It is hardly a lottery ticket, the TSLA market cap is already larger than Toyota, GM and Ford combined. It is unclear to me how much room for growth there is.

Found this: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/1/d/1HflVng6sYIb6Gs4p...

Not sure how accurate it is, but the rest of the industry is only worth 773 billion combined. Which means if you invest now at a market cap of 277b, you can only 3x your money on that lottery ticket.

I'm not sure it's the case that Tesla has a massive monopoly on driver data, and even if it does it won't for long. Toyota for example has their TSS system which collects a ton of driver data. Tesla has produced around ~1 million vehicles in its lifetime. Toyota produced 10x that last year alone. If more data is the key to unlocking level 5 then Toyota or one of the other big players will get there long before Tesla does.

Also, in which regions? Other manufacturers could collect data globally, whereas Teslas seem rare outside of the US.

What head start in driverless tech? Right now, Tesla isn't even among top companies developing self-driving car technology.

Also, it's would pretty naive to think that governments would allow a single company to have such sort of monopoly like you describe.

The headstart is all the data they've collected by having actual cars, on actual roads, driven by actual humans.

The idea is that gathering this data may be a prerequisite to resolving the bajillions fringe-cases that are currently in the way of level 4 autonomy.

This assumes that the other manufacturers don't also gather data from actual cars, on actual roads, driven by actual humans. Which is not the case. Toyota for example has it's TSS system. Toyota also makes around 10 million cars a year. Tesla makes around 370k. Even if they had a head start it's not going to take long for them to get lapped.

I haven't explored Toyota's offering but Tesla's OTA updated will always give them an edge.

With all Toyota's data, you will have to buy a brand new car to get whatever improvements your data contributed to the system.

With Tesla, you get those improvements while you're asleep and maybe your car drives a bit better. For a tech-centric space where people are used to software improving overtime, Tesla will have an edge.

Toyota Motors North America (TMNA) doesn’t even use drivers data when making design decisions in their dashboard electronics so don’t worry about them. What use is all of this data if the important decision makers don’t have access to it? Contractors design most of their components but Toyota doesn’t/won’t provide their contractors (95%+ foreigners working locally on visas) with data to make decisions with or training to learn from past lessons. This leaves their contractors to just wing it for them and hopefully make the crucial decisions correctly. Many of TMNA’s insights come from frequent tear downs of competitor vehicles including the latest Model 3s.

Will it though? GM plans to add OTA to all models and Ford announced it for the new F-150. Even without OTA it is not true that you have to buy a new car to get software updates. You can take it into the dealer and get it done.

If amount of data collected and OTA are Tesla's big edge then there's even less chance they will dominate the market and put all their competitors out of business, because those advantages are going to go away over the next couple of years.

Tesla's driverless technology is years behind the current leaders.

What’s your story if self driving never works.