1. Butterfly wheel. Illegal. 2. Not having side mirrors. Illegal. 3. Unbreakable windows. Maybe not illegal, but pretty dangerous. Well, it will come with an emergency escape ball though. . . 4. Profit. Well, that is also illegal in Elonland.
The truck looks like a total piece of sh*t. Like they threw something together with plywood and cardboard. I'm waiting for the day when Elon announces that the entire TSLA adventure was just him trolling our society and capital markets. Market cap down to $60 billion (lol) on the reveal. The times we live in...
Discounted cash flow analysis of a robotaxi company are bullish for the stock. Each robotaxi makes $30,000 (source tesla autonomy day) a year times 1 million vehicles equals $30bn profit times 20 pe equals $1.2 trillion market cap. The model 3 leases say that the vehicles cannot be purchased at the end of the lease unlike model s and model x so they are coming back to the company to be used as robotaxis. The full self driving software is going into beta by the end of the year.
I'd give this scenario about a 1 in 300 chance of being realized, so your proper present value is more like $4 billion.
We are realistically at least a decade away from fully autonomous vehicles, and that's being generous. There are many experts that speculate its actually going to be much longer. And Elon's "million vehicles".... well first we'll need every city to have a 100% reliable 100% of the time 5G build-out. (Its that "100% of the time" thing that bothers me.) But say they figure that out.... every major player is in the game now. Ford and Volkswagen for example. Do you really think Tesla will be the only one selling these things? Elon was (is) ahead of his time, but there is no way the software required for this can or will remain proprietary, there will be a national standard set; there's no way there can't be. These cars will all have to talk to each other... and that also includes cars that will still have drivers. And if there's no longer that barrier to entry, meaning all the big players will be using the same software.... if the market is for a million vehicles.... you can bet Ford/VW and all the rest will be churning out the lions share. That trillion dollar marketcap might be a little optimistic. jmho.
I don't see any value in watching a BS-laden marketing show. To burst your bubble by just one avenue: assuming FSD technology does come to fruition sometime soon, and assuming the legal, regulatory, PR/social etc. hurdles to widespread robotaxi operation are overcome, the vehicles certainly won't be generating anywhere near a 100% per annum ROI if even one competitor exists - just look at Uber and Lyft. Lots of companies are working in the autonomy space, and have been for years. I don't believe for one second that TSLA is ahead of any of them, or even on par. TSLA is a lone minnow with a shoestring budget competing against numerous huge enterprises with many multiples of its resources, who are these days forming massive cross-industry alliances/partnerships to try advance the technology on numerous fronts, and tackle what is obviously a tremendous industrial challenge. On top of that, Elon's abrasiveness, personality cult, habitual lying and bullshitting etc. has the predictable effect of driving away talent while leaving the staff ranks full of yes-men and third-tier players promoted above their ability. It also makes it difficult for the company to quickly abandon flawed courses of action. This the exact opposite of what you need to push the frontiers on a difficult, risky, cutting-edge technology and business strategy. Given that the CFO is now a 34-year-old sycophant, there's also a huge risk of accounting fraud collapsing the whole thing. I mean... just look at the sh*tshow of the truck reveal. Were the designers, engineers etc. incompetent, was everybody too afraid to tell Elon that his ideas sucked, or was it a bit of both?