Elon Internal E-mail Leak: Discount if Employee Buys a Tesla and test FSD capabilities

[ZeApelido]

I caught wind of an internal e-mail Elon send employees today (I have a pic of the email). Perhaps some of it is interesting info to note in their development of FSD features.

I will paraphrase key portions:

1) He wants to add 100 employees to internal testing as they roll out FSD capabilities

2) He talks about the benefits of the Tesla AI chip vs Nvidia. Tesla chip can do 2000 full resolution frames per second while Nvidia chip can only do 200 cropped, partial resolution chips at same cost, volume, power consumption, and mass. [However doesn't sound like these cars will have the new chip, but provided info as motivation that they will achieve capable FSD at some time]

3) Any employee who buys a Tesla and agrees to provide 300+ hours of driving feedback to Autopilot team by end of 2019 will get EAP + FSD for free. Premium interior upgrade will also be thrown in for free.

3) First come, first served. All Tesla employees, no friends or family.

 

[pkodali]

I caught wind of an internal e-mail Elon send employees today (I have a pic of the email). Perhaps some of it is interesting info to note in their development of FSD features.

I will paraphrase key portions:

1) He wants to add 100 employees to internal testing as they roll out FSD capabilities

2) He talks about the benefits of the Tesla AI chip vs Nvidia. Tesla chip can do 2000 full resolution frames per second while Nvidia chip can only do 200 cropped, partial resolution chips at same cost, volume, power consumption, and mass. [However doesn't sound like these cars will have the new chip, but provided info as motivation that they will achieve capable FSD at some time]

3) Any employee who buys a Tesla and agrees to provide 300+ hours of driving feedback to Autopilot team by end of 2019 will get EAP + FSD for free. Premium interior upgrade will also be thrown in for free.

3) First come, first served. All Tesla employees, no friends or family.

Can you post the email?

 

[ZeApelido]

I don't see a point, nothing terribly contentious in there.

 

[israndy]

I wonder what the discount would be. If I get a job at Tesla tomorrow I want in on that.

But really, I wanna help test the software as an owner who has retired. Absolutely nothing better to do with my days. Though I will be at the Fremont Delivery Center on Saturday, so I guess I could be doing that too.

-Randy

 

[mongo]

I caught wind of an internal e-mail Elon send employees today (I have a pic of the email). Perhaps some of it is interesting info to note in their development of FSD features.

I will paraphrase key portions:

1) He wants to add 100 employees to internal testing as they roll out FSD capabilities

2) He talks about the benefits of the Tesla AI chip vs Nvidia. Tesla chip can do 2000 full resolution frames per second while Nvidia chip can only do 200 cropped, partial resolution chips at same cost, volume, power consumption, and mass. [However doesn't sound like these cars will have the new chip, but provided info as motivation that they will achieve capable FSD at some time]

3) Any employee who buys a Tesla and agrees to provide 300+ hours of driving feedback to Autopilot team by end of 2019 will get EAP + FSD for free. Premium interior upgrade will also be thrown in for free.

3) First come, first served. All Tesla employees, no friends or family.

Cool!

1) Makes sense

2) Same as previously mentioned on conference call

3) 8,000 in options for 300 hours = $27 an hour. That's a great deal for Tesla.

3b)

 

[AWDtsla]

3) 8,000 in options for 300 hours = $27 an hour. That's a great deal for Tesla.

More like $0. No marginal cost for something it seems the employee wouldn't have paid for in the first place. I'm surprised the entire employee fleet isn't leveraged for this purpose.

 

[mongo]

More like $0. No marginal cost for something it seems the employee wouldn't have paid for in the first place. I'm surprised the entire employee fleet isn't leveraged for this purpose.

Well, that's an assumption on the employee intent. Plus, it increase the resale value, so there is a benefit to the employee and a potential future loss to Tesla (no upgrade ever). I agree, free EAP/FSD while employed would be a nice perk.
Would the IRS consider this a taxable gift? In which case, Tesla is footing that bill...

 

[AWDtsla]

I don't see a point, nothing terribly contentious in there.

You can spin news anyway you want. Especially if you have no integrity and context doesn't matter to you.

 

[AWDtsla]

Would the IRS consider this a taxable gift? In which case, Tesla is footing that bill...

Not if you make the value $0 through license agreement. It would be like saying every time you get a site-licensed piece of software from your company it would be a taxable gift.

 

[MartinAustin]

This isn't any different to what a lot of other tech companies do. There is a process called "dogfooding" where you use your company's unfinished (but not dangerously broken) products before they are released, in order to provide scaled-up testing.

This happened all the time when I worked at Microsoft. I remember being invited to have internal beta versions of Windows Vista & 7, Media Center Edition, Office and other stuff at our workdesks and/or at home. There was no pay involved in using it, but it helps the company spot bugs faster due to the scale-up in the size of the testing team.

Totally not surprising for Tesla to be doing this... and employees choose whether or not to opt in... no-one is being forced to do anything or into any sort of hardship.

 

[mongo]

Not if you make the value $0 through license agreement. It would be like saying every time you get a site-licensed piece of software from your company it would be a taxable gift.

Hmmm... Company licensed software on a company computer for company use seems different from gifting a fixed price option on a personal car.

 

[NYCR160]

I would gladly test the software for free here in New England as a non-employee. I already have the car....

 

[MP3Mike]

@ZeApelido Did you happen to be a source for this report: Tesla Enlists Employees to Be ‘Full Self-Driving’ Beta Testers

If so, did they give/offer you any compensation?

 

[ZeApelido]

No, she said she heard about it but was looking for copy of the e-mail, must have gotten somewhere else. My response to her was

Thanks. Curious as to how you will slant the take on this e-mail? How are you compensated for the article?

No response

 

[Tesomega]

They should provide this to current Tesla owners with a waiver; I will take this happily and provide some valuable data; atleast I can get a refund on my EAP+FSD.

 

[strangecosmos]

The biggest missing piece is the exact features that will be tested. Most impressive of course would be if the software if truly fully autonomous à la Waymo or Cruise, but that might be too high a hope. Would be awesome though!

Cool thing about this approach is it seems pretty easy to scale. If things go well with the first 100 testers, I don’t imagine it would be that hard to add another 100, and then another 100. Unless you are super concerned about secrecy, I don’t see why you couldn’t have 2,000 employees testing.

Compare to scaling up full-time testers: you have to provide them a car and pay them an hourly wage. Employee testers are buying cars from Tesla, and Tesla’s only cash expense is whatever it costs to produce the premium upgrade package (could be like $2,500). Tesla is missing out on some unknown amount of incoming cash that employees would have spent on Enhanced Autopilot + Full Self-Driving Capability, but no cash is actually leaving Tesla’s bank account. A unit of the software is free to produce.

For the employees, it’s still a $13,000 value, plus you get to try out the latest tech that Tesla has developed. A great deal.

Another bonus is if the employees work on Autopilot/autonomy they are creating a tight feedback loop between development and testing. Or even if the work on something else, but can just tell their colleagues in the Autopilot department what they’ve noticed.

 

[Cyberax]

1) He wants to add 100 employees to internal testing as they roll out FSD capabilities

Cue the Cave Johnson voice:

Please do NOT test if: - You are allergic to lunar sediment and/or starch; - You have fulfilled your monthly self-election quota; - You are confident enough in your work performance to unvolunteer from the test self-election process"

 

[Atari2600]

I assume all will be using AP 3.0

 

[cpa]

Would the IRS consider this a taxable gift? In which case, Tesla is footing that bill...

No. First, a gift is a transfer of property without full and adequate consideration. Gifts are only between individuals, not businesses. Any transfer of property without full and adequate consideration from a business is a taxable event.

However, embedded in the IRC are various exceptions to the taxability of these gifts, promotions, or whatever you wish to call them. Generally, many employee discounts are included in the list of exceptions so that the value is not considered compensation and added to the employee's W-2. It has been a long time since I researched this topic. I believe that in order to qualify to be a non-tax event the following must be in place for manufactured products:

--The product or service must be available to ALL employees.
--The product or service must be available to employees of "affiliated entities" (probably under 267 or such), so Space X employees would have a shot at this too.
--For manufactured goods, the value of the benefit must be <20% of the gross profit across all similar lines of product. So, only the gross margin on automobile sales would be used to determine the 20% limitation. Storage batteries and solar installation gross profits would be excluded.

I assume that the cost of this feature that would normally be charged to a retail customer would be <20% of the gross profit in the automobile segment.

It is unclear to me whether the self-imposed limitation of 100 employees would run afoul of these rules, but my first reaction without knowing each and every detail would be that this benefit would not be considered wage income to the employee.