The purest expression: if Cybercab reaches unsupervised scale, Optimus hits a million-unit line and FSD clears Europe, Tesla re-rates from an automaker to an autonomy-plus-robotics platform. The stock is the direct claim on every part of the thesis at once. Size as a core anchor position and expect extreme volatility along the way.

For a time-bound, convex bet on autonomy and Optimus inflection, long-dated OTM calls turn the same view into asymmetric upside for a defined premium. If robotaxi commercialization and the Optimus ramp land inside the option window, the payoff dwarfs the equity; if they slip, the premium is what you risk. Keep it small relative to the equity core because options can expire worthless (100% loss of premium).

The thesis names VW explicitly — factory closures, 120k jobs, half the lineup deleted — as the poster child of legacy-auto collapse under Tesla's cost, autonomy and utilization advantage. As robotaxi utilization erodes private car ownership and ICE share, the highest-fixed-cost, engine-heavy incumbents suffer most, and VW is the sharpest single-name embodiment. Cleaner and more direct than shorting a broad auto ETF.

The non-obvious Optimus play: a million humanoids a year means an enormous new demand curve for precision actuators, and Harmonic Drive is the world leader in strain-wave (harmonic) gearing that sits inside high-torque robot joints. Rather than buy a broad robotics ETF, this targets the exact bottleneck component the Optimus BOM most needs. A pure-play pick-and-shovel on the humanoid ramp regardless of which robot maker wins.