$TSLA bulls proclaiming that TSLA robotaxis will put $UBER out of business is as outrageous as their warnings in 2020-2023 that TSLA EVs would put legacy auto out of business, because nobody was as vertically integrated or could build EVs as profitably as TSLA. TSLA bulls’ earlier prediction that legacy manufacturers would go bankrupt turned out to be flat out wrong, just as TSLA bulls’ current prediction that TSLA robotaxi will put UBER out of business will prove flat out wrong. Lest anyone forget, TSLA still requires a safety driver in every robotaxi it operates. According to the latest FSD community tracker (sorry, the data is all we’ve got), TSLA efficacy is still just 449 miles per critical disengagement - far below Waymo, Baidu, and other autonomous manufacturers who are at 10K-17K miles per critical disengagement. While TSLA bulls proclaim that no one else is close to TSLA in unsupervised autonomy, there are now 5 fully autonomous manufacturers with robotaxi operations already up and running that don’t require a safety driver in their vehicles - Waymo, Baidu, Zoox, and WeRide. Despite TSLA’s huge data advantage, TSLA is not there yet. Why not? While TSLA bulls can shoot me down with personal attacks (“he’s too old”, “he doesn’t understand the technology”, and my favorite “he just wants to buy TSLA cheaper” rather than face facts, the reality is what $UBER CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said on Uber’s earnings call yesterday: “This is a very, very big market. There will be no winner-take-all.” This is not unlike $AMZN in 2013 which didn’t make its own products and instead offered a broad platform that promised next day delivery to efficiently sell all merchants’ products. The shift to unsupervised autonomous vehicles is real and will present huge investment opportunities. But it’s clear that UBER’s broad platform of 180M MAUs, autonomous partners, and shortest time to ride requests, make it uniquely positioned to exploit this shift to autonomy. Face facts people.

$TSLA China reported 10.7K insured registrations for the week of July 21-27. Through four weeks, the quarter is +45% QoQ and -10% YoY. Source: @piloly

$TSLA plans to roll out supervised robotaxi in San Francisco this weekend.

$UBER continues to outperform $TSLA (YTD $UBER +51%, TSLA -21%) as the race for autonomy heats up. The investment thesis for $UBER is that UBER benefits most as autonomous tech advances since it allows UBER to eliminate the cost of a driver from the cost of ridership, which could lower the price by half and significantly expand TAM. For $TSLA, mastering unsupervised autonomy could allow it to expand its robotaxi fleet, which given vertical integration and mnfg scale allow it to undercut the cost of every other ride hailing competitor if it can get to 99.99% efficacy (one critical disengagement per 10K miles, or once per year). Since TSLA robotaxis in Austin still operate with safety drivers, investors are skeptical. Since the 6/22 Austin robotaxi launch, $UBER +8% vs $TSLA -5%.

In today’s posts for subscribers, it’s clear that the unsupervised autonomy space is getting crowded, as I have argued for years: WeRide’s new autonomous robobuses; $UBER’s robotaxi partnership with $LCID and Nuro; plus Trump’s walk back of plans to fire Powell prior to his term expiring next May. $TSLA

$TSLA Summary - 7/15/2025 Positive Catalysts: 1/ Trump streamlines federal process allowing TSLA to secure general unsupervised autonomy license nationally 2/ FSD licensing deal with 1 or more OEMs 3/ TSLA removes safety drivers from robotaxis, expands to states outside TX as critical disengagements fall to one per 10,000 miles by FY’25 YE. 4/ DE Supreme Court overturns Chancellor McCormick’s 2018 comp ruling late-2025 5/ Cybercab production begins early-2026 6/ Optimus production begins late-2026 Negative Catalysts: 1/ Trump admin restricts state efforts to control carbon emissions, which could significantly reduce TSLA ZEV sales. 2/ TSLA fails to introduce new cheaper form factor in 2025/1H, and instead cuts prices and costs similar to 2023-2024 3/ TSLA issues 12-15% new equity to acquire xAI under TSLA corporate umbrella. Requires TSLA shareholder approval. 4/ FY’25 and FY’26 EPS ests continue to fall (-43% and -32% respectively YTD) as FY’25 and FY’26 delivery ests continue to slide (FY’25 -20% and FY’26 -22% YTD). 5/ TSLA 2025 P/E of 170x too high relative to FY’25-‘30 EPS growth of +25% CGR. Avg forward P/E past 3 years 80x. $TSLA 6-12 month price target $310

$TSLA China reported a strong 12.3K insured registrations for the week of July 7-13. This was the highest second week of the quarter ever. After two weeks. 3Q is +92% QoQ and -3% YoY. Source: @piloly @Tslachan

Linda Yaccarino @lindayaX stepping down as CEO of X can’t be a coincidence in the aftermath of Grok going rogue yesterday and spewing out streams of antisemitic garbage. This incident likely wrecked any chance of X attracting increased advertising dollars this year, making Linda’s job untenable. $tsla

I disagree with the doomsday crowd who believe Elon’s formation of the America Party will hurt the Tesla brand. While it’s difficult to predict the short term impact, I doubt this will impact $TSLA stock longer term. IMHO the America Party is highly unlikely to get much traction, given how difficult it’s been for independent parties to succeed in the past, and at some point Elon will focus on something else.

In today’s pre-market summary for Subscribers: Trump’s signature tax and spending bill moves back to the House where it is expected to pass before the weekend, after the Senate approved it 51-50 with VP Vance casting the deciding vote; $TSLA 2Q deliveries today before the open; we could see a buy-the-news reaction even if 2Q deliveries miss again (our est 370K -17% YoY vs WS 385K -13% YoY); tomorrow we get June U.S. non-farm payrolls (+110K expected).