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General Motors Company
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GM cutie patootie!

I absolutely should have which is why I ended with the it was a mistake to diversify lol. Percentage wise though, I expect LAC to out perform TNZ next year so even though I'm taking a beating on the position now, I know it will pay off in the near future. Looks like Democrats will take both chambers, bullish for green energy, and next year is the miner re-rate! If that ship goes down it's taking DOE, GM, and Trump along with it to the tune of $3B. Unlikely. What's more likeis for Trump to pump the hell out of it like he did to his administrations other personal stake, Intel.

Dumped all my NVDA shares. Video games are a dead thing. Put it all on safe bets like Enron and GM.

The problem is that you’re assuming Uber’s vehicle costs will be equal to Waymo’s. Right now, they project to be significantly less. Uber is purchasing their Rivians and Lucids for $50k-$70k per vehicle. Waymo’s average cost per vehicle is $105k. That’s why I don’t see Waymo as a threat. Assuming Waymo will be able to scale to Uber’s enormous size at no additional cost is what you’re overlooking. If Waymo intends to be their own service provider, it would cost at least $10-$20B just to grow, maintain, and advertise a platform comparable to Uber. So even in your faulty assumption that all vehicle input costs are necessarily equal, Waymo doesn’t escape that “Uber fee” as those costs then gets baked into each fare and the equation becomes remains vehicle cost+software cost+platform costs. The 20-30% Uber fee may ultimately be cheaper than the costs of trying to replicate Uber. I mean, Coca-Cola doesn’t “need” to rely on McDonald’s to distribute their product. They could easily buy/launch their own restaurant chains (like Pepsi did). But it wouldn’t necessarily be a better deal for them. What you have exactly wrong is that rider preference will dictate which service is used. Available supply will dictate user preference and that will dictate which platform is used. People generally don’t care what car is coming, they only care if one is coming and whether it can take them where they’re going. That’s Uber’s advantage as they are already on six continents and partnered with over 30 AV providers. I may love Waymo more, but if they aren’t available and/or can’t take me where I’m going, it doesn’t matter. Waymo projects to achieve manufacturing capacity of up to 20k vehicles annually over the coming years. For comparison, Volkswagen currently has manufacturing capacity of 24k cars per day. I live in Dallas. Waymo is cool but it can only take you up to 6 miles at under 35mph. Volkswagen and Mercedes launch on Uber this year. Hyundai launches next year. Toyota and GM project by 2028/2029. Not hard at all to foresee a scenario where these giants overtake Waymo’s “lead” of 4k robotaxi’s. It would theoretically take Volkswagen only a few hours to do so. Waymo licensing their software to OEM’s like Ford/Nissan/Honda who will sell vehicles to their franchised dealerships to run their own ride-share business on the Uber platform is much more likely to be the majority of Waymo’s future. This cuts out Waymo’s vehicle acquisition costs, platform development costs, and fleet management costs. Cummins had a lot of success with this kind of business model. Everybody is distracted by Waymo/Tesla. The real threat to Uber is ChatGPT/Anthropic being able to connect you to a local Toyota/GM dealership running out their AV’s and completely bypassing the Uber/Waymo platform.

Yeah, man, I think that's a great idea. I didn't want to put all my eggs in the same basket so I came up with a fullproof diversified plan. Followed all the classic advice like never invest more than 5% into any one company. And split your funds into equity and bonds. I can't go wrong with this plan: **1. US Banking 10%:** Two rock-solid titans with Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual. **2. Insurance 5%:** AIG is the largest insurance in the world! Zero risk. **3. European banks are reputedly even safer so 5%:** Anglo Irish Bank is my bet. **4. Industrial 5%:** GM because you can't go wrong with American classics. **5. Retail 5%:** Circuit City because of all this computer building boom and stuff. **6. Transport 5%:** Frontier Airlines. These low-cost airlines are just amazing cash cows! **7. Tech and energy 10%:** Solyndra & Joost. I know these amazing guys with really promising startups so decided to put take a stake in their companies. These Joker-cards are probably the ones that will turns us into multi-millionaires while the other assets grind more slowly. **8. Real estate 15%:** Got us a fabulous new house in Florida! 15% of all our funds in downpayment and then the mortgage is quite large. But hey, as they say, real estate always goes up long-term! You've seen these guys getting rich with property in the recent years, right!? **9. Fixed-interest 40%:** Following the classic 60/40 advice I'm putting 40% into Greek governmental bonds! We went to Greece once at it was such a nice experience! Germany was such a drag in comparison, so I'm not giving my money to those lederhosen idiots! I'm like, this is all buy-and-hold so I'm even going to peek at the balance for years, just like these weirdo Bogleheads say (who knows, maybe they're onto something!). So yeah, all the family's money is now in there, although wifey doesn't know anything about it yet. She'll be so happy once I'll tell her some years later, how rich and stable we all are. Probably tell when when the kids hit high school in 2012, and we can start planning their fabulous time in elite colleges!

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+.