Then I learned that Musk's incentive pay has a 10 million full self-driving subscription hurdle, and it all made sense.

Realistically, he should have put someone else in charge after the launch of the Model 3 to develop the company further, but I don't think his ego allows it.

Tesla also cannot justify valuations based on automotive sales/subscriptions alone - they were always going to have to pivot.

They're in a tight spot and they need to do something drastic.

- Waymo is generating less than 150m in 2025.

- Consumer robotics is an absolute unknown.

How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation.

It's not like Tesla is failing, they have $40 billion cash at hand, more than many auto company's net worth,it's that people want to believe that Tesla is failing. I hope Tesla succeeds, with or without Musk.

People still buy Teslas. But in my circle, most have bought other EVs (and not just because of Elon). Teslas are no longer the obvious superior choice.

On the whole, it's a great car, it really is. They've pretty much nailed the fundamentals. It's opinionated, not unlike Apple, but if the opinions work for you you'll enjoy the car.

But there are shortcomings, and they are jarring. The parking sensors basically don't work at all due to being vision only - and apparently can't be made to work properly. The lane change and reverse warnings are just crap and may as well not be there. My previous car implemented these to perfection, but I cannot trust the Tesla. The autopilot is a gimmick that offers you nothing but increased risk - and there's no way in hell I'd trust FSD for car that can't accurately detect the distance of my house when parking. The big touchscreen is great for passengers, but outright dangerous for drivers.

Having said all that, it seems strong emotions around Musk and Tesla cause people to want Tesla to fail. They want the car to be bad. There is so much motivated reasoning around this brand that it's hard to take any article like the above, or half the comments in this thread, seriously.

I have my doubts their robots will be anything more than a gimmick for rich people.

  Car revenue: -11%
  operating margin: 3.86%
  Free cash flow -30% 

With telsa it was robotaxis, and when that failed to materialize, humanoid robots (fucking LOL).

SpaceX is an even more insane example. They are eyeing an IPO at a 1.5 trillion valuation. And yet the market for satellite launches is simply not that big. (What would you do with a satellite, if I gifted you one for free?). Estimates have SpaceX doing about $3B in annual earnings, which would give them a 500x earnings multiple at a 1.5T valuation (Apple: 35).

And so SpaceX/Elon had to invent the absolutely idiotic idea of "data centers in space" to sell some future vision of tens of thousands of launches per year.

He keeps upping the ante (and the ridiculousness of the vision), and so far investors keep funding it.

Me? I've realized that this madness is entirely "opt-in" and I choose to simply...not opt-in.

Tesla is committing suicide here by eliminating the best sedan ever and by committing to an idea (taxis) that mainly serve the low end market.

Message to Musk: people like to own things. Only the low end segment don't mind sharing their means of transportation. High end won't share. Biggest profits in tech are in the high end market as Apple and Samsung have repeatedly shown.

I mean that may be the case, but I get the sense that Tesla's primary goal at the moment is creating cheap robotaxi ready vehicles, and S and X don't really fit well with that. Partly because of cost, but also because I suspect it's harder to build FSD for multiple different vehicles so both models are just a distraction right now.

I'm not saying this article is wrong, but it seems like it may make sense that they focus on Y, 3, robotaxis and future projects like optimus.

I don't have strong opinions either way on Musk, but his ability to see future tech trends before others has historically been quite impressive. Personally I think the idea that Tesla would be better off behaving like every other car company betting on small iterative improvements to the current line up is really quite silly. It's going to be extremely difficult to compete with China without protectionist policies. Tesla probably should be looking to the next thing if they want to survive.

A robot that can only walk around my house is still useless. A robot that can wheel or track or even park in front of my dryer and fold laundry would be incredible. Yet every demo is Robot Jumps And Dances, not Robot Does Something Useful.

My theory is that bipedal motion is the "easy" problem, and fine motor control is the hard problem. That makes me bearish on Optimus: A car with questionable full self driving is still a useful car. A robot with questionable fine motor control is going to break every dish in the house.

"If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will." -Steve Jobs

Also if they feel self driving is sufficient, why would they bother with inferior stuff

What I'm wondering at this point is why the investors in Tesla are still riding this crazy train. Blaming simple market manipulation seems far fetched. Mass hysteria and delusional beliefs are common enough in the stock market but reality eventually sets in and this bubble has been inflating for a long time. The people who lose the most are going to be the small investors- the really ruthless hedge fund bros will probably walk away unscathed.

It's amazing after 20 years of the same MO, people still don't understand how Tesla/SpaceX operate and succeed. It's like deleting millions of lines of code from a code base. It improves not just performance of the organization, but maintenance as well. The S/X were outsized tech debt on every facet of the business and now they're gone. 100% the right move and very few people understand it.

I'm done listening to pundits doubt Elon. I haven't seen Wall Street forecast future economic and technological trends well at all. Elon has created an EV market, caught falling rocket boosters, created the leading AI "nonprofit", and launched a worldwide satellite internet service, mostly in the face of rent seeking financial professionals and hacker news SSEs calling him dumb. I'm not sure what else a man needs to do to prove he deserves a little deference in his strategic decisions.

What I don't understand is why are the Tesla shareholders accepting his bullshit?

Actually I think this new directions demonstrates how great decision making they have at Tesla. Today and even more in the future they have no way of competing with the Chinese manufacturers. It is simply physically not possible.

So they are rightfully pivoting and moving away from the race to the bottom that is ensuing.

They won’t make 25k cars either. Very little margin on that.

Pivoting to consumer robots? Isn’t that cool?

Additionally, to take another step toward AGI, you need vast amounts of real-world data. Optimus can provide that, much like Tesla cars have for driving data.

Now he's going all in on self driving. It's obvious that self driving turns personal transportation into a service business. So that's where he's going. Yeah, if you don't believe in self driving then it's suicide. But if you do, it's the only thing that makes sense.