Tho both alphabet and apple are working on it as well 
Tesla has an advantage now. Of course, competition isn’t sleeping.
Oh man, I really haven’t done my homework. Musk actually gave a whole presentation with actual expected costs per mile. He expects the total cost to be $0.18 per mile.
In the video below, the man suggests that the robotaxis could operate at a price of $0.50 per mile, which would still be much cheaper than Uber ($2 per mile).
The numbers that I’m talking about ($0.06 cost for owner, $0.20 for the customer) could be achieved in 10 years, when the robotaxi market saturates. The man says that at this price point mass transit makes no sense, at least for a large part of the population. I’m not sure how we would solve traffic jams, but I guess that where the Boring Company comes in 
Yep, gorgeous! Made lots on this stocks just from set-and-forget limit orders whenever below 272… I’m pretty lazy, buying needs to fit any mood 
If you guys are interested in Tesla then buy Tesla stocks. If you guys are interested in EV’s, then you should consider NIO as a serious option! They are putting in the work and having a serious growth forecast. The big advantage of NIO, is that they offer a battery swap system, it take like 5’ to change you battery while you’re enjoying a coffee, and you are ready to drive again.
Here a video of the EV’s april sales in China from 7’30"
And here is the NIO website.
I’m not doing any advertising or so for NIO, just talking about a company who try to watch Tesla right in the eyes in China.
Personally, I think battery replacement system makes little sense. Large improvements are being made regarding capacity and charging speed. Just wait until Tesla battery day. Why rely on some expensive infrastructure to replace your battery, if soon you will be able to charge the battery in 15-20 minutes? If you’re on a long trip, it even makes sense that you take a pause, buy coffee, get a snack, stretch your legs. If you’re not on a long trip, just charge at home.
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Do you know if it is related to NIU ? NIU produces E-scooters.
Honestly, i have no clue about that! But i don’t think so…
I’m confident I won’t be able to convince you @Bojack of anything, but I’d like to add my perspective, which is the polar opposite of yours.
I believe the only genius Elon Musk possesses is in marketing. If you’ll ever have the chance to hear him speak of an area in which you specialise, you’ll be able to tell he doesn’t really have a deep understanding of things. The recent fiasco with him downplaying covid and playing the epidemiologist was a glimpse into that.
Regarding Tesla, I am much more bearish than @Julianek is. Here’s a few more datapoints to support my viewpoint:
- Tesla is heavily and constantly accessing the capital markets. In the past 5 years, the the number of shares outstanding has gone up by 50%. If you believe at some point this company will be worth 1T$ (I don’t), you should expect that value to be divided between a lot more shares. The most recent equity raise was in Q1, and even bullish analysts expect another one this year.
- What pushed Tesla into profitability in the past few quarters were the sales of Reg Credits. This is in effect a subsidy that ICE manufacturers pay directly to Tesla. This is a 100% margin business which will completely disappear in 1 or 2 years, as other EVs come to market. In Q1, without the credits, Tesla would have lost ~$340M (compared to actual recorded profits of ~$16M).
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You really think so little of me? 
(joke)
Sure, I agree with you. Even if today Tesla is worth $150 billion and in 2030 it will cost $1 trillion, it doesn’t mean the share price will increase 7x. A lot of that growth will have to come from issuing of new shares. But even if they put all that capital into robotaxis, it could still make 10-15% annual return.
Tesla is investing heavily in gigafactories, superchargers & R&D, so I would not expect them to be profitable just yet.
Finally, Musk may be a weird guy, he may be way off in fields that are not his area of expertise, but this does not prove that he sucks at carmaking or rocket science. Can you really dismiss the advancements that his companies made in the last years?
Btw just today I read an article about Novak Djokovic. The guy is #1 tennis player, but he is also bonkers. Yet another example that you can be a genius and an idiot at the same time.
Can you really dismiss the advancements that his companies made in the last years?
Actually, I believe I can dismiss a lot of them as pumps with little to back them. Musk is very good at that, at making you believe everything he’s doing is Giga. Let’s ignore his other companies and focus on Tesla.
I believe we’re in agreement when I say that the most important aspect in the Tesla vision is achieving L5 self driving. I posit that compared to the other players in this market, Tesla is actually dead last when it comes to autopilot tech. I believe only the first (and maybe the second player) to reach L5 automation in driverless technology will profit off of it, and Waymo is leaps and bounds ahead of Tesla. There’s no comparison.
Here’s the 2020 California automated vehicle report: https://venturebeat.com/2020/02/26/california-dmv-releases-latest-batch-of-autonomous-vehicle-disengagement-reports/
Waymo reports 1 autopilot disengagement (meaning unsure what to do, revert control to driver) once ever 13000 miles!
Tesla? 12 miles.
The truth is cameras are insufficient. Musk’s talk about how driving Tesla’s trains their neural net is just technobabble, every respectable AI specialist agrees that via cameras they can only ever reach a local maximum in performance which is very far off of Level 5.
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You misread what they wrote. Tesla only covered 12 miles on autopilot in 2019.
I already begin to see what your logic is. I also wonder who are these respectable AI specialists that you speak of. Humans only have two cameras and yet they are able to do the job. So why would AI need extra senses?
Tesla collects valuable input from their cars all the time have have orders of magnitude more data than Waymo. The customers driving their cars help to train the AI. Waymo is restricted to the roads that they have mapped down to the millimeter.
The AI in Tesla behaves more like a human. Just check their latest video on recognizing partially covered stop signs or telling what is road and what isn’t. Waymo will need to map the whole World and constantly update their database, whereas Tesla, once ready, will be driveable everywhere.
@Bojack I don’t know where you got the idea that Waymo needs a map of the world for it to function. It does it in real time, just like everyone else. Only better.
Tesla collects valuable input from their cars all the time have have orders of magnitude more data than Waymo.
First of all, that might be false. Measurements of how much data is flowing out of Teslas were taken by third parties, and it was only enough to cover some frames here and there.
Regardless, the point is moot. Quantity of data is relevant up to a point. Quality of data is way, way more important, ask any AI guy. Waymo is actually registering the entire data they encounter, which has camera recordings + full depth understanding thanks to the Lidar sensor.
I also wonder who are these respectable AI specialists that you speak of.
Just last week the head of AI at Facebook publicly said that Musk has no idea what he’s talking about when it comes to AI.
I will leave you at this: if you’re seriously considering putting that much of your hard earned money in this company, go find some AI specialists working on this problem (outside of Tesla) on Linkedin. Ask them their opinion. You’ll learn a lot more than from promotional videos the Tesla AI team puts out.
Good luck!
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Well, I did create this thread in expectation of getting negative advice to ward me off. And it has worked, I’m definitely not as enthusiastic anymore.
By the way, as we speak, Musk has tweeted that the self driving package will go up in price by $1000 and he puts the value of full self driving at $100’000.
Either you’re wrong or he’s the biggest bullshitter of all time. Either way we will have fun watching it. Let me grab my popcorn 
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By the way, I feel uplifted when Elon does not shy away from criticism and provides constructive counter arguments.
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Either you’re wrong or he’s the biggest bullshitter of all time.
Indeed, those are the two options.
Musk has tweeted that the self driving package will go up in price by $1000.
Personally I think he’s trying to FOMO people into buying it with this narrative of prices going up, because as is right now the product does not provide anywhere near that kind of value (What is it priced at now, $7k?). Also, how soon in the future does it have to be ready? Do you believe the next year nonsense? Because if it takes 5 or 10 years for it to be anything resembling self-driving, you’ll have to buy it again then, because the FSD is purchased with the car, it doesn’t stay with you for the next car. 
Frankly I think it’s a disgrace that the regulators even allow him to sell a product which doesn’t exist as marketed. But I’ve lost hope of the regulators doing any kind of regulating (remember the funding secured BS?), they don’t want to upset the stock prices, that would be bad for our feelings.
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I think it’s a disgrace when anyone tries to step in between the seller and buyer. Inform, not enforce.
Great car, questionable company (finances). I don’t know much about the man himself, but I wouldn’t let his media portrait guide my investment in one of his companies.
In fact, I was considering going short on TSLA, but in time remembered whether I want to be a trader or an investor.
TSLA is for traders, not for investors. Pick your place. 
I’d suggest reading up:
- Mr. Valuation professor: http://aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2020/01/an-ode-to-luck-revisiting-my-tesla.html
- SeekingAlpha on TSLA: https://seekingalpha.com/symbol/TSLA?s=tsla®ular_articles (Montana Skeptic is my favorite)
- from Seeking
Apologies if that’s all been mentioned before, the thread looked kind of too long for me to read up on. 
You could argue that individual stocks are always for traders, at least in our net worth regions.