Venture capitalist Chamath Palihapitiya revealed his surprising ranking of Tesla Inc.‘s TSLA ventures beyond electric vehicles. He declared “Ride-sharing is number one. And the absolute probably by an order of magnitude,” when asked about the company’s biggest potential growth areas.
The Autopilot-Fueled Revolution? Palihapitiya’s bullishness on ride-sharing stems from its potential synergy with Tesla’s self-driving technology.
“In order for ride-sharing and ride-hailing to really work the way that they envision it, you will have level five autonomy supported in jurisdictions where… you can summon a car from your app and if you don’t have access to a mobile phone, you can go to these bus stop equivalents and just press a button and the car comes to you,” he said on the latest episode of the All-In Podcast.
This seamless user experience, he believes, powered by Tesla’s Autopilot technology, is “a gargantuan game changer.”
“Just to contrast, Uber and Lyft seemingly are profitable because they find pricing power to raise prices. So if Tesla enters in as the third player in that field and just guts pricing, which I think would make sense for them to do, I think this thing is just gangbusters nuclear,” he added.
However, a bullish Tesla analyst, whose fund includes the EV giant’s stock in its portfolio, last week highlighted the disconnect between CEO Elon Musk‘s emphasis on Tesla’s commitment to autonomy and institutional investor sentiment. However, he noted the potential for a narrative shift on Aug. 8, when Tesla is set to unveil its robotaxis.
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Charged Up On Energy: While ride-sharing took the pole position, Palihapitiya said the second-biggest opportunity was in Tesla’s energy business — something that even the company itself has been drawing more investor attention to.
He pointed out the current state of affairs, saying, “Today in America, if you look at the energy infrastructure, the utilities keep raising rates and they keep raising rates independent of what it costs to generate energy.”
Palihapitiya proposed a bold solution: transforming millions of homes into “mini-utilities” equipped with Tesla solar panels and battery systems.
He said companies like Palmetto, a leading residential solar installer in which he has heavily invested in, are at the forefront of this movement.
These systems would grant homeowners independence from the traditional grid, allowing them to “be totally resilient and independent of the utilities.”
Palihapitiya believes this trend, coupled with net-metering policies that allow homeowners to sell excess solar energy back to the grid, could create a seismic shift in the energy landscape.
“So if you have 100 million of these mini utilities competing against 1,700 incumbents… that’s an upheaval of an enormous amount of market cap.”
Not So Optimistic On Optimus: While Palihapitiya is enthusiastic about Tesla’s ride-sharing and energy endeavors, he expressed some reservations about the company’s humanoid robot project, Optimus. He argues that “the conclusion that I came to… is I suspect instead of having a generalized robot, you have very specific use case robots that look differently.”
“So for example … there’s something called intuitive surgical, which is essentially a robot that operates on you. And if you look at that, it doesn’t look anything like what you would think a robot would look like,” he said.
Image made via photos on Flickr and Shutterstock
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