Tesla and Uber Unlikely to Survive (Vol. 2)

Tesla and Uber Unlikely to Survive (Vol. 2)

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hyphen

26,262 posts

92 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Jeez. What the fk.

Checked the original Hertz announcement and it says they are planning to place an order by end of 2022... https://ir.hertz.com/2021-10-25-Hertz-Invests-in-L...

So has the media mislead? It's just a Hertz publicity stunt.

Edited by hyphen on Tuesday 2nd November 07:26

CheesecakeRunner

3,927 posts

93 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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off_again said:
Thats a fair worry TBH! There will be a minority of owners of Tesla's that still have free charging, who no doubt will be pissed. But the majority of buyers in recent months and years will have to pay, even at a discounted rate. Given that one of the big benefits of a Tesla for a lot of people, is access to the charging network, I suspect this wont necessarily go down well.

But, if Tesla can make it happen and balance the books on it - it could well be the kick start that EV adopters need. The big question in the US is around the chargers though. All bespoke here, so lets see what happens.
I was in two minds about it.

On one hand I think it’s needed for increasing adoption.

On the other, as you say, one of the reasons for buying a Tesla was access to that network.

But on balance I don’t think it’ll be too bad. Because access to the chargers all goes through the app, the charger live status in my car will be accurate, and the nav will take care of getting me to an available charger with a preheated battery and enough range for the journey. When I get there I know the charger will work, and it’ll be fast. So it doesn’t matter if cars there are Tesla or not.

The biggest challenge will be cars not parking in the bays properly in order to make cables reach. I see the sites in Norway have been specifically chosen as there are a substantial amount of chargers (20+) and much clearer access to them to cater for different charge port locations. I could see the same here initially, in that not all supercharger sites accept third party vehicles.

Edited by CheesecakeRunner on Tuesday 2nd November 07:28

Durzel

12,310 posts

170 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Burwood said:
isleofthorns said:
so, today, Tesla seems to have added about 90 billion to their market cap...

... that's more or less the whole of BMW in one day.....
It’s typical of a momentum stock. I’m not being controversial. It’s a huge bubble that may run to 1500 but it will pop. If anyone is truly up 50 bags and sitting tight they are insane.

This action is driven by short interest which grossly distorts reality. Some do make a fortune but it’s not new. Back in the 90’s I bought my first home with yahoo options. The stock went from 100 to 200 in 5 days. Infospace. Several stocks went from teens to 1000. 3com, palm pilot anyone remember that. It was like looking at a casino slot payout. 30 to 150 in 30 minutes. Today is tame compared. It will all go tits up at some point. I think it’s got a ways to go though. We need a catalyst, like Apple or msft-real cash bell weathers to start bleeding. Hey, what do I know.
With respect, the mistake you appear to clinging to is that you keep thinking that the stock price HAS to collapse because it is not based on fundamentals.

As a Tesla owner, but not a TSLA owner, I can’t really explain the stock price. But you can have a look at plenty of other stocks like GME, AMC, etc that blew up due to short interest, and belief, and greed, and haven’t subsequently collapsed. Those stocks are - in my opinion - nowhere close to their “true” value either. People are to this day investing and “HODL’ing” a stock in a company that had been losing money year-on-year, with no practical positive outlook (streaming is only getting bigger, and “going out to the cinema” becoming less popular). Still, people believe AMC will “go to the Moon” through sheer force of will.

The same is broadly true of Tesla, I think. People believe it will carry on rising, and belief is really only what matters with the markets the way they are now. So long as enough people are buying the stock, there’s no reason not to think that the price is basically what it is, and the fundamentals become less and less relevant.

I’ll admit it has been quietly amusing to see people who are wedded to the notion that “any day now” people will wake up and realise the valuation is nonsensical. If you, or indeed I, had invested money back when you were foretelling a collapse below £600 we’d both have doubled our money at this point, and that wasn’t even that long ago.

I don’t plan to buy in at this level, but I’ve also been wrong on stock purchases before. i don’t think people can necessarily make prudent decisions on this stuff when the price is almost entirely speculative. The only sane thing to do is really to buy if you believe in the vision, and ride it out for however long and accept that whatever happens happens between now and X years ahead. Making predictions about the price, as you have been doing, based on a flawed belief in correlation with fundamentals, is only going to continue to look misguided, I think.

Edited by Durzel on Tuesday 2nd November 07:39

Durzel

12,310 posts

170 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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CheesecakeRunner said:
I was in two minds about it.

On one hand I think it’s needed for increasing adoption.

On the other, as you say, one of the reasons for buying a Tesla was access to that network.

But on balance I don’t think it’ll be too bad. Because access to the chargers all goes through the app, the charger live status in my car will be accurate, and the nav will take care of getting me to an available charger with a preheated battery and enough range for the journey. When I get there I know the charger will work, and it’ll be fast. So it doesn’t matter if cars there are Tesla or not.

The biggest challenge will be cars not parking in the bays properly in order to make cables reach. I see the sites in Norway have been specifically chosen as there are a substantial amount of chargers (20+) and much clearer access to them to cater for different charge port locations. I could see the same here initially, in that not all supercharger sites accept third party vehicles.
I think there will be people (particularly shareholders) who are on the whole "push to EV adoption trumps all!" who, when they pitch up at a supercharger they'd previously depended on and found it full or several cars blocking bays due to charge port location, that their convenience is impacted and it's suddenly a problem.

I think it's corrosive, personally. It's a secondary revenue stream for Tesla, so good for shareholders, but for owners - particularly ones who might have been swung towards Tesla over other marques which, let's face it, probably have better build quality - it's not great. I can't see any upside, personally. People have suggested that it will mean Tesla has more money to build more superchargers, but that assumes the money from charging a) is enough and b) will be used for that. It also assumes that Tesla won't lose sales as a result, which I think is a certainty. There will be people who ended up in a Model S because of the network who decide this time around they're going to buy that Taycan, e-Tron, or whatever else - because what difference does it make so long as it's got a CCS port? Tesla will have to sell a lot of charging to make up for ~£100k a pop sales losses.

it is "on brand" for them in terms of the drive to sustainability, etc, so it's difficult to criticise, but if you're just a regular Joe car owner who has suddenly found that the USP for your car has been invalidated, with whatever knock on effect that has to value, maybe those people will feel the pain more, when they never expressely signed up with that in mind.

Tuna

19,930 posts

286 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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hyphen said:
Jeez. What the fk.

Checked the original Hertz announcement and it says they are planning to place an order by end of 2022... https://ir.hertz.com/2021-10-25-Hertz-Invests-in-L...

So has the media mislead? It's just a Hertz publicity stunt.
Makes sense from Hertz point of view.

What's the betting they're currently talking to Ford, VW, Toyota et. al. to see if they can get a better deal? Musk has said he won't discount, and if the order isn't even going to be placed for another year, there's time for his competitors to get something in place.

Tuna

19,930 posts

286 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Durzel said:
With respect, the mistake you appear to clinging to is that you keep thinking that the stock price HAS to collapse because it is not based on fundamentals.

As a Tesla owner, but not a TSLA owner, I can’t really explain the stock price. But you can have a look at plenty of other stocks like GME, AMC, etc that blew up due to short interest, and belief, and greed, and haven’t subsequently collapsed. Those stocks are - in my opinion - nowhere close to their “true” value either. People are to this day investing and “HODL’ing” a stock in a company that had been losing money year-on-year, with no practical positive outlook (streaming is only getting bigger, and “going out to the cinema” becoming less popular). Still, people believe AMC will “go to the Moon” through sheer force of will.

The same is broadly true of Tesla, I think. People believe it will carry on rising, and belief is really only what matters with the markets the way they are now. So long as enough people are buying the stock, there’s no reason not to think that the price is basically what it is, and the fundamentals become less and less relevant.
True enough. The thing is that belief has the opposite effect in a falling market. The psychology behind the current stock market is that there are a lot of people with some spare cash, a little more free time on their hands due to Covid, and nowhere useful to put it due to long term low interest rates. Add in a little marketing grease from the pile-on of social media 'investment gurus' and low friction investment tools like Robinhood and it's easy for money to flow into the system on belief alone.

With the current level of capital investment, it would be pretty much impossible for Tesla to fail - they've got enough to keep going for decades now, to develop multiple new models and build out factories at will. Pretty much any of Musk's goof-ball ideas can be built, tested and thrown out if/when it doesn't perform as plan. That's great - he can have an astronomically high failure rate and it doesn't matter at all, so long as he gets a few wins. The fanbois will lap up any success (particularly of left-field ideas) as proof he's a genius, and the critics will point to the long line of failures and question how he is even allowed to dress himself in the morning.

At the same time, Tesla is currently valued higher than all other car manufacturers on the planet combined. On a fundamental level that makes no sense at all, even if you do the hand-wavey thing of "they're more than a car company". It's true that belief will sustain that valuation, but if we start seeing financial pressures on the market and individuals, inflation starts biting and people have to pay their bills, then money can flow out just as quickly. Then you've got a real problem, because the only real 'value' of the company was that other people believed there was value there. Pop!

Who knows - no predictions here. There are lots of mutterings that we're going to see hard times ahead, inflation and material shortages are on the horizon and we're not done with covid yet. Things could change rapidly, or we could just see a long period of stagnation as the current issues slowly unwind. If I could see the future, I'd have won the lottery by now.


Durzel

12,310 posts

170 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Excellent post. I'm in total agreement with everything you've said there.

Burwood

18,709 posts

248 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Durzel said:
Burwood said:
isleofthorns said:
so, today, Tesla seems to have added about 90 billion to their market cap...

... that's more or less the whole of BMW in one day.....
It’s typical of a momentum stock. I’m not being controversial. It’s a huge bubble that may run to 1500 but it will pop. If anyone is truly up 50 bags and sitting tight they are insane.

This action is driven by short interest which grossly distorts reality. Some do make a fortune but it’s not new. Back in the 90’s I bought my first home with yahoo options. The stock went from 100 to 200 in 5 days. Infospace. Several stocks went from teens to 1000. 3com, palm pilot anyone remember that. It was like looking at a casino slot payout. 30 to 150 in 30 minutes. Today is tame compared. It will all go tits up at some point. I think it’s got a ways to go though. We need a catalyst, like Apple or msft-real cash bell weathers to start bleeding. Hey, what do I know.
With respect, the mistake you appear to clinging to is that you keep thinking that the stock price HAS to collapse because it is not based on fundamentals.

As a Tesla owner, but not a TSLA owner, I can’t really explain the stock price. But you can have a look at plenty of other stocks like GME, AMC, etc that blew up due to short interest, and belief, and greed, and haven’t subsequently collapsed. Those stocks are - in my opinion - nowhere close to their “true” value either. People are to this day investing and “HODL’ing” a stock in a company that had been losing money year-on-year, with no practical positive outlook (streaming is only getting bigger, and “going out to the cinema” becoming less popular). Still, people believe AMC will “go to the Moon” through sheer force of will.

The same is broadly true of Tesla, I think. People believe it will carry on rising, and belief is really only what matters with the markets the way they are now. So long as enough people are buying the stock, there’s no reason not to think that the price is basically what it is, and the fundamentals become less and less relevant.

I’ll admit it has been quietly amusing to see people who are wedded to the notion that “any day now” people will wake up and realise the valuation is nonsensical. If you, or indeed I, had invested money back when you were foretelling a collapse below £600 we’d both have doubled our money at this point, and that wasn’t even that long ago.

I don’t plan to buy in at this level, but I’ve also been wrong on stock purchases before. i don’t think people can necessarily make prudent decisions on this stuff when the price is almost entirely speculative. The only sane thing to do is really to buy if you believe in the vision, and ride it out for however long and accept that whatever happens happens between now and X years ahead. Making predictions about the price, as you have been doing, based on a flawed belief in correlation with fundamentals, is only going to continue to look misguided, I think.

Edited by Durzel on Tuesday 2nd November 07:39
What you describe is a Pyramid scheme. It's like blaming 'weak hands/sellers' for a price drop. You assert a limitless flow of new capital will send it ever higher. It would, however no market works like that. GME is a low float huge Short interest stock. I am surprised it's held up but that is due in large part to the structure of the business and the shares available. It too will tank. It's just a matter of when.


Durzel

12,310 posts

170 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Burwood said:
What you describe is a Pyramid scheme. It's like blaming 'weak hands/sellers' for a price drop. You assert a limitless flow of new capital will send it ever higher. It would, however no market works like that. GME is a low float huge Short interest stock. I am surprised it's held up but that is due in large part to the structure of the business and the shares available. It too will tank. It's just a matter of when.
Ponzi schemes are all the rage now though. Just look at cryptos as a whole. "Greater fool theory" is king.

Belief is basically fuelling everything at the moment. I think Tuna nailed it quite succintly, there's a lot of retail money sloshing around and access to this stuff via RobinHood et al is as easy as it's ever been. People who have never invested before and would usually have had to jump through "financial advice" hoops are able to FOMO in to whatever is currently rising.

So long as people continue to believe, the price will continue to rise or at the very least rumble along. The current price of GME, AMC, etc doesn't make sense - even after restructuring, etc - but you don't have to look far at various forums etc to see that it's very much a David vs Goliath thing going on in the price.. a lot of retail money maintaining the price through sheer force of will and railing against imagined enemies like "hedgies", etc.

I think betting against sentiment is foolish at the moment, even if it seems like the logical thing to do.

edit: For clarity I'm not saying any of it is sustainable, but betting against it in the short term is probably not wise. Or maybe it is, but it's pretty much impossible to know.

Edited by Durzel on Tuesday 2nd November 12:08

Burwood

18,709 posts

248 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Oh I agree with the latest power of the retail Robin Hood trader-i won't say investor wink And i wouldn't dream of betting against it, now. You can count on one hand the number of Shorts (Puts) i've entered.

The point I was making is Valuation based on even the most tenuous metric-the numbers don't stack up and never will at this level. Even if they sold 15M cars and had a vast robot taxi fleet. Simple economics. EVs must get cheaper to be mass adopted. That's why they want to sell the sub $20K car. Toyota know this and that's why they sell 10m? cars annually. If Rob on here had the inclination to buy the stock years ago and has made enough to buy his dream retirement, hats off to him. I admire the commitment. Opportunities like this are once every 20 years or so.

smile

JonnyVTEC

3,012 posts

177 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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RobDickinson said:
They'll just make an adapter for the USA chargers, either fixed to the SC or purchasable
They already do for the CCS adapters.

gregs656

10,949 posts

183 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Durzel said:
Excellent post. I'm in total agreement with everything you've said there.
I also agree. One of the reasons I watch TSLA is because if sentiment leaves TSLA that negative sentiment could easily spread across retail investors (and/or traders) who start pulling their money out of absolutely everything and that would be painful for everyone.

hyphen

26,262 posts

92 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Too big to fail? They may suspend all trading biggrin

TameBritishMuslim

172 posts

77 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Tuna said:
Durzel said:
With respect, the mistake you appear to clinging to is that you keep thinking that the stock price HAS to collapse because it is not based on fundamentals.

As a Tesla owner, but not a TSLA owner, I can’t really explain the stock price. But you can have a look at plenty of other stocks like GME, AMC, etc that blew up due to short interest, and belief, and greed, and haven’t subsequently collapsed. Those stocks are - in my opinion - nowhere close to their “true” value either. People are to this day investing and “HODL’ing” a stock in a company that had been losing money year-on-year, with no practical positive outlook (streaming is only getting bigger, and “going out to the cinema” becoming less popular). Still, people believe AMC will “go to the Moon” through sheer force of will.

The same is broadly true of Tesla, I think. People believe it will carry on rising, and belief is really only what matters with the markets the way they are now. So long as enough people are buying the stock, there’s no reason not to think that the price is basically what it is, and the fundamentals become less and less relevant.
...Then you've got a real problem, because the only real 'value' of the company was that other people believed there was value there. Pop!
Once the traders and speculators pile out, the 'real value' of the company will be what all long term investors saw in the first place and during all those years when the price was low and flat prior to the initial 'break out'. The share price will adjust lower until future positive events such as new factories come online and ramp up and/or new models are delivered.

Tuna

19,930 posts

286 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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TameBritishMuslim said:
Once the traders and speculators pile out, the 'real value' of the company will be what all long term investors saw in the first place and during all those years when the price was low and flat prior to the initial 'break out'. The share price will adjust lower until future positive events such as new factories come online and ramp up and/or new models are delivered.
False logic there. If belief can arbitrarily make a stock "worth" far more than the underlying company is valued at, then it can also make it "worth" much less.

Historically, for the majority of its existence, Tesla has been valued in terms of it's future possibilities - the "change the world" stuff like robotaxis and FSD. If it turns out that they can't deliver and sentiment turns against Musk, then the stock price (and their ability to deliver future positive events) will drop. It becomes just a car company, competing against many other car companies, with bigger networks, servicing operations, sales operations and model ranges. The future expectation can be negative if you think the rest of the world will catch up and eventually out-compete your business. Think Palm Pilot, Nokia, Blackberry and all the other companies that are held up as object lessons in losing tech leadership.

As a very long term Lotus follower, I can promise you that a company can produce the best, most ground breaking car(s) in the world and still be stuck in a niche, eventually starved of investment and struggle to produce the "next model" that will grow the company.

I very much doubt that would happen to Tesla - they're just too well capitalised now - but a stock value that is less than their current size as a niche automotive manufacturer is entirely possible.

Personally though, since you made such a song and dance about how much you've made from Tesla, I hope you HODL all the way. wink

Durzel

12,310 posts

170 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Tesla's fate is pretty closely intertwined with Musk's, I think. Unlike Microsoft and Apple who have basically matured under Nadella and Cook respectively, Tesla and Musk aren't so easily decoupled.

Musk has done an amazing job really of making proclamations about the state of full self driving for many years, and despite never actually coming to fruition the market has never really responded as you'd expect. He seems to be given a near-infinite amount of latitude for missed deadlines and hyperbole.

I do feel that Tesla have done well in this climate because the markets are generally in a weird place right now. Everything feels very frothy, and there is a lot of retail investor money swirling around that is being ploughed into stuff with the minimum (or no) due diligence, just purely on FOMO and "vibe". I doubt much of the bulk of money that is precipitating the double-digit gains on stuff are the old school "look at the 5 year trend" thinking.

So, I think Tesla is vulnerable to its competition actually delivering the things he's promising faster and more reliably, but also his outbursts and seemingly random decisions. Buying a load of Bitcoin and then taking Bitcoin payments (briefly), and then "realising" that the mining of it can be egregiously wasteful, when you're the figurehead of a company with a mission statement to encourage sustainability just feels utterly surreal, yet he gets away with it and the markets don't react the way you'd expect them to.

off_again

12,417 posts

236 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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hyphen said:
Jeez. What the fk.

Checked the original Hertz announcement and it says they are planning to place an order by end of 2022... https://ir.hertz.com/2021-10-25-Hertz-Invests-in-L...

So has the media mislead? It's just a Hertz publicity stunt.

Edited by hyphen on Tuesday 2nd November 07:26
Yeah, WSJ did an article on it, but behind a paywall - Jalopnik has some information on this:

https://jalopnik.com/that-tesla-hertz-deal-isnt-do...

This is weird! I currently work for, and have worked for several public companies in the past. I have to certify sales and revenue each quarter and all of the companies that I have worked for are VERY strict on revenue recognition. This doesnt seem to be a signed deal and hence shouldnt be reported - and importantly, making public statements to the effect are market moving ones, and really shouldnt have been made. This has effected the stock price and its all very weird.

There is something very shady going on here. I am not pointing the finger at Tesla here, since there are three companies involved here. But surely the PR and IR teams for these public companies should have got involved.

TameBritishMuslim

172 posts

77 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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Tuna said:
TameBritishMuslim said:
Once the traders and speculators pile out, the 'real value' of the company will be what all long term investors saw in the first place and during all those years when the price was low and flat prior to the initial 'break out'. The share price will adjust lower until future positive events such as new factories come online and ramp up and/or new models are delivered.
False logic there. If belief can arbitrarily make a stock "worth" far more than the underlying company is valued at, then it can also make it "worth" much less.

Historically, for the majority of its existence, Tesla has been valued in terms of it's future possibilities - the "change the world" stuff like robotaxis and FSD. If it turns out that they can't deliver and sentiment turns against Musk, then the stock price (and their ability to deliver future positive events) will drop. It becomes just a car company, competing against many other car companies, with bigger networks, servicing operations, sales operations and model ranges. The future expectation can be negative if you think the rest of the world will catch up and eventually out-compete your business. Think Palm Pilot, Nokia, Blackberry and all the other companies that are held up as object lessons in losing tech leadership.

As a very long term Lotus follower, I can promise you that a company can produce the best, most ground breaking car(s) in the world and still be stuck in a niche, eventually starved of investment and struggle to produce the "next model" that will grow the company.

I very much doubt that would happen to Tesla - they're just too well capitalised now - but a stock value that is less than their current size as a niche automotive manufacturer is entirely possible.

Personally though, since you made such a song and dance about how much you've made from Tesla, I hope you HODL all the way. wink
How many other car companies have a gross margin of 29% (excluding EV credits) as it stands today with Tesla? How many have telemtry for insurance business? How many have an energy division to not only install capacity but perform arbitrage? How many have the same level of vertical integration, lean design and rapid prototyping and development? How many are making huge leaps and bounds in manufacturing to decrease cost of production and increase efficiency? Why is an established player like VW's CEO saying that it takes them 30 hours to produce and ID4 and yet it takes Tesla about 10? Which other car company is paying as low per KWh for batteries as Tesla is? Why is the average age of a VW worker 50, whereas, the average age of the Shanghai workers at Tesla is 26? Which other car company has a charging network they can leverage? And so on..

TL;DR: It's belief for a variety of good reasons not just 'faith' and even if RoboTaxi's and FSD are not here in a meaningful way by 2025; Tesla is anything but another car company.

RobDickinson

31,343 posts

256 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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If you think it's retail investors pushing up the cap by $95bn in a day your crazier than I thought.


Burwood

18,709 posts

248 months

Tuesday 2nd November 2021
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A lot of waffle. No question Tesla are more efficient, currently. I make it 26% GM. And? Oh. 1.2T right. Average age of Chinese workers 20 years younger. And? Maybe the older ones are for the scrap heap. I always find it interesting when the subjective waffle comes out and the hard numbers bypassed. Tesla battery cost is what, $85/kw/h? VW is $90, big deal.

If say in 10 years things have grown and you can expect, i dunno maybe a reliable income stream. What i'm asking is how much money is it reasonable to expect this business to generate. tax paid, options paid, net in the tin? 20B, 30B, 50B? And if anyone has some thought let's have some numbers, car sales, FSD, rob taxi assumptions. Saying Cos Tesla. $5000.

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