Everything has to go right or it will be irrelevant before it works.
Starship is not all of SpaceX. Saying, maybe because one hates Musk, that SpaceX is going to become irrelevant is wishful thinking.
In 2025 SpaceX launched more rockets into space than the entire world ever sent in a year up to 2022, something crazy like that.
Then out of, what, 14 000 active satellites in space more than half have been launched by SpaceX.
SpaceX is, so far, the biggest space success story of the history of the human race (and GP is right in saying that SpaceX is now a national security matter for the US).
Everything has to go right with that, or cybercab will be irrelevant before it works. Same deal. Same bullshitter.
> cybercab will net them $50k per car per year.
Assuming no mass boycotts, nor targeted vandalism. We've already seen both in the last 12 months.
What's keeping Chinese brands out of the USA, isn't keeping them out of Europe or much of anywhere else.
Not just that, the cost of each rocket launch is drastically cheaper than all of its competitors costs.
To bring the discussion back on topic: $50k/year or ~$250k over the course of the vehicle's lifetime, instead of $5k for a singular sale event, is why the path for the company is crystal clear. Cybercab is the same kind of step for Tesla as the Model 3 was back in 2017.
This is completely false. Audi and Chevrolet both have self driving as good as Tesla.
FSD works EVERYWHERE, almost any time.
This dichotomy has always been in place for a huge range of specifics, both for imports and technology that makes workers less relevant. The "we want cheap stuff" argument is the one that has done best historically, though the track record of handling this badly also led to the invention of actual literal communism.
One matching what you say; the other saying they're up significantly, e.g. https://finance.yahoo.com/news/byd-overtakes-tesla-world-lar...
I do not know what to make of this.
However, it is unimportant, as the main concern for your argument should be all Chinese brands combined rather than any specific brand. Unfortunately, given I'm seeing two narratives that seem to be mutually exclusive for BYD, I don't think I can trust web searches to tell me about all brands combined either.
However, even that is unimportant, as my point was more focused on the price and value for money, how Chinese models compete on AI for less cost; even to do badly in this regard (which they might or might not be given the mutually incompatible news stories I've seen) is less a narrative about Chinese market failure and more of a demonstration that hardly anyone really cares about the AI in the first place.
Who will be paying Tesla $50k/year, and why?
Considering what Uber drivers take home after costs, I think this is unrealistic.
> Chinese ADAS are much better than European ones but still far behind FSD.
Not so, on both "much" and "far". Some tests put FSD ahead of various Chinese options, other tests put them behind. Tesla's FSD is still considered a level-2 system due to the failure modes it has, whereas (Europe's) Mercedes-Benz Drive Pilot and (Japan's) Honda Sensing Elite are level 3. Allegedly others exist, but I'm mentally categorising those as vapourware until they ship, this is demonstrably a domain in which it's easy to fool oneself into thinking the destination is closer than it is.
Ask your local llm for the earnings of a $.20/.30 per mile autonomous vehicle
How widespread the manufacturer allows their software's use, is not the same thing as how good it is.
Sure, FSD works everywhere. But SuperCruise has zero crashes caused with 700 million miles driven. There are youtube channels dedicated to all the Tesla FSD crashes.
*googles* Mid Jan this year? Yes, I was focusing on my German language course for the entire month. Only online here to relax.
> It wasnt close to fsd.
Except it was. Failure modes make Tesla's FSD a level-2 system, not even level 3: https://abc7news.com/post/mercedes-beat-tesla-become-1st-off...
Almost all businesses are more cautious than Musk, that doesn't tell you the systems are actually lower performance. The certification shows where they're at after all the smoke and mirrors, and where Tesla's at just isn't very impressive these days.
This difference isn't just a Euro/US split, most US companies are also more cautious, so same goes for Waymo who have been maintaining their slow-and-cautious approach despite what Musk keeps promising with Tesla, and operate actual robo-taxies in more cities than Tesla does.
> Ask your local llm for the earnings of a $.20/.30 per mile autonomous vehicle
I mean, I can do that in my head because 100,000 miles/year is a lot of driving even at motorway speed, and 1e5 times any cost per mile is trivial mental arithmetic, and even at 30¢/mile it still doesn't get you $50k/year/car.
30,000 miles/year is more likely, given constraints about when people most need vehicles and the relative fraction of time spent on motorways vs. urban areas, at which point 30¢/mile gets you more like $9k/year.
Also, crucially, 30¢/mile is what Waymo are already claiming as its operating cost. The reason this matters is that the moment anyone has competition on this (e.g. should Tesla actually do what they've been promising is 6-18 months away for the last decade), they don't corner the market and don't get to charge that much just because it's cheaper than a human Uber driver, they're facing off against other robo-taxi people with the same advantages who are, today, already operating in more places than Tesla are and without as much political stigma. Basically, when you get two competitors like this, it looks like the market for software and prices tend to costs; everyone in transport then only makes a profit when the demand exceeds supply, like this Monday in Berlin when my partner had to spend half as much on one single taxi ride as a monthly Deutschlandticket because of a strike action, but this kind of thing does not a business plan make.