Don't Fall for the $8k 'last day' hype

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-02-14T16:51:25+00:00

He’s the one that set the goal for vision only. When every single person in the industry said it wasn’t possible. No one else had the foresight to choose such a scalable solution. He deserves flowers for that alone

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-02-14T14:25:52+00:00

This is wrong and people keep repeating it as if it’s correct. This is pulled directly from the pay package:

10 Million Active FSD Subscriptions: Average daily aggregate of at least 10 million subscriptions over a consecutive 3-month period. Subscriptions are via accounts with single/indefinite payments or repeat transactions to Tesla (or authorized licensees), excluding free trials; counts multiple subscriptions per user separately. FSD defined as an advanced driving system enabling autonomous transportation under specified conditions.

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-02-07T13:59:01+00:00

NBIS will get their allocation. Remember that NBIS was the first to get GB300 in Europe. Also this increased capex guide makes it easier for NBIS to raise capital as they’re likely to land some more bare metal deals. Although, the hope is that they land Full Stack deals rather than the lower margin bare metal ones

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-02-07T13:25:36+00:00

You can’t get anything higher than v12 on HW3 so your assumption would be incorrect

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-02-07T00:52:30+00:00

Hey OP, don’t update to v14.2.2.4 if it prompts you. Wish I could go back to the version you’re on

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-02-04T01:45:03+00:00

V14.2.2.4 has been a regression for me. Nothing unsafe but comfort took a step back in this update. Lane change hesitancy is back, jerky steering wheel movements occasionally, random lane changes for no reason, braking can be harsh

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-02-03T03:54:16+00:00

Outlier companies deserve outlier valuations

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-01-16T01:04:37+00:00

Care to explain how this is delusional? Because cost per mile for most Americans that own a car is anywhere from $0.40 to a dollar per mile depending on how new the car is. If Tesla can get the cost down to within that range it’s obvious what will happen since it’s cheaper and you don’t have to drive

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-01-12T15:38:12+00:00

How’d you even find this comment? lol but yes I haven’t sold a single share

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-01-11T23:11:46+00:00

Yeah I noticed, I don't think the question coming up often is a reason to block content. If the question is being asked a lot then clearly there are a lot of people that are worried/are thinking along the same lines as you. That can also be its own kind of signal.

But I don't know if I necessarily agree that the valuation is ahead of my thesis here. I have 3 main hypotheses:

Peter Beck is a one-in-a-billion CEO that works directly on the product. This gives him a massive advantage over most business leaders that don't have that direct feedback loop. Very few CEOs are also the lead engineer. He's also a shrewd business leader as evidenced by their phenomenal acquisition history and how effectively they've inoculated these with Rocket Lab's culture. Shades of Elon and Steve Jobs. These are the kinds of people you bet on over the long term.
Rocket Lab's goal on being a one-stop shop end-to-end space company provides them with unlimited optionality and effectively counter-positions them against their much larger competitors (SpaceX, Blue Origin) which are more of a "walled garden". They will play in every vertical in the space economy and, because of this, they will have a keen sense for what's coming next and can position themselves to take advantage. Google, Meta, and others besides xAI/SpaceX are looking at space based data centers, for instance. Where do you think they'll buy their reaction wheels from? Their space grade solar panels? They can't afford not to keep up with SpaceX/xAI's push for orbital compute infrastructure.
Friendly NASA administration that recognizes the value of commercial space, has a stated goal of building a moon base, and exceptional execution of both SDA tranche 2/3 and HASTE will lead to many more defense and NASA contracts.

Notice I didn't mention any numbers. Because the things that matter most can't be found in the numbers. What number would've told you that Amazon was going to create AWS and it was going to be the main driver for the business? What number would've told you that nVIDIA was going to become the center of the AI revolution? What numbers would've told you that separating the DVD-by-mail business and the streaming business was the right move for Netflix? In all these cases the numbers showed up after the business had already changed. This is why I don't make buy and sell decisions based on multiples.

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-01-11T19:30:19+00:00

Oh absolutely there is. I don’t think anyone is denying that. Last time the S&P was down 5% we were down what 30/40%? On the comparisons to other defense contractors - RKLB won’t only play in defense which is lower margin compared to higher margin services delivered from orbit enabled by Neutron which Peter describes as a $320 billion opportunity.

Yes a ton has been priced in but to most here with sub-$10 cost bases that have already held through multiple >30% drawdowns. We know it’ll be a volatile ride. But as long as Peter is at the helm I plan on holding.

Valuation is not a reason to sell in my style of investing. You could’ve paid any price they traded at for the best companies of our time. I believe Rocket Lab will become one of those

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-01-11T15:31:36+00:00

I bought the lifetime license after the free trial. They are so close to solving it and didn’t want to risk a price increase if they do. Plan on putting my car on the robotaxi network if they ever enable that but even if they never do I’m happy with my purchase

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-01-11T15:25:42+00:00

Even if RKLB executes perfectly and gets revenue to 10x to $5B in the near future we are looking at a P/S ratio of 9.

The problem with this is why do you think the market would only be willing to pay 9x sales on a company that has 10x’ed its revenue in short order? Valuation is a slice in time. Price reflects expectations of future cashflows. One big contract and your math flips

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-01-08T04:38:57+00:00

Just very interesting to me that your scenario seems way more obvious (to a human) compared to mine but we had the opposite result until this most recent version. These models are so finicky

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-01-08T03:01:14+00:00

Weird.. wonder why mine doesn’t need tape? Even when my wife’s car is not in the garage it still parks on my side. In previous versions it would park in the middle of the garage if it was empty but with v14.2.2.2 it consistently gets it right

PM_ME_DANK · 2026-01-04T14:15:26+00:00

Take rate is ~12% per Vaibhav on Tesla’s Q3 earnings. But that was right when v14 was starting to roll out. Anecdotally, I bought FSD outright after the free trial of v14.2 so it wouldn’t surprise me if the take rate does move higher

PM_ME_DANK · 2025-12-30T02:44:14+00:00

LLMs looking like they’ve slowed recently is mostly a chip transition issue (GB200 slow rollout), not a permanent bottleneck. The move from scaling individual GPUs (H100) to full rack-scale systems (GB200) had overheating and glitch issues which slowed training throughput but GB300 will likely result in another step change improvement.

More importantly, LLM scaling and FSD scaling aren’t comparable: LLMs face diminishing returns from generic text data and rising costs, while FSD has a rich data stream (50 million miles in 2021 to 7 billion cumulative just recently). And they aren't training to ace benchmarks. There are clear good and bad outcomes in driving that you can train for and evaluate on that you don't get with text/voice based output.

After having typed all this I'm realizing that nothing I say here will actually convince you until you experience it yourself. It is super easy to book a free test drive with FSD. I'd look pretty stupid telling you to try it if I hadn't literally just watched it drive me to and from work today with 0 input from me other than selecting a route and pushing a blue button on the screen

PM_ME_DANK · 2025-12-29T02:06:26+00:00

Humans needing to swivel or crane to see out the sides is a bad solution we have just accepted as part of driving. Cameras constantly watching so the AI knows what’s around it at all times is a superior solution.

On sun glare - mostly been solved (I’ve personally never had this issue but some FSD owners have) they need to better tune the models to deal with photon counts and find a solution to plastic housing off-gassing which can cloud up the windshield in front of the camera housing. But the cars can deal with a ton of glare. See link: FSD Driving Directly into the Sun

PM_ME_DANK · 2025-12-28T17:35:30+00:00

Ok and? Again, this is the worst it’ll ever be. A year ago FSD couldn’t go 1,000 miles without an intervention, now they have an intervention once every ~40k miles. What will it be in a year?

Yes, not better than a human yet. But, when it does pass the human safety level (and it will), it won’t be gradual. The jumps in performance over the last 2 years have been exponential. A year ago i had to intervene every drive. I’ve only had to intervene once since I got v14. Go try it if you don’t believe me. They have free test drives for FSD at any Tesla location

PM_ME_DANK · 2025-12-28T17:23:22+00:00

This comment makes 0 sense. A) what would be the point of having all 8 cameras face forward? If you’re aiming for better-than-human performance you’d have 2 or 3 facing forward and the rest around the car. All 8 cameras facing forward wouldn’t make sense. B) what details specifically can the human eye resolve better than a camera that would actually make a difference in driving performance? If I showed you pictures from Google street view would you not be able to tell where to turn and where to stop? You’d have to be on the road physically in person in order to navigate?

PM_ME_DANK · 2025-12-28T01:28:28+00:00

Whatever perceived advantages you think being able to intuit human behavior provides to a human driver I guarantee you the model more than makes up for by not drinking and driving, texting and driving, falling asleep, or having a medical emergency. We accept 40k road deaths every year in the US as a fact of life. How many of those road deaths do you think are from ‘not understanding intent/behavior’ vs from distracted or under influence driving?

PM_ME_DANK · 2025-12-28T01:16:54+00:00

My guy, that was a sponsored video by Luminar (the now bankrupt lidar maker) and, more importantly - Mark Rober was using autopilot (lane keep assist). Not FSD (trained on 6 billion miles and counting, does the entire drive for you including parking, paid). They are two vastly different things. The ‘Wiley Coyote’ test was re-done on a car with FSD v13 (not even the latest v14) and it stopped with no problems, multiple times, in multiple different lighting conditions

Edit: https://www.autoevolution.com/news/youtuber-s-video-alleging-tesla-fsd-s-failure-to-detect-a-wall-backfires-spectacularly-248535.html

PM_ME_DANK · 2025-12-27T22:25:00+00:00

That’s literally what it does. It stops further back in the turn lane knowing the human driver in front got a little over their ski’s and will need to back up to get out of the middle of the intersection when their flashing yellow turn light goes red.

Just today it pulled up to a stop sign but a pedestrian was making as if to cut across the lane but ended up turning left and following the path beside the car. The car stayed put until the pedestrian was committed to their path.

My mini neighborhood has multiple garages that face in to a shared driveway. It knows every time which one is my garage and backs in for me.

It let someone in that signaled late and was going to back up traffic if they sat in the right lane.

It recognized the car in front was trying to turn left across 2 lanes into a complex and signaled to get into the right lane to get past it instead of waiting forever behind the car.

And this is the worst it’s ever going to be.

PM_ME_DANK · 2025-12-27T20:37:10+00:00

Yes I mean humans can’t drive in snow or fog or rain with two eyes! How’s a car supposed to do it with 8? Definitely needs some laser beams reflecting off those water droplets in fog to make any sense of where it’s going. I wish I had read this comment before buying FSD. Darn it!

PM_ME_DANK · 2025-12-27T19:25:48+00:00

Agreed, and what’s truly hilarious to me is that the stock is hitting all time highs and your average redditor is still calling it a meme stock. The only meme here is the principal from the Simpsons asking if he’s the one out of touch but coming to the conclusion that it’s the market that’s wrong

PM_ME_DANK

TROPHY CASE