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There's a lot more to aero efficiency than just roundness. Coefficient of Drag 0.33 Cybertruck 0.3 Average sedan 0.3 Rivian R1T 0.33 Silverado EV 0.44 F-150 Lightning 0.45 Average ICE pickup Cybertruck is tied with the Silverado for 2nd-most aerodynamic pickup truck ever made...

There are on the order of 10 trillion miles traveled per year in automobiles. 3 trillion per year in the US alone where Tesla’s autonomy competitive advantage is greatest. The trend is for increased miles, and if autonomy and mass production of affordable, long-lasting EVs are achieved, then the...

I agree. Also, I think Tesla has accrued more actual underlying value than the other megacap tech companies in the past three years. I thought TSLA was a good deal at the 2021 price and now the price is cheaper despite the company being much more valuable and derisked. I am trying to deploy...

I think you might be right, but the economics of those business projects are a function of the amount of solar flux and wind, cost of land, cost of labor, amount of land and amount of local demand for electricity. All of these factors work heavily in Texas’ favor. We also could flip the...

Texas leads on total solar and wind energy production mainly because of its size, geography, population, and climate. These are the same reasons why, for example, Massachusetts is near the bottom of solar power rankings. I think politics and business environment make much less difference than...

His comment was vague enough that I don’t think we can know. However, I do know that $1.7B of finished goods inventory is equivalent to about 10 days of vehicle sales these days. It can take a least a few days, if not a week, to ship vehicle inventory from one part of a single country to...

I would like to explain why I disagree. There is value in being able to quickly signal disagreement with something someone has said without needing to take the time and effort to refute it. In-person social interactions allow one to do so with facial expressions, body language, and quick...

The 10-Q says that inventory increased QoQ from $13.6B to $16.0B which is a $2.4B increase. $1.7B of that came from finished goods. The rest was mostly work in process and raw materials, probably from the Cybertruck production lines ramping up. Random forex fluctuations, for which Tesla does...

5 years ago they were ramping up Model Y and then Covid messed up everything. They repeatedly told investors that bringing a new model to market would have resulted in fewer total vehicles produced. This was why the Cybertruck was late. No new tech for the existing models? Are you serious? I...

I doubt Tesla would charge a dramatically higher price, because they care too much about advancing safety. By the time FSD is that good, the decision that prevents the most deaths and injuries is to expand FSD usage to as many vehicles as possible.

Also, traffic caused by crashes is a major negative externality of human driving. It messes up people’s days, the randomness of the timing makes scheduling journeys more difficult, it clogs up the road network, and it occupies first responder resources. Accidents in large metros cost the local...

Here is some fascinating Boring Co efficiency analysis from X user Jon Twigge. I had been planning to write up something like this, but this post covers most of it plus some things I hadn't thought of. The general theme is that the vehicles can be designed custom for the extremely specific and...

Is it? Are we sure that all of the costs associated with that revenue have already accrued to the income statement? I don’t know enough about the accounting rules to be confident.

Volcanic eruptions from an hotspot in Earth’s mantle in the Pacific Plate about 4000 km off the coast of the Americas produced a chain of undersea mountains, some of which grew large enough to reach above the ocean’s surface, thus creating a large archipelago.

Lmao 🤣 yes there was. Model 3 production preparation followed by production hell was an all-hands-on-deck situation. People were pulled away from other business units, including Energy, to pitch in. They literally had C-level executives walking the production line and sometimes personally...

This is wrong in so many ways. 1. In fact, they poured most of their operating cash flow not into shiny objects but rather into: Factory construction and associated inventory of parts and work-in-progress (including the Lathrop megapack factory) Paying off debt Increasing completed vehicle...

What do you mean they don’t get many projects? Tesla is the leading provider of large battery systems, and the Megapack is sold out for over a year despite prices that are garnering 30%+ gross margin including hardware, installation, and long-term service. You can’t even place an order on the...

1.4 billion miles is enough data to conclusively say that Tesla FSD with human oversight is safer than every mode of transportation, except maybe for civil aviation. And that’s only because we need about 100x more data for a meaningful comparison with airline travel. Tesla has done a fantastic...

Production cost and scalability are closely connected. Most of the potential demand would come from the majority of people in middle-income countries earning on the order of US$10k per capita at purchasing power parity Robotaxi needs to be as dominant as possible to maximize rate of transition...

Can we stop feeding trolls so much please? On this website, block lists do not filter out replies to blocked posters.

Right now I do not have an opinion on the Board's proposal to leave Delaware and reincorporate into Texas, because I don't understand the ramifications. Is there anyone who knows more about this topic?

Why focus only on commuters? That's a major part of demand, but far from the only portion that matters. The transportation demand curves clearly show that. A work-related vehicle is not exactly a robotaxi but if it's getting high usage for a commercial or government application, then it's...

Mars is on topic for long term Tesla success in my opinion. Tesla and SpaceX are sister companies whose successes compound on each other. Many reasons why this is important. If SpaceX actually gets manned missions to Mars happening in the next decade then that's probably going to be a positive...

Uber's cost structure includes not only driver wages but also: ICEV operating costs and vehicle longevity Poor occupancy factor (on average, I'd guess maybe 1.5-2 seats per car are occupied by paying customers) Insurance costs commensurate with the risk of human driving Third-party maintenance...

The robotaxis would have "basically nothing to do" in between morning and evening rush hour? Have you been to a major metro area recently? Have you looked at actual traffic data? You are greatly overstating the magnitude of daily demand fluctuation. In most cities, the nadir of midday demand is...

That's some interesting speculation, but in reality the officials of the Clark County government and the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority have been heavily in favor of the Vegas Loop and the potential of the technology, as well as what it could mean to Las Vegas to be the leader of a...

Yes, and also he talks like that all the time about a lot of things. Tesla has risked everything in a sink-or-swim fashion only three times: Roadster S 3 If any of those launches had failed, Tesla would’ve died and gone out of business. Game over. That’s why Elon dropped all other priorities...

It's not an "all in bet". That is hyperbolic language that people keep using, despite it being untrue and despite the CEO having directly refuted it on X. "All in" means that if the gambit fails, the player is out of the game. Also, I doubt we are going to have to wait until August to find out...

Just curious...is there anyone who still thinks Tesla should have initiated share buybacks instead of saving all their surplus cash?

If robotaxi and autonomy don't work, Tesla will pivot back to consumer cars. It is not that big of a deal if you can look past a year or two. This company's ability to pivot quickly is one of its greatest strengths. The first several years were a "burning dumpster fire of stupidity," according...

I did not realize that was all a quotation of Koguan. The disagree was about that.

My understanding is that the Board does not have the authority to award him that. The shareholders do as part of a democratic voting process. The Delaware Chancery Court recently ruled that the previous vote was null and void because it was done unlawfully due to shareholders not having been...

No problem To be clear, it was a prediction based on facts. It could be wrong. Also a few big wildcards here are: 1) Boring Co tunnels 2) How much will robotaxis cause an increase in amount of transportation consumed? 3) What are the difficult-to-predict, second-order consequences of this huge...

I doubt it will be a big difference in the rate of carpooling. However I have personally used Uber Pool many times to save money. Uber doesn’t offer that option anymore but the attraction was that the fares were lower. Some customers would be price sensitive.

I’m not a traffic engineer but here’s my contribution anyway. Autonomy allows for many sustainability improvements. Elimination of vast swathes of parking, which take up a huge amount of space and greatly contribute to urban heat island effects and stormwater runoff pollution. Replace with...

I did some estimates on this last year. Robotaxis could have such a massive IRR that the early ones might pay for themselves within a year or so. The main variable that matters is how fast the network scales. In the most extreme case, if autonomy works and Tesla diverts 100% of vehicle...

I think we need to bear in mind that this company is led by an autistic man who has a strong preference for literal, precise, matter-of-fact communication and a strong distaste for any form of deception, including white lies that neurotypical people find to be acceptable. The usual social games...

People keep saying it's a "bet the company" situation, but I think that's hyperbole. OG roadster, S and 3 were true do-or-die product launches. Nowadays, Tesla has a comfortable lead over the competition and plenty of cash, thanks to their prudent rejection of the shareholder demands to buy back...

Losing Drew is definitely bad for the company. He had deeper experience than anyone remaining, including Elon himself, who has less experience at Tesla than Drew due to competing demands on his time from SpaceX and other ventures. I don't think it's the end of the world, but certainly it is a...

The consumer price index, flawed though it is, has increased by 6.34x since 1974, whereas 2400/35 = 69. Using the price of gold as a proxy for overall inflation is ludicrous. Off by an order of magnitude. Prices in general are obviously nowhere close to 69x higher than the were 50 years ago. If...

LFP is likely already a million-mile chemistry because LFP cells easily last for thousands of cycles if paired with a good battery management system. A 250-mile LFP battery needs to survive for 4000 cycles to hit 1 million miles. High-quality LFP cells in well controlled environments have been...

Probably posted on their phone. This site automatically scales pics to full width if posting from mobile browser, and it's not obvious it happened unless you switch over to desktop. It's gotten me a couple times

This is great data! I didn't know this existed. Especially if we look at just inventory, not inventory/sales ratio, it is clear that there is substantially more production than sales lately in the US. However, I don't think "channel stuffing" is a good description, because inventory is...

Model 3 is significantly larger than the average car in the world. And Americans are significantly larger than the average person in the world.

Context? When and where was this photo taken? Apple's famous 2007 unveiling presentation for the original iPhone was like this. Steve Jobs' demo of the prototype phone was carefully scripted to ensure that the bugs didn't cause a failure...

You know what demographic has low car ownership rate, high tolerance for risk and novelty, is more urbanized, uses ridesharing the most, and tends to get intoxicated frequently? Young adults. I think that's the clear first target market if adoption is an issue.

I think he is looking at first principles, albeit with some that are philosophical, not physical. I think the message he was trying to rebut was that of the growing contingent of environmentalists who are antinatalist and who view humans as an irredeemable cancer on the Earth. Not only does he...

"Use your car as a profit center" makes more sense in areas of medium-low population density where it's harder to make a robotaxi fleet economically viable. It's a good intermediate hybrid option. Owners can retain the benefits of having their own private car available on-demand, while also...

I guess it depends on what you mean by sharing a platform with a consumer version. There will definitely be a lot of commonality in the architecture annd technology, and a modified Gen3 consumer car could certainly make a decent robotaxi. The modular unboxed manufacturing process and structural...

A vehicle specially optimized for robotaxi use case will have significantly different design objectives, even for stuff that’s not obvious like aero, suspension, and thermal management. Trying to serve both use cases with one design yields a vehicle configuration that’s not optimal for either...