Entrepreneurs in general lie awake nights evaluating ideas to produce goods and/or services which are worth more (to themselves and/or others) than it would cost to provide them.Elon is astonishingly good at that. So much so that his AI-controlled anthropomorphic robot project bids fair to make human physical work anachronistic.
The original mission of Tesla was to speed the transition to sustainable energy. Nobody with the trace amount of skepticism could avoid thinking that that mission was a Democrat boondoggle. But the Biden (?) Administration made it excruciatingly clear that the synergy between unions and the Democrat Party transcended in importance to Democrats any real concern about pollution from energy. Elon saw the suppression of freedom of expression which was Biden Admin’s principal project and, by making Twitter honest, abandoned his connection with the CA Democrat party which was a principal support of the market for Tesla automobiles.
I long ago disclosed that TSLA was the largest single holding in my investment portfolio. As I told my broker, TSLA represents hope for future prosperity for my descendants. But it has to be said that CA is no longer the logical primary market for Tesla, precisely because Elon has, what Democrats consider, “gone rogue.” “Flyover country” represents a very large untapped opportunity for Tesla, for political and geographical reasons. Fuel prices are lower in “flyover country” than anywhere else, and gas stations are much more plentiful than standalone fast chargers. But home chargers are cheap and economical, and unless you do a lot of daily driving, fast chargers are strictly for trips rather than daily use - always assuming you have a garage . . .
But with self-driving AI, Tesla’s project is to make individual car ownership less dominant in personal transportation within population-dense areas. And also transcend the need for busses by making taxi rides cheap and convenient.
I recently purchased a Tesla Model Y, the largest-selling single model of any make of car worldwide. And as a late adopter of iPhones and similar tech, I have to say that I don’t naturally understand all the symbology in the software of the car. I was pushed into the purchase by my children, who I inferred thought that my assumption that the best time to buy a Tesla would always be “tomorrow” implied that in effect that meant “never.”
“Full self driving” was the primary selling point for me; if you want to travel by auto, and if you are my age, that can definitely be a restful way to do it. Once you get comfortable supervising it - tho the necessity to supervise will, I suspect, be transcended in this calendar year. Reportedly supervised self-driving is safer than manual driving already.
Thanks c_I_c. Great to see your informative posts.