3 ms·

You must have missed part of the huge hype bubble when Musk claimed that Teslas with FSD would be "appreciating assets" because owners would be able to rent the

You must have missed part of the huge hype bubble when Musk claimed that Teslas with FSD would be "appreciating assets" because owners would be able to rent them out as robotaxis when not using them. He said they should be worth up to $200k because of that, and also this p2p robotaxi fleet would make Uber and all taxis obsolete. If FSD was actually full self-driving, then the idea makes a lot of sense. Yes, Tesla customers and investors believed it because of the personality cult of Musk, but there was an actual (albeit wrong and likely deceptive) business proposition that gave investors a reason to value it as being worth more than all the other auto makers put together. That proposition depended entirely on FSD being only X years away and that Tesla would produce the best FSD product. https://electrek.co/2019/07/16/tesla-cars-worth-100k-200k-full-self-driving-package-elon-musk/ https://electrek.co/2019/07/16/tesla-cars-worth-100k-200k-fu...

AlexandrB 4y ago
> You must have missed part of the huge hype bubble when Musk claimed that Teslas with FSD would be "appreciating assets" because owners would be able to rent them out as robotaxis when not using them. If Musk actually believed this it was irresponsible of him to sell any cars at all since holding onto them would have yielded a better return for investors/stockholders.
- bluGill 4y ago
  Probably not actually. If you rent your car you, you also need to clean it. Musk/Tesla isn't setup to do that, and the overhead of getting setup for that type of operation means that while is a profitable small business idea it may not work out for a large company. While there is a business in that space to be had, I'm not convinced it is very big.
- Kirby64 4y ago
  That was the rationale for why they planned on not actually allowing leases of the Model 3 to buy out their lease at the end. Since robotaxi was right around the corner... Not sure what ever happened there, but I think Tesla managed to hold firm on that stance and won by luck since the used market bubble happened...
- humanistbot 4y ago
  > If Musk actually believed this it was irresponsible of him to sell any cars at all since holding onto them would have yielded a better return for investors/stockholders. When Musk announced this, he said they were still selling Teslas because they needed just a bit more real-world data to 'complete' FSD.

AlexandrB 4y ago

> You must have missed part of the huge hype bubble when Musk claimed that Teslas with FSD would be "appreciating assets" because owners would be able to rent them out as robotaxis when not using them. If Musk actually believed this it was irresponsible of him to sell any cars at all since holding onto them would have yielded a better return for investors/stockholders.

bluGill 4y ago
Probably not actually. If you rent your car you, you also need to clean it. Musk/Tesla isn't setup to do that, and the overhead of getting setup for that type of operation means that while is a profitable small business idea it may not work out for a large company. While there is a business in that space to be had, I'm not convinced it is very big.
Kirby64 4y ago
That was the rationale for why they planned on not actually allowing leases of the Model 3 to buy out their lease at the end. Since robotaxi was right around the corner... Not sure what ever happened there, but I think Tesla managed to hold firm on that stance and won by luck since the used market bubble happened...
humanistbot 4y ago
> If Musk actually believed this it was irresponsible of him to sell any cars at all since holding onto them would have yielded a better return for investors/stockholders. When Musk announced this, he said they were still selling Teslas because they needed just a bit more real-world data to 'complete' FSD.