This means 2 things. 1)@elonmusk is truly afraid of Chinese competition in the global automotive industry. And 2) he's underestimating #Tesla's capability to produce a competitive low-cost EV.
3. Expect low-#lithium prices for long.
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Elon Musk is pushing Tesla to go all-in on Robotaxi.
From everything that happened in the last few weeks, speaking to a few new sources, if it wasn't clear before, Elon has pushed Tesla to go all-in on self-driving. - Cheaper EV program, NV9, postponed. - Robotaxi timeline accelerated - Rush to build new data center at GFTX - billions spent on compute power
If Tesla can't make self-driving work, it will have a minimum of three years without meaningful growth in deliveries because of this focus on self-driving. I get it, to a degree. AI is moving at incredible speeds right now, and there’s this feeling that technologies will move a lot faster because of it. Many tech leaders are rushing to attach their companies to its growth. I’ve had FSD Beta in my car for 2 years now, and it didn’t feel to me like FSD was improving at AI speeds, if at all, but I’ve had v12 for a week now, and I have to admit that this is a meaningful improvement.
But Tesla FSD needs a lot more than a meaningful improvement to truly become self-driving. The idea is that the AI rate of improvement will help it get there fast, this is a huge bet. If it doesn't work, Tesla will simply not be the dominant player in the post-electrification auto industry that it was on the path to become. Elon is basically saying: Tesla wins self-driving or nothing. To be fair, he warned us all about it. He said: "Tesla is worth nothing without self-driving". Now, we can confirm it with the recent moves at Tesla. He set up the company to be like that whether you like it or not.
