Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[mongo]

This is true for human driver safety only. For X times better safety you need a different existence proof. For what it's worth I think it's likely just not proven yet.

That's a criteria constraint though. Better than driver that never had an accident? Better than average driver?
Do people have accidents because they:

1. Can't see (sensor limit)
2. Don't see (attention, limited field of view limit)
3. Drive not for conditions (speed )
4. Drive poorly (insufficient space if lane change, tail gating, brake checking)

A reliable vision system and computer only has #1 to deal with.
If we make all cars with a top speed of 5MPH out of nerf type flame proof foam with a 10,000kg roof crush rating (falling objects), it would be super safe. Then the nav system could almost be contact sensors and ultrasonics.

No one would buy that though.

 

[Fact Checking]

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Elon Musk: SpaceX CEO blasted for ‘dangerously misleading’ action against climate change

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Hey, at least they were careful enough not to name Elon as the "Tesla CEO", which would have made the absurdity of that narrative even more apparent.

The British tabloids are Murdoch-land - which go hand in hand with the Koch climate criminals. Of course they are going with "Big Lie" tactics and are attacking some of the best initiatives and the most effective public figures the loudest. Just ignore them.

Fact is that planting somewhere between 0.5 and 3 trillion trees would largely counter global warming:

The ecologist who wants to map everything​

And at a price tag of ~50 cents per tree such a project is entirely reasonable, it's the damage caused by 2-5 Hurricane Harvey's. Those trees would be earning back their cost within a decade, even if we value our only habitable planet at zero.

Of course we also must stop all new CO2 emissions.

 

[mongo]

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Elon Musk: SpaceX CEO blasted for ‘dangerously misleading’ action against climate change

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Top reporting:

Greta Thunberg has also highlighted on Twitter that planting trees won’t be enough action against climate chance.

 

[electracity]

You leave out one thing though... At least according to Tesla, mass production of FSD vehicles has started for several years already. The cars just need a simple free motherboard swap and OTA update!
Lets be a bit pessimistic and say that Tesla still needs 1 more year to solve it, LIDAR will not be cheap and mature enough for elegant integration in regular FSD vehicles...

It's not so much about Lidar as a second sensory system that will raise the probabilities high enough to allow FSD. Musk was expressing this need when he spoke optimistically about refining radar into a more useful forward looking sensor.

Gut feelings about small probabilities differences are irrelevant. Successful FSD is all about pushing decision systems to very high probabilities of accuracy. Anyone with high confidence in unproven extremely complex systems either a non-engineer or a liar.

Rational investors seek to discern the probability of future events occuring. Black/white thinking does not make for either good engineers or good investing.

 

[Huskyf]

27 Model 3's manufactured by October 31:

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Battery workshop progressing nicely, with roofing underway:

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Open soil is temporarily getting covered in green geotextile, I suspect to keep the dust from the road surfaces, and to make it look nicer until fully developed:

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Is this 28 Model 3's made by October 31, or some other car?:

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#29, #30 and #31 being supercharged?

View attachment 472703View attachment 472707
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#32 is the test unit for off-road testing?

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#33 just coming out of the factory at 5:30?

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Interesting looking trucks parked deep inside the factory at 5:42:

View attachment 472706​

(Might just be regular vans though.)

As @KarenRei mentioned it too, the loading docks are mostly empty - likely because it's still trial production ramp-up, with much lower parts and materials requirements.

Did you saw the little house with red roof they have the T of the logo of Tesla at the center cool effect ?

 

[ReflexFunds]

I have tremendous respect for both of your opinions but disagree.

Tesla plans to ramp up to 20M EVs/year, including Semis, pickups and other battery intensive vehicles, plus as much as a TWh/year of storage. While there may be short periods when they have excess battery capacity, locking up capacity in contracts to other oems would almost certainly slow down growth toward that incredibly ambitious target.

Also, the marginal profit Tesla could make from selling 100,000 skateboards per year (for example), would be dwarfed by the profits from 100,000 additional Tesla vehicle sales enabled by manufacturing those skateboards. This is especially true factoring in the enormous profits that can be made when the Tesla Network is activated. Unless they sell skateboards bundled with FSD the value of using batteries for vehicles capable of being in the Tesla Network will dwarf other uses.

Also, as far as the mission, vehicles in the Tesla Network will be driven 4-5X the number of miles/km of vehicles that aren't. EVs in the Tesla Network will displace far more oil than EVs that aren't and using batteries for those vehicles will do far more to accelerate the world to sustainable transportation.

So I doubt they'll get into the skateboard business any time soon. If they do, I suspect it will be in small quantities. For example, if they have contractual obligations to buy cells from Panasonic they no longer want for their own vehicles or storage, they might use them to make packs and skateboards to sell to other oems and earn a little cash on the side.

I don't disagree with your general argument.

I do think that Tesla will definitely sell (or more likely keep) any car it can make if it delivers on Robotaxis. I also think Tesla has a good chance of selling every car it can make even if it doesn't deliver on Robotaxis. I also don't think capital should constrain growth.

However, Elon also has to plan for the possibility this isn't true. Good management always have contingency plans. While I'm sure Elon fully believes he will deliver Robotaxis in the near future, he is still making many business decisions based on the assumption that this never comes to fruition.

I see selling skateboards as one of these contingency plans. If Tesla doesn't deliver on its primary business plan - it still can make a huge amount of profit. If Tesla can't prevent global warming alone - it can still help other people solve it together.

Tesla is the only company in the world that can make highly efficient and affordable EV battery packs and Powertrains. Many many companies in the world can build car body lines, paint shops and assemble cars. If there is ever a possibility Tesla will be capital, labour or demand constrained in its growth in the future, it makes sense to prioritise its capital and available labour on building Powertrains and batteries - other people are capable of building car assembly plants or diverting their current ICE workforce to assembling EVs based on Tesla skateboards. Contingency plans have huge value even if in the end they never have to be put in use. And I don't think building extra battery/powertrain capacity should ever constrain growth of Tesla's full car/Robotaxi production. It will be new capex for new facilities for a new product line. No reason for any cannibalisation of its own vehicle production if they invest enough capex in expansion.

 

[Alphacrux]

I think that image doesn't even show the full ugly, they apparently also have these side protrusions:

View attachment 472696​

But I didn't raise this because I wanted to give LIDAR the benefit of the doubt and not argue aesthetics.

Also note the price effect of Byton's design: two LIDAR units on the top of the car (forward and backward facing one), and two on each side of the car. This quadruples the cost compared to the single unit designs, plus exposes side LIDARs to the occlusion effect of numerous objects that are below driver eye height that might block LIDAR visibility against approaching hazards (fences, signs, bushes, etc.).

LIDAR will be one of those technologies, like physical keyboards on a smartphones, there were thought to be essential for decades, but will seem 'obviously superfluous' in hindsight, once there's a company that shows how to do it right, like Apple did it with the iPhone or like Tesla is doing it with FSD.

Funny. Years ago, in the Blackberry / pre-iPhone era, I was involved in a short consumer research study at Dell. We were to evaluate different prototypes of physical keyboards on the device for ease of use, accuracy, and “feel”. I gave relevant feedback as requested. But in a final write-in comments section, I told them that physical keyboards on a phone were a waste of display space. I guess nobody listened..

 

[ReflexFunds]

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Elon Musk: SpaceX CEO blasted for ‘dangerously misleading’ action against climate change

View attachment 472708

You do hope when FUD gets this utterly absurd some readers do start to think twice about all the other nonsense they have read about renewable energy/Tesla/Elon.

 

[StealthP3D]

I don't want to live on this planet anymore.

Elon Musk: SpaceX CEO blasted for ‘dangerously misleading’ action against climate change

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Gosh, that Elon Musk really has a lot of hubris to think simply planting more trees would solve all our problems!

If he really cared about the world he would do things that could actually solve the climate problem like helping transition us off fossil fuels. Instead of greenwashing the problem with trees, maybe he could bring practical EV's to the markets around the globe or figure out how to turn every roof into a miniature energy generating plant by using clean sunlight!

Typical rich person, so out of touch he thinks planting a few trees will solve all our problems.

 

[Nakata]

Guess what James May bought.

 

[jbcarioca]

LIDAR seeing snow is literally the problem that I described. Snow forms random shapes on the ground, and constantly changes even the shape of the road itself. LIDAR cannot distinguish...

I am perplexed why intelligent well-informed people still imagine lidar to be useful in complex visual environments.

We might be slightly better off were we to emphasize when lidar DOES work exceptionally well. Rather that list those cases we have Elon describing the use of lidar at SpaceX to help in docking operations at the ISS. In geophysics there are some excellent
What is Lidar and what is it used for?

As in most geophysical applications the accuracy of results depends on distinguishing between ‘noise’ and the signal one wants to measure. I use this example because, like navigating a vehicle, geophysics presents extraneous information much more dense than is useful information. In geophysics one can devote long times and huge computing capacity to distinguish signals.

Navigation is inherently time-sensitive. Lidar cannot actively resolve extraneous information quickly. Even more important lidar cannot penetrate anything at all other than air without generating huge reflections (by definition) so will not operate effectively in polluted air, much less in snow, rain and slush.

Since lidar is used to excellent effect to map sea floors it is quite worthwhile to distinguish between lidar ability to reflect solid under liquid and the ability to do so rapidly and compactly.

People accustomed to using radar in airborne environments know how effectively radar can be in expanding visual range while distinguishing between a wide variety of reflections.

I am no expert, but I do have experience using radar and have looked at several applications of lidar. That makes me think lidar can help on the factory floor, maybe even in warehousing. In driving, no chance!

People are very prone, all of us, to adopt confirmation bias. Some continue to waste billions in lidar. When the weather is bad nothing will do a perfect job, but lidar is the least effective of the sensor lot in poor conditions.

 

[winfield100]

Would a tracking system pay off more in Northern states? Probably keeps off and removes snow faster.

@UncaNed
that is a debatable question. from my reading about others experiences,
a tracking system will get you about an extra 30%, but it adds complexity$ and moving part$ and do you want single axis (like on a rocker) or double axis to keep rays normal (90 degrees) incident.
which is less complex and overall less expensive?
I could add 30% more panels to my 37 panel array, 11 panels covering ~18sq meters as I have plenty of room (and do that again 2x if i wanted), probably around $6,000 or so. virtually no maintenance
(Maybe throw up a Solar Pergola in the driveway to park underneath with a dozen or 16 panels)
(I could not use trackers as not enough room in yard)
remember back in time, 1956 PV was around over $600/watt. 1974 $101/watt, now around 20 - 40 cents a watt.
Solar Panels » Sun Electronics
ie, cheaper to just throw up more panels (in my aged, not so humble opinion)
to clarify the answers to your question, there are about 40 years of _free_ archives (register first) of your questions asked and unasked at
https://www.homepower.com/

 

[Off Shore]

Observations:

1. Much fewer trucks at the docks. Looks like the initial wave was to fill all the workstations, and from hereon, it'll just be to restock them as needed.

View attachment 472687

2. Obligatory zoom-in of the Keyfob Parking Area. More cars than previous. At least one appears to be unpainted, and there's a white car.

View attachment 472688

3. Lots of cars scattered randomly elsewhere, however - like this right outside of where they drive out of the factory.

View attachment 472689

4. This one looks like it's undergoing offroad testing:

View attachment 472690

5. Construction on the battery plant continues at quite a clip. Here they're getting ready to clad a wall.

View attachment 472691

6. Roof cladding is underway on the other side. Note that they've now concreted the second floor here as well.

View attachment 472692

7. They're bridging from the battery plant to the other side. I assume for coolant pipes? They've laid out pipes on the ground in the direction of the power conversion building, although they look way too large to be power conduits.

View attachment 472693

8. Not sure what they plan to do with all of these. The larger ones look too large and heavily built to be ventilation (although maybe?). Some sort of liquid tankage?

View attachment 472694

9. And lastly, general "greening" of the plant. I'm guessing that these are seed germination blankets?

View attachment 472695

#8, Those are the new larger-diameter Maxwell batteries cells.

Edit: Dammit, I'm doing it too.

 

[pnungesser]

Radar has capabilities that go beyond vision, like see ahead of the car ahead. Lidar, says Musk, ultimately adds nothing.

Vision also is a poorer judge of distance than radar, particularly at longer distances. Think about a police radar gun that can read speed at a long distance. Vision could never do that practically.

 

[electracity]

Vision also is a poorer judge of distance than radar, particularly at longer distances. Think about a police radar gun that can read speed at a long distance. Vision could never do that practically.

Machine vision is usually not usefully analogous to human vision. The ability to render distance data from stereoscopic machine vision can be expressed precisely.

 

[jerry33]

But does having lidar lead to a better system by whatever metrics you care about: safety, drive speed, accessible % of world. Or does it lead to faster development time. Just because others are using it doesn't mean they think vision+radar can't work.

It leads to a faster demo, but actual rollout will likely never be finished because the required maps are not perfect and probably never will be.

 

[KarenRei]

#8, Those are the new larger-diameter Maxwell batteries.

Ah, I see. The smaller ones must be 2170 cells I see (2,1m long, 0,7m diameter)

 

[Beltsbear]

Because:

• Radar sensors provide valuable, life saving physical information that cameras don't: they can sense through ~200 meters of fog, dust, rain and snow, at night. They can often "see through" the next car in front and detect a suddenly slowing car two cars ahead. LIDAR on the other hand is using single frequency photons that don't sense more than cameras and radars already do.
• Radar sensors are also an order of magnitude less expensive than LIDAR.

If LIDAR units cost $10 each and had a power draw of 10 watts there's no doubt it might make sense to add them like ultrasonic sensors, for redundancy. But at $50,000+ (high end LIDARs), or even at $5,000 they'd be crowding out real safety measures.

FSD sensors for volume manufacturing of passenger cars must be selected based on cost/benefit analysis, not theoretical utility.

For example there's no doubt that a second, rear facing radar, or a secondary forward facing radar with a different frequency would improve overall safety - but radar sensor units are not that inexpensive yet.





Not only is your argument a logical fallacy, there actually is one FSD competitor who is following Tesla's lead - Intel:



Intel's very latest chip might have the computing capacity - but they don't have Tesla's fleet size, nor the training data feedback loop.

All of these are essential to success if the FSD problem is "very complex" (as @ReflexFunds pointed it out), requiring tens of million of miles of training on hundreds of thousands of cars per neural network and driving software iteration, and billions of miles of training on over a million cars to reach "superhuman" levels of reliability - which I think it is.

I am perplexed why intelligent well-informed people still imagine lidar to be useful in complex visual environments.

We might be slightly better off were we to emphasize when lidar DOES work exceptionally well. Rather that list those cases we have Elon describing the use of lidar at SpaceX to help in docking operations at the ISS. In geophysics there are some excellent
What is Lidar and what is it used for?

As in most geophysical applications the accuracy of results depends on distinguishing between ‘noise’ and the signal one wants to measure. I use this example because, like navigating a vehicle, geophysics presents extraneous information much more dense than is useful information. In geophysics one can devote long times and huge computing capacity to distinguish signals.

Navigation is inherently time-sensitive. Lidar cannot actively resolve extraneous information quickly. Even more important lidar cannot penetrate anything at all other than air without generating huge reflections (by definition) so will not operate effectively in polluted air, much less in snow, rain and slush.

Since lidar is used to excellent effect to map sea floors it is quite worthwhile to distinguish between lidar ability to reflect solid under liquid and the ability to do so rapidly and compactly.

People accustomed to using radar in airborne environments know how effectively radar can be in expanding visual range while distinguishing between a wide variety of reflections.

I am no expert, but I do have experience using radar and have looked at several applications of lidar. That makes me think lidar can help on the factory floor, maybe even in warehousing. In driving, no chance!

People are very prone, all of us, to adopt confirmation bias. Some continue to waste billions in lidar. When the weather is bad nothing will do a perfect job, but lidar is the least effective of the sensor lot in poor conditions.

You couldn’t have studied this issue and come up with some of this information. Lidar can add useful data and certainly can do it for time sensitive applications. The absolutist camp that lidar shouldn’t be used is bordering on ridiculous.


Elon is a very smart man, he has made a cost benefit analysis of lidar and other systems and come up with what he thinks is best. I happen to agree with his assessment that you can solve this problem without lidar, but given large resources, more computing capability, no care for looks, lidar will help.

in the end I do believe that successful large-format trucking systems will use lidar because it’s just another tool in the puzzle. That may mean the system needs two times or more the compute capability. This is something that just wouldn’t be worth it to do on a car but could potentially be worth it on a semi.

 

[electracity]

It leads to a faster demo, but actual rollout will likely never be finished because the required maps are not perfect and probably never will be.

You are erroneously conflating Lidar with 3D mapping.

 

[StealthP3D]

(Maybe throw up a Solar Pergola in the driveway to park underneath with a dozen or 16 panels)
(I could not use trackers as not enough room in yard)
remember back in time, 1956 PV was around over $600/watt. 1974 $101/watt, now around 20 - 40 cents a watt.
Solar Panels » Sun Electronics
ie, cheaper to just throw up more panels (in my aged, not so humble opinion)

I agree with it being more cost-effective to throw up more panels rather than mess with motorized tracking. However, it really does make sense to optimize the angle of the install. In the original example, they had low-angle roof surfaces facing East and West. I am a big fan of solar panels facing East and West because they broaden the duration of solar production throughout the day which means fewer batteries and/or peaker plants are needed. However, East/West panels should be at a steeper slope than South-facing panels or they are not all that effective. In far northern climates, wall-mounted panels work well.

In warm climates where shade is desireable on decks and over gardens, west-facing panels can provide that afternoon shade as well as generating peak production as all the air conditioners come during peak consumption periods. But most solar installs tend to optimize for peak production without regard to whether the production happens when the electricity is most needed. This will become more important as solar becomes a larger percentage of total generation.