[vannevar]

The problem with being a car company is that they'd have to compete with China. It's possible, but they'd have to make additional capital investments to keep up. They've just wasted a ton of money on a failed Musk vanity project (Cybertruck) and squandered a ton of goodwill in their home market via the DOGE fiasco. Cash flow is not what it once was, and if they're going to make a big capital investment, they're probably right in looking at robots. But that strategy puts them back where they were 20 years ago, just getting started in EVs, and their cash flow will depend on cars for many years to come.

[hrunt]

If the problem with being a car company is that they'd have to compete with China, then I have some bad news about being a robot company. China is already farther ahead in both technology and volume of humanoid robots.[0][1][2][3]

[0] https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/28/cnbc-china-connection-newsle...

[1]https://www.unitree.com/g1

[2] https://interestingengineering.com/ai-robotics/limx-humanoid...

[3] https://www.bgr.com/2083491/china-agibot-humanoid-robot-us-c...

[overfeed]

If you think of Musk companies as vehicles to extract money from state and federal governments, then everything falls into focus. Carbon credits, government launches and the Quixotic quest for Mars, and soon Tesla robots sold to the DoD and DHS. I'm only half-joking.

[vannevar]

Fair point. It's hard to support Tesla's valuation as a car company, it may be even harder to support as a robot company. You have to wonder what might have been if they'd spent that Cybertruck money on battery research.

[direwolf20]

Is there anything China isn't far ahead in? Maybe capitalism was a failure.

[SR2Z]

It doesn't help that Musk supported a guy who turned around and gutted the incentives that were helping Tesla turn a profit.

[nishanseal]

It seems counterintuitive, but this helped Tesla which is why Musk championed it. Basically when that tax credit came out, a bunch of Tesla owners had their cars underwater - loans were more than new cars were selling for and depreciation thru the roof. Plus the tax credit helped their competitors. Now that the credit is gone, Tesla owners are closer to being in the black on their cars and it also caused Ford and GM to cut EV production by I believe 100%. Win win for Tesla.

[jeltz]

Right now they struggle to compete with European car manufacturers, there is no way they can compete with China.

[bamboozled]

The problem with being a car company is that they'd have to compete with China.

As if China cannot produce kick ass robots ? What special sauce does Musk have here that a country with a massive pool of highly trained and educated engineers and decades of manufacturing expertise don't have?

[Ekaros]

I would bet that as soon as someone "solves" robots. China will relatively shortly, that is months or few years produce something that surpasses them. They have all the pieces and all the capabilities. Just look at drones for example. It just requires correct solution and China might even be first to provided that.

[vannevar]

I'm sure China can. But nobody is producing consumer humanoid robots at any scale yet, so Tesla can at least make the argument that they'll make better robots when people actually start buying robots. People are buying cars at scale right now, and existing Tesla models have fallen behind their Chinese competitors.

[burnt-resistor]

Tesla "competed" by corruptly getting BYD banned from the US and hurting US consumers.

[saimiam]

Looks like they took Peter Thiel’s animosity towards competition too literally by blocking BYD from the US market. Without competition, they had no incentive to innovate since they were selling into the wealthiest market in the world for their product, the US.

No innovation made them stagnate. Being blocked from the US made BYD innovate.

[laughing_man]

He generated a lot of goodwill with "that DOGE fiasco", too. It just depends on where you fall politically.

[linkregister]

Elon generated goodwill with DOGE among a group of people. He then alienated them during a public spat with the president. This is also a president who has decided to make EVs synonymous with the opposition political party.

[danny_codes]

Which is interesting because it seems DOGE failed to do anything useful. Patrick Boyle’s video suggested it actually cost $100B.

Which would be par the course for Ketamine Elon

[vannevar]

The people he generated goodwill with don't buy a lot of EVs, apparently.

[qingcharles]

Elon's a strange hero for MAGA. All the hardcore rural MAGAs I know hate Elon. They consider him a rich dickhead nerd (and group him with Gates) and they hate EVs with a passion, since they are quiet and produce no black smoke.