> The proposed plan would grant Musk up to 12% of Tesla's stock, worth about $1.03 trillion if the company hits its target market value of $8.6 trillion. The plan requires boosting Tesla's valuation nearly eightfold, or about $7.5 trillion, over the next decade.
Obviously no chance in hell that Tesla hits that market cap legitimately just based on the performance of the past four years.
However, if the administration succeeds in killing the Fed’s independence and sending inflation to the moon, he might get that payday early! It will in be Zimbabwe dollars, but he will get that trillionaire title (along with many others).
Stocks and company value haven't been tied to reality in years. Tesla could completely cease production and say they're getting in the puppy kicking industry and their stock prices wouldn't fall a bit. They might even skyrocket.
Well, you have to admit that that is atleast a growth industry. Pretty easy to achieve a thousand fold growth in puppy kicking. Who knows how big the puppy kicking market could eventually be?!?
Apparently their profit is a couple billion, market share is dropping, [1] and they've promised revolutionary products without delivering for a decade now. A multitrillion dollar valuation for a company in decline that fails to deliver innovative or quality products, and a trillion for a dude driving it into the ground, is an interesting quirk of 2010s-2020s economics.
Still profitable while other competitors are losing money like BYD and a bunch of traditional gas manufacturers.
They have already released multiple revolutionary products including the first real electric car and then the model y which is the best selling car in the world.
Tough economic situation for a car manufacturer. If you consider running a profitable company during a tough situation and unprecedented tariffs to be "driving into the ground" that's up to you.
Considering Ford and everyone else is absolutely getting clobbered in electric vehicles I do find that comical
Which products? EVs are a commodity. Self driving technology is better at Waymo, and in China, the latest Huawei version of self driving, installed in Avatar cars, is on par with Tesla’s and even better in some cases. What’s left? The Optimus robot? Unitree from China and Boston Dynamics (owned by Toyota), are ahead of Tesla. Not to mention the hundreds of startups in China working on the same thing, all using essentially the same transformer based architecture with only minor tweaks. There’s no moat this time. What Tesla still excels at is marketing and hype, but even that has its limits.
That's quite the counterargument. Care to back it up with anything more than "you're wrong"? Right now this reads more like a dismissal than a rebuttal.
I didn't say it's hate. I said that they may hate him. There's a difference. Considering Tesla is doing great compared to other companies like BYD who are their biggest worldwide competitor and they are hemmoraging money
When AAPL and NVDA breached the 3T mark I was convinced that they’ve hit a ceiling. But, time has shown that I was wrong. I think any valuation is possible now.
Well, now that the US has a War Department, and its Secretary of War Hegseth is publicly stating they are not going to defend but attack, one would assume US troops are going to be doing some pilfering in South America.
I think he said something along the lines of bringing back the “warrior ethos,” and the US has been losing since Vietnam. I have no idea what he’s talking about, but can’t imagine anyone having voted for this and related policies when they talked about bringing down the price of eggs.
I think whatever the surveys said, the egg prices/inflation actually had little to do with Trump victory and the left shouldn't be misled by this. People vote now for emotional reasons, reasons of identity, and these rational reasons are mostly cover--something you tell a pollster but not the real truth. Take note of anyone you know who gave this reason and see what they say about 6 months of manufacturing decline, slowing job growth, or about the inevitable inflation from tariffs...I bet most defend it in some way.
The right is now split into a faction that rejects foreign interventions and wants to withdraw, if not total isolationist then something in that direction, and another faction. At the elite level this other faction is ascendant. The lesson they have drawn from US military failures from Vietnam to GWOT is different from the former faction. In their view the problem is that we were not aggressive enough, we were too constrained by overly legalistic and conservative rules of engagement and various ideological goals which polluted the prosecution of the wars and prevented us from "winning". They DO want a more cruel, more aggressive force posture. They admire and defend Israel in large part because they see it as a model of a force which really believes in "winning". A substantial portion of the voter base is attracted to this, enthused by the prospect of aggressive campaigns in Latin America with relaxed rules of engagement, and sees the renaming to Department of War as a "based" declaration of this doctrine. The country is moving more in this direction and the more isolationist (kind of "Buchananite") wing is getting purged again, but with some concessions made to them.
I am not sure the left has any answer to this right now because it has discredited itself with so many, especially losing a lot of younger men (those under 21 heavily favor Republicans), and generally the country may simply be moving in this direction. I think be clear eyed what you are facing.
The problem with trying to read things into the results of the 2024 election is that they’re totally in line with a global thrashing of incumbents that occurred that year. Incumbents in the US actually did better than the average.
Humbly, I think this thinking is part of the problem. The incumbents were crushed because they mostly all copied each other and are seen as part of the same system. There are Western parties which have behaved differently and were not crushed. It wasn't just a meteorological event.
It was about the eggs but also immigration and men in women's private spaces and sports. Identity wasn't a big factor although everyone in high places and their bots work hard to make it so. We shall see.
Many actually do not seem to know this, especially in the political/think tank class. There are highly placed Democratic officials who blame inflation and point to this research.
This spectrum of political doctrine is also about to run the US economy into a very rough recession that I don’t think will be undone until Trump and his ideas get the boot from politics in some meaningful way.
I'm in South America. I see electric BYD everywhere and not a single Tesla. The same in SEA. Your theory could explain something. Force 'em all to purchase Tesla instead of BYD.
(Congress established and must approve any DoD changes)
Such actions are increasingly common and remain effectively unchallenged, stalled all the way to a compliant SCOTUS that falls in line rather than be ignored should they rule against.
Approved or not, the 1973 War Powers Act gives the executive branch the power to deploy troops wherever and whenever for 60 days + 30 days to bring them back, and the only legal fence is that Congress must be notified within 48 hours of said deployment.
Give US forces 48 hours of free reign in Venezuela and they will set the world on fire. Coupled with the right framing by the right reporters, Congress will give near unanimous approval for further escalation.
World War seems nigh inevitable at this stage. Better prepare to hunker down in that bomb shelter: refresh your stock of rations and gear up for the long haul.
Thank FSM and His Noodly Appendage that the current administration is entirely, utterly, completely, irrefutably, 1000%, 1400%, 1500% against doublespeak!
Get DOGE to dismantle all federal agencies including Medicare, IRS, and Social Security. Then contract out those same functions to Tesla in the name of efficiency?
So it’s First Nations nationalism? Odd cause for Elon to support. His heritage isn’t anywhere close to that (a white person in the US is bad enough but a white person from South Africa too?).
It's very worrying. Besides the sheer absurdity of it, as it is, it's a mix of valuation milestones and operational ones. But the thing is, that the first operational ones are 'easy' - Tesla is already on track to deliver 20 million vehicles within next 10 years. 10 million FSD subscription, 1 million robots, 1 million robotaxi ? This can all be very easily achieved if you bend the definition a bit. Hey, according to Tesla, they are already running a Robotaxi that is accessible to the public. Nevermind that there is a driver now in the driver's seat and the only thing that is public is an app, that puts you on the waiting list.
Given that, the only real issue is the valuation targets - and that folks, that's an open invitation for stock manipulation for the master manipulator himself.
What makes Tesla better-equipped to deliver on autonomy than other companies? The argument with FSD was that Tesla had cars on the road gathering real-world data and that their solution was cheaper and more scalable (not that either of these actually helped them in the end). What is the argument for robotics?
> What makes Tesla better-equipped to deliver on autonomy than other companies?
A willingness to ship at a much lower level of technical readiness and safety, and a reasonable chance of achieving enough regulatory capture to be allowed to do so.
How are they not noticing cheaper, better cars, pending lawsuits, toyota's invention of aluminum batteries making lithium obsolete, end of early mover advantage, and history of underdelivering?
I think you misunderstand. There's no reason to think they're not aware. It's more: "If you do this very difficult, nearly impossible thing (given the current situation), we'll give you a ridiculous amount of money for the miracle, because you'll make us rich in the process".
Since it's apparently all denominated in stock, and vesting is conditional on multiplying the stock price 7.5x over the next decade*, every misgiving over the current valuation should make this package all the more worth it to shareholders (who the board is supposed to represent).
*or at least the sort of operational milestones that make for the kind of pithy headlines that prop up the stock price
I believe Tesla bulls are banking on robots, robo-taxis, and other products. Surely nobody believes Tesla's consumer car business is poised to grow. (Given the history of under-delivering, etc., I wouldn't bet on Tesla dominating robotics or any other field, but as I understand it, this incentive package has no particular downside for shareholders.)
What kind of robots? Factory robots? Androids? China has abt 3 android companies for every american one. It's also an unproven market. Android forms are not great at asserting force in any direction yet. Complex vision remains a problem, but will hopefully advance. Im not pessimistic, but the risk is enormous.
I have not kept up- what does their industrial battery segment look like? That seemed like a market with huge growth potential, but maybe batteries are too commoditized now. Plus, supporting the renewable woke agenda.
They only promise 1 million robots, so no problem! The crazy thing is they're still betting on robocars (10 million subscriptions) despite still not having sold a single fully autonomous ride.
The negativity of this ambitious goal in this discussion is worrying. He did achieve all the goals set in the then 2018 lofty goals. He may just do it again. And despite being late, Tesla seems to be delivering slowly on all their promises. It's slow, and often deceptive, but not criminally so.
Tesla sales have been plummeting in Europe and the US, recently the US drop was in the double digits. On top of that, the former buyer market for Teslas have started calling them swastikars and slapping “Bought before Elon went crazy” bumper stickers on their Tesla. Resell value for Teslas have tanked. Everyone I talk to is well aware of the drop in Tesla quality and the hidden crash test data. Tesla also just lost a ton of income from the loss of gov subsidies that Must himself helped destroy. The negativity is based in the reality of his “work”. He’s an overpaid hype man that lies about everything and steals the work of others only to crash and burn it - lately through culture war hate mongering and a sad desperation to be liked.
Investors who bought an expensive hype stock have now realized it's a giant bubble that will burst the moment they start selling their considerable shares.
Their only option is to desperately ride on, hoping to stay ahead of the tide until they find some higher ground. Who knows: dangling a giant carrot in front of their mule might help?
He very obviously paid people to play the game for him, but he is sufficiently CEO-brained that he may actually believing that paying someone to do something means that you did it.
It is likely worth it - the Tesla robot will be the most advanced consumer grade product ever made. Shocked but not shocked that Apple didn't beat them to it (not shocked because Cook was just using Jobs playbook that only lasted for so long)
I'm not trying to insult you, but think about this. Musk has a reputation of actually delivering on the things he showcases- Cybertruck is real, it also failed, but he delivered it. Starlink is real, and it is winning spectacularly and probably has saved countless Ukrainian lives at this point. Yes FSD is not there yet, but I can pretty much guarantee you that it will be the first car that (is not a taxi) that has it.
And breaking apart my own statement slowly for you:
Tesla robot will be the most advanced consumer grade product ever made
^ product ^
will have vision, grip, communication,
ability to agentically think and perform physical tasks
^ Yes it is "a consumer grade product"
that will literally not have
real viable competition for a while
So please stop with the MDS so we can actually discuss the REALITY of the world.
>You can't possibly believe Musk's fantasies after a couple decades of hilarious (and occasionally dangerous) lies.
Eh, betting against Musk generally seems to be a losing proposition. Starlink alone would have given me faith in his abilities, what Tesla's done with Models 3 and Y and SpaceX with Falcon 9 gives me all the more reason to believe him. Yes, despite the absurd timelines, which I'm generally okay with. (Not OP)
I happen to agree with you but for different reasons.
I will never bet on Musk, but I’m also not dumb enough to bet against him, given TSLA’s stock growth. The board has set a wild target for him before, and he hit it.
It’s too easy to say “he’ll never achieve that!” from the comfort of an armchair internet comment.
Ok, if you really believe that, step up to the line and place your bets. Because if you don’t believe it enough to put money on it, you probably don’t believe it that much.
(Eyeroll) I didn’t feel like I needed to state my disagreements because I felt like they weren’t relevant enough to spend time on. So I agreed with his point that I’m not betting against Musk, but left out the reasons.
But leave it to the pedantic internet commenters to take issue with even a minor inconsistency.
I promise to do better next time, thank you for your feedback. I know I’ll make you proud one day, dad.
How about the myriad of other companies that produce Robots? Like Figure and a large number of Chinese outlets? Tesla is not the winner in electric cars why would they be better at robots. My guess is low cost robots from China will be everywhere..
.. ever heard of BYD? BMW just released the first car on their new platform that is better then Teslas in pretty much every way .. Musk has ruined Tesla with bets on wrong cars i.e Cybertruck instead of pushing price and volume.
so now the question is: how do we convert this bag of signals into mimicking a human. this question has been asked for text already, and the answer is LLMs which can, at the very least, mimick humans pretty well.
if a humanoid can be made to mimick a cook, or a cleaner, or manual labor, be able to navigate human geometry (stairs, ramps, etc.) that is already huge.
i agree that it would be the most advanced consumer grade product - the only thing that might beat it, is a domestic nuclear reactor.
It has to handle dirt, water, soap, five-year olds who pour sugar water over the robotic hands etc.
So far I've only seen these things in clean and dry environments, where they fold dry laundry, badly.
It looks like an absolute and expensive maintenance nightmare. Also, I'd worry about prompt injection or malfunction. Better carry an axe at all times:
I would not trust a company which has been saying they can get a car to go by itself from here to there for the last 13 years to make a humanoid robot cook :) first time there is any grease or dirt that robot gonna suffocate and die!
people will eat this shit up though, next 11 years every earnings report will say robots will be cooking at michelin star restaurants “soon”
All that stuff is just details. Like with autonomous cars. Elon may be late to the party and slower to execute but he will talk so loudly about it and make sure the media conflates robots with Tesla, so personal robots will basically become his idea.
For Tesla shareholders being the "first" with the idea has incredible value.
They kind of are - the powerwall is the number one selling solar accessory that exists. It's the iphone of solar equipment right now. Yes SR did not do well - so that's the cybertruck of that part of Tesla Solar.
Just ask yourself if Tesla cannot be autonomous in their own merely 2 mile long tunnel with only trained teslas drivers how can you believe any other promises ?
Setting a lofty goal and failing is not to be rewarded or congratulated, or in this case compensated .
There are other stuff to do in the world both as far as technological advancement and leisure that could fill that time and man hours and produce a tangible ROI as opposed to "we are failing but at least we are trying"
By the same token the next goal set by Musk would be creating a wormhole if he hasn't said it already considering the amount of drugs that he takes.
Many people conflate the reasoning that is prevalent in SV for founders where they say "there is no price for failure". That is maybe true for the individual not when trillions of man hours and trillions of dollars are allocated.
By your world view no one should do anything because they could fail. Ycombinator shouldn't exist because most of them fail.
They haven't hit your personal standard. Who cares? Investors are happy with their progress and at the end of the day that is more important than people like yourself who probably do t have skin in the game
> > By your world view no one should do anything because they could fail
It is one thing to fail independently say at your own startup, complete different thing is having choose between keeping your job or do something that you feel like it's a dead end or it is deceiving the public even tho you are not convinced just because the higher ups ordered so.
THat's how trillions of dollars and most importantly trillions of man hours are set on fire
When they actually lose money let me know. Right now they're still making billions in profit. If that's your idea of success you must be making tens of billions yourself
When you announce goals and fail them is like when boxers or UFC fighters announcing they'd destroy an opponent or sail easily to win the belt.
When they lose of course people are gonna call them out regardless of the monetary purse that they were awarded for losing the fight.
And that is the way it should be considering you are dangling in front of people a huge improvement in their quality of life and then constantly failing to ship it.
For all its flaws Microsoft shipped Windows 95 after talking about it for 10 months before the launch. Not 10 years. And that was really a big quality of life improvement for basically billions of people.
Finally people don't care about what the marketcap of Tesla is or what Musk net worth is, those discussions happen among the fanboys and those who have false idols. People care about how a company can improve their life and despite all the fanfare, Tesla Motors have produced very little improvment through its history, and thye are not a startup either considering they are 2002-2025
Windows 95 is comically easy compared to most of the stuff that Tesla does.
|People care about how a company can improve their life and despite all the fanfare, Tesla Motors have produced very little improvment through its history,
This is just objectively not true. They produce some of the safest cars in the world, and have the best selling car in the world. Obviously those same people you are talking about disagree with you.
Tesla was founded in 2003, not 2002. Regardless they are still a startup compared to all the other US car manufacturers. Regardless though Tesla has done amazingly well, been very profitable while others are suffering, and despite major cap-ex are able to still make a profit.
> > Windows 95 is comically easy compared to most of the stuff that Tesla does.
Many would not agree but whatever , it was a paradigm shift that changed the world and improved the quality of life of billions of people.
The point of companies is to improve the quality of life of people, not pursue stuff that is hard for virtuoso technical bragging rights. That is something that theoretical physicists do. Actually if something is a low hanging fruit that can improve the quality of life of billions of people that should be pursured not the virtuoso technical mastership for the sake of technical virtuosity
> > This is just objectively not true. They produce some of the safest cars in the world, and have the best selling car in the world. Obviously those same people you are talking about disagree with you.
Put a car from 2003 and a Tesla from 2025 next to each other and they are 99.999% the same. As a matter of fact Tesla can't do many things that a 2003 car can do.
This is the folly of people who think that a product which is 200 year old like the automobile can be revolutionized just because you can convince a bunch of loonies that it became a "tech company"
And you are fixating on technical prowness for technical prowness' sake.
If a start button can improve the life of billions then it should be pursued.
There are many thousands of "start button" alike solution which would improve the life of billions but the capital and the man hours are tied into fixations which are impossible or perpetually 20 years in the future.
Basically everybody who is not reinventing the wheel for political purposes.
Musk history is basically reinventing the wheel to fit political narratives not bona fide consumer need for a paradigm shift
Electric cars (reinventing the wheel to latch onto the left political narrative of climate change)
Twitter (reinventing the wheel to latch onto the right wing political narrative of censorship)
SpaceX (reinventing the wheel to latch onto the right/left political narrative of military domination)
The true paradigm shift that has a chance to change people's lives is AI and LLMs and Musk missed it completely, and spectacularly, like he was informed of everything that was being developed and still decided not to direct resources there up until ChatGPT shook the world, then he jumped on the bandwagon like everybody else who didn't have inside information
Between Waymo and Comma.ai, yes they did. Not in those goofy tunnels, but the underlying tech is there. So then why are the Vegas tunnels not self-driving? Tesla FSD works great in select places right now! How is the tunnel not one of them?
My opinion makes no difference in the scheme of things, but yes, I'd still think it's a waste. There's a monorail. Spend the money on making that suck less instead.
https://youtu.be/VPjODKUxV5g is where I'm coming from. The section of the system, where there's one tunnel, so the previous car has to clear the tunnel before the next vehicle can go, seems particularly stupid.
Not at all. It's traffic that is completely below ground which means that no streets above are burdened with it, it's all electric so no emissions. Name me any other form of transportation that was built so affordably in the US and moves this many people while not impacting street traffic?
By comparison the Vegas Monorail cost 5x as much, took 1/3rd longer to build, and takes roughly a third of the passengers that the Boring tunnel does. This is a huge win for Las Vegas, and they continue to build out because it's worked out well for them.
> It's traffic that is completely below ground which means that no streets above are burdened with it, it's all electric so no emissions
So are modern subways. Cost is a major point tho, subways are designed to move waaaaay more than 30k people a day for much less, but costs of building are much higher.
This is only 1.7 miles and a novelty, I would not know If the differences hold for Tesla on other places or when scaling up. My suspicious is that it does not.
I also wonder that if you use the same tunnel they did but modify the cars to run by themselves using traditional techniques, would the operation get cheaper but the shortcomings be more glaring.
Vegas now has 5 stations and is 2.2 miles. Can you realistically compare it to a billion dollar a mile sub at line that would take a decade to build (or more)?
30k a day is a nearly a million a month and costs are low by comparison (no expensive subway cars etc).
Have you actually looked what some of their extensions look like?
Please go look at Encore station on Vegas Loop. And come back telling me it is below ground... And that is not only place. Overall it looks like right mess. Including very scalable solutions like single tunnels to some stations...
Obviously no chance in hell that Tesla hits that market cap legitimately just based on the performance of the past four years.
However, if the administration succeeds in killing the Fed’s independence and sending inflation to the moon, he might get that payday early! It will in be Zimbabwe dollars, but he will get that trillionaire title (along with many others).