3 ms·

why is Tesla much higher? I thought Tesla's market cap was because of the self driving feature.

by simianwords 9mo ago

tgsovlerkhgsel 9mo ago
The only semi rational thing that could explain it is the robots.
- sorenjan 9mo ago
  It's always the next big thing. It used to be self driving, now it's AI and robots.
- everforward 9mo ago
  I don’t even think that’s rational, but it may be what’s propping them up. Last earnings call Musk said Optimus wasn’t doing “meaningful work” at Tesla and as far as I’m aware they haven’t done meaningful work anywhere. I think they’re behind the curve there. Figure AI recently finished an apparently successful feasibility trial of their humanoid robots with BMW and Boston Dynamics has a deal with Hyundai for their Atlas humanoid robots. I’m not even convinced humanoid robots are going to pan out in general. They only really make sense in a scenario where you’re back porting robotics to factories built for humans. That has value but feels temporary; factories designed to be robotic feel like the future, and there’s no need for them to do the job the same way a human would.
  - philipwhiuk 9mo ago
    > Boston Dynamics has a deal with Hyundai for their Atlas humanoid robots Slightly depressing that we're back to replacing the big industrial robots rather than new markets.
    - everforward 9mo ago
      I _think_ these are meant to replace humans working alongside the industrial robots rather than the big industrial robots themselves. I don’t work in manufacturing though, and the press releases are too buzzword-y for me to grasp the actual tasks they’re going to do. I would guess the long term strategy is to do this for economies of scale and then push into new markets opened up by the lower price point. I would guess these are horribly expensive right now, given something like Spot is way simpler and still like $40k
  - lvspiff 9mo ago
    this is something that also never made sense to me - it felt like star wars got it right - for repairs and remedial tasks a trash can (rs-d2) or all the little service droids are more appropriate, but c3p0 or other nurse and protocol droids makes sense to look more humanistic since they serve functions to facilitate human activitiy - but there is no way those functions are numerous enough to be priofitable.
  - floxy 9mo ago
    >I’m not even convinced humanoid robots are going to pan out in general. I want one personally, so it can rake the leaves, mow the lawn, tend the garden, do the laundry and dishes, replace the roof, etc., when I'm old. But they should also be used to pick up litter along the highway, paint over graffiti, etc..
    - UebVar 9mo ago
      I feel like the humanoid form is getting in the way for that, and that a "Spot" like design with a hand on top is better suited for that. Also i think laundry and dishes are already 95% automated since about 50 years.
      - tgsovlerkhgsel 9mo ago
        It'd almost certainly need at least two hands, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who would pay to automate the remaining 5% of the dishes. And the two-handed spot will have a hard time grabbing something under the sofa.
        everforward 9mo ago
        For dishes and clothes? Zero hands required, you can use a vacuum to pick them up and maneuver them (inverting the air flow to drop them). A buddy demo-ed something from work doing exactly that like a decade ago, but it was commercial and designed for an assembly line.
    - everforward 9mo ago
      I absolutely do too, I’m just not convinced a single humanoid robot is going to do the job cheaper and better than a dozen purpose-built robots (which you might own, or might rent from Home Depot or whatever when the need arises). Eg lawn mowing robots already exist, and have for a decade or so. Garden tending also exists, though I think only commercial prototypes at the current moment. Roofing feels very possible, but I only roofed once so ymmv. Is the future going to be buying a humanoid robot with a thousand servos for $100,000, or texting a number to have a self-driving car drop off a bladed roomba made from bargain bin brushless motors and plastic to mow your lawn for $0.50?
  - tgsovlerkhgsel 9mo ago
    Our world is adapted for humans, so humanoid robots will fit in most places. They might not be the best choice, but the universality has a good chance of making it worth it through economies of scale. Building a custom robot that can stock shelves at a supermarket won't be worth it for a long time, but programming an existing humanoid platform might work. Find a couple hundred tasks like this (including household use), and that platform now has huge economies of scale. Now, when you're starting a small factory, using the existing humanoids might make more sense than getting custom tooling, at least for some tasks. You'll often see factories where some tasks that could, in theory, be automated are left to humans because they're relatively small tasks and not worth automating with a custom machine. Humanoids could fill that gap.
    - everforward 9mo ago
      > Building a custom robot that can stock shelves at a supermarket won't be worth it for a long time, but programming an existing humanoid platform might work. This feels inverted to me, but perhaps I’m reading it wrong. A lot of the core challenges are shared, but the humanoid has to solve a bunch of additional challenges. Eg balancing is difficult with moving loads of various weights. Humanoids have to deal with that, while something more forklift-like practically opts out of that issue by just being designed with a high mass and low center of gravity. I don’t see a universe where a humanoid is ever cheaper, but I could maybe see it generalizing well enough for usage to make it worth it. I’d still be a bit surprised, because operating costs would surely be higher (way more servos or hydraulics to fail, higher power usage hauling around unnecessary parts and weight). This seems doubly true for factories where opex is so much more meaningful than capex. It’s worth spending $4M on custom tooling rather than $2M on generic tooling if it drops your opex by $500k/year on a factory with a 20 year lifespan.
lawn 9mo ago
It's a meme stock. There's nothing rational about Teslas valuation.
petesergeant 9mo ago
Tesla valuation prices in the minuscule but real chance that Elon is able to pull a unicorn[0] out of his ass at some point in the future. 0: The magical creature, not a 1bn company
jillesvangurp 9mo ago
Waymo needs $16B to build what Tesla already has: manufacturing capacity. Without that, there are only so many cars they can put on the road. They've proven they can do the rides. But they haven't proven they can do it cost effectively. To scale up and start making a profit, they'll need to start building/buying lots of Waymo cars. That's not going to be cheap or fast. That's going to involve a lot of capital expenses. Tesla is the other way around. They can definitely make lots of cars and make a profit. But they haven't quite gotten FSD to the stage where it can do rides properly. Supposing they at some point figure that one out, they are very well positioned to start producing vehicles by the hundreds of thousands pretty soon after. That's indeed the premise for their valuation. It's risky but not completely without merit. Another point to make is that Waymo and Tesla are not going to have this market to themselves for very long. There are quite a few autonomous ride hailing companies serving rides at this point. And while the attention is often on the US, China is moving pretty quickly as well. Several companies competing there in several huge Chinese cities, for example. On the US side, I think there are a few players that might become competitive soon. Zoox is looking pretty solid. And Rivian is rumored to be pushing autonomy as well. There are a few more players in various stages of technical readiness. The real battle will be in a few years when we are past the basic "does it work", "is it safe" questions and legal approvals all over the world become more routine. Then it will be all about volume and scaling. That's going to take probably at least until 2030.
- seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
  Based on the news, I think Waymo will import base vehicle builds from China and then adding the control systems and software to those. So it’s not like they will start making cars.
  - sowbug 9mo ago
    That sounds right. Unless Waymo considers car manufacturers to be its competition and therefore something to commoditize, it wouldn't make sense for them to get involved in ground-up manufacturing. And by this point, it seems like an electric-car platform already is close to a commodity, which is another reason for Waymo not to waste capital building another.
guywithahat 9mo ago
Probably because Tesla sells about a million cars a year, including the worlds best selling car (Model Y) since 2023. The stock consistently performs well as well, I know they outperformed estimates for last quarter. Being positioned well for autonomous driving presumably helps hold the stock up, but I don't think that's the core of the valuation, and Waymo does a fraction of what Tesla does. Waymo is impressive, but their 2025 revenue was ~350 million.

why is Tesla much higher? I thought Tesla's market cap was because of the self driving feature.

tgsovlerkhgsel 9mo ago

The only semi rational thing that could explain it is the robots.

sorenjan 9mo ago
It's always the next big thing. It used to be self driving, now it's AI and robots.
everforward 9mo ago
I don’t even think that’s rational, but it may be what’s propping them up. Last earnings call Musk said Optimus wasn’t doing “meaningful work” at Tesla and as far as I’m aware they haven’t done meaningful work anywhere. I think they’re behind the curve there. Figure AI recently finished an apparently successful feasibility trial of their humanoid robots with BMW and Boston Dynamics has a deal with Hyundai for their Atlas humanoid robots. I’m not even convinced humanoid robots are going to pan out in general. They only really make sense in a scenario where you’re back porting robotics to factories built for humans. That has value but feels temporary; factories designed to be robotic feel like the future, and there’s no need for them to do the job the same way a human would.
- philipwhiuk 9mo ago
  > Boston Dynamics has a deal with Hyundai for their Atlas humanoid robots Slightly depressing that we're back to replacing the big industrial robots rather than new markets.
  - everforward 9mo ago
    I _think_ these are meant to replace humans working alongside the industrial robots rather than the big industrial robots themselves. I don’t work in manufacturing though, and the press releases are too buzzword-y for me to grasp the actual tasks they’re going to do. I would guess the long term strategy is to do this for economies of scale and then push into new markets opened up by the lower price point. I would guess these are horribly expensive right now, given something like Spot is way simpler and still like $40k
- lvspiff 9mo ago
  this is something that also never made sense to me - it felt like star wars got it right - for repairs and remedial tasks a trash can (rs-d2) or all the little service droids are more appropriate, but c3p0 or other nurse and protocol droids makes sense to look more humanistic since they serve functions to facilitate human activitiy - but there is no way those functions are numerous enough to be priofitable.
- floxy 9mo ago
  >I’m not even convinced humanoid robots are going to pan out in general. I want one personally, so it can rake the leaves, mow the lawn, tend the garden, do the laundry and dishes, replace the roof, etc., when I'm old. But they should also be used to pick up litter along the highway, paint over graffiti, etc..
  - UebVar 9mo ago
    I feel like the humanoid form is getting in the way for that, and that a "Spot" like design with a hand on top is better suited for that. Also i think laundry and dishes are already 95% automated since about 50 years.
    - tgsovlerkhgsel 9mo ago
      It'd almost certainly need at least two hands, and I'm sure there are a lot of people who would pay to automate the remaining 5% of the dishes. And the two-handed spot will have a hard time grabbing something under the sofa.
      - everforward 9mo ago
        For dishes and clothes? Zero hands required, you can use a vacuum to pick them up and maneuver them (inverting the air flow to drop them). A buddy demo-ed something from work doing exactly that like a decade ago, but it was commercial and designed for an assembly line.
  - everforward 9mo ago
    I absolutely do too, I’m just not convinced a single humanoid robot is going to do the job cheaper and better than a dozen purpose-built robots (which you might own, or might rent from Home Depot or whatever when the need arises). Eg lawn mowing robots already exist, and have for a decade or so. Garden tending also exists, though I think only commercial prototypes at the current moment. Roofing feels very possible, but I only roofed once so ymmv. Is the future going to be buying a humanoid robot with a thousand servos for $100,000, or texting a number to have a self-driving car drop off a bladed roomba made from bargain bin brushless motors and plastic to mow your lawn for $0.50?
- tgsovlerkhgsel 9mo ago
  Our world is adapted for humans, so humanoid robots will fit in most places. They might not be the best choice, but the universality has a good chance of making it worth it through economies of scale. Building a custom robot that can stock shelves at a supermarket won't be worth it for a long time, but programming an existing humanoid platform might work. Find a couple hundred tasks like this (including household use), and that platform now has huge economies of scale. Now, when you're starting a small factory, using the existing humanoids might make more sense than getting custom tooling, at least for some tasks. You'll often see factories where some tasks that could, in theory, be automated are left to humans because they're relatively small tasks and not worth automating with a custom machine. Humanoids could fill that gap.
  - everforward 9mo ago
    > Building a custom robot that can stock shelves at a supermarket won't be worth it for a long time, but programming an existing humanoid platform might work. This feels inverted to me, but perhaps I’m reading it wrong. A lot of the core challenges are shared, but the humanoid has to solve a bunch of additional challenges. Eg balancing is difficult with moving loads of various weights. Humanoids have to deal with that, while something more forklift-like practically opts out of that issue by just being designed with a high mass and low center of gravity. I don’t see a universe where a humanoid is ever cheaper, but I could maybe see it generalizing well enough for usage to make it worth it. I’d still be a bit surprised, because operating costs would surely be higher (way more servos or hydraulics to fail, higher power usage hauling around unnecessary parts and weight). This seems doubly true for factories where opex is so much more meaningful than capex. It’s worth spending $4M on custom tooling rather than $2M on generic tooling if it drops your opex by $500k/year on a factory with a 20 year lifespan.

lawn 9mo ago

It's a meme stock. There's nothing rational about Teslas valuation.

petesergeant 9mo ago

Tesla valuation prices in the minuscule but real chance that Elon is able to pull a unicorn[0] out of his ass at some point in the future. 0: The magical creature, not a 1bn company

jillesvangurp 9mo ago

Waymo needs $16B to build what Tesla already has: manufacturing capacity. Without that, there are only so many cars they can put on the road. They've proven they can do the rides. But they haven't proven they can do it cost effectively. To scale up and start making a profit, they'll need to start building/buying lots of Waymo cars. That's not going to be cheap or fast. That's going to involve a lot of capital expenses. Tesla is the other way around. They can definitely make lots of cars and make a profit. But they haven't quite gotten FSD to the stage where it can do rides properly. Supposing they at some point figure that one out, they are very well positioned to start producing vehicles by the hundreds of thousands pretty soon after. That's indeed the premise for their valuation. It's risky but not completely without merit. Another point to make is that Waymo and Tesla are not going to have this market to themselves for very long. There are quite a few autonomous ride hailing companies serving rides at this point. And while the attention is often on the US, China is moving pretty quickly as well. Several companies competing there in several huge Chinese cities, for example. On the US side, I think there are a few players that might become competitive soon. Zoox is looking pretty solid. And Rivian is rumored to be pushing autonomy as well. There are a few more players in various stages of technical readiness. The real battle will be in a few years when we are past the basic "does it work", "is it safe" questions and legal approvals all over the world become more routine. Then it will be all about volume and scaling. That's going to take probably at least until 2030.

seanmcdirmid 9mo ago
Based on the news, I think Waymo will import base vehicle builds from China and then adding the control systems and software to those. So it’s not like they will start making cars.
- sowbug 9mo ago
  That sounds right. Unless Waymo considers car manufacturers to be its competition and therefore something to commoditize, it wouldn't make sense for them to get involved in ground-up manufacturing. And by this point, it seems like an electric-car platform already is close to a commodity, which is another reason for Waymo not to waste capital building another.

guywithahat 9mo ago

Probably because Tesla sells about a million cars a year, including the worlds best selling car (Model Y) since 2023. The stock consistently performs well as well, I know they outperformed estimates for last quarter. Being positioned well for autonomous driving presumably helps hold the stock up, but I don't think that's the core of the valuation, and Waymo does a fraction of what Tesla does. Waymo is impressive, but their 2025 revenue was ~350 million.