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Because some people read beyond headlines and realize that Tesla will most likely dominate with Robotaxi. Their traditional consumer vehicle revenue could pale

Because some people read beyond headlines and realize that Tesla will most likely dominate with Robotaxi. Their traditional consumer vehicle revenue could pale in comparison. And Optimus could be another order of magnitude larger. That’s the optimistic bull case. It’s not impossible. Tesla will be able to scale Robotaxi much quicker than Waymo can scale.

nradov 1y ago
Why? In principle the basic Waymo technology could be adapted to work on any modern vehicle. They aren't dependent on Jaguar manufacturing capacity to scale up.
- surajrmal 1y ago
  It's capital intensive to make all of those devices. Tesla's strategy is to rent back devices they sell to consumers. This lowers the necessary capital costs and will enable quick scaling. It's a similar ploy to how Amazon quickly grew its delivery capabilities.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Alphabet has $95B of cash and short-term investments on hand. I don't think lack of capital is the obstacle to scaling here. https://abc.xyz/investor/sec-filings/quarterly-filings/2025/ https://abc.xyz/investor/sec-filings/quarterly-filings/2025/ Tesla still has no autonomous vehicle that customers can actually buy, let alone rent back for taxi service. So any "strategy" remains entirely hypothetical.
    - hollerith 1y ago
      >Alphabet has $95B of cash and short-term investments Not only that, but also they could probably raise 10 times that much by creating new shares and selling them (if they had a plausible story to tell investors as to why the money would be well spent).
  - senordevnyc 1y ago
    I so wish Tesla had gone Waymo’s route and focused on delivering really safe LIDAR-based level 4 with cheaper hardware. I think they’d be well-positioned to take the market by storm. But instead they made an ideological stand on cameras only, and they’re helmed by an unhinged drug addict who lies constantly, to the point many who once would have loved to buy an actual self-driving Tesla now won’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, even if they do someday deliver an L4 experience. I really, really hope Waymo licenses their tech. I think that would stomp Tesla into the ground once and for all.
    - Rover222 1y ago
      it's bizarre how even the smart people here (smarter than me on average, no doubt), think they know better than Karpathy and Musk who have spent a decade deep in this problem. SpaceX has landed orbital boosters 500 times, and STILL no one else has done it. Teslas drive millions of miles autonomously (yes supervised, but still) every day. You can't even type a response without containig your political/social bias on anything related to Musk.
      - metabagel 1y ago
        Tesla is still at level 2 autonomy, whereas Waymo is at level 4. It doesn't appear Tesla can achieve level 3 autonomy given Musk's ideological opposition to lidar. Without lidar, the AI has to be 100% accurate, and it's not and won't be for the foreseeable future. As they say in Maine, "You can't get there from here."
        Rover222 1y ago
        The level 2 vs 4 thing is a technicality and fairly misleading, Teslas can already operate in a much wider range of roads and conditions. Waymo is still on guardrails. Mercedes touted "level 4" but you had to be following another car, going slow, etc etc. General autonomy is what matters. I trust Karpathy when it comes to lidar vs vision. Do you shoot lasers out of your head to drive?
        1y ago
- Rover222 1y ago
  Ah yes $100k worth of extremely complex sensors. very scalable.
  - nradov 1y ago
    Not a problem. The costs for sensors always falls rapidly as production volumes scale up. The first GPS receivers were large dedicated devices that cost thousands of dollars. Now they're just a chunk of IP in the SOC for every little consumer device and cost pennies.

nradov 1y ago

Why? In principle the basic Waymo technology could be adapted to work on any modern vehicle. They aren't dependent on Jaguar manufacturing capacity to scale up.

surajrmal 1y ago
It's capital intensive to make all of those devices. Tesla's strategy is to rent back devices they sell to consumers. This lowers the necessary capital costs and will enable quick scaling. It's a similar ploy to how Amazon quickly grew its delivery capabilities.
- nradov 1y ago
  Alphabet has $95B of cash and short-term investments on hand. I don't think lack of capital is the obstacle to scaling here. https://abc.xyz/investor/sec-filings/quarterly-filings/2025/ https://abc.xyz/investor/sec-filings/quarterly-filings/2025/ Tesla still has no autonomous vehicle that customers can actually buy, let alone rent back for taxi service. So any "strategy" remains entirely hypothetical.
  - hollerith 1y ago
    >Alphabet has $95B of cash and short-term investments Not only that, but also they could probably raise 10 times that much by creating new shares and selling them (if they had a plausible story to tell investors as to why the money would be well spent).
- senordevnyc 1y ago
  I so wish Tesla had gone Waymo’s route and focused on delivering really safe LIDAR-based level 4 with cheaper hardware. I think they’d be well-positioned to take the market by storm. But instead they made an ideological stand on cameras only, and they’re helmed by an unhinged drug addict who lies constantly, to the point many who once would have loved to buy an actual self-driving Tesla now won’t touch them with a ten-foot pole, even if they do someday deliver an L4 experience. I really, really hope Waymo licenses their tech. I think that would stomp Tesla into the ground once and for all.
  - Rover222 1y ago
    it's bizarre how even the smart people here (smarter than me on average, no doubt), think they know better than Karpathy and Musk who have spent a decade deep in this problem. SpaceX has landed orbital boosters 500 times, and STILL no one else has done it. Teslas drive millions of miles autonomously (yes supervised, but still) every day. You can't even type a response without containig your political/social bias on anything related to Musk.
    - metabagel 1y ago
      Tesla is still at level 2 autonomy, whereas Waymo is at level 4. It doesn't appear Tesla can achieve level 3 autonomy given Musk's ideological opposition to lidar. Without lidar, the AI has to be 100% accurate, and it's not and won't be for the foreseeable future. As they say in Maine, "You can't get there from here."
      - Rover222 1y ago
        The level 2 vs 4 thing is a technicality and fairly misleading, Teslas can already operate in a much wider range of roads and conditions. Waymo is still on guardrails. Mercedes touted "level 4" but you had to be following another car, going slow, etc etc. General autonomy is what matters. I trust Karpathy when it comes to lidar vs vision. Do you shoot lasers out of your head to drive?
        1y ago
Rover222 1y ago
Ah yes $100k worth of extremely complex sensors. very scalable.
- nradov 1y ago
  Not a problem. The costs for sensors always falls rapidly as production volumes scale up. The first GPS receivers were large dedicated devices that cost thousands of dollars. Now they're just a chunk of IP in the SOC for every little consumer device and cost pennies.