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I believe Elon is taking SpaceX public because he knows that Tesla is cooked. The Chinese have already won. They're pumping out cars for $10,000, 1,000 km range

I believe Elon is taking SpaceX public because he knows that Tesla is cooked. The Chinese have already won. They're pumping out cars for $10,000, 1,000 km range, and at jaw-dropping scale. He knows Tesla is on borrowed time.

pjc50 6mo ago
Tesla are in a strange place: people keep pointing out how decoupled the stock price is from the car business, and the stock refuses to go down. Partly because they're still selling the dream of full FSD. Chinese companies seem to be ignoring FSD and going straight for the full EV crown. Japanese companies are clinging to hybrids, which they do well, but are still dependent on petrol. America simply won't let the Chinese cars in and will continue to buy $100k gas guzzler trucks, because that's what the market demands.
- khriss 6mo ago
  > because that's what the market demands. Is that true though? People are currently forced to buy gas guzzlers since there are simply no practical and cheap EVs available in the United States. If Chinese EVs were allowed to be sold in the US, it's not a given that people would still prefer ICE cars. Indeed, the fact that they are banned suggests that the Govt knows that the domestic car industry can't compete with them.
  - fragmede 6mo ago
    The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Bolt (and Volt) and Fiat e500 don't exist in your narrative? People want their big SUVs, even Tesla sells one or two.
- aurareturn 6mo ago
  Chinese companies seem to be ignoring FSD They're not. They already have robotaxis in many Chinese cities.
londons_explore 6mo ago
Manufacturing was always going to be temporary in the USA. You just can't win at manufacturing cost sensitive goods when all your workers want to be highly paid. Should have gone the Apple route - design in the USA, make in China, and use a walled garden to ensure hardware clones aren't desirable and can't run any of your apps/features.
- ZeroGravitas 6mo ago
  Tesla makes more than half its cars in China. They are generally regarded as better in quality than the US built ones.
  - londons_explore 6mo ago
    But they have no walled garden... They should by now have some kind of platooning feature where you press a button and it'll hook up to the Tesla car ahead of you for long distance journeys. Or a 'tesla miles club', where driving 100k miles gets you perks like free insurance, theme park tickets etc. Or something like 'free parking when you park with a friend who also has a tesla'. Basically Tesla needs the equivalent of the iMessage blue bubble lock in effect and the 'all my stuff is on iCloud it would be too hard to move to android' effect.
tristanj 6mo ago
No, it's because Elon understands the model of selling cars for humans to drive will be dead by the end of the next decade. With self-driving cars, the economics of buying a personal car stop making sense (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization), the cost-per-mile of a self-driving car is lower than that of a personal one, so people will switch to ride hailing over purchasing a car. This happened before around 2015 when Uber was massively subsidizing ride hailing, where it was cheaper to Uber everywhere than to buy a car. Many people realized the cost of insurance + car payment was higher than just Ubering everywhere, so they took Uber and never bought a car. And given the option of driving a car manually or letting the computer drive for you, 95% of people will choose the computer for convenience. Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo. The consumer car market will collapse 50-80% by 2040, and Tesla leadership sees this. There is no point on trying to innovate on a dying market. It makes far more sense to move onto future markets, i.e. selling cybercabs and robots.
- bryanlarsen 6mo ago
  If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less. Add dead heading and milage will increase even further. If cars still get about 200 000 miles of life like they do now then we'll have fewer cars, replaced more often, so still requiring the production of a similar number of cars. We'll need million mile cars to reduce that, and those don't appear to be coming from Tesla.
  - tristanj 6mo ago
    > If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less People won't be driving at all. > still requiring the production of a similar number of cars. Doesn't address my point, that consumers won't be the ones buying cars. These cars will be sold to self-driving vehicle fleet managers, not consumers. Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead. > those don't appear to be coming from Tesla Tesla just killed its consumer vehicles Model X and Model S. Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.

pjc50 6mo ago

Tesla are in a strange place: people keep pointing out how decoupled the stock price is from the car business, and the stock refuses to go down. Partly because they're still selling the dream of full FSD. Chinese companies seem to be ignoring FSD and going straight for the full EV crown. Japanese companies are clinging to hybrids, which they do well, but are still dependent on petrol. America simply won't let the Chinese cars in and will continue to buy $100k gas guzzler trucks, because that's what the market demands.

khriss 6mo ago
> because that's what the market demands. Is that true though? People are currently forced to buy gas guzzlers since there are simply no practical and cheap EVs available in the United States. If Chinese EVs were allowed to be sold in the US, it's not a given that people would still prefer ICE cars. Indeed, the fact that they are banned suggests that the Govt knows that the domestic car industry can't compete with them.
- fragmede 6mo ago
  The Nissan Leaf and Chevy Bolt (and Volt) and Fiat e500 don't exist in your narrative? People want their big SUVs, even Tesla sells one or two.
aurareturn 6mo ago
Chinese companies seem to be ignoring FSD They're not. They already have robotaxis in many Chinese cities.

londons_explore 6mo ago

Manufacturing was always going to be temporary in the USA. You just can't win at manufacturing cost sensitive goods when all your workers want to be highly paid. Should have gone the Apple route - design in the USA, make in China, and use a walled garden to ensure hardware clones aren't desirable and can't run any of your apps/features.

ZeroGravitas 6mo ago
Tesla makes more than half its cars in China. They are generally regarded as better in quality than the US built ones.
- londons_explore 6mo ago
  But they have no walled garden... They should by now have some kind of platooning feature where you press a button and it'll hook up to the Tesla car ahead of you for long distance journeys. Or a 'tesla miles club', where driving 100k miles gets you perks like free insurance, theme park tickets etc. Or something like 'free parking when you park with a friend who also has a tesla'. Basically Tesla needs the equivalent of the iMessage blue bubble lock in effect and the 'all my stuff is on iCloud it would be too hard to move to android' effect.

tristanj 6mo ago

No, it's because Elon understands the model of selling cars for humans to drive will be dead by the end of the next decade. With self-driving cars, the economics of buying a personal car stop making sense (personal cars are utilized <5% of the time, while self-driving cars can see >60% utilization), the cost-per-mile of a self-driving car is lower than that of a personal one, so people will switch to ride hailing over purchasing a car. This happened before around 2015 when Uber was massively subsidizing ride hailing, where it was cheaper to Uber everywhere than to buy a car. Many people realized the cost of insurance + car payment was higher than just Ubering everywhere, so they took Uber and never bought a car. And given the option of driving a car manually or letting the computer drive for you, 95% of people will choose the computer for convenience. Self-driving is proven technology, see Waymo. The consumer car market will collapse 50-80% by 2040, and Tesla leadership sees this. There is no point on trying to innovate on a dying market. It makes far more sense to move onto future markets, i.e. selling cybercabs and robots.

bryanlarsen 6mo ago
If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less. Add dead heading and milage will increase even further. If cars still get about 200 000 miles of life like they do now then we'll have fewer cars, replaced more often, so still requiring the production of a similar number of cars. We'll need million mile cars to reduce that, and those don't appear to be coming from Tesla.
- tristanj 6mo ago
  > If this self driving future is better, people will be driving more, not less People won't be driving at all. > still requiring the production of a similar number of cars. Doesn't address my point, that consumers won't be the ones buying cars. These cars will be sold to self-driving vehicle fleet managers, not consumers. Obviously, cars will still be made, but not consumer cars. The consumer car market is dead. > those don't appear to be coming from Tesla Tesla just killed its consumer vehicles Model X and Model S. Tesla shifted focus into the Cybercab & Cybervan, both self-driving only vehicles, which don't have steering wheels.