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Elon's FSD Vaporware vs. 60 Minutes Driverless Trucks
- Thread starter NerdUno
- Start date
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Speaking of self-driving trucks, Waymo is expanding their self-driving trucks to Texas and New Mexico.
"Waymo, the leading U.S. self-driving vehicle company, is expanding its robot truck program by moving into Texas with a new depot in Dallas that will serve as the hub for road-testing its fleet of 18-wheelers."
"Waymo tells Forbes its semis roll into Dallas this week and the Silicon Valley-based company plans to hire licensed local truckers to assist with highway evaluations as safety drivers. It’ll start with a temporary facility this month, as it looks for a long-term base of operations. Mapping of roads in Texas and New Mexico with the high-definition cameras and sensors on Waymo’s autonomous minivans was completed in March ahead of plans to start truck tests in April, before the Covid-19 pandemic delayed things. Waymo isn’t saying how much it’s investing in the project."
"The Alphabet subsidiary’s current fleet of 13 Peterbilt trucks, loaded with digital cameras, laser lidar sensors, radar and computing system will be operating on the I-10, I-20 and I-45 interstates and other high-capacity commercial routes between Texas and New Mexico."
Waymo Taps Texas As Its Robot Truck Hub With Dallas Depot
DanCar
Active Member
Perhaps you would get more likes with a different attitude. How about watch and be happy?
Interesting.
The more I read about Waymo, the more it seems they could see huge growth. When we talk about Tesla, we often say they are a tech company. So, it would seem a company like Waymo (or Google/Alphabet?) is the main competition for Tesla. Maybe Amazon or Apple if they buy their way into the space. Cars will soon be just another device in IoT, and those tech companies have the cash and wherewithal to intertwine auto, utility (million mile battery plus V2G), and insurance industries. With the Android based system in the Polestar plus Waymo, is it within Alphabet’s reach to offer 3rd party management of cars, breaching the warranty moat by offering warranties in exchange for gaining Big Data (with all the home appliances streaming data, they’d have the information needed for insurance).
At the very least, with Tesla’s indifference towards supporting the growing used Tesla fleet, there’s room for tech companies bringing cars into their revenue streams. If a small shop in Canada can hack their way to performance upgrades, I’m confident new players in the auto space can quickly make up ground.
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diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Yeah, Waymo is competitive because they got the money and they clearly got the FSD hardware and software.
But I think Mobileye is also a viable competitor for FSD. They have 1M cars equipped with their EyeQ chips collecting data and building HD maps. The EyeQ5 chip is a great FSD computer and they have very good FSD software as seen in their FSD demo. Lucid is going with Mobileye and launching an impressive "hands-free" L2 ADAS that looks very competitive to Autopilot. And Lucid will do OTA software updates with planned L3 autonomy in the future. Introducing Lucid DreamDrive
So I would say Mobileye has a good shot too.
Stop your weeping.
Phantom braking will get your windshield wet, and your Tesla doesn't have internal wipers.
I’m anxiously awaiting the Air!
Any company capable of achieving FSD and coupling it with OTA, has the potential to disrupt Tesla’s incredible rise.
I got into Tesla because I generally drink the disruption kool-aid too much. Maybe I have my head in the clouds, but I’m one of those that think we’re going to see huge disruptions to many industries soon as 5G, AI, blockchain, energy storage, etc start to overtake.
I think the Big Tech players are the primary companies have what it takes to compete with verticality of Tesla. Maybe one of the other auto manufacturers buys their way (VAG?), but I think it’s more likely Tech acquires an auto manufacturer (and/or utility and insurance group). Maybe that’s crazy
diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
I don't think you are crazy. Personally, I think a lot of the legacy automakers like Ford and Volkswagen are on life support and don't have much longer. I think Tesla, Lucid are the new automakers that will take their place.
According to Electrek, Ford had $42 billion in revenue last year from the F-150 so I wouldn't write them off just yet.
LOL! How many vehicles has Lucid shipped to customers?
VW Group (VW AG/VAG) produces and sells about 10 million vehicles/year worldwide with a full range of automobiles! Sure, they don't sell much in the US (2019 US Vehicle Sales Figures By Brand and I'm not fan of them) but that may be where you get your perceptions from. Their brands are at Brands & Models of the Volkswagen Group.
Volkswagen Group records higher deliveries in 2019 was for 2019.
In 2019, Ford in the US alone sold almost 900K F-series trucks (2019 US Vehicle Sales Figures By Model).
In the past the largest automakers in the world tended to be a race between GM, VW AG and Toyota. GM isn't at the top any more because they sold off their money losing European operations (Opel/Vauxhall). And, they also stopped building vehicles in Australia, basically killing Holden/GMH.
In comparison, Tesla in 2019 (Tesla Q4 2019 Vehicle Production & Deliveries | Tesla, Inc.) delivered 367,500 vehicles worldwide.
VW produces more vehicles every 2 weeks than Tesla did in all of 2019.
Interestingly, I posted the same video at Autonomous Car Progress and didn't get much of a reaction.
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diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
Lucid is unveiling their first production-ready car on Sept 9. They have not shipped anything to customers yet but they will.
There was a time when Tesla had not shipped anything yet to customers but look at Tesla now!
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diplomat33
Average guy who loves autonomous vehicles
I am just not seeing any really attractive EV products from Ford or VW yet.
I look for:
- Style
- Charging
- Long range
- OTA updates
- Autonomous Driving
I’ve driven the E-Tron and Taycan a combined 500 miles. I thought both were very compelling, certainly better overall cars than our first S. The charging in the Taycan was better than advertised. Pretty impressive first attempts imo.
So I’m optimistic the VAG will compete in the future. I’m intrigued to see where Porsche’s relationship with Apple goes, as although the conventional car side was good, it lacks in treating it as an eventual IoT device. OTA and remote feature aspects need some attention.
In regards to Ford, I do wonder if we’ll see faster improvement from legacy manufacturers once the fixed costs of the ICE production lines are paid off. Mostly on copying Tesla, Lucid, but improvement. There is some merit to not pushing EVs that kill the revenue of products they spent billions to develop.
But they are caught in a bit of a dichotomy. They have more pressure to show quarterly profit- spending the huge amount of cash needed on becoming as much an IoT company as a car manufacturer would have the normal Wall St analysts upset. I wonder if Tesla’s rise recently will flip that paradigm. Imo investors are starting to finally want to see a path to EV/IoT as much as quarterly earnings. Otherwise Tesla wouldn’t have such insane P/E.
I’m way off topic now, but there’s no doubt China is using the transition to EV to become a player.
Ford doesn't even ship an EVs in the US any longer. Their most recent was the gen 2 Focus Electric and both it gen 1 barely sold any. We're waiting for Mach-E.
VW e-Golf is discontinued for the US but VAG has the couple e-Tron BEVs and Taycan.
Obviously, what you look for doesn't reflect the US nor worldwide auto market.
For all of 2019 EVs and PHEVs combined in the US per FINAL UPDATE: Quarterly Plug-In EV Sales Scorecard made up only about 330K sales out of 17.1 million (US auto sales fall in 2019 but still top 17 million for fifth consecutive year), so that's just under 2% combining both EV and PHEV.
I've seen figures like 90 million auto sales globally for 2019 (e.g. The recession in global car sales shows no sign of ending - CNN). IEV's piece estimates 1.94 million EV + PHEV sold globally, so that's a bit over 2.1%.
And, in many other parts of the world, incomes are lower and therefore cars are cheaper. And, in some of parts of the world, they don't even have reliable electricity supplies w/o regular rolling blackouts.
For example, I found this figure New Car Prices in India - Latest models & Features 27 Aug 2020 which claims "Car prices in India range between Rs.2,94,800 (Maruti Suzuki Alto) and Rs.2,12,00,000 (Nissan GTR)". 294,800 Indian rupees is currently just over $4K USD.
My work (in Nor Cal where we have tons of EVs and PHEVs) has quite a bit of (all) free J1772 L2 charging and some Tesla wall connectors. We literally have hundreds of EVs/PHEVs at my work (well, this is all before COVID-19 lockdowns) including several hundred Teslas. I know of people in my immediate group a few years back who when in the market for a new car ruled out an EV from the beginning. Within my immediate working group, only a couple of us have EVs and no more have PHEVs. One of them had a Model 3 and doesn't even have an EV any longer.
They are more than just a player. In a given year, China's EV + PHEV sales are about triple that of what's sold in the US: Close To 1.18 Million Plug-In Electric Cars Were Sold In China In 2019.
FYI one of firms highlighted in the program, Starsky, has quit. Here is a postmortem: The End of Starsky Robotics
This is the first post of yours that I’ve seen in a while that has made me think “this guy is crazy”. I think Tesla has a short term future (I’m not going to try to define what I think “short term” actually is because I don’t really know) but long term I think they’re dead in the water. Their business is selling cars (not “tech”, not energy, but cars) and services surrounding their cars, and it doesn’t make them money. They’re showing profit because they sell emissions credits, and those will dry up sooner rather than later. Meanwhile their competitors who actually know how to turn a profit selling cars have been slowly moving into the EV space. Anyone who thinks the likes of Ford or VW who measure car sales in the multiple millions per year can’t find someone willing to partner with them on batteries is a dammed fool.
Sure, they could turn it around (Elon somehow gets away with some blatant s*it so it wouldn’t surprise me if he was able to keep things afloat somehow), but as of the moment I press the “post reply” button I don’t see them having a future in the long term. Yes, their stock price keeps going up and I’m sure people here have made untold fortunes in their Robinhood accounts, but please keep in mind that the stock price is NOT their business.
DanCar
Active Member
Tesla is a multi faceted company. They may make more money in the future selling batteries like powerwall, solar cells, etc... To define Tesla's business as selling cars is one dimensional in a multidimensional game.
JohnSnowNW
Active Member
They sold almost 900k F150's last year, with a recall on 20% of them...and revenue ≠ profit.
I believe it's widely known that Ford is not in the best financial situation.
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