I don’t look Q to Q. I look at 5 year timeframes.
Great companies do great things over long periods of time. In my view Tesla is the greatest company in the world by far.
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WSJ reports $TSLA board had started the search for a CEO to succeed Musk… and early in the day news came out that Musk is on his way out of DOGE..
Whatzup elon??!!
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Tesla sales are tanking rapidly. There are over 10K cyber trucks sitting in lots with no buyers. EU sales are tanking even faster than US, Sweden it is down 80%, netherlands 74%, denmark 67%, France 60%…
Meanwhile the stock has significantly moved up.
Robotaxis are coming. You don’t understand Tesla.
I asked ChatGPT on robotaxi timeline.. find below. How much valuation for “robotaxi’s” is build in, I don’t know..
Tesla Robotaxi Timeline (announced vs. actually observed)
| Year / Event | What Tesla or Elon Musk Promised | What’s Happened / Where Things Stand |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 2016 | “All Teslas being built now have the hardware for full autonomy; we expect coast‑to‑coast driverless trip by end 2017.” | No coast‑to‑coast demo ever occurred. Hardware was updated twice (HW 3 in 2019, HW 4 shipping in 2023). |
| Apr 2019 – Autonomy Day | “We’ll have 1 million ‘robotaxis’ on the road in 2020 earning owners $30 k / yr.” | FSD (Beta) was released to employees Oct 2020 and to wider owners in 2021–24, but always with a “safety driver.” No revenue‑generating robotaxis. |
| Mar 2022 | Musk tweets that Tesla is “working on a dedicated robotaxi with no steering wheel.” | No prototype shown that year. |
| Aug 2024 (slipped to Oct 2024) | Scheduled “Robotaxi / Cybercab” unveiling alongside $25 k car. | Cybercab design shown 10 Oct 2024; heavily modular “unboxed” manufacturing approach revealed, but no drivable prototype. |
| Apr 22 2025 – Q1 earnings call | Musk sets June 2025 launch of a paid, invite‑only robotaxi service in Austin, Texas, starting with 10–20 modified Model Ys and “plenty of tele‑operation.” Reuters | |
| May 1 2025 | Tesla X post hinting at 1 June go‑live. TESLARATI | Still testing with safety drivers; no driver‑out trials observed as of mid‑May. Electrek |
| May 16 2025 | Morgan Stanley note after factory visit: service “can’t screw up,” will rely on remote operators until unsupervised FSD is proven; Cybercab production pushed to mid‑2026. Electrek | |
| Today (May 19 2025) | Multiple outlets reconfirm limited Austin launch “in a few weeks”; broader revenue impact not expected before late 2026. Investor’s Business DailyFuturism |
What to expect next
- June 2025 – Austin pilot:
- 10‑20 Model Y vehicles, geofenced downtown/airport corridor.
- Remote tele‑operators can intervene; passengers will be invite‑only at first.
- Data will feed regulators and Tesla’s internal safety case.
- H2 2025:
- Cybercab engineering validation; a steering‑wheel‑less, two‑seat pod built with Tesla’s “unboxed” giga‑casting system.
- Possible factory‑floor reveal during an “Optimus & Autonomy Day” rumored for Q4 2025. Investor’s Business Daily
- 2026:
- Musk projects commercial scale‑out and paid public service in additional U.S. cities “by late 2026,” contingent on regulatory approvals and FSD reaching unsupervised Level 4 performance. Reuters
- 2027‑2028 (analyst median view):
- Independent analysts and many Tesla bulls now model meaningful robotaxi revenue 2027+—one‑to‑two years later than Musk’s target—citing technical validation, tele‑op staffing, and state‑by‑state rulemaking.
Key uncertainties
| Area | Risk |
|---|---|
| Technical | FSD must demonstrate <1 disengagement per 10 k–100 k mi in mixed traffic to satisfy regulators. Current public FSD disengagement data aren’t published. |
| Regulatory | Only Waymo & Cruise have statewide driverless permits; Tesla will need similar waivers city‑by‑city (and has no California driver‑out permit yet). |
| Economics | Tele‑operation adds cost; hardware retrofit for HW 4 and redundant steering/brake actuators raises CapEx until Cybercab arrives. |
| Execution history | Tesla has missed or slid every autonomy deadline since 2016; investors discount timelines by ~2 years. |
Bottom line
- Earliest real‑world, rider‑only Tesla robotaxis = June 2025 in Austin (pilot, supervised).
- Material, open‑to‑public robotaxi network = 2026 (Tesla’s claim) / 2027‑28 (consensus).
- Treat all dates as provisional; regulatory sign‑off and demonstrated safety metrics will dictate the true rollout pace.
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The future is Robotaxis and Optimus.
Anyone looking at Car sales are looking backwards.
Tesla’s cash flow with Robotaxis will skyrocket. This will take a few years. They will go national and they will go global. They might also announce some licensing deals in coming months (like Superchargers).
Declining car sales is showing the damage to the brand is what I highlighted. I understand $TSLA is all about physical AI. If they can deliver robotaxi on time and overcome regulatory hurdles and scale, yeah the current valuation may even be cheaper.
There are lot of other tech names I own, I can wait and watch, how $TSLA shapes up. It is not trading so cheap that the valuation is so compelling to buy a call option.
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Due to the “Keyman Risk”, I gave my TSLA stack a haircut.
The backlash against MUSK will, IMO, be a headwind for all his companies.
My goal is to dodge that self-inflicted bullet.
ralph
The entire premise of the corporate-owned robotaxi is a terrible growth story. It comes with exceptionally high overhead (vehicle manufacturing) and high annual material costs (service, repairs, replacement), regulatory hurdles, you name it. Even if it is one day profitable, it isn’t a growth industry. Now, if they were selling just the high margin software to the public, that would likely be a growth industry but Tesla owning a 1MM plus fleet of robotaxis through the US seems like a terrible business model - and one that is likely restricted to the top 50 or so large metro areas for economies of scale.
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I am willing to give a benefit of doubt here. Current automobile, car ownership model is not necessarily the model of the future. For me, technology, regulatory, operational issues are bigger challenges than the economic model.
Right. Robotaxis are the future. Cheap, Electric, FSD, Point to point. Fully automated.
No ugly parking lots required.
That may be true and it can also be true that robotaxis will be a terrible business to be in.
The ur-example of that would be commercial airlines. The airplane for personal transportation was a revolutionary technology. But it ended up being a really lousy business. That’s what led Warren Buffett to pithily observe that “if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down.”
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I don’t know how anyone with any experience with rural, or even suburbia would think that. Personal vehicle ownership is a lifestyle. It is part of the fabric and personality of life for so many Americans that even if it was cheaper and better to do something else, it still isn’t likely to change.
Consider the massive amount of money people waste on buying and driving pickup trucks every year when they have cheaper and better alternatives. Yet you believe those people are likely to switch to a small robotaxi service and give up that freedom? I don’t buy it.
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Your earlier argument was dismissing corporate ownership of cars. Now, can it be a hybrid model, sure. Corporate ownership doesn’t necessarily have to be ownership by TSLA, it could be UBER, Avis, or individuals who are buying for renting to any combination.
Marketplace will experiment and determine the best model.
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It won’t likely be UBER as they have a business model that works - they have none of the overhead and simply take a fee from every ride. It would seem to be crazy for them to take on the expense of a fleet of vehicles that they owned or even leased.
And, if Avis is buying them, that still doesn’t make robotaxis for Tesla a growth industry any more than any other car company is a growth industry - selling a fleet to car rentals isn’t a growth industry. Remember Hertz’s purchase of all those Teslas? I doubt another rental company wants to be the early adopter of robotaxis after that.
Elon has said many times that Uber is the competition. So, using Uber as a benchmark, GROK says (inexact) online data suggests that the SMALLEST population Metropolitan area with Uber service has about 100,000 population.
IF one ASSUMES that UBER is a proxy for ‘economically viable’ then, wherever UBER is available, then robotaxis will also be economically viable?
The internet says there are about 387 Metropolitan areas in the US, each with a ‘core’ city with at least 50k population. The total metropolitan area has a significantly higher population.
I asked Grok to list the 150 largest Metropolitan areas.
I had to manipulate the question and drill down to get to populations below 150k. At # 208 or so, was San Angelo TX with population about 125,000.
According to GROK, UBER rides are available in San Angelo TX.
According to GROK, UBER rides are available in Temple TX pop 94K. Note that Temple is eastmost city in the Temple, Belton, Killeen Metropolitan area with 500k+ pop.
Do these data SUGGEST that robotaxis will be economically viable in a significant portion of the US?
Thanks for stimulating me to look at these data. It will inform my future choices about holding TSLA stock.
ralph
GROK noted that in smaller population areas, UBER availability might be spotty.
Not until they hit Level 5. And perhaps not even then.
Uber is a very asset-light, employee-light business model. Uber doesn’t need to have anything physically located in any given market in order to provide service there. Everything’s taken care of by the drivers.
For the foreseeable future, though, the robotaxi business model won’t be like that. They’ll require at least one employee (and likely more) to be physically present in the market during service hours. As a Level 4 system, someone has to be there to go out to the vehicle physically if things get “stuck” - not remote operators, but something like Waymo Roadside Assistance. Even once you get to Level 5, you still need someone to charge and clean the cars, deal with “left behind” objects, fix minor damage, etc. They’ll need a place to “sleep” at night. And, of course, there’s also the cost of the car itself.
You’re going to need a large enough volume of rides in the community to make those expenses pencil out.
Unless it’s a (near) exact copy of Uber, i.e. the hardware isn’t owned by a corporation, it’s individuals renting out their Teslas all day and night and eating the capital, maintenance, charging, and cleaning costs. This seems unlikely to me, except in small doses by enthusiasts here and there. It would take time for typical someones to amass enough capital to have a “fleet” of any significant size, and more time to roll up those fleets into an Avis or Hertz size corporation. I acknowledge there might be a few entrepreneurs who can start right off with a small fleet, but I would think that would be the exception until the concept is proven.
Then Tesla has to have the back room infrastructure to get requests, assign rides, and take payment. Pretty easy on that part, certainly. They’ll also have to cross the regulatory barriers that Uber got over, but the fences are far higher for “pure self driving” than “not really a taxi” rules that Uber thwarted.
If Tesla can do this, and at scale then maybe it’s a good business. It is not going to replace individual ownership to any significant degree, anymore than taxi cabs have (except in the densest urban environs).
Here in my little burg of 200,000 I can get an Uber in anywhere from 2 to 15 minutes; sometimes it’s faster to wait for the bus. And after midnight it’s pretty much never. I’m pretty sure there aren’t a lot of people ditching the car, with the possible exception of college kids who can’t afford/aren’t allowed to have a car on campus anyway.
I’m not saying it can’t work, or that it won’t work, but I am saying it isn’t a chip shot and an easy path to riches. But some have swallowed the kool-aid, and that’s what makes for paradigm changing businesses. Electric cars, certainly one of them. Robotaxi’s? Maybe, but a big maybe not.
No. They are different business models. I could run an Uber business in a town of less 10,000 if I wanted to. What does Uber care if I don’t make enough to turn a profit? Uber still makes money.
You can’t do that if you own or lease a fleet that requires overhead.
For example, I just looked up a small town in my area: Pittsboro IN, population less than 4,000.
I just priced a ride to the airport from Pittsboro for tomorrow at noon for $34. Uber has service for areas much smaller than 100k because there is no overhead for those areas. No dedicated fleet that needs to be on standby - and some rando that works for Uber two days a week can cover that ride and Uber gets their profit. If Uber/Tesla had to buy a $25k robotaxi for that trip, it would both likely be more expensive and probably not even available. It would take over 735 trips to the airport from Pittsboro at that same price just to cover that $25k cost (assuming they were that cheap) whereas by contrast, Uber gets ~25% of every $34 trip - without the fleet cost.
As a business, I don’t see why I want to own a fleet of robotaxis when I can lease drivers for free.
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I don’t think that is ever going to be a viable option with the current fleet of Teslas on the road today. I don’t think technology on the road will ever be level 5, or even level 4 - and it would be too costly to retrofit them all.
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