I did not know this and explains why I see so many teslas with their blinkers on and not maneuvering despite having ample room and time. Ultimately this behavior makes them unsafe for their occupants as well as others around them.

Cars only work because we can predict driver behavior, if they break that prediction that’s when bad things are likely to happen…

Lately I’ve started to ignore Tesla blinker.

Most probably because it has a radar that the Tesla lacks. That means your car has two sources of truth and can very efficiently and quickly make an informed decision about whether or not there's anything in the way.

Kia Telluride here but I assume it's the same underlying system as Hyundai - I can attest that it's very good (and doesn't cost anything extra like Tesla charges lol) which makes sense considering they have the majority stake in Boston Dynamics since a few years ago.

Tesla FSD will change lanes when you use the blinker. It will also accelerate and remain engaged if you press the pedal, e.g. if you want to coax it forward at an intersection.

Tesla's original "secret plan" (published on their website) was to become a commodity car manufacturer faster than electric cars became a commodity. Such that the other manufacturers would find them selling obsolete vehicles and Tesla just becomes the new General Motors.

This was the justification for their stock price for quite a few years: "It's logical that Tesla is worth more than all other automakers combined because it will soon be the only automaker."

Then in 2022 Elon basically admitted that they couldn't win on production and had to continue to win on technology and they'd do that with self driving. [https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basica...]

But now Tesla is way behind on self driving (which was oversold by the whole industry tbh). So what's their new plan? Now they're no longer a car company and will make robots!

> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

But it's make-believe. Tesla is a car manufacturer. They haven't shipped anything else other than cars. And they even suck at making cars these days. Tesla Semi? All but dead. The new roadster? Also dead. Full Self Driving? Doesn't exist. Robotaxis? Even if they got them to work, at this point the brand is too toxic for widespread adoption of those.

They could have persisted at being a disruptive car manufacturer and still held a several hundred billion dollar valuation. Now they are a very mediocre car manufacturer, with their only actual success being conning everyone into believing that they are a bleeding-edge tech company so their $1.5Bn valuation seems justified.

Why is making humanoid robots a moat? Other companies have been making robots for longer, humanoid and otherwise, and doing it better.

Has Optimus signed up for any sports yet: https://edition.cnn.com/2026/01/02/china/china-humanoid-robo...

Is Optimus close to what Boston Dynamics is doing with Atlas: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YIhzUnvi7Fw

Brand value is definitely a moat. Not the deepest of moats, but it is a moat nonetheless.

> It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

Tesla is valued as if it is a tech company with a car business as a side gig. Its balance sheet is a car business, and I'm not even sure it spends enough on tech to have tech qualify as a side gig. And the other tech avenues it has been pursuing (autonomous vehicles, humanoid robots) are areas that other people have been doing for better and longer. Hell, Honda had autonomous (not tele-operated) humanoid robots working 20 years ago.

To be honest, at this point, I mostly consider the other bets that Tesla is pursing are just passion projects to keep the stock price artificially high. Were Tesla more realistically valued, it would lose probably 90% or more of its value, and Musk would be a much poorer man.

Pure logic would dictate that Tesla has a market cap of around $5B. It's actually fraudulent that it's not, and for some reason the SEC allows Musk to lie on every earnings call without repercussion.

Everything tends toward commodification in a hyper-competitive, hyper-connected world. The only variable is time... and this "time" keeps shrinking.

As commodification accelerates, consolidation follows. In the current landscape, where private capital and state power are deeply entangled under the banner of national security, this consolidation no longer stays economic. It becomes geopolitical.

The end result... it translates to not just corporate monopolies, but geo-monopolies... enforced not by markets alone, but by coercion, conflict, and control over resources.

It's not that EVs are a commodity. Competition and speculative production capacity buildouts combined with lower than expected consumer demand made the market less profitable.

> > It's pure logic that Tesla has to pursue bets that would justify billion dollar valuations and being a car company isn't that.

You can pursue everything with words, even you can pursue Sydney Sweeney but then you have to show the receipts.

The receipts of Tesla (Factories, lines of production, expertise of people hired, 25 years of history...) are one of car company.

But of course, it's all narrative so people will keep outbidding each other to own a piece of this company.

The financialization of hope, that's what it is.

Tesla's moat is constantly moving to the next thing and claiming it has a moat before moving on to the next thing.

Elon's business model is moving from one government subsidized thing to the next (see SpaceX now bribing for tax dollars to go to Mars).

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Bingo.

> Do you have any sources for that claim? I can attest that current iteration of FSD is very, very good, and very likely is a safer driver than I am.

That's a damning statement about your driving skills, and probably not true or you'd have had your license revoked by now. I've had FSD for five years, and even today it regularly makes dangerous mistakes. For example, left turns and roundabouts are the equivalent of Russian roulette, but just last week my FSD started driving through a red light because it interpreted a green left-arrow as a sign that it could proceed forward.

If you need to do 50 miles on the interstate it's pretty solid though.

Lemonade doesn't support your claim that FSD is a safer driver than you are. It just says that, most charitably, they believe FSD and a human operator are safer than just a human operator (The co-founder said exactly this to Reuters [0]). Further, the program has only been around for a week and their marketing copy specifically cites "Tesla's data" as the source for the 50% reduction rather than any sort of independent analysis.

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/lemona...

> At least one major insurance company agrees

Lemonade has <1% market share

> At least one major insurance company agrees

You mean the insurance company that has only existed for 10 years and I never heard of before this Tesla tie-in marketing gimmick?

I assume OP meant something closer to "fair market value" than "fair vs. unfair." Tesla is not priced according to its underlying assets or technical analysis (e.g. P/E ratio), but solely based on hype/sentiment.

Interestingly, retail investors and company insiders collectively own more of Tesla than institutional investors.

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Can they afford to do that? I would assume it would be the other way around unless the valuation of either/both changes drastically.

XAI acquiring twitter is probably a better recent example than solarcity.

I wonder if they reconfigure it and tone down the look to something more traditional.

$40B in cash/equivalents, minus some $13-20B in debt (depending what source you pick).

Oh their self-driving thing...Full* "Self" Driving (supervised)(see notes)(not liable for anything)

It's baked into the foundations of the U.S. While perhaps not a cult as we describe it today, even the first puritans that settled here were considered extremists not welcome in their home countries. For such a young country, we have always had a burgeoning industry in upstart cults, grifts, and religions (but I repeat myself).

Trust me, I hate Tesla and Elon as much as the next naysayer

But just to keep the story straight

Tesla received ~$3 billion in subsidies.

When Elon exercised his Tesla options in 2021, he paid $11 billion in taxes on it.

By all accounts those subsidies were an incredibly good use of taxpayer money, and similar subsidies should keep being handed out, even if the byproduct is another big troll on twitter.

That's true for a lot of (most?) car manufacturers?

I fully agree that TSLA is madly overpriced as a car company, and too hyped as any other type of company.

An important question is therefore: why didn't anyone else?