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

[Carl Raymond]

No. That alienates half the US population. Overseas, that may work better.

In the US, just focus on the performance.

Sorry. Had to disagree there. Same reason we have to tell kids eventually that there is no Santa Claus. Grown ups need to know.

 

[Words of HABIT]

If Tesla suddenly has a €2000-8000 bonus for all sold EU(note Norwegian deliveries doesn’t count right?!) cars, they should redirect efforts there now and add more options very soon. Get more from the deal and kill competition before it gets started, maybe they will get even more credits this way. Only offer P3D and AWD to China until GF3 opens, introduce all options for EU and do a 50/50 US/EU mix for SR+... Norway can do LR, AWD, P3D for now...

There is no competition to kill. Every New EV is a win regardless of make or model.

 

[SebastianR]

OT - Market related: China sales of cars continue to collapse. After 10 months of declines March saw another YoY decline of 12% for private car purchases.
Schlüsselmarkt: Autoflaute in China, Porsche stark betroffen - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Wirtschaft

Also: German car makers had a really bad Q3/Q4 2018: They declined by 7.1% (adjusted for seasonality so it is an actual decline)
Deutsche Schlüsselindustrie: Automobilproduktion schrumpft erheblich - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Wirtschaft

They all blame WLTP for that fiasco...

EDIT: Oh, and one last one from the WTF?!? department: Some arsonists laid fire to an air quality measurement station in Stuttgart (one of the key cities that is affected by bad air quality due to Diesel but also the HQ for Daimler and Porsche...) Neckartor in Stuttgart: Unbekannte zünden Feinstaub-Messstation an - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Mobilität

 

[22522]

5% load total
Or
10% load with full fail over redundancy
Not: 10% load after failover.

Full failover mode uses twice the resources to do the same job.
That means everything is being done twice, in parallel, to verify consistency.
Yah, not voting since that would require 3 in parallel, but rather lock step like is common on automative safety critical hardware.
http://www.ti.com/microcontrollers/hercules-safety-mcus/overview.html

Bit errors are only minor if they occur in the early layers of the NN (and then only if the error is in the data portion). If you drop a high level bit in the classification layer, you could ignore a real object. If you alter a bit in the driving policy, the car could go the wrong way. If you alter a bit in the coefficient table, you could saturate (of potentially overflowing overflow) the output. If the failure is in the HW and not coefficients, multiple multiple error could result.

Heath status via self checks would require injecting full coverage test data (multiple test cases for full bit/ HW coverage) streams at a faster rate than a bad bit would result in vehicle misbehavior. Either with known test results, or by injecting the same data on both cores and comparing. It would also require verifying all internal calculations, not just final output.

Lockstep identifes any influential bit flip or logic errors instantly and puts the system into fault mode. NoA is running on AP2.x (10% of HW3 single core) so they could go to four copies of a half size NN (8 copies of something double the size of current) for limp to safety mode and still have redundancy to potentially determine which core (or half core) has the fault.

Do you know when and where they map out the distortion in the wide angle cameras?

You can take the raw signal in and neural net on that without ever transforming to 3D cartesian coordinates, or you can do a transformation early and try to sew everything together in a 3d twin space.

These two approaches have different brittle points that may show up in the stock price.

 

[bdy0627]

About the necessity to file an 8K:



I agree.

Let's check and see what the market says:



I.e. Market thinks this doesn't change much for Tesla. I think this was important to FCAU as it saves them literally billions of USD over the coming years and it shows a (credible) way to manage their otherwise horrible EU emissions problem.

I'm quite happy that only TSLAQ folks are screaming bloody murder over the FCAU deal: to me that cash is welcome and a great addition to TSLA but (hopefully) not determining the fate of Tesla going forward. Only TSLAQ folks would think this is required to "save the company".

Don't forget that we also saw 2 analyst downgrades yesterday (a bull and a bipolar bear) and return of the shorts. The stock was reacting to several things. Return of the shorts was probably the number uno effect.

 

[shlokavica22]

AP might be just feature complete by end of the year. Hopefully they learned from old FSD fiasco and they will manage expectations and will not do any thing flashy until AP is ready.

I think presentation will be rather advertisement for FSD and to bring awareness of it to wider audience rather than showing their technological advances and making promises of Tesla Network.

In essence- the event will be not driven by trying to "please" investors, but rather convince customers to purchase "Fully self-propelled steering" with their new car.
Showing more detail about Tesla Network will probably convince many people who sit on the fence to go and buy fully loaded Model 3, instead of postponing the purchase of Autopilot for later.

It seems like a win-win situation for the longs team.

 

[mongo]

Do you know when and where they map out the distortion in the wide angle cameras?

You can take the raw signal in and neural net on that without ever transforming to 3D cartesian coordinates, or you can do a transformation early and try to sew everything together in a 3d twin space.

These two approaches have different brittle points that may show up in the stock price.

There a few threads regarding the NN architecture that have good info.
Here is breakdown by @jimmy_d Neural Networks
It reports camera agnostic NN with no pre-un-distorting.

 

[j6Lpi429@3j]

Just had cause (debating with friend) to check out the specs of the upcoming electric aston martin:
Aston Martin Rapide E specs revealed: it's a £250,000, 602bhp electric 4-door
have a read if you want a laugh. They want to charge roadster 2020 prices for a car with no supercharger network HALF the acceleration, HALF the range and no autpilot because.... they think their customers are idiots?

I'm sure Astons have nicer leather stitching, but the first time they get overtaken by someone in a model 3 for a third the price they are going to bin the thing...

its SCARY how far behind tesla everybody else is...

 

[AlexS]

AP might be just feature complete by end of the year. Hopefully they learned from old FSD fiasco and they will manage expectations and will not do any thing flashy until AP is ready.

I think presentation will be rather advertisement for FSD and to bring awareness of it to wider audience rather than showing their technological advances and making promises of Tesla Network.

It's Elon time don't forget it. This means by the end of this year, maybe by the end of next, definitely by the end of year after

Someone should ask Andrej Karpahy to get a realistic timeline.

Elon over promising is norm.

 

[UncaNed]

I just received 2019.8.5 and used NOAP without user confirmation through multiple interchanges, passing people, etc. I had a grin on my face for the entire time. Freaking awesome.

I just received 2019.8.5 and now it doesn't even initiate anything, let alone do anything without confirmation.

 

[lklundin]

Auto dealers losing money on operations, NADA says

View attachment 395227

I guess they could cut cost by selling online?

 

[SO16]

Sorry. Had to disagree there. Same reason we have to tell kids eventually that there is no Santa Claus. Grown ups need to know.

My goal is to sell the vehicles and to get people switched over. A sale made by not bringing up a fact is better than no sale with that included fact. The ends justify the means and is a win/win in the end.

 

[SO16]

I just received 2019.8.5 and now it doesn't even initiate anything, let alone do anything without confirmation.

Odd. I assume you have already rebooted, etc.

 

[Todd Burch]

It's Elon time don't forget it. This means by the end of this year, maybe by the end of next, definitely by the end of year after

Someone should ask Andrej Karpahy to get a realistic timeline.

Elon over promising is norm.

I will be happy if Elon lets Andrej do almost the entire FSD event on the 22nd. That dude has his s**t together, and people are honestly more likely to believe his timelines and statements regarding FSD since he is an expert in computer vision and machine learning. Elon's the visionary. Andrej's the expert.

 

[lklundin]

OT - Market related: China sales of cars continue to collapse. After 10 months of declines March saw another YoY decline of 12% for private car purchases.
Schlüsselmarkt: Autoflaute in China, Porsche stark betroffen - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Wirtschaft

Also: German car makers had a really bad Q3/Q4 2018: They declined by 7.1% (adjusted for seasonality so it is an actual decline)
Deutsche Schlüsselindustrie: Automobilproduktion schrumpft erheblich - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Wirtschaft

They all blame WLTP for that fiasco...

EDIT: Oh, and one last one from the WTF?!? department: Some arsonists laid fire to an air quality measurement station in Stuttgart (one of the key cities that is affected by bad air quality due to Diesel but also the HQ for Daimler and Porsche...) Neckartor in Stuttgart: Unbekannte zünden Feinstaub-Messstation an - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Mobilität

So here the media reports seasonality adjusted sales - and not a word about Tesla, which get "demand cliff" and no attention to YoY growth...

 

[traxila]

I just received 2019.8.5 and now it doesn't even initiate anything, let alone do anything without confirmation.

Did you adjust the settings to allow for it? I had to poke around to find all the menus. Of course, may be bugs...

 

[Carl Raymond]

My goal is to sell the vehicles and to get people switched over. A sale made by not bringing up a fact is better than no sale with that included fact. The ends justify the means and is a win/win in the end.

We can electrify every vehicle and close every coal plant, it won’t stop the climb of the Keeling Curve unless we also address shipping, aircraft, concrete, steel, agriculture. People need to understand the nature of the enhanced greenhouse effect or it will get the better of us. IMHO.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

I think you make many positive contributions around here, but this type of reply is...not helpful. It might even contribute to making TMC an echo chamber.

I was also hoping for higher production of Model 3s in Q1. As well as higher deliveries, yes. But I would also have been happy with another 10K produced and loaded up on ships headed for Europe and China. I think we can agree that there’s sufficient demand.

You seem to think that Tesla chose not to produce more cars than they did. While that is undoubtedly true for S/X, I think they made as many 3s as they could and there were just too many challenges this past quarter to ramp much more.

110% growth YOY. That's where the focus should be. I am all for them trimming here...cutting tyere...doing what they need to do to keep the growth moving forward.

Dan

 

[SO16]

We can electrify every vehicle and close every coal plant, it won’t stop the climb of the Keeling Curve unless we also address shipping, aircraft, concrete, steel, agriculture. People need to understand the nature of the enhanced greenhouse effect or it will get the better of us. IMHO.

Sadly half of America will not see (or accept) the issue until they are eyeball deep in water while standing on their front porch. IMHO.

But I hope you are right.

 

[ItsNotAboutTheMoney]

Auto dealers losing money on operations, NADA says

There's a combination of a weak market, manufacturers increasingly playing incentive games to control sales and pricing, and more people using Internet lead-generator middle-men to buy from the middle-men who buy from the manufacturer.*

The average age of the US vehicle fleet has lately been increasing by 0.1years/year. So, It's probably now 11.8 years. There's an implication for the market.

* Aside: don't use those online ordering middle-men for industries with fixed pricing (e.g. food). All they do is eat into margins.