Ok, he delivered your Tesla and your Starlink, but so far he has hasn't delivered your Robotaxi, your Optimus, your lunar lander, your space datacenter etc. And the list keeps getting longer instead of shorter...
>Robotaxi, your Optimus, your lunar lander, your space datacenter etc. And the list keeps getting longer instead of shorter...
Lets go through this one by one
[1]Robotaxi.
Someone just drove coast to coast USA fully on autopilot. I drive my tesla every day, and i literally NEVER disengage autopilot. It gets me to work and back home without fail, to the grocery store, to literally anywhere i need. Whats not full self driving about that? I got in two crashes before i got my Tesla cause i was a dumb teen, but i'm sure my Tesla is a much better driver than my younger sister. Politically it's not FSD, but in reality, it has been for a while.
[2]
Optimus has gone through three revisions and has hand technology that is 5+ years ahead of the competition. Even if they launched it as a consumer product now, i'm sure a million people would buy it just as a cool toy/ gadget. AKA a successfull product.
[3] Lunar Lander
Starship, a fully reusable, 2 stage rocket that has gone through 25 revisions and is 95% flight proven and has even deployed dummy starlinks. 10+ years ahead of everyone except maybe stoke.
[4]Space Datacenter
Have you ever used starlink? They have all the pieces they need... Elon build a giant datacenter in 6 monmths when it takes 3-4 years usually. He has more compute than anybody and Grok is the most intelligent AI by all the metrics outside googles. Combine that with Starship, which can launch 10X the capacity for 10% of the cost, and what reason do you have to doubt him here?
Granted... it always takes him longer than he says, but he always eventually comes through.
Eventually comes through? Have you forgotten Hyperloop, new roadster, instant battery swaps, tunnels to replace all traffic, your car appreciating in value, your car being used as a robotaxi during downtime to make you money, semi convoys, etc etc?
He does (or at least a good proportion) if you want to use as precedent for delivering on these promises, though. Especially for the larger more extreme statements and not just buying himself into an existing business.
His investors are quite happy with his success rate. He is constantly building new stuff. And as a consumer who has had great experience with every product I've bought, so am I
No one buys into Elon's firms because he's expecting dividends.
His investors are not investing because of his success rate in delivering on his promises. His investors are investing exclusively because they believe that stock they buy now will be worth more tomorrow. They all know that's most likely not because Elon delivers anything concrete (because he only does that in what, 20% of cases?), but because Elon rides the hype train harder tomorrow. But they don't care if it's hype or substance, as long as numbers go up.
Elon's investors are happy with his success rate only in terms of continuously generating hype. Which, I have to admit, he's been able to keep up longer now than I ever thought possible.
Theranos were also hyping a lot and trying to build some stuff. There is some threshold (to be decided where) after which something is more of a fraud than a hype.
Also these days stock market doesn't have much relation to real state of economy - it's in many ways a casino.
Not sure who determines the threshold, he certainly goes to court more than your average person, but these are not start ups, they are large companies under a lot of scrutiny. I don't think the comparison is valid
>he certainly goes to court more than your average person
Yes because he sues a lot of entities for silly things such as some advertisers declining to buy ads that display next to pro-hitler posts, or news outlets for posting unaltered screenshots of a social media site he acquired.
> The hype to substance ratio isn't quite as important as some choose to beleive
Musk's ratio is such that his utterances are completely free from actionable information. If he says something, it may or may not happen and even if it does happen the time frame (and cost) is unlikely to be correct.
I don't get why anyone would invest their money on this basis.
Some combination of the two, for sure. doesn't mean that Musk can't keep doing it. however you describe it or define it, it's a proven strategy at this point. I'm not sure Larry knew how Musk would make him good on Twitter, but he knew enough about Musk to be confident it would happen.
I think this is why he gets away with it. A "win" is a product delivered years late for 3x the promised MSRP with 1/10th the expected sales. With wins like these, what would count as a loss?
He gets away with it for one reason only, and because he consistently delivers good returns on capital.
Most of Tesla's revenue derives from Model Y and FSD subs. I agree that Cybertruck was a marketing ploy. Don't think it was ever intended to be materially revenue generating.
Revenue has flatlined, but investors' confidence comes from Musk's track record for delivering good returns to investors. I think we can agree Musk succeeded in 2020 to 2025 in this regard. Whether you are confident he can do it again over next five years is the key question.
I'm personally more persuaded by the argument that Tesla is a meme-stock at this point - like much of crypto, it runs on "vibes", not solid fundamentals.
But even if share price is the metric for success, 33.6% over 5 years is like 6% compounded annually, which is okay I guess? [0]
