Happy “Elon Makes Another Promise He’ll Likely Delay” Day to all who celebrate… 

Musk is back on his bullsh*t promises. Yesterday, out of nowhere, he decided Austin’s robotaxi fleet will “roughly double” next month… and for once it didn’t sound like he was spitballing on the Joe Rogan podcast. Mostly because the bar is on the floor: Austin’s current fleet is so small riders are reporting “High Demand” errors like they’re trying to book Coachella tickets.

(Source: Giphy) 

Which, of course, is a good thing. However, at the same time, Waymo is rolling out fully driverless freeway services left, right, and twice on Sunday. Imagine being an Austin rider stuck waiting twenty minutes for a supervised Tesla while the Google bots in Phoenix are out there cruising down I-10 without humans in the front seats. For this reason, Musk is treating this thing like a cage match. “Game on,” he told Google’s Jeff Dean last week.

(Source: Reuter) 

With that said, there’s a very specific kind of déjà vu that hits every time Elon Musk announces something like this. You hear it, you nod, you keep scrolling… because somewhere in the back of your head you still remember the Cybertruck timeline, the Mars timeline, the Full Self-Driving timeline… you get it. And yet, analysts are still giving him the benefit of the doubt. As usual. You’d think after a decade of seeing Musk press the fast-forward button on timelines and then slap duct tape over the results, the Street would take the cautious route. Nope. They’re already projecting the robotaxi business as 90% of Tesla’s future value, as if supervised pilots in Austin translate directly to a nationwide autonomous fleet by 2029. Bold strategy Cotton, let’s see if it pays off for ‘em. 

To Tesla’s credit, the data advantage is real. Millions of daily miles of training footage will beat Waymo’s carefully fenced-off metro routes every time. But that only matters when the cars don’t need a human in the front seat… which is the part everyone keeps pretending is “any day now.” Additionally, in the background, Musk is simultaneously pitching that once Optimus hits mass production, Tesla experiences “an even larger valuation change.” That’s where we are. The robotaxi capability is the first transformation event. The humanoid robots are the next one.

(Source: Giphy) 

But if history is any guide, this is exactly when the Musk narrative machine kicks in. First you fix the basics. Then you point at the expansion. Then you ask everyone why they ever doubted you in the first place. And because this technology never rolls out all at once… it creeps in, city by city, lane by lane… most people won’t notice the shift until the map just looks different one morning.

Meaning, for now, keep your eyes on Austin.  If that fleet actually doubles, and if the wait-times stop sounding like a restaurant that forgot your reservation, then we’ll know the robotaxi push has at least escaped the “promise” phase and entered the “fine, it works, I guess” era. Until then, place your bets accordingly, friends… 

At the time of publishing, Stocks.News holds positions in Tesla and Google as mentioned in the article.