Robots eat cars

I think they are way more like a normal car company than they publicly admit. I make the argument that they are entirely like a normal car company, just a vertically integrated one like Hyundai/Kia.

They’d really like to have more upside than a normal car company due to their software and AI and robotics, but until the day they start selling those things to other companies it’s all unrealized.

Why wouldn't they want to compete with luxury automakers? It's the more profitable market segment. Every mass market car company selling a similarly high unit volume as Tesla has a luxury marquee because it's simple to reuse/modify the same platform, chuck in some more leather, massaging seats, and sound isolation materials, and toss on a fancier badge and marketing campaign.

The Cybertruck is indeed a strange halo car, but it really should have been a truck with more mainstream appeal. Elon psychosis is indeed highly responsible for that truck's failure, along with an inability to deliver the ballpark promises regarding price and range.

As of 2025 before the discontinuation of the Lightning F-150, the Cybertruck actually did not outsell the Lightning despite Ford essentially selling down remaining inventory, while the Silverado EV/Sierra EV (the best EV truck on the market for actual truck usability, IMO) is picking up the most momentum. GM is already outselling the Cybertruck:

https://ev.com/news/chevy-silverado-ev-sales-nearly-double-a...

Cybertruck is also going to in the future have the “Chrysler PT Cruiser” problem where it’s just about impossible to iterate on the styling for a second generation. Arguably they’ve already run through the Chrysler PT Cruiser lifecycle where it was incredibly cool on release but became something of a joke by the end of its run. Unfortunately with an overstyled car like that it’s difficult to predict whether it’ll be a timeless classic or…a PT Cruiser.

I also believe that Waymo relied on much more intensive mapping than Tesla does/did -- so you could imagine two really different graphs -- Waymo's quality and deployment starts higher, but it is perhaps capped against places they're willing to do the scanning, and by their labor Capex. They will be racing to lower the scanning requirements and lower the labor requirements. Meanwhile Tesla looks worse for a long time because they've bet on getting tech together for an 'everywhere' launch, and it's a J curve around quality -- useless at 3 9s, and very, very useful at 5 9s. If those are the actual dynamics, figuring out who will be the 'winner' needs the following strategy assessment:

1) A take on whether or not robotaxis are 'winner take all/most' (I propose they are not, switching cost for consumers is super low)

2) If you think both companies will get to 'good enough' a take on capital dynamics for at-scale launch (I think Tesla wins here, because Elon will rely on owner's capital for at-scale launch, or at least can if he wants to, while it seems very unlikely that Waymo will start selling their cars to individual operators at scale in a timely fashion)

3) An organizational assessment - if we assume that vision only ML will eventually work at all for 5 9s, can Waymo 'trim down' their data and labor stack faster than Tesla can scale up their vision-only ML?

Upshot - I wouldn't bet against Tesla being the dominant robotaxi in ten years. But I would be very surprised if it matters very much or they were the only one - eventually the stack will get commoditized. Tesla's solved almost all the hard problems of getting most of these on the road, except for that last 9 of reliability -- you'd have to really hate Elon to think they won't get there at all with the AI resources between SX/xAI and Tesla available.