Vaporware or Vision? We dissect Tesla’s 10/10 Cybercab event (that’s a date, not a score!) and debate if it lived up to the hype. Was it a Muskian inside joke at shareholder expense? We tackle the tough questions:
* Did Waymo already beat Tesla to the autonomous driving punch?
* Why wasn’t Optimus the AI breakthrough we hoped for (and why it might not matter)?
* What are the likely real economics of being a robotaxi shepherd? Is it the cash cow Musk claims?
* And ultimately…how much $TSLA should you own after this reveal?
Tune in for our no-hype analysis!
WSW E49
[00:00:00] Introduction
[00:00:07] Luke: Hey, and welcome to the latest episode of Wall Street Wildlife with Krzysztof and Luke. We have a banger of an episode planned because we watched the Tesla robo truck, cyber cab, whatever the damn thing was. Um, f***. There’s not much to talk about. It was bullshit.
[00:00:26] Krzysztof: You were suspecting it was going to be a lot of bullshit, right? I, I heard some folks saying it was a disgrace.
[00:00:31] Luke: A disgrace. I don’t know
[00:00:33] Krzysztof: are a disgrace,
[00:00:34] Luke: felt a bit let down. Gone.
[00:00:36] Krzysztof: By the way, uh, I am in, I am, if, if you look at the background, my usual books are not behind me because I find myself in the fine foliage, New Hampshire, white Mountains, uh, in New England, hiking with my buddies.
So I’m in the middle of a men’s group getaway. And so last night we got together and, uh, walked today And, uh, we, I, I. Coerced my buddies to watch the Tesla event with me.
And, uh, this is a little bit of a preview, but they were deeply, deeply cynical and unimpressed about what they saw.
[00:01:15] Luke: Are you the, are you like the Tesla guy in the group or do other people Like have the cars or drink the tequila or anything else.
[00:01:25] Krzysztof: No, it’s actually a motley crew because I am a Tesla owner and long time, you know, Musk, uh, follower of his story, uh, another buddy of mine is also a Tesla owner, but a third, our man off the street, was thinking about getting a Tesla and decided recently, due to Musk’s politics, not to.
[00:01:44] Luke: Wow.
[00:01:45] Krzysztof: So it’s a motley crew. So we had a, a, a kind of, uh, I would say relatively objective oriented view. Like we want it to be impressed,
but weren’t really, yeah.
[00:01:58] Luke’s Pre-Event Predictions
[00:01:58] Luke: I was going to set my alarm for like 4am to watch it and damn, I’m glad I didn’t. There was, it was so lacking in substance. I just, I didn’t get anything out of it. So I made, I don’t know if you saw my prediction on X. I, uh, I made a six part prediction.
So, I’ve scored myself, I think I get a 4 out of 6. I said We will see cyber cab with no in car controls, just a screen. That was an easy one. That’s just, that’s a win. Fully autonomous rides on the Warner Brothers property, like table stakes, if he wasn’t even doing that. Although I’ve got a skeptical view about that.
We’ll talk about in a sec. I thought we would see like something like an Uber like app for hailing a ride or something to, you know, like for cyber cab owners, so they could see the revenue it’s generated, like a mock up of an app or something. Didn’t talk about that stuff, so I failed there. I thought we’d see, I think we’d hear about Optimus being operational in Gigafactories and actually starting to, even if it’s a bit smoke and mirrors y, like perform useful work.
We didn’t see that, but we did see Optimus, like, wandering around the parting lot. But again, I’ve got a skeptical view about that. And then my last
[00:03:09] Krzysztof: serving drinks and serving drinks. I think there is like pouring cocktails or something like that.
Yep.
[00:03:14] Luke: yeah, yeah, yep, yep, yep. And then, uh, so I’m sort of two for four, and my last two are a win. But sadly, uh, some musk dates that we can ignore. Yep, check. And Tesla stock will falter. Yup. Check.
[00:03:30] Krzysztof: Yes. Well done. Well done. I don’t know if this is a much of a tangent, but I wanted to say that Musk’s kind of cult of personality. This is the first instance where I felt noticeably skeptical going in. And the fact that we got his kind of, you know, the must distortion field, the dates, the given and the, this will, Optimist will be the best product of all time, I have now lost enough credibility with him that on the even baseline level, I’m thinking, this is all, like you said, smoke and mirrors, nothing of substance, and I cannot believe a word that he’s saying, other than putting forth this gigantic vision.
So it felt like, like an empty hologram almost.
[00:04:21] Luke: Yeah, yeah, totally. And if we, if we just pick up on exactly what he did say, uh, his quote, we expect to see fully operational autonomous FSD in Texas, Texas, Krzysztof, and California next year. So that’s what 2025. Um, the FSD vehicles are going to go into production and hit the roads by 2026 or before 2027.
Let me put it that way. So. Like, breaking that down, you’ve got a Model 3 with, hardware 3, I guess, uh, and you’ve got, like, the full FSD beta. Like, your car’s pretty smart, pretty good. So I think Musk is saying, yet again, like, for the tenth, tenth year running, that’s gonna be supervised, full serve driving.
Sometime next year, but we’ve heard that last year and the year before, and the year before, and the year before. So what’s changed?
[00:05:09] Krzysztof: Here’s a little bit of a, I don’t know if it’s conspiracy rethinking, but I think this is in part why Musk has all of a sudden gone all in for Trump. Because my suspicion is for that claim to be true, he needs all regulators as out of the way as possible. And the way he’s going to do that is by backing the political candidate who basically will say, yeah, all right.
If this is a kind of business y relationship we have now, we’re going to Then yeah, I won’t stand in your way. And then if that’s the case, then sure. Texas might actually be a hands off, do what you want.
[00:05:46] Has Waymo Beaten Tesla To The Punch?
[00:05:46] Luke: Well, but I mean, let’s, let’s remember, right, Waymo are doing this right now. Like Waymo is the reason I’m actually massively underwhelmed by what we saw yesterday, because Waymo are out there. I don’t know what regulations they’re operating under, but they are doing unsupervised FSD in like Phoenix and Arizona and a bunch of like cities.
So they must be operating under some kind of regulations that Tesla could too. The thing that’s holding Tesla back is the software’s not ready.
[00:06:14] Krzysztof: Isn’t the way most stuff though, like really geo fenced into, correct me if I’m wrong, like really limited areas?
[00:06:21] Luke: Yeah. Like, like, I guess, like, I don’t know, but like downtown in certain areas, but they’re riding autonomously. Right. Cause we saw like the video a few weeks ago of them all like collecting in a parking lot at 3am and honking at each other and waking up the neighbors. So like that’s genuine unsupervised riding.
Like let’s, I don’t want to get too like negative on Tesla because I do think that there’s something very important here. But yeah, and yesterday’s event didn’t touch on the meat and veg of this thing, which is Like, I gather a Waymo vehicle costs around 180, 000, something like that, like it’s an expensive piece of hardware, because there’s LiDAR and all sorts of other stuff.
and Musk is trying to put, uh, the cyber cab on the road for 30, 000, which really, let’s call, let’s say sub 50, 000, like who knows what it’s going to look like in the first year. So that’s like, that’s much more affordable. So their innovation is around like a platform, a hardware platform that they can manufacture at really sensible cost.
and they’ve got like a proven ability to mass, mass scale, mass manufacture these things. but they got to solve the software and they haven’t done that yet. And like I, I was, I was a bit underwhelmed with even the, uh, the, the full self-driving inverted commas, uh, on the Warner Brothers parking lot and the, the optimist is as well.
I think there’s a lot more smoker mirrors going on there than you might think. So I’ve spent the day watching a bunch of other attendees videos and. I don’t know. I mean, this is my own opinion. I get the impression that all of those Optimus robots, there’s like 30 or 40 of them out there. They’re all just being operated by one or more, like a team of people behind the scenes.
It’s kind of fly by wire. Like some of them speak with different accents. Some of them respond like in a human way. So yeah, I think that’s another example of the software is not there yet. But again, incredible hardware platform, and they should, like, get some acclaim for that, but this is nowhere near the final product.
I
[00:08:28] Krzysztof: man, where to start? My own experience with FSD, full self driving in my car right now has gotten ridiculously good. I don’t, but of course it’s not ready because I don’t know about that 0. 1 percent where it won’t handle correctly. And I’m obviously as a driver, not ready to take that chance, but I don’t know if this is a contrary view to what you just said.
I feel like they will solve the software problem in, And not too long from now, but again, I don’t know if that’s me just hoping or making shit up or what, here’s a line of thinking I took with my friends and over, you know, like breaking, trying to think this through any time where I suppose civilization is on the cusp of a major leap of some kind. It is hard for most people, I think, to be genuinely, to embrace what that future looks like, because it’s a, it’s too big of a leap. So we default to what we know, right? And what we know is parking lots and traffic, and this is an intractable problem, and no way in hell can this ever be other than what it is. So my, my bullish twist or spin, if you will, is. Even though I didn’t buy Musk’s sales pitch and none of the, the, the, the shiny things, and I didn’t learn anything new, I did remember maybe is the word that I believe in the vision. That I think it is possible, and it will happen sooner, whatever that means, and that it’s a vision worth pursuing. And even though this particular event did nothing to make me think it’s closer, or I kind of left with this, like, ambivalent taste of, damn, that was terrible, and keep going, keep going, keep going, like, do it.
[00:10:28] Luke: Totally agree. Right. This is a, I do like the opening to Musk’s like chitchat on stage where he talked about like, do we want to live in a Blade Runner future or some like shiny glamorous glitzy future? And clearly, you know, you and I talked about, uh, you know, my, all of my investments a few weeks ago, we talked about my investments being driven by wanting to live in like a Star Trek world, not a Dune world.
Kind of dystopian sci fi future. And so like the Cybertruck and the Optimuses, that is part of like the glitzy future I want to live in. But I wish yesterday hadn’t happened because there was a lot of expectations from the market and from analysts around. They were going to show something really material.
And again, it was just like another visioning session, essentially, like hot air.
[00:11:16] How Much Tesla Should You Own?
[00:11:16] Krzysztof: Yeah, so let’s get a little more concrete. One of our patreons asked us directly, I have a 4 percent position. Is this given yesterday’s event too much? Now, point one is obviously We need to remind everyone that it’s, uh, investing is personal. And so it can’t, there is no correct number. We could possibly give you whether that’s too much or too little, because that has to do with risk and your risk profile depends on your age and all of the other stuff, right?
But that aside, my sense right now is because I’m actually in the moment cash poor, uh, and I don’t have more to add to Tesla, I am glad that this event. Is not the thing that all of a sudden is gonna make the price jump because the end is near, you know, the, the finish line is obviously near. Um, and therefore I’m happy in a kind of contribu, uh, what’s it called?
Counterintuitive way. I’m going to get to buy even more shares at this price. quick second point though, is, is the stock too expensive given what we saw yesterday? And I think the answer to that might be yes, depending on just how much we could believe in Musk’s dates, which is, I don’t know. So TLDR for me is I am glad the market is not getting clear evidence of further progress, which means I’m going to add to my shares over the next maybe year or two, you know, um, but then the opportunity cost and all that,
[00:12:53] Luke: This is a stock I’m happy to accumulate into, uh, but it is expensive right now.
And I was hoping to, I did think hard about maybe chopping it in half yesterday. And I thought, no, screw it. Like I’m, it, I was, as I said in my tweet, I was expecting some pain. I didn’t expect today’s event or yesterday’s event to be, To like light the stock on fire. Uh, I’m just taking a very long term view.
And if the stock sells off, maybe I’ll add a little bit more. I probably wouldn’t let this get much above a five or 6 percent position for me, you know, right now, just because it is still a car company, despite all of the incredible vision. like I want to see something tangible in terms of Cybertruck, Optimus, you know, some, some other product line.
[00:13:39] Krzysztof: right. In this moment, it’s still a car company.
And I think this is, this is reminding me of a moment in Nvidia, maybe two years ago where, remember the quarter where they were having crypto issues and supply and demand issues. And at that moment. It kind of, you know, scary, it’s expensive and you’re thinking, okay, this company Has all kinds of warts on it But those who deeply understood the vision and where it was going held and then obviously were Massively rewarded. I think this is a somewhat analogous situation. Just that the time frame is unknown I think the correct way to approach Tesla in your portfolio is to hold your nose at the at the valuation hold it up regarding Musk’s antics and if you think in I don’t know, five years, right? In five years time, you will probably be glad to have added in these kinds of moments, even though it’s, of course, might dip a lot further,
[00:14:43] Luke: But it’s not gonna be like a 10 bagger from today’s, well it looks like it closed at about 680 billion dollars today. Like, it’s gonna be a long journey to get like a 10x return, whereas Nvidia suddenly went wild.
[00:14:56] Krzysztof: right? Because NVIDIA was a spring coil, whereas Tesla, obviously there’s too many unknowns. I mean, even, even like, what does that mean if, for example, things go well and full autonomous driving. is achieved in Texas and California. Like how does how would that move the share price exactly in
[00:15:16] Luke: Oh, I mean,
[00:15:17] Krzysztof: Right?
[00:15:18] Luke: that would be massive. Yeah, that would be massive. No,
[00:15:22] Krzysztof: I think I’m saying the
opposite. I’m saying, if that were the case, you think all of a sudden, Tesla would sell that many more cars, even though it wouldn’t be available in the majority of states.
[00:15:34] Luke: day they can actually start operating autonomous vehicles, uh, the stock is going to catch fire because suddenly, like the cyber cab is no longer a pipe dream and a vision. It’s actually real. Like it’s then just a manufacturing challenge and Tesla are the masters of manufacturing. At the moment though, they have this impassable wall, which is the software.
[00:15:59] Krzysztof: Okay, I see. I
see. Yeah. So you know, to go back to to go back to the 4 percent question. I think my Take away from this is 4 percent to me, not knowing anything else about the context, is that is a reasonable position. And if I had, I actually think I have more than 4 percent in Tesla right now. And if it’s me, I’m excited at the opportunity to continue adding at these levels.
I just wouldn’t put
[00:16:24] Luke: we, um, we talked.
[00:16:26] Krzysztof: yet.
[00:16:27] Luke: We talked on last week’s episode, I think, or two weeks ago, we talked, we responded to Deb’s question, Debra’s question about like, how would you invest a thousand dollar portfolio? And we said, Oh yeah, maybe break it up into like 10 or 12 pieces. Like I’ll be happy to have Tesla as one of my 10 positions in my portfolio.
So, you know, if you’ve got a smaller portfolio and you’re adding new money and this isn’t going to like wipe out your life, you know, maybe a 10 percent position is perfectly fine.
[00:16:54] Krzysztof: Right, on, on the back of, like NVIDIA, I think Tesla is the only company I could think of right now that legitimately has its shot at becoming the world’s most valuable eventually
[00:17:07] Luke: yeah. My money’s actually on SpaceX, which is another one of Musk’s,
like, portfolio, right? But yeah, I totally agree.
[00:17:14] Krzysztof: So it’s kind of weird. This is what was weird about sort of thinking about what we wanted to say, correct me if I’m wrong. It’s this weird tape, like aftertaste. That’s like, why was it so disappointing? While the vision right while the vision still remains mostly intact. And I think it also I hate to divert us too far away from the main point.
But I do think there’s something about the obviously the US election is less than a month away. He’s being seen in a very different light as the richest human on the planet, now advocating so hardcore for one political candidate that is obviously problematic in all kinds of ways, regardless of your political leanings. Like it’s a mess. It’s like a weird, Muddled.
[00:18:03] Luke: I’ve, uh, like I used to be invested in Tesla because of Musk, and I suppose these days I feel like I’m invested in Tesla in spite of Musk.
[00:18:13] Krzysztof: Yeah. And you know, if my buddy comes on to give his take in a little bit, he’s one data point of somebody that really wants a Tesla. He’s really open minded and will not do it any longer. That can’t be, I mean, pure like business 101, that just, that needs to be either the world’s greatest exception of all time where the CEO could get away with something like this. Or the law of business gravity will return Tesla down to earth because you can’t do this kind of shit and like liberally, literally sabotage your own company and, and, and it’d be just fine as well. Nothing had happened
[00:18:52] Luke: He’s done it time and time and time again, right?
[00:18:56] Krzysztof: to
[00:18:56] Luke: Yeah,
[00:18:57] What Was Good About The Robotaxi Event?
[00:18:57] Luke: ultimately these are like stock promotion events as opposed to, uh, like anything that’s really meaningful, but let’s not, let’s not lose sight of like some of the good things. So what, like, what are the good takeaways from yesterday? Like the car looks great.
The, uh, then the van, the cyber van, well, I mean, not, not practical with like no ground clearance, but like a nice sort of. Would you call those things, you know, you have like a prototype in a showroom or something? Yeah, like cool prototype, I’m sure, you know, directionally, but there’s nothing new. Like we’ve seen, we’ve been seeing that style of vehicle in like magazines and car shows for decades.
but it looks great. It looks great. And I think Optimus was the thing that, uh, impressed me the most. Like the robots look really good, even though I don’t buy for a second that they’re actually walking around autonomously. Like, maybe it’s partly autonomously, but I think we’re all being piloted, by a human.
But that’s fine, because that’s the software, and it’s the same software challenge as FSD, so. I get they’ve got to solve that, but it looks really good. And it looks like, I had a funny conversation with a buddy on WhatsApp today. He’s like, uh, robots do not need to be human shaped.
They need to be customized to the tasks they need to do. The only robot that needs to be human shaped is a sex robot. And he’s clearly wrong because people can have sex with any shape thing.
Would you have like a human shaped optimus or a couple of them in your house? Let’s leave the bedroom aside, but like, you know, cooking and cleaning and maybe making the cocktails for you and the boys when you get back from your hike.
[00:20:35] Krzysztof: I would.
[00:20:36] Luke: Okay. Yep. Me too. Right. For sure. And if I can get one for the price of the car, for real,
[00:20:41] Krzysztof: yeah, mow the lawn and do clean the floors, all that right Roombas and all that. Yeah. Oh, you know what I realized what the most disappointing for me in the sense, it’s because I didn’t learn anything new other than like you said sci fi. Fancy prototypes. I wanted something like this is going to be so boring sounding and disappointing, like an update or a new announcement around a HVAC product. Like, because I know that like, you know, in previous, teasers, like somehow I learned, I, I I’m pretty sure I’m not making this up that they were working alongside solar panels and batteries. A Tesla version of a better AC unit or something like that. That would move. Everybody has HVAC problems. Everybody.
[00:21:34] Luke: it’s not the, uh, it’s not the cyber air con event though. It was the robo taxi event. Right. Yeah, for
[00:21:41] Krzysztof: you know, the way that, you know, the one more thing and right now
energy is, you know, huge, right? True. But anyway, point being nothing new, right? The most, what I got most excited about was the stupid slide about, you know, getting rid of parking lots and replacing them with trees. I’m like, Oh, yes, my, you know, my liberal tree hugging self is like, that’s, I don’t know, that’s, sell me more of that.
But in summary, it comes down to are you selling buying or holding and your take right now is what?
[00:22:19] Luke: Uh, I kind of wish I did trim yesterday, but I took a no regrets decision to leave it alone. So fine. So be it. Um, I’m definitely not adding. I’m not, I’m not trimming either. I’m just going to sit and hold. I’m about a 5 percent position. That feels about right to me.
[00:22:34] Krzysztof: And for me, I don’t see any urgency to add But I’m glad that I seem to have a longer runway in which to add at valuations that are still kind of lofty.
[00:22:46] Luke: sorry, sorry, for clarity, do you have any Tesla in your portfolio today?
[00:22:51] Krzysztof: Yes.
[00:22:51] Luke: You do? Okay, right.
[00:22:52] Krzysztof: Yes. Let me, I mean, I could tell you, uh, in my, well, in King of the Jungle, uh, I have, you know, it’s only one of five companies that I own. So, in king of the jungle. It’s a 1. 65%. and in my real world portfolio, it is 4. 5%. Look at that
[00:23:16] Luke: okay, there we go. Both about the same then, yeah, yeah. I think, so, so you and I about the same. And what’s your view? buy, hold, sell?
[00:23:23] Krzysztof: hold an ad in the coming months.
[00:23:27] Luke: Is there a, like, I don’t really do price targets, but I know you do. Is there a particular price you would set a limit at, order out or something?
[00:23:35] Krzysztof: This is, This
is totally off the cuff because I haven’t really looked at the numbers recently, um, in terms of ratios and stuff, but what’s the price now? Around what? 200 again, it kind of fell down to like 210, something like that.
[00:23:49] Luke: What’s that? 680 billion dollar market cap. I don’t know what the share price is,
[00:23:53] Krzysztof: I will probably, I don’t know. We’ll probably need to lose another 30 percent for me to get really enticed to ad.
[00:24:03] Luke: but that’s substantial. If, I mean, if it dropped 30%, then yeah, I’d probably be considering adding too.
[00:24:07] Krzysztof: yeah,
[00:24:08] Luke: yeah, I was like, this is one I’m just happy to hold for like at least another decade, unless something, things go seriously wrong. Yeah, I think, I think it’s worth saying though, because we don’t own the stock.
If I did not own the stock today, I think this is a good candidate to buy or to consider buying. So if you’re listening and you don’t own Tesla, and if we haven’t completely put you off the idea of, uh, the car company, which it is today, then, um, yeah, you’d like to take a proper look at it as an investment.
Go check it out on finchat.io, there’s some really good numbers on there, it’s a great tool. go read about it on your favorite research services and, uh, see what you think. But I think it’s worth that. It’s worth considering for a growth oriented portfolio.
[00:24:51] Krzysztof: Exactly. it’s legitimately uncommon to come across opportunities in the investing world that could be That are paradigm shifters. And that remains the case regardless of the relative flop of the presentation.
[00:25:06] Luke: Yep. Actually I will say we, um, our friends over at 7investing, Simon Erickson, he’s put together a fairly detailed valuation model for Tesla. So if you are thinking about investing, go check out 7investing.Com. Uh, I think there’s still a 1 deal to become a subscriber and you can check out Simon’s, valuation model.
For one buck,
[00:25:29] Is Musk Making An Inside Joke At Shareholder’s Expense?
[00:25:29] Krzysztof: speaking of, I had one more thought, around Tesla Musk’s presentation style. And my buddies all felt that it was. Extraordinarily sloppy, like almost unprofessional. I mean, we know the way Musk speaks is, kind of weirdly stuttery and as though he doesn’t put much effort into polish. I made the observation though, and see, see where this lands with you, Luke. That when I watch Apple presentations, post Steve Jobs, Apple presentations, let me clarify. They are so polished. That I feel like they are corporate ads aimed at almost a non human because of the, you know what I’m talking about, right?
If you ever watched the Napa presentation, this is the most beautiful product. And it’s the most, it’s like, feels so, so shiny that there’s no humanity left. And I was left wondering in terms of salesmanship, whether Musk’s Kind of stuttery, sloppy, off the cuff y kind of remarks are regardless not the better path, because at least they’re authentically human. Like, almost like perversely, wow, only a human could have made a presentation this sloppy, which means there’s still a beating heart under there somewhere.
[00:27:00] Luke: maybe, like, probably more than any other time I’ve seen him speak. I got the impression he was just taking the piss. like, I don’t know. It was a bit weird. Like, he weirdly. Deliberately, I guess, mispronounced Robovan. Like, he initially was calling it Robovan. Like, what, what are you on about? Are you just misreading the autocue?
Or are you just, is it like an inside joke that you guys are having? And he’s, he’s forgotten that, like, the audience have no idea about this inside joke. He just sounded like a bit of an idiot, to be honest.
[00:27:27] Krzysztof: It’s weird, right? It’s weird. We know He’s the world’s richest man with billions and billions of dollars. We know they obviously took a long time with this event. It was pushed back. So how hard is it unless he’s so sort of like engineer minded and oriented that it doesn’t even occur to him that there’s like this rhetorical side to things, which I find hard to believe. To be honest, even if he doesn’t care, maybe in the end, because he’s an engineering guy, whatever, it’s all about the machines in the end, blah, blah, blah. It’s a little bizarre.
[00:28:03] Luke: I mean, maybe like his buddy Trump, right? This is his version of, like, Trump saying, I could go out on Fifth Avenue and shoot someone. And I’d still get voted in. Like, Musk is kind of doing the same thing. He’s like, I can, I can just come out and shoot the shit, say literally anything, and you guys are going to be like, whoop and cheer, because I got like an army of robots behind me.
[00:28:22] Krzysztof: Yeah. Yeah. I’ve been wondering about Musk’s, uh, politics and morality for some time now. But at the end of it, I still do deep down believe that he’s trying to be a force for good. And somewhere underneath the sloppiness.
And I still think the mission is oriented in the correct direction.
[00:28:47] Luke: Yeah, like, I do, I don’t really care. I do wonder to the extent he’s actually involved in the day to day operations of the firm. Like, I’m sure he sets the strategy and the priorities, and he’s like the front man. Does he do any more than that these days? Don’t know. I’d always be happy if the answer was no, he doesn’t.
[00:29:05] Krzysztof: Hard to say, right?
[00:29:07] Luke: It doesn’t matter. It’s not relevant, right? It’s just, yeah.
[00:29:10] Krzysztof: If he wanted to make Tesla the world’s best company, he has plenty of problems and loopholes and complexities to solve that we know all the other things he’s doing are taking away from that because he needs, he’s a human, he only has so many hours in the day. So it doesn’t matter if he sleeps none at all or any of the other stuff, the calculus is simple. He’s not doing as great a job for Tesla as he could, and right now we’re suffering from it. And it’s, it’s, it’s visible in the lack of professionalism.
[00:29:48] Luke: But then you say that, right? I’ve got my Highland on the driveway. It’s a beautiful car, right? And like, clearly, like, the stuff is getting better. As a hardware company, like, they’re almost unsurpassed as far as I’m concerned. It’s just they haven’t got the software figured out. Even the freaking software in my car is bullshit.
Like, the implementation of YouTube music and Spotify are just diabolical. They just don’t work. Anyway,
whatever.
[00:30:15] Krzysztof: how it works for me. So is that a UK issue?
[00:30:18] Luke: Maybe. Who knows?
All right, well it was good to chat. Unfortunately it wasn’t like us getting it because they’re going, wow, incredible, like our stock has doubled in price because like they’re actually out doing FSD drives right now, that there seem to be still very far from that.
[00:30:32] What’s A Ride In The Cybercab Actually Like?
[00:30:32] Luke: But nonetheless, it was good to see the, uh, the fun and games, and I’ve probably got more insight watching the uh, attendees videos and seeing the must presentation itself.
[00:30:42] Krzysztof: Oh, actually, can you speak to that just a little bit? Because I’ve been hiking in the, in the mountains. did you see anything of what it looks like to take a ride inside the robo car,
[00:30:52] Luke: Yeah, yeah,
so a couple of them. I mean, it’s clearly, it’s kind of like a, it’s such a controlled safe environment and it’s basically like a Disney or Warner Brothers like ride in theme park, right? It’s just an auto, it’s a vehicle following a predefined path. Okay, sure there were a ton of other vehicles on the road, but also You could see, like, there were a ton of handlers, like, everywhere, and all of them seemed to have, like, smartphones and probably, like, an emergency, like, stop button in case something, like, is about to go up shit creek.
so a highly, highly controlled environment, but the car itself looked beautiful, and the inside looked great, and the vision is right, but we’ve, we’ve known this vision for a ton of time.
[00:31:34] Krzysztof: Can you actually say just a little more about what the inside looked like? Cause you know, watching the presentation, I only had a, you know, that bit of that outsider’s view in.
[00:31:43] Luke: Yeah, two seats, like you saw, like the goal, you saw the goal wing doors, but like two seats, just one big screen, and it seemed to be oriented around, so when the guys got in, it was like, actually I’ll splice into the, if you’re watching this on YouTube, I’ll splice some of the video in, but a couple of videos I saw, like the passengers would get in, the car would be like, buckle up your seatbelt, and they’d click the seatbelt in, the doors would come down, they’d choose a destination, they had a choice of like, Two or three destinations, like New York, which is like a set, or Westworld, or somewhere else, they pick the destination.
They both had to press, like, start, then the car set off, and it, you see, it drove pretty quickly, like, I would guess, like, 25, 30 miles an hour. It wasn’t, like, nannying around. And the in car experience seemed to be oriented to entertainment. So it was like, it was trying to push you, push the drivers towards like, watch a movie.
So, you know, they could sit and watch like Blade Runner 24 7 or whatever, while they’re going to the destination.
[00:32:37] The (Likely) Economics Of Cybercab Ownership
[00:32:37] Krzysztof: Alright, so Tesla to still to be determined Tesla’s fate and taking over the world to be determined.
[00:32:45] Luke: Yeah. Like they’ve been beaten to the punch already by Waymo in terms of actually like achieving the goal. But. Can Waymo scale out at the right, uh, sort of operationally income positive? I don’t know, maybe not. Tesla certainly claim to be able to if they can manufacture the cars for like, say, sub 50, 000.
Like you can see how clearly that would make sense to put a vehicle on the road that costs that to generate, you know, even if I’m paying like Uber rates or even I’m paying like a tenth of the Uber rates. So, and actually, Like, why am I excited about this, right? Like, who is this good for and bad for?
Because I was thinking about this for a different tweet I posted the other day. Like, this is clear, if they do finally solve FSD, right, this is clearly very good for Tesla themselves, because they are going to sell a shit ton of vehicles. this is great for riders, like individuals, like I used my Uber today and it cost me whatever, like 50 bucks to get into central London, and maybe I can get into central London for, like, half that or less and maybe eventually.
Like five bucks. so fantastic for riders. the, the sort of the, the other party in the case, in the business case, just, this does not make sense to me whatsoever. So here’s, like, turn your analytical view on this, right? Because Musk’s, Musk’s sort of spiel as part of the vision is, oh yeah, you know, you could be like a shepherd and you own like 10 of these vehicles and then off they go and they’ll earn you like all this money.
While you sit back in your armchair and smoke your big fat cigar like you’re doing right now. like if they finally solve this at, okay, for the first couple of years, I’m sure there’ll be a ton of money to be made by anyone who’s got a car that they can send off and run as a taxi. Uh, like that Jeff Bezos quote, your margin is my opportunity.
if there’s any good or service, Where you can essentially buy this thing for, let’s say, 50, 000 and it can generate, let’s say, 50, 000 a year. Suddenly, you know, Tesla won’t be able to sell those things fast enough. They absolutely won’t. And when demand, when supply meets demand, like the prices will come crashing down and Tesla will be able to control the pricing.
I’m sure they’re always going to take their cut. but if they’re not the only player in the market, if there’s other Chinese manufacturers and maybe Waymo at more scale or some NVIDIA drive cars out there doing the same thing, because we’re all going to copy each other as soon as someone gets it really figured out for real, then that’s going to force like prices down to the lowest common denominator or become like a race to the bottom.
And that’s great for riders, but that’s not going to be great for the people, the shepherds who own their fleet of cars, because like the, the income per mile driven. It’s going to like come cratering down.
[00:35:35] Krzysztof: I realized I have a question for you. I have two Teslas in my family, mine and my wife’s, both happen to be red. one of them is an original 2018. I got in May because I waited in line and I was one of the first people to actually be on the road with it. It has only 36, 000 miles on it. So, over six years, quite, quite low mileage and FSD. This will be precisely the moment we’re selling it. makes the most sense because there’s low mileage. It’s still, uh, you know, there’s still value in there, but the reason holding me back mostly is in the back of my mind. I’m thinking, wait, this whole shepherd thing, if Musk, if there’s any truth to that at all, and if, for example, like things go Musk’s way, then if this car could be on a road in Texas, where I live in 2025, which is only, you handful of months away, then might not that be a really might not that be a really bad decision from the Shepherd business standpoint, because if this car could all of a sudden make me 10, 000 just driving around, then obviously, that’s a that’s a horrible mistake in hindsight, what would you what would you how do you advise me?
[00:37:00] Luke: Um, I don’t want to dash your hopes. Uh, like the latest version of the model three is, I think they call it hardware four and then anything up until like, say started this year was hardware three. And I guess, uh, your wife’s one is also probably also hardware three. It was like an earlier model three. I like at some point, let’s say the latest Musk date, they will solve FSD and they’ll get like your model three out doing it.
so I could see it maybe like certainly be the hardware for cars first, but then it’s another question. Can they, is there enough resolution in the cameras? for the hardware 3 vehicles to actually be able to do that because I can’t see Tesla doing like a recall to upgrade the whole sensor suite. Yeah, so like, maybe, but you might find your second class citizens, uh, with the older vehicle.
Maybe even my vehicle won’t be like adequate, you know, maybe they’re going to need hardware five, hardware six before they finally actually solve full FSD. And because, I mean, like a hack they could do, which I’m sure they’re thinking about is a bit like Amazon Go did with their supermarkets and got like lambasted for it.
There could be a Tesla control room somewhere with like a super shepherd just keeping an eye on like their allocation of a thousand cars and if any particular car gets into like a complex situation it just gets like bumped up a queue and then an operator takes over and navigates you know reverses out of the gap it got stuck in or whatever it is or you know calls the police if it’s just like run someone over so like so maybe they’re going to need like another generation of hardware with Like something more robust than whatever, whatever like crappy mobile connectivity they’ve got on the car.
Because my, my phone will keep connection when I’m driving around, but my car will drop its 5G connection all the time. So I think it’s probably a substandard antenna. so there’s probably a hundred reasons why. Like, the hardware may or may not be adequate.
[00:39:07] Krzysztof: So what I’m hearing you say is don’t get my hopes up, uh, hanging on to the six year old Tesla for purposes of it becoming one of the flock that’s going to make me money is probably delusional in terms of either 2025, either in terms of timeline or in terms of hardware. And if you add those probabilities together, then the odds drop even lower.
[00:39:35] Luke: Well, if you, if you buy what I was saying about, uh, like race to the bottom, it’s probably delusional to think that anybody’s Tesla will make them any kind of anything approaching serious money other than in like the first couple of years maybe where the world is like supply constrained. But there’ll be quickly be so many on the road because the economics will be so incredible.
if you’re making like, you probably won’t make more than a couple of bucks.
[00:40:04] Krzysztof: Hmm.
[00:40:05] Luke: Cars, cars and houses are depreciating assets, Krzysztof. It
[00:40:10] Krzysztof: Right. Well, badger. Thank you for that. No holds bar. no feelings hurt. No holding back.
[00:40:19] Luke: was good. It was good to connect. Thank you for making time on your hike, even though your buddies have now all ditched you and gone to the pub, hopefully without you.
[00:40:27] Krzysztof: Well, you know, they’re wherever they are. I have my I have my my parting gift.
[00:40:34] Luke: Okay. I’m lucky you’re lucky for us. You’re not home alone with an optimist or God knows what would happen.
[00:40:42] Krzysztof: All right, my friend.
[00:40:44] Luke: this was a impromptu unstructured episode of Wall Street Wildlife, but I hope you got some value out of our random witterings. You can find us on all the social media channels, uh, especially on patreon.com/wallstreetwildlife. Join our patreons, become one of the tribe, uh, and we definitely prioritize your questions first.
We might even do a whole episode on one of your questions like we did two weeks ago. If you want to chat to Krzysztof and I, or just tell us what idiots we are, you can find us on X, I’m at 7 Luke Hallard.
[00:41:16] Krzysztof: And I am at 7 Flying Platypus, but my new preference to communicate with listeners is over on Patreon. So find us there.
[00:41:25] Luke: Are you ready to become a beast of an investor?
[00:41:28] Krzysztof: Your journey starts here. Rawr!
