That’s a pretty wild and closed mind thinking to say there’s no business model for it.
I’m not saying Tesla can truly solve this problem, but lets just assume for the moment that they actually can solve self driving.
Note: For anyone who questions this thesis, just to pre-empt people replying “but they can’t do it”, that is NOT what this discussion is going to be about, so get lost.
Now that that is out of the way
Waymo vehicles are retrofitted vehicles that are expensive to begin with, with more expensive hardware. The car itself is 70k+ and with retrofits its well over 100k. Jaguar and their suppliers have to earn a profit on the vehicle, and then Waymo has to pay on top of that to get it all customized. (edit: and pay for service which comes at a profit for the supplier as well)
Tesla has designed a bespoke vehicle specifically for autonomous driving that is going to cost them less than 30k to build at scale including all the hardware, no retrofits needed. Everything from it’s construction, interior, 2 seats vs 4 seats etc are all designed for this one exact purpose. They don’t even have a steering wheel or pedals, and while the video could just be a gimmick, they’ve showcased a robot that is specifically designed to be able to clean this specific interior.
Tesla can refine their own lithium hydroxide, to build their own batteries, which they claim (no proof) are cheaper than their supplier batteries for cost/kwh. That’s not to say they could sell them for more profit than Samsung or LG or BYD, but that those companies put a profit ontop of their cells, and Tesla claims the cost is below that.
So, they refine their own lithium now, could already make batteries cheaper than they could buy them from others before that, they build their own cars where they don’t need to make a profit on the sale, which has been explicitly designed for this one use case and you still don’t think there’s any room for it to be profitable, IF they can actually solve the problem?
That’s a pretty wild and closed mind thinking to say there’s no business model for it.
I’m not saying Tesla can truly solve this problem, but lets just assume for the moment that they actually can solve self driving.
Note: For anyone who questions this thesis, just to pre-empt people replying “but they can’t do it”, that is NOT what this discussion is going to be about, so get lost.
Now that that is out of the way
Waymo vehicles are retrofitted vehicles that are expensive to begin with, with more expensive hardware. The car itself is 70k+ and with retrofits its well over 100k. Jaguar and their suppliers have to earn a profit on the vehicle, and then Waymo has to pay on top of that to get it all customized. (edit: and pay for service which comes at a profit for the supplier as well)
Tesla has designed a bespoke vehicle specifically for autonomous driving that is going to cost them less than 30k to build at scale including all the hardware, no retrofits needed. Everything from it’s construction, interior, 2 seats vs 4 seats etc are all designed for this one exact purpose. They don’t even have a steering wheel or pedals, and while the video could just be a gimmick, they’ve showcased a robot that is specifically designed to be able to clean this specific interior.
Tesla can refine their own lithium hydroxide, to build their own batteries, which they claim (no proof) are cheaper than their supplier batteries for cost/kwh. That’s not to say they could sell them for more profit than Samsung or LG or BYD, but that those companies put a profit ontop of their cells, and Tesla claims the cost is below that.
So, they refine their own lithium now, could already make batteries cheaper than they could buy them from others before that, they build their own cars where they don’t need to make a profit on the sale, which has been explicitly designed for this one use case and you still don’t think there’s any room for it to be profitable, IF they can actually solve the problem?