> Google, Amazon Robotics/Kiva, Hyundai/Boston Dynamics, even Nvidia are ahead of Tesla in AI+robotics.
Optimus seems to be much closer to actually being released as a product than Atlas. After over a decade, Boston Dynamics still hasn't shown anyone a live, unscripted demo of Atlas as far as I can tell (Tesla was showing those with multiple Optimus robots a year ago). And they don't appear to have any plans for actually selling it as a product anytime soon.
I'm skeptical of the humanoid robot market in general, but at the moment Tesla and Unitree appear to be the two companies ate the forefront of it.
This is a non-sequitur. The Optimus demonstrations so far have been partially controlled (though the degree to which they were appears to be overstated). This doesn't change the fact that they've done public demonstrations with the robots while Boston Dynamics hasn't.
This isn't true at all? Robots can be controlled externally, either fully or partially. ASIMO didn't stop being a robot because it was under external control for demonstrations (from what I can tell, much more external control than the Tesla robots).
The Tesla stock evaluation has little to do with what Tesla is delivering today and a lot more with what investors imagine they will be able to do in the future.
Based on their history I'm pretty optimistic that those expectations will not be met, but Tesla somehow still rises in value.
Yes. A lot of people, and obviously some "news" reporters, need to learn the difference between market share and stock price. And that as a market grows one company cannot maintain the same market share as competitors join in over time.
"Tesla is on track toward a second year of sales decline." - from the article
Consecutive years of sales declines is a situation where it does not matter if the market is growing or shrinking, it's bad for a company. The only way to grow if absolute sales go down is to raise margins on each individual unit.
"But with weakening sales and a host of competitors, Tesla has had to cut prices in recent years, squeezing its margins and worrying investors."
Hmmmm, I guess maybe the author of the article understands this better than you think?
I would say the smartphone market would be more stable in terms of market share by its nature. The only way that it would shift significantly is if there were a mass exodus of users from one platform to the other. But the vast majority of people are perfectly happy staying with whatever they have. Likewise, many new smartphone users who aren't locked into a platform yet get locked into whatever platform people around them are using.
In the vehicle market, there's a lot more competition space than just two or three brands. And just because someone is around, say, Ford drivers. It doesn't necessarily mean that they're going to go out and buy a Ford for themselves. Rather, they're going to buy whatever they find appealing.
Taken to the extreme for example, say Apple had 100% of the market. If a competitor entered the market and gained 1% share,then Apple's market share will have decreased.
In Tesla's case, a number of competitors have entered the market. It would be impossible to maintain whatever market share they had no matter how good the product is or how well their stock price is doing.