Mainstream investors and financial media are (finally) warming up to the idea that Tesla is not a car company — it’s a robotics and AI company.
The Model 3 is just a robot with wheels. It’s also why the Tesla IR site has a robot on the main page, not a car.
Robotaxis are hitting Austin in a few weeks. It could completely change the economics for TSLA. Instead of selling a car once to a consumer, you generate significant cash flow on an asset, which improves margins and growth.
But they are behind. Forget Waymo’s rollout…
China is in play.
Pony.ai (PONY) has 300 autonomous vehicles in the PRC, and they’ve just inked a deal with the largest taxi operator in Shenzhen.
The difference here is that Pony doesn’t make the cars. They can install their tech at a local factory, or they can slap it on in the aftermarket.
It’s a strong value proposition for automakers, who are light years behind Tesla on any kind of autonomous driving.
PONY is giving us a solid technical setup combined with a narrative follow-on when the Robotaxi hype hits in the next few weeks.
The stock had two recent stop loss runs that were bid up aggressively, suggesting that larger players are pulling bids as a way to get access to cheaper inventory.
Provided that $16 holds, there’s a good chance it breaks from the upper end of this range and starts to catch some momentum.
I’m playing it with the Jun 18/22 call spread. I picked a spread instead of straight calls because the option premium is through the roof, and traders are preferring to buy OTM options, so I’ll get long but take out some of the option-related risks with changes in vol and time. The tradeoff is that if the stock runs to $100 overnight, then I will miss out on a ton of upside.
If options trading is foreign to you or you’d like to learn more about how I approach them, take a look at a video training I’ve put together right here.
