Tesla is committing automotive suicide

Tesla also announced they will be discontinuing the basic lane keep + adaptive speed cruise control they helped pioneer in cars sold going forward. But this is now a standard (free) feature even in basic vehicles like the Toyota Corolla. Why would they intentionally cripple their vehicles to the point hat they would be inferior to most cars today?

Then I learned that Musk's incentive pay has a 10 million full self-driving subscription hurdle, and it all made sense.

They had the first mover advantage, but then Musk lost interest in the company and let it just sit there for the last five years or so without making sure that they have a future-proof product pipeline and that those products are actually being delivered on a reasonable schedule. Now they are increasingly turning into an EV also-ran while their moonshots are unlikely to work out any time soon.

Realistically, he should have put someone else in charge after the launch of the Model 3 to develop the company further, but I don't think his ego allows it.

BYD is slapping the EV industry around like a gorilla, Tesla simply cannot compete in any meaningful way. Waymo has achieved profit per unit and people are happy to see driver-less taxis in their city and pay for the service.

Tesla also cannot justify valuations based on automotive sales/subscriptions alone - they were always going to have to pivot.

They're in a tight spot and they need to do something drastic.

What makes this move even more incredulous is that none of the two market they want to move towards are proven markets:

- Waymo is generating less than 150m in 2025.

- Consumer robotics is an absolute unknown.

How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation.

This story may be true. But I have read Fred Lanbert articles on Tesla and they are always negative. And in many cases even biased. So I'd take it with a pinch of salt.

It's not like Tesla is failing, they have $40 billion cash at hand, more than many auto company's net worth,it's that people want to believe that Tesla is failing. I hope Tesla succeeds, with or without Musk.

I'm not saying the pundits are wrong, but tons of people said Tesla would never amount to anything back when they were just shipping the Roadster and the Model S.

I think we're at the point where there is a bit of healthy competition in the EV space (even when excluding the Chinese), that Teslas are mostly just symbolic.

People still buy Teslas. But in my circle, most have bought other EVs (and not just because of Elon). Teslas are no longer the obvious superior choice.

Tesla could be a major automaker if they released cars like a normal functional automaker. Elon, for his many faults, was perhaps the best person in the world to get Tesla where it is today, but he is more likely to burn it to the ground than maintain success of the company. If Tesla built a more traditional mid size SUV it would probably sell nearly as well as the Model Y and if they created a new more modern Model S It would probably do well also.

I have my doubts their robots will be anything more than a gimmick for rich people.

Tesla cannot sustain astronomical valuations by delivering actual products. A dream cannot be real

Their revenue is flat for last 4 years. They have established their status outside top 10 manufacturers and losing EV market share to Chinese and Europeans.

  Car revenue: -11%
  operating margin: 3.86%
  Free cash flow -30% 

Tesla PE > 280 is magic. Now they are "pivoting" to Cybercab, humanoid robots and investing billions into xAI. Jumping from hype-trend to next without any problem is impressive. Fair valuation always in the future.

I bought a new Model Y a few months ago.

On the whole, it's a great car, it really is. They've pretty much nailed the fundamentals. It's opinionated, not unlike Apple, but if the opinions work for you you'll enjoy the car.

But there are shortcomings, and they are jarring. The parking sensors basically don't work at all due to being vision only - and apparently can't be made to work properly. The lane change and reverse warnings are just crap and may as well not be there. My previous car implemented these to perfection, but I cannot trust the Tesla. The autopilot is a gimmick that offers you nothing but increased risk - and there's no way in hell I'd trust FSD for car that can't accurately detect the distance of my house when parking. The big touchscreen is great for passengers, but outright dangerous for drivers.

Having said all that, it seems strong emotions around Musk and Tesla cause people to want Tesla to fail. They want the car to be bad. There is so much motivated reasoning around this brand that it's hard to take any article like the above, or half the comments in this thread, seriously.

Amazing that Tesla announced the next generation roadster and sold pre-orders which I think cost $100k and then just never released it and there seems to be no indication (last I checked) that it ever will be.

Help me understand this: why would anybody buy a Tesla car today, unless it was incredibly well-priced with respect to the competition? Seems to me, yes, this kills Tesla cars.

It's not like Tesla actually has functional FSD technology. If a ten year staged rollout of "transportation as a service" is the way to get there, then Waymo has a substantial leg up. Either way it is a lose-lose for Tesla. They failed to continue innovating on the EV and battery fronts as well.

I heard Tesla's "Full Self Drive" is now ready. The only thing missing is "self" and "full" but that's just a small detail. Moving on to fully autonomous robots now.

Strongly disagree with this opinion piece. I think Musk/Tesla figured out it is impossible to compete with Chinese manufacturers in the foreseeable future so they are pivoting.

Elon's superpower is commanding insane valuation premiums. The trouble with this is that "the bill eventually comes due", so to speak, which forces Elon's companies to take wilder and wilder bets, or to make wilder and wilder promises.

With telsa it was robotaxis, and when that failed to materialize, humanoid robots (fucking LOL).

SpaceX is an even more insane example. They are eyeing an IPO at a 1.5 trillion valuation. And yet the market for satellite launches is simply not that big. (What would you do with a satellite, if I gifted you one for free?). Estimates have SpaceX doing about $3B in annual earnings, which would give them a 500x earnings multiple at a 1.5T valuation (Apple: 35).

And so SpaceX/Elon had to invent the absolutely idiotic idea of "data centers in space" to sell some future vision of tens of thousands of launches per year.

He keeps upping the ante (and the ridiculousness of the vision), and so far investors keep funding it.

Me? I've realized that this madness is entirely "opt-in" and I choose to simply...not opt-in.

Fully Self Driving themselves off the cliff one might say...

Interesting to put this into perspective to Tesla's master plans from 20 years (https://www.tesla.com/secret-master-plan) and 10 years ago (https://www.tesla.com/master-plan-part-deux)

What is so enjoyable about this is that it'll be all musk's fault when we look back and realize Tesla just died off over time. Once other companies started actually competing with him, he wasn't smart enough to hold the lead. Lucid, byd, even hyundai, all made better cars within a few years, so Elon just basically gave up. I love that

The new Roadster is such vaporware that no one is even bothering to bring it up.

They might actually be going all-in on a robotaxi future, i.e. betting on a future where car-ownership is not the default.

I owned a model 3 and two model Ss. I largely regard model S as the best sedan ever made (in less than 100k USD luxury price range). No, model 3 doesn't even come close. Plus you can buy a 3yr old model S "like new" at the price of a new model 3.

Tesla is committing suicide here by eliminating the best sedan ever and by committing to an idea (taxis) that mainly serve the low end market.

Message to Musk: people like to own things. Only the low end segment don't mind sharing their means of transportation. High end won't share. Biggest profits in tech are in the high end market as Apple and Samsung have repeatedly shown.

A bit futurologisticaly but I think as in any authocracy regime, companies don't rely on the market and consumers. The durable source of income for them are goverment contracts. Autonomous androids are the next big thing which should help the richest people deal with disobidient work force.

I don't strongly disagree, but also don't really see why they would keep manufacturing X and S if the design is old and the car needs a refresh to be competitive? I guess the argument is that it would have been worthwhile refreshing it?

I mean that may be the case, but I get the sense that Tesla's primary goal at the moment is creating cheap robotaxi ready vehicles, and S and X don't really fit well with that. Partly because of cost, but also because I suspect it's harder to build FSD for multiple different vehicles so both models are just a distraction right now.

I'm not saying this article is wrong, but it seems like it may make sense that they focus on Y, 3, robotaxis and future projects like optimus.

I don't have strong opinions either way on Musk, but his ability to see future tech trends before others has historically been quite impressive. Personally I think the idea that Tesla would be better off behaving like every other car company betting on small iterative improvements to the current line up is really quite silly. It's going to be extremely difficult to compete with China without protectionist policies. Tesla probably should be looking to the next thing if they want to survive.

TBH, Tesla lost the plot after master plan 2 (Roadster 2, Semi and Cybertruck are all fine examples), now it's just a farce. Another company I will be glad to not have in my life.

I'm surprised that I feel like this is the right move for them. Competing on the cars seems like a bad idea now that EVs are kind of a commodity market.

The way it’s set up on their website right now, it’s very confusing why anyone would want a model X. It’s double the price of a model Y with very few ostensible improvements other than acceleration and top speed.

Bipedal robots are dumb.

A robot that can only walk around my house is still useless. A robot that can wheel or track or even park in front of my dryer and fold laundry would be incredible. Yet every demo is Robot Jumps And Dances, not Robot Does Something Useful.

My theory is that bipedal motion is the "easy" problem, and fine motor control is the hard problem. That makes me bearish on Optimus: A car with questionable full self driving is still a useful car. A robot with questionable fine motor control is going to break every dish in the house.

Or he never intended for it to stick around and used it a the biggest pump and dump ever to become the richest man in the world using subsidies all along the way to get there. Will be interesting to see how much stock Elon sells...

More like surgery to remove the excess weight. If they are not selling well, why would they continue making them? That would be suicide.

"If you don't cannibalize yourself, someone else will." -Steve Jobs

The discontinued models were 3% of the sale. It's not "suicide".

Also if they feel self driving is sufficient, why would they bother with inferior stuff

I just quit reading any articles from this site. They are so obviously biased it’s obnoxious. I wonder who is paying them.

Electrek writer and owner still salty about failing to game the referral system, continue with fake journalism

I have to admit, I love my model S and have been very bullish of TSLA but this news makes me very bearish. There is no way they are going to make robots at scale in the next 5 years and the model s and model X are cool pieces of technology. If they dont start rolling out robotaxi extremely quickly to new locations, I cant imagine the stock going anywhere but down.

He’s just retooling to manufacture his fighting Uruk-hai.

I wonder if he has some kind of dementia brought on by excessive consumption of ketamine? Or perhaps it's just that he has surrounded himself with people who will never tell him no. Sort of like a lot of dictators do where they have executed everyone around them who could give them pushback and therefore they end up living in a fantasy world while their people starve.

What I'm wondering at this point is why the investors in Tesla are still riding this crazy train. Blaming simple market manipulation seems far fetched. Mass hysteria and delusional beliefs are common enough in the stock market but reality eventually sets in and this bubble has been inflating for a long time. The people who lose the most are going to be the small investors- the really ruthless hedge fund bros will probably walk away unscathed.

Give me a break. Tesla has 4 different, 4 person cars. It's redundant. In manufacturing and business, reducing variability is everything. Engineering and supply chain has now been freed from two entire SKUs. That's massive. In a self driving world, they don't really the Model 3 either. The best part is no part - well getting rid of two entire vehicles worth of parts that contributed very little to the bottom line is massive.

It's amazing after 20 years of the same MO, people still don't understand how Tesla/SpaceX operate and succeed. It's like deleting millions of lines of code from a code base. It improves not just performance of the organization, but maintenance as well. The S/X were outsized tech debt on every facet of the business and now they're gone. 100% the right move and very few people understand it.

So, let the MDS unfold in hackernews