Why Tesla's Robotaxi Lead is a Game-Changer (Ep. 761) 

You are on a roll these days with the videos Dave! Hope to regularly hear more of thoughts… You are missed😊

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Start early with diversified investments in stocks, bonds, and real estate. Maximize contributions to tax-advantaged accounts like 401(k)s and IRAs. Regularly review and adjust your strategy to ensure security....

Great to see Dave getting excited, hope family is doing great Dave !

You don’t need to tip the driver if there is no driver 😢

Dave Lee : Tesla wisdom

glad see you back to the community, Dave!

Key question is when Tesla can achieve unsupervised driving????? For my daily driving disengagement rate is still under 5 miles, this is way way below expected ~1 million mile threshold

Dave on a video tear post shareholder meeting - bullish! Hope you and your family are doing well

It isn't just the 4-5 year lead in autonomous driving... it is the 10(?) year combined lead in autonomy PLUS enabled fleet of millions PLUS the manufacturing capability to 'profitably' add several million vehicles per year.

Once again, Dave Lee is Spot-On.

Thanks for the great content. Prayers and thoughts are with you Dave.

spot on. Tesla supercharger network is a real life example of what was discussed in your video.

Dave Uber & Lyft know that as well . I think they two ride service companies particularly Uber will join tesla knowing if they don’t tesla Cybertaxi will eventually crush their business. Also the CEO of Uber is a very smart man and friendly with Elon. I am certain he is entertaining some type joint venture with tesla . We shall wait and see what Uber is going to do after 8/8! They will not wast time.

Also remember to those that understand what Tesla is and what Elon is doing: the more doubters and the harder they doubt, inevitably the higher the payoff

What lead? There are companies out there with actual working taxis. All Elon has is another promise. Mark my words it will not be a taxi he comes out with, it'll be what it looks like, literally what it looks like. Tesla is way behind in the self-driving race. even BMW and Mercedes have more advanced auto systems they're not called self-driving but they can do more than a Tesla. The day everybody wakes up to this con man's lies that stock is going to go to zero

Since 2016 Elon has said robotaxis coming soon (next year). All robotaxis, including in China use LiDAR.

Hope beyond reason FSD will be free Free FSD will result in tiny margin FSD taxi fleets If #1 is hoping to have a 50% margin business. #2 will set up the same thing but only charge a 5% margin At 50 cents a mile, I'm willing to wait two mins longer than #1 trying to charge me $1 a mile If there is any advantage at all to be had, it's in a dedicated uktra low cost robo taxi provably single or dual seater. But even that will only delay the inevitable race to the bottom

Tesla will be 4-5 years ahead, but more importantly they will have tens of billions of miles more data. The Tesla robotaxi will drive much smoother and will be measurably safer than a competitor. Who will want to put their family in a less safe and comfortable alternative to Tesla?

Robotaxi already exist

Not having to tip makes a robo-taxi less expensive without a lower price. Not having to pay a driver makes it a far more attractive price. The other thing is that women have had problems with male drivers. I think women will be early adopters of a robo-taxi.

Fast food companies will want their own self driving delivery vehicles. I think they will load up and then deliver far more cheaper and efficient than any current food delivery service.So you could potentially have companies like McD buying fleets of Tesla self driving delivery vehicles.

Dave… You really need to take a step back and get some objectivity.

Thank you, Dave!!! Always a pleasure to see you pop up and dispense insight and wisdom. Exciting to imagine the future!

I think you are missing 1 important point, which is the trust barrier. Tesla has to gain consumer confidence with FSD before the mass majority will trust their safety on it over a human driver - especially with comparable pricing. One way to possibly address this is to charge half of what human drivers cost as an early adoption program. From there, they can draw in more customers and eventually raise prices slightly to undercut Uber.

Uber n Lyft drivers also pick n choose customers..favoring requests for longer rides over short rides to get reimbursed more. Robotaxi’s will not be so discriminating making it a better service in this regard.

They don't actually understand that data is what is needed to train neural networks and you need billions for the hardware to process the data for training. They simply don't understand.

Glad to see you back Dave! Always appreciate your insight!

videos coming out like this feel like tesla stock is at the peak again lol

So happy to see you putting videos out again Dave. You're the best. You and Rob are very missed ! Only balanced bull with a brain nowadays is Dillon with Electrified. ❤

Let them announce the robo taxi then analyze . Instead of speculation hype . You are not some zen master

How much can Tesla charge rider with no human driver? Human driver charges $30 per hour to rider. Uber add charges 25% on top base of what is still unclear. For FSD robotaxi, the charges per ride is base on what? Car and FSP cost and cleaning the car? Uber add 25% on top of these costs? Charging battery is cheap. And with a 1 million mile range battery coming this is close to nothing. Say 1 cent per mile uber will charge. Cost per ride should be close to $1 to $5 to rider at most. With this cheap ride robotaxi no need to buy a car and Tesla and most car makers can go bankrupt soon.

Price war with Uber day 1. Vanshare is also on Uber's roadmap. This isn't going to be as profitable as Cathy Woods thinks.

Its not certian tsla will be #1 But whoever is #1 there will rapidly very rapidly (less than 18 months imo maybe even less than 18 weeks) be a #2 #3 #4 #5... So whoever is first sets up a 50% margin robotaxi fleet Whoever is second has two very easy options. Offer their FSD for free to auto makers only charging a fee to the end customer to allow the end customer to pool their car into a ford or GM or Toyota fleet So Toyota gets say Microsoft FSD for free. Great the customer is happy. And say 10% of toyota buyers add their toyota to toyota taxis and can choose their own prices Thats a race to the bottom 10 million toyota sold per year If 10% add to toyoa taxi powered by Microsoft FSD. Thats 1 million toyota robo taxis globally in the first yesrm then 2 million in the second year then... Well if #1 charges $1 per mile and makes 50c profit on that If i own a toyota yeah sure i probably cant charge $1. But i can probably charge 80 cents and there will be customers Unlike an uber driver i wouldnt care if i only had 3 customers a day. For a human thats not enough. For a self drive sode hustle toyota taxi. Whatever Very rapidly whoever chargest the least will take the largest market share So if costs are for arguments sake 50cents a mile and #1 can charge $1 per mile Within 2 years the price will be close to costs. So instead of $1 per mile woth 50c costs. Youll have 55 cent per mile with 50c costs making it a low msrgin commodity business

Like playing the game Starcraft against 3 other players but Tesla had a 1 hour lead of building.

Tesla may be at a lead of a few months, if at all, in technology (The Lazy Tyranny of the Wait Calculation, Ethan Mollick), their main advantage is the distribution of hardware. Nvidia's approach of training in simulation is much more promising (See Nvidia's DrEureka) and can be used by many other companies, thus creating scale. A third party company, or directly Nvidia, can create an app that uses all these cars as a robo taxi service. So technology wise the competition is not very far behind, if at all. The only thing is the hardware distribution, thus still giving Nvidia a few year advantage. Not sure how to valuate such an advantage. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Robotaxy vs Uber as it is now is not right competition. Uber has competitor named Bolt in Europe and wordwide 50 countries. Bolt has also Bolt drive service and that is more a like to robotaxy and gives look into robotaxy era and potential. The key is usable optimal fleet size. In Bolt drive case I use daily rushours are problems and when about 5% total rides in down reached then available car is 1 minute walk away so when those cars are 15k$ and Tesla has 25k$ That leaves 15k$ cars in about 10% advantage. Also Tesla has scaling problem. Eventually Tesla wins but that is not an easy win and takes a lot of money. Airbnb like service moddel is also not going to happen due to taxation mor probable is that you rent car from Tesla and make contract that you have car available certain timeframes then Tesla charges you and you pay monthly fee like 3x lower to lease a car and also you pay infront payment as in leasing case so Tesla lowers risks. While those dumb 15k$ cars can't drive to you and such deal can't be made. Currently may dayly drive 30km 20miles cost me 20€ so 400€ month was like 200-250€ 2years ago but still leasing + fuel+ insurance and so on it cost me 600€ to own a car. Currently i have 2-3 home office days so it is 150€ month and owning car is 500€ minimum in such case so 3x win for me

You make a good argument for RT to win in the competitive market, Dave. Assuming Tesla gets regulator approvals for FSD in cities, that’s where it will start-in individual cites, by the Tesla fleet only. They will solve the huge liability issues first, before permitting individual private owners to include their cars in a fleet, even on a temporary basis. Personally, I can’t imagine letting my $50+K car be used as a taxi, even temporarily. Just the barf + damage factor alone makes me shy away from that notion. I do trust that FSD will be safer than a human in 98% of situations, but it’s the other bad human drivers that I worry about and make me risk averse. So, the question is, how do owners obtain accountability from other drivers? Cameras? Doubtful for scammers/hit and run situations. True, that applies today, but do you think that many people will hang around for driverless cars to resolve accidents, even fender benders? Thinking this through, maybe Tesla should develop Optimus for RoboCop applications, even if your Optimus is in the driver seat of your RoboTaxi-think about it, Your Optimus is the chauffeur one moment, then after an accident, and it’s a witness to the accident or crime, it becomes deputized temporarily for the city. I do really wonder how they will solve the liability issue. The down side to this, there is a risk that RoboCop becomes Terminator at some point. Anyway, I’m sure there are much better minds thinking this through on the theoretical applications, but the practicality of the RT and Optimus as useful and safe societal tools makes one wonder…how? It’s not that simple.

These so called experts are totally wrong, and Tesla with first mover advantage and literally millions/billions of FSD miles, the competition is coming refrain has little to no substance IMHO. Tesla for the massive win on Robotaxi service implementation. Totally agree with your analysis Dave!

So I see this as let's say I buy a Y next June, and in 2 years they perfect FSD & get the government to sign off. Now my Y becomes a Robo Taxi when I want. When I am not using it, I go to the Tesla app and put it in the system. Someone local needs a ride. It autonomously pulls out of the driveway, takes them where they want to go, then returns to the driveway after. I make bank w/Tesla making a small cut. No other car company is close to this & 99.9 % of Investors are Tech stupid......

Hi Dave, as usual, your videos are extremely insightful. However, you don’t mention the fact that Tesla will certainly patent its FSD technology once it is perfected. Once that is done any and all “competitors“ will have to purchase/license that technology from Tesla. They cannot simply utilize that technology without paying for it.

All in on tsla & kinda discouraging the last urs but I get its all for naught without free speech.. i know youve lived through these multi yr lulls before..😵‍💫🙄 courage for your wife Dave

Why isn't there a single physical trial for Tesla robotaxis in the US? Waymo and Cruise is already testing their robotaxis for years. Looks like Robotaxis for Tesla is still a longshot at best. Aug 8 is coming and would it be another nothing burger?

Interesting analysis but must account for the regulatory aspect. Not all cities would &/or are willing to allow robotaxis in their streets. Besides, I am seeing a lot of protests (people losing their jobs) coming. Safety and reliability would be the key enablers.

From the point of technic,it is much easy to run Robotaxi than to run （general）FSD,because Robotaxi only needs FSD works well in small areas.Do not need FSD work well on all conditions all over the world.

Dave, how are you factoring Tesla’s insurance risk/liability in your valuation? 1 accident can make regulators insist on Tesla pausing their services. It will shake the confidence of ride hailers globally when the news spreads.

Dave, Elon Musk has been feeding us a big load of BS. TSLA is not moving. Elon has gotten his money and we’re all watching him act a damn fool dabbling in politics.

I think the RoboTaxi will be interesting but also there will be new issues that will occur in this new "world". I don't think I would share my Tesla on any robotaxi network ... maybe purchase a used Tesla 3 and use that. I would be afraid of what some "people" will do to the car.

Can someone explain why robotaxis will make more revenue than uber and lyft ? Especially when robotaxis will need to lower cost to attract riders. Uber and lyft is less than 20B revenue, so how can robotaxis can be 5-7T?thx

i have no idea how these youtubers come up with this BS when theres no proven product. FSD is Faaaar from level 4-5 thats needed for robo taxi. Yet these fan boys are making such absurd statements. i have 3 teslas but i do not think robo taxi will succeed unless theres some AI level we see in movies.

This guy said that Tesla is not unique because other car companies are 1 to 3 years away from getting on the self driving. Ha ha. We have heard that since 2017.

Dave, robotaxi is controlled by the super algorithm built over various years. Unless some one hacks and robs the algorithm …. Tesla is a good 2 decades ahead.

0nce Tesla proves the safety there is NO WAY I would use another company. Period. I will pay more if i need to - safety is the prime consideration.

Waymo is already FSD isn’t it? Zero lead. Maybe better in ways so Tesla can be top 2 or 3 so not too late but not already the obvious winner. It should be valued more than 0 but not 100%

Hahahshahahahahwhsjsjsjsjsj lmaooooooʻ. Suiiiiiiiiiiiiuiire.

Good grief, this is like a bunch of Star Trek Geeks talking about going to Warp 3 or Warp 4 this afternoon in their starship, which they are building in their garage. Hello - Tesla geeks. There is no self-driving software to make any Tesla drive by itself now nor probably for 10 years. So you can talk about Robotaxi adding $500 trillion dollars to TSLA's income but the truth is that our Star Trek Geeks stand a better chance going to just Warp 1.

It would if interesting if Tesla could demonstrate the safety beyond those lying statistics. Maybe design a test between a robotaxi and a racecar or other highly really good human driver that would show the doubters that the human drives was indeed less competent.

How all this robot taxi will charge? Will Tesla pay a person to stay at charger and just plug car coming in? Is there even enough super charger ?

Uber platform is not going anywhere imo. All automakers who want to compete with Tesla will need to deploy their fleets on Uber to get demand

You just sound too weird. No offence but i cant have this playing loud in my house people will think im weird too

Wow Tesla's existing robotaxi network is really kicking ass in imagination land.

Tesla tobotaxi: coming up next year 2014

I’ll believe it when I see it on the stock price: another maybe news hyped up just like solar, cyber truck, semi, and FSD.

Can make a robotaxi but can't make a robocar. Doesn't make sense.

Can Tesla Auto park yet? You know its not important to be first ...😄

Dave I love you and am so grateful for your wisdom!!!;)

There will be intense lobbying to outlaw robo taxis and the only way to try to stop that is to spend even more on lobbying.

Tesla will have solve insurance and liability situation?!?!

Whatever happened to Dan O'Dowd recently? Did he toss in the towel?

Great News For Tesla So Why Is The Stock Down?

Robo taxi will need to be recycled in time, you can’t sell it as as a used car like rental cars.

It is like LLM!! Where it can take six months to train the model!!

Dave, tell AI to tone down your lipstick

First Class content! Thank you.

Hold on a minute, Dave, Tesla is not ahead of anybody because their cars can’t drive themselves. I know this first hand because I have owned Tesla for five years and I have seen only marginal improvement on the confidence that the car exudes through self driving.

Tesla is transitioning from the auto world, covered by auto analysts to ai covered by ai analysts. you will start seeing realistic PTs and analysis pretty soon. The trigger event will be 8/8. Watch uber, lyft stock after 8/8

How about Tesla buying Uber?

But does Tesla really want to own and operate these cars?

Agree with your analysis. I would add that safety is the big key. If Tesla hits the ground with a 4 year lead their platform will always be safer due to their massive data advantage. Safety wins in any autonomous scenario.

What if a robotaxi needs to charge the battery?

If Tesla will fail and do bad . Dave is gone ,

The confirmation bias is strong in this guy.

No the main argument is will they solve it? I think they will but the evidence has to clearly show that they will. Don’t rely on weak opposition arguments.

Disagree. Price is all that matters. Uber and lift charge $20/5 miles. Tesla charges $1.25/5 miles. 100% of people will use Tesla, even if 1 out of 1,000,000 rides the car explodes killing everyone in a 30 foot radius. Call it the Tesla lottery. BOOM! I would take the Tesla. What a rush!

I dont think you can really apply first mover advantage network effect model to ride hailing - From end-user perspective this advantage, originally sprung from communication and social media platforms, relies on two key factors, the users' own network of other users(friends, colleagues, family etc), and, his/her own data (messages, pictures, files, data etc). Both extremely difficult to migrate to a new platform. Ride hailing on the other hand is like a dating app. You have minimal data on these platforms and your network is nothing but ever shifting connections. So, when a newer/better platform comes along you migrate with extreme ease, and you can hop around quite conveniently. Think again. Think hard. I dont think without user data, and user network, such network-effect tautology works. From the drivers' perspective it may be bit harder to shift to a new platform because of the capital investment though. The rest of the arguments are fine.

Dave there's a sound of desperation in your voice, we understand knowing FSD doesn't work and has virtually zero value even if it did. Tesla going to $25 in 2025, sorry for the bad news, but when you ride with the Con Man what do you expect?

Dave is wrong here. Analysts wants to see a real robotaxi product on the road and not just elons premises before they set any value on it.

Dave, the reason I do not assign any value to FSD, is because it really is not as safe as the Tesla community professes it to be. According to FSD Tracker, city miles driven to critical disengagements is 117 for 12.3.6. That is hardly an improvement since 2017. The 117 miles driven to critical disengagements must be in the hundreds of thousands if not millions before it is safer than humans. Elon has been pushing this narrative since 2017, and there has not been any improvement except for the quality of the drive. Unfortunately, Elon is betting the future of Tesla on FSD at a significant risk to the company.

Dave, if Tesla’s FSD software is no longer based on code but trained on driving videos, what stops other companies from also simply training their models on driving videos? Does Tesla’s competitive advantage only then lie in its hardware (Domo, custom chips in cars)?

Few problems: - vast majority of people don't see added value from their car driving itself. Its a cool gimmick but that's it. Ask around, paying for it doesn't sound interesting for the vast majority. - vast majority will never feel safe having strangers in their cars. It's just the truth. - even IF robotaxi network becomes real, everyone will be jumping in to try and make money. There will be like 100 Teslas available for each 1 person looking for a ride. What do you think that does to the price per mile for a ride? It will become a bad investment due to severely low ROI because of supply/demand disparity. Looking for logical rebuttal l of what I said above, as a long investor.

So why would authorities work with Tesla for Robotaxi licenses if they don't cooperate with the NHTSA?

Dave is an insane person now

At the time of this comment Uber - $70/share with a 146.39 billion market cap. Lyft $14/share and a 5.72 billion market cap. I would think it’s fair to think that Tesla would “consume” those.

I can see how Robotaxis will decimate the human driven taxi business. How many Taxis are currently required in a City environment though? It's nothing like the number of private cars. Ask yourself why those private cars exist. I'd suggest that it has little to do with the price of a Taxi ride, and everything to do with convenience. You can play with the numbers all you like, but in the end, it's convenience or facing life without that convenience that will determine how many rides a required. To me it sounds like everyone wants to own a car, and also make money selling rides to everyone else.... except.... those people have cars themselves. It's a solution for everyone else, but not for me.

Even if someone could copy Robotaxi quick (*cough* landing rockets *cough*) it will still generate money and therefor should be part of every evaluation model, that looks further than 12 months.

If Tesla offers a loyalty program....every 500 or 1000 miles? you get the next trip free up to 20 miles or something like that.

Great to see you again, Dave! You mention there isn't a strong second place competitor to Tesla unsupervised FSD; however, I'd argue that Waymo is beating Tesla in unsupervised robo0-taxis right now. You can ride Waymo's anywhere in SF and they don't have a driver in the front seat at all. The experience is seamless. How does this change your thesis as I do see Waymo as being further ahead?

Tesla should chooses the easy area to begin their Robotaxi business where FSD works pretty well. No need to waste time to make money until FSD fix all problems.

To those who say robotaxis must be in the streets before analysts should consider value… Ask yourselves… when did the stock price of Novo Nordisk start to go exponential, before or after Ozempic went on the market?

I haven't seen ARK's or other's detailed models showing how this is a trillion plus market. Uber + Lyft earn about $17B per year collectively. If they are around $1 per mile and cutting the rate generally increases use of the service, what does the robotaxi need to charge per mile to stimulate this massive increase in use? My typical wait time is in the 5 to 9 minute range. Certainly this could be improved with more cars. It is not clear to me how much of a premium people will pay for faster response on the pickup. If airlines are any indicator, it seems that people are more interested in price.