Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

[22522]

Much of Tesla's accident avoidance advantage is from the radar detecting 2 cars ahead. I don't see Tesla losing the radar even if not used for FSD.

 

[aubreymcfato]

Perfect. No lawsuits. EVER. End game. Well done Tesla.

FWIW, this is what George Hotz always said Tesla was lacking. It was his major concern from the interviews I heard.
I know nothing but this move reassures me on many levels.

 

[joh01652]

Just watched a very nice GM commercial for EVs. EVerybody needs an EV. The end of the commercial announces GM will have lots of EV come 2025. Seems aimed at holding brand loyalty, please just wait for us.

We knew this day was coming, when Big Auto would start advertising for EVs. This has such massive upside not only for Tesla but for all EVs and the environment because more and more people will hold off on buying another ICE and wait for when an appropriately priced EV comes their way. I know several people who are holding off on buying another vehicle until they can afford an EV, and that list is sure to grow.

 

[GBleck]

Yesterday’s big TSLA-related news IMO is the announcement that future FSD versions will be vision only. Reasons why this is a big deal:

1. Radar already seemed redundant. Humans don’t use radar to drive.

2. Future cars will probably see radar systems removed. Benefits of this:

a. Increased margin per car on the order of a few hundred dollars, or cheaper cars. Either way, a win.
b. Less parts = more reliability.
c. Less power consumption, both for the radar unit itself, and for the processing of this data. Also, more compute time available to process vision data.

3. Passive vision doesn’t get confused by bounced reflections (like when driving thru a tunnel).

4. Shows that Tesla has high confidence in the reliability of its vision sensing.

5. AP team can focus on vision 100%. In a way, narrows the scope of the problem.

The only possible downside of eliminating radar that I can see is that you can’t bounce passive vision under the car in front of you to see the car in front of that one. You may be able to get around this with vision by training the system to identify cars by looking through the lead car’s windows. Tesla might find they want to keep radar for this reason, but I’m betting radar goes away over the next year or two.

BTW I don’t see radar’s ability to see through fog as an advantage, because if the fog is that heavy your vision system won’t work anyway and you can’t drive on just radar alone.

Impact to TSLA:

Short term: none. The market is not smart enough to figure this out.
Longer term: Tesla widens autonomy lead against the current players dependent on active sensors (Waymo, Cruise) for localization and driving tasks.

If memory serves the radar sends processed data on the bus and not raw returns. It would be doing the processing locally and just returning a max of I think 20 or so returns over the CAN bus at a time. Not a huge processor savings on the Tesla side. The savings would therefor be from the radar side. Removes one more not Tesla black box with potential supply chain disruption problems from the logistics chain that is a Tesla.

 

[aubreymcfato]

Bitcoin hit $60K this morning. But remember, Tesla buying at ~$35K was a horrible move....

Again, can we not conflate different layers?
Financially: awesome move. Environmentally: horrible move.
It's quite simple actually.

 

[lascavarian]

Much of Tesla's accident avoidance advantage is from the radar detecting 2 cars ahead. I don't see Tesla losing the radar even if not used for FSD.

Humans need a certain response time but computers far less. The data may suggest that accurate ranging via vision is sufficient to avoid collisions for a computer controlled vehicle.

 

[Knightshade]

I think the broader concern raised by OP was about personal privacy and what ownership really means going forward.

We live in a world where our rights are limited by EULAs we never read. And even if we did read them, they can change without sufficient notice. It becomes more of an issue with every passing day as everything becomes "smart". My oven has an internet connection for goodness sake.

As someone else pointed out- they don't need to be sending video back from the interior camera for this to work.

The code ON THE CAR already has a check for driver attention, it can just be sending back a YES/NO at any moment, or an aggregate of what % of the time you were paying attention.


(that said- the camera inside the car is pretty awful at this task.... even the more specialized HW on Caddys that's far more capable isn't perfect at it... but it's a "better than nothing" at least.... I'd hope if Tesla IS doing it this way they're erring on the side of the driver, like if the system can't tell (entirely possible with sunglasses or low light) it assumes you're paying attention rather than the other way around where people lose features because they put a crap camera not meant to do this job in the mirror)

Humans need a certain response time but computers far less. The data may suggest that accurate ranging via vision is sufficient to avoid collisions for a computer controlled vehicle.

One the points raised when Tesla was touting how awesome their radar was it could detect a car not visible ahead of the one in front of you that was stopped, and thus start to react to THAT car that's not visible even if the car you can in front of you hasn't started reacting yet.

Vision only is a downgrade in that situation.


But don't take my word for it- Here's Elon explaining why Radar+Vision is safer than just vision.

Radar sees through rain, fog, snow, dust, and essentially quite easily. So even if you are driving down the road and the visibility was very low and there was a big multi-car pileup or something like that and you cant’ see it, the radar would and it would initiate braking in time to avoid your car being added to the multi-car pileup.

In fact, an additional level of sophistication – we are confident that we can use the radar to look beyond the car in front of you by bouncing the radar signal off the road and around the car. We are able to process that echo by using the unique signature of each radar pulse as well as the time of flight of the photon to determine that what we are seeing is in fact an echo in front of the car that’s in front of you. So even if there’s something that was obscured directly both in vision and radar, we can use the bounce effect of the radar to look in front of that car and still brake.

It takes things to another level of safety.

In fact we've seen video of radar on a tesla reacting and avoiding an accident before anything visual is available to it

Tesla Autopilot avoids a crash before it happens | Engadget

Tesla's Autopilot 8.0 has a particularly clever feature: it uses radar to track road activity two cars ahead, helping it avoid danger that you wouldn't normally see. And it now appears that this tech just averted a disaster. Dutch Model X owner Frank van Hoesel has dashcam footage showing his...

www.engadget.com

IIRC when that story broke Elon proudly retweeted it showing how radar adds to safety.



So I've got to think this is one of those 'Twitter is actually not that great at communicating things" things and they're not really taking radar out of FSD, they're removing its use in one really specific way that wasn't at all clear from a tweet.

 

[Curt Renz]

Benzinga - this morning: 7 ARKK stock w/Support Incl. TSLA

Excerpt:

Suttmeier said Tesla Inc also held a critical support level at around the $600 level. He said the bounce suggests Tesla could rally at least to its next resistance level between $780 and $804.

 

[Todd Burch]

Just watched a very nice GM commercial for EVs. EVerybody needs an EV. The end of the commercial announces GM will have lots of EV come 2025. Seems aimed at holding brand loyalty, please just wait for us.

I’m sure they thought long and hard about where the batteries for all those EVs will come from!

 

[Chunky Jr.]

I am also puzzled by the removal of radar for FSD, but I'm assuming that Elon is a lot smarter than me so there must be a good reason for it that will be revealed in the near future

 

[Curt Renz]

Tesmanian - this morning: Tesla's Market Share Rising

Excerpt:

To once again dispel doubts, Piper Sandler posted a note to customers titled “Some comments regarding Tesla’s market share (yes, it’s still rising).” Analysts at the firm said they receive questions every quarter about Tesla's apparent market share decline. In response to them, Piper Sandler wrote that "these concerns are off the mark" and once again clarified the essence of what is happening.

 

[MTL_HABS1909]

Again, can we not conflate different layers?
Financially: awesome move. Environmentally: horrible move.
It's quite simple actually.

This has already been debunked. Move along.

 

[Jackl1956]

Green found in the software that the internal camera has metrics to see if you are paying attention or looking away, even through sun glasses.

Yes, seriously, because of what I've learned here on TMC I have stopped reading almost any sort of news now. The lies/misinformation/misinterpretation are so blatant and constant regarding Tesla I feel I have no option but to disregard all of it. And that goes for covid news, political news, etc. Mainstream media is a wholly captured pawn of wealthy special interests. I view "news" as mostly veiled advertisement with a sprinkling of light entertainment. I'd suspect Twitter and Facebook are just as bad if not worse.

It's every person for him/herself now with regard to "truth," whatever that is anymore. I try to make decisions based on outcome, not knowledge, my main goal to limit downside exposure the best I can since I walk through the world blind, deaf and dumb.

It's nice to come to TMC where participants are incentivized to try to get a handle on what's true. TMC is my main source of information now. Kind of sad, really.

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin were born on the same day in history. Each of these men, changed the course mankind through his actions. Each of these men, wrote with eloquence, to illuminate and clarify the most divisive issues of the ages.

Both Lincoln and Darwin, in their writings, would build compelling arguments, supporting the positions of their opposition, before using reasoned evidence to support with clarity the truth and rigor of their own positions.

I for one, believe it falls to us to know and understand the positions of our detractors, so that we may offer reasoned evidence, so that we may offer our best stories.

 

[willow_hiller]

I am also puzzled by the removal of radar for FSD, but I'm assuming that Elon is a lot smarter than me so there must be a good reason for it that will be revealed in the near future

I understood that tweet to mean that they're removing radar from the perception stack, but that doesn't mean it won't be used by any other neural nets in the car (or using its output outside of the neural nets).

We know from last October Tesla is investing in better radar units: Tesla is adding a new '4D' radar with twice the range for self-driving - Electrek Unless things have seriously changed in the last 5 months, that would be an odd decision.

 

[Artful Dodger]

Much of Tesla's accident avoidance advantage is from the radar detecting 2 cars ahead. I don't see Tesla losing the radar even if not used for FSD.

Yes, you've hit on an important consequence of the software architecture: FSD Beta (a.k.a. "Navigate on City Streets") is a separate mode from other components of the entire FSD Suite.

If you watch any of the numerous videos of FSD Beta testers transitioning from city streets to Interstate on-ramps, FSD Beta turns off, and the existing "Navigate on Autopilot" kicks in (the FSD component available since 2018).

In short term development (which certainly includes April 2021), this is how FSD Beta will be integrated into the entire FSD Suite. The consequence likely means simply that the on-board radar will be used on highways (adaptive cruise control, emergency braking, advance warning of hazards), but that radar data may not be an imput to the neural net(s) for FSD in city traffic.

In the longer term, anything is possible (including Elon changing his mind). As a positive, not including a radar transceiver in the future 'robotaxi' saves some costs, saves some power, and saves some software integration headaches. As a drawback, most of us want the extra features and are willing to pay a premium for them.

Simplest answer going forward IMO is that S3XY cars continue to be built with RADAR, and the "robotaxi" may not have it (since they rarely leave the City).

Cheers!

P.S. I've been saying for years that "robotaxi" should NOT have friction brakes; AWD with regen braking is fit for purpose, saves money and weight, wear and repair, and allows extra safety and maneuverability via torque vectoring that you can not obtain with simple ABS.

P.P.S. Robotaxi also won't have a steering wheel or operator pedals (of course), but likely will have shatterproof "Tesla Glass". I also think pneumatic tires are ripe for disruption...

 

[StealthP3D]

There is a decent chance all of us TSLA HODL'ers are going to be incredibly filthy rich by 2030.

What comes after "incredibly filthy rich"?

Asking for a friend.

 

[JRP3]

the camera inside the car is pretty awful at this task

What makes you say that?

 

[StealthP3D]

P.S. I've been saying for years that "robotaxi" should NOT have friction brakes; AWD with regen braking is fit for purpose, saves money and weight, wear and repair, and allows extra safety and manouverability via torque vectoring that you can not obtain with simple ABS.

Robotaxi won't operate where there are deer and other human drivers? Unless regenerative braking strong enough to bring the tires to the limits of traction are developed, friction brakes will not be going away.

 

[JRP3]

Robotaxi won't operate where there are deer and other human drivers? Unless regenerative braking strong enough to bring the tires to the limits of traction are developed, friction brakes will not be going away.

Not to mention times when regen is reduced because the pack is too cold or at high SOC.

 

[StealthP3D]

I am also puzzled by the removal of radar for FSD, but I'm assuming that Elon is a lot smarter than me so there must be a good reason for it that will be revealed in the near future

I'm sure there's a kernel of truth here, that the FSD team has changed the way radar is used in a fundamental manner.

Knowing that Elon likes to set bear traps when he senses things are about to get a lot better, my takeaway is things are going great with FSD. He has a history of statements that a bear would interpret in a negative manner, alarmist even, and a bull would assume the best. No one brags about things that are negatives.