Leasing period for model X. When will NextGen X arrive?

[Flottes Wiesel]

There is no "model year" in the Tesla world - Tesla improves ability of their cars using over the air updates and offer new hardware, when they are ready to roll out. It's always wise to buy the car now, otherwise you will never stop waiting for the next major improvement.

But there might be a different situation, if you have the choice to decide upon the date of replacement. Should our fleet management opt for a three year-leasing or four year-leasing?

In our local market, three year leasing of business limousines is supported by local manufacturers heavily. They not only tend to color their portion of air polution, they like to push registration statistics. So the usual rule is: three year leasing costs less than four years. Tesla is different, returning the car after three years instead of four costs a significant premium.

Will tesla still manufacture the model X in three or four years? Very likely, if they accomplish their mission until than and survive in a hostile surrounding.

Will it take three years or four, until many small steps add up to a major leap? There is plenty to do:

- a more mature set of sensors, bringing autonomous driving closer to reality. It's not only a second color camera. I am worried, that Model X is equiped with a single, front-directed radar only. On a German Autobahn, you need to observe front traffic and trunk companions with same, high attention. Changing lanes here, you need to add backwarded radar to detect fast approaching cars from behind. Even if you keep your lane, it might block faster cars, that are not allowed to overtake on right-sided lanes. Autonomous cars, being nearly blind to the back will not be fun cars in Germamy.

- an enhenced choice of battery and charging options, offering more range and enduring high speed travel. Today, a Model X might be the stop-and.go champion with highest acceleration. But I guess I cannot go 210 km/h travel speed on light traffic for a long distance. That's BMW and Porsche territory.

- a simplified user interface, head-up-display technology or something similar.

 

[wdolson]

They will improve the battery capacity when the new cell format becomes available, but that will probably be about a year from now.

The improved sensor suite for AP 2 probably won't be out until closer to the release of the Model 3. The software for that isn't there yet and they will want to standardize the hardware across their fleet. Cars rolling off the production lines now appear to have room for extra cameras and there may be an upgrade kit available to upgrade late AP 1 cars to AP 2 when the time comes.

They are working now on improving the capabilities of AP 1, but that will take some time to get ready for customers. There will be a long testing phase once they get it written.

With Mobileye dropping Tesla, I'm not sure what that means for AP 2. If Tesla had built AP 2 around Mobileye's hardware, that means they need to find a new vendor or make the hardware themselves.

There are always little tweaks to the S/X production, but don't expect any big changes this year. Tesla's resources are focused on getting the Model 3 ready for production and the GF running as well as all the expansion necessary to support the M3.

 

[Flottes Wiesel]

My model X has left production line any day now, so I know my current configuration. In technical terms, my interest is the potential increment beweet Model X in three years and Model X in four years from now.

I am not worried about the split with MobilEye. Tesla tends to insource production of many parts. Systems providing autonmous driving should be more sensitive to competion advantage as a second-row-seat with motor, which was dropped before, I understand that MobilEye produces an embedded chip, being able to calculate image analysis, which reduces complexity for downstream processing steps. Tesla seems willing to combine different sets of sensors, so they prefer to access raw pictures and do the processing differently. We will see, which approach will be superioir. MobilEye stays in the market. hopefully, one of their OEMs builds a better car, that would spur Tesla.

 

[wdolson]

Three years is just about impossible to predict. I don't think anyone outside of Tesla would have predicted where we are today in mid-2013.