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OK then, robotaxis for the relatively poor make sense if economics dictate. Meanwhile, China has reached "peak gasoline" due to shift to EVs, and their BEV buses help greatly for even less cost per passenger. India is a natural market for BEV transition, particularly for mopeds which I saw...

About robotaxis, I've wanted to comment on this opportunity for Tesla, though I'm not particularly qualified to opine on this compared to others here who have really thought about it all more, from 'nativewolf' to 'discoducky'. I will express my personal biases below, but first... ... I see a...

Sadly, the California state rebate program (CVRP) ended last year. There are various local rebates of a thousand or two -- the best incentives are via the "Clean Cars 4 All" program for various parts of the state in disadvantaged and low-income communities, i.e...

Here is some encouraging news about C02 reduction in an area covering several million residents, strictly due to EV adoption in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is borne out by observational studies by UC Berkeley. See: https://apple.news/A7KJUGb_eSuOJxc6_aMu8Sg and...

Meanwhile, at California's Disneyland in Anaheim, where we're woke as hell and we're not gonna take it anymore, some great EV news from Tomorrowland: https://apple.news/ABRDRPlPJR36TcqcVRsRSVg

Although I use eX-Twitter to track Tesla developments, I don't follow Elon Musk there largely because his output is so voluminous and anything important will be reported elsewhere. Of late, the best info comes from Tesla executives. Further, many eX-Twitter followers are disconcerted by the...

Off topic pointer, about the subject of Pi Day, today as well marking the founding of SpaceX. I was going to post my somewhat geeky missive about the conjunction of Tesla/Musk's "March of Nines" for FSD, physicist Richard Feynman, and the number pi, illustrated by use of a single line of Unix...

Hello from a denizen from other TMC forums, such as the TSLA Investors Discussion thread, and occasionally subthreads of "AI, Autopilot, & Autonomous/FSD". I was quite impressed by the launch today, and now see noted that Pi Day marks the founding of SpaceX. This is clearly the place which has...

The panel had some great points, including an obvious question overlooked by many Musk sycophants (personal bias -- I drink the Tesla koolaid but not the Musk koolaid) ... ... Why would EM jeopardize mega billions in IRA rebates for $7500 point-of-sale, $ for EV charging infrastructure...

Speaking of San Francisco Cybertruck publicity, one was in the Chinese Lunar New Year parade here last nite. It is the largest Chinese New Year parade outside Asia, drawing 3,000,000+ viewers -- more than just the attendants due to live TV streaming. It wasn't towing any float, however, just...

Nice! A bit of trivia for Tom Lehrer buffs is that the song is sung in Spanish as ¿Quién sigue?, in 1971 by a radical theatrical performance artist known as Nacha Guevara, who fled military dictatorships into exile more than once from Argentina. Lyrics here...

Got that paper flyer too, but tossed it because the fine print was too small to read.

Nice list. I would personally add -- do a "sleep on the factory floor" effort to land the $7500 IRA credit for the Model 3, the largest single COGS reduction I can imagine (I know, it's technically not a COGS item in the traditional sense of the word, but it certainly is to a consumer!) So...

Curious why you didn't highlight the "1984" ad, the original viral Chiat/Day/[email protected] collaboration.

Noting: Apple has quietly tripled its testing of autonomous cars, records show — The Washington Post

One way to track the horse race is to tune into the Top500 supercomputer list at top500.com. This year the #1 (Oak Ridge's "Frontier") 1.7 exaflop machine runs with AMD CPUs & GPUs. #2 is Argonne's "Aurora" with Intel gear. #3 is Microsoft's "Eagle" with Intel Xeon CPUs but with Nvidia's H100s...

Then you probably wouldn't like the biography of Sam Bankman-Fried either (especially since SBF's antics often put Musk to shame), though it's great writing by Michael Lewis who has a page-turning stylistic flair in contrast to Isaacson's plodding pace... ... or perhaps the engaging...

First time I've heard about the Tesla employee margin call situation. Reminds me, dating myself, of when a few Genentech emps, including managers got caught that way in the 1980s when one of their first biotech drugs didn't gain approval. As well, setting limit stops is not recommended for...

China could very well reach net zero first before the US, modulo coal. I've heard about China reaching "peak gasoline", believable due to the shear ICE -> EV conversion rate. And if coal is disintermediated, there are fewer coal tankers to China, thus participating in a positive-feedback loop...

Your post together with your previous one is informational and intriguing, in light of the reputation of other Texas district courts. I'm alluding to both the East and West Texas district courts being "rocket dockets" for patent troll lawsuits. At first it was East Texas, where juries were...

Just curious when this may have happened. I see from the web that for Model Y, cars after May 2023 had the change, e.g. from web search: Fremont Model Y Builds - VIN F789400 or higher Austin Model Y Builds - VIN A130120 or higher Info about when this happened for Model 3 is welcome.

In that list of 47 changes, it's curious there's no mention of HW4 w/camera changes. Since HW4 was confirmed for at least the Chinese-produced European cars, I don't see any reason to suspect it won't be on Fremont-produced cars. Strange not to mention this major change.

There is a middle ground with "platooning", whereby a hybrid human/machine drives a lead truck, while a fully-automated 18-wheeler drives behind.

Faster than for Baja, which was lacking when Tesla did a Cybertruck run there, using icky fossil fuels to help the cause? (Aside: years ago I went there to see a total solar eclipse, memorably carrying 5 gallon cans of fuel into the Sonoran desert "just in case".) If Tesla is ramping up a...

So, why not have the limited supply of Nevada 2170s go to the model 3 first, so the $7500 rebate goes to the car with the lower ($3K currently for long-range) MSRP?

Although I myself am not an overseas voter, I trust the expertise of one who founded an overseas voting project for U.S. citizens, votefromabroad.org, now morphed into the daily political junkie site electoral-vote.com. It is run by Prof. Andrew Tannenbaum, known for many books and projects...

A correction is needed here about voting while living abroad -- it's done all the time by U.S. citizens, per: https://www.usvotefoundation.org/vote-from-abroad-overseas-voting

Question, from one who's far from being a truck guy... Is there a general rule-of-thumb about percent of mileage loss, by weight towed, for gas trucks vs EVs? I saw something recent about how a 240 mile range Ford Lightning got 120 miles under real-world conditions. Mostly I wonder if...

Musk is on record that if the angular Cybrtrk doesn't fly they can always redo (p. 318 of the Isaacson bio "[....] We're not doing a traditional boring truck. We can always do that later. [....]", I'll posit the following. Sometimes it's easier to start from scratch on a concept using existing...

More specific to Tesla brand damage is the longitudinal Bloomberg Businessweek survey of 7000+ Model 3 owners. I was one who participated; by nature it was self-selective. Of particular note is the Sankey flow diagram mapping "Would buy another Tesla again" vs. "Opinion of Elon Musk", from...

Tripping the light fantastic! Question: if the cars are synchronized (and they looked really synced to me), how was the "Mexican Wave" done -- custom programming?

Saw TSLA business news (via finviz.com) about an AI-related panel at the Apec Summit (a cancelled Musk appearance with CEO Marc Benioff), something that might be followed by Tesla investors. Did anyone post about it here, or did it have political overtones so was swept away?

Technically, Apple beat consensus for both revenue and earnings for the past quarter. Further, even though sales were technically down YOY for the quarter, they were higher using constant currency. The "miss" is with the consensus of analyst estimates for the holiday quarter not matching loose...

Although I'm not a radar aficionado, it's interesting to see in the TI literature you cite a reference to radar-assisted child/animal detection for car interiors. I suppose Tesla is using vision + neural nets and microphones to meet those NCAP standards.

From the Isaacson book, p. 505: "So in May 2023, he decided to change the initial build location for the next-generation cars and Robotaxis to Austin, where his own workspace and that of his top engineers would be right next to the new high-speed ultra-automated assembly line." This followed...

(1) Drugs and Elon happens. (2) The sooner that expectations can be "managed" about 50% CACR the better. Why not have a Tesla official say the actual truth that it's rare that making physical goods over more than several years can occur at that rate? For software yes, but not for metal-bending...

Am I the only one around here who just uses a Sharpie pen to cover up curb rash? The "third-party opportunity" only seems to convert scuffed metal to scuffed nylon. Or, maybe it's just time to bring back real curb feelers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curb_feeler

Ah, ye olde "acquihire", which AAPL also has been wont to do. Cf. google search "acquihire"

O wow man, it's cool bro', but what does like pinstriping cost?

Yes, the synergistic effect at the state level for making the fed credit against taxes be refundable is huge! For California the contortions needed to both get a >$7500 fed tax bill while getting < 4X federal poverty level for different combinations of household size was crazy, but the payoff...

Preface: I'm appreciative for recovery checks, too, (one each for a taxable and a retirement account), but for a total amount of $978.78 I clearly don't play in the same league! Some striking things about this SEC settlement claim: one is that you didn't have to declare an actual loss from a...

Agreed. In SF, I would fold in adequate response to emergency vehicles — just stopping when one is heard won’t work because there’d be no traffic with sirens going off all the time. With sufficient localization (do Teslas even possess a stereo microphone pair?), the planner must develop “an...

Here's some additional local San Francisco news related to commercial auto autonomy: https://missionlocal.org/2023/08/cruise-waymo-cpuc-next-future/ In the commentary, there was an interesting reference about having the possibility of first responder overrides, similar to firefighters having...

That's just a sample of SF-local news on robotaxis. I don't have an opinion about one vs. the other (Zoox will be there too), but I'm a bit strange, having never ride-hailed anywhere. [Aside: For basic transportation within the city environs I take BART, SF Muni bus/trolley, or walk, and...

Here's two recent "local color" autonomous car stories from my hometown. The story comments section can be enlightening; the first one highlights Waymo, the second one involves Cruise...

A Cruise employee recently told me (at a publicity event on the streets of San Francisco) that Cruise cabs don't back up, but that "they're working on it". A similar situation involving buses, fire engines, etc. making wide turns into streets narrow enough for just one car (it's not rare here)...

So now the FSD license transfer has come to pass. (Since I'm not the type of person to trade in a car for a new one every few years, owing to huge depreciation this way, I'm not a candidate.) Monthly subscriptions make more sense now for most who keep cars on such a short leash (or lease)...

90%+ yields are indicated in articles like this below, months ago. https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/leaked-document-shares-a-glimpse-into-teslas-current-4680-production-yields/