Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

Tesla has proven to be very good at lying, moving goalposts, and insisting that this time [x] is right around the corner. I don't know what would be different this time. They might launch it with, like, 5 cars total, or have it be 100% teleoperated, or limit it to side roads.

They might require the passenger to sit in the drivers seat and take liability, or push it back a few more months, or only run it at 3AM when there is no traffic.

I don't think any of these would tank the stock price, since historically Tesla has gotten away with similar skulduggery. I learned the hard way many years ago to not bet against Tesla, and I don't see anything here that would override that lesson.

Fingers crossed for you though - I definitely think Tesla is irrationally priced, and there would be a certain justice in that overinflated valuation sinking down to reality.

The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.

I've been buying Tesla puts at a small scale for the past 6 months, usually puts about a month out.

It's been a great way to lose money so far.

There is a weird disconnect between Reddit and the rest of the world, and it's becoming increasingly obvious when I encounter a Redditor off reddit

> But Elon has killed his brand with his politics, and the robotaxi initiative is a desperate attempt to gain ground. But it's going to kill someone and it will be 100% on him because he's the one pushing this when there's no way it will ever be ready for real world situations the way Waymo is.

What if his political allies allow and enable him to push this upon the populace despite it killing people.

After all, other industries have been allowed to kill plenty of people if it makes money and lines the pockets of friendly politicians of all stripes.

Maybe nobody is forcing you to get in a robotaxi, but behavior normalization based on availability is a powerful force.

Best of luck, I can't tell you how much I have lost having rational takes on Tesla that proved correct in reality, but ultimately immaterial to shareholders.

Tesla stock is a cult stock. People buy it because it goes up. It always goes up. Wall street has long been clued into the brain damage and delusions it's core investors have, and are more than happy to play into the fantasy. Its a company of perpetual massive promises while always carefully dancing around "hammer drop" days.

Robotaxi isn't launching, it's being rolled out over months slowly. Which will turn to years, but like always Elon will be "1 year away" to Tesla paradise. Everything this company is priced on is slowly "rolling out" with the full launch "just around the corner".

Tesla FSD right around the corner

Tesla Semi right around the corner

Tesla <$25k EV right around the corner

Tesla robotaxi right around the corner

Tesla Optimus robot right around the corner

Tesla supercar right around the corner

And people really genuinely believe this is all right around the corner, so load up now while it is still "undervalued"...

But just to be honest here, the people who have full on bought into the hype have made incredible amounts of money.

> But Elon has killed his brand with his politics

I think a lot of people would like to think this is true, ironically because of his politics.

> I have over $100k in Tesla puts.

I also have Tesla puts but that is brave!

While extremely overvalued by any metric, Musk has also been somehow able to keep the stock flying high for years and years on the force of hyperbolic lies (full self driving only a few month away forever) which most of the market keeps believing. It's a fascinating counterexample to the idea that the stock market can't be fooled.

So I only keep a few puts at a time because the hype surrounding the stock tends to outlive the expiration on the options. Every now and then I cash in big when it has a nice drop though.

I also use FSD HW4 daily, and it really just works well in regular conditions. It's unbelievable how we have a level of autonomy here and now, and not too many people know about it. Out of about 6k miles in the last 7 months, I probably drove 80 or so. I did not have many issues in the rain, but I do have issues in the snow. It's still somewhat unaware of how to drive well in snow. I usually disengage when it's snowy or very icy.

I have a Tesla with HW3 and FSD is an absolute dangerous joke. It nearly pulled me into a curb on its first attempt to enter a freeway.

Also, I think it keeps getting overlooked that freeways are designed from the ground up as a exclusive use of motorized vehicles. FSD performs OK there. But, taxi services are everywhere in cities around the clock in all sorts of weather. And I can't imagine trusting FSD for that use case.

I live in major metro in the south east. HW4 FSD in a model 3 and it is dangerous. Certainly, it's a lot better than a few years ago but still nowhere near something that could safely carry me home from the bar.

For someone living in Seattle, a product that requires good weather is close to useless...

FSD: Designed by Tesla for California.

> drive between Portland and Seattle

that's literally just I-5 all the way, with probably 5-10 minutes of street driving at either end. So does FSD really offer _that_ much more of a benefit over adaptive cruise control with lane keeping unless you're continuously overtaking?

I've tried enabling FSD on my Tesla twice (got two one-month trials), and really wanted to love it but was disappointed with the results when not on highways. My wife tried it once and won't touch it again.

Yeah, I don't expect that driving on wide laned, well-marked stretches of interstates like I-5 is problematic, especially in nice weather.

Let's try Pittsburgh in snow in December, and then see.

Mind you as recently as 12 months ago there were still videos of Teslas happily taking straight lines through roundabouts.

I have the same experience as you. I live in a state with no snow though.

Cruise in SF was a bit of a freak accident. There were systematic issues that exacerbated the issue, but it wasn't an issue of bad disengagement numbers. In fact, Cruise 2023 actually highlights how misleading disengagement numbers can be, as they reported 0 critical disengagements the entire year over 583k miles. Waymo is extremely consistent about their numbers and they typically sandbag themselves relative to their competitors. Tesla of course doesn't officially report CA numbers, so people rely on crowdsourced data that the company and fans maintain are orders of magnitude lower than reality.

It's entirely possible that the opaqueness and small scale of the Tesla rollout could lead to situations where long tail events like the Cruise collision simply don't occur, or aren't allowed to reach public media.

That is entirely untrue. Fred Lambert was one of the most full-throated supporters of Tesla just a few years ago. He personally referred around 15 million dollars of sales [1] to Tesla. If even Tesla's most fervent supporters now call them liars and dangerous, you should probably listen.

[1] https://electrek.co/2019/01/17/tesla-roadster-free-killed-re...

OK but also note there's also not a "both sides" to everything. Some stuff can just suck.

> Are taxis like the anti-public transportation?

Taxis are a useful way to get around, including to and from public transit. That's all that should matter. Whether they fit into a particular urban vision is secondary to the fact that they're desirable to the people living there.

Much of the US was built in ways that make mass transit impractical and inefficient, but those same areas have comprehensive road systems already built out, sometimes excessively. That gives self-driving taxis an opportunity to fill in the transit gap in the huge expanses of this country ill-suited for trains and buses, but well-equipped with roads.

I think the actual concern is around medium-to-large cities and metros, where self-driving cars will compete directly with mass transit, much like Uber does, but potentially much more competitively.

I'm a huge proponent of e2e learning for robotics (worked at two places doing e2e before Tesla adopted it) and personally believe its the right approach long term. I also have FSD on my Model 3 and love it for L2+. That said, my experience with disengagements is very different than yours.. I have a few a week for things like road works, school zones, route map following. Perfectly fine for L2+, L4 it would be unacceptable.

If these robotaxis end up looking more like my experience than yours then another layer of trouble will be root causing and fixing failure modes. Training models e2e makes both of these much more difficult.

So - the cooked-ness of Tesla may depend on what you think Musk's goal was with Tesla.

If you believe he was out to change the world - maybe he'll let Tesla die. It's unlikely they are going to accomplish much else at this point, better, smarter more experienced competitors are sweeping the board.

If you believe he's out to make as much money as he can, he'll probably course correct at some point. Lidar it is clear will be the future of self-driving, and with all the adopters the economies of scale will kick in at some point.

The danger about shorting TSLA is that Elon may have a staff buying puts and calls to balance on the trading troughs. I was watching the trading volume during the big declines in the spring think the support was dropping out but it always came back. The biggest recovery was when he went to the Middle East with Trump. I think his dog and pony show had a big buy in at a critical time.