Tesla looking to recognize more FSD revenue for 2020 Q1

[boonedocks]

At least from 2019 Q3 earnings call, Zachary Kirkhorn said $30 million was recognized for Smart Summon in US, and "As we expand Smart Summon to additional markets and release new features, we will continue to recognize additional deferred revenue."

But still unclear if it's based on vehicles installing the update or just that the update is available. But recognizing revenue definitely seems to require having functionality available to the region.

WOW $30MM for something not even worthy of a party trick

 

[Knightshade]

WOW $30MM for something not even worthy of a party trick

Given they had well over a billion in deferred revenue on the books end of 2019 that's a very very tiny drop of that bucket.

 

[Snuffysasa]

So what do we think the chances Tesla tries to rush this out by March 31 to take more differed revenue this quarter?

 

[Knightshade]

So what do we think the chances Tesla tries to rush this out by March 31 to take more differed revenue this quarter?

Pre covid-19? 100%

Now I'm unsure they'll have enough testing done and bug fix folks available to make that happen

 

[Daniel in SD]

So what do we think the chances Tesla tries to rush this out by March 31 to take more differed revenue this quarter?

Seems like now they'll try to take a big loss this quarter. Though next quarter is looking really bad too...

 

[Snuffysasa]

Pre covid-19? 100%

Now I'm unsure they'll have enough testing done and bug fix folks available to make that happen

seems unlikely autopilot engineers can do any meaningful work from home ?

 

[Mardak]

seems unlikely autopilot engineers can do any meaningful work from home ?

What do you think Autopilot engineers are doing in the office?

 

[Daniel in SD]

seems unlikely autopilot engineers can do any meaningful work from home ?

Why do you say that? It’s computer programming.

 

[mongo]

seems unlikely autopilot engineers can do any meaningful work from home ?

Expected case:
All the training is on servers, local machines are for labeling, coding, and viewing. With VPN, nothing changes.

Worst case:
Remote desktop session to work machine.

 

[Knightshade]

I'm sure they can do SOME work from home. Probably a fair bit.

At some point they need folks testing that code in real cars though- which is going to be happening massively less during a stay at home order.

 

[Snuffysasa]

What do you think Autopilot engineers are doing in the office?

Why do you say that? It’s computer programming.

I was asking, not stating. to see what other people thought...

though... I figured a lot of the final steps in prepping a firmware for release have the highest security measures... and a lot of these may require staff being in the office. Or even just the final protocols they have in place for approving a firmware for release may involve protocols that require people to be physically present.

I could be wrong though.

I'm sure they can do SOME work from home. Probably a fair bit.

At some point they need folks testing that code in real cars though- which is going to be happening massively less during a stay at home order.

When you say test code in real cars....

are you referring to Tesla engineers driving around cars to test and fix bugs... or are you reffering to the Early Access folk... these people will most likely be working from home more and therefore driving around less to validate the firmware?

 

[Knightshade]

When you say test code in real cars....

are you referring to Tesla engineers driving around cars to test and fix bugs... or are you reffering to the Early Access folk... these people will most likely be working from home more and therefore driving around less to validate the firmware?

Both. I expect they have an internal validation fleet to test things at a pretty fundamental level, and the early access fleet to test things on "real" roads... both would be seeing a lot less use these days given the lockdowns.

 

[Missile Toad]

This is what I'm afraid of:

I'm sure they can do SOME work from home. Probably a fair bit.

At some point they need folks testing that code in real cars though- which is going to be happening massively less during a stay at home order.

If they can 'f'-up the voice commands while in the office, can we expect any better with respect to FSD, and they do the work from home? I would think, that heads are rolling at Tesla in order to get proper SW development management.

 

[MassPlay]

Elon's talk about FSD being "feature complete" is just setting the stage so Tesla can recognize the FSD revenue. Pretty smart, Tesla can recognize the revenue as its "complete" but doesn't have to deliver it because of regulatory approval.

 

[Knightshade]

Elon's talk about FSD being "feature complete" is just setting the stage so Tesla can recognize the FSD revenue. Pretty smart, Tesla can recognize the revenue as its "complete" but doesn't have to deliver it because of regulatory approval.

Naah... well, naah for pre-march-2019 buyers.... for them, one of the promised features is doing these things without interventions... so at least SOME of THAT revenue can't be recognized for quite a while (if ever)- just as we've seen with things like smart summon, you can't recognize it until you have the feature available in a given geo...

Post March-19 buyers they can recognize quite a bit of that with just the stop lights/signs bit since that's 2 of the 3 remaining "promised" features for those folks... (automatic driving on city streets being the third- not sure I'd hold my breath on that one right now)

 

[Mardak]

That's good news because Tesla definitely need to be using more data if they want to accelerate FSD. After all, the whole advantage that Tesla is supposed to have over the competition is the large data that they get from hundreds of thousands of cars driving all over the US and the world, picking up edge cases etc... So they better actually use that data.

If Tesla doesn't recognize additional Autopilot revenue today, looks like they'll have incurred some additional expense from the additional data bandwidth and storage. In the past week, our car has uploaded 2.5GB whereas the previous 3 weeks averaged 250MB/week, so 10x the data. If this is consistent with other Teslas uploading more data and with Tesla passing 1 million cars earlier in March, Tesla is probably easily getting 100x the data compared to when Model 3 launched.

 

[NHK X]

If Tesla doesn't recognize additional Autopilot revenue today, looks like they'll have incurred some additional expense from the additional data bandwidth and storage. In the past week, our car has uploaded 2.5GB whereas the previous 3 weeks averaged 250MB/week, so 10x the data. If this is consistent with other Teslas uploading more data and with Tesla passing 1 million cars earlier in March, Tesla is probably easily getting 100x the data compared to when Model 3 launched.

over the past month I’ve had the car upload around 17gb over a few days, it’s done that twice now.

not sure what all that data is given having AP2.5, but they are doing something for sure.

 

[captain_sahaj]

Seems too late now for tesla to acknowledge some of the deferred FSD revenue for this quarter...

 

[Knightshade]

Seems too late now for tesla to acknowledge some of the deferred FSD revenue for this quarter...

Naah... midnight in California is still hours away! plenty of time to "officially" release an update

 

[Snuffysasa]

over the past month I’ve had the car upload around 17gb over a few days, it’s done that twice now.

not sure what all that data is given having AP2.5, but they are doing something for sure.

perhaps uploading image sequences (videos) of intersections?