I don't know. Take cities like Bangalore (India) for example. I don't live there but do occasionally visit family every couple of years. And I consistently hear a general sentiment of "I just take Uber because the traffic is insane. But the traffic is insane because of too many Ubers"
But in all of that sentiment, nobody's saying "I wish I could drive instead" – they're more than happy to have someone drive them around if it's cheap enough. That was true with Auto Rickshaws, and it's even more attractive in an air conditioned car.
If taxis get cheaper, people will use them in even more situations, like daily commutes. Why not?
And what do you mean by "EV Fantasy" – I get if you meant Robotaxi or self-driving fantasy. But there are hundreds of thousands of Teslas (maybe a million?) driving around the world isn't there? Are all these people imagining that they're driving a Tesla EV? Which part of it is a fantasy?
Sure --- if roborides are cheap enough and safe enough, more people will use them.
The immediate question for Tesla and their investors --- can they really provide "safe" robo rides using their current approach?
This is far from being proven since Tesla is only rated as Level 2 autonomy which according to Tesla itself, requires constant supervision. Placing passengers and the public in danger with inadequate technology is a textbook legal definition of negligence.
The longer term question; assuming they solve FSD --- is can they make tons of money from cheap rides? Enough to justify their current outlandish stock price.
They recently launched their Robotaxi service in Austin, and it seems to be as good as Waymo or better. https://youtu.be/RcaBZenrCCs
They also recently autonomously delivered a car to a customer’s apartment straight from the factory line. https://youtu.be/lRRtW16GalE
https://www.synopsys.com/blogs/chip-design/autonomous-drivin...
The fantasy that any of this nonsense is a sustainable business, especially when the charismatic leader completely FUBARed his government hobby project and is biting the hand that feeds him. Tesla's biggest source of revenue is the US government.
Even a US city of 100,000 people, it can be really tough or impossible to get an Uber - good luck getting a ride from the airport at 12:30 in the morning
I bought a model Y dual motor in 2021 is it’s been hands down my best car ever. Almost zero maintenance. Yet more proof of never take stock advice from HN, in fact do the opposite in most circumstances. Elon derangement syndrome at its finest.
This is just driven by partisan anti-Elon sentiment.
The reality is Tesla has never accounted for more than 2% of light vehicle sales worldwide. And over the last 2 years; instead of spectacular growth, sales have actually declined.
And of course, Tesla isn't even in the top 10 for top selling brands of cars. Only about 1 in 50 new cars being sold is a Tesla.
Their valuation is largely based on hype.
[1] https://www.thedrive.com/news/the-worlds-best-selling-car-is...
> If taxis get cheaper, people will use them in even more situations, like daily commutes.
This seems straight out of the Uber pitch from its early days. "Our total addressable market is the entire auto industry because people will prefer taxis over driving themselves". And a decade later where are we? Most ridesharing apps are shrinking day by day.
The unit cost of a taxi isn't sustainable in a long term. People might want to pay for someone to drive them around but that is an expensive proposition.
Robo taxis now seem to be selling the same dream. Cut out the driver and that will make rides cheaper. But deploying taxi is going to be a huge expenditure. This might be doable with VC money upfront and even cheap just like the early days of Uber. But in the long run same thing is going to happen. Once all competition is gone robotaxis are not going to be any cheaper. It will be back to square one.
That was my life in Beijing until I moved back to the states 8+ years ago. Forget about even buying a car, where would you park it? The subway was an option, especially after line 10 opened which was basically one line to work but...it was always really crowded and I didn't like standing for an hour (loop lines aren't very direct).
But there were too many cars, to make it work I had to shift my working hours, so I would leave super early (~6 AM) and come home around 3PM. It definitely didn't feel sustainable but it worked out (now I WFH...and in LA I lived right next to my lab...so I still avoid driving).
Robotaxis can't deal with insane traffic, and would be disadvantaged when aggressive drivers learn how to trick robotaxis to give way submissively.
Some countries have highly developed road systems that are more predictable, and where drivers are more likely to cooperate rather than aggressively defect.
If Elon had supported Biden and Harris (despite Biden's repeated sleights against Elon's companies), we probably wouldn't see the levels of Musk Derangement Syndrome we're seeing now.
Shame it all got so political. I don't blame Musk for that - he is just a CEO who is open about his politics. I blame the Left for being completely intolerant of anyone and any company that doesn't strictly adhere to their ideology.
This is deeply, deeply silly to assert in 2025 as the right attempts to shut hobble the Ivy League, the NIH, prominent public policy law firms, green card holders writing op-eds, etc.
People are delusional about who the bad guys are. OP is right, the Elon hatred from the left is driven primarily by partisan politics after he supported Trump post assassination attempt. This was after years of the left mocking his success and attacking his companies.
He’s done more good for the US than almost anyone. People have a warped sense of values.
Indeed. You've evidenced a disturbingly narrow interpretation of the First Amendment, for example.
Obama pushed for EV credits which allows Tesla to make any money.
Obama pushed for Commercial Crew Contract which allowed SpaceX to get Gov. contracts.
And Trump is trying to undo that lol ...
Also there's like 300 million people in the USA. You could definitely find at least a dozen "left" serial killers. Doesn't make it representative of registered democrats.
Second of all, he did a literal nazi salute. There's nothing radical about wanting nothing to do with nazis
“The Left” bears sole responsibility for this? I don’t think so. If some of us find this man some kind of a Nazi and genuinely creepy, we have a named syndrome now?
Musk chose to visibly support causes I personally find repugnant. I’m not intolerant; he can do what he wants within the confines of the law. And surely given his much-vaunted genius, he must realize that symbols are important to people whether the actions they take on account of them are rational from a purely economic point of view.
The progress he made on electric vehicles is laudable. The real shame here is his lack of self-control to focus on his business.
You don't blame the man who did a Nazi salute on stage at a political rally?
Tesla is still one of a handful of trillion dollar companies. Maybe it will be a bust, but it isn't one today.
> Uber P/E is about 20. Tesla P/E is around 170.
So the expectation is tesla will continue to grow at a significant rate while uber "stagnates".
> I personally don't think so.
Investors do. I'm surprised how well the stock is doing given the all the distractions. It certainly isn't trading like it is about to bust.
It feels good to support American-made sustainable technology that has revolutionised the electric car and battery storage markets.
I struggle to understand those who would short-sell Tesla, unless they have some kind of emotional hangup against Elon Musk or government efficiency?
It’s objectively clear that the company is in a bad market condition, and you don’t need to have an “emotional hangup against Elon Musk or government efficiency” to know it’s bad business to alienate your potential customer base and deliver shockingly bad public appearances.
If Ford’s CEO was stumbling-down drunk or higher than a kite at a presser, I’d short Ford too.
That didn't stop him from raising the value of $TSLA from a penny stock to one of the largest companies in the world.
With his initial investment, and with him as the product architect of the first Tesla vehicle (the Roadster), he transformed an academic project with no products to the world's most valuable automaker.
An automaker so valuable, it's worth more than Toyota, BYD, GM, VW, BMW, Mercedes, Ford and Honda COMBINED.
People have shorted $TSLA before because they underestimated Musk, and let their own personal affectations cloud their understanding of Tesla's potential, and Musk's singular genius.
This doesn't give you the slightest bit of pause?
Poor explanation since ~50% stock is owned by institutions.
I think retail holds 38% of ownership.
Rest of ownership is mostly Elon ~13%.
indexed fund ownership doesn't explain institutional holdings. Tesla is 5% of NASDAQ 100 by market cap. Vanguard owns 7.7%, BlackRock owns 6.4%.
Disclaimer: not a financial analyst and I might have numbers wrong (mostly from Tiger Trading App).
Yes. Wildly overvalued for an automaker that it has never accounted for more than 2% of light vehicles world wide --- and instead of the wild growth projections they sold to investors, sales over the last 2 years have actually declined.
Any "potential" here remains largely unrealized.
... I mean, that's exactly why one might short it, surely? Clearly, this cannot be the case; the valuation makes no sense, and no bubble lasts forever, so one could reasonably expect it to return to reality at some point. Of course, as always the real difficulty is figuring out _when_ that happens ahead of time.
Tesla is currently priced as if it is the predominate auto manufacturer. It should be obvious by now that this is pure hype and fantasy.
Wait, do you have an emotional hangup FOR Elon Musk ?
> or government efficiency?
Is this satire ?
Maybe pick one or two of these at best but all of the above is highly unlikely.
What makes this unlikely is simple marketplace competition. Just as unlikely as Tesla conquering the auto manufacturing market.
2. It's not about "different political opinions", it's far beyond that and to suggest so tells anyone reading your comment everything they need to know about you.
I guess historically, lots of companies have operated by selling dreams.
The real estate industry sells dreams of suburban utopias.
The fitness industry sells dreams of sexy good times.
The cola industry sells dreams of likability and friendship.
Apple sells dreams of in-crowd later-day eco-hipsterism.
Tesla sells… dunno. Maybe dreams of billionaire crypto-bro futurism?
As long as the company is worth $900B+, you're never going to convince its fans that they're wrong.
Even if the stockholders all lost everything, I think a significant portion will still think they were following the messiah, the same way that old ladies give their last three pennies to tele-vangelists while eating cat food off of paper plates.
Among it's peers, Tesla has no equal in the "dream" category.
Tesla is one of the "Magnificent 7" technology stocks. Leaving Tesla aside, the average P/E of this group over the last 2 years is around 30. Tesla is currently around 170.
But even this doesn't really capture the full extent of the Tesla "dream". Tesla is the only one of these stocks with an earnings decline over the past 2 years.
The highest valuation combined with the poorest results --- that's a lot of dreaming.
God, I would love to see an AMA from one of these guys that have to sit in a seat with their hands folded staring at the road 8 hours a day.
Do you really trust a taxi service that opposes reporting accidents?
https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/trump-...
Talk to Elon. He has "Robotaxi" painted on the side of his vehicles.
In some ways the Tesla EV fantasy has worked - build a high priced car to finance a medium priced car to finance cheap cars and move the world to sustainable transport. The only difference is the cheap cars are being made by Chinese manufacturers rather than Tesla.
Which is actually in line with their thing on patents:
> Tesla Motors was created to accelerate the advent of sustainable transport. If we clear a path to the creation of compelling electric vehicles, but then lay intellectual property landmines behind us to inhibit others, we are acting in a manner contrary to that goal. Tesla will not initiate patent lawsuits against anyone who, in good faith, wants to use our technology. (2014)
So now it's off to new fantasy --- robotaxi.
The problem with this fantasy --- ride hailing isn't nearly as profitable as auto manufacturing.
Half the world isn't going to ditch their autos in favor of robo rides any time soon. This is what it will take to justify Tesla's current outlandish stock price.
Uber P/E is about 20. Tesla P/E is around 170. Can Tesla ride hailing be 6 times bigger/more profitable than Uber in the near future? I personally don't think so.