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I think you're totally wrong on this. Tesla didn't waste the first mover advantage. They benefitted from it whilst it existed, but Electric vehicles turned into
by Traster 8mo ago
I think you're totally wrong on this. Tesla didn't waste the first mover advantage. They benefitted from it whilst it existed, but Electric vehicles turned into a commodity, which was entirely expected and there's no moat.
You've explained yourself why it would be untenable for Musk to pursue becoming the biggest car manufacturer in the world - if he succeeded in that goal... he would have succeded in shrinking the value of the company significantly.
It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.
- epolanski 8mo agoBingo.
- breve 8mo agoWhy is making humanoid robots a moat? Other companies have been making robots for longer, humanoid and otherwise, and doing it better. Has Optimus signed up for any sports yet: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/02/china/china-humanoid-robot-sports-intl-hnk-dst https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/02/china/china-humanoid-robo... Is Optimus close to what Boston Dynamics is doing with Atlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIhzUnvi7Fw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIhzUnvi7Fw
- SideburnsOfDoom 8mo ago> Why is making humanoid robots a moat? It really isn't. (1) Also, what's the first billion dollar market for humanoid robots? Industry? "lights-out manufacturing" exists already, and doesn't require humanoid robots. Hyundai and BYD (among others) say they're going to put humanoid robots in their factories (2). They won't be Tesla robots. Is this really such a huge use? 1)https://www.topgear.com/car-news/tech/here-are-nine-humanoid-robots-used-carmakers-and-no-were-not-scared-all https://www.topgear.com/car-news/tech/here-are-nine-humanoid... 2) https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgjm5x54ldo https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgjm5x54ldo
- edmundsauto 8mo agoI want my laundry robot!
- SideburnsOfDoom 8mo agoIs that a billion dollar market, is it within reach, and does it require a humanoid? And if so, will any 1 company have a lock on it?
- omilu 8mo agoYes I would easily pay 20k for a robot to fold and put away laundry.
- marssaxman 8mo agoWhere I live, wash/dry/fold service costs ~$3/lb including pickup & delivery, so depending on how many clothes you wear in a week you'd be looking at 5-10 years before that robot even starts to pay for itself - without even accounting for the cost of the laundry machines it'll need to use or the water and power to run them. Laundry machines are expected to last 10-15 years; will the robot last so long?
- dstroot 8mo agoAnyone who owns a tesla vehicle with "full self driving" is probably chuckling to themselves about Tesla ever making useful general purpose robots any time soon. Disclaimer, I own two tesla's with FSD and it's far from "full" or "self". I am very sceptical of robotaxis unless they have the appropriate sensors & SW (e.g. Waymo) which Elon has not done. Finally, I know lots of people who own cars, but none who own robots. Many friends will not have Alexa in their homes due to privacy concerns. How many people will trust Elon to have a robot in their homes and assume he's being benign and safe with your personal data?
- sgjohnson 8mo ago> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that. But it's make-believe. Tesla is a car manufacturer. They haven't shipped anything else other than cars. And they even suck at making cars these days. Tesla Semi? All but dead. The new roadster? Also dead. Full Self Driving? Doesn't exist. Robotaxis? Even if they got them to work, at this point the brand is too toxic for widespread adoption of those. They could have persisted at being a disruptive car manufacturer and still held a several hundred billion dollar valuation. Now they are a very mediocre car manufacturer, with their only actual success being conning everyone into believing that they are a bleeding-edge tech company so their $1.5Bn valuation seems justified.
- dannyfritz07 8mo agoA quick search verified they also manufactured batteries, solar modules, and solar shingles.
- gamerdonkey 8mo agoFord Motor Company manufactured charcoal, but in the end it stayed a car company. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)#History https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kingsford_(charcoal)#History
- testing22321 8mo agoI know it’s popular to hate on Elon and therefore Tesla, but you need to be accurate when doing so. They’re still chipping away. > Tesla Semi?All but dead. They’ve been running a pilot all this time, and the factory in Nevada to mass produce them is on schedule. Production ramp is second half of this year. The factory is ginormous. > The new roadster? Also dead. Elon said yesterday the unveil is in April “hopefully” > Full Self Driving? Doesn't exist. Robotaxis? Cars are driving passengers around Austin now with nobody in either front seat. It takes automakers almost a decade to bring a new vehicle online, Elon just does it all publicly while everyone else doesn’t take the wraps off until the final 6 months. Obviously everything is way behind elons hype timelines, but I do still think it’s all coming.
- JumpinJack_Cash 8mo ago> > It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that. You can pursue everything with words, even you can pursue Sydney Sweeney but then you have to show the receipts. The receipts of Tesla (Factories, lines of production, expertise of people hired, 25 years of history...) are one of car company. But of course, it's all narrative so people will keep outbidding each other to own a piece of this company. The financialization of hope, that's what it is.
- freakynit 8mo agoEverything tends toward commodification in a hyper-competitive, hyper-connected world. The only variable is time... and this "time" keeps shrinking. As commodification accelerates, consolidation follows. In the current landscape, where private capital and state power are deeply entangled under the banner of national security, this consolidation no longer stays economic. It becomes geopolitical. The end result... it translates to not just corporate monopolies, but geo-monopolies... enforced not by markets alone, but by coercion, conflict, and control over resources.
- sosomoxie 8mo agoPure logic would dictate that Tesla has a market cap of around $5B. It's actually fraudulent that it's not, and for some reason the SEC allows Musk to lie on every earnings call without repercussion.
- elzbardico 8mo agoWelcome to 2026: Companies routinely, exaggerate, obfuscate and mystify investors. Most of investors don't care. The SEC is a joke.
- FuriouslyAdrift 8mo agoSeems low on a company that is profitable and consistantly has around a $100B a year in revenue with only $13B in debt...
- dmbche 8mo agomore like 12b in 2022 and less every years since down 30% in 2025
- bratwurst3000 8mo agovw has over 300 billion revenue and way more profit then tesla. still not worth 1/10 of it. 5 billion sounds good for tesla
- FuriouslyAdrift 8mo agoVW is carrying $221B in debt and just closed their main plant in Germany because BYD is eating them alive.
- ahartmetz 8mo agoVW just closed a very small plant (165k cars in 24 years) in Germany, the one in Dresden. The largest ones are probably Wolfsburg and Emden, these are running. VW is in trouble, not in terminal decline.
- jordanb 8mo agoTesla's original "secret plan" (published on their website) was to become a commodity car manufacturer faster than electric cars became a commodity. Such that the other manufacturers would find them selling obsolete vehicles and Tesla just becomes the new General Motors. This was the justification for their stock price for quite a few years: "It's logical that Tesla is worth more than all other automakers combined because it will soon be the only automaker." Then in 2022 Elon basically admitted that they couldn't win on production and had to continue to win on technology and they'd do that with self driving. [https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basically-zero-without-self-driving-2022-6?op=1 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basica...] But now Tesla is way behind on self driving (which was oversold by the whole industry tbh). So what's their new plan? Now they're no longer a car company and will make robots!
- Deklomalo 8mo ago[dead]
- misiti3780 8mo agoway behind compared to whom ?
- whaleofatw2022 8mo agoYour take makes sense. i.e. the GigaPress for frames but it just didnt scale like they hoped.
- jcranmer 8mo agoBrand value is definitely a moat. Not the deepest of moats, but it is a moat nonetheless. > It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that. Tesla is valued as if it is a tech company with a car business as a side gig. Its balance sheet is a car business, and I'm not even sure it spends enough on tech to have tech qualify as a side gig. And the other tech avenues it has been pursuing (autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots) are areas that other people have been doing for better and longer. Hell, Honda had autonomous (not tele-operated) humanoid robots working 20 years ago. To be honest, at this point, I mostly consider the other bets that Tesla is pursing are just passion projects to keep the stock price artificially high. Were Tesla more realistically valued, it would lose probably 90% or more of its value, and Musk would be a much poorer man.
- outside1234 8mo agoTesla's moat is constantly moving to the next thing and claiming it has a moat before moving on to the next thing. Elon's business model is moving from one government subsidized thing to the next (see SpaceX now bribing for tax dollars to go to Mars).
- Deklomalo 8mo ago[dead]
- arbor_day 8mo agoIt's not that EVs are a commodity. Competition and speculative production capacity buildouts combined with lower than expected consumer demand made the market less profitable.
- neogodless 8mo ago> Electric vehicles turned into a commodity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity > a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them Uhh.. not sure where you live or what your local / regional market is like. I'm in the United States, where what car you drive is a really big decision. Many people share on social media what car they bought, and tell people around them about the new car they bought. I've yet to witness a situation where someone said "I bought an electric car" and the response was something like "Why are you telling me you bought toilet paper?" (Even toilet paper has brand names and advertising.) That isn't to say that the car market hasn't shifted over time. Cars began as "engine to move wheels plus a few other things" and evolved so that the engine seemed less of the central reason why you bought a specific vehicle. An electric powertrain does take things a bit further, in that most EV buyers know very little about the motors, though they certainly know a thing or two about the battery. Batteries are generally a commodity at smaller scales, but in a car, they matter significantly. Still, brand matters, too. Ask Lucid or Rivian or Porsche how they sell their electric cars for $70K - $160K. How is it that a commodity available to purchase for ~$30K can be sold for $130K additional? (That's not how commodities work.) No, electric cars are not a commodity. It's just a difficult market with a lot of players, and a broad market with constantly evolving tastes. Ask Toyota why they have half a dozen different SUV models. Or why the Ford F-150 comes in 200 configurations. (That's not how commodities work!) Just because the gasoline-burning engine was replaced with electric motors and batteries, the car didn't turn into a commodity overnight. I'm open to counterarguments and persuasion to the contrary.
- Fischgericht 8mo agoIf you do not want to run a car company, maybe do not... run a car company? Get an ice cream truck. It absolutely makes no sense to convert a car manufacturer into an AI company. Or a robotics company after you have build CAR FACTORIES around the planet. If you as a CEO don't like the business you are running for your shareholders, it is time to get a new CEO that does. There still are managers that really like running car companies. I don't get the feeling that BYD management is bored about the EV business...
- theshrike79 8mo agoThe competition was this: Tesla had a very good computer, they were learning how to put a car around it. Traditional manufacturers (German mostly) had good or very good cars, but they sucked at the computer stuff. --- And unknown to all, the Chinese learned how to make good cars with good computers built in as those two were trying to achiever their respective goals.
- AtlasBarfed 8mo agoYeah there's no margin in being a luxury car builder And of course you're just going to pretend what the mission statement was.
- CRConrad 8mo ago> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that. Isn't this in reply to a post (or was that another reply just below it?) about how other, "traditional", car companies are valued at 55, 60, 80, and 280 billion dollars...? Seems being a car company and having a billion dollar valuation isn't all that incompatible.