> Tesla is trying to create self driving taxis to make the rest of the auto industry obsolete.

This is a pretty baffling take. Most people in the world operate their own cars, and even if taxis were free, a large portion of them would continue to operate their own cars because it's convenient.

Taxis also don't replace a good chunk of the new vehicle market. People driving fleet trucks aren't going to work out of taxis. The top selling vehicles in the USA are pickup trucks, and it isn't even close.

Lastly, even if they succeed, competition will catch up and the market will be saturated.

In 20 years, people will still be buying the humble Civic. While the next 20 years at Tesla will probably be a string of market failures and wacky promises of personal space craft or some shit.

> Lastly, even if they succeed, competition will catch up and the market will be saturated.

Waymo is already in the lead, and OEMs will be beating down Waymo's door to license a simplified Driver stack if L3 autonomy becomes a sales-driver (ha!)

Edit: Waymo already has strategic partnerships with Toyota and the Hyundai group, so OEMs are already further along this path than I thought

I didn't state my opinion at all. That's just why it's valued the way it is. People believe that it will be valuable, that's what an investment is.

I'm just offering a reasonable explanation for why people value it. Nobody has to agree.