Transcription
Tesla vice president of AI, Ashok Kaliswami, is very confident about Tesla's self-driving and robo taxi. In his presentation, he showed FSD supervised now approved in 11 countries and a list of 13 more countries and the rest of Europe where it's pending approval. And while FSD is going global, Tesla just announced they've expanded unsupervised robo taxi to now be available in the entire greater Austin area. The hiring for robo taxi and the infrastructure they keep building all point to mass scaling, but the big question is still when? When will this all happen? We've got the bulls here with us today. We've got the power bull, the queen, Tesla Boomer Mama, Alexandra Mertz. We've got the rational, also known as Mr. Incredible, the executive Jeff Lutz. And we've got the botbull, the master forecaster, the slayer of spreadsheets, Sir Basher. Welcome, everyone.
"Hi Herbert."
"Hi Herbert."
Let's start with the I asked, uh, you know, the question this week is just what are the three biggest, most, uh, discussed topics amongst Tesla investors? And there were three of them. So, one is robo taxi expansion, SpaceX, and Tesla and competitors. So, we'll cover each of those in detail. Let's start off with the robo taxi expansion. Uh, this is the new geo-fenced area in Austin where you can now hail an unsupervised robo taxi. Ashra Kawaswami himself announced it. Unsupervised robo taxi now available in the greater Austin area. We don't know how many cars. It could still be a handful, but it is now something you could hail unsupervised. No longer kept to just a smaller part of it. It's the entire Austin metro area. Jesse Richard was the first to find out about this. Uh, he started to just test it to see how far it can go. It turned out to be the whole area. CERN, how important is this development to the company and the product? I don't look at the quarterly stock movement.
"A very realistic bull questioning certain decisions."
"The rational bull. Enjoy listening to bears looking for the red flags. You're supposed to react. The longer-term opportunity for Tesla is like no other company that I've ever seen."
"Well, it's another step. It kind of feels like a baby step at this point, doesn't it? Given that it's almost a year. If this is any indication as to how quickly they can scale up other cities, then that's not encouraging. I don't believe it is. Uh, we all want to see larger geo-fenced areas. We all want to see more vehicles and we all want to see more cities. It appears to me that they're gearing up for that. We're seeing more vehicles in other cities. We're certainly seeing a hiring, uh, spree or or lots of different hiring for lots of different roles in many cities across the country. Um, and I think all that is very encouraging. And I think what has been challenging for investors over the last few months is just the pace of the of the movement forward. And I think we've all speculated as to what may be causing the delay, delays. Is it the software? Is it the infrastructure? Is it something else? Um, and that's just been difficult, I think, for Tesla investors."
"Thank you for that, CERN. And then Jeff, you made a post and you're kind of implying that you think that they would increase the number of robo taxis that are unsupervised, like the number of vehicles, and that the robo taxi tracker would be delayed or, uh, delay in tracking it anyways. What did you mean by that?"
"Well, I mean, you're going to expand the service area. You don't want the other metrics to decline because you're going to be offering it up to more people. So, you think you would add more vehicles to the mix, and that's probably what they're doing. And it looks like this app is a bit laggy. And it's rightfully, first off, I think it's well-made, but it looks like it's, it's lagging. It may be lagging even more than it did when it launched. So, we're just going to have to keep our eyes open and almost empirically try to understand what's happening with wait times. Somebody was asking, like, as long as they can keep the wait times under 20 minutes. I'm like, in an urban area, that's still way too long. So, they've, they've got to get it down significantly, and that would mean more cars, like hundreds of them. So, we know they have the capacity to produce hundreds of them. The question is, is do they feel comfortable enough? And for me, when I see them expand that area, and we've, we're coming off of this pause, that tells me that they have a new release in hand that they're really confident in, and that they've tested. And, and now I think there's going to be another wave of basically expansion in this service. So, we'll see what, what happens. We're seeing all the other signs of all the other cities. We're seeing the trailers of cars going out, the testing that's happening. So, this is, to me, this, like I was explaining earlier in the week, this feels like you're, like in a supply chain, like you're, you're planning for the launch of a product. And this is what you do. You get all your materials together. You do your testing. You get your operational readiness. You're hiring people. And this feels like this feels like a launch, but instead of it being a pilot in a factory, the factory are the roads. And it feels like they're just building up towards towards launch. And we'll talk a little bit later in the show about, you know, what this convergence could be, but it feels like there's a lot of different milestones inside of Tesla that could have been revealed earlier, but weren't. So, we'll talk about..."
"That's a controversial topic. We'll cover that. But just to be clear, this is just an expansion of where unsupervised robo taxi goes. It does not mean that every ride now is unsupervised. It could still be some. Or do you guys think that that is what that means? That it will eventually be all the rides will no longer be supervised?"
"I thought they took the cars, the supervised um ones. I thought they're only unsupervised, but I could be wrong."
"Yeah, that's what I heard as well. But it is drop by drop. Drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, right? It's really, we're all hoping for a flush, for a big announcement. Now, the big announcement actually was on May 28th. I don't know whether you've addressed that. If I was in that Cyber Bull show, um, where they got the permit for taxes, right, to um, operate..."
"...uh, unsupervised. That is a big announcement. We've always said there are three things to to unsupervised. It's the regulators. Well, that is done now in Texas. It's the hardware, the software, you know, the cars that is ready or getting ready. And then it's the whole infrastructure, cleaning, picking up, and on time, you know, all the things that make a robo taxi service a robo taxi service. And, you know, as as wonderful as it would be that this just opens like a gate and everything is in place at once, that's just not how it happens. Every little thing comes, adds to the puzzle, and then at one point it will be a complete puzzle, and it is not yet. It is not yet. As frustrating as it is now, is it because Tesla is delaying things, or is it just because things take time? We will discuss, but it is frustrating to watch how slow it goes."
"Let me ask the three of you guys to answer the question. Uh, why is it so slow? Right? Is it because I think you said it, if I read, read what you're saying there, Jeff, that it's FSD that there is another version, but the safety data coming out in January, February, March looking pretty good. I mean, we're very happy with that data that's coming out there. Is it infrastructure? We're watching them build these three now, three massive 36,000, 151,000 square foot, uh, facilities for car wash and charging being built or approved in around Dallas and Texas, Austin? Or is it hiring? Or is it some other reason, like maybe purposely deciding, hey, we don't want to expand yet quite right now? What, what, where do you guys go? Let's go down the, the list here. What do you think, CERN?"
"Um, yes to potentially all of those."
"Okay."
"Um, the last one to me is a little bit conspiracy-theorist to me. I don't think that Elon would intentionally do that. He certainly has an incentive to, so I, I will say that out loud. Do I believe that Elon acts in that way? I don't think so. Um, that said, you know, some people feel that, you know, he's got firm control of SpaceX. The control that he has of Tesla is not as firm. And so here perhaps is an opportunity to firm that up. So it's a rational thing for him to try to do that. So I wouldn't necessarily blame him if, if that's going through his mind. But I, I really don't see him acting that way. I think there's, there's something that they're working on with respect to robo taxi. And we've, we've discussed on this show before. We speculated about, you know, the last few feet and issues around parking and picking up people and those kinds of things. Mhm."
"That takes a while to iron that stuff out. That's not something that that gets fixed overnight. Uh, there's, there's development, there's testing, there's, there's, you know, going back to development again and fixing problems. That just takes time. So, I give them some grace on all that. At the end of the day, you know, is there's some sandbagging going on? I, I hope not. And I don't think so. But again, I think we should recognize that there's an incentive to..."
"And strangely enough, if I, if I may add to that, and strangely enough, on the other side, Tesla China supervised FSD, I feel they're exaggerating because it's not approved on the whole territory. Yet, for multiple times now, the Tesla official account or Ashok, they do as if, right? So I don't get it that in the US it's such a, I call it again, puzzle piece where, no, we don't have all the pieces. Now, no, we don't have to be patient. We don't have all the pieces. And in China, where we really don't have all the pieces, well, there we are. It's in the list. So I don't understand it. Does it bother me? No. I mean, what the heck, that's just, you know, you run a company, there's stuff happening. But, uh, there is something, yes."
"Yeah, a couple weeks ago, there, there was actually a testing that was caught on camera where they saw these Model Ys being tested with the with the chain on a parking lot. They kept trying over and over again to make sure it recognizes it. And then a video was just shown recently where on a, you know, how on a highway sometimes they want to close one lane, the left lane, and then they have these weirdly enough these kind of like thin, you know, gates that are opened up, and the FSD didn't see it and hit it. These are the edge cases that is still not ready, and they're still working on it. And maybe they, they don't want to roll this out and then have an issue like that. They want to solve it before they roll it out wide. But that's, that just happened a couple weeks ago where they're testing it still. Jeff?"
"Yeah, no, those edge cases. I, I've had one too with the railroad crossing bars coming down. You know, these edge cases have to be resolved because if you just start multiplying the number of vehicles out there, the numbers get pretty big pretty quickly, and you don't want, you know, someone to have a bad experience, and you don't want to deal with the warranty issues on your own vehicles. You want it to be as clean as possible. But these things are solvable. I actually think, uh, Tesla underestimated what was needed for the size of these rollouts. And I think as they, they've gone, they're getting, remember, they're starting from essentially zero. They're not an established service provider of, you know, ridesharing. So it's like, oh, all of a sudden we get started. Oh, oh my God, we need a service center. Oh, maybe they thought they were going to use the existing service centers that they have. I'm not sure. But I actually think all these things are needed for a smooth launch because everything about a rideshare service is about uptime and utilization. And if you don't have the ability to service the cars, if you can't clean them efficiently, if you can't do all these, if you can't charge them as well, I, I, what's going on with wireless charging? So, I think there's a lot of questions out there. So, I don't think it's this massive, uh, on the robo taxi side. I don't think there's this sandbagging going on. Actually, I think there's a lot of, um, ancillary operational work that's needed, and it just takes time. And I also think that they're improving these edge cases. So, I think two things can be true at the same time, that around operational readiness and around solving, uh, for these final edge cases. But Tesla has a lot of, uh, dials or knobs that they can do even post-launch. People don't realize. I mean, they, they have these different speed profiles for a reason. So, as weather conditions change, or if there's some concern, if there's some edge, they can always dial down the speed and the aggressiveness of these robo taxis and and greatly, uh, reduce any probability. But these, these convenience issues are still there. So, I think it's both. I think two things can be true at once, and I think they're still working through it. But I actually think it's imminent. I don't think you build up this much inventory, put this much product in the field. Like they have a, they have an internal gauge. They know what they need to do. And I, I don't think that they would be filling up these lots with vehicles if they didn't think that this was imminent."
"Okay. I want to come back to this big discussion about is Tesla actually delaying certain, uh, we'll go through that and have a big discussion on that. But before that, let's finish off the discussion on FSD and robo taxi. And this weekend, this week, Estonia approved FSD supervised. And then Ashok Swami was in an interview or sort of a presentation, and he shared a number of really big information. But one of the most important thing is that he is very confident, uh, you know, when he was presenting his confidence about FSD and robo taxi was very clear. So he showed this slide saying, this is where FSD Tesla self-driving is approved. United States, Canada, Mexico, Netherlands, Estonia, Lithuania, Europe, China, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, of course. And then in the yellow, those are pending regulatory approval. And it's incredible. So if you look at the list, thank you, Nick Cruz, Betain. Um, currently pending approval would be Japan, India, Israel, Bangladesh, Thailand, Taiwan, Malaysia, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Ethiopia, Colombia, Chile, all of Europe. Combined, 36% of the world's population lives in these places. FSD is going global. This is a great list to finally see where it is pending approval."
"There are a couple of errors on that list, Herbert."
"Oh?"
"Uh, Bangladesh is not highlighted, nor is the Philippines on Ashok's map."
"Oh?"
"You looked at it that closely. Wow."
"Yeah."
"Um,"
"Good job."
"And but it is interesting to me that you've got Ethiopia. Like, that's a surprise to me."
"Yeah."
"As far as I know, Tesla only operates in Morocco and Africa, not Ethiopia."
"Yeah."
"Um, but that's great. Um, the first inroads in in Africa. That would be wonderful. Uh, Colombia and Chile, that's fantastic as well. But yeah, that's that's promising. FSD..."
"Pending approval. Yeah, pending. We don't know what that means."
"Yeah, we don't know what stage that's at. For example, I think they're probably in advanced stages in places like Israel."
"Mhm."
"Um, we saw some information today about Belgium. Apparently, they're waiting for the homologation data from from the Dutch authorities."
"Yeah. Very advanced. Yeah."
"They're next."
"Um,"
"Yeah, all of Europe is wrong because obviously Netherlands and Estonia are already approved. So, you can't really say all of Europe, but, uh..."
"No, pending, pending approval would be the rest of Europe, I guess. Yeah."
"Yeah. Not all. And then China is obviously the big question. I mean, maybe we all missed something, but I didn't see a formal announcement of, uh, approval of supervised FSD in China."
"No, that'd be a big deal. There was. And my, and my Chinese friends always tell me that, no, it's not. It's certain cities, certain regions, but it's not a formal, yeah."
"Country continues to always include it, including, uh, including, um, Ashok here. He said China."
"My response is to those that say it's sandbagging, well, that's the country of sandbagging."
"Now, if you look at the language though, it says supervised self-driving across the world and it says China. So, it's correct. There's some supervised self-driving in China. It says shipped to customers. So technically, that's a, that's correct. It doesn't say approved in China."
"So, you know, if we parse the language, he's, he's technically correct there."
"Fine."
"Wow. Look at you, CERN."
"I'm all over this one. Give, give me a map and I'll study it for hours."
"All right. What am I pointing at here? Look at what is this one."
"All right. Uh, that's the part of Antarctica, I think. Uh, going there. Yeah. I don't think that's up for approval anytime soon."
"No, I don't think so."
"Okay. All right. Let's go to the big topic then. Okay. I'm going to share with folks here what I've been hearing from some Tesla investors, or some investors. They are saying that, look, something's fishy. Something is really fishy. If you look at what has happened, you've got the robo, the Roadster was supposed to come out in January. Then it was supposed to go out in April 1st. Now, nothing. We've not heard anything. Now we're way into June. Nothing. Why is the Roadster demo been delayed? Why has the Optimus demo been delayed? Initially, that was going to come out in December, then it was January, then it became March or whatever it was. Then it became, oh, we're not going to show it until we are near production. All of a sudden, in the last 3 months, they were all set, ready to do a big demo. I wanted to dance. And then it became, it's like, oh no, uh, I'm afraid of, uh, people finding out if there's an issue. And I think CERN, you've always said, well, you're going to have it covered up anyways. You're going to have it wearing some sort of suit. So, you're not going to see inside anyways. What's, what exactly are people going to copy from you? And then, if you, the robo taxi expansion, right? That was the big one. Initially, they said they were going to have six cities, uh, by the end of June. By the way, here we are, and we're still in Dallas, Houston, and Austin. And then California is still, right, not, not actually robo taxi. So, there seems to be a number of, maybe there's a few things here I might have missed where there were promised to be shown in the first quarter, now it's not. The obvious answer could be, well, SpaceX is going to go IPO on June. SpaceX is going to acquire Tesla. They want to keep Tesla stock down. So, Elon is purposely sandbagging. And then will this show all of these happening later? That's the kind of thing I'm hearing from others. Who wants to attack that first and share what your opinion is?"
"You're on mute. Mute, Alexandra."
"Better if I'm not muted. Right. Um, so my, my first take is the same that I explained to Joe on Thursday morning. Um, I do believe in a merger of SpaceX and Tesla at the same market cap. Meaning it would give, if SpaceX goes up the way people anticipate, it would give Tesla stock a huge lift. And this lift has to be sustained for a couple of months until our vote and then until regulators approve it. At the same time, we have SpaceX, the index inclusions, and at the same times we have a slow rising float of SpaceX with the lockup periods expiring in a staggered manner. If this announcement happens, like I think, somewhere between end of June and mid-August, we have until mid-December to have a lot of support of the SpaceX stock. In my view, if my merger idea comes true, again, this is me fantasizing, um, Tesla would immediately reach the higher level and then move in lockstep with SpaceX. SpaceX would have some good news because of this index buying, which is not only end of June, beginning of July, and then S&P in December, once we have the S&P confirmation, but actually at multiple points in there because initially there's not enough float and they have to rebalance those, and so those indices will keep on buying in September down to December. They will buy at, at certain moments, all the time in those six months, not all the days, but in at certain points in those six months. So, you have on the SpaceX side good hope for good trading and a lot of demand. It's all about demand and supply. If at the same time you have in lockstep Tesla, and Tesla now suddenly comes out with a lot of good news, there will be days where Tesla goes up and pulls up SpaceX, and then there will be days that SpaceX goes up and pulls up Tesla. So, I do believe there could be, game is a big, big word for it, but there could be a movement of good news on the both sides which is actually very advantageous and helps both stocks. So, that could be the plan. Maybe that's far-fetched, but that is my theory."
"Jeff or CERN?"
"It's, uh, it's almost difficult for it to be a coincidence that a lot of these things are all moving into the second, the second half is really going to be stacked if you think about it. But it, it just like some of these things were just demos. Like they, they were just, you didn't even need an audience. You can just broadcast a demo of doing something like the Roadster, for example. So, if you look at these products, they, they're the perfect, um, representation of a combined entity. And again, don't, like, pepper in the comments, 'Oh, you want this merged?' I haven't seen a merger document. I don't know what's in it. If it's bad, I won't like it. If it's good, I'll like it. Okay. But it's a lot of these things that we're going to be demoed are the combined representation of SpaceX and Tesla. The Roadster is, uh, there's SpaceX engineers working on the Roadster. If you look at Optimus, the brain of Optimus is SpaceX. Mhm."
"If you, if you look at Mega Pack, the Mega Pack is going to Houston, is supposed to be unveiled and ribbon cutting and starting production at the second half of this year. That a lot of that now is going towards data center. It's going towards SpaceX as well. I think the first one gigawatt Mega Pack cluster, uh, was for SpaceX, was for Colossus. That's a big deal, by the way. So, you have Mega Pack coming, you have Optimus coming, you have Roadster coming, you have all these things that are honestly that show the the combined workings of the two companies. So, if anything, in a merger situation where you would want to really, uh, emphasize the value of Tesla, it would be these groundbreaking products. I know the Roadster is going to be small volume, but it's going to be representative of extremely high tech. Um, in the automobile world, the one thing that, you know, nobody can really do anything about unless they let the wait times balloon, would be just auto sales. And we're seeing a dramatic uptick. And it's not just, uh, you know, poor comps the last year. Some of this stuff is organically much bigger. What's happening in South Korea, Japan? I mean, South Korea's 11,000 cars in a single month. Um, so, and and I think there's a big driver around this in terms of the price of oil. I also think the retrenchment of other automakers in Western Europe and in the US in EV is helping. But you're seeing some big numbers. This, and and that'll be reported, by the way, in the third week of July. Third or fourth week of July, we'll see the report for this quarter. So, you're going to have convergence here in the second. Optimus supposed to ramp this summer. Let's put it in that July to September timeframe. The Roadster reveal this Q2, probably a big number in terms of vehicle sales, and probably a big catchup on the energy side as well, given the light Q1. You could have a, a really strong convergence here happening for Tesla. So, I don't know. This could all be, and then of course, the rollout of robo taxi, uh, coming. I mean, this could all be a giant coincidence, but maybe not. Probably not."
"I think that's an excellent list from Jeff. And just to add, I think a couple of other things. If you think about all the things that are going on behind the scenes that are not product reveals, that are not rollout, robo taxi rollout related. Um, and unfortunately for Tesla investors, they have been associated with SpaceX. There's been the combination of XAI and SpaceX. There's been this, this IPO, the the road show. There's been Terra Fab. There's been negotiations behind the scenes with Intel. We're rumored to hear negotiations with ASML or discussions with ASML, and who knows who else. Um, they are figuring out where to build Terra Fab. They're negotiating with different counties for tax abatements, uh, because the amount of equipment you put into these, this Terra Fab is going to be massive, and so if you don't get a tax abatement, it's not going to be economical. So, there's so many different things going on behind the scenes. How much is Elon involved in all that stuff? I don't know, but I would imagine quite a bit. Um, not to mention, you know, SpaceX potentially buying, building, or buying land and building more launch facilities, rumored to do so in Louisiana. So, there's just so much going on. And for Tesla shareholders, from their perspective, that's not that great because Elon's plate is full of SpaceX stuff. Now, he's the guy that's probably the best at context switching in the world and managing multiple things, but even he probably has his limits. And certainly, as it comes to scheduling a Roadster reveal, he can only be in one place at one time. So, he's got a lot on his calendar. He's a lot of commitments. Um, who knows what he had to drop in order to go to China with the president? You know, you're suddenly gone for a few days. Um, I would imagine that was relatively short notice, in terms of that, right? So, there's so many things that they have to juggle, and you're going to, like, some, unfortunately, some things are going to drop, some balls are going to drop, and and maybe the Roadster reveal was one of the casualties on that. As it relates to Optimus, I think that's more related to, well, you know, let, let's learn from other companies and past experience. You might as well just have your product ready, reveal it, and then be ready to sell it. What's the point of revealing it too soon? We all want to see it. I, I want to see it now, but Apple doesn't operate that way, right? And wouldn't it be cool to have the reveal and say, 'Oh, you can order now and it's going to be available. You can buy, you know, it'll be delivered to you in two months.' That would be cool. And I'm willing to wait for that."
"I think he was, uh, disappointed. He was, he wanted to, you know, if you're going to reveal Optimus Gen 3, you better have a very good demo. And he felt like it wasn't ready. So, let's push it. I guess what's odd is Alexandra, the, you know, did something change because they must have already known that the IPO for June for SpaceX was going to be June. They probably knew that in October last year, and then they were already still announcing all of these robo taxi rollout, demo, Optimus demo, robo, Roadster, and then they changed that. So, it's like, it's like, did they all of a sudden find out that, you know, something changed with the SpaceX IPO, and then therefore, let's push this?"
"Yeah, I'm, I mean, I can, I can only try to make sense of it. And part of when I analyze these things, we've discussed it when we went through the S1, is I try to understand when things shifted. And my gut feeling, it's not more, I wish it was more, is that the whole IPO idea matured last summer. I have the feeling that by November, when we had the shareholder meeting, there was already, when we had the Tesla shareholder meeting, there was already a firm idea of SpaceX IPOing because remember my question to Elon about a joint shareholder meeting this year?"
"Right. So, and, and it's not the only indicator, but I have the feeling that things came. And yes, at the same time, they still promised that January 1st date, April 1st date. So, I mean, things can happen in production, things can happen that just strategically. What is a little bit surprising is it seems to be delayed on all fronts, right? So, that gives us this feeling and this unsatisfied dissatisfaction of where the next good news, please bring it. Um, I don't know. But I think what we should address because it just fell, so people understand that, um, we're taping this on Thursday afternoon. You're releasing it on Friday morning. Um, is that S&P just announced that they are not changing their rules for index inclusion. So, let me go back because that scenario I've written an article about four months ago. I'm sorry about all my articles, but it helps me to align my thoughts. So, what does that mean? If S&P would have accepted to soften their conditions and bring this forward, non-profitable companies would have been able to be included in the S&P 500 after six months. That would have been the case for SpaceX, but also for OpenAI, Anthropic, and so on, other mega caps that are now getting ready to to IPO. Obviously, SpaceX will be the first one to profit from it, and it was very much pushed because the new rule should have started applying from June 8th, just four days before the IPO. So, it did look very coordinated. They had a consultation. That consultation ended last week, Thursday, a week ago. And today they published, just now, that they are not changing their rules. So, there will not be an S&P inclusion on the December 12th, which would have been independent of profitability of SpaceX. What will be is a year from the IPO in June next year, they would consider at that moment whether SpaceX is sufficiently profitable. But we have gone through that headache. That is a headache because they want multiple quarters, and then they, it's still discretionary, and whatever. However, if there is a merger, and the merged entity exists, Tesla has a place in the S&P in the top 10, um, of it, at the moment of the merger, even though SpaceX is not profitable, replaces the Tesla ticker in the SpaceX, and purchases have to happen. So, while S&P did not change their rules, and that will apply to OpenAI, it will actually not apply now to SpaceX if there is a merger, because that rule is a completely different rule. It is that the merged entity is included, even though it's not profitable, and at the exact moment when the merger is consumed. Okay, so we're back to that base scenario. They will then look at the float. By then, the float will be by far 30, 40%. So, there will be huge buying at that moment, at the moment the merger is consumed. Hope I explained that short and clear."
"Which, if, if they announce it in August that they intend to merge, the vote, uh, for Tesla occurs in November. You still thinking that what month would the actual merger occur?"
"Q2."
"Q2?"
"But before June of next year."
"Mhm. Yeah. Yeah."
"Yeah."
"And the day of the merger, the new entity ticker, so maybe SPCX or maybe he bought X or whatever. What do we know? Would then replace the Tesla ticker in the S&P 500. They would be obliged to purchase all these additional shares because now, obviously, it's a bigger entity. Um, and that purchase is float adjusted. So, it depends on how much float from SpaceX will be then available."
"Doesn't Herbert have to change some of his merch then? Don't you have that TSLA hat?"
"If they merge up..."
"...become a collector's item."
"I have to get rid of the TSLA hat. Yeah."
"So, we are filming this on Thursday afternoon, and then this just dropped. Like you said, S&P Dow Jones officially announced that they will not be changing their inclusion rules to make it easier for mega-cap companies, one of which is SpaceX, to be fast-tracked into the S&P 500. Here's their reasoning. And, um, this is their consultation that they came back at. So, if that's the case, what happens is, uh, initially we thought that they were going to cut it back from 12 months to 6 months. That's no longer the case. So, instead of being included, possibly included into the S&P if SpaceX goes up in June, they could have been included in December, but now it's going to be June of next year. That's the earliest that it could possibly happen. So, what does that mean for Tesla SL?"
"Wait, wait, wait. No, no, no. The June date is if you don't have a merged entity. So, if it's just say SpaceX itself."
"You just explained if it's a merged entity, it would be at the merged moment."
"Correct. If you don't have a merged entity, then it would be June next year. But one way that it can happen..."
"...is that you think that it's going to be second quarter that the actual merge would occur, and if that happens, then that's when Tesla's already in S&P, so the merged entity would be in it, and then there would be more forced buying."
"Exactly."
"Okay. So, it's not terrible, maybe timing-wise."
"It stretches the line a couple of months further. It's an incentive to get the merger through the soonest possible. It certainly is an incentive because that is the big buying. The, the Footsie and CRSP and NASDAQ 100 is nice. It's about 15 to 20 billion each, and it's, I mean, it could be more, but at least the passives are that. But the big chunk, 60, 70, 100, maybe even more than 100, um, that's S&P."
"Herbert, I'd like to make a prediction right now."
"Yeah, please."
"That S&P, the S&P committee is going to be forced to change this rule, even though they've declined to right as of this time."
"Okay."
"The reality is that index inclusion and all these rules is a made-up thing."
"Yes."
"To make it sound like there's, there's rational, reasonable thinking going on. What's going to be happen, and they may find this, the form of economic reality hits them, is we now have a major index that that's not going to include SpaceX soon, and other indexes. They may find out that there's a massive flow of capital from S&P indexes into the others, and for business reasons, they will get their wits about them very quickly and make a change."
"Because they are paid royalties by the volume of the funds that track these indices. That's how they are paid."
"Yeah, let's not be fooled that this is some kind of high pious ruling from from the god."
"Yeah. And the other, I mean, if they are not, you know how hate I hate the funds, but I hate even more the index makers. But the, the S&P was never friendly to Elon. And the bears, the Elon haters were out in masses the last couple of weeks screaming about these index changes because they know darn well what it means. If you have ever managed a fund, you know darn well what this means. So, while again, I want to say this doesn't really change my prediction for the period from June to mid-December because those are staggered and they will be fulfilled. It pushes that last catalyst, that huge catalyst at the end, a little bit forward, but it also is a motivation now for the merger workers, meaning the lawyers and the bankers that will work on this, to make it happen rather sooner than later because..."
"Interesting, Alexandra."
"So, it's actually good news for Tesla. Let's, let me just catch up all the audience members who aren't aren't following. Alexandra has a theory, and it's just a theory. She knows nothing more than anyone else, but she's dug in more than all of us into the proxy and all the num, all the governance things. And here's her theory. Her theory is that SpaceX is going IPO on June 12th. That's a fact that's happening. And then somewhere, she thinks in August, they will make an announcement to purchase Tesla. You can see the breadcrumbs in the amendment S1A. And then why, why August? Because there needs to be a Tesla vote, which most likely will happen in November. And then if the November happens, then the merger will happen. She said now Q2 of the actual merger will occur, Q2. But as soon as they make the announcement in August, the two companies should lock that price going up and down at the same together, at the same time."
"Let me, let me just make a little precision. I think it will be latest in August, mid-August. I think it can happen at any moment between end of June and mid-August, the announcement."
"We're in June now."
"I don't know how confusable they are, if it's very close to the IPO, or whether they want to wait out that at least the NASDAQ 100 inclusion is behind, whatever. I don't know that. Or they may wait for a certain market cap, right? They may also watch the stock and, you know, see what happens and then maybe they have in, maybe Elon has a number in his head of the SpaceX market cap where he thinks, okay, now I'm going to announce it. Um, and then there are a couple of weeks of special committees. Then there is a proxy. Then there are six weeks where we have to read the proxy and vote. Then there is a shareholder meeting. Then there are regulators. So, you can work your butts off and probably manage all of that in, I don't know, eight to nine months. But, you know, and now they have a motivation because now the motivation is, when we're done, the S&P inclusion happens. That's a real high financial motivation. Huge. And..."
"And it's actually the flip of what's happened now, isn't it? Because right now that the, you know, the conspiracy theorists, we were just discussing it now that, you know, you want to sandbag Tesla, you, you want to push the events happen later. But now, if SpaceX is no longer going to be have an option to be included into the S&P 500 in December, then the stock could fall because there's a lot of people selling it, less people buying it at that time. And so Elon will want to have the merger because Tesla has a real business model for the short term, for the next year, for three years from now. SpaceX is much more further out. And so it would be perfect timing for him to say, 'Hey, we've got a business model that's going to generate real cash in the next three years.'"
"And why I say the shareholder vote should happen in November because up to beginning of December, the, the three initial indices still have buying, buying pressure, right? And, and the, the lockup for the early investor only ends in December. So, if you want to ride that wave, the earlier the shareholder meeting is before that December expiry date, the more you have this vote under control."
"Herbert, I'm just going to push back on something you said."
"Okay."
"About SpaceX's opportunity being further out. Did you see Goldman Sachs today came out with their 2030 revenue number?"
"Yeah."
"Of a mere $322 billion."
"Yeah. I, I just interviewed, uh, Aaron Bernett of Mach 33 and Larry Goldberg, and we went through his latest business model for SpaceX, and they're being very conservative, and they're even more conservative than Goldman Sachs. And what they are saying, yeah, that the near-term is is Starlink. But even the AI data centers, you know, won't start till 2028, and then really won't happen till 2031. And I know that Goldman Sachs is a lot more, um, aggressive about it. And then so..."
"Let me quickly address Goldman because Goldman really bothers me. Goldman has both in the 2018 CEO vote and in the 2024 revote voted against. They have really not been an Elon friend."
"No."
"Now they are co-lead for the IPO. Who decided that? I have no idea. Whatever. And now they are pumping it. I mean, I know the leads have to pump it, but I mean, pumping of pumping, right?"
"Wall Street is just disgusting. It's, I mean, it's..."
"Their number, CERN, of 300 and whatever, $32 billion dollars for AI is, I think, almost 10 times what Aaron Bernett's Mach 33 was. So, it's a, it's a bit not correct."
"Herbert, I was on a call with them this morning, and they're at $30, $305 billion for 2030. They're actually just right on top of each other."
"Oh, you, you think, uh, Mach 33? Well, I just looked at it and we just, we just talked about it. Okay."
"Yep. No, they're $305 billion is my understanding."
"Um, regardless, it's still 2030, four years away."
"Yeah. No, I'm just pushing back on the narrative that that SpaceX's opportunity is like..."
"Yeah."
"...way further out. That may, that may be true, but also may not be true."
"Also, just back to the index thing, the whole S&P methodology, they talk about financial viability, right? And you have to have GAAP net income from continuing operations must be positive for the most recent quarter and the sum of the most recent four consecutive quarters. Like, these things sound like they're etched in stone, like, you know, hand down from from some somebody high on a mountaintop. The reality is, again, they're going to be forced by market forces to to change their ways and they may learn..."
"...of the big mega caps. So, you will have indices and S&P 500 without SpaceX. I mean, again, SpaceX will slip in through the merger. But let's just say the merger would not happen. Without SpaceX, without OpenAI, and without an impossible, you know, those are going to be three of the top 10 mega caps. You have one out there saying, 'Okay, it's too young. It's one thing, but three.'"
"Yeah."
"And the three will join who? They'll join NASDAQ."
"Of course. All the others are ready. All the others."
"And everybody will buy NASDAQ instead of..."
"And Russell Indexes and others."
"Exactly. And the Vanguard ones, CRSP, are all the Vanguard ones. Yeah."
"Yeah."
"Yeah."
"And OpenAI and Anthropic are going public pretty quick. They're rushing it. They're rushing fast. Might happen in a couple months."
"Want to be on the wave. So, what's interesting about this is what we're seeing play out in real time is these are actively managed indexes, and they actively manage through their rules. But let's not make any mistake. They're actively managing who goes in these indexes."
"CERN, this is a political tool. It always has been. Rating agencies are index makers are index funds are this 401ks are the whole setup is to make Wall Street rich and to have influence. That is all it is. It's always been. We can start in the 1960s. It's disgusting. I'm done with this world. That's why I left it in 2007. Thanks to Elon, I'm back in it, but never mind. But the way this is set up is it pretends to give a safe environment to retail investors, and it strips them of everything. Voting rights, money through management fees. If you don't pay a lot, you give up a lot of other things. If you pay a lot, you give maybe up a little bit less of the other things. But one way or the other, they have you."
"The other thing too, Herbert, other breaking news is Starlink has announced that they have 12 million subscribers."
"That was fast. My gosh, they were just at 10 million last month."
"Yeah. So, you know, here you go, S&P. You know, we, we, we thumb, thumb our nose at you in terms of profitability. We're building profitability very quickly. It's fun. It's fun to watch."
"All right. Uh, let's talk competitors. Um, so, people are concerned about, uh, let's say, let's start with Optimus. Um, there's Figure who came out and showed an incredible demo over 7 days, 24 hours a day, three or four bots took replacement, replace each other to do the pick and place."
kind of task that proved to most people that this is not just a demo, you know. You have a quick two-minute demo to show everybody how great it is. They can physically see that it's actually working, that it can actually do as fast as a human. They actually even had a human there competing with them directly, uh, with the bot directly to show that when the human takes breaks, lunch, and and and the breaks, that the robot catches up and they're pretty equal.
And then you had Open AI announce, and he came out and said, "We are doing robotics as well, and we're hiring people." Uh, are these competitors something to be concerned about, Jeeoff?
>> No, there's this humanoid robotics and robotics in general is going to be so big. We don't have enough people actually designing and building bots in the US, and we're missing a lot of the supply chain. We're missing a lot of the conventional robotic supply chain here. So, we, we don't have enough doing it. So, there, I don't think there can be enough competitors, to be honest with you. The question is, are they capable? If you put them through, if you pass them through that filter we've talked about, of can they do the AI brain? Can they, um, can they make the right product in terms of, of, uh, putting the right specs in, but also engineering it, and then can they manufacture at scale? And very few companies are going to, are going to go through that filter or go through that strainer, and Tesla certainly is going to be through that and out on the other side. So, I don't think we have enough, as a short answer, and we can always have more.
These YouTube videos, I, the, the Figure demo was impressive. There's no question. I'm not going to, but in general, a lot of these videos from companies, you just, you have to understand the context of what you're seeing in that video, and what's a fully spec-compliant product that is, that has the right reliability, power consumption for mass production for its end use. And there's a difference between these two. This is why all these companies are essentially doing a new rev of their bot because they know that they're going to need it. And you can say, well, they're just up, they're just upreving it every year like iPhone. Well, no. They're, I, I believe that actually this is going to be a limited year, especially in the US, where if these companies had a million units of capacity, they wouldn't use it and they wouldn't want to build a million of their current bot. They, there's things that they need to solve for so that they are reliable. They can hit the cost structure that, that's needed, and they, they hit the right power consumption and capability targets. So, uh, but this, this will be a big year in China, certainly, and in the US for, you'll just see a higher volume of bots, and you'll see bots doing, uh, real-world things in factories for, for, for me, not just for demo, like, it'll actually, they'll actually start putting them in. But another year though, to start seeing some real scaling. But no, there's not enough people making a good bot, so we need more.
>> Herbert, there's 36 job listings right now for robo taxi related jobs. How, how many job listings do you think there is for Optimus right now? 202. So Tesla is very focused on Optimus. They're building a massive team. This is going to be a huge product for them. Don't let a demo from Figure, as great as it was, and I'm in the camp, what that was amazing to be for them to be willing to live stream that for was it eight straight days. Kudos to them. Well done.
>> Yeah. But Tesla is solidly in this game and building that team. We're seeing the factory being built at Giga Texas. It's going to be almost as big as the main Giga Texas factory. So, don't despair. Optimus is coming.
>> Yeah. One more quick, quick point is when, when it took five years for the smartphone supply chain to go from a million units a year to a billion units in a year. And in that time frame, there were many things that needed to be re-engineered in the product. So the cost structure came in line, the reliability came in line, the performance came in line, and the same things that have to happen with, with bots as well, and the supply chain, the, the supply of components. So there's a bit of a road ahead. Nobody's going to make a million of anything next year that's going to be useful. And don't underestimate what's needed because when we did the smartphone, it was a globalized supply chain. You had access to supply everywhere. And you're essentially assembling in Asia and distributing it everywhere. This is actually going to be a much more difficult product and a much more difficult supply chain, actually, for the product.
>> All right. And then, uh, Whimo and, you know, robo taxis. So, there is a tremendous amount of, um, are you happy, Jeeoff, with how many cyber cabs you've been seeing out there since the numbers you were expecting by this point?
>> Yeah, I think the ramp is going fine. In fact, I think Tesla will, um, correlate or cooperate the ramp with the readiness of the operation in the field and the readiness of the software to go. So, I, I think, I think it's going fine. Uh, but yeah, these, these comparisons to Whimo are bizarre. Just like CERN said with Figure, uh, different conversation, but it's great. We, I think Whimo, 3,700 cars, great, but they're going to be fundamentally different when Tesla is at scale, and you need multiple of these comp. We don't have enough ride share companies actually that do good work that make enough good product at scale. That's why you can't open your phone and get an autonomous vehicle in every city in every suburb in the US because we don't actually have enough. So, this whole competitive thing, I know there was a clip on CNBC this morning. Um, just unbelievable how the media, I, it's almost purposeful of how they try to position where they see or box they want to put Tesla and his and Elon and his products. And it's really, it's not only inaccurate, it's almost, it's ignorant the way that the comps are being done. Competition in all these growing fields is actually going to be a very good thing for the consumer, and we don't have enough supply of it, just in general. So, don't worry about it.
>> And one thing I want to highlight is in over all these years that I've been following Elon, he always welcomes competition to the point that they put their patents out there, just because he feels that more of good products is a good thing. So, and, and that competition is even a stimulation for, for Tesla to improve. So, don't think that Tesla fears competition. Not at all.
>> So, here's a, a video by Tech Danny.
>> Behind me is production cyber cab. Let's check it out. It is in a new color called gleaming gold, and it is gorgeous. Definitely gleaming. If you come around this way, you press this button here. Self-opening McLaren style doors. Those are sick. And if you come inside, you get two seats and two seats only, but they're very large. They look very comfortable. One big center console, so you can watch a movie while the car literally drives you wherever you want to go. Now, let's check out the back. This is the boot, as they say. Very, very large. There's no second row, just made for two passengers, and lots and lots of storage. So, if you have suitcases, whatever you have to take in there, you got plenty of room for all of your stuff for your ride to the airport. And a couple of things you do not have on the Cyber Cab that might surprise you. No rear view mirrors, no sunroof, no back window to see out of, because you're not driving this thing, it's driving you. Let's shut the door one more time, just for fun, because it looks so cool. There's the brand new Cyber Cab. What do you guys think? Are you ready to see these on the road? And would you take one to the airport?
>> So Jeeoff, I mean, they, it looks pretty production ready. Looks pretty good. We've not, we don't know, but we have not heard, uh, any concerns about the cyber cab, right? Does that look like it's, it's pretty well there? It's like it's ready to go.
>> Um, this is a per, this is a really good for Tesla, this rollout of them basically shipping to themselves because they really took risks with this product. How it's constructed, the very low part count, the new, the different materials, this door mechanism, I think is a very high-risk thing to put out there. And you can, you can, you can engineer it, and you can get your manufacturing tolerances to be perfect, but sometimes there's something seen at scale that you miss. So, I'm hoping that these doors, a, don't get stuck, b, don't, are become misaligned. Um, but these are all the things I would, I always, I'm paranoid when you, when you think about products and ramps and doing, you know, failure mode effects analysis. So, uh, that would be to me a high-risk thing. But, yeah, the cars look great, but these are, these cars are going out for demo in, in public. So, they're supposed to be, they're supposed to look great. If they didn't, that would be strange. Uh, so, yeah, I, I think they're scaling. I think it's off and running, and I think there's going to be some form of convergence of this cyber cab's product in field, uh, hopefully this summer.
>> Just imagine what the price of gold's going to do when they really ramp up production.
>> Sure.
>> Gold flakes in that paint.
>> Yeah. I mean, the investment is really at, like you were saying, Cern, the amount of, uh, people that they're hiring for robot, for robots, Optimus, but here, there's a 51,000 square foot delivery center in Grand Prairie, Texas. This is crazy how big this one is. This, I think this might just be for service also, like service, not just for robo taxi, but it is zoned for robo taxi as well. This is, uh, in between, it's near Dallas-Fort Worth, in between Fort Worth and Dallas. So this is like, I think the third. You got one in Austin, one in Houston, one here.
>> This is an indication to me that they're going to use all of their facilities for robo taxi. Where we're needed, there'll be robo taxi dedicated facilities, but they can essentially run robo taxi fleets out of existing facilities. Um, you know, and they're going to have some fun growing pains with that potentially. Um, but it's great. They've got a lot of infrastructure to build. I, I do think that it's interesting to think about that this idea of customer-owned cyber cabs, where we can take care of the charging, the cleaning, the maintenance. Um, that helps them scale actually maybe faster if they have to build out all this infrastructure themselves. Why not have individuals own these vehicles? And again, as Elon said, that they'll make a cyber, make cyber cabs available for public sale by the end of this year. We'll see if that, that happens. Uh, but for me, that's one reason too, in terms of helping them scale this out.
>> I was just going to say, it, there's a weird, there's a, a weird structural thing financially for these requisitions to be loaded in the system so we can see them. Somebody in finance had to account for them and start moving budget, so there's budget available internally. That's an internal blue money thing. But when these people are actually hired and they're actually on the payroll, and these structures are built, if Tesla's not putting a ton of volume of cyber cabs out there, these things are going to be a massive OPEX, uh, boat anchor, and Tesla's just not, that's not going to, I don't think that's going to happen. I think they're going to, I, I think you're going to see a lot of product flowing through. But these facilities, they have to get built over, right now, some of these things are, oh, there's a site over there. But I think they'll, they're not complex. They can get built pretty quickly. But just the point of it is, is that the finance, the finances around this, it's going to be a real strain on OPEX if they build all this up, they hire these people, and they don't have a ton of robo taxi ride share volume coming. So, I actually think they're planning for a, a fairly big deployment.
>> Yeah. You know, I, I spent part of this spring in Santa Monica because of the health issues of my husband, and they have Whimos there. And just next to our hotel was the parking of the Whimos where they get cleaned and get ready for the next thing. So we had sufficient hours to watch this. It was a circus. Um, it doesn't take much to have a cleaning facility and charging facility. It looked like a big supercharging facility. I mean, they obviously charging much slower than, than where the Teslas are. And in the meantime, they went to another row where there were people actively cleaning them and and getting them ready for the next one. Then they went back to the charger, and then off they went. So, it's not, this part is not complex. I mean, if you add a service center to it, obviously much more comes to it. But if it is just cleaning, charging, ensuring they're going back, it's, uh, and, and in Santa Monica, it wasn't even covered. It was on the open air. But, uh, but, uh, they may want to have it, you know, with a roof so that temperature is controlled and whatever.
>> All right. Uh, quickfire questions, guys. So, let's, uh, see what you guys think. When do you guys expect the Optimus V3 reveal, if Elon said now it's going to be as close as possible to production in Fremont? Uh, what are you thinking, Jeeoff?
>> Q3.
>> Q3 and it'll be in Fremont.
>> Oh, can be anywhere.
>> Yep. Uh, Cern.
>> If there's a merger sooner rather than later. If there's not a merger, later. If they announce it in August, as Alexandra was suggesting, then you think maybe it'll happen latest in August. I mean, they, we're June already. I'm telling you, it's like,
>> This is coming up too fast. It's just weird for me to think that sometime next month they might already announce.
>> September, first half of October, if there is a merger. That's a nice.
>> Second half of July.
>> No, to, for the reveal of the Optimus.
>> No.
>> Second half of September, first half of October.
>> Agreed.
>> That's a nice window. Yep.
>> Okay. Wow. All right. Okay. Uh, what is the next important milestone for Tesla?
>> The announcement of the merger.
>> Robo taxi ramp.
>> Which is when? What's your thinking, Cern?
>> Any minute.
>> Like, what do you, what do you mean by ramp?
>> Well, actually a concerted effort to to ramp. And I do think by the end of this quarter, we're going to get the other three cities that are on the chart, and they might just, they might just make it by the, you know, by the wire.
>> Well, end of this quarter is in 21 days. Yeah. So, I think we're going to see that. Uh, that way they can, they can say that they did it in the time frame they said.
>> Mhm.
>> Um, and then I expect that this summer we're going to see a more concerted ramp.
>> Okay. This summer, June, July, August, September.
>> Yeah.
>> Okay. Concerted robo taxi ramp, you said. Okay. And then, uh, Jeff.
>> Same. And couple with that, cyber cab giving production rides to real human beings,
>> Sometime in July, August, September.
>> Soon.
>> Yeah, that's what I've been saying. July.
>> Q2 is going to be a, a big. I think I think Q2 is going to be sizable for Tesla. But let's see. Typically in this month, we would come out of a Sunday of a starting the middle month of a quarter, and there'd be a bunch of sales announced or incentives. There's nothing, nothing new announced.
>> What are you implying?
>> That they've got a lot of demand for cars.
>> Sales are strong. So that we will, we won't know that until July 3rd when that we might see the deliveries and production numbers.
>> Well, yeah, we're going to get monthly snapshots though of registrations, and they're strong. That's why we got May.
>> Yeah, May has been strong. Although, although the US didn't seem strong, but I don't know where the US data would come from so quickly, but, um, but the other countries looked good. The net of it, including if this US data was accurate, the net of it was up 27, 28% over last year.
>> Alexander said that, uh, July, June 12th, when SpaceX goes IPO, that is a milestone for Tesla's stock. Larry Goldberg thinks that July, June 12th, just because SpaceX goes IPO, just in general, because of halo effect, like people are going to be talking about SpaceX, they're going to be hearing about Elon, that does just in general, he sees a 10%, 15% jump in Tesla stock because of, just because. What do you guys think?
>> I don't see it.
>> Then, why did you say that Tesla is it? I said, what's the next milestone for Tesla stock? And you said June 12th.
>> Merger. No, no, no. I said the merger. I said the merger announcement.
>> Announcement of merger.
>> End of June and middle of August.
>> Okay. I misheard you. All right. Um, yeah. Cern. What do you think? The stock going to move at all? Tesla stock on June 12th?
>> Um, it will move in my opinion, based on Tesla factors. I don't know that that if SpaceX has a massively successful IPO, that that necessarily moves Tesla.
>> If, do you think it will, people will sell Tesla to buy SpaceX?
>> If that's the case, that's happening this week. People.
>> Yeah, I think that's probably already happened.
>> It may go back in if they didn't get a lot of, a lotment.
>> Well, that's, that's another thing too, isn't it? And I think people are probably selling other things besides. You, anybody that was trying, that wants to buy SpaceX at the IPO, they likely love Elon and want to be invested in as much as they can with Elon, and they're not selling Tesla. They're selling everything else. They're probably selling their S&P index fund at this point.
>> They should.
>> Yeah. I was actually reading, I was just reading Eric, I think his name is Baracus. He is the Bloomberg reporter for ETFs and indices. He's really good. Um, not always good on on Bloomberg, but he's good. And he just said, this is a major strategical error of S&P. People will choose their passive funds and say, you know what, if you don't want three big things, let's go.
>> Y.
>> That's what he's saying. Yeah. Just wait until OpenAI, Anthropic are in there. Everybody wants Anthropic.
>> This is their cash flow. This is their cash cow. S&P 500 royalties.
>> Gosh, it sounds so much like Delaware again, making a strategic mistake because of,
>> Politics, politics, politics, or something like that. Yeah. And then shutting themselves in.
>> Never a friend.
>> Yeah.
>> I'm actually, now, in retrospective, I'm actually surprised they played the game and tried to propose it, whatever. But never mind. Who knows?
>> Well, they have to pretend like they're listening to their constituents.
>> Yeah.
>> Why don't we close with just, uh, your thoughts on what, what is the message to Tesla investors? People, investors have been sitting here watching the stock stay flat for so long, just on edge for robo taxi expansion, delayed, delayed, delayed. Um, comments.
>> Well, I've talked to a lot of Tesla investors. Um, and there's a lot of frustration, for sure. There's a lot of people that have watched other companies do extremely well, whether it's Nvidia or more recently companies like Micron, um, or even some private companies that perhaps they could have invested in. And so, it's been tough. And my message has been consistent in that what's happening with Tesla is not unusual. We've seen this with other stocks before where there's long periods of time where nothing happens, and all of a sudden it's a hockey stick. Sometimes the best course of action is to sit on your hands and do nothing. It's really hard as an investor to watch everybody else make money while you're not. And there's a lot of sort of, uh, traders out there or people that are more short-term minded that are in your face and showing you how great they're doing and how stupid you are for not selling Tesla at a certain price. There's lots of different ways of investing. I'm not necessarily putting that approach down, but just if you are a long-term holder, your patience will be rewarded. And, and I would like to add, and I would like to add, if you've gone through the worst, which were those 12, 18 months ago periods when Tesla dealerships were under fire, when politics were all over the place, I understand your frustration and that you're impatient, but you've gone through the worst. That's done now. And what is coming is going to be calmer waters and higher stock prices. The fundamentals are there, and we may have this huge catalyst with the merger. So, I think this is the moment to breathe. No FOMO. Just sit it out, and we'll see. And no financial advice. Oh, I already see Jeff sending me, don't give any financial advice. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not.
>> Herbert's like prompting us to give financial advice. What's your advice to investors? Well, there's 10 million of them. They all have different time horizons, and they all, uh, have different goals and desires. So, it's really hard to, to give. So, just know what you own. The question you have to, everybody's got different investing styles. There's the options casino. There's, there's buy and hold. There's all different kinds of things. But I just look at the portfolio of the company, like the products they have, and the leadership. And that's one of the key drivers for me. And I can't find a, a company with a better portfolio of product and innovation. I can't find a pro company that manufactures better, uh, in terms of the type of products, the capability of manufacturing than Tesla. And it just, but it's a different time horizon. So, your time horizon's longer. Well, who's, who is a better portfolio of products than Optimus and the, a profitable EV portfolio and autonomous ride share at ride share at real scale? I don't have a, a better portfolio of products than, of course, energy and the AI products and so forth. I don't know if. So, I always, I always look at the leadership. I look at the product, and I look at its competitive moat. And I think that's where a lot of analysts get tripped up, so-called analysts get tripped up, is they can't see the moat, uh, and understand the moat. And, and that could be your alpha.
>> Another thing too, I'd like to add is, is that for all of the SpaceX investors that I've talked to, I don't think I can name one that's selling any of their Tesla shares.
>> Same.
>> Take that for what it's worth. Not financial advice. Yeah, and I mean, there will be more delays. That is just part and parcel of, uh, what we're talking about here, but you guys have all said that next six months is where maybe a lot of things that we've been waiting for finally shows up. Robo taxi expansion, maybe an Optimus reveal, maybe, you know, guess the one that's most important is robo taxi. It's got to roll out the cyber cab. They're to keep building that. So, all right. Thank you guys. That was fun. Uh, lots of debate. We, we, we tackled a lot of, uh, controversial topics today. We went straight at, straight there and had to answer what a lot of people are saying. So, let's, uh, let's, you know, not hide, but actually address it. Thank you all. See you soon.
>> Thanks, Herbert.
>> Thank you.
>> Thank you.
>> 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 herm.com.