Unaudited? I mean, sure, BMW could have been lying in a corporate press release about their financial position, its not unheard of for corporations in general, but come on, Musk has fairly famously settled out of court with $20m (and same again for Tesla) fines and forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman because he made false statements that influence share prices — "throwing stones in glass houses" comes to mind.
Have any of the things you're writing about Tesla doing, been audited?
> It is good enough that a single person cannot drive long enough to know if it's improving or not.
That's why we use statistics, not anecdotes.
The statistics that are available say the Tesla AI is worse, in general over roads and conditions, as compared to Waymo's AI.
On the topic of auditing, it's a shame the Tesla statistics are crowdsourced and not an audited first-party account, but unless something's changed recently, Tesla doesn't seem to release any more than the legal minimum of information here.
> Major events to look out for in the near future are the removal of safety drivers in Austin, the expansion of the robotaxi service to 8 cities,
Even if those happen on schedule, they'll still be behind.
> the commissioning of the "unboxed" cyber cab production line, […] and the start of the Semi truck manufacturing line.
While these would be relevant if the share price was sane, the relevance is that their absence or delay would suggest something catastrophically wrong rather than that their successful opening is noteworthy — new model production lines are table stakes for a traditional car company with P/E in the 5-10 range, not something "coming soon" that justifies a P/E close to 300.
That the Semi is already massively delayed ought to suggest a lower P/E ratio than a normal company, not a higher one.
> the demo of Optimus V3,
Disagree: Everything I've seen says that next year's V3 will still be a prototype. Meanwhile, competitors are already shipping.
And again, power envelope means a 5-10 year gap in capability between what AI can run on-device in a car vs. an android.
> FSD V14.3,
People have been saying this about different FSD version numbers for years now.
You yourself are stating that the current version "is good enough that a single person cannot drive long enough to know if it's improving or not", and seem to have missed that you were replying to "what statistics can be found in public information". So: why do you think this point release is important? Do you accept that there's statistics that show room for improvement, or is this just a number-go-up applause light?
> All these milestones are slated to occur in the next 12 months. They will change the risk weighting on the stock one way or the other.
Will they, though? The only thing that seems to have had any effect at all in the last few years were widespread protests against Musk personally and by extension Tesla.
I used to believe Tesla's timelines. I moved country and figured I could do OK without transferring my driving license because if I found I needed a car they'd be self-driving "real soon now" — that was 2018, and at some point you have to learn to stop trusting the guy when he spends a decade repeatedly saying his vision is only 6-12 months away from the point at which he speaks.
The argument that Tesla sucks because they haven't delivered on their promises is kinda illogical. Tesla is closer to a viable robotaxi, and grid scale energy arbitrage business than they ever have been and the share price reflects it.
With a P/E ~250+ Tesla should be an automatic short if your analysis is correct. I have $2 million long in the company. In 2035 it will be >$8 million. In 2035 Waymo will be a footnote.
But obviously, Musk's diminishing credibility isn't seen as a problem by investors because if it was he'd be kicked out.
That aside:
> For instance no car company outside of China except Tesla makes a profit on EV sales
BMW Group says otherwise: https://www.bmwgroup.com/content/dam/grpw/websites/bmwgroup_...
(And yes, BMW do have an autopilot, who knows if they'll hit their schedule, but all they have to do to beat Musk with delivering this is not slip as much as him, and he slips a lot in a way that only looks good when the comparison is US government space contractors: https://daxstreet.com/news/228484/bmw-sets-sights-on-level-4...)
Lots of the EU companies don't say much about separate profitability of ICE vs. EV, or if they do I couldn't find it.
But even then, so what if Tesla was the only non-Chinese EV company making a profit? Those Chinese EVs are still causing trouble for the old manufacturing bases in the US and Europe even though the Chinese cars have huge tariffs.
Tesla's prices only work against traditional manufacturers, and American ones at that (here in Europe, we're not big on Ford or General Motors either, lots of European EVs are getting nice and cheap way ahead of Musk actually delivering anything for $20k) — Tesla don't get to keep a big margin when Wuling or BYD comes along and gives Americans (or indeed anyone else) an EV that's $18k (/€18k/£18k) despite tariffs.
> Currently Waymo is well above $2per mile and has no clear path to 30cents.
Neither does Tesla. Like I said, Tesla are at least 6 years behind. Tesla's still got humans behind the wheel, and what statistics can be found in public information they have a high rate of manual intervention compared to Waymo.
Unless something has changed recently, Tesla's (so-called, and much criticised for the name) "Full Self-Driving" is SAE Level 2, whereas Waymo was already testing Level 4 autonomy back in 2017. (That's 8 years, not 6, I'm being generous even just by allowing Tesla to claim the current Tesla Robotaxi to count as an equivalent of the first commercial Waymo Robotaxi service, given the Waymo commercial service started several years after a few very impressive public demonstrations which, unlike Musk's demonstrations, have yet to be tainted by lawsuits revealing the involvement of metaphorical smoke and mirrors).
I own a hw3 Tesla with FSD. It regularly drives me for over an hour without intervention. It is good enough that a single person cannot drive long enough to know if it's improving or not. I can imagine if you're in Europe you might not understand the difference between different ADAS offerings because FSD is not allowed to operate in the EU.
Reasonable people can disagree on Tesla's ability to execute on their plans. I consider the current 10-20% chance reflected in the stock price today to be accurate. I continually re-evaluate this probability. Major events to look out for in the near future are the removal of safety drivers in Austin, the expansion of the robotaxi service to 8 cities, the commissioning of the "unboxed" cyber cab production line, the demo of Optimus V3, FSD V14.3, and the start of the Semi truck manufacturing line. All these milestones are slated to occur in the next 12 months. They will change the risk weighting on the stock one way or the other.
For me, it's not that FSD will never work, it's that they're obviously at least 6 years behind Waymo.
For humanoid robots, again, it's not that it will never work, it's that not only is there plenty of competition that's already beating Tesla to the market for the "mostly remote controlled with a bit of automation" model (which is useful, I don't want to undersell that), but also that there will be at least a 5-10 year gap between the AI hardware necessary for a level-5 self driving car fitting in the power envelope of a car, and the hardware fitting in the power envelope of a humanoid robot that can get into a car and drive it (and that a fully autonomous humanoid robot is harder than level-5 self driving).
Energy? Again with the competition: they're one of the worst current brands in the world market — it's not the idea's wrong, it's just that they're the Blockbuster to a dozen would-be Netflixes.
Even with cars, competition from cheaper better models from China and Europe would already be biting Tesla's global sales even if Musk was not angering a significant fraction of what used to be Tesla's core market (upper-middle-class environmentalists).
Waymo cars are ~$200k each the new robocab will be closer to ~$20k to produce. These business advantages are why the market has some degree of faith that Tesla will out compete companies like waymo in the quest for .30cents per mile costs. Currently Waymo is well above $2per mile and has no clear path to 30cents. Getting to 30 cents is the only way to unlock the trillion dollar opportunity, otherwise you're just recreating Uber.
These are the types of considerations that make Tesla attractive to risk tolerant investors.
Just the robotaxi business alone could be worth hundreds of billions a year in avoided insurance costs and save the average Western family about $5k in transportation costs annually. If it works. Most people don't think it will, but most people thought Amazon wouldn't work either.
All with their own patent situation, of course.
Hopefully this patent SNAFU makes up for 1% of that monumental screw job.
I am not elderly, do not DUI, drive tired, or touch my phone while driving. I put myself in a different risk pool by my behavior.
I step into a Tesla FSD car, I am in the same risk pool as everyone else in one when it decides to run 1% of red lights or whatever other stupid bug in the next release.
The unsupervised "robotaxi" uses a different NN. It doesn't behave the same way as FSD.
No well trained journalist would ever write a story like this without verifying the information in redundant ways. If they didn't do that then they probably already know it's fake and could literally write anything they wanted to support the narrative.
A) Well trained journalists and editors are not stupid. B) If they write something false they already know it's false 99% of the time and are doing it for other reasons.
In light of A + B it makes no sense to rely on what is written in the article to support the idea that it is false or undersourced.