Tesla Shareholders Approve Elon Musk's $1T Pay Package

I own a hw3 Tesla with FSD. It regularly drives me for over an hour without intervention. It is good enough that a single person cannot drive long enough to know if it's improving or not. I can imagine if you're in Europe you might not understand the difference between different ADAS offerings because FSD is not allowed to operate in the EU.

Reasonable people can disagree on Tesla's ability to execute on their plans. I consider the current 10-20% chance reflected in the stock price today to be accurate. I continually re-evaluate this probability. Major events to look out for in the near future are the removal of safety drivers in Austin, the expansion of the robotaxi service to 8 cities, the commissioning of the "unboxed" cyber cab production line, the demo of Optimus V3, FSD V14.3, and the start of the Semi truck manufacturing line. All these milestones are slated to occur in the next 12 months. They will change the risk weighting on the stock one way or the other.

Unaudited? I mean, sure, BMW could have been lying in a corporate press release about their financial position, its not unheard of for corporations in general, but come on, Musk has fairly famously settled out of court with $20m (and same again for Tesla) fines and forced to step down for three years as Tesla chairman because he made false statements that influence share prices — "throwing stones in glass houses" comes to mind.

Have any of the things you're writing about Tesla doing, been audited?

> It is good enough that a single person cannot drive long enough to know if it's improving or not.

That's why we use statistics, not anecdotes.

The statistics that are available say the Tesla AI is worse, in general over roads and conditions, as compared to Waymo's AI.

On the topic of auditing, it's a shame the Tesla statistics are crowdsourced and not an audited first-party account, but unless something's changed recently, Tesla doesn't seem to release any more than the legal minimum of information here.

> Major events to look out for in the near future are the removal of safety drivers in Austin, the expansion of the robotaxi service to 8 cities,

Even if those happen on schedule, they'll still be behind.

> the commissioning of the "unboxed" cyber cab production line, […] and the start of the Semi truck manufacturing line.

While these would be relevant if the share price was sane, the relevance is that their absence or delay would suggest something catastrophically wrong rather than that their successful opening is noteworthy — new model production lines are table stakes for a traditional car company with P/E in the 5-10 range, not something "coming soon" that justifies a P/E close to 300.

That the Semi is already massively delayed ought to suggest a lower P/E ratio than a normal company, not a higher one.

> the demo of Optimus V3,

Disagree: Everything I've seen says that next year's V3 will still be a prototype. Meanwhile, competitors are already shipping.

And again, power envelope means a 5-10 year gap in capability between what AI can run on-device in a car vs. an android.

> FSD V14.3,

People have been saying this about different FSD version numbers for years now.

You yourself are stating that the current version "is good enough that a single person cannot drive long enough to know if it's improving or not", and seem to have missed that you were replying to "what statistics can be found in public information". So: why do you think this point release is important? Do you accept that there's statistics that show room for improvement, or is this just a number-go-up applause light?

> All these milestones are slated to occur in the next 12 months. They will change the risk weighting on the stock one way or the other.

Will they, though? The only thing that seems to have had any effect at all in the last few years were widespread protests against Musk personally and by extension Tesla.

I used to believe Tesla's timelines. I moved country and figured I could do OK without transferring my driving license because if I found I needed a car they'd be self-driving "real soon now" — that was 2018, and at some point you have to learn to stop trusting the guy when he spends a decade repeatedly saying his vision is only 6-12 months away from the point at which he speaks.

I also bought shares. Sold them all for a profit this year.

My beliefs (all of them) are based on analysing what information I have access to, which in the case of "I won't need to drive" includes things said by Tesla which turned out to be falsehoods, and also other things not relevant to this topic.

The reasons I sold those shares include not only the CEO's failures to deliver, but also that other shareholders like yourself keep making excuses for the CEO's failures thus suggesting nothing will be fixed, and also that the CEO angers his customer bases to the point that showrooms get smashed up and products arsoned.

Normal people do not consider such things to be signs of "winning".

> The argument that Tesla sucks because they haven't delivered on their promises is kinda illogical.

I didn't say "suck", I said didn't deserve their current price.

What is illogical is that you're defending them despite them making false statements about what they could deliver that got them sued.

They're only "a bit weird", not "suck" by product range/market segments served (Cybertruck excluded); by sales and so on, Tesla is a perfectly adequate *$50 billion doller market cap* car company — like Hyundai, who make more profit and more cars, and has a robotics company in the same group.

The key there is "50 billion" not "trillion or so". Tesla is not magic.

> Tesla is closer to a viable robotaxi, and grid scale energy arbitrage business than they ever have been and the share price reflects it.

"closer […] than they ever have been" is still behind the competition.

The world has been moving on with each of these things while Tesla dithers and their CEO is distracted by SpaceX, his other AI company that owns his social media company, and offending much of his target market with ham-fisted political involvement.

> With a P/E ~250+ Tesla should be an automatic short if your analysis is correct.

Shorts are strongly associated with the phrase "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" for good reason.

> I have $2 million long in the company. In 2035 it will be >$8 million. In 2035 Waymo will be a footnote.

You yourself have said their market price relfects a "10-20%" chance. Your own 80-90% bet is necessarily that Tesla does not.

That said, given everything I'm seeing in the US, I'd put P(sufficient hyperinflation by 2035 to get that proportional change in market cap, conditional on Tesla actually still exists) ~= 0.1-0.25

Also on the subject of 10%, Musk has claimed variously 5%, 10%, and 20% chances of AI causing an apocalypse/wiping out humanity. Anyone who actually believes him on 10% (I don't, not that I have power to make such a call even if I did), should be willing to let 800 million people die to stop anyone (including Musk) developing it.

This alone should have crashed their stock price.

Tesla is a trillion dollar market cap company that struggles, STRUGGLES to put a sixth or seventh product line into production! A sixth one! They have five models, including the Cybertruck, which is not selling well. They stopped selling the Model S in Australia!

Speaking of trucks and Australia, utility vehicles ("utes") are very popular over here. I've never seen a Tesla Cybertruck here and likely never will. Meanwhile, just this weekend I saw a dozen BYD electric utes, and... they look good. They're fast, they look practical, and they're clearly available in volume. People are buying them! Many people!

There's an enormous market for electric vehicles of all shapes and sizes, and Tesla has been completely unable to tap into many of these markets.

Car-sized trucks.

Urban deliver vehicles.

Mini buses.

Full sized buses / coaches.

Light trucks.

Heavy trucks.

Etc...

Where are they? They promised a heavy truck, they made a few dozen, and then... crickets.