Tesla stock

How much longer will investors fall for the autonomous vehicle dream?

 

I don’t doubt the improvements they are making to driver assistance.
“Full self driving” is misleading, and fully autonomous vehicles are an elusive dream which may become reality someday.
But how long will investors wait?

 

If you are a risk taker who insists on bets on individual stock - you are really missing the boat if you don't follow Nancy Pelosi and her family's stock trades:

Pelosi Unloads Millions In Nvidia Stock At A Loss Before Senate Passes Massive Tech Subsidies (forbes.com)

Nancy Pelosi Scores Whopping Payday On Controversial Stock Trade (msn.com)

Pelosi defends lawmaker stock trades, citing 'free market' | AP News

See Every Stock Trade Speaker Nancy Pelosi's Husband Made Between 2021 and 2022 (businessinsider.com)

Inside Nancy Pelosi’s Husband’s $5 Million Alphabet Options Windfall (forbes.com)

Congressional Stock Trading Tracker Exposes Nancy Pelosi’s Questionable Portfolio (msn.com)

Nancy Pelosi Discloses New Batch of Husband's Stock Investments (businessinsider.com)

Nancy Pelosi's Husband Made Massive Stock Purchase in September: Docs (businessinsider.com)

 

SE iPhone is "only" $429 as of today. For comparison, Samsung's entry level is about 1/3 that price. Apple OTOH likely makes at least a couple hundred profit on their "affordable" SE.

Agree. Was never a believer that game-changing FSD was coming anywhere near the time frame of the optimists. Suspect the realization that it was not around the corner was a significant part of the fall in stock price in the last few months.

We are on a free trial of FSD this month with our Model Y. It's quite impressive and would consider it if spent a long time on open roads where it would be more acceptable to let some level of guard down or needed assist with physical impairments. But it's not good enough to where it's safe to not pay the same level of attention as driving alone in my scenarios.

FSD will be worth >$100k when it can drive to work as safely as the average human driver, drop me off close to my work entrance, then drive itself home, take the wife to work and kids to school, park somewhere safe like back home and charge off solar, drive us on trips while we sleep overnight and self charge en route when needed...getting there but still at least years away at this point.

 

"Topline
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) revealed in regulatory filings Tuesday her husband Paul Pelosi sold millions worth of stock in chipmaker Nvidia at a loss a day before the Senate passed a multibillion-dollar bill aimed in part at boosting U.S. chip manufacturing that sent Nvidia shares surging, a decision Pelosi’s office says was to avoid further “misinformation” about the couple’s investments."

So the Pelosis deliberately lost money ($4.1 million) in order to avoid conflict of interest problems?

But that is also minor-league 7-digit stuff. The big-league grifters are playing 10-digits:

Donald Trump nabs additional $1.2 billion 'earnout' bonus from DJT stock

Jared Kushner's Post-White House $2 Billion Saudi Investment Sparked Ethical Debate and Saudi Skepticism Due to 'Inexperience' and 'Public Relations Risks'

 

Apple definitely has a captive market. We drifted over ten years ago with our laptops after 20 years of Microsoft.
Then came smartphones and iPhone just made sense for connectivity and texting.

I actually tried to switch back to an acer laptop last year and hated, so I’m stuck with the high prices.
The one good thing is that it’s like brand new at ten years compared to my previous dell’s which would crap out at three.

going back to Tesla, can they make it with a 40k minimum price?
Maybe, but competition is gaining, and I don’t see FSD or charging network making as big a difference as in the past

 

So this article about them buying call options is not true?

‘A deceptive tactic’: Nancy Pelosi disclosed a 7-figure bet on NVIDIA over the Christmas holidays — despite recent efforts to ‘permanently ban’ lawmakers from trading stocks (yahoo.com)

 

Continued discussion belongs in the FHoPol, not here. But I really had to wonder why a post of the tone I was responding too, had as its very first link, an article highlighting a congresscritter selling a position at a loss to avoid possible conflict of interest, while not including any links at all mentioning other grifters raking in figures 3 digits larger.

Partisanship? Please continue over in the political sandbox.

 

No, couldn't care less what these goobers buy and sell. I was just reading this thread and remembered seeing an article about Nancy buying a lot of NVDA options and at the time I read it, I was debating about whether to follow her lead. I passed, unfortunately. And the question was legit, tone or no tone. I have no desire to post in the house of politics as it seems to be full of idiocy. We can call this a wrap.

 

Other potential market opportunities:

The top three best selling vehicles in the United States are all trucks. Cybertruck is interesting but probably too jarring for most of that demographic, so would be nice to know that they had a more conventional appearing BEV truck in the pipeline (with Tesla styling) to compete with those. Or just buy Rivian and develop/grow the heck out of it.

Enormous growth potential still in the energy business with healthy margins. FSD aside, lots of potential with AI/robotics.

 

I've rented 4 Teslas now driving them in CA TX,FL,LA Most had FSD and I got to explore it in a variety of driving environments. It does have its perks. The best perk is there were 3 times the car..dinged me...and hit the brakes pretty hard and both times I was shocked and like WTH!!!!! Then there was a car that ran a light or cut me off that I didn't see. So it saved me from being in a crash. So for $12,000 it had the ability to prevent harm to my body, money lost, paperwork filled out, trips to the Dr. Chiropractor, ER and potential rest of my life injuries. Heck I spend that much on preventative care and exercise equipment to keep my body in shape... The real life R and D that was gained in a horrific accident where a guy drove his entire family off a cliff in his Tesla and nobody died (shouldn't be taken lightly). So FSD gets my vote and my money. I've spent and lost more money on other things with zero ROI. It is evolving....sure..but so are we humans. It's nice to have the choice and like most things in life it just costs you money.

 

One thing about FSD is it's always looking out in all directions for you. Last night while driving my Prius, after taking off once the light turn green, I realised I didn't look to my right if everyone were stopping before proceeding, something I almost always do, but not this time. Nothing happened, but y could have been side swept, something that driving in FSD can prevent as it's never distracted. Sometime confused? Yeah, but that's why you're still the driver, but it's never distracted. Accidents are mostly caused by distraction, so FSD is making driving safer, when it's not abused.

 

I think those are excellent comments.
Am also a big fan of anything that makes driving safer for me.
Would be a proponent of FSD when it is used as you described- you are still an attentive driver and FSD is a supplement to your driving that can alert you to potential problems.

There seems to be a divergence of how some people use these features or maybe a difference in how they are interpreted.

People who tout the advantages of full self driving vehicles and speak of how they let the vehicle drive itself are adding gasoline to a forest fire in terms of public pushback on this feature - people such as yourself who use this feature as a safety supplement to their own driving make a good sensible case for this type of assistance and developing it even further.

When used responsibly- a wonderful benefit to safety and society - when used irresponsibly it can lead to tragic results.

These people (below) are doing no favors to these type of safety advancements and illustrate many individuals worst fears and fan the flames of pushback against these features.

 

fsd is what it is. What it is not, is full self driving.
It is not driving auto sales, and it is not capable of autonomous driving.
Robotaxis are somewhere in the distant future

 

There will always be bad actors.
If we throw out automated driving assistants due to those bad actors, then we should also ban cars due to the same inattentive people.
While we are at it, we should ban lawn mowers, phones and other devices that have led to harm.

 

My lawn mower is self driving, literally. It's like a Roomba for your lawn (I called mine Lawnba for that exact reason lol). When mowing the grass in the backyard, it's left unattended with the dogs inside. When mowing the front lawn, I stay there and do other stuff like trimming the edges, washing the cars, etc. It is not left unattended when someone could mess with it. It has a blade rotating at high speed underneath ffs. Beside, it's fun to see people's (especially dog's) reaction when they see it doing its stuff lol

 

But having a driver assist do the driving for me causes me to question the attention I am paying to the driving environment. Easier to be changing the radio station, changing something on the info screen, answering a text message displayed on the screen or spoken to you etc. Even when I have my hands on the wheel I feel I am giving less attention. So in a situation where the automation failed, would I be reacting as quickly as if I was "normal" driving? And would it be more so after hundreds of uses of the automated system?

How is FSD with the sun at a low angle directly at you (the situation of my only accident in the last 40 years)? It is always the edge cases I worry about.