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Comment by blindriver | Hacker News Reader

I have over $100k in Tesla puts.

There is no way Tesla survives this. They have plummeting sales every quarter, and Elon is pushing out a product that is going to get into an accident within the first week.

Robotaxis are glorified Ubers and will never level up to Waymos. FSD is useless if you have to keep your eye on the wheel and road.

I have a Tesla Model Y. It's my favorite car I've ever driven. I subscribed to FSD as recently as last month for one month to try it out. It doesn't work as well as a Waymo, not even close. It still feels like a really good high school demo but not close to being in the same ballpark as Waymo.

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.

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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.

Tesla has lost a lot of their lustre this year. Sales plummeting is incontrovertible. Just based on that alone is devastating. But this robotaxi lack of success will not be treated the same anymore.

If the market was actually rational the stock would have tanked already. The small number of people who hold the most stock have every incentive to keep the price high.

Tesla stock isn't based on whether they are a successful company, it's based on whether or not Musk is good at convincing people to put money into anything that's near him.

People who want to hold stock aren't the ones who set the price at which it trades. People who want to actively buy or sell it do.

You got Keynes's admonition against shorting right. But Tesla stock is impervious to reality not because of a small number of shareholders, but because an unusually large number of retail shareholders are in the cult of personality. It's a meme stock.

Totally possible this time is different... but I'm more making the point that if I'd bet against Tesla each time it looked like they would tank, I'd be very broke.

At least historically, Tesla stock has shown a consistent ability to defy reality.

No pressure, but if you feel comfortable with it... would you share the specific contracts you bought? I'll be interested to see how it works out.

> Totally possible this time is different

Sure, it's possible. However, all signs are that it is exceedingly unlikely.

I'll hold you to that in a couple months :)

It should have lost a lot of lustre, but it hasn't. I see no justification for the stock being even $30 right now, but it is 10x that number.

> They might launch it with, like, 5 cars total, or have it be 100% teleoperated, or limit it to side roads.

All of these things. On a previous investor call, he said "10-20 Model Ys" would be deployed in Austin.

And that they'd all have remote operators.

And that fully autonomous would be geofenced (or in his words, "with some limitations", because he's allergic to that word).

It's "fully autonomous, driverless self-driving" that's actually heavily Mechanical Turk-ed.

>Tesla has proven to be very good at lying

Not Tesla. Musk was, but that ship sailed together with his nazi salute.

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

A great quote and applies to a lot of things

Sure, tell that to Theranos' executives.

Oh yeah, you can't, they're in jail.

Theranos never went public, so the quote about markets doesn't apply.

I do agree with the general sentiment, however. If FSD kills a person, many executives, including the top dog, need to go to jail.

That seems like an awfully low bar to imprisoning people. Shouldn't executives at every company which designs or manufactures vehicles go to jail by your standard? If not, why?

Sure. My Honda Accord’s cruise control is totally the same as the defective on arrival robot taxi.

I have heard of at least one case where someone thought that cruise control could operate as an un-supervised 'autopilot' and nearly died; I believe their (almost new) RV went off some sort of cliff.

There's a difference between someone not understanding the functionality of their car, and the CEO openly deceiving the public about the functionality of their car.

If this RV manufacturer's CEO said that the cruise control was FSD, yes then one can understand the user's confusion.

Do you mean to say it’s confusing to say “of course silly, the feature is called “Full Self Driving”, but the vehicle does not fully drive itself, your are in control!”

Because there's a fundamental difference between "manufactures a car with well-understood features in a mature regulatory space" and "prematurely deploys untested and unprecedented functionality without oversight." If a legacy manufacturer rushed out a product that ignored regulation, for example, they should be similarly subject to prosecution.

There's lots of oversight in the automotive space; everything from the dashboard indicators to the crash standards are tightly regulated. Perhaps the regulators should be 'better', but it seems to me that Tesla is quite compliant (as it does 'recalls' and all the like). Which regulations is Tesla maliciously failing to comply with?

There are no requirements in FMVSS that meaningfully apply to FSD, unless you want to consider AEB part of FSD (which it isn't). Tesla voluntarily follows ISO 26262 for the parts they consider safety critical (i.e. not FSD), but that's just a generic software process standard. ISO 21448 is both uncommon in industry and voluntary. Tesla does not follow SAE J3016 terminology internally. Tesla does not follow UL4600. Tesla flouts both the CA DMV and the NHTSA reporting requirements. Etc.

Can you point out where there's meaningful oversight that Tesla cooperates with without complaining or missing data?

Because the product here isn't the car itself.

It's FSD. Which is bought separately and advertised separately.

But both are made by the same company so the liability is still on Tesla.

> If FSD kills a person, many executives, including the top dog, need to go to jail.

It would be great to have that level of accountability.

Drunk drivers that kill people barely go to jail: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/man-gets-10-days-in-jai...

It's a quip, but scarily accurate - it has been said multiple times, "If you want to murder someone and get away with it, hit them with your car."

So that's what the lying cops at the Canton PD got wrong!

FSD saves people, naysayers here of the technology are like bureaucrats, raising a problem for every solution.

FSD, in particular, already did definitively kill a person between 2022-08 and 2023-08 [1]. Still going strong.

Note that this is distinct from the tens of publicly documented fatalities on Tesla Autopilot.

[1] https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/inv/2022/INCR-EA22002-14496.pdf

>[...] the quote about markets doesn't apply

I'm about to blow your mind.

https://www.blackrock.com/se/individual/themes/discovering-p...

> If FSD kills a person, many executives, including the top dog, need to go to jail.

Remember that Musk (through "doge") just illegally dismantled the agencies that might've been able to hold Tesla accountable for safety violations.

Theranos survived for years after people first began raising the alarm... if you'd somehow figured out a way to make a large bet against it, there's a decent change the market would have remained irrational longer than you could have remained solvent unless you were very lucky with your timing.

I mean, the point is, someone betting against Theranos in this way, if it were a public company, would almost certainly have lost money (unless their timing was _perfect_). Enron would be a better example (as it was public); a lot of people, even before Enron's downfall, were fairly sure that Enron was dodgy, but trading on that belief would have been extremely dangerous, because it might take _years_ to come unstuck, and shorts (or puts) ain't free.

To be fair, buying puts is probably the safest way for OP to take a short position.

Keynes

I have had the exact opposite experience. I have been using FSD on HW3 for a few years and the latest version for me is much safer than me driving. I dont care about your opinions of him killing the brand, they are irrelevant. It's clear that the vision only approach will work, it may need more training data but it will get there. Good luck with your short!

Last I checked there were 35K fatal accidents in the US every year - if FSD can bring that down to 3.5K that will be an obvious win.

I used to try it for a few drives after each release then revert to driving myself. with the newest version i let it drive a lot- and i’m on the older hardware. Everyone likes to bemoan the lying but every corp lies, at least with Tesla you get to point the finger instead of yell at a faceless mass. and if it’s 15 years of lying and a well known political target, then at some point it’s not lying- it’s a feature. people need to take some personal responsibility. also, of course, every day that goes by without a fatality is another day that all the naysayers should capitulate- but we won’t hear it. time and pressure will solve fsd sooner than later, i doubt there is a soul in here that doubts it, so there is also /that/ clock that is ticking.

Cars, one of life’s current greatest killers. by accidents and by pollution-hmmm, let’s run down that evil dude!

edited: made on writing mistakes

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.

Regardless of what happens theta and IV crush will probably wipe you out. I don't like Tesla's stock but I don't touch it just because both the stock and options tend to be way overpriced.

It really is wild that investments are driven by the marginal investor, not the median investor. 99% of us can think that Tesla is trash, but 1% of world investors is an absolute ton of capital.

The last price in any market (whether it's stock shares or housing) is driven by the market liquidity which is extremely inelastic. It mostly just does whatever it feels like short term and the time it takes for elasticity and fundamentals to overwhelm it can be so agonizingly long.

You're more complaining that investors who don't own a stock have no influence on its price. Which is true, but I don't see a workable way to change that.

The median investor in Tesla, on the other hand, seems to be happy with the situation since they're not selling.

I'm not complaining really, just think it's a explanation that describes the downward sticky nature of companies that can't seem to justify their valuations.

I agree that the median investor feels that way, I just think that the median Tesla investor (apart from passive broad based funds) is a tiny, tiny, tiny part of the market.

Actually, the reason is the opposite. Tesla is reportedly over 40% owned by retail investors compared with under 20% for most big tech stocks. It's a meme stock.

If you invest in an index fund, 1.9% of your money goes into Tesla.

Investing in a proportional index fund moves the market as a whole, but does not move the individual stocks in relative rank. Aside from short term frictional liquidity issues, it just makes the stocks' relative movements exaggerated.

The valuation of Tesla is still decided by the marginal investor.

One could even be excused for the paranoid thought that there's a conspiracy of capital backing techno authoritarians. Of course, some of that is a money maker, like surveillance tech. But these are the same people backing dodgy brain implants, and third rate LLMs at fabulous valuations. And who are OK with merging a dying social media site with that third rate LLM start up.

Yeah it's been a good learning lesson. I only put in what I was comfortable losing (and fast!). The way the stock moved after the absolutely abysmal earnings will certainly stick with me lol

My new strategy has been wait for a large swing (when IV is high) then sell puts at ~ .1 delta. Ask me at the end of the month if it works out.

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

No one here is ready to have that conversation.

I used to be on Reddit a lot when I was a teenager. I remember during a state election I was certain this libertarian representative/delegate would win, he was so popular on Reddit!

I don't think he got even 5% of the vote. The voting on Reddit combined with a number of other features of the site just give you this really twisted idea of the way people around you think. I don't think it's good to even visit it.

When it comes to Tesla Reddit is 95% in line with hacker news sentiment.

I also got the free month of FSD about four months ago and tried it out on my Model 3, and was astonished at how bad it was in the greater Seattle area: I had to manually intervene on about 4 out of every 5 drives. I do not understand how I continue to see so many comments online raving about how great FSD is; I have to conclude these are coming from either desperate stock-boosters or people who drive exclusively on wide, flat roads in Salt Lake City early on weekend mornings when the roads are all empty.

I don't have FSD, just basic autopilot, but I'm unhappy enough with the lane following/braking/accelerating behavior that I only use it in very limited cases.

Unless FSD improves on these -- which I don't think it does, I think it just adds features -- I can't imagine trusting it.

Yes, I'm a control freak, but I wouldn't be happy with a human driver doing the things AP does, so why would I be happy with the car doing it?

It's definitely behind Waymo level, but the selling point of Tesla FSD is apparently that it works with 'normal' cameras as opposed to the super expensive Waymo kit so they can afford to put it in an upper mid range car.

I've seen it action only in my friend's Tesla in SF, and he also had to manually intervene, but to be fair Tesla themselves say you must be ready to take the wheel at any time. I think it may reach fully autonomous level with a few more years in the oven though.

> I think it may reach fully autonomous level with a few more years in the oven though.

The problem is Tesla pumps have been saying this for 10 years.

> It's definitely behind Waymo level, but the selling point of Tesla FSD is apparently that it works with 'normal' cameras as opposed to the super expensive Waymo kit so they can afford to put it in an upper mid range car.

A potential problem for Tesla is prices are coming down for expensive sensors like LiDAR. We are at the point where you don't have to go camera only to keep a car affordable.

BYD is putting a dozen cameras, 5 mm-wave radars, and 12 ultrasound sensors on many of their cheaper cars. Go up to around Tesla's price and BYD has models with all those sensors and LiDAR.

> I think it may reach fully autonomous level with a few more years in the oven though.

The article is about Tesla planning to launch it as 'autonomous' (mostly) driving _next week_.

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.

While I agree with everything you said, there was one main factor regarding this particular grift - The public opinion in general used to be a lot more positive about Musk.

I wonder if his constant lies are becoming more scrutinized now. This will make it harder to keep up the game of making outlandish promises that are only 1 year away.

Don’t worry, your pre-paid roadster will be delivered by a Tesla Semi driven by a Optimus robot as early as tomorrow.

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

They'll only have made incredible amounts of money once they sell the stock for an incredible amount of money to a buyer that gives them incredible amounts of money. Before that they just have a share of the above empty promises.

> 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 think that "would like to think" applies more when he was pissing off the Democrats (and Brazilians, Ukrainians, British, Germans, Canadians, South Africans, etc.); it looks like he's since burned his bridges with the Republicans in general and Trump in particular, which I believe leaves him with the support of Russia (who may just be trolling) and China (at least until BYD et al. are big enough to absorb the Chinese Tesla factory workers).

> 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.

It’s not the people in Robotaxis that are the issue; it’s everyone around the damn things that are the big liability.

Regulatory protection will not help Tesla the first time it runs over a random pedestrian. It will be a PR nightmare.

You mean his political allies that he accused of pedophilia?

I don't think that he's accused Texas' governor of that, and that might be the more important relationship in that state. After all, consider how much California helped Tesla early on.

Also, if you think that accusation you mentioned is going matter in the long run, it is possible you are holding them to a higher standard than they hold themselves to.

He apologized last week: https://nitter.net/elonmusk/status/1932695486684950962

> What if his political allies

Does he have any of those left? Like, he just had a very public spat with Trump, and despite his attempts to crawl back, Donald doesn't really seem to be taking the bait. Who is his political constituency at this point, far right never-Trumpers? That seems fairly marginal.

> There is no way Tesla survives this

Tesla can definitely survive this. They've got a low cost base, tens of millions in the bank, a rabid fan base, access to capital. It'll probably change next quarter, but as of right now they're still profitable.

Their trillion dollar capitalization is highly unlikely survive, but Tesla as a company making cars has a very long runway to survive mistakes.

Just curious, what are the expiration dates on your puts? I'm just as pessimistic, but wondering what your timeline is.

What do you mean, ~desperate attempt~? The robotaxi has literally been the goal from the very beginning.

Unfortunately I think Elon can remain a cult leader longer than you can stay solvent

> 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.

It's almost a meme stock at this point. Trying to time a market reckoning is very difficult because investor interest is highly decoupled from fundamentals.

There will be incidents and Tesla will just put the blame on drivers, and if you're buying one it most certainly has a clause that you cannot blame Tesla for the problems that the system will cause.

Liability waivers are often limited by state law, especially when negligence is involved.

There is no driver in a robotaxi. If it kills a pedestrian, you can be sure that person’s family will say Tesla is liable.

"I have $100k+ in Tesla puts" would make a great bumper sticker!

Especially on the Tesla he drives.

I think if Robotaxis take off, then his politics won't matter at all. People aren't going to care what brand of car comes to pick them up as long as they feel safe. I've been bearish on Tesla for years and they always prove me wrong. Robotaxis/Waymos are going to be national thing within the decade. It's just a bet on who survives, the biggest loser will be gig workers, that part I feel confident about.

Robotaxis are a pleasant experience now partially because, like early zipcar, it's mostly richer nerds using the service.

Over time they are going to run into all the problems of public infrastructure in low trust places like NYC where, unattended, you will have people use the backseat as a dining room, smoking lounge, bar and toilet. Time will tell how they deal with bad riders.

> Time will tell how they deal with bad riders

Kick them out. Identity is tied to a credit card and a smartphone, after all.

Nature finds a way

Sure, for public infrastructure where the provider is legally limited in the ways it can limit access. If the claim is there literally aren't nice spaces in New York City, or any American city, you haven't been there.

I've lived in NYC 20 years. Unstaffed stuff left unattended just doesn't work.

Zipcars & Cars2Go turned into wrecks precisely because there were no prying eyes at pickup or drop-off. I stopped using them after the 5th consecutive trashed car. Reporting it to support would garner a $10 refunds. Clearly the repercussions for bad customers were not strong.

I disagree. Most rideshares happen in urban areas, where people are liberal. Liberals hate Musk. If you have the choice to take MAGAtaxi or a Waymo, as a liberal that's an obvious choice.

People care more about if a ride is cheap and effective than who owns it. I know that bursts a lot of political die hard bubbles, but it's the absolute truth.

What's your strike price and maturity date?

> I have over $100k in Tesla puts.

I mean, if this were a _normal_ company, that would make sense. But it's Tesla, so it's a very dangerous game, because Tesla's stock price is at best only peripherally related to Tesla's business. You're in great risk of Musk posting a meme or having another child with a silly name or whatever, thus pushing up the stock price 10%.

good luck...

- https://x.com/SawyerMerritt/status/1934623551694508456/photo... - "(Obi) The Road Ahead:Pricing Insights On Waymo, Uber and Lyft" https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25973106-obi-waymo-6... - https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-06-16/why-tesla-c...

Best-selling BEVs worldwide January-April 2025, according to new data from EV Volumes:

1) Tesla Model Y 2) Tesla Model 3 3) BYD Seagull/Dolphin Mini 4) Wuling Mini 5) Geely Geome Xingyuan 6) Xiaomi SU7 7) BYD Yuan Plys/Atto 3 8) BYD Yuan Up/Atto 2 9) Wuling Bingo 10) Xpeng M03

You're cherry picking by listing by model rather than by brand. This advantages Tesla in two ways.

- Tesla has very few models. The model Y is more than half of Tesla's total sales. The Seagull is less than 10% of BYD's total sales. A better metric is total sales per company by either volume or dollars.

- Tesla already sells pretty much everywhere, so don't have the "easy" option of expanding sales by expanding into other markets. OTOH, the Chinese brands are not yet widely available in several large markets.

I'm old enough to remember when the iMac was the best selling PC in the world*.

This was the 90s and Apple had only just narrowly avoided bankruptcy, but as they only had one model (even one colour!) of "cheap" consumer PC whereas everyone else had loads, they were by this measure the best seller.

* or the region, I forget, after all it was the 90s.

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