Transcription
While Tesla's plans to launch a paid robo-taxi program in June will start slow, they've already got millions of vehicles able to use full self-driving supervised in the US, Canada, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and China. But what will the world look like once autonomy is commonplace? What new businesses will emerge?
Today, we get to speak with Case Roland Shop, an executive at Mr. Green, one of the largest electric vehicle leasing companies in the world. The company owns nearly 5,000 Tesla vehicles and is gearing up to be a major autonomous fleet management company, not just in Europe, but also in the US.
Thank you very much. Welcome, uh, Case. I appreciate you joining me.
Well, thanks for inviting me. Always a pleasure.
Yeah, thank you very much. This is very exciting for me because I want—I've been wanting to follow up with you guys. I did an interview with Florian Minder, of course, your company, Mr. Green. But, uh, this idea that your company is basically going all in on Tesla vehicles. You guys have been buying Tesla vehicles—5,000. You own 5,000 now with the idea that, you know what, at some point the world's going to change. There's going to be autonomy, and you want to be a fleet management company. Can you tell us a little bit more about, uh, Mr. Green and what you guys do?
Yeah, for sure. So, um, the company was founded actually in 2008 by Florian Mindop and Markers, and they started off just buying some electric vehicles because that's where they thought the future would lie, and then in 2013 Tesla came to market. So we went all in on Tesla and started buying the S's, X's, and then in 2018 when Model 3 got announced. That's where the big bust came, and, um, then I think we grew the fleet. In total, we purchased—purchased almost 10, 11,000 of them. Uh, but we sold, of course, the older ones which weren't FSD capable. And, uh, right now we have a fleet of around 5,000 vehicles, a little bit under actually. And, um, we made a big bet after Autonomy Day that the future is autonomous and FSD is going to be the big winner. Um, so we actually have already 40% of our fleet equipped with FSD. Uh, right now it doesn't work here in the—in, uh, in Europe. Not as good as it should, however. Um, but yeah, that's where we're at.
That is so brilliant. But—but a big, uh, bet that was—but I think it is brilliant. Right. You're making this bet. So you're waiting until it gets approved. We'll ask you a question about when do you think it gets approved in Europe? Let's walk me through a little bit of, um, the thinking here. So, you will own 5,000 cars. You will buy as many as you can. Uh, it makes a lot of sense to me. By the way, this is, you know, there's a lot of people I know that they're already planning to become a fleet management, but it sounds like you have—you not only do you want to be a fleet manager, you want to help other fleet management—tell—to tell me a bit more about your business model.
Yeah. Yeah. So, right now we're the main business is still a full operational leasing service. Uh, so, we put them out on long-term rents, uh, with all services included, and that actually helps us pay back those vehicles, and in the end the vehicles remain in our possession. So, the bet has always been on, um, that instead of a decreasing asset, it's—it's going to be an increasing asset. Yeah. However, I think, uh, we're going to shift from that because it's not the asset value itself that's going to rise, but the revenue streams coming from those assets are going to go 5x, 10x. Um, and that's the future where we're betting on. Um, so we're trying to accumulate as many as possible, and we're always on the—on the lookout for people that share the same mindset and the same vision for the future. Um, and the people that are in that mindset already know what they're talking about, and we want to partner up with those. So, software companies, shepherds, bigger fleet operators, and combine forces to make—to become a key player in this, uh, industry that's going to be, uh, unveiled, I hope in the next month.
Yeah, I want to dive deeper in exactly how that would work. Um, so first of all, you're—you've got 5,000—the—I would imagine that since you've owned it for so long, you've leasing them out. So that—that is your business model for now. Brilliant. By the way, I think it's brilliant. Now, but the prices of the cars fell, right? Because the secondhand value of these cars fell. But at some point when people—when it becomes like—and it's now, right? This is happening this year maybe or certainly if I first half next year. Uh, people will realize that these aren't just cars. These are—right—robots with wheels. These have a brain. Soon you'll be able to speak to it through Grock. But more importantly, it can drive itself. And so then the value of old Teslas will just automatically skyrocket. Like even if you don't have FSC, people will come knocking on your door and says, "Let me buy that from you because it can generate up to $30,000 a year."
Exactly. What—how much do you think that these old Teslas that you currently have now, what val—how much value do you think it might jump up to? Two times, five times. I—I know you said that—that's even—that's good, it's still not—that's not really the business model, but yeah.
Well, um, we have always thought that, uh, in general like the resale value of a Tesla was going to be higher than any other vehicle in the market because the regular depreciation curves, um, have been kind of constructed by the old industry with regular updates and, um, facelifts of those models. So it was kind of expected what the decrease would be, and the market value of a used Tesla has gone like this over the past couple of years. Um, in the chip crisis, for instance, uh, Tesla was the only company that was able to deliver. So what happened is that the market value of a used Tesla from like a year or two years old was actually higher than the new car prices. That's like—it's defining that resale value is very difficult and also like, um, very timesp specific. But then in 2023 Tesla came with some price cuts, even in 2022 as well, uh, they also raised prices a little bit, and with interest rates rising, uh, the whole market kind of collapsed, and in 2024, uh, very Dutch specific, uh, we have government incentives for 5 years, uh, that make it very profitable or very attractive to, uh, lease an electric vehicle. However, after those 5 years, those government incentives go away, and it's all based on the value for, uh, for the taxes, and those initial vehicles were quite expensive. So, between 60, 70,000 for the long range and performance models. Um, and all of a sudden like 30,000 of those vehicles flooded the market. Yeah. So where we expected market values to be at around 15, 17, 18,000, they plummeted to 10, 9, maybe even eight at some times. However, we—we're slowly starting to see a rise again, uh, in those prices. And I think if that robot taxi opportunity becomes, uh, a reality, it's not only commercially very interesting, but also if you're—if your commute is like 2 hours a day and you can work during those two hours a day, that's very valuable. And with just either a subscription of like €99 a month or, uh, €7,500, uh, USD—euros, you're going to unleash the full potential of it, and you can deploy it on the robot taxi network when you're working in the office. Uh, so it will be a money printing machine, and everyone who is owner of that vehicle will profit from the revenue streams generating from those cars.
Yeah. Do you have a guess on what the value of that Tesla would be jump to once people realize this is a real reality?
Well, that's—that's a big unknown yet because, of course, we have all hardware 3—still a discussion if FSD is going to be possible there. Uh, but let's say hardware 4, we also know that hardware 5 or AI5 is coming with a dedicated cyber cap, robo-taxi, and perhaps even the Robbo, and it all depends on the value of that cyber cap. If cyber cap comes out at 25k or 30k, that will have its effect as well on the resale values. So I estimate somewhere—depending on the build—build year of the Model 3s, by the way, uh, everything produced after 2021, uh, we'll see a fairly steady value of somewhere between 15k till 23k, I guess.
Gotcha. I think it's going to be a lot higher than that. These are now autonomy—autonomous capable cars, and so people will buy it regardless. Uh, yeah. Okay. Let's talk about how your model works. So, you have—you're a fleet management company. What—What is your thinking of that? How this will work? Assume that there's already full self-driving. There's robo-taxis around. You've got approval. You own, let's say, 5,000 of them, maybe probably by that point more. What are you expecting to do?
Well, we want to be an aggregator. Um, so what Elon Musk said—the future is going to be, uh, private—private owned vehicles, uh, big fleet management or fleet operating companies, um, and Tesla itself will jump in as well. I see a lot of potential for delivery services, um, for ride-hailing services, taxi companies. Let's say we run a fleet of 10,000 vehicles. We can have them running around on subscriptions to, uh, private individuals or to businesses. But as long as those cars aren't being used by, let's say, the owners of that vehicle or the leis of the vehicle or the renters—however you want to call it—we want to make sure that we partner up with companies such as Uber, Lyft, um, you name it, and whenever there's peak demand but they don't have enough drivers or supply or—or vehicles, they can tap—tap into our API, our fleet management API, and get the vehicles based on AI with the, uh, most optimum state of charge and in, uh, the most close range that they can be there within 5 minutes. Uh, so that's a possibility that we—that we can have a connection there. But your car can also at night be, uh, a sort of a delivery package hub. So where right now you see a lot of—especially after co—a lot of home deliveries, and you need to be at home for those deliveries, but after co also people go out the door again—let's say you want to decrease the traffic density and the—the traffic jams during the day—most of that is being caused by either big lorries driving from hubs to hubs and the last-mile delivery within the city center—if you can replace that to the—
Right. And you can have access to that vehicle with, uh, the—the awesome Bluetooth low energy connectivity that Tesla supplies. Um, and also the cameras on the sides of the vehicle as well as the cameras in your phone. Uh, you have authentication. People can just open the trunk, put the package in there. Uh, so there's a lot of use cases to, um, to—to think of. And I think—or I believe that once the tech is available, a lot of creativity will flow, and there's also a lot of things that we are not capable of conceiving yet because the tech isn't there. Um, so we're also very curious what will happen there and what will—hopefully it'll spark creativity, uh, and innov—innovation.
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. At one point, right, Elon was interviewed by Tesla owner Silicon Valley, and he said that we're going to need fleet managers, shepherds, to take care of the cars. So, that was a good validation of your business model. But then now they came out and said, "Oh, we're going to have our own, you know, automated cleaning that might come." And so, what would you guys actually do? So, let's say Tesla rolls it out here in the US. They have their own cars. They allow retail owners of Teslas to put in their car or pull it out like an Airbnb. Elon's been talking about that. And so when—when they—when they allow retail owners to do that, Tesla says, "Okay, we'll take care of it." In a way that they've become the shepherd because they will then, you know, send it to the—the—the automated cleaning before and after, send it back to your home. What would your role be in that scenario?
Well, think of, uh, having servicing hubs, servicing and cleaning hubs at strategically placed locations. Um, making deals with, uh, airline, uh, like, uh, airports and bigger transportation companies. And it all depends again on the form factor of the vehicle because that self-cleaning robot, the robot that sucks, um, is of course designed for CyberCap. CyberCap has no wheels, uh, no steering wheels, sorry. Of course, it has wheels. Um, but the doors open, so it's easily accessible, but that's completely different for a Model 3 and for a Model Y, like getting in and out of that vehicle. So, in that transition phase, you would still need, uh, cleaning and servicing companies with—I think—human beings, uh, at least for that transition phase. And I don't believe that Tesla is going to fulfill a big role at first because what I've noticed over the past couple of years, uh, Tesla is great at selling vehicles. Um, but there are some complaints still about service centers, availability, weight times, and stuff like that. So I think it's a little bit too much for them to start doing this. And that's where bigger fleet operators and bigger fleet management companies come into play. And right now, um, we already have such a hub, uh, around Amsterdam. So where we first had our, um, operations headquarters in city center Amsterdam, not useful for, uh, going, uh, there with a car and parking it. So we decided to buy a—a big—big facility where we also located our headquarters towards, uh, where we facilitate charging, touchups, um, small maintenance, uh, and bigger maintenance. We have some other companies as well, and we do also do our own paint jobs, and I think that is essential in the robot taxi future that you want to have as little cars in the city center and driving around constantly and going by themselves to these service centers. So hubs are very important. Uh, getting the funding to buy those vehicles is very important, um, and also making the—having the right software in place, and we have been testing quite extensively and also, um, ourselves by tapping into the fleet API, and we have gathered immense data about movement of the vehicles, usage, how much standill, how much time are they charging, where are they charging, what did it cost, how many kilowatt hours went in there, what's the phantom drain, um, how many times did people, uh, start and—and, uh, close the vehicle—that data is very valuable as well. So selling that data to other companies is also very valuable, and you can also think of, uh, for instance, collaborating with local governments, um, because these cameras capture everything that's happening on the road. So mapping entire cities, um, and also giving alerts, uh, where the local governments can pay a little bit more attention to getting the infrastructure, um, at an optimum state for autonomous driving in as well.
I love it. You guys have really given us a lot of thought, and you're already in there doing it now. So I do think that, um, yeah, Tesla will more likely than not partner with companies like you or bigger companies. I think there'll be, you know, this idea that an—an owner will be able to put in your car. Yes, they're going to allow that, but they—they will prefer to partner with bigger and bigger and bigger, uh, organizations, right? And then like you say, maybe you'll be the one to buy it from them. Tesla would prefer to buy—sell it to you or Hertz, and there—whole new businesses come flowing through that, you know, their ver—you know, they've created a whole new platform that's going to be very exciting. And then from that there's many different kinds of businesses that can help it up. You know, I can't even think of it, right? Is there any that you're—
Yeah, it's—if you think of pharmacies, for instance, right now people need to go there physically to get their drugs, but, um, you—they can also be home delivered, and people that need to go to a doctor's appointment—in the past, uh, you would have either call a relative or a caretaker, uh, to do that for you to bring you there or an expensive taxi service, and right now for a very low cost, uh, doctors can even price it in—like general practitioners or, uh, hospitals. It's an extra service that they can offer. So that's also another possibility that you can think. So somebody needs to partner with these kinds of—or—of businesses, and that could be your role, right? Is that what you're saying?
Yeah. You guys can be the one to organize these kinds of things. So even though Tesla has, uh, kind of the—the—the base—the base of it—a—you can buy as many Teslas as you can, and two—there's all these kind of roles that you guys can be playing to supplement it.
Mhm. Yeah. This is great. So what's the plan? You got 5,000 in, uh, Europe right now. Um, you're waiting for—We'll talk about Europe FSD approval, but what's your plan? Are you—do you have, uh, are you guys going to raise money? Are you—how are you going to get to the US? Those kind of, um—
Yeah, so, um, we have been working on like how to set up a, uh, the necessary funds, and then you can also be a little bit more creative because in, um, in the traditional sense, it's usually a loan, uh, that you get from banks or angel investors for equity and stuff like that. Um, but we want to put the assets, um, as the backing for that loan actually, and you can also maybe think of using blockchain technology for that and where you can pull maybe the whole Tesla retail, uh, community who already believe in this future, and for a fairly low ticket—ticket price, you can be, uh, you can become partial owner of an asset and even multiple assets, and I think the returns on those assets—assets are going to be bigger than when you're going to buy Tesla stock and wait for the returns on that. So that's also interesting, and you can also do it like side by side, but if we use blockchain technology for that, there's also less need for administration and making sure—sending invoices back and forth. Uh, so we're also looking into that, and it's also very secure. Um, but we're in talks with people from, uh, um, the United Arab Emirates, for instance, uh, because we're going to—we're seeing a lot of, uh, movement there as well, especially in Saudi Arabia and Dubai, and in the US we are talking with some good investors as well and also with some aspiring fleet operators that need those funds, and we believe we can also play a role there as, uh, connecting those aspiring fleet operators to bigger investment or to retail investment communities and bring everything together, and of course our experience with these vehicles in the fleet API is, uh, yeah, tremendous.
Okay, it's—it's coming together a little bit more for me. So basically there's a—a lot of people I've been talking to in the US who's like aspiring to be a fleet management, right? They go—one day when these guys come out there and it's already a robot taxi, I'm going to buy 10 of them myself, uh, because I—I'd like to get my fingers on this, but—well, if you just buy 10, they probably need to partner with somebody like you to provide all their services—aggregated it, uh, just make it a little bit more full. So they're—they have a service, but just, you know, combine you guys all together. Okay. What—so what are you—what is your time frame? So, you've bought the—you bought these ahead of time, and you're waiting, uh, very patiently, but you've got a business model that covers you, which is brilliant. But in the meantime, at some point, and it's coming very soon, we got FSD approved—all these countries I listed out in intro. Um, what are you waiting for? Obviously FSD approved in Europe for you to then implement something or do you need to wait for robo-taxi to be launched, uh, city by city by Tesla and then those are the cities you're going to launch in?
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's the latter part, um, is very vital because once it becomes a reality, uh, more and more investors will come out and want to be, uh, want to play—play a role in this space, and then finally you also have the confirmation that this expected future is finally a reality. Uh, so we're very—we're waiting for that actually. And, um, I will be traveling with Florian and Mark to the US in about a week from now. We're going to—at least I am going to spend
I think two to three weeks in the Austin area, and then I'm going to travel all around the country, and uh, ending my visit in San Francisco and LA. Um, hope to see you at the X takeover. I just purchased my tickets.
Um, but here in Europe, a lot of it depends on regulations, sadly. So we've seen a lot of talks about from Elon with regulatory approval pending. Uh, well, it's still pending. Uh, about a year ago, we were very close, and then all of a sudden, a group of countries—uh, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and the UK—uh, last minute decided to block it, and that's where another division came in: system-initiated maneuvers on the one end, uh, on highways, and system-initiated maneuvers in urban areas.
Well, in September this year, we're going to see system-initiated maneuvers being allowed on highways, and uh, they call that DCIS phase two, and phase three would be um, FSE supervised, essentially, also on urban areas. I think that's going to take a while, uh, especially right now with the developments—it's not looking very good. However, uh, we have next to like the United Nations also the European Union. Uh, an article got published by Politico a couple of days ago where the EU might um, get rid of their strict regulations um, in the like the the trade tariffs war between uh, the US and the European Union. So there is still a possibility that this year we might see um, some movement in the regulatory space, but I think it's going to take at least two years. So we want to pay close attention to what's happening in the US, partner with people there that run the day-to-day operations um, and take those learnings and apply them later on in Europe as well.
I had heard that there were certain loopholes that could happen. One example I've heard is the Czech Republic already passed something, some bill, some law that allows full self-driving, but uh, but but it will be in January 2026, so the end of this year. Uh, and then that will bypass the UNCCE. Um, is it so tell me about that one.
Um, well, there's an important distinction to be made because we have ADAS on the one end and we have ADS on the other end, and to um, make that in Tesla terms, we have FSD supervised and we have FSD unsupervised. FSD supervised is um, a specific set of regulations that, by the way, sorry, that's what I was I was I was referring to—just FSE supervised being approved. You were referring to FSD unsupervised, like this potential for robotaxi trials. Is that right?
Uh, yeah, for the the the trials with No, no, sorry. I was talking about FSD supervised because that's I think a necessary step to get the the people on board, and but the longer that takes, the less um, important it becomes because if unsupervised is going to be on on the roads in a couple of months from now—um, actually this month—uh, where we're going to see the launch um, at least in a small pilot form of Um, but they're making legislation for both variants. So, ADAS on the one and ADS on the other.
Okay. And that specific bill that you're talking about is indeed uh, going to go uh, into force January 2026. And that's the first EU country that has tackled the liability issue for autonomous vehicles. Yeah, and no other country or group of countries or transnational governments have been able to uh, to do that. So regulators all around the globe are going to take a look at this um, because this bill actually describes how to police uh, the bill and how to actually um, make sure that um, who was at fault and who was liable in in whichever scenario you can conceive of. Um, so that's a big first step in terms of uh, autonomous driving systems, and the EU and the UNCCE in parallel are making legislation for this as well. But I think the earliest deliverables there are uh, September 2026 uh, or March 2027. So that's quite some time from now.
Okay. Gotcha. Yeah. I've read about that, and I thought it was brilliant. It was basically very clear that says that if the vendor who has the autonomous car uh, very clearly says that they are on full self-driving and it gets into an accident, they're responsible; they pay for it. But if they warned you, and you the driver are uh, have been told, then you're responsible for it. That's great. Definitely brilliant. Straightforward. That's that's also like the the basis of that's that's actually why it's also taking so so much time for both these these laws to um, or regulatory frameworks actually um, to get there because HMI—human-machine interface—that's yeah—um, that is vital, and they're discussing, okay, do you need a prompt um, that alerts you in time and that you have enough time to accept the system-initiated maneuver, or are you going to need some other incentives or haptic feedback, for instance. Um, but this bill in Czech in the Czech Republic um, can actually tap into the API of that vehicle and make sure that indeed, did you get a a warning that the operational design domain or the driving task is not capable of of performing um, and that you as a human should take over because it's going to be an accident going is pending. Um, so it's it's you can finally define where it went wrong and what actually happened. And right now, with just a couple of days ago, we saw this video being released right from um, FSD supervised killing uh, this this woman uh, due to sunlight blocking the vehicle. Um, but it they never go in depth in these uh, investigations. So these these Nitsa investigations or other investigations um, and when the media picks it up, it's always, yeah, because it only got cameras and it it doesn't have LAR, so it's dangerous. It's a killing machine on wheels. But if you finally can read out these these uh, error messages, then you can finally um, decide who's liable and what to do there from a legal standpoint. So that's it's a very important step, I think. And um, Elon responded to this as well. Uh, he replied he commented on this with just cool cool.
Yeah. Uh, for that what that that accident you're referring to—uh, Bloomberg wrote an article about this uh, death of this pedestrian uh, who was killed by a car that was on FSD. What they failed to mention is that this was in 2023 using FSE 11. This is before the neural net version of 12 and and onward. And um, they blamed it on the the sunlight, but uh, that that apparently the car did not see that, but the car actually did see that the you know that there's a person there. It didn't move away fast enough, but the person who was driving it did not blame FSD. So, it's just it was a bit of an exaggeration, right?
Um, yeah. And by the way, the reason that that person the reason the person was a pedestrian at the time because in the highway is because there was a another accident that happened ahead of it that c that caused you know the the backup, and that's why she got of her car that would she wouldn't have done that if they had all FSD. They would not have likely have even had that first accident. So that's that scenario would have wouldn't have happened in the first place then. So this is and the world is about to change. We're going to go into robotaxis.
Um, you guys have been waiting patiently. You've been buying cars. Is there like some number of cars? It's just as many as you can. Get as much money as you can, get as many as you can, or is there some sort of like milestones you're shooting for?
Yeah, our our milestone is at least 15,000 of them uh, by 2027. Um, however, market circumstances over here in the Netherlands and Europe are quite difficult, and not many people see this future. And you need people with deep pockets and banks uh, that are willing to back you. And as long as the sentiment and the media coverage is very negative, you're going to have a hard time explaining it. So preaching to the choir is easy, but uh, preaching to the unconverted is very difficult. Um, so that's why uh, again, if robot taxi launch takes place in let's say a week from now and it's going to have good results, is going to make our mission a lot more easy as well.
Yeah. Oh, that's it's it's here; right, that's the whole point of uh, entrepreneurship. You get ahead of the game, and uh, you see something that others don't: take risks, but uh, it's happening. You guys are set up well. You're going to come to the US. Are you looking for partners? Are you looking for investors? When are you going to yeah, both. So uh, we're already in touch with some smaller fleet operators that are um, doing their business already in a small scale, so uh, short-term subscriptions to uh, Uber drivers or renting the cars out via Turo or possibly even having already like a a base minimum viable product of their own rental ride-hailing apps.
Mhm. Uh, I'm in good contact with a lot of um, Tesla-specific fleet management software companies. Um, so yeah, we just want to learn as much as possible. Uh, we're going to have some visits with the DOS uh, of different states, and um, yeah, most of the time I'm going to spend in Austin in the Fort Worth, Dallas, Austin area. See what the industry is doing there. Um, the legal landscape is pretty straightforward there, and uh uh, very much like a less a fair um, kind of approach. Um, and I'm very curious to see the space in uh, on the west coast as well. Um, how it's taking place there because I've never been in a Whimo before. Uh, so I'm very curious to see how how that's going. Um, but yeah, investors, uh, fleet operators, uh, servicing companies, uh, real estate, uh, transportation companies, airports, uh, the lot.
Yeah. Gotcha. So, Mr. Green has chosen to go all in on Teslas, but then you said earlier that uh, you see potentially, hey, you'll partner with Uber and Lyft or whoever if if that's one of the ways to make sure that uh, there's a demand of supply enough for the demand. So what's your thinking there? Right now, like Uber and Lyft are a platform connecting the driver to the the whole taxi market. So they disrupted the whole taxi industry in essence. But I think those platforms are also on the point of being disrupted uh, by this new technology because where in the current uh, world as a driver you are limited to just one car. You can only drive one at a time. But robot taxis will enable all those drivers uh, working for Uber Uber right now are going to buy 2, 3, 4, 5, 10, 15, 20 vehicles and become their own shepherds in essence.
Mhm. And um, I think once the price comes down of transportation, and that's where I think the biggest disruption is going to be, the demand for ride-hailing is going to go skyrocket, and the need for public transportation like buses and trams will become obsolete, like Mhm. why have a a line bus driving around taking so much space up on the on the roads. Um, so that demand is going to go up, but do they have enough supply, and that's where parties such as uh, Mr. Green come into play um, that we can have uh, our API opened up to all these companies, and then they can just simply tap into our cars um, yeah, whichever one is closest and has the best uh, state of charge and is clean.
Gotcha. Okay. So Tesla will have their own network, but then you think that you'll have a bunch of Teslas, and then when other organizations they need uh, cars, they can tap into you guys, and you guys will fill their needs. Okay. Yeah, that makes sense. They tap into the robot taxi network, and the robot taxi network will become like the the overarching uh, space, and we can just deploy them on the network, and then other companies tap into the robot taxi network. Right? At the end of the day, you own the cars, and then so you get the cut anyways as Tesla would have done, and so you just want to own as many cars as possible. Okay. It's a it's a great idea. Love that you're doing that. Tell me about you, Case. Uh, your background, your um, you told me that you're all in Tesla almost as a stock.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, that started in 2020 after I've seen Autonomy Day. So I started at Mr. in 2019. Uh, before that, I have had some some mostly commercial uh, jobs, and um, I have a a background in political science, hence also why I uh, dive into the regulations uh, of it.
Mhm. And um, I've after seeing Autonomy Day and especially Autonomy Day 2, I I noticed where we're where we're heading, and that's it's an inevitable future, and that Tesla is very bold in their approach, and the the the value increase potential that it's going to in unleash. I thought, okay, I have around 20k in savings. I have I have it on the bank for well, three, four, five years doing nothing, and it's actually costing me money to have it on the bank there. Yeah. So I thought, okay, uh, I've never invested before, hopped in and started buying uh, like a big chunk at first and then every month with my additional salary I can buy one stock. Yeah. So I bought it when it was at 900, 100, 700. Um, it has been a roller coaster. Um, and actually watching your videos but also other uh, videos in the on the YouTube and Xpace has helped me tremendously to stay calm, filter out for noise and just watch the signal. So thank you very much, Herbert, um, and making these investments. Uh, I'm almost all in Tesla, but I also am uh, very much invested into Nvidia, and Nvidia I have made a very good bet there at the right time. So I bought it when it was like 120, 130, and I've seen the rise to 1300 that increase. Um, I decided to shave some of the position, and here you see a Model 3. Um, I decided to buy the Model 3 Highland, and uh, yeah, that's it's a great car.
Yeah, I've got one of those, too. So, okay. So, this is great. You uh, Tesla stock you've and and then the the bet on the robotaxi. It's It's here. What's your What are the milestones you're expecting for robotaxi to succeed? What's your probabilities? So, are you thinking is Mr. Green? What's your thinking that Tesla will do 10, 20 cars and then a thousand cars? How many cars by the end of this year?
Yeah, that's a great question. Um, I think like the initial rollout uh, what Elon mentioned is that it's going to be like 10 to 20 vehicles at first. Um, I think primarily uh, Model Y because Model Y has that internal cabin radar. Uh, it has the front uh, camera and it also has the external microphone uh, to respond to emergency services. Um, I think safety is going to be a big aspect of it. Um, are they going to use remote operators? Uh, and how um, invasive are they going to be like how big of a roar are they going to play?
Mhm. If they truly show that they can pull off this unsupervised. And then what I'm especially looking forward to seeing is how quickly can they scale from let's say 20 to 500,000 in the Austin area, and then how quickly can they scale to other cities as well. So, I think San Francisco and LA is a it's a fair possibility. That's uh, that's also a place where they're going to going to drive around. Uh, I even think they got the transportation uh, check mark already. Um, but also the price the price of the price per mile and the price per ride. Um, if that's half or a quarter of what Uber and Whimo is offering,
Mhm. then I think at the end of the year it's game over. And then additionally, what I'm very much looking forward to is how quickly are they able to ramp Sarcap production. And I think they're going to be at around 1,000 to 5,000 vehicles at the end of this year mass production. And I then assume that they will leapfrog like or or grow in that year uh, to let's say a production amount of 50,000. And then if that all goes goes well, scale up to like five, 10, 15 big cities, major cities in uh, in the US and then move to other countries.
Yeah. And so at the end of this year, how many robotaxis do you think and how many cities? Okay. Um, I hope this is going to age well, but I think at the end of this year, it is possible that we're going to see at least three to five US cities um, uh, where robot taxis are going to be driving around. And what's the definition of a robot taxi? I think it's going to be a combination of Model Y and uh, Cyber Cap. Uh, so let's say numbers at the end of the end of this year. I think 10, 10, 10,000 vehicles is um, okay, it's it's not unthinkable. It's not.
But whoa, that's the highest that's the biggest number I've seen. I' I've been asking folks, and they generally will just be conservative and say 2,000, 3,000, 5,000.
Yeah. Yeah. But they have enough production capacity for the Model Y. Um, and Model Y sales aren't that strong. So if Robbo taxi um, shows that it works, why not unleash those cars to the robot taxi network?
Yep. Yep. If it I I agree with you. It's like it's like uh, it's like very slow, right? 10, 20, 30, and I think you said 100, 500. But once you get to some some number, let's say a thousand. If then here, what you're testing is not safety anymore. At that point, you're testing the infrastructure, right? How many remote drivers, the cleaning, the app, all that. But once you can do a thousand, once you hit a thousand, what's the difference between 5,000 and 10,000? It's right. They can already like jump fast.
Yeah. Yeah. I think so too. And Tesla has surprised us many times with uh, how quickly they can scale. Uh, just take a look at how fast they can build a giant factory out of nowhere. Um, so yeah, never bet against Elon. Uh, so uh, yeah, I think they're going to amaze us.
Yeah, I think so too. Um, so uh, what tell me more about uh, what your the risks that you guys are seeing here potentially like you know how long might all this might take or are you guys pretty well confident that this is all happening?
Yeah, like what Tesla itself is going to do in this space is also going to be of vital importance, and that's actually the biggest risk because if we are going to invest a whole bunch in getting the necessary infrastructure and servicing hubs all around and then all of a sudden Tesla comes and all their service centers are capable of doing this, then what's your role going to be? So again, waiting for Tesla is very important for us. Um, and it's very difficult to really prepare for this. So what what we're aiming for is having the right partnerships in place uh, with enough uh, money and operational uh, capacity that once we see the future become a reality, we can move fast.
Yeah. Yeah, but you don't want to prepare too much in advance and be tied into leases, big purchases. That's that's a big risk. Yeah. You I think the damage for the vehicles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You guys need to be big enough, and then as soon as Tesla says it's a go, things are moving forward, then they are interested in contacting folks like you. You want to be big enough that you are the the folks that they'll call first. Uh, but then you but you don't want to get too big too early when it you called it wrong in terms of like a year, two years, three years later before they actually truly rolled it out.
Exactly. So like where we've seen in the co area um, we have seen a lot of companies go down the drain because all of a sudden you saw like a big surge in deliveries. So all these small like drop-shipping companies decided to uh, start accumulating enough stock to deliver everyone. Um, but once COVID cleared, all those companies went downhill, and also a lot of retailers in the city centers couldn't pay their rents anymore. So, um, that's also something that if we're going to invest big time right now and have everything in place, uh, yeah, if Tesla moves, Tesla is such a big company, um, they can swipe you under the rug, uh, in an instant.
What's your thinking about humanoid robots? Because that also has the potential to be, uh, needing a fleet management company as well. Uh, what do is it part of, uh, your plans?
Yeah, I am not too creative yet in that space. Um, but Folion has a lot of ideas about this. Um, but I think the two go hand in hand. So where I was talking earlier about like last-mile delivery, uh, packaging hubs, that's those jobs are going to be fulfilled
By Optimite, at night, working around the clock, but still they need to be charged. They need, need to be stored when idle.
Um, so also, like bigger fleet management companies, um, it's it's an easy next step and an easy add-on because if you have like the the investment infrastructure around it in place, you have the servicing infrastructure in place, um, for the robot taxis, it's not that difficult to scale up with uh humanoids and servicing those cars as well. Right. It's it's uh it's the big idea, I think, and more opportunity with that.
In fact, if anything, you could argue that that's going to be more likely to happen than robo-taxi. You can argue regulation-wise, right? The, so you know, back to Europe, like I always um uh I worked for one of the largest uh European c companies in the past and you know, they they said that they they're very aware that if the US is doing something and they're a major economic block and you got China doing something and they're a major economic block, you're needs to do this otherwise it's like you will lose. And so if the US now allows FSD and then China allows FSD and they're both moving towards robo-taxis, that will make it so economically viable for the companies that are there, factories that are there to be able to produce uh sell cheaper products because transportation is one of the top expenses for these uh they'll make be much more efficient.
So wouldn't that just end up like I'm just like yeah, of course, it's Europe though, right? Europe regulations is just ridiculous. But, you know, the idea that Europe needs to realize that they need to just do it because you you're stuck between these two economic powers already. You're going to be in limbo uh as a whole economic block. And the whole reason for like the EU in general started from an economic standpoint.
Yes.
And what they're doing right now is stifling progress. Um, funnily enough, back in 2014, we were very forthcoming and progressive actually. So, a lot of uh work was happening on the innovation front. Um, in the Netherlands in 2014, uh, we hosted, I think, one of the the big Euro top events, uh, the the big political events and everything centered around autonomy, and we have even seen a bill like experimentally uh, allowing public road testing without a physical driver behind the steering wheel. Also from within the EU and the and the European Commission. A lot of work has been done on the autonomous part of it. But somewhere around 2018, 2019, that shifted completely and um I think it's like it's almost as if they pulled the handbrake on it and um just just stopped it, and that's where uh the US took off eventually and yeah, China has been ever since I was uh 10 years old, I think I've heard fathers or friends of mine saying China is going to be the the the the next biggest economy, and they are actually.
Yeah. Yeah. That's great. Okay. Well, thank you so much, Case. So, how can people find you?
Mr. Green, what is the website?
Mr. Green.eu or Um, yeah, we have a mrgreen.eu. Um, but also mrgreen.nl. Uh, we have a dedicated robot taxi uh page in English on our website. So, if you type in Mr. bring uh Wii robot, you're going to find it. Um I am very active on X. So you see my X handle here in the screen and also uh worth looking at Florian Minoprops account. Uh we have a we have opened an X uh community uh where uh potential uh future flock uh shepherds of the flock can um can subscribe to and join.
Yeah. If you're interested in uh owning a lot of Teslas in order to put into part of the robo-taxi program, contact these guys and um you guys can work together.
And then you also have your own podcast, right?
Don't you have a definitely. Yeah. Together with uh with Florian and two other guys. We have uh Damian and we have Kenny. Um, all entrepreneurs. And uh we decided it was time to um give our European insights and we don't hear enough positive news about Elon, only negative news, and we want to um be a good source of information and give our takes on uh what is happening in the the Musconomy. Uh, so that podcast is called Tesla to Mars. And we have hit around 42 episodes, I guess, right now.
Yeah. Um, we're getting there. We're getting better, but we're not at a production level as uh as you are. But we're learning. We're learning. So, if you want to if you want to join in, um, yeah, pay us a visit, subscribe to the channel, and uh, always open to criticisms and um, like how do you say constructive criticism? um what what we can do better.
Um I I watched a few of the episodes and I really enjoyed it because it's one of the only places to listen to the conversation. It's a little bit of what we talked about like what's going to happen in the future? What are these who's going to own these? Who's going to clean them? What's going to change in society? What are new businesses? Like this is this is happening. There's no doubt autonomy is here. It's going to be very disruptive. And it's not just one industry that will be disrupted; there will be many. It's major; it's infrastructure, urban planning, uh complete industries uh will cease to exist, and new industries will will will will rise, so it's going to be I think one of the biggest revolutions since the invention of the automobile itself. And then exactly robot robot taxi is just one small part of it because autonomy is the thing that matters. And then it's going to
Yeah, it's almost inconceivable.
Yeah. I mean, everything's going to change. Like maybe you don't need as many uh retail stores anymore. Maybe there's no need for um I mean, I was reading another book and it was talking about these kind of things. So, what can change and so opportunities abound.
Thank you so much, Case. Appreciate you. We'll see you soon. Bye.
Thank Thank you for having me. I've created a website that is the most comprehensive resource for the Tesla investor. Please check it out. Simply go to my website at herbert.com.