficult to see the Mars announcement as anything but hype.

[JumpCrisscross]

> difficult to see the Mars announcement as anything but hype

Oh yeah, the announcement is hype. But there is actual work underneath it making real progress in science and engineering that moves us closer to Mars. Some of that, moreover, is work that has limited appeal outside a Martian context.

[fragmede]

The real thing is that the moon is a better stepping stone, but Bezos already claimed it so Musk had to out do him, which is why he's shooting for Mars.

[JumpCrisscross]

> the moon is a better stepping stone, but Bezos already claimed it so Musk had to out do him, which is why he's shooting for Mars

They were contemporaenous. Musk was trying to send stuff to Mars in 2001 [1]. Bezos started Blue Origin in 2000 before any Moon goals had been made concrete or public. I wouldn't say either of their goals really referenced each other until after the financial crisis (that is, after they were both comfortably billionaires with launch-vehicle programs).

[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-elon-musk-spacex/

[usefulcat]

> It costs him little to nothing to say,

That all depends on how much he values his credibility, I think..

But to be fair, for someone as good at self promotion as he is, I can believe that the value of the hype could be greater than the cost in credibility.

[vardump]

> Tesla is falling to pieces now

Did I miss something?

[stickfigure]

Year over year sales are declining. Stratospheric stock price is propped up by promise of selling humanoid robots, a technology (and market) which are unproven.

I would not invest.

[scottyah]

That's a no, it's business as usual except they have massive cash reserves.

[rubyn00bie]

Having approximately $44 billion in cash on hand is not a massive cash reserve for any company with the market cap of Tesla ($1.3 trillion). Even less so when you realize how capital intensive its current car and non-existent robot business is… The entire EV market is risky right now for margin compression as Chinese EV manufacturers are really pulling ahead. It’s pretty wild to see just how far they’ve progressed while the west mostly does nothing. Even Tesla hasn’t provided any real innovation in years in regards to their core business. And from what I can tell, they’re pretty much outright ignoring their auxiliary businesses.

If Optimus fails to impress, and gain traction, I’d seriously expect Tesla to end up a subsidiary of SpaceX within the next ten years as Elon tries to protect up his net worth.

[billti]

That's why I think the Optimus thing might make sense from a 'market cap' perspective. Tesla is great at innovation and ramping global manufacturing for new tech. Ten years ago, that was EVs. But now EVs are becoming a commodity and every other car company is catching up.

I do think 'self driving' is still their 'moat' when it comes to EVs. I use it every day, and nothing else comes close. But other than that, building EVs is becoming a cut-throat slim-margin business. I don't think that's where Elon, or Tesla employees, want to spend their energy.

[stickfigure]

When Tesla was overpromising self-driving cars, the thing they sold was still a pretty nice car. Even without the magical features, customers were still satisfied with the product.

Now imagine you're selling robots. If the robot "disengages" and breaks 10% of your plates while emptying the dishwasher, you're going to be pissed. There's no fallback to manual mode. It has to work 100% of the time out the gate.

Based on past history, I don't think Tesla has an engineering culture capable of hitting a home run with this kind of frontier technology out of the gate. So they either delay it until it's ready or they launch it prematurely, in which case everyone mocks it and the dream crashes (along with the stock price).

[ben_w]

Even optimistically (no pun intended), I don't see Optimus justifying the Tesla share price.

There's plenty of other companies making robots. Robots can either be controlled by AI or by humans. In the case of humans, there's no moat because everyone can do that. In the case of AI, it can either be on device or on a server, but we're already hitting power supply concerns for data centres, rising prices and supply issues for the components for even local servers, and the historical timeline over which hardware and algorithms have become more energy efficient (and the available power envelope) suggests that on-device AI sufficient for an Optimus to get into a non-self-driving car and drive it at some competence score* happens around a decade after that competence is reached by self-driving cars.

It doesn't even matter if your perception on the relative ranking of different self-drive systems is right or wrong, we're still not yet seeing Tesla vehicles do as Musk said in January 2016:

  I think that within two years, you'll be able to summon your car from across the country. It will meet you wherever your phone is

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

* Any competence score, i.e. 2016 self-drive quality is likely already doable.

[awesome_dude]

> Ten years ago, that was EVs. But now EVs are becoming a commodity and every other car company is catching up.

Kind of yes, the competition, especially from China, is catching up, and exceeding Tesla's offers.

Kind of no - EVs were around for a very long time before Tesla, Tesla's sales pitch (at one point) was that it was a software company not a car company.

On that front - almost every vehicle manufacturer has caught up, and Tesla is still stuck /promising/ a self driving car, but still not delivering.

The Twitter acquisition is widely seen as the marking point where Musk lost his appeal - something that was not smart because, coupled with his foray into politics was an attack on his core market - middle class left of centre people who were buying for the environment.. etc

He poisoned his brand, and Tesla's too (because the two brands, his and Tesla's, were so intertwined)

He lost the impetus in European markets, leaving a dying (for him) US market, and Asia (which is largely interested in Chinese made vehicles).

My Anecdata: In Australia, where I am, it used to be Tesla's were fairly common, now, I think I've seen two in the last week, compared to maybe a dozen BYD (and I am in a middle class suburb)

[lotsofpulp]

> It’s pretty wild to see just how far they’ve progressed while the west mostly does nothing.

The “west” came up with Tesla and Rivian, and their cars are on the road. And the US tariffed chinese EVs. What else can be done to combat China’s lower priced labor and possibly more lax environmental regulations?

[rubyn00bie]

The west needs to combat it by using subsidies and regulations to “spray and pray,” to a large degree. Just as China has… The problem with the occident, at the moment, is that corporations use the incentives to raise margins and not to innovate.

In the US at least we’re gearing up for massive failure in the automotive industry solely because we’re avoiding competition. Yes, there will be margin compression, but without it domestic businesses become inefficient. It’s going to be “80s/90s Detroit” all over again with bigger bailouts because at some point it’ll be too politically popular to reduce prices. When that happens the public will be the ones footing the bill.

And all that says nothing of the fact cheap labor alone doesn’t make a better car. But the fact China can both make a better car (EV) and with lower labor costs really shows how dependent US automakers are on market inefficiencies. The US, and Europe, were massively ahead in quality but that lead been destroyed.

I’m not a fan of capitalism, but if the US is going to sell it and preach it— we might as fucking well embrace it. Otherwise we’re just subsidizing the rich without rhyme or reason (other than blatant corruption and exploitation). The cost of those subsidies will be stagnation, and the outright capitulation of quality long term.

[hcurtiss]

Tesla is falling to pieces?

https://stocks.apple.com/symbol/TSLA