In July 2020 I wrote a short memo called "Tesla: Game, Set, Match?" Elon Musk had just told the World AI Conference in Shanghai he was "extremely confident" Tesla would reach Level 5 autonomy soon, using the hardware already in its cars.
I closed the memo with Charlie Munger's line about Musk, "Never underestimate the man who overestimates himself." Then I asked whether Level 5 autonomy might be one more thing by Tesla that once seemed impossible.
At the time, I owned Tesla shares (owned from late 2018 to mid-2022). I hold no position in Tesla, or in any automaker, today.
Today, Tesla is moving away from being an automaker faster than at any point since I started writing TaaSMaster memos. Interestingly, cars still produced 73% of its revenue in the third quarter. Yet R&D spending rose 69% on AI, the Optimus robot and Cybercab. Last month, Musk confirmed that independent committees at Tesla and SpaceX are even studying a merger.
So I went back through more than six years of my own TaaSMaster memos about Tesla to review what I got wrong, what I never stopped believing, and what Tesla might actually become.
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Tracking Disruption in Global Autos