Waiting for Tesla CyberCab AI5 – Is the Model 2 Finally Coming?

I've been really following the rollout of the new Model 3 and the Model Y, and those lower-cost, lower-priced cars are— it's an improvement in some ways of giving new and existing Tesla owners a pathway, a lower-cost pathway to get to the the full self-driving. It's not a perfect pathway because I, there's a lot of compromises. So let's say you bought a higher-end Model 3 back in 2022, like I did. And if you wanted to get back into a Hardware 4 car, then you're going to need to possibly spend a little less money, but you're having to replace your car, right? So you're having to spend more to stay in the ecosystem. That may not be financially what you want to do right now. So it's a difficult time for Tesla owners to feel like that they have to spend lots and lots of money to stay in the system when they have a Tesla vehicle right now. But the prospects of getting a hardware update to be able to enable a car like this one to be able to get up to hardware 4 is not looking very promising right now. So all those that are on a subscription to FSD, really, I don't— I have a hard time seeing that there's really any pathway in the future. So these cars are pretty much for the foreseeable future locked into where they are, which is in the, the current install of Full Self-Driving, which don't get me wrong, it's a usable Full Self-Driving. And I think that's Tesla's thinking right now. I'm using it right now to drive the car and it's doing a very good job. There's a little hesitations now and then, a little bit of quirks. On occasion, but generally does a pretty good job. I don't really have a lot of negative things to say about the Full Self-Driving stack in this car. I think it's, it gives me what I need. It does raise the prospect, and I think that's what Elon and Tesla is thinking, is that there may not be really a need to upgrade everybody because eventually if you're a fan and you care about getting full self-driving, you're probably gonna want to buy a new car anyway. You might as well get the latest models. But I do wonder about the expectations that we saw over this last week or so about the new standard models, what the market was and what they were expecting, this low-cost Model 2 or something like that. And what Tesla delivered was basically a stripped-down Model 3 and Model Y for a few thousand dollars less. As a pathway to make up for the, the $7,500 tax credit, basically enabled people to feel like that they had a pathway to get into a new car. So That's where we're at right now with this. And we're in a situation where, where we need to all really think about our finances and think about what the best course to go is. And I'm currently thinking right now that I'm probably going to wait until the hardware 5 cars come out before I upgrade my car. And just live with the, the full self-driving that I have in the car right now. I don't think that's a bad pathway, but I think the new cars with Hardware 5 are going to be remarkable, right? So that should be the best time to probably upgrade. And I do think a lot about the CyberCab too. About what Tesla could do with the CyberCab. Is it going to remain a vehicle without a steering wheel? Or are they going to make a variant on that same body style and that same model that could be made available as the true Hardware 2 vehicle? That's the prospect. I guess it raises a lot of questions around Is that vehicle going to have an optional steering wheel in it, or is that vehicle going to remain only a, a self-driving vehicle without the steering wheel or pedals? I think it's an interesting question, and I don't know that we know the answer to that yet, but I do think that vehicle has the prospect of being that $25,000 car. The CyberCab is the form factor that you would think would be the ideal vehicle for an era when full self-driving is unsupervised, right? You just— the car is like a— it picks you up even though you own your own car. You actually would treat it like a taxi. And I think it's an interesting future that you could own your own CyberCab, or I think that they'll create like a different variant of it. I think they'll create a model like we've seen that would be used for a taxi service or an Uber type of a vehicle. I think that's going to be the primary use case for it. But they will have that, that model line with that form factor that could be sold as a regular car that would be owned by an individual like myself. And that car becomes very utilitarian. And that's an interesting prospect is that CyberCab does have a big trunk. It's a two-seater. I think Tesla could scale the sale of that car to be very large, and the prospects of that vehicle being the next generation Tesla vehicle at scale where they would sell 20 million cars or something like that is a very real possibility. But then again, people might think with that vehicle too, that they don't need to buy a car because why not just tap into the taxi, the CyberCab taxi network, and just, if you need to go to the store, you need to go somewhere, you just pop open your app and click a button. A CyberCab comes by and picks you up. Do you really need to own your own cybercab? I think it's an interesting question. I guess it depends on what the price point is. I might want to own a cybercab because I want to rent it out. So I think it's an interesting future as we think about maybe people buying a fleet of these cybercabs and putting them in the network. But maybe they own one themselves and use that, that CyberCab for their own personal purposes. If I'm trying to go to the airport, let's say I live up in Connecticut and I want to fly out from JFK down to New York, I could have my car drive me to JFK. And then turn around and come home. And then when I arrive back from my trip, the CyberCab drives down to JFK and picks me up at the airport and then drives me home. That's the future that I'm excited about. And it could do that locally too. Let's say I have an appointment to go somewhere else. It just takes me there and takes me home. Now that's what I'm doing right now with my Model 3 is it takes me everywhere I need to go. So that definitely is a, is an interesting feature. But this concept of being able to take your own car and have it drive somewhere and drop you off. And pick you up even a week later or something like that is an interesting aspect of this. And if you're going to, let's say, another city, maybe that car could drive you. Well, let's say I wanted to drive to Philadelphia and I was planning on staying there for a few days for a conference or something like that. The car could drive me there, and then actually stay with me there, and I could actually rent the car out in Philadelphia as a CyberCab while I'm staying in Philadelphia and could generate some income for me with my car. And I'm sure that the Tesla network will enable the car to automatically get itself charged and maybe even get itself cleaned. That would be a good prospect for earning a little extra money, but using my car to take me where I want to go and take me home. I hope you have a terrific day, and thank you for watching. Bye.