[sgjohnson]

Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

For many people, the very term EV itself is still ubiquitous to Tesla.

And somehow Tesla is still worth more than every other non-Chinese automaker combined. $1.5T.

GM? $80B. Stellantis? $40B. Toyota? $280B. Mercedes-Benz? $60B. BMW? $55B. Volkswagen Group? Also $55B.

I’m sure I’ve missed plenty of others, but I could miss some 18 $50B automakers, and Tesla would still be worth more than all of them combined.

If Tesla was valued fairly, it would probably be at the tune of $5B. But I’ll never bet against it, because the markets can remain irrational for longer than I can remain solvent. And for some unbeknownst to me reason, the markets value Tesla as a hot tech company, not a 3rd rate automaker, which is what it actually is.

And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.

[gwbas1c]

> And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.

My Huyndai's Autopilot equivalent (I don't even know what they call it) is better than the enhanced Autopilot in the Model 3 that I traded in. It actually changes lanes when I put on the blinker, instead of only changing lanes 70% of the time, and the other time just sitting with the blinker on and a clear lane.

[not_ai]

I did not know this and explains why I see so many teslas with their blinkers on and not maneuvering despite having ample room and time. Ultimately this behavior makes them unsafe for their occupants as well as others around them.

Cars only work because we can predict driver behavior, if they break that prediction that’s when bad things are likely to happen…

Lately I’ve started to ignore Tesla blinker.

[philistine]

Most probably because it has a radar that the Tesla lacks. That means your car has two sources of truth and can very efficiently and quickly make an informed decision about whether or not there's anything in the way.

[noboostforyou]

Kia Telluride here but I assume it's the same underlying system as Hyundai - I can attest that it's very good (and doesn't cost anything extra like Tesla charges lol) which makes sense considering they have the majority stake in Boston Dynamics since a few years ago.

[compootr]

I bought an IONIQ 6 with Hyundai Driver assist II, and it's not what the reviews cut it out to be.

On stretches of pretty straight highway and in traffic, it fares very well, only requiring minor interaction, but on larger curves, it completely disengages with no tone or warning, just a light on the dashboard that turns off.

I'm fully aware you're supposed to drive a car by paying attention to the road, but if the whole point of this feature is to make driving more chill, randomly disengaging makes me distrustful of it

[gkfasdfasdf]

Tesla FSD will change lanes when you use the blinker. It will also accelerate and remain engaged if you press the pedal, e.g. if you want to coax it forward at an intersection.

[Traster]

I think you're totally wrong on this. Tesla didn't waste the first mover advantage. They benefitted from it whilst it existed, but Electric vehicles turned into a commodity, which was entirely expected and there's no moat.

You've explained yourself why it would be untenable for Musk to pursue becoming the biggest car manufacturer in the world - if he succeeded in that goal... he would have succeded in shrinking the value of the company significantly.

It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

[jordanb]

Tesla's original "secret plan" (published on their website) was to become a commodity car manufacturer faster than electric cars became a commodity. Such that the other manufacturers would find them selling obsolete vehicles and Tesla just becomes the new General Motors.

This was the justification for their stock price for quite a few years: "It's logical that Tesla is worth more than all other automakers combined because it will soon be the only automaker."

Then in 2022 Elon basically admitted that they couldn't win on production and had to continue to win on technology and they'd do that with self driving. [https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basica...]

But now Tesla is way behind on self driving (which was oversold by the whole industry tbh). So what's their new plan? Now they're no longer a car company and will make robots!

[sgjohnson]

> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

But it's make-believe. Tesla is a car manufacturer. They haven't shipped anything else other than cars. And they even suck at making cars these days. Tesla Semi? All but dead. The new roadster? Also dead. Full Self Driving? Doesn't exist. Robotaxis? Even if they got them to work, at this point the brand is too toxic for widespread adoption of those.

They could have persisted at being a disruptive car manufacturer and still held a several hundred billion dollar valuation. Now they are a very mediocre car manufacturer, with their only actual success being conning everyone into believing that they are a bleeding-edge tech company so their $1.5Bn valuation seems justified.

[breve]

Why is making humanoid robots a moat? Other companies have been making robots for longer, humanoid and otherwise, and doing it better.

Has Optimus signed up for any sports yet: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/02/china/china-humanoid-robo...

Is Optimus close to what Boston Dynamics is doing with Atlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIhzUnvi7Fw

[sosomoxie]

Pure logic would dictate that Tesla has a market cap of around $5B. It's actually fraudulent that it's not, and for some reason the SEC allows Musk to lie on every earnings call without repercussion.

[jcranmer]

Brand value is definitely a moat. Not the deepest of moats, but it is a moat nonetheless.

> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

Tesla is valued as if it is a tech company with a car business as a side gig. Its balance sheet is a car business, and I'm not even sure it spends enough on tech to have tech qualify as a side gig. And the other tech avenues it has been pursuing (autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots) are areas that other people have been doing for better and longer. Hell, Honda had autonomous (not tele-operated) humanoid robots working 20 years ago.

To be honest, at this point, I mostly consider the other bets that Tesla is pursing are just passion projects to keep the stock price artificially high. Were Tesla more realistically valued, it would lose probably 90% or more of its value, and Musk would be a much poorer man.

[Fischgericht]

If you do not want to run a car company, maybe do not... run a car company? Get an ice cream truck.

It absolutely makes no sense to convert a car manufacturer into an AI company. Or a robotics company after you have build CAR FACTORIES around the planet.

If you as a CEO don't like the business you are running for your shareholders, it is time to get a new CEO that does. There still are managers that really like running car companies.

I don't get the feeling that BYD management is bored about the EV business...

[freakynit]

Everything tends toward commodification in a hyper-competitive, hyper-connected world. The only variable is time... and this "time" keeps shrinking.

As commodification accelerates, consolidation follows. In the current landscape, where private capital and state power are deeply entangled under the banner of national security, this consolidation no longer stays economic. It becomes geopolitical.

The end result... it translates to not just corporate monopolies, but geo-monopolies... enforced not by markets alone, but by coercion, conflict, and control over resources.

[JumpinJack_Cash]

> > It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

You can pursue everything with words, even you can pursue Sydney Sweeney but then you have to show the receipts.

The receipts of Tesla (Factories, lines of production, expertise of people hired, 25 years of history...) are one of car company.

But of course, it's all narrative so people will keep outbidding each other to own a piece of this company.

The financialization of hope, that's what it is.

[CRConrad]

> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

Isn't this in reply to a post (or was that another reply just below it?) about how other, "traditional", car companies are valued at 55, 60, 80, and 280 billion dollars...? Seems being a car company and having a billion dollar valuation isn't all that incompatible.

[theshrike79]

The competition was this:

Tesla had a very good computer, they were learning how to put a car around it.

Traditional manufacturers (German mostly) had good or very good cars, but they sucked at the computer stuff.

---

And unknown to all, the Chinese learned how to make good cars with good computers built in as those two were trying to achiever their respective goals.

[outside1234]

Tesla's moat is constantly moving to the next thing and claiming it has a moat before moving on to the next thing.

Elon's business model is moving from one government subsidized thing to the next (see SpaceX now bribing for tax dollars to go to Mars).

[arbor_day]

It's not that EVs are a commodity. Competition and speculative production capacity buildouts combined with lower than expected consumer demand made the market less profitable.

[AtlasBarfed]

Yeah there's no margin in being a luxury car builder

And of course you're just going to pretend what the mission statement was.

[neogodless]

> Electric vehicles turned into a commodity

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity

> a resource, that specifically has full or substantial fungibility: that is, the market treats instances of the good as equivalent or nearly so with no regard to who produced them

Uhh.. not sure where you live or what your local / regional market is like. I'm in the United States, where what car you drive is a really big decision. Many people share on social media what car they bought, and tell people around them about the new car they bought. I've yet to witness a situation where someone said "I bought an electric car" and the response was something like "Why are you telling me you bought toilet paper?" (Even toilet paper has brand names and advertising.)

That isn't to say that the car market hasn't shifted over time.

Cars began as "engine to move wheels plus a few other things" and evolved so that the engine seemed less of the central reason why you bought a specific vehicle. An electric powertrain does take things a bit further, in that most EV buyers know very little about the motors, though they certainly know a thing or two about the battery.

Batteries are generally a commodity at smaller scales, but in a car, they matter significantly. Still, brand matters, too. Ask Lucid or Rivian or Porsche how they sell their electric cars for $70K - $160K. How is it that a commodity available to purchase for ~$30K can be sold for $130K additional? (That's not how commodities work.)

No, electric cars are not a commodity. It's just a difficult market with a lot of players, and a broad market with constantly evolving tastes. Ask Toyota why they have half a dozen different SUV models. Or why the Ford F-150 comes in 200 configurations. (That's not how commodities work!)

Just because the gasoline-burning engine was replaced with electric motors and batteries, the car didn't turn into a commodity overnight. I'm open to counterarguments and persuasion to the contrary.

[epolanski]

Bingo.

[gkfasdfasdf]

> And to add insult to injury, even GM Super Cruise is widely renowned as better and safer than Tesla’s current “FSD”.

Do you have any sources for that claim? I can attest that current iteration of FSD is very, very good, and very likely is a safer driver than I am. At least one major insurance company agrees [0]. I don't have any experience with Super Cruise though.

[0] - https://www.lemonade.com/fsd

[root_axis]

> Do you have any sources for that claim? I can attest that current iteration of FSD is very, very good, and very likely is a safer driver than I am.

That's a damning statement about your driving skills, and probably not true or you'd have had your license revoked by now. I've had FSD for five years, and even today it regularly makes dangerous mistakes. For example, left turns and roundabouts are the equivalent of Russian roulette, but just last week my FSD started driving through a red light because it interpreted a green left-arrow as a sign that it could proceed forward.

If you need to do 50 miles on the interstate it's pretty solid though.

[enragedcacti]

Lemonade doesn't support your claim that FSD is a safer driver than you are. It just says that, most charitably, they believe FSD and a human operator are safer than just a human operator (The co-founder said exactly this to Reuters [0]). Further, the program has only been around for a week and their marketing copy specifically cites "Tesla's data" as the source for the 50% reduction rather than any sort of independent analysis.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lemona...

[sjsdaiuasgdia]

> At least one major insurance company agrees

You mean the insurance company that has only existed for 10 years and I never heard of before this Tesla tie-in marketing gimmick?

[xnx]

> At least one major insurance company agrees

Lemonade has <1% market share

[vladms]

> If Tesla was valued fairly

I think it's a wrong mental model to think of stock market value as "fair" or "unfair" (or maybe it's just me thinking of "unfair" when I see the word "fair").

My impression is that if Tesla would be valued based on quantifiable things it would be much much lower (production costs, competition, revenues, potential, etc.). Of course, you shouldn't value something only based on quantifiable things, but in Tesla the "wishful thinking" part seems to be much larger than for others.

[johnmaguire]

I assume OP meant something closer to "fair market value" than "fair vs. unfair." Tesla is not priced according to its underlying assets or technical analysis (e.g. P/E ratio), but solely based on hype/sentiment.

Interestingly, retail investors and company insiders collectively own more of Tesla than institutional investors.

[Multiplayer]

GM Supercruise on my 2024 Silverado RST is a joke compared to Tesla FSD. It's not even remotely comparable. Supercruise only works on freeways/highways, does not understand ANY navigation. It's a better cruise control, that's about it. I own 2 Tesla model S of different vintages and FSD is a completely different animal. My 2017 model s can navigate from my house to, well, anywhere, with no intervention. I have been very disappointed in how long it took Tesla to get here based on the promises they made 10(!) years ago, but they are there now. Even a year ago FSD used to scare me frequently and cause me to disengage but that never happens now.

[pants2]

The only thing remotely comparable in the US is probably a Comma 4 with a forked OpenPilot build on a well-supported vehicle

[asah]

SpaceX will acquire Tesla and save the shareholders, just like Tesla acquired SolarCity.

[extraduder_ire]

Can they afford to do that? I would assume it would be the other way around unless the valuation of either/both changes drastically.

XAI acquiring twitter is probably a better recent example than solarcity.

[stinkbeetle]

> Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

I doubt that because Tesla was not a first mover, established automotive companies were.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nissan_R%27nessa#Nissan_Altra

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_Ranger_EV

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honda_EV_Plus

Etc.

The innovation/imitation/commoditization cycle is not really new or limited to Tesla, it applies to everything from robot vacuum cleaners to CPUs. Whether Tesla survives or not probably depends a lot more on boring things like economic and trade policies of large countries.

The much more interesting thing to study would be how ice auto manufacturers not only completely wasted their first mover advantages, but also their long established brand value, supply chains and distribution and sales networks when it came to EVs.

It was not many years ago, industry "experts" were still going on about how Tesla could never hope to build cars at scale, that their "build quality" would sink them, etc. Whereas many people have rightly identified this commoditization and threats from Chinese manufacturers as being one of the biggest risks to Tesla from the beginning. Surely it's more interesting to study the things that were not obvious or well predicted?

[dstroot]

And Elon canceled the S and X models but not the Cybertruck? C’mon…

[hnburnsy]

I wonder if they reconfigure it and tone down the look to something more traditional.

[vagab0nd]

I feel like there's this weird information gap that shouldn't be there in this day and age. FSD drives me around every day. 99% of the time, I don't touch the steering wheel for the entire trip, both city and highway. It's obvious to me that it is working well and has tremendous value. As far as I know, no other car on the market can do this. But apparently this info is not reaching a large number of people. I'm genuinely confused.

[NoPicklez]

How would GM Super Cruise be renowned as better when it is only compatible with highways? You can't use it around town or in the city.

Sure, it might be considered safer because it only allows itself to work when its on a controlled highway in a straight line.

[memish]

1. Tesla has $40B in cash and is profitable. To say it's worth $5B is beyond absurd.

2. The market determines what is a fair value, not rando haters on the internet. Even professional Wall Street consensus is that it's fair value at approximately $1.2T market cap.

[rkagerer]

$40B in cash/equivalents, minus some $13-20B in debt (depending what source you pick).

[jmyeet]

> Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

It's a study in many things.

Tesla only exists because of the transfer of wealth from the government. DOE loans, EV tax credits and other incentives are the difference between existing and not existing.

That's not necessarily bad. The problem is the government really gets nothing for their money. Look at how China incubates their businesses.

As an example, imagine where we'd be if the government had insisted on standardized charging infrastructure instead of Tesla's originally proprietary Supercharger network.

> If Tesla was valued fairly, it would probably be at the tune of $5B.

I could see it as high as $100B but not $1.5T. Not even close.

And I, too, would never bet against it. Nothing fundamental is behind Tesla's valuation. It's just gambling.

[misiti3780]

I was with you until you compared super cruise to FSD. not even comparable

[bmitc]

> Tesla will become a case study on how to completely waste the first-mover advantage.

Did they ever have a first mover advantage? They had first mover hype, but did they really have an advantage?

Companies like Kia and Hyundai had an advantage. They already had logistics, design, R&D, manufacturing, supply chains, etc. all figured out from decades of building and improving cars. Tesla had NONE of that. All Kia and Hyundai had to do to get into EVs was add another few models to their lineup with some iteration on all their existing processes. And immediately, these models became hot sellers.

Tesla had to literally reinvent (but to themselves invent) what it takes to design, build, and sell a car.

This writing has been on the wall for years. Tesla has less than a handful of models and can't even iterate on them in any substantial way. Other car makers make dozens of models and rev them every year and do a design refresh every five to ten years. Tesla never had any advantage or key selling point outside of hype.

[insane_dreamer]

I think these days you have to look at Tesla stock more like crypto -- you're betting on the hype and hope to ride the wave and exit before it crashes.

[esseph]

> And for some unbeknownst to me reason, the markets value Tesla as a hot tech company, not a 3rd rate automaker, which is what it actually is.

Cult. It's a cult.

There's a contingent of tech bros that think they're "smart" because they latched on to Tesla and have been riding its nuts through Elon's political stunts without a care in the world. Tesla failing would mean to them that they failed. They can't fail, they're too smart. If they just HODL for a little longer, then he'll get something magical out and validate their decision making. Sunk cost running wild.

[outside1234]

We are in a time when people are in cults. Trump is a cult. Elon is a cult. Tesla is a cult.

Cults do not operate on logic, but almost always result in a mass casualty event of some sort.

[notabee]

It's baked into the foundations of the U.S. While perhaps not a cult as we describe it today, even the first puritans that settled here were considered extremists not welcome in their home countries. For such a young country, we have always had a burgeoning industry in upstart cults, grifts, and religions (but I repeat myself).

[alex1138]

That valuation is sure interesting considering the people killed in crashes from Tesla's self-driving thing

Edit: I love making legitimate points and instantly accruing downvotes from 'Valley VC types. Look yourself in the mirror.

[jlongr]

Oh their self-driving thing...Full* "Self" Driving (supervised)(see notes)(not liable for anything)

[jacquesm]

Tesla benefited from tax payer subsidies.

[WarmWash]

Trust me, I hate Tesla and Elon as much as the next naysayer

But just to keep the story straight

Tesla received ~$3 billion in subsidies.

When Elon exercised his Tesla options in 2021, he paid $11 billion in taxes on it.

By all accounts those subsidies were an incredibly good use of taxpayer money, and similar subsidies should keep being handed out, even if the byproduct is another big troll on twitter.

[andruby]

That's true for a lot of (most?) car manufacturers?

I fully agree that TSLA is madly overpriced as a car company, and too hyped as any other type of company.

[ben_w]

An important question is therefore: why didn't anyone else?