GM
General Motors Company
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Companies competing against themselves is how they gain more market share. Look at GM back in the day with the exact same cars across Chevy, Olds, Pontiac and Buick.

GM anach

How does that ignore your hotel point? As you said, most people don’t care what car is coming, they only care will it be on time, get them where they’re going, and can they afford it? I gave you a dozen AV providers operating on Uber. With AV ride-hailing eating 30-50% of car ownership, I see it being more like the streaming industry with several providers than the smart phone industry with only 1 or 2. There will be room for a Netflix/YouTube/HBO/Disney/Paramount. But Uber looks like YouTube/Netflix (offers everything), Waymo and Tesla look like HBO/Disney (unique content). You gotta understand what Tesla and Waymo are. Tesla is a mid-tier OEM and elite-tier hype factory with zero experience/success building an Uber network. They promised 1 million robotaxi’s on the road by 2020. Here we are in 2026 and there’s only 170 Cybercabs on the road. At 30-50% of car sales, that’s an implied demand for 30-50 million AV’s annually. So even if Tesla devoted 100% of their manufacturing capacity to robotaxi’s, they could still only meet a maximum of 6.6% of demand. Tesla will be like Papa John’s and eventually partner with Uber. If they don’t, it will bankrupt them. Waymo manufactures AV capability, purchases vehicles from OEM’s, installs it, and rents the vehicle while giving a cut to Uber and Avis for networking/maintaining for them. Even if we assume they continue operating on Uber, it is a super capital-intensive business model comparable to Hertz/Avis/Car Dealerships, which are very low growth/margin businesses. If we assume they don’t partner with Uber at all, they’ll need to spend billions trying to develop a competitive network, which is likely to end up like Google+. From the car providers, I think the AV winner will be Toyota. They are the largest, most efficient, and most trusted manufacturer in the world. They’re also a major stake holder in Waymo/Uber and is developing their own AV capability. Volkswagen/Mercedes/GM/Hyundai are all better bets than Tesla/Waymo. Regulations for these AV’s are still developing so I don’t think assuming first mover advantage is wise. Like in the streaming industry, the real winner won’t be content creators, it will be demand aggregators like Netflix/YouTube. Uber will be the real AV winner. I like Lyft, too. A major factor frequently overlooked is how many dealerships there are literally everywhere. They are experts the business of buying/managing/maintaining/selling cars. Only instead of having their inventory sit on the lot for weeks/months, they can immediately have it generating money by operating on Uber. Making Uber a lot like YouTube.

Why would Dominos, Pizza Hut, and Papa John’s bother dealing with Uber at all? Papa John’s actually resisted dealing with Uber/DoorDash for a long time. Then they realized distributors serve an important purpose. Especially when all their drivers were leaving for Uber. This is not unique to this industry. Why would Coca-Cola bother dealing with McDonald’s at all? Why would Warner Bros and Paramount deal with Netflix at all? Why would food companies bother dealing with Walmart/Costco? Volkswagen, Mercedes, Hyundai, GM, Toyota, Rivian, Lucid, MayMobility, WeRide, and Pony AI all launch their AV’s on the Uber platform within the next 12-24 months. Ford, Nissan, Honda likely will by 2030. Fact of the matter is cars are easy to get. A global network of 200M monthly users is not. I’m very confident that if Tesla insists on being a stand-alone provider, it will take Tesla out of the car industry. Their best bet is to buy out Lyft and take Uber’s approach of partnering with other OEM’s/Fleet Managers. I’m pretty confident, most of Waymo’s future won’t be in ride share. It costs them $105k per car. At current uber rates, that means they have to average at least 100k miles per vehicle just to break even. And that’s before they spend $10B of trying to build a network to compete with Uber. For context, commercial fleets average \~35k miles. I’m certain Waymo’s future will be closer to Cummins than Uber. They’ll sell their AV tech to either OEMs like Honda who are behind on developing their own or to fleet managers to install it on existing vehicles and operate primarily on Uber. Everyone thinks Waymo has some massive lead because they have 4k cars that can’t go above 35mph or take you more than 6 miles. Waymo’s manufacturing capacity has plans to scale to 20k cars a year. Assuming they can afford to purchase 20k cars a year. Volkswagen’s current manufacturing capacity is 24k cars a day. I expect autonomous ride-share will eat 30-50% of car sales by 2035-2040. This means all OEMs will be devoting most of their manufacturing to it. With so many providers, there will be a need for a demand aggregator like Uber. I foresee all car rental companies and car dealerships pivoting to fleet managers running their own cars on Uber and/or servicing Uber’s fleet, which they have $10B allocated to acquiring 150k of their own AV’s. Right now Uber looks like Facebook to Waymo/Tesla’s Google+.

\> How is this different? This is different because the people who are borrowing money from Ford or GM, most of them are earning real money that they can use to pay the debt back. The AI companies are losing money hand over fist and not making any real profit to pay the money back to NVIDIA.

Like when you go to Home Depot, Lowe’s or Macy’s and they want you to get their credit card to buy their stuff. Or Ford, GM or whatever car manufacturer wants you to buy through their financing. How is this different?

GM GM thetaaaa Been a while

With 87% GM, I expect my dividends to rise. Lol