5 ms·

I think if Tesla accepted they are a car company rather than a tech/AI/robot/storage one and concentrated on building better cars at the increasing scale needed

I think if Tesla accepted they are a car company rather than a tech/AI/robot/storage one and concentrated on building better cars at the increasing scale needed to make them more attractive to buyers the company would do a lot better. One idea - put the AI tech in a new company (with a contract to provide Tesla with FSD if they ever develop it), so Musk can play with AGI and androids on his day off and give him half the shares if Tesla sales increase.

goethes_kind 3y ago
I disagree completely. Once you commit to a very well understood market like consumer vehicles, your growth potential is going to be much more grounded in reality, which means TSLA goes down, which means Tesla has less to work with. Secondly that is really not where their strength lies. Car manufacturing is a fairly competitive market so any innovations they can came up with will only result in a very temporary lead. Plus all the talent they recruited would be wasted if they were just building slightly up market EVs. I could see Tesla branching out in many sectors and become something like the new Samsung/Siemens/Mitsubishi...etc.
- gizajob 3y ago
  Yeah Tesla totally doesn’t need to spin off its AI and let Musk become further distracted. It’s fine to be dabbling in all these things because it’s actually a cohesive vision that’ll come together eventually. Like he said on the call yesterday, the cars are just robots with wheels, and the robots without wheels are coming soon. Would just be good to have more focus from Elon, and more growth in general which seems like it will be coming lest their competitors get the better of them.
  - dartos 3y ago
    > coming soon That’s Tesla’s favorite release date. “Soon” or “next year”
    - input_sh 3y ago
      I think their favourite release date is by far "by the end of next year".
  - itsoktocry 3y ago
    >Like he said on the call yesterday, the cars are just robots with wheels Yes, Elon says that. What do your eyes tell you? My tell me they are just cars.
    - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
      Kind of like how in 2021 Elon was telling the public on earnings calls that Level 5 FSD would be ready within a year, while the person in charge of Autopilot software and other executives were telling regulators that wasn’t possible. Three years later…
  - nprateem 3y ago
    > the cars are just robots with wheels, and the robots without wheels Will their cars also be able to do the washing up and their robots take me and the kids camping for a weekend?
    - gizajob 3y ago
      No, their robots will.
      - nprateem 3y ago
        So their cars aren't just robots on wheels after all. Who knew?
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >I could see Tesla branching out in many sectors and become something like the new Samsung/Siemens/Mitsubishi...etc. I guess that's the idea, but is it reality? They are starting to install a few batteries (Tesla Energy), which isn't far from their core business. But it's still a tiny part of their revenue. What else?
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    The energy thing is a weird talking point, because energy is _so_ commodified; if anything you'd expect an energy company to have a lower P/E than a car manufacturer.
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago
  > I could see Tesla branching out in many sectors and become something like the new Samsung/Siemens/Mitsubishi But that's almost the same thing - Mitsubishi nuclear, Nikon, and the car company etc. are run as individual companies under the same holding family. If your going to make cars you need to try to make cars people want as well as you can or customers will buy elsewhere (like BYD in Asia)
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
vardump 3y ago
Amazon's stock holders are sure happy at this point Amazon didn't accept to be just an online book store.
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >Amazon's stock holders are sure happy at this point Amazon didn't accept to be just an online book store. Sometimes I wonder what possesses a person to always point to single, extremely rare examples as analogies, like this. Tesla is not Amazon. Hocking goods online is not selling cars. Does Amazon really make much money off of anything but AWS?
  - decremental 3y ago
    [dead]
  - sigmoid10 3y ago
    Last year they made more than twice as much with pure online, in-house product sales than they did with AWS. Even their third party sales made 50% more than AWS. Their cloud computing might be big, but it is still dwarfed by ordinary sales.
    - luma 3y ago
      In revenue, but not in profit.
  - distortionfield 3y ago
    Except it’s not a single rare phenomenon, and Tesla has proven itself capable of serious innovation before.
  - rezonant 3y ago
    I read it as tribalism. Internet commentator with investments in Amazon (either via stock or just by choosing to use their products) decides to spend their time unquestioningly promoting a trillion dollar company for free. It's a tale as old as time, unfortunately HN is far from immune to it. I dislike Amazon and Tesla pretty equally, but then Bezos didn't royally screw up Twitter, so there's that.
GuB-42 3y ago
The storage part makes sense. An electric car is essentially a car build around a battery, it is the most important component by far. Remove the "car" part and you are left with a battery storage solution. For the tech part, it is where the big profit is. That's why its market cap is so much higher than Toyota and close to all the other car manufacturers combined. That's because it is seen as the next Apple, not as just a car company. Whether this idea has merit is debatable, but the markets think it does, and it would be crazy for Tesla to turn down all that money.
fallingknife 3y ago
All the issues that come up about Tesla supposedly needing to build better cars come from people who don't own them. Everybody I know with one loves it. And the data backs this up. https://www.wardsauto.com/industry-news/brand-loyalty-weak-all-auto-brands-except-tesla https://www.wardsauto.com/industry-news/brand-loyalty-weak-a...
- helsinkiandrew 3y ago
  This post is in relation to the Tesla warning that its rate of expansion will be “notably lower” this year and the recent price cuts they've made to keep sales going. In relation to that, "building better cars" means building cars that sell more - either having the characteristics/features that people want and are willing to pay for or making them cheaper.
- yellow_lead 3y ago
  The data seems to be "only from the first four months of 2023", and Tesla seems to only fare best in the luxury segment.
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    So they are competing in the luxury segment even though 90% of their sales are not luxury cars?
- benj111 3y ago
  I really love my $niche_tech_doodad. That doesn't mean everyone is going to like it. It isn't enough to say that current customers love it, but how many potential customers will
  - fallingknife 3y ago
    They sold almost 2 million cars in 2023. It's not a niche thing. Furthermore there is a clear path to higher demand in building out the charger network, an area where they are already in the lead. That's what is keeping me from buying one now. And no, not everyone, or even most people, are going to like it or buy it, but that is true about every make and model of car ever made.
paulsutter 3y ago
Tesla is scaling up very well actually https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-deliveries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-v...
jillesvangurp 3y ago
Why would they do that? Each of those industries is potentially worth many billions. As a car company they are doing just fine. The issue with Tesla is not creating more demand, which is fine, but more production capacity to meet it.
- milansuk 3y ago
  Agree. Spinning out the FSD and Optimus teams wouldn't accelerate progress on the new models. Also, they will make more money from humanoids than car robots.
paxys 3y ago
The thing is the moment they admit they are just a car company their stock will start to get valued like a car company.
kfrzcode 3y ago
This is why X.ai exists. Also; self-driving cars are just robots on wheels.... that utilize extreme edge "tech" - in the form of advanced machine learning, computer vision, artificial.... problem solving, and generally the associated compute solutions required to engineer a robot that can store enough energy on itself for useful human travel, let alone making the whole damn thing safe, let ALONE making the whole damn thing marketable Now. What other CAR company does any of that, to any degree? The "anti-Musk" virtue signal is by far the most annoying one on either side of a stupid arbitrary peanut gallery. Anyone thinking Elon Musk is anything short of an incredibly intelligent, talented, skilled, and tenacious entrepreneur and - dare I say - engineer - we have the fortune to see in our era. He is controversial but ignore the noise. The actual ground truth is extremely, extremely impressive. Think all that has happened since just the iPhone with all of his companies, and why, and how. Perhaps that would inform a better opinion than whatever the news cyclists have suggested your way this week.
- shafyy 3y ago
  How is that kool-aid tasting?
  - Difwif 3y ago
    Musk has gotten increasingly more outspoken with all of his views and has certainly said some eyebrow raisers but the anti-Musk narrative just makes my eyes roll. MSM clearly loves writing about him (how else will they fill the void of showing us Trump tweets everyday?) Many people just follow the establishment narrative and billionaires and government officials are the easiest boogeyman before you have to give it some thought. I will continue to like people for the good things they do and focus my criticism on their actions rather than the person.
    - the_only_law 3y ago
      Thank the lord he has white knights like you to defend his honor.
    - kfrzcode 3y ago
moogly 3y ago
Too bad Musk on several occasions explicitly said that Tesla is worth absolutely nothing if they don't nail AI/robotics, so the precedent is already set.
rsynnott 3y ago
> the company would do a lot better. The _company_ probably would, but the share price might not.

goethes_kind 3y ago

I disagree completely. Once you commit to a very well understood market like consumer vehicles, your growth potential is going to be much more grounded in reality, which means TSLA goes down, which means Tesla has less to work with. Secondly that is really not where their strength lies. Car manufacturing is a fairly competitive market so any innovations they can came up with will only result in a very temporary lead. Plus all the talent they recruited would be wasted if they were just building slightly up market EVs. I could see Tesla branching out in many sectors and become something like the new Samsung/Siemens/Mitsubishi...etc.

gizajob 3y ago
Yeah Tesla totally doesn’t need to spin off its AI and let Musk become further distracted. It’s fine to be dabbling in all these things because it’s actually a cohesive vision that’ll come together eventually. Like he said on the call yesterday, the cars are just robots with wheels, and the robots without wheels are coming soon. Would just be good to have more focus from Elon, and more growth in general which seems like it will be coming lest their competitors get the better of them.
- dartos 3y ago
  > coming soon That’s Tesla’s favorite release date. “Soon” or “next year”
  - input_sh 3y ago
    I think their favourite release date is by far "by the end of next year".
- itsoktocry 3y ago
  >Like he said on the call yesterday, the cars are just robots with wheels Yes, Elon says that. What do your eyes tell you? My tell me they are just cars.
  - TheNewsIsHere 3y ago
    Kind of like how in 2021 Elon was telling the public on earnings calls that Level 5 FSD would be ready within a year, while the person in charge of Autopilot software and other executives were telling regulators that wasn’t possible. Three years later…
- nprateem 3y ago
  > the cars are just robots with wheels, and the robots without wheels Will their cars also be able to do the washing up and their robots take me and the kids camping for a weekend?
  - gizajob 3y ago
    No, their robots will.
    - nprateem 3y ago
      So their cars aren't just robots on wheels after all. Who knew?
itsoktocry 3y ago
>I could see Tesla branching out in many sectors and become something like the new Samsung/Siemens/Mitsubishi...etc. I guess that's the idea, but is it reality? They are starting to install a few batteries (Tesla Energy), which isn't far from their core business. But it's still a tiny part of their revenue. What else?
- rsynnott 3y ago
  The energy thing is a weird talking point, because energy is _so_ commodified; if anything you'd expect an energy company to have a lower P/E than a car manufacturer.
helsinkiandrew 3y ago
> I could see Tesla branching out in many sectors and become something like the new Samsung/Siemens/Mitsubishi But that's almost the same thing - Mitsubishi nuclear, Nikon, and the car company etc. are run as individual companies under the same holding family. If your going to make cars you need to try to make cars people want as well as you can or customers will buy elsewhere (like BYD in Asia)

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

vardump 3y ago

Amazon's stock holders are sure happy at this point Amazon didn't accept to be just an online book store.

itsoktocry 3y ago
>Amazon's stock holders are sure happy at this point Amazon didn't accept to be just an online book store. Sometimes I wonder what possesses a person to always point to single, extremely rare examples as analogies, like this. Tesla is not Amazon. Hocking goods online is not selling cars. Does Amazon really make much money off of anything but AWS?
- decremental 3y ago
  [dead]
- sigmoid10 3y ago
  Last year they made more than twice as much with pure online, in-house product sales than they did with AWS. Even their third party sales made 50% more than AWS. Their cloud computing might be big, but it is still dwarfed by ordinary sales.
  - luma 3y ago
    In revenue, but not in profit.
- distortionfield 3y ago
  Except it’s not a single rare phenomenon, and Tesla has proven itself capable of serious innovation before.
- rezonant 3y ago
  I read it as tribalism. Internet commentator with investments in Amazon (either via stock or just by choosing to use their products) decides to spend their time unquestioningly promoting a trillion dollar company for free. It's a tale as old as time, unfortunately HN is far from immune to it. I dislike Amazon and Tesla pretty equally, but then Bezos didn't royally screw up Twitter, so there's that.

GuB-42 3y ago

The storage part makes sense. An electric car is essentially a car build around a battery, it is the most important component by far. Remove the "car" part and you are left with a battery storage solution. For the tech part, it is where the big profit is. That's why its market cap is so much higher than Toyota and close to all the other car manufacturers combined. That's because it is seen as the next Apple, not as just a car company. Whether this idea has merit is debatable, but the markets think it does, and it would be crazy for Tesla to turn down all that money.

fallingknife 3y ago

All the issues that come up about Tesla supposedly needing to build better cars come from people who don't own them. Everybody I know with one loves it. And the data backs this up. https://www.wardsauto.com/industry-news/brand-loyalty-weak-all-auto-brands-except-tesla https://www.wardsauto.com/industry-news/brand-loyalty-weak-a...

helsinkiandrew 3y ago
This post is in relation to the Tesla warning that its rate of expansion will be “notably lower” this year and the recent price cuts they've made to keep sales going. In relation to that, "building better cars" means building cars that sell more - either having the characteristics/features that people want and are willing to pay for or making them cheaper.
yellow_lead 3y ago
The data seems to be "only from the first four months of 2023", and Tesla seems to only fare best in the luxury segment.
- fallingknife 3y ago
  So they are competing in the luxury segment even though 90% of their sales are not luxury cars?
benj111 3y ago
I really love my $niche_tech_doodad. That doesn't mean everyone is going to like it. It isn't enough to say that current customers love it, but how many potential customers will
- fallingknife 3y ago
  They sold almost 2 million cars in 2023. It's not a niche thing. Furthermore there is a clear path to higher demand in building out the charger network, an area where they are already in the lead. That's what is keeping me from buying one now. And no, not everyone, or even most people, are going to like it or buy it, but that is true about every make and model of car ever made.

paulsutter 3y ago

Tesla is scaling up very well actually https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-vehicle-deliveries/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/502208/tesla-quarterly-v...

jillesvangurp 3y ago

Why would they do that? Each of those industries is potentially worth many billions. As a car company they are doing just fine. The issue with Tesla is not creating more demand, which is fine, but more production capacity to meet it.

milansuk 3y ago
Agree. Spinning out the FSD and Optimus teams wouldn't accelerate progress on the new models. Also, they will make more money from humanoids than car robots.

paxys 3y ago

The thing is the moment they admit they are just a car company their stock will start to get valued like a car company.

kfrzcode 3y ago

This is why X.ai exists. Also; self-driving cars are just robots on wheels.... that utilize extreme edge "tech" - in the form of advanced machine learning, computer vision, artificial.... problem solving, and generally the associated compute solutions required to engineer a robot that can store enough energy on itself for useful human travel, let alone making the whole damn thing safe, let ALONE making the whole damn thing marketable Now. What other CAR company does any of that, to any degree? The "anti-Musk" virtue signal is by far the most annoying one on either side of a stupid arbitrary peanut gallery. Anyone thinking Elon Musk is anything short of an incredibly intelligent, talented, skilled, and tenacious entrepreneur and - dare I say - engineer - we have the fortune to see in our era. He is controversial but ignore the noise. The actual ground truth is extremely, extremely impressive. Think all that has happened since just the iPhone with all of his companies, and why, and how. Perhaps that would inform a better opinion than whatever the news cyclists have suggested your way this week.

shafyy 3y ago
How is that kool-aid tasting?
- Difwif 3y ago
  Musk has gotten increasingly more outspoken with all of his views and has certainly said some eyebrow raisers but the anti-Musk narrative just makes my eyes roll. MSM clearly loves writing about him (how else will they fill the void of showing us Trump tweets everyday?) Many people just follow the establishment narrative and billionaires and government officials are the easiest boogeyman before you have to give it some thought. I will continue to like people for the good things they do and focus my criticism on their actions rather than the person.
  - the_only_law 3y ago
    Thank the lord he has white knights like you to defend his honor.
  - kfrzcode 3y ago

moogly 3y ago

Too bad Musk on several occasions explicitly said that Tesla is worth absolutely nothing if they don't nail AI/robotics, so the precedent is already set.

rsynnott 3y ago

> the company would do a lot better. The _company_ probably would, but the share price might not.