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Tesla is committing automotive suicide

• p-o 8mo ago
  What makes this move even more incredulous is that none of the two market they want to move towards are proven markets: - Waymo is generating less than 150m in 2025. - Consumer robotics is an absolute unknown. How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation.
  • esseph 8mo ago
    > be rationally justified? Nothing about this stock has ever been rational
    • iugtmkbdfil834 8mo ago
      To be fair, market has been decoupled from reality on the ground for a while now. Just the fact that companies were able to operate giving stuff away for free only to suddenly yank the chain in a desperate bid to gain profitability later should be enough of a signal. That said, as much as I dislike Musk ( and I have bet money against him before ), his instincts are likely not wrong. And it does help that, clearly, he knows how to bs well. I am not saying you are wrong, but I think he is just a poster child for everything wrong with current market ecosystem.
  • nailer 8mo ago
    Because it's hard and Tesla think they can do it. See 'reusable rockets' and 'having paralysed people control things with their minds' for other examples. HN often seem to think there's Elon fans downmodding things but it seems more like a case of irrational hatred.
    • MBCook 8mo ago
      So? They could make the first working flying cars. They could work fantastically. And maybe one they release them we find out… no one wants flying cars. They sell 500 a year despite only costing as much as a normal car. Just because you can figure out how to do something doesn’t mean you’re going to make money at it.
      • nailer 8mo ago
        Are you saying SpaceX doesn't make money? I have no idea about Neuralink but the first sounds pretty odd.
        • MBCook 8mo ago
          Where did I say that? I was using the classic idea of the flying car as an example of a thing that has been out of reach as an as a product for normal people and may not actually be successful if it were to really be sold. Replace flying car with whatever example you want. To put it in a different way, you could be so busy figuring out how to do it that you don’t figure out that a business case doesn’t actually exist. I wasn’t trying to comment on any of Musk‘s other companies specifically. Only that we don’t know if making robots will actually make money.
          • nailer 8mo ago
            > > Are you saying SpaceX doesn't make money? > Where did I say that? > > > Just because you can figure out how to do something doesn’t mean you’re going to make money at it.
            • MBCook 8mo ago
              Oh come on. Lots of successful companies are based on something they figured out how to do that others hadn’t. I really was not trying to slam his other companies. I think you’re reading too much into this. Making humanoid robots is not a guaranteed path to riches. That’s all I’m trying to say.
    • Fischgericht 8mo ago
      'having paralysed people control things with their minds' would be great if you guys had a healthcare system that would pay for it.
    • perardi 8mo ago
      Oh, well let me get in my sub-$30,000 Model S, with a swappable battery and full-self-driving capabilities, and take a fully automated trip to the Hyperloop downtown so I can catch a quick ride out to O’Hare so I can fly out to watch a successful Starship launch… …oh wait. I can’t. Because for all his successes, Musk has also sowed quite a lot of bullshit that has gone precisely nowhere.
      • vel0city 8mo ago
        > so I can fly out to watch a successful Starship launch Not just watch a launch, but go to O'Hare to launch and go to Sydney in ~30min. In September 2017 they said we'd be flying Earth-to-Earth on a BFR last year.
        • nailer 8mo ago
          Technology sometimes takes longer than estimates.
          • perardi 8mo ago
            And in Musk’s case, “longer” means “abandoned”. Like the cheap model 3. Or the Hyperloop. Or swappable batteries. Or X as an everything app that includes banking.
            • nailer 8mo ago
              In everyone else’s case too. This was supposed to be a Startup News site. Instagram was supposed to be a way to check into cool places in your neighbourhood and see who was around.
              • vel0city 8mo ago
                In both of those cases, the platforms actually did those things at some point in time and for one later pivoted a few times. When did SpaceX do Earth-to-Earth commercial travel service? How many people have ridden on a BFR?
    • FireBeyond 8mo ago
      To be clear, Neuralink has shown some promising signs. Has also shown some terrible signs. And then I don't know if Musk is oversimplifying for a soundbite or more of his Dunning Kruger, but some of the descriptions seem to lack any knowledge of neurology. He describes a universal chip that will do different things and solve different issues depending on what part of the brain it's implanted in. That's not how it works at all.
    • Qwertious 8mo ago
      More examples, please! Reusable rockets is the load-bearing example, I don't think that argument works without it. You could maybe squeeze in "he kickstarted the EV market".
      • scottyah 8mo ago
        maybe? Tesla is the biggest reason there are any electric vehicles on the road today, I haven't heard of anyone (knowledgeable) who has even hinted otherwise. I can understand not liking Elon, but trashing the companies he's formed and the marvels they've created is just proof you don't value a truthful understanding of the world.
        • jfoster 8mo ago
          I agree with you, but I find it interesting that BYD got started around the same time as Tesla. They took quite different paths to international distribution.
        • habinero 8mo ago
          Elon bought Tesla, he didn't start it.
          • scottyah 8mo ago
            I guess that may be technically correct, but that's really just a anti-elon reddit type comment you're parroting. There were like four people and him "buying it" was just investing way more money in than anyone else wanted to.
      • _Tev 8mo ago
        Starlink was also ridiculed. "Some upstart beating industry veteran at crewed spaceflight" was also treated as a ridiculous idea (see extra funding Boeing was able to extract from congress). But all those massive successes are SpaceX . . .
  • api 8mo ago
    Consumer robotics strikes me as an engineering tar pit so deep it leads to hell. If full self driving is hard due to the long tail of unusual special cases, this is orders of magnitude worse. Take FSD but multiply the number of actuators and degrees of freedom by at least 10, more like 100. Add a third dimension. Add direct physical interaction with complex objects. Add pets and children. Add toys on the floor. Add random furniture with non-standard dimensions. Add exposure to dust, dirt, water, grease, and who knows what else? Puke? Bleach? Dog pee? Oh, and remove designated roads and standardized rules about how you're supposed to drive on those roads. There are no standards. Every home is arranged differently. People behave differently. Kids are nuts. The cat will climb on it. The dog may attack it. The pet rabbit will chew on any exposed cords. We've all seen those Boston Dynamics robots. They're awesome but how durable would they be in those conditions? Would they last for years with day to day constant abuse in an environment like that? From a pure engineering point of view (neglecting the human factor or cost) a home helper robot is almost definitely harder than building and operating a Mars base. We pretty much have all the core tech for that figured out: recycling atmosphere, splitting and making water, refining minerals, greenhouses, airlocks, and so on. As soon as we have Starship or another super heavy rocket that's reliable we could do it as long as someone was willing to write some huge checks. And of course it's a totally untested market. We don't know how big it really is. Will people really be willing to pay thousands to tens of thousands for a home robot with significant limitations? Only about 25% of the market probably has the disposable income to afford these. You'd have to go way up market first, but people up market can afford to just pay humans to do it.
    • foobarian 8mo ago
      I think if they are teleoperated they could make sense, or at least more than the device-local versions
      • duskwuff 8mo ago
        A teleoperated robot is little more than a human worker with extra steps. (And an expensive, clumsy human worker at that.) I can't imagine many situations where that would make sense instead of having a human do the work in person.
  • notfried 8mo ago
    Except that it doesn't need to be consumer to start off. You can build specialized robots that deliver value at a massive scale. Imagine a "Prep Cook" at a restaurant, there are millions of these around the world. If the Optimus can do that job for a price of $1,000/month, that's likely to be more efficient and better quality than a human can do. And there has to be many jobs like this.
    • mekdoonggi 8mo ago
      A million robots making $1k a month is $12b a year, but you need to actually produce the robots, maintain them, train the AI, own the data centers. Also, if you take 1 million jobs, do you think that might cause demand to drop for services?
      • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
        A general drop in services, yes. A drop in the services being provided by the robot, probably not. I doubt if many Prep Chefs are regularly eating at the restaurants they work at. When the robots are taking millions of jobs in all areas of service, there might be a problem.
      • ETH_start 8mo ago
        No, automation doesn't reduce jobs, i.e. doesn't reduce consumer spending, as consumer spending is determined by output, which automation boosts. The savings from automation in a particular sector are spent elsewhere — wherever services are more costly (in labor). That's the dynamic behind Say's law, which shows that spending on less automatable jobs like barbers and physical therapists increases as automation reduces costs in other sectors of the economy.
        • mekdoonggi 8mo ago
          I understand this is a well-developed economic theory and I am complete uninformed, but this doesn't make intuitive sense at all. If 1 million prep cooks are replaced by robots, will food become cheap enough that those prep cooks can all get jobs as barbers, and the money people spend on food will shift to haircuts? Will the food be so cheap that all those prep cooks can afford to learn to cut hair? Also consider the money velocity of a human vs a robot. A human is probably paycheck to paycheck spending everything they earn. Robot earnings go back to company, which makes the stock go up, 90% of which is owned by billionaires who just keep hoarding and hoarding.
  • jamincan 8mo ago
    A lot of the current valuation is based on Elon drumming up investor expectations. As they start to lose their spot as market leaders in EV, Tesla's inability to deliver on what Elon promised will become more clear as their competitors level with and surpass them. Moving to new, unproven markets is fruitful ground for someone like Elon to drum up expectation and hopefully keep distracting people from the fact that he's had very few recent successes to show for all the hype he receives.
  • Zigurd 8mo ago
    They haven't said it explicitly. But the reason that Waymo can add five cities this year is very likely they are at least at break even on opex. They likely reached that point sometime last year and it seems to have held up. So I wouldn't call robotaxi service unproven. But I would call the idea that you can claim to be running a robo taxi service without depots, cleaners, CSRs, and remote monitoring that can handle difficult situations in a more sophisticated way than each car having a human monitor it, naïve.
    • runako 8mo ago
      I read that as meaning even the scaled robotaxi service (Waymo) does not throw off enough cash to offset the loss of Tesla's vehicle sales unit. (The putative Tesla buyer they are dissuading from purchase would have to take a whole lot of robotaxi trips to generate the same amount of profit for Tesla. Assuming Tesla can get robotaxis working.) In the 2000s publishing pivot to the Internet, this was known as "trading physical dollars for digital pennies."
      • DiscourseFan 8mo ago
        Such is the law of the falling rate of profit, a general tendency of Capitalism.
    • jfyi 8mo ago
      >They haven't said it explicitly. This seems to be a major strategic decision of Alphabet pretty much across the board. I have only recently noticed the stark contrast to the constant hype trope you see in their competitors.
  • socalgal2 8mo ago
    I'll bet that's what people said to Steve Jobs when they were making the iPhone - PDA sales are 0.01% of PC sales in 2006
    • gilbetron 8mo ago
      And also what people said to Dean Kamen when he was making the Segway in 2001.
      • cosmicgadget 8mo ago
        Or Mark Zuckerberg when he was making the metaverse in 2019 or whatever.
  • dzhiurgis 8mo ago
    Tesla processes as many miles in 2 days as Waymo in its entire lifetime. Waymo will be crushed in few years.
    • q3k 8mo ago
      We've been hearing this 'Tesla has so much data!! Tesla FSD and robotaxis any day now!!' bullshit for probably a decade now.
      • jfoster 8mo ago
        They are certainly far behind their original schedule, but do you mean to suggest that they are not making progress? If the original schedules hadn't been made public knowledge, the progress they have made would seem quite fast-paced.
        • amanaplanacanal 8mo ago
          If Waymo didn't exist, maybe.
          • roryirvine 8mo ago
            If Waymo didn't exist, we'd instead be lauding the progress of Wayve, Pony, and WeRide. At this point, Tesla have the potential to be at best maybe #5 globally. No wonder they're so desperate to hide behind a tariff wall in their home market.
    • windexh8er 8mo ago
      If this were the case Waymo would already be gone. Tesla, under Musk, has missed a big opportunity. The claims of FSD "next year", by Musk for the past decade, fall on deaf ears now. While Waymo was focusing on building it Musk was multi-tasking and letting Tesla falter. RIP Tesla and what could have been. The reality is more clearly that Tesla could have been an amazing EV platform in totality. Instead they are being beaten in: driverless, PSD/FSD, and home energy production & storage. The only thing Tesla has a real lead in is still their EV power distribution footprint. I wouldn't be surprised to see that sold off in the next 5 years given their direction.
  • loosescrews 8mo ago
    On top of that, despite huge investments of both time and money into both areas, seemingly rivaling competitors, Tesla does not seem to be anywhere close to a market leader in either segment. They have to both prove the markets and that they can compete in them.
  • burnte 8mo ago
    > How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation. Musk seems to have successfully decoupled investors from results. The stock price seems to move far more based on what he says and does than what the company says and does. It's completely irrational. Tesla is a huge bubble.
  • testing22321 8mo ago
    EVs were a very unproven market when Tesla started and it was commonly accepted they didn’t have a hope in hell. I think musk knows you gotta take risks and skate to where the puck is going, not where it is now. If he’s wrong, it’s all over of course.
  • duxup 8mo ago
    >Let alone the valuation. Maybe that's the driver. I always figured keeping Musk on was a sort of suicide pact, without Musk the company might be more traditionally valued, but that means the stock would tank. So they have to stick with him. Staying in autos, eventually folks figure out the math and the stock tanks ... so they have to keep moving and keeping that sort of aspirational stock price.
• mekdoonggi 8mo ago
  Fully Self Driving themselves off the cliff one might say...
• the_sleaze_ 8mo ago
  BYD is slapping the EV industry around like a gorilla, Tesla simply cannot compete in any meaningful way. Waymo has achieved profit per unit and people are happy to see driver-less taxis in their city and pay for the service. Tesla also cannot justify valuations based on automotive sales/subscriptions alone - they were always going to have to pivot. They're in a tight spot and they need to do something drastic.
  • dlisboa 8mo ago
    > Tesla also cannot justify valuations based on automotive sales/subscriptions alone - they were always going to have to pivot. Their valuation was never justified by that. They always sold a fraction of what other companies do.
    • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
      But at one time they sold the majority in what many saw as a disruptive new replacement for what those other companies did. They were poised like Apple which sold relatively few iPhones in the first few years compared to the other companies, all of which are gone now. But Tesla squandered that advantage.
  • jcfrei 8mo ago
    Yup, they pivoted to making robots and subsidizing X/Grok.
    • etchalon 8mo ago
      Well, they pivoted to saying they're going to make robots. Any day now.
      • wraptile 8mo ago
        Who in their right mind would buy a robot from Tesla anyway.
        • 8mo ago
• karmakurtisaani 8mo ago
  I was very close to going short on Tesla yesterday. Very glad I didn't in the end. The fundamentals of the company are absolute trash, yet the stock price is through the roof year after year. One day the crash will be epic.
  • malshe 8mo ago
    I think in a weird way SpaceX listing publicly would trigger Tesla’s downfall as Elon fans will switch to that stock. Then SoaceX will buy out Tesla.
    • MBCook 8mo ago
      That’s a good point. Can Tesla fail? Seems like he’s constantly using one company to fund others, shuffling the cups and balls around claiming everything is still fine. I could see him doing serious damage or even trashing an otherwise healthy company doing this to prop up total failures.
      • malshe 8mo ago
        > Can Tesla fail? If SpaceX buys it, it will fail upward :) He did that with SolarCity when Tesla bought it then repeated with X when XAi bought it.
  • Fischgericht 8mo ago
    In the last couple of months it was really crazy: Some inconvenient truth came out, and within minutes the stock made a huge jump UP. Who regards it as a good sign if a car manufacturer just got ordered to pay $200 mio in damages in just one single Autopilot crash case, creating precedent for a lot more of lawsuits. I think you could wake up one day, read the WSJ with the headline "All Tesla cars ever sold have just exploded at the same time, killing hundred thousands of people" - and the stock price would surge 10%. I really would like to know what the stock price would do if Tesla had good news. But I guess we'll never find out about that one... ;)
• z2 8mo ago
  Tesla also announced they will be discontinuing the basic lane keep + adaptive speed cruise control they helped pioneer in cars sold going forward. But this is now a standard (free) feature even in basic vehicles like the Toyota Corolla. Why would they intentionally cripple their vehicles to the point hat they would be inferior to most cars today? Then I learned that Musk's incentive pay has a 10 million full self-driving subscription hurdle, and it all made sense.
  • kube-system 8mo ago
    Also California raised false advertising issues with the naming of “autopilot”
    • deleted 8mo ago
      [deleted]
  • jjice 8mo ago
    I have a newer Corolla that's pretty much the absolute floor of the base model (LE with I believe minimal packages) and it has all the technology one would expect now, all while having physical buttons where it matters. Lane assist and adaptive cruise control are table stakes now.
    • tasty_freeze 8mo ago
      Indeed, I have a 2023 Corolla. The dealer didn't like it when I said "LE" stands for "Low End" as a joke (it means Limited Edition). The technology for such a low end car is impressive. In addition to adaptive cruise control and lane keeping, the display shows the speed limit not by consulting a map but by reading the signs as you drive down the street. They call it RSA, Road Sign Assist. It also uses the camera and radar to alert when there are potential hazards (closing too quicky on the car in front, and lane changing into someone in the blind spot). All that in a $23K car, built into that base price.
      • TheCondor 8mo ago
• this_user 8mo ago
  They had the first mover advantage, but then Musk lost interest in the company and let it just sit there for the last five years or so without making sure that they have a future-proof product pipeline and that those products are actually being delivered on a reasonable schedule. Now they are increasingly turning into an EV also-ran while their moonshots are unlikely to work out any time soon. Realistically, he should have put someone else in charge after the launch of the Model 3 to develop the company further, but I don't think his ego allows it.
  • TacoCommander 8mo ago
    The end game is the SpaceX IPO which will make him a trillionaire, and then he doesn't need Tesla any more.
    • toomuchtodo 8mo ago
      Indeed. SpaceX in Merger Talks with xAI - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46814701 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46814701 - January 2026
    • burningChrome 8mo ago
      Or the Boring Company which most people have also completely forgotten about.
      • hinkley 8mo ago
        Because it’s boring.
        • alterom 8mo ago
          Not in principle, mind you. It's just that the company has stalled every major project they started, and, so far, completed a rather shitty an uninspiring one in Vegas that has no reason to exist in the first place (it's subway but with Teslas instead of trains). Its only purpose is to prevent the money from being spent on viable public transportation projects, and in that sense, it's very interesting that it got so far.
• misiti3780 8mo ago
  I have to admit, I love my model S and have been very bullish of TSLA but this news makes me very bearish. There is no way they are going to make robots at scale in the next 5 years and the model s and model X are cool pieces of technology. If they dont start rolling out robotaxi extremely quickly to new locations, I cant imagine the stock going anywhere but down.
  • toephu2 8mo ago
    > There is no way they are going to make robots at scale in the next 5 years If you said 1 year okay I would believe you. But have you seen the advances in AI recently...? And the work done in robotics by other companies like Google and Figure? 5 years is definitely doable.
    • misiti3780 8mo ago
      Sorry, Ill say it a different way. I dont think Tesla will be able to sell ME a robot within the next 5 years that does my laundry and cooks me dinner. If they want to sell millions of these things, that is what it's going to need to do.
    • Qwertious 8mo ago
      AI isn't the only bottleneck - even if the software problem was solved today, a robot arm competitive with human arms simply doesn't exist (and the only ones that have a hope of competing cost $16k each) - it turns out all those degrees of freedom makes the arm super fragile, and the human arm is filled to the brim with sensors (e.g. to figure out the weight of the item you're holding, or to tell when the teatowel is slipping or if you're gripping it tight enough). (Source: construction-physics, if anyone wants to comment with the link)
      • nate_meurer 8mo ago
        I know the Optimus marketing wank is all sci-fi humanoids, but I wonder if the products that actually hit the market will be much simpler, not trying to compete with human arms, as you say. Does that seem likely to you?
• ClarityJones 8mo ago
  The author said he saw Tesla prove that EVs were profitable, but it was profitable when taxpayers gave it $7,500 per vehicle sold... That's the whole profit margin on higher-end cars, and more profit than most mass-market makers get. EVs were never profitable.
  • thebruce87m 8mo ago
    Tesla don’t only sell in the US - when you say “per vehicle sold” - are you saying that the American taxpayers were subsidising the global sales? Or are you saying they were not profitable only in America?
  • toephu2 8mo ago
    Even when excluding regulatory credits and consumer tax incentives, Tesla’s automotive business remains profitable. Cost of Goods Sold (COGS): As of late 2024 and early 2025, Tesla’s average cost to produce a vehicle dropped to an all-time low of under $35,000. Gross Margin: Tesla’s automotive gross margin (excluding regulatory credits) has typically hovered between 15% and 18% recently. This means they earn several thousand dollars more per car than it costs them to build.
  • stefan_ 8mo ago
    Also helps if Obama gives you $500M to R&D the Model S.
    • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
      That was a very long time ago and many billions ago and it was a loan that was repaid with interest in two years.
  • rahimnathwani 8mo ago
    If you want to deduct tax rebates, then what about the other side? - New cars are subject to sales tax - In some states (e.g., California), there are additional fees buried in DMV registration costs. California's Vehicle License Fee (VLF) is based on the depreciated value of the car. So newer and more expensive cars pay more to use the roads than do older cars. So the VLF is effectively another tax on new cars.
• samiv 8mo ago
  I heard Tesla's "Full Self Drive" is now ready. The only thing missing is "self" and "full" but that's just a small detail. Moving on to fully autonomous robots now.
  • NorwegianDude 8mo ago
    I guess people are just a few days from starting to earn $30k/yr on their model 3s, as musk said it years ago? lol
• modeless 8mo ago
  It's business as usual for Elon. This is his main strategy. He always goes all in on risky technology that people say won't work. People said it about EVs. They said it about reusing first stages. They said it about Starlink's phased array antennas. Now he's going all in on self driving. It's obvious that self driving turns personal transportation into a service business. So that's where he's going. Yeah, if you don't believe in self driving then it's suicide. But if you do, it's the only thing that makes sense.
  • edmundsauto 8mo ago
    He’s been all in on self driving for at least a decade now. He has not been able to produce anything close to his claims.
    • modeless 8mo ago
      He was doing self driving but he wasn't all in on it until a few years ago, when they (apparently) stopped working on new models of cars for personal ownership. That's what makes it all in.
  • TheOtherHobbes 8mo ago
    I'm more and more inclined to suspect that XEverything is some kind of money laundering scam, where the world's richest people throw money at Musk because of his politics - which they hope will make them even more money. And not because of his technological promises, which are increasingly ridiculous and unbelievable based on more than a decade of his own public statements.
• 1970-01-01 8mo ago
  More like surgery to remove the excess weight. If they are not selling well, why would they continue making them? That would be suicide. "If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will." -Steve Jobs
  • ndr42 8mo ago
    Cannibalize meant in this case to have product that will kill one of your other products (in this case the back then cash cow iPod would be killed by the iPhone). I don't see this in Tesla.
    • 1970-01-01 8mo ago
      The Y and 3 do everything the X and S do. I don't see how they could keep making them without eating away sales.
      • rkagerer 8mo ago
        Not really. The Y doesn't even come close on towing capacity.
        • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
          But the CyberTruck does, though it is an entirely different segment.
• shevy-java 8mo ago
  Well, Elon decided to go that way. Really can't blame anyone else but himself here.
• elbasti 8mo ago
  Elon's superpower is commanding insane valuation premiums. The trouble with this is that "the bill eventually comes due", so to speak, which forces Elon's companies to take wilder and wilder bets, or to make wilder and wilder promises. With telsa it was robotaxis, and when that failed to materialize, humanoid robots (fucking LOL). SpaceX is an even more insane example. They are eyeing an IPO at a 1.5 trillion valuation. And yet the market for satellite launches is simply not that big. (What would you do with a satellite, if I gifted you one for free?). Estimates have SpaceX doing about $3B in annual earnings, which would give them a 500x earnings multiple at a 1.5T valuation (Apple: 35). And so SpaceX/Elon had to invent the absolutely idiotic idea of "data centers in space" to sell some future vision of tens of thousands of launches per year. He keeps upping the ante (and the ridiculousness of the vision), and so far investors keep funding it. Me? I've realized that this madness is entirely "opt-in" and I choose to simply...not opt-in.
  • code_for_monkey 8mo ago
    the humanoid robots thing is so ridiculous, theres no way that comes to fruition
  • rkagerer 8mo ago
    What would you do with a satellite, if I gifted you one for free? Let's forget orbital mechanics for a while to make this answer more fun. It would follow me around and provide a dedicated, private lifeline of communication anywhere I go, real-time aerial surveillance of my surroundings, and eventually lasers to zap anyone who pisses me off.
    • loosescrews 8mo ago
      Yes, and the reality is that any of those would require a fairly large constellation of satellites. I guess the play is that many large constellations of satellites will be launched.
      • asadotzler 8mo ago
        Not really. That's only the case for LEO sats. Going up higher gets you hemispheric coverage with a single bird.
• tromp 8mo ago
  From FSD to Full Self Destruct ...
• alecco 8mo ago
  Strongly disagree with this opinion piece. I think Musk/Tesla figured out it is impossible to compete with Chinese manufacturers in the foreseeable future so they are pivoting.
  • cosmicgadget 8mo ago
    ... away from their top tier models and into the ones that directly compete with China.
    • 3adawi 8mo ago
      their top tier models barely sell any volume, at least for now with Tariffs in most of the west, Tesla can still move huge numbers of Y and 3 but will see how that will go this year with so much movement in geopolitics
  • Qwertious 8mo ago
    The article basically says Tesla lost it's lead due to inaction years ago, so what you're saying isn't much different - "it's already dead, they're just pulling the plug" VS "they're committing suicide, which started several years ago".
• seydor 8mo ago
  Tesla cannot sustain astronomical valuations by delivering actual products. A dream cannot be real
• mdavid626 8mo ago
  Why is everyone freaking out? They won’t produce cars which don’t sell well. Model S and Model Y were rounding errors. They won’t make 25k cars either. Very little margin on that. Pivoting to consumer robots? Isn’t that cool?
  • deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
  • sjsdaiuasgdia 8mo ago
    > Pivoting to consumer robots? Isn’t that cool? Has there been a single public video of an Optimus robot that isn't an embarrassment? Has there been a single public video of an Optimus robot performing a complex or precise task? No, scooping popcorn at the Tesla diner isn't a complex or precise task...it wasn't very good at that in the videos I saw either, and it seemed they only had it doing that job for a short amount of time. If we're that close to consumer robots, why isn't Tesla (or other Musk companies) increasingly using them internally? Seems like it'd be a great way to prove the potential while working through the kinks. It'd be exciting if there was any actual detectable signal of a product worth buying. Instead we have...this... https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bk91DpkdPQY https://www.youtube.com/shorts/bk91DpkdPQY
• z3ratul163071 8mo ago
  This "Elon Musk lost interest" is very, very naive take. Actually I think this new directions demonstrates how great decision making they have at Tesla. Today and even more in the future they have no way of competing with the Chinese manufacturers. It is simply physically not possible. So they are rightfully pivoting and moving away from the race to the bottom that is ensuing.
  • AlexandrB 8mo ago
    The S and X were the luxury models. They're keeping the cheap ones. It sounds like they're jumping headfirst into the race to the bottom instead of pivoting away from it.
  • kklisura 8mo ago
    So, they're pivoting to competing with China on manufacturing robots? Yeah, that'll pan out...
• socalgal2 8mo ago
  I'm not saying the pundits are wrong, but tons of people said Tesla would never amount to anything back when they were just shipping the Roadster and the Model S.
  • GeorgeTirebiter 8mo ago
    ;-) looks like they are right, taking the slightly longer view! ;-)
• BeetleB 8mo ago
  I think we're at the point where there is a bit of healthy competition in the EV space (even when excluding the Chinese), that Teslas are mostly just symbolic. People still buy Teslas. But in my circle, most have bought other EVs (and not just because of Elon). Teslas are no longer the obvious superior choice.
  • dzhiurgis 8mo ago
    You might be surrounded by people who stopped thinking. My friend said "hell no" to Tesla right around backlash started and ordered a PHEV. Thankfully, somehow, someone convinced him to upgrade to EV. I keep begging him for a drive, but I suspect he's embarrassed by how shitty BYD is (same with other mate who somewhat regrets with all the issues he had, albeit they were far cheaper back then).
    • deleted 8mo ago
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    • BeetleB 8mo ago
      Since I'm in the US, BYD is not part of the equation. And yes, I will grant that at this point, it's possible that Tesla has the least serious problems. I don't know - I haven't looked at recent data. But it's the usual trajectory: I know plenty of people who bought Teslas in the last 5 years and complained how many weeks/months it would sit at the dealer awaiting repairs (just like it is with Hyundai/Ford/everyone-else these days). Case in point: Pretty much everyone I know who bought a non-Tesla and had issues with it is still happy with the purchase. Just like Tesla users of the past ;-) Only one guy got annoyed and sold his car and bought a different non-Tesla EV. My point is that if Tesla suddenly dissolved tomorrow, existing automakers will continue improving their vehicles. Maybe 10 or even 5 years ago Tesla's death would have meant the end of EVs in the US. But by this point we've hit critical mass. They're here to stay. There are just so many non-Tesla EV choices now.
  • octorian 8mo ago
    I still think there's a benefit to sticking with EVs from companies that are actually "all in" on EVs. Otherwise you're buying the product that the company (or really the sales/service channel) really doesn't want to sell you. In this space, Tesla does have competition (e.g. Rivian and Lucid), but nowhere near as much as they should.
• bottlepalm 8mo ago
  Give me a break. Tesla has 4 different, 4 person cars. It's redundant. In manufacturing and business, reducing variability is everything. Engineering and supply chain has now been freed from two entire SKUs. That's massive. In a self driving world, they don't really the Model 3 either. The best part is no part - well getting rid of two entire vehicles worth of parts that contributed very little to the bottom line is massive. It's amazing after 20 years of the same MO, people still don't understand how Tesla/SpaceX operate and succeed. It's like deleting millions of lines of code from a code base. It improves not just performance of the organization, but maintenance as well. The S/X were outsized tech debt on every facet of the business and now they're gone. 100% the right move and very few people understand it.
  • AlexandrB 8mo ago
    How many 4-person vehicles does Toyota make again? What about BYD? I think it's way more than 4.
  • EthanHeilman 8mo ago
    > Tesla has 4 different, 4 person cars. It's redundant. You are spot on, it makes sense to have the Model 3 (economy sedan) and Model y (upmarket crossover SUV). My question here is why did Tesla have four 4-person cars in the first place? If you wanted to streamline engineering and supply-chain why have Cybercabs instead of using the model 3 or model y as the base? Why split the company between Optimus and making cars? Cybertrunk does make sense, it is a technology demonstrator and test article filled with all the new ideas and tech they are going to build into the next generation. They get data on people using it by selling it to them. What you say is a sound strategy for Telsa to peruse, but they don't seem to be perusing it.
  • lbreakjai 8mo ago
    There's clearly no difference whatsoever between a Toyota Aygo and a Hilux, as they both seat exactly four people. That's why most car brands only have a single model.
  • cosmicgadget 8mo ago
    It's weird that you think people don't understand the concept of simplification, especially here. And that if someone says "that's an odd move" it must be because they can't grasp the idea of redundancy (between vehicles priced differently by a factor of two).
• skeptrune 8mo ago
  I'm surprised that I feel like this is the right move for them. Competing on the cars seems like a bad idea now that EVs are kind of a commodity market.
  • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
    Is it a bad idea for Toyota, or Honda, or Hyundai/Kia, or GM, or Ford, or even Rivian and Lucid?
    • skeptrune 8mo ago
      Yes, they wouldn't be able to retain share price whatsoever if they announced this.
• deleted 8mo ago
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• ai-christianson 8mo ago
  They might actually be going all-in on a robotaxi future, i.e. betting on a future where car-ownership is not the default.
  • ojagodzinski 8mo ago
    in US? Country built around car-ownership?
    • fhdkweig 8mo ago
      It is built around driving cars, but not necessarily car ownership. From what I gather through movies and television, cities like New York City don't really have car owners, but there are a lot of taxi cabs. Now Uber and Lyft have moved into small towns that never had taxis.
      • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
        I’m not sure that is a good example - NYC is an outlier and it has 45% of households owning cars.
    • testing22321 8mo ago
      Most people^ don’t actually want to own a car and deal with breakdowns, maintenance, repairs, fender benders, etc etc. They want the convenience and freedom a car provides. Right now in many places the best way to get that is ownership, so we suck it up and buy a horribly depreciating asset that causes headaches. That could quickly change if someone can figure out how to make using a car just as convenient while also cheaper. ^ of course there are car enthusiasts who will always want to own, but that’s a tiny fraction of car owners.
• nabla9 8mo ago
  Their revenue is flat for last 4 years. They have established their status outside top 10 manufacturers and losing EV market share to Chinese and Europeans. Car revenue: -11% operating margin: 3.86% Free cash flow -30% Tesla PE > 280 is magic. Now they are "pivoting" to Cybercab, humanoid robots and investing billions into xAI. Jumping from hype-trend to next without any problem is impressive. Fair valuation always in the future.
• OutOfHere 8mo ago
  It's not like Tesla actually has functional FSD technology. If a ten year staged rollout of "transportation as a service" is the way to get there, then Waymo has a substantial leg up. Either way it is a lose-lose for Tesla. They failed to continue innovating on the EV and battery fronts as well.
• littlestymaar 8mo ago
  I have no issue understanding why Musk does that, he's gone from “weirdo with lost of enthusiasm and charisma” to “batshit crazy, so full of himself there's basically no negative feedback loop anymore”. What I don't understand is why are the Tesla shareholders accepting his bullshit?
  • Qwertious 8mo ago
    Tesla shareholders who fully believe Musk is crazy will either 1) be quietly selling their stocks and don't want to draw attention, or 2) factored in the crazy and bought in anyway. If the craziness started today then that would be a good question, but it's been years.
    • littlestymaar 8mo ago
      I mean of course Musk has been crazy for years, but there's 1. “calling the leader of a rescue mission a pedo”-cazy and 2. “Tesla exits the personal car market”-crazy and as much as I can understand that investors could get away with 1., it's unbelievable to me that they accept 2.
  • cosmicgadget 8mo ago
    Cults of personality are all the rage these days. And in this case, people are probably just ratcheting up their stop loss prices and hoping the market is suckered by his next grand scheme.
  • TheCoelacanth 8mo ago
    Because without Musk's reality distortion field, Tesla stock would lose most of its value.
  • scottyah 8mo ago
    Do you actually care why or is this just a rhetorical question so get hn karma?
    • littlestymaar 8mo ago
• kolbe 8mo ago
  I have a Model Y with AI hardware version 4. It is phenomenal at self-driving, and if your impression of FSD is a year old or older, then you are woefully out of date in understanding where the tech is today. If I could, I would send my own grade school child off to her friend's houses and extracurricular activities in my car unaccompanied. It is safer than buses, taxis, and me. Not since Tesla created the first economically viable EV for the American public have I been as excited about a revolution in automotive technology. Other than the fact that Tesla still needs people out there manually driving to generate training data, I don't think Tesla should be selling cars at all. I fully support this move, and all I have to say is thank God for Waymo, so we can have good competition in the Robotaxi market. I'm done listening to pundits doubt Elon. I haven't seen Wall Street forecast future economic and technological trends well at all. Elon has created an EV market, caught falling rocket boosters, created the leading AI "nonprofit", and launched a worldwide satellite internet service, mostly in the face of rent seeking financial professionals and hacker news SSEs calling him dumb. I'm not sure what else a man needs to do to prove he deserves a little deference in his strategic decisions.
  • diamondfist25 8mo ago
    its MDS, the same thing as TDS. FSD can be working right before people's eyes, and yet they only believe what they read on news and not what they see in front of their eyes.
  • Synthetic7346 8mo ago
    Would you say it's better/safer than Waymo?
    • kolbe 8mo ago
      I've never been in a Waymo, but I am impressed with them from what I've seen reported.
  • tzs 8mo ago
    > Not since Tesla created the first economically viable EV for the American public have I been as excited about a revolution in automotive technology. What do you mean by "economically viable" and "for the American public"? I wouldn't count the Roadster because it was expensive (~$100k) and only produced in limited numbers (~2500 over its lifetime). I'd say that to count as for the American public a car has to be quite a bit more affordable than that, and quite a bit more available.
• Hamuko 8mo ago
  The new Roadster is such vaporware that no one is even bothering to bring it up.
  • moralestapia 8mo ago
    Yo, it will have a rocket!
• stickfigure 8mo ago
  Bipedal robots are dumb. A robot that can only walk around my house is still useless. A robot that can wheel or track or even park in front of my dryer and fold laundry would be incredible. Yet every demo is Robot Jumps And Dances, not Robot Does Something Useful. My theory is that bipedal motion is the "easy" problem, and fine motor control is the hard problem. That makes me bearish on Optimus: A car with questionable full self driving is still a useful car. A robot with questionable fine motor control is going to break every dish in the house.
  • duchef 8mo ago
    It seems very rational to assume bipedal motion is easy and fine control is difficult. Some babies can walk from 9 months. No 9 month olds are playing Beethoven's 5th on the Piano.
    • TheCoelacanth 8mo ago
      A 9 month old baby also can't play tic tac toe, but that doesn't mean tic tac toe is difficult. There was millions of years of very strong selective pressure making humans evolve to learn to walk easily. There has been very little selective pressure making humans be good at learning tic tac toe. Often whether something seems difficult or easy to humans has more to do with how well evolution has prepared us for it than with the inherent difficulty of the problem.
  • youngtaff 8mo ago
    Chinese manufacturers were recently reporting that people were twice as efficient as humanoid robots
    • throw310822 8mo ago
      Twice as efficient is an incredible achievement if you think that a few years ago humanoid robots struggled to stay upright and couldn't locate their own... well, charging port.
  • scottyah 8mo ago
• deleted 8mo ago
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• Pigalowda 8mo ago
  He’s just retooling to manufacture his fighting Uruk-hai.
• kypro 8mo ago
  I don't strongly disagree, but also don't really see why they would keep manufacturing X and S if the design is old and the car needs a refresh to be competitive? I guess the argument is that it would have been worthwhile refreshing it? I mean that may be the case, but I get the sense that Tesla's primary goal at the moment is creating cheap robotaxi ready vehicles, and S and X don't really fit well with that. Partly because of cost, but also because I suspect it's harder to build FSD for multiple different vehicles so both models are just a distraction right now. I'm not saying this article is wrong, but it seems like it may make sense that they focus on Y, 3, robotaxis and future projects like optimus. I don't have strong opinions either way on Musk, but his ability to see future tech trends before others has historically been quite impressive. Personally I think the idea that Tesla would be better off behaving like every other car company betting on small iterative improvements to the current line up is really quite silly. It's going to be extremely difficult to compete with China without protectionist policies. Tesla probably should be looking to the next thing if they want to survive.
• etempleton 8mo ago
  Tesla could be a major automaker if they released cars like a normal functional automaker. Elon, for his many faults, was perhaps the best person in the world to get Tesla where it is today, but he is more likely to burn it to the ground than maintain success of the company. If Tesla built a more traditional mid size SUV it would probably sell nearly as well as the Model Y and if they created a new more modern Model S It would probably do well also. I have my doubts their robots will be anything more than a gimmick for rich people.
  • NetMageSCW 8mo ago
    That’s why so many credit Gwynne Shotwell with SpaceX’s continued success. Unfortunately Elon didn’t look or didn’t want an equivalent for Tesla.
• GeorgeTirebiter 8mo ago
  Help me understand this: why would anybody buy a Tesla car today, unless it was incredibly well-priced with respect to the competition? Seems to me, yes, this kills Tesla cars.
  • diamondfist25 8mo ago
    uh, cuz Model Y is awesome? and FSD is complete?
• cratermoon 8mo ago
  Will Tesla be remembered as the DeLorean of the 2020s, or more like the Edsel?
  • cosmicgadget 8mo ago
    Almost certainly neither.
    • Qwertious 8mo ago
      The DeLorean was a stupidly-expensive car that had a lot of maintenance problems, decided to use an unpainted stainless steel exterior and had corrosion issues as a result, but is remembered despite all of this engineering mediocrity due to its unusual stylistic choices. I'm guessing Tesla's cybertruck will be the DeLorean of the 2020s.
      • cosmicgadget 8mo ago
        If you want to restrict the discussion to just the Cybertruck, it's more like the Edsel - an embarrassing failure from a dominant manufacturer. The Delorean similarities are largely skin-deep. Also probably 99% of people here are familiar with Deloreans and stainless steel.
        • cratermoon 8mo ago
          In what world is Tesla a dominant manufacturer? The company's market share peaked at 4.31% in 2023. That's behind GM, Toyota, Ford, Hyundai, Stellantis (Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep), Honda, and Nissan-Mitsubishi. Only VW, Subaru, and BMW had a smaller market share.
          • cosmicgadget 8mo ago
            They sure as hell dominated EV sales for quite a few years. Their valuation is absolutely dominant compared to any of those brands. Regardless, they're closer to Edsel-era Ford than DMC.
• SequoiaHope 8mo ago
  Amazing that Tesla announced the next generation roadster and sold pre-orders which I think cost $100k and then just never released it and there seems to be no indication (last I checked) that it ever will be.
  • testing22321 8mo ago
    Yesterday on the earnings call Elon said the reveal is in April “hopefully”.
    • SequoiaHope 8mo ago
      Sure. April fools day I imagine.
• flemhans 8mo ago
  "We are lucky they're so stupid"
• ZebusJesus 8mo ago
  Or he never intended for it to stick around and used it a the biggest pump and dump ever to become the richest man in the world using subsidies all along the way to get there. Will be interesting to see how much stock Elon sells...
• yigithan 8mo ago
  I think this makes a lot of sense if he puts all the effort into Optimus and makes it a really good robot. Once you have a really good robot, you do not need the car to self-drive, the robot can drive any car (or truck). I know it is very hard, but as we should have learned by now Elon loves very hard problems and this is exactly in his wheelhouse. It may all have been in his plans considering how he was very opposed to LiDAR and tried to base the system on vision alone. Additionally, to take another step toward AGI, you need vast amounts of real-world data. Optimus can provide that, much like Tesla cars have for driving data.
  • youarentrightjr 8mo ago
    Man... to live in your world...
  • lubujackson 8mo ago
    This is such a sad comment.
  • diamondfist25 8mo ago
    MDS is real. Just as real as TDS. I have Model Y and FSD. FDS is light years away from its competition
• fallingfrog 8mo ago
  I wonder if he has some kind of dementia brought on by excessive consumption of ketamine? Or perhaps it's just that he has surrounded himself with people who will never tell him no. Sort of like a lot of dictators do where they have executed everyone around them who could give them pushback and therefore they end up living in a fantasy world while their people starve. What I'm wondering at this point is why the investors in Tesla are still riding this crazy train. Blaming simple market manipulation seems far fetched. Mass hysteria and delusional beliefs are common enough in the stock market but reality eventually sets in and this bubble has been inflating for a long time. The people who lose the most are going to be the small investors- the really ruthless hedge fund bros will probably walk away unscathed.
  • Marsymars 8mo ago
    > I wonder if he has some kind of dementia brought on by excessive consumption of ketamine? Or perhaps it's just that he has surrounded himself with people who will never tell him no. Both of these points make me think of Tony Hsieh.
• davidguetta 8mo ago
  The discontinued models were 3% of the sale. It's not "suicide". Also if they feel self driving is sufficient, why would they bother with inferior stuff
• ece 8mo ago
  TBH, Tesla lost the plot after master plan 2 (Roadster 2, Semi and Cybertruck are all fine examples), now it's just a farce. Another company I will be glad to not have in my life.
• dissent 8mo ago
  I bought a new Model Y a few months ago. On the whole, it's a great car, it really is. They've pretty much nailed the fundamentals. It's opinionated, not unlike Apple, but if the opinions work for you you'll enjoy the car. But there are shortcomings, and they are jarring. The parking sensors basically don't work at all due to being vision only - and apparently can't be made to work properly. The lane change and reverse warnings are just crap and may as well not be there. My previous car implemented these to perfection, but I cannot trust the Tesla. The autopilot is a gimmick that offers you nothing but increased risk - and there's no way in hell I'd trust FSD for car that can't accurately detect the distance of my house when parking. The big touchscreen is great for passengers, but outright dangerous for drivers. Having said all that, it seems strong emotions around Musk and Tesla cause people to want Tesla to fail. They want the car to be bad. There is so much motivated reasoning around this brand that it's hard to take any article like the above, or half the comments in this thread, seriously.
  • frm88 8mo ago
    There's also the various reports of federal technical supervision instances that attest Teslas have the highest failure rates: Germany: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tuev-report-2026-tesla-model-y-has-the-worst-reliability-among-all-20222023-cars-261596.html https://www.autoevolution.com/news/tuev-report-2026-tesla-mo... Denmark: https://fdm.dk/nyheder/nyt-om-trafik-og-biler/tesla-skandalen-fortsaetter-naesten-hver-anden-tesla-model-y-dumper-til-syn https://fdm.dk/nyheder/nyt-om-trafik-og-biler/tesla-skandale... Ireland: https://www.rsa.ie/road-safety/statistics/nct-statistics-and-annual-reviews https://www.rsa.ie/road-safety/statistics/nct-statistics-and... At some point you have to acknowledge the data as facts.
    • dissent 8mo ago
      I kind of don't really care, as long as I get good service if my car is affected. I'm not defending them here. The next few years will tell if it was a bad buy or not. So far I'm really happy with it. My point was there's a huge anti-Tesla bias entirely as a reaction to Elon Musk. It's emotional, not rational. It's not objective criticism of Tesla. Sure, there are some awful moves he's made, vision only, FSD claims, but if it was another car company it wouldn't even be on HN. Wasn't so long ago that VW (a manufacturer literally started by the Nazis by the way!) were caught falsifying their emissions.
• TechTechTech 8mo ago
  Interesting to put this into perspective to Tesla's master plans from 20 years (https://www.tesla.com/secret-master-plan https://www.tesla.com/secret-master-plan) and 10 years ago (https://www.tesla.com/master-plan-part-deux https://www.tesla.com/master-plan-part-deux)
• slantaclaus 8mo ago
  The way it’s set up on their website right now, it’s very confusing why anyone would want a model X. It’s double the price of a model Y with very few ostensible improvements other than acceleration and top speed.
• diamondfist25 8mo ago
  So, let the MDS unfold in hackernews
• unstatusthequo 8mo ago
  I just quit reading any articles from this site. They are so obviously biased it’s obnoxious. I wonder who is paying them.
• 93po 8mo ago
  Electrek writer and owner still salty about failing to game the referral system, continue with fake journalism
• sidcool 8mo ago
  This story may be true. But I have read Fred Lanbert articles on Tesla and they are always negative. And in many cases even biased. So I'd take it with a pinch of salt. It's not like Tesla is failing, they have $40 billion cash at hand, more than many auto company's net worth,it's that people want to believe that Tesla is failing. I hope Tesla succeeds, with or without Musk.
• holtkam2 8mo ago
  What is so enjoyable about this is that it'll be all musk's fault when we look back and realize Tesla just died off over time. Once other companies started actually competing with him, he wasn't smart enough to hold the lead. Lucid, byd, even hyundai, all made better cars within a few years, so Elon just basically gave up. I love that
• starchild3001 8mo ago
  I owned a model 3 and two model Ss. I largely regard model S as the best sedan ever made (in less than 100k USD luxury price range). No, model 3 doesn't even come close. Plus you can buy a 3yr old model S "like new" at the price of a new model 3. Tesla is committing suicide here by eliminating the best sedan ever and by committing to an idea (taxis) that mainly serve the low end market. Message to Musk: people like to own things. Only the low end segment don't mind sharing their means of transportation. High end won't share. Biggest profits in tech are in the high end market as Apple and Samsung have repeatedly shown.
• ihagen 8mo ago
  A bit futurologisticaly but I think as in any authocracy regime, companies don't rely on the market and consumers. The durable source of income for them are goverment contracts. Autonomous androids are the next big thing which should help the richest people deal with disobidient work force.