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Comment by vannevar | Hacker News Reader

The next shoe to drop will be shifting Model Y production from Fremont to Austin. Fremont will make Model 3s. Austin will make Model Ys and Robotaxis/2s. Cybertruck will be canceled. None of the Tesla plants will be making robots at any scale for many years.

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Yeah I don't buy this announcement. Converting their huge Fremont facility to just making humanoid robots? Do they have some large buyer or something? I'm skeptical.

they have a large buyer - all of the silly people investing money in the company

IF they work (and that is a massive, massive if), every factory on earth will replace every human with them.

It’s inevitable, the only question is how many years until it happens: 2, 5, 10, 50?

Place your bets!

Do think factories are still mostly humans on assembly lines?

Not mostly, no.

But I toured an auto assembly plant of a major US OEM recently and there were a ton of humans on the line.

Unions will be an issue, but all the OEMs are walking dead anyway.

Tour Toyota. It’s be lights-out except for all the people there on tours to see the mechanical marvels.

That is true of press, weld, and paint stages, which gives you a chassis and nothing else. It is absolutely not lights out for "final assembly" which despite the name is how massive amounts of the car comes together.

Robots are great at the bulk movement required for sticking sheet metal into huge stamps as well as repeatably welding the output of these stamps together. Early paint stages happens by dipping this whole chassis and later obviously benefits highly from environmental control (paint section is usually certain staff only to enter.)

But with this big painted chassis you still need to mount the engine/transmission, the brake and suspension assembly needs installing, lots of connectors need plugging in for ABS- and supporting all the connectors that will need plugging in is a lot of cabling that needs routing around this chassis. These tasks are very difficult for robots to do, so they tend to be people with mechanical assists, e.g. special hoisting system that takes the weight of engine/trans while the operators (usually two on a stage like this, this all happens on a rolling assembly line) drag it into place, and do the bolting.

Trim line is also huge, insert all these floppy roof liners, install the squishy plastic dashboard, the seats, carpets, door plastic trim, plug in all your speakers and infotainment stuff, again the output of the automated stages is literally the shell of a car, and robots are extremely bad at doing precise clipping together of soft touch plastics or connection of tiny cables. Windshield install happens here too, again these things are mechanically assisted for worker ergonomics but far from automated.

Each of these subassemblies also can be very complex and require lots of manual work too but that usually happens at OEM factories not at the assembly factory. Automation in these staffed areas mostly is the AGVs which follow lines on the floor to automatically deliver kanban boxes which are QR tagged (the origin of the QR code, fun fact) to ensure JIT delivery of the parts needed for each pitch.

It is far from lights out even in the most modern assembly plant and I think it will be a long time until that is true. The amount of poka-yoking that goes into things like connector design so there is an audible "click" when something is properly inserted for example- making a robot able to perform that task at anywhere near the quality of even a young child will take vast amounts of advancement in artificial intelligence and sensing. These are not particularly skilled jobs but the robotics skill required is an order of magnitude more than we can accomplish with today's technology.

Wiring harnesses seem like the final boss of manufacturing automation. A lot of times they're still built entirely by hand, and also installed by hand.

Automation is really good at assembly of stiff, solid objects. Anything soft and flexible seems too error prone. See also: the garment industry.

Which is why Tesla went so hard on the harness for cyber truck, to learn how to do it for the next vehicles

Factory robots have almost nothing in common with humanoid robots and are probably at least 10000x simpler.

That’s the point!

"Do think factories are still mostly humans on assembly lines?"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCBdcNA_FsI

china dark factory

I suspect it's going dormant for a couple years and then he'll say "Hey, this robot thing isn't working out, so we're closing the facility." He doesn't have any desire to stay in California.

A reasonable guess.

As far as I can tell, the number of humanoid robots doing anything productive is zero. It's all demos.

This is far harder than self-driving. As a guy from Waymo once said in a talk, "the output is only two numbers" (speed and steering angle).

Also, there are at least 18 humanoid robots good enough to have a Youtube video. Tesla is not the leader.

Remember the "cobot" boom of about five years ago? Easy to train and use industrial robots safe around humans? Anybody?

I'm not saying this is impossible, but that it's too early for volume production. This will probably take as long as it took to get to real robotaxis.

> Also, there are at least 18 humanoid robots good enough to have a Youtube video.

Agreed, thing is the robot hardware isn't the hard part anymore, the top ten robots are all sufficient to be transformative if they had good enough AI.

My bet is on Google/Gemini being the first to market from what I've seen so far.

Boston dynamics is a leader in getting robots to do useful niche work in well bounded environments, but that's yesterday's news.

> Boston dynamics is a leader in getting robots to do useful niche work in well bounded environments, but that's yesterday's news.

BD did most of their locomotion using classical dynamics and control theory until a few years ago. So did Honda, with Asimo. I did some of that in 1994.[1]

Early thinking revolved around landing on the "zero moment point". There's a landing point which, if hit, maintains speed and balance. To speed up, you aim for slightly beyond that point; to slow down, aim for a nearer point. That was Asimo. You could push that concept to the level of BD's "Big Dog", and later, their smaller dogs. Even pre-calculated flips were possible. But that approach gets you rather clunky motion.

The next step was to use some machine learning to tweak the control system parameters. That works, but you don't get overall coordination of all the joints. That only started to appear as machine learning systems became powerful enough to take on the whole problem at once.

Hard problem. Took over three decades to get decent humanoid control. Now everybody is doing it. You can be too early.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kc5n0iTw-NU

The story needs only to hold up until car production has shut down.

S and X were a small fraction of Fremont already. The plant can do >500k units per year, but S/X were closer to 20k.

It sounds like this would be giving ~5% of the factory space to Optimus production, which seems reasonable.

Do you expect the demand for Tesla's robotaxis to be high? I don't see it.

If they actually worked right now, the demand would be high. Demand is certainly high for Waymos. Even if they worked worse than a Waymo I think the demand would still be very high. But it's hard to tell if (or when) it will work well enough to actually be a real product.

that's why I said "Tesla's robotaxis".

They have not proven they are waymo level or near it, or that they will ever be there given the lack of lidar.

The question is what 'high' means in context of revenue.

Uber, the globally available taxi company, is valued 8 times less than tesla. If you are now able to kill all the costs for the taxi driving and reduce the cost for the car also, how much revenue is left?

Robotaxi has to be cheaper than a normal taxi to kill taxis. The margin of that company can't be that much more than a company like uber.

And uber itself will also invest in this, as every other car company. XPeng and co everyone who is building or working on this, will not just idly looking and waiting for tesla to just take 'whatever this cake' will look like.

For me it becomes a complet game changer if it becomes so reliable so extrem reliable, that i can order a car at night, a fresh bed / couch is then in the car and i can lie down while it drives me a few hundred kilometers away.

>Robotaxi has to be cheaper than a normal taxi to kill taxis. The margin of that company can't be that much more than a company like uber.

This just isn't true. If you're a woman, choosing a slightly more expensive robotaxi over a ride share where you might meet your end is a valid choice.

Robotaxis as a business has to be lower than a taxi as long as robotaxis are not known for being the better driver.

And woman have used taxis plenty of times especially because or for security. So I don't think your argument is very strong.

At the end of the day, you're still trusting a misogynistic man to get you from point A to point B. One drives the car and works as a gig worker and wears a flannel shirt, and the other sits in an office at Waymo HQ, wears a patagonia vest. Both are still part of the patriarchy and have very little interest in making sure you're safe, unless there's money to be made.

As much as I want to assume this is a trolling response, I'll pretend it is in good faith. The person you replied to is not speaking about nebulous dangers of "the patriarchy". They are talking about the risk of being verbally harassed, or physically/sexually assaulted by the driver during or directly after the ride.

https://www.wctv.tv/2026/01/14/rideshare-driver-arrested-aft...

https://www.wkrn.com/news/local-news/nashville/woman-shares-...

What the hell are you talking about?

> has to be cheaper than a normal taxi

... plus 24/7 shifts of human drivers

> Robotaxi has to be cheaper than a normal taxi to kill taxis.

I'm not sure that's true. Self serve checkouts are killing the checkout. Washing machines killed the washing board. Something can be the same price or dearer if it's more convenient.

That comparison has the problem that it is not comparable. A robo taxi is not much different from human taxi. I can not see much of an improvement for the rider. Whereas washing machines are an incredible time saver and self checkouts can be faster (especially if you use these little hand scanners).

> self checkouts can be faster

Are you sure? They are great for reducing personnel cost for the shop operator, but a cashier scans so much faster than you do. If you want to optimize for speed, the human cashier would still be better.

> Even if they worked worse than a Waymo I think the demand would still be very high.

They may already work better than a Waymo. It's hard to tell. It's certainly there using the public version of FSD. There's awkwardness, but the same can be said of Waymo. What I don't know is how many mandatory edge cases remain to be handled before they can set it free.

Probably not a great strategy to piss off every blue voter in the country and then try to setup a business in cities.

Of course it will be high. Transit is a huge market. They would just need a small share of Uber, lyft, regular taxis, public transit.

Private taxis don't compete with public transit. They operate in completely different spheres

As a blanket statement that's not true with NYC being the most obvious (but not the only) counterexample.

Do you commute to and from work every day by taxi in NYC

Early on in Uber's life, I went to a presentation they held where they showed there was a U shaped curve by income of who used Uber. Upper middle class people used them as discretionary entertainment vehicles but Uber had a substantial lower class population using them as necessary transport when working graveyard shifts in locations public transit didn't go.

So yes, there's a surprising contingent of people who commute to work every single working day using hire cars.

> Upper middle class people used them as discretionary entertainment vehicles but Uber had a substantial lower class population using them as necessary transport when working graveyard shifts in locations public transit didn't go.

This is information that suggests that Uber does not compete with public transit

When I was a child visiting my grandma in a large city in England, we would often take the bus to the supermarket, but use a taxi to come back with the shopping. In the 1990s some local taxi company even had a special phone by the supermarket entrance with a single button to dial to request one.

I think my grandma could easily afford this, but there would have been others considering dragging the shopping onto the bus.

Just a guess but she probably would have taken the buss back if you weren't there? Like, she wouldn't want to bore you waiting for the buss or try to time it shopping with a kid.

I think it was the weight of the shopping. My food would have increased what needed to be carried, but I was too young to be much use carrying it.

The point is taxis supplement and can replace public transport for low-income or unable-to-drive people in some situations — not necessarily every day.

The cost of owning a car dwarfs the cost of an occasional taxi ride.

Unless you're truly car sharing with a bunch of other people going the same way, I don't see how that makes sense. You have to wait for the car to arrive and you're paying a premium for it.

First of all, some people do commute via ride hailing apps, yes. Second of all, transportation is a much bigger category than simply taking people to and from work.

To what extent by your estimation do taxis compete with public transit in New York City? The comment I was responding to said that New York City is obvious proof that taxis do, in fact, compete with public transit. That is what is being discussed here.

To the extent that millions of customers use them every month to move around NYC. In reading this thread it appears you may have some narrower definition of "compete" than everyone else here.

Typically this word means that the product or service broadly serves same market in some way that overlaps. It isn't typically used so narrowly to imply that the products/services are directly replaceable in all ways.

Most wouldn't because it's expensive. But at scale automated vehicles should be dramatically less expensive, in the range of 50-60¢/mi conservatively, and at that level it is going to be quite compelling to a lot of people since it's a private vehicle (no taxi driver) and it's reasonably affordable, a 1 seat ride, etc.

It's possible they'll be even cheaper but that range is the cost according to the IRS of operating a typical vehicle all in, and that seems like a reasonable guess of the cost of an autonomous electric vehicle with far lower probability of crash than a human (all the savings basically going to profit margin).

At ~60¢/mi, there'd be a lot of people who would save money on balance using autonomous taxis to get everywhere vs owning a private vehicle (10k mi/yr would cost only ~$6k/yr, a pretty low cost of ownership/use for a private vehicle).

I just calculated it for 40 cents per mi and just the basic commute to my company would cost already 40 euros.

But I calculated traveling 2 times a week, of course at the commute time everyone else commutes and public transport costs 50 Euros per month.

My company car though costs 200 Euros + 100 Euros energy.

Im pretty sure cybertaxi can't and will not provide 40 cents / mi in high demand times, for middle class paying more mone for the convinince of having your own car is still cheap and if i need to do anything further away like any trip, it will be expensive again.

And all of these cybertaxis have to live somewere.

The math doesn't make sense already.

The problem is that the automobile based transportation system doesn't scale because the road dimensions are fixed.

So even if prices plunge, thus encouraging people to take more self driving cabs vs other things because of the fixed road size you immediately induce severe traffic, which discourages people and sets a ceiling on adoption as people pick more efficient alternatives.

I imagine this seems "true" to people who don't consider public transit an option for whatever (class) reason.

As others have said, they definitely compete in the same market.

Actually taxis are defined to be part of public transportation and are also regulated as such.

>Uber, lyft, regular taxis

Waymo is already there, just needs to scale and they are already cooperating with Uber.

>public transit

Unless Musk develops the shrink ray it will never compete with actual high throughput public transit, for the same reason if jets flew themselves we wouldn't commute by air. The cost of drivers per fare is less than in a private car, so the benefits for a bus are lesser. Modern metros are already autonomous.

Also the US is essentially the only country with failed public transit, outside of Africa. If he thinks he can expand his robo taxi fleet to China or Europe or hell even Russia he's got screws loose

Tesla is already valued 9x higher than uber.

Uber makes money on every ride.

Teslas Robotaxi has to be cheaper than a taxi with a human and i don't think they will be able to have a lot higher revenue per ride than uber. Not 9x

And if Tesla starts to deliver a robotaxi, all of this revenue has to be shared between taxis, uber, Tesla, Waimo, Zoox, Rimac, Cruise, Baidu, WeRide, ...

So how huge is the market for Tesla to be valuated 9x higher than Uber?

We can even combine a big car company, a robotics company, a solar roof company, battery storage company, ETruck and a robotaxi company and STILL don't get to the same valuation than Tesla currently has.

Teslas share price is math for stupid people.

>> i don't think they will be able to have a lot higher revenue per ride than uber. Not 9x

Why would Tesla need to have higher revenue per ride than Uber? The value of a company is driven (ultimately) by its profit, not its revenue. And Tesla doesn't have to give the majority of the fare to the driver.

Tesla has to pay for the operational and maintenance costs of the vehicle which Uber can offload to the drivers (most drivers barely break even after taking these cost into account), on top of all the ride management infrastructure that Uber deals with.

Higher costs means higher revenue is necessary to break even. It's basic math. Don't even need to get to first order principles.

Yes, and Uber pays ~80% to the drivers, so that the drivers can pay for those things...

And, also, Tesla car owners will be able to use their POVs as part of the Robotaxi network, for which Tesla will get a cut of the fare.

It would be high if it worked, but it doesn't.

demand for any robotaxis will be high. Just look at the number of Uber drivers whom the robotaxis will replace. Plus leased robotaxis or personal/reserved ones - whatever shape it'd take replacing at least some percentage of personal cars.

There is only a "small" issue - to make those robotaxis, i.e. the self-driving system for them. Almost 20 years in, Google/Waymo is way ahead of everybody and is still not there yet (i believe we will get there anyday now - which maybe next year or in 10 years - especially giving all the avalanche of investment in AI. Though i'd have expected that 4+ years in we'd see a lot of autonomous platforms/weapons in Ukraine, yet it hasn't happen too yet)

That means a lot more capex though (as it is drivers bring their own cars) and I'm not sure how much enthusiasm there is for more of that right now

Nothing prevents the drivers to long-term lease a robocar like a personal vehicle and send it to work for Uber during the time when they don't need it.

Currently an Uber driver can drive at any given moment only one car for Uber. With robocars, a driver can invest in 2, 3 or more robocars and send them to work for Uber. Similar to how people buy multiple properties to rent out on AirBnB.

I don't see the demand for their robots to be high either tbh, but they're betting on them. It's not going to work.

Hyundai is partnering with Boston Dynamics to deploy 30k robots a year.

Amazon is looking to replace 600k employees over the next decade.

Why do you believe demand for humanoids isn't high?

"...demand for their robots..."

Demand for Tesla products is tanking.

Demand for humanoid robots not made by Tesla may rocket. Who knows.

If the humanoid robots are no better than the cars, it's unlikely. Unitree and Boston Dynamics are pretty much there in terms of solving the hardware problem, and the rest is software and the hardware manufacturing learning curve.

The Chinese are massively out-manufacturing Tesla in the electric car market - would you bet on Tesla somehow being better than the Chinese at manufacturing?

The rest as I said is software; given Tesla's consistent lack of success in "Full Self-Driving", would you bet on them outengineering the rest of the world in the software aspect of robotics?

Tesla's biggest factory is in China.

Tesla is good at building big factories. The Cybertruck (total sales ~46k) factory was designed to build 250k units a year and later 125k. Meanwhile BYD outsells Tesla in China and globally.

Over the last five years Tesla has made a profit of about $41 billion while BYD has had a loss of about $13 Billion. Would rather be the Apple of electric cars than always selling them at a loss.

From 2028.

And this is about industrial robots, which is much easier to handle than what household robots supposed to be about. Will we ever see a robot that will be able to take grandma to the tub and clean here, to then carry her up the stairs to bed, without killing her? I doubt it.

And finally: Boston Dynamics has actual working products for ages now. They don't need to cheat by using RC toy remote controllers to control their robots. And they are doing serious expectation management. This is completely different league than what Musk is doing.

Also, I don't think it's desirable to have robots taking away human work without first solving the question "and what are we going to do with all the unemployed?".

I can't remember when was the last S/X refresh. It's nuts they just let it go stale and shut the factory down.

Tesla got the job done, which was empower Musk, not manufacture EVs at scale. The stock is the product.

Has it all really been just one giant grift to steal every Americans social security number.

And what would he do with them?

The same systems had labor board whistleblower info.

Why would musk love to identify (or at a minimum, but a huge chilling effect on) labor board whistleblowers? The world may never know.

Try to impair democracy through election denial groups? Absolute power and all that jazz.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46734078

The Trump administration admits even more ways DOGE accessed sensitive personal data - https://www.npr.org/2026/01/23/nx-s1-5684185/doge-data-socia... - January 23rd, 2026

Case No. 1:25-cv-00596-ELH - https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.577...

> The unnamed employees secretly conferred with a political advocacy group about a request to match Social Security data with state voter rolls to "find evidence of voter fraud and to overturn election results in certain States," the filing said. It remains unclear whether any data actually went to this group.

“Maybe you do not care much about the future of the Republican Party. You should. Conservatives will always be with us. If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.” —- David Frum

So why the car company? Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking?

> So why the car company?

How else was he going to become wealthy? Wealth is unelected power. Show me evidence he’s after anything but power.

> Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fraud_in_the_United_...

https://www.npr.org/2024/10/11/nx-s1-5147732/voter-fraud-exp...

https://www.brennancenter.org/topics/voting-elections/vote-s...

https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/research-reports/debu...

There is no material voter fraud. It is a red herring to disenfranchise voters.

Additional citation:

The Georgia voter data is clean - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46856850 - February 2026

>Also I was told there is no voter fraud. Is that just because nobody’s looking?

I was told you haven't raped anyone, is that because we haven't looked into it?

Unless there's evidence that something happened when decisions need to be made we assume it didn't.

It's so sad an engineer like you believe there was widespread fraud in the 2020 election even after all the investigations. It speaks volumes to your abilities in all aspects of life.

I'm not following your logic.

What you responded to was a quote of a request that claimed that was what they were looking for. Whether it was a good-faith request or they used the data for only that, etc is the real question.

And if they did find something, it would obviously have been in court a long time ago.

> The stock is the product.

Musk reeks of scam. But for a stock pump and dumb scheme there sure are a lot of teslas on the road.

Tesla sold 1.7M cars in 2024. Toyota sold 11.1M cars in 2024.

Tesla’s current market cap is $1.43T. Toyota’s current market cap is $354B.

There really aren’t that many teslas on the road, and their sales are declining.

This kind of maybe made sense for a while their revenue was growing at a very fast pace but now that its stagnant/falling they are no different to any other car company.

I wonder if this coincides with Musk getting into politics? Never a good choice to alienate half your customer base. Michael Jordan famously said he never got into politics because "Republicans buy sneakers, too."

Tesla stock isn't valued as a car company

Which is exactly the problem.

The stock is priced on expectations of how many humanoid robots they might sell over the next decade.

Those expectations in turn treat humanoid robotics as if Tesla is the only game in town, when Tesla's Optimus is not yet available for purchase and other companies already ship.

Then someone brings up the value of Tesla's AI to those robots, and here's my response to that to save re-writing it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46799603

"Robots"

A product no one knows if there is a real demand for promised to be made by a company that has no core competency in robotics

But hey let's just value this BS in the trillions because why not. Sam Altman's ChatGPT is not far behind

Oh, Optimus is much worse than ChatGPT.

ChatGPT, for all its flaws, does actually exist and definitely isn't just a remote-control-based illusion, and some people even pay for it.

Optimus, the only thing we can be sure is real is the hardware, which is the least interesting part. But even if they really are running just on software without remote control, the one and only thing they've shown in any public demo that would actually be impressive, was voice comprehension in a noisy environment.

Elon would save Tesla by force xAI to buy it like twitter does

because why not???? at least Grok is real and we are years away from real "Skynet"

SpaceX for weapon delivery, xAI for the brain and Tesla for robot chasing

Maybe I’m just naive enough, because I love cars and progress, but I think you agree that he really showed our whole small world that EV can exist and work. Everyone laughed, no one believed it will work and here he still is rich and we have Teslas everywhere. Driving, not killing more people than other brands.

Except that the Model Y accounts for more fatalities than any other car out there.

Going to need a citation on this one.

I don't even think it is correct. Teslas as a whole have twice the fatality rate [1] per billion miles as the industry overall and the model Y has a rate 4x the industry average, but that can't overwhelm the fact that there are too few Teslas on the road to make that 2x or 4x turn into more total fatalities.

[1] https://www.roadandtrack.com/news/a62919131/tesla-has-highes...

A quote from the original study [1], in which Porsche 911 is the 4th on the list

“The models on this list likely reflect a combination of driver behavior and driving conditions, leading to increased crashes and fatalities.”

I would like to remind you that Tesla's least powered vehicle has around 300HP and needs ~7s to go from 0 to 100km/h. Musk is a moron but Teslas are still good and safe vehicles.

[1] https://www.iseecars.com/most-dangerous-cars-study

Is it really safe to unleash 300hp daily drivers with instant torque and significantly greater weight to the general public?

That's another question, and not a dumb one at all! But still, while the product is what it is, there is still personal responsibilities in using it properly and safely. Otherwise we should ask regulators to just prohibit this kind of vehicles.

That ship has long since sailed. My college-age niece just bought her first car, which is a 2012 V6 Mustang with 305hp, naturally aspirated. I'm sure it's lighter, but that just makes it faster.

I think China would’ve gotten us to here without Tesla.

While you're correct on the one hand, Tesla made EVs feasible and mainstream, did the investments and caused a rolling effect of worldwide investments in e.g. batteries and EVs, and government subsidies that also made investing in EVs more attractive to competitors.

Besides EVs, Tesla's long term revenue could very well be in the supercharger network, too. It's not as exciting as self driving cars, but the oil companies have been the most valuable companies / stocks worldwide without being exciting like that. I mean I don't think EV charging will be anywhere near as big as oil because it doesn't involve nearly as much infrastructure or international trade, but it's still big, especially if governments refocus on replacing ICEs with EVs.

(the focus has been let go because the subsidies were too popular and expensive)

I agreed on the supercharger network, which made it pretty surprising when Musk fired the entire supercharger team.

Musk's goal all along was to get away from boutique production. He wants to sell millions of cheaper cars, not thousands of cars for wealthy people.

Not sure it's going to work out. Without some big jumps in battery tech, EVs are going to be difficult to sell without subsidies.

And yet Chinese EV's are flying out of their factories, well, a few are - most are self driving out to the shipping yards.

This despite the 2025 support by the Chinese state for the Chines EV industry now being almost nothing.

  By contrast, defenders of China could point out that the data show that subsidies as a percentage of total sales have declined substantially, from over 40% in the early years to only 11.5% in 2023, which reflects a pattern in line with heavier support for infant industries, then a gradual reduction as they mature.

    In addition, they could note that the average support per vehicle has fallen from $13,860 in 2018 to just under $4,600 in 2023, which is less than the $7,500 credit that goes to buyers of qualifying vehicles as part of the U.S.’s Inflation Reduction Act.

Old source: https://www.csis.org/blogs/trustee-china-hand/chinese-ev-dil...

but the arc of less subsidies is clear.

You'd expect subsidies to drop as supply chains mature and economies of scale kick in. What about subsidies to inputs like electricity, aluminum, batteries, etc?

You would be better answered by reading the link and any methodology references.

Perhaps "support" already factors in all relevant subsidies.

You should also factor in lax human rights enforcement in China (which acts like a subsidy essentially in effect and is not factored in these calculations):

https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/10/human-rights-...

BYD is at the bottom of the list (worst for human rights). Tesla is second at the top (better for human rights).

> You should also factor in ...

Thank you for the suggestion.

I should point out that is not my work, and dates from 2023. If you follow the link to the work quoted you might be able to contact the authors and pass them your thoughts.

You are citing a source to tell a story about subsidies.

Lack of worker safety standards can be considered to be a government subsidy when doing a comparison.

Therefore, it's reasonable to point out that it should be factored in.

Absolutely. Even better, suggest that the authors factor that in to their presentation.

Now, I'm not going to tell you what _you_ should do, nor would I even tell you what I think you should do.

I'll leave that to @thesmtsolver2 and others who enjoy that type of thing.

This is a retarded list of self reported paper commitments, not actual practice, i.e. no actual supply chain assessment was done, not that you can trust a propaganda shitrag like amnesty. Tesla simply "promises" in their PR to be better for human rights. Hint 50%+ of Tesla exports come from Tesla Shanghai which uses same supply raw material supply chain as rest of PRC auto, functionally they're the same.

Meanwhile how do you factoring in PRC manufacturing is simply more modern with more labour saving automation, i.e. they simply have less people to "abuse". PRC simply be peak human rights by eliminating the most humans from process.

Musk would love to be selling several billion dollars per year of model S/X sales, the issue is they aren’t that competitive with other cars in the luxury segment thus the falling sales numbers.

Tesla’s doesn’t really have a complex strategy at this point, they are getting squeezed out of the high end by legacy automakers where their lower cost batteries don’t matter as much. They are absolutely fucked on the low end as soon as Chinese cars enter the picture.

So self driving is really the only option to sell any long term upside to keep the stock from tanking. It’s not a very convincing argument, but you play the hand your dealt.

> getting squeezed out of the high end by legacy automakers where their lower cost batteries don’t matter as much. They are absolutely fucked on the low end as soon as Chinese cars enter the picture.

The deep irony here is that after ~15 years of trying ti differentiate from the legacy American automakers, they land in a very similar competitive position. Chinese EVs are in the process of running the table outside the protectionist markets of the EU + US/Canada.

Eventually those protective barriers will fall as they protect a relatively small number of citizens by taxing the majority. It remains to be seen whether the US and European domestic producers will survive.

What's their competition on the high end? Porsche, Cadillac? Do Rivian or Genesis count?

Lucid runs circles around the S when it comes to build quality and features.

What about sales, though?

They outsold the model S last year which was their primary competition.

They successfully launched their second model, the gravity, which would have competed with the X but will now likely just outright replace it.

Their mass produced $50k SUV is expected to launch this year.

They're very cool in theory. My impression from the EngineeringExplained guy's experience isn't great. And Lucid does something similar to Tesla where too much (IMO) is controlled through the touchscreen.

A significant fraction of his issues were both him and his wife using their phones as key’s. He obviously it should still work, but it’s something of an edge case.

Audi and Mercedes? (Well in Europe where the highend Teslas barely had any sales anywya, at least). Porsche is probably a tier or so above

If they are eating into model X or S sales it obviously counts here.

Porsche, Audi, BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Genesis, and Cadillac are all competitive in different ways. Stat wise someone buying the electric G-Wagon is making a poor decision, but swagger is a selling point which very much costs Tesla sales.

Cadillac’s approach of a huge dumb battery powering a huge heavy vehicle may not be ideal for the average use case, but customers are going to prioritize different things. One SUV just can’t be the best solution to every lifestyle.

You may have to play the hand you have, but Musk was the dealer and he is still losing.

> Musk's goal all along was to get away from boutique production. He wants to sell millions of cheaper cars, not thousands of cars for wealthy people.

So the literal opposite of the Cybertruck, which was released less than a year ago.

Not to mention the Roadster

The non-existing vehicle Musk still was able to get suckers to pay him for

According to the Wikipedia article the first one rolled off the line in November 2023. That’s a good two years.

> He wants to sell millions of cheaper cars, not thousands of cars for wealthy people.

Why hasn't the cheap car been designed yet then?

The Model 3 is pretty cheap for an EV. The average car in the US is over $50k now, so it's competitive on price.

If $50k is competitive for you, that should be a sign something's gone wrong.

In Europe we can get new cars for less than half that price, both for domestic production and also post-tariffs on Chinese imports.

> If $50k is competitive for you, that should be a sign something's gone wrong.

Or, on the contrary, a sign that something went right. If Europeans weren't drowning in poverty, they would also buy more expensive cars.

> Europeans weren't drowning in poverty

How come the US has a higher rate of struggling with groceries (12.2% US vs 8.5% EU), healthcare (44% US vs. 18.6% for costs) EU, education costs, etc.?

> they would also buy more expensive cars.

Price != quality. European cars have better safety standards, as well as being cheaper to own and run. American cars… the vibe I got from them on trips was the expectation for them to serve as an additional air-conditioned entertainment room that just happened to be on wheels, whereas the European ones are mostly a mode of transport unless you're specifically into luxury brands.

> How come the US has a higher rate of struggling with groceries (12.2% US vs 8.5% EU), healthcare (44% US vs. 18.6% for costs) EU, education costs, etc.?

Reliability of statistical data. The more totalitarian a state is, the more out of touch with reality it can be in its statistics. If we look at the statistics provided by North Korea, they have zero on all the points mentioned. Europe isn't there yet, but it's moving at full speed. Their cars even safer and cheaper to own and run than European ones.

> The more totalitarian a state is, the more out of touch with reality it can be in its statistics.

That's more of an American problem than an EU one at the moment.

We're not the ones shooting unarmed protesters in the head ten times after removing their legally owned gun, nor faking arrest photos, etc.

Even before that, our leaders have not* called for the death penalty to be used against politicians reminding troops of their existing obligations to not follow illegal orders.

Even before that, the US government shutdown at end of last year means some economic data was never collected at all.

Even before that, DOGE having Musk at the helm had obvious conflicts of interest with regards to e.g. ongoing investigations against Tesla.

* to my knowledge, but TBH wouldn't be surprised if Orban has, but also Hungary is to the EU as, IDK Wyoming perhaps, is to the USA.

> We're not the ones shooting unarmed protesters in the head ten times after removing their legally owned gun, nor faking arrest photos, etc.

To be fair, can you even "open carry" a firearm anywhere in Europe? Isn't the UK trying to ban pointy kitchen knives[1]?

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-us/crime/general/uk-considering-point...

With the appropriate permit, yes. Which is also the case in Minnesota.

(The permit requirements differ a lot between countries, but that an implementation detail, you should not be killed while respecting the law)

I believe kitchen knives, without good reason (being a chef is a good reason, have just bought it ditto), are already banned in public in UK.

Still, UK does have a firearms licensing process; I doubt anyone at any protest would be allowed one, but the response of UK police only escalates to "pin to ground then shoot in head" when they've mistaken you for a suicide bomber wearing an explosive vest and expect you to blow yourself up in a crowded subway train (which has happened! I don't excuse this! But this is still less stupid than claiming someone is armed after removing their weapon).

This is all terrible. But how does this change the fact that Europe has a more totalitarian government, committing more political assassinations and persecuting political opponents, while Europe is mired in poverty?

I mean, compare the median wages of factory workers in Europe and in the US and the amount of taxes they pay to support gangs of alien rapists.

Do you mean Russia?

Because while Russia is indeed within the continent of Europe, counting it in this context is about as sensible as calling Venezuela and El Salvador "American" just because of the continent they happen to be part of.

If you didn't mean Russia, I have no idea what fiction you're reading.

Not that any of this justifies American cars being overpriced, having no real low-end options. You're way more car-centric than we are, lots of you need cars, whereas many more of us are fine without any, so you having no cheap (new) options is more surprising.

Ah, you’re talking about the regime that fired the commissioner of the Bureau of Labour Statistics because the president didn’t like the figures, right?

Right?

Scary to realize how some people in the US have been brainwashed into thinking European countries are totalitarian states drowning in poverty

Just be rich (in debt) like Americans seems like a bad plan for a global brand. Poorer countries outside NA and the EU buy stuff too, y'know.

If you're implying the US car market is hamstrung by manufacturer collusion, stupid regulations, and a legal environment that caters to dealers at the expense of customers, then... I agree.

> Without some big jumps in battery tech, EVs are going to be difficult to sell without subsidies.

The actual sales figures show otherwise, but sure, there's still a lot of uncertainty with regards to batteries / range, I can imagine even moreso in the US. Traveled to Austria a while ago in an EV (~1000 kilometers), we had to stop 3x on the way, but the battery was good for another 2.5 hours of driving after a coffee. I keep hearing that "solid state batteries are around the corner" and they will solve all problems with capacity and safety / fire risk, apparently. I'll just sit and wait patiently, it'll take years before their production capacity is on par with current battery tech.

The whole battery thing is a massive misunderstanding of how EVs work vs gas vehicles.

For an EV with a range of 250 miles (400km) you can drive 400mi (645km) with one (1) thirty minute stop.

That's pretty much, drive 3 hours, stop for 30 minute lunch, drive 3 hours.

The confusion stems from the fact that gas cars don't fill up themselves before you depart, and they don't fill up themselves when you arrive. There are rather large differences between gas and electric cars, but people still treat EVs like gas cars, and demand EVs be more like gas cars.

Isn't it more like 4 hours?

The EPA tests at 55MPH, and driving faster than that will yield a lower range, so each 200 mile leg should take closer to 4 hours.

I factored that in since a 250 mile EV is sold as usually around 300-320mi

You’re still giving the EV more range than it would have. You’re not supposed to drop below 20% or charge above 80% so following that an EV with 300 miles total range would only have 180 while in a gas car you can comfortably nearly empty the tank without issue.

If his goal was to sell millions of cars he would have developed something beyond Model 3 and Y. But he canceled the next generation programs.

The refresh would need large investment. And it seems that S/X weren't selling that well to warrant such an investment. Just looking around - SV, a key market for Tesla - everybody buys 3 and Y, not S and X. In some sense it seems that 3/Y cannibalized S/X.

While that's true, S/X were considered luxury vehicles, 3/Y mainstream and they far, FAR outsold the S/X. In most cases, volume trumps individual prices.

Of course, that doesn't mean they had to discontinue those lines.

As luxury vehicles they were also competing in a different market, where competitors have caught up.

The problem is just there is no concept of a car company where they only sell their standard mass market vehicles. Somewhat more expensive higher margin vehicles are in the lineup for almost all the other companies. Its kind of strange to suggest its not worth it when it is seemingly worth it for most other companies.

Maybe the wisdom of having a 'full lineup' is wrong and has to do with making dealers happy.

On the other hand, having 99% of your sales be 2 very similar vehicles seems questionable strategy.

It is worth it when it is done right, i.e when you do correct market differentiation (see my other comment here on Mercedes) to avoid your low end cannibalizing your higher end. This high margin really helps you, and this is why almost everybody does it. EVs are probably even better suited for it given that the platform itself is easier/cheaper to share between the low end and the high end - thus the current Teslas S/X story looks even more of a failure as by releasing 3/Y that similar to S/X (that probably helped a lot with 3/Y sales though) they forced themselves into the need for a very significant (expensive) redesign of S/X while having very low sales of it.

The big issue with S/X was that they were not luxury enough, in terms of performance they were fine. So the redesign was mostly needed in terms of interior quality, materials and so on. Not that crazy expensive and something all other car companies manage to do.

I see it differently - they needed to redesign everything except the power train. I.e. in addition to the interior, externally it should have been looking way upscale from 3/Y. Giving that their design language is already almost 2 decades old, they needed (and actually would still need it for 3/Y max 5 years down the road) to have a full redesign for S/X similar to how BMW did with 2002 7-series trickling down that design into 2004 5-series and 2006 3-series (or like Mercedes did with S-class in 1996 and trickling down that to E and C later)

I don't know if it's genius or madness, but all of Tesla's cars look the same. When I see a Tesla, I can't tell if it's a 3, S, X, or Y unless I get close. The most distinct one is the X with its fancy doors.

So when I hear they're cancelling the S and X I can't even picture which cars we're talking about.

How can legacy auto refresh models every two years and Tesla cannot?

Perhaps it has to do with sales numbers? The Model S and Model X were not selling well.

Pretty sure the Mercedes S-Class is also not selling a ton of units.

268K of 5 top end Mercedes models were sold in 2025 (and like 1/3 of them were sold in Maybach or AMG version!). Where is Tesla S and X combined sales were only 32K in 2024 and 18K in 2025.

You wouldn't mistake Mercedes S-Class for E-class and E-class for C-class. Even BMW 7 vs. 5 vs. 3 look more distinct than Tesla S vs. 3 and X vs. Y. The Mercedes and BMW do the good job of market differentiation while in my view Tesla failed here, and thus cheaper 3 and Y cannibalized sales of S and X. Thus, paradoxically, given that Tesla started in luxury segment, Tesla hasn't recently been capturing that high margin of the luxury segment (which is doing very well overall - just look at those Maybach and AMG numbers)

Agreed, let alone 1M units a year!

My dad found it extremely amusing that Elon said "we just have to solve the 'AI problem' and we'll have robots doing shopping for us", or something like that. I can't remember the exact verbiage, but that was the gist.

The word "just" is doing a lot of work there. Going by that logic: We "just" need to figure out cold fusion to have effectively infinite energy. We "just" need to develop warp drives to travel across the galaxy. We "just" need to figure out the chemo problem to cure cancer.

It is like me at the climbing gym: "This problem is too hard for me, let's work on a harder one instead, then I at least look cool while failing."

"Since we failed on self-driving since 2016, robotaxis since 2020 (1 million on the road), and ASI since 2023, we might as well start on failing on robots now".

Nice. I think my new climbing routine will be to just look at the 5.13 and mime moves from the ground for an hour, then go home.

I _could_ flash this V12 but what would be the point?

Interview in Davos. The “right” has the same touch than the “just” here:

> MUSK: Yeah. But I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point, right? And Tesla’s rolled out a sort of robo-taxi service in a few cities, and will be very, very widespread by the end of this year within the U.S. And then we hope to get supervised full self-driving approval in Europe, hopefully next month.

Source: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=IgifEgm1-e0

It's amazing how much hand-waving rich people are allowed to get away with. If I tried that people would (correctly) call bullshit.

Ah, see, no, and this is why you'll never be rich^. The rich people don't ever listen to that "if I tried that people would call bullshit" voice. They just try it. And try it again. And keep trying it. And then they become CEOs or President or whatever. They literally just keep doing it. It doesn't matter how untethered what they're saying is from reality. It doesn't matter that it's pure bullshit. They just keep going and pick up enough followers and the rest snowballs from there. Twas ever thus. How do you think every cult or religion to every form has come about? How do you think every dictator has come to power? They vehemently, psychotically ignored "if I tried that" and just tried it and kept repeating it until the cognitive dissonance wore down into oblivion and the pathological washed over them.

^Sociopathic rich, I mean. I'm sure you're doing fine.

I don't dispute any of that; I really hate plugging my own stuff but I actually wrote a blog post about a similar topic last night [1]. TL;DR Billionaires are sociopaths who act sociopathic and then define anything that doesn't benefit their sociopathy as a "disorder".

It's not that I'm surprised that they constantly lie, I'm just surprised anyone falls for it. Like, we were supposed to have "full self driving by next year", every year as far back as 2018, if I remember correctly. You'd think after the third time that FSD didn't happen, people would say "maybe this guy is actually full of shit".

[1] https://blog.tombert.com/Posts/Personal/2026/01-January/What...

MUSK: Yeah. But I think self-driving cars is essentially a solved problem at this point, right? And Tesla’s rolled out a sort of robo-taxi service in a few cities, and will be very, very widespread by the end of this year within the U.S.

He said that would happen in 2025. And probably earlier, too.

We "just" need to figure out the terraforming problem then we can all move to Mars and be interplanetary explorers. Imagine how cool it would be to have corporate leaders who had vision--environmentally friendly automobiles, cheap space travel, etc.--without the clammy snake oil grifter bullshit. Reality is cool AF. The things that are actually achievable are amazing. We don't need to spout nonsense to do great things. We don't need "AGI" (whatever that might be) to do neat things with machine learning. The Jetsons is a cartoon. Trying to make it real is dumb.

we need AGI and robot so people can leave chore in house to a robot

The Mars obsession absolutely blows me away. Like, he's obviously read KSR's Red Mars. He's obviously aware of the conditions out there. Mars is a fuckin' bummer. It is absolutely hostile to human life. Sure, we'll land people there, and maybe set up some sort of station if we really want to throw a few trillion dollars away from actual problems here on earth... but it's not going to be pleasant. Not anytime, ever. The gravity sucks. The dust and fines suck. The storms suck. And last for months. The temperatures suck. There's no "outside". There's no trivial way to generate power at scale. There's no magnetosphere, so you'll get cancer. The soil is poisonous.

Elon's stuck with this 12-year-old-boy absurdity about "becoming interplanetary to save the species" as if Mars could ever be a practical lifeboat when we inevitably drive the planet into the ground or a meteor hits. It's... absurd, puerile fantasy.

I think there's value in space exploration even for its own sake, but I think it's utterly idiotic to think that we're going to realistically be able to terraform Mars in the next century if ever.

Even if I do think it's worth exploring space, including Mars, I think it's silly to assume that it's going to be a way to guarantee the permanence of humanity.

This is precisely my point. Folly. (But the knock-on effects of the space race and exploration and on and on are valid and I'm a big space fan... it's just that caging it as some sort of potential lifeboat beggars belief.

Doing such seemingly impossible things have been what humans have been doing. The tech developed for Mars would definitely influence our Earth society. Hard to say how and when, but it has been historically the case. I think instead of spending billions on election influence campaign, spending that on Mars has a better impact to society.

That’s the point. Don’t listen, keep trying and you can achieve anything. Rich people are either bored or stupid so you will get money eventually.

>he's obviously read KSR's Red Mars

If he had, he was clearly not paying attention to the social and economic message of the book.

The guy owns a rocket company and still hasn't even been to LEO. Katy Perry has spent more time in space than Elon.

Mars isn't happening, at least not on his watch.

The funniest part is that the Mars Trilogy is hella optimistic about the tech needed to get and live there.

An interview with a Silicon Valley big shot finally explained this.

The concept is that you can convince smart people to work extra hard for you by selling them the story that no-no-no, they’re not merely tweaking some dystopian algorithm to sell Chinese plastic crap to people, they’re saving the world.

Once you recognise this pattern, you’ll see it everywhere: Zuckerberg, Sam Altman, and Elon all do it.

Hence the “AI safety” rhetoric. Those CEOs will gladly take the safeties off and make an army of Terminators to sell to the highest bidder! The safety talk is for their employees, to convince them to work like slaves to “save the world”.

I am also certain given time this problem is achievable but the problem is what we expect after that ????? mass unemployment or we just convert all human into robot repairer ???? what the end goal there

Basically yes. The robots take care of the rich, and poor people with their need to have a cut of the resources just go away.

They do believe in a post capitalism utopia, they just think only about a thousand people need to enjoy it.

> I went through this Ford engine plant about three years ago, when they first opened it.

> There are acres and acres of machines, and here and there you will find a worker standing at a master switchboard, just watching, green and yellow lights blinking off and on, which tell the worker what is happening in the machine.

> One of the management people, with a slightly gleeful tone in his voice said to me, “How are you going to collect union dues from all these machines?”

> And I replied, “You know, that is not what’s bothering me. I’m troubled by the problem of how to sell automobiles to these machines

- Walter Reuther, Nov. 1956 https://quoteinvestigator.com/2011/11/16/robots-buy-cars

I find it amusing listening to his Q1 earnings calls; every year the same exact blabber of robots everywhere 'end of the year', self driving tesla's everywhere after the summer, mars next year etc. Every Bloody Year. The real clever thing of this guy, no matter how smart/not/nazi/whatever he is, is the fact that investors KEEP throwing money in even though the major ones are on those earning calls every year for a decade already and of course that these stocks are not cratering.

But I recommend listening to those calls, start 5 years back; because on reddit but also here, you get wide eyed awestruck people who say 'ow optimus is december this year! ow self driving everything in september!'.

Its classic Elon over-promising. Problem with robots is that they are useless without AI, while cars can be driven by a human, so as long as controls work and range is good they are viable

And why would we even need or want robots shopping for us? I mean, most of us. For some disabled individuals it could be a benefit. For everyone else, it seems like the height of laziness and absurdity.

Tons of people hire people to do their shopping. Curbside pickup and grocery delivery has existed for a while.

A large amount of the people I see in grocery store around me are working as pickers filling online orders.

Why would cybertruck be cancelled?

it's one of their models i would like for them to succeed the most. americans love trucks (especially where i live), and the impact of electric truck replacing ice ones on the gestalt of the neighborhood is significant, no noise, no fumes. people tend to drive their electric cars/trucks more gently too. my neighbor bought one, and it's night and day.

and oddly enough, while i kneejerk hated it at first, the design has grown on me, something genuinely different, playful. much rather see a parked cybertruck than yet another oversized bloated "regular" truck.

In what world is the Cybertruck not "oversized" and "bloated". It has roughly the same footprint as an F150.

Modern F150s are also bloated and oversized.

it's its own design, doesn't look like a fat truck, more something new and big

> people tend to drive their electric cars/trucks more gently too

Really? I tend to see much more aggressive acceleration from people in electric cars (including myself when I'm driving, though I try not to). I've been putting it down to people being used to how gas cars seem to be working harder when you ask them to accelerate heavily, while electric just goes with no complaints.

i guess it's not accompanied with the noise which makes the difference for me

I have bemoaned the sameness of car design these days. To the Cybertruck I say, thank you for trying something different!

But not like that.

(Also, the problem is "Americans love trucks"—the Cybertruck doesn't solve that. It's still just a lethal grocery-getter in suburbia where the Cybertruck was only going to sell anyway. I'd sooner get behind the new golf-cart craze in suburbia—let them drive their golf carts to Costco.)

While I also don't mind manufacturers trying a new look, and I like the vague "halo warthog" look of the thing, the Cybertruck seems to have ended up a very bad spot.

It's just not a good truck.

It's also suffered from being insanely overhyped, and then underdelivering on basically every front.

---

Part of my problem with modern Tesla is that they seem to have really jumped the shark on delivering products that are functional. Across the board - from autonomous driving, solar roofs, power walls, Cybertruck, Semi, etc... Even the mass manufactured lines like the Y get staggeringly bad reliability ratings and reviews.

Good form is great! Good form at the expense of good function is not.

If you drive a truck because you like trucks, then a Cybertruck works.

If you drive a truck because you need a truck, then Cybertrucks don't really work.

That being said, I think a lot of people are in the first category.

The second category people have things that can be fit in a normal truck, but not a Cybertruck.

Because it's selling terribly: https://www.businessinsider.com/cybertruck-sales-decline-tes...

Lower than expected sales https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tesla-cybertruck-sales-elon-mus...

I don’t agree with that external analysis (cnbc is saying it’s lower than their expectations). This is a gen 1 product for super fans that they want to evolve into a mainstream one.

> Why would cybertruck be cancelled?

IIRC, the fully-electric F150 Lighting was canceled due to poor sales, and its sales were better than the Cybertruck's.

It isn't just about sales, it is about margin. F150 Lightning was losing money on each unit produced - they cost about 40% more to product than they sold for. Cybertruck has a positive gross margin, so even though sales are terrible, they don't have have a pressing financial need to cancel it.

Tesla doesn't disclose the gross margin on Cybertruck. They may say it is positive but if nobody knows what constituted those gross margins or what they amounted to, it's pretty much meaningless.

Hard to imagine it being profitable given the very low utilization of the production line and associated tooling.

I agree. I am quite confident that if someone challenges them on this claim, they will say it was non-GAAP gross margin, which excluded all the crucial expenses

is your position that large electric trucks can't succeed in the near future?

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