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

[rk20]

Dang! It sounds like you're saying a neural net works just like a human? So, after the crash it's just like "It happened so fast I'm not sure what happened."

At least with a human we can blame it on things we can understand, like "human error". That's so comforting!

The neural nets create inputs to a finite state/rules engine for actions. This can be tapped to understand cause and effect.

 

[charliepmayer]

Since one of the chief complaints registered here is the idea that Tesla seems never to repair its' customer contact, specifically often mentioned is inability to reach a human.
Today while checking on my imminent Model S delivery I had an unprecedented experience.
I called my local Service Center to check. A VRU attended. The VRU greeted me by name and asked if I was checking on my delivery, then transferred em to a human, who answered in less than ten seconds and had all my data at hand, including the expectation that my car would reach the store by the 21st, barring unforeseen events.
That is the first time any company other than my Airline and Hotel preferred vendors, on both of which I have their highest Elite status, have had such easy access. I do not know how the rest of the world may be treated.

This unprecedented experience gives me tentative suspicion that Tesla CRM is being improved.
Has anybody else noted such treatment?
This has the portent of reducing costs, minimizing complaints of inattention plus making the lives of Customer Service people vastly easier.

This could be worth a few basis points on GM, just by reducing costs. It might also make employee retention better by eliminating some of the most frustrating calls.

Glad to hear that jbcarioca. Thank you for the post. Yes, similar story here. I heard nothing from my usual contacts for a week - emails not answered - so this afternoon I called my local service center - San Antonio. A human answered (this person was in Fremont). He had my full account at hand. Patiently explained the process and delivery status of the order. Answered every question politely and professionally. Two minutes later my contact in Las Vegas called with a full status report and delivery information. Coincidence? I think not. Somebody's listening.

 

[StealthP3D]

There’s some evidence that when we humans explain our own behavior what we’re really doing is rationalizing after the fact. “I did X, therefore I must have been thinking Y and it didn’t work out because Z”.

Tesla should be able to train a neural net to mimic this human behavior, using data from existing accident reports.

It sounds like the natural result of this would be for the neural net to make a short crash report after each accident. And 80% of the time it would learn to make stuff up to make it seem like it did absolutely nothing wrong?

My owner had set my speed at exactly the speed limit. I was over-taking a truck being driven by a human in the slow lane when the human allowed his truck to cross the lane maker into my lane and forced my vehicle onto the shoulder where it struck a police car that was sticking out in my lane a little bit. Unfortunately, the camera footage was accidentally corrupted when I tried to review it so I had to reconstruct this report by reverse engineering my driving logs.

 

[SarahsDad]

Solid FUD the last 2 days. Weirdly I see this as a bullish sign. Almost feels like it's the last hurrah before a big push upwards.

 

[Bouboule]

Yesterday I rewatched the documentary AlphaGo. I had watched it a couple years ago but didn’t fully appreciate all the information that was provided and how it relates so well to FSD.

The Wikipedia page is also very informative and shows all the versions, timeline and performance.

The key take away is that as the time between version reduces dramatically, the performance improves dramatically.
It should be similar for FSD.

 

[M|S|M MYP]

 

[Beltsbear]

Doug has a way of pretending to be positive on a Tesla while subtly making you lose interest in owning it. He had some really good FUD around 35 minutes during his test drive. He says he's just blown away by the performance while being mortified that "regular people" are going to have access to this. He says
"You can see the headlines now, this is going to lead to some stuff."

The real kicker is when he adds "It doesn't require skill anymore to afford a car this fast." Huh? Since when did it require skill to afford the fastest cars? Maybe he is talking about the way Bugatti won't take your money until you prove to the salesman that you have good driving skills? Yup. that's right, Bugatti was always known for refusing to let bad drivers buy their cars Uh-huh.

Or maybe he's talking about how the ultra-rich are always born with a silver spoon in their mouth and with built-in performance driving skills?

I watched the video pretty carefully, and while he does not understand basic things about the car (like biohazard mode) , I did not think he was too alarmist about the prospect of the performance being too much. Besides that 'does not require skill' line, he is correct, Tesla puts extreme performance at a much lower price. I would say other than the paint stuff, he was positive through most of the video. No question in my mind, his video will net overall sell the Plaid. His reaction to the speed alone will sell these cars.

 

[EVWatcher]

Yesterday I rewatched the documentary AlphaGo. I had watched it a couple years ago but didn’t fully appreciate all the information that was provided and how it relates so well to FSD.

The Wikipedia page is also very informative and shows all the versions, timeline and performance.

The key take away is that as the time between version reduces dramatically, the performance improves dramatically.
It should be similar for FSD.

View attachment 697937

I think that doc is a good watch and can inform thinking but it's healthy to keep in mind they are not very comparable.

AlphaGo and the subsequent software is an AI that plays a game and has a very clear identifier for declaring an improvement, it wins.

AlphaGo can play itself, or its predecessor in a virtual environment to improve.

FSD is - at least as I understand it - two things. An AI developed to interpret visual input - Tesla Vision-, And hard coded rules for driving.

Tesla Vision can't really play against itself as I understand. I guess its possible that they could feed two models through a video clip and then whichever model had a higher degree of confidence about what it saw wins. But to validate it it needs to roll out to a test fleet and have users say "Hey this is way better, but it tried to drive through the concrete pillar under the monorail".

That process is much slower than a computer playing itself 24/7.

AI Day could prove me very wrong though.

 

[Todd Burch]

My thoughts on AI day:

1. Affect on stock price: nil to slightly positive. I hope. Don't think anyone has hyped it this time, and price obviously hasn't risen ahead of time due to expectations of some big move in the stock.

2. I suspect the AI Tesla is investing beyond their vehicle fleet relates to factory automation--the machine that builds the machine. What is Tesla's mission statement? Accelerate the advent of sustainable energy. Best way to do that? Get the price on their cars and other products down as low as possible. How do you do that? Focus on the machine that builds the machine.

So I suspect Tesla is working on in-factory AI. Machines that transport raw material and other goods around the factory. Machines that visually inspect panel gaps and approve/reject vehicles based on the measurements. Any way they can increase the production rate or reduce production cost.

 

[JRP3]

Doug has a way of pretending to be positive on a Tesla while subtly making you lose interest in owning it.

He has a long history of subtly and not so subtly trashing Tesla for years.

 

[Beltsbear]

The neural nets create inputs to a finite state/rules engine for actions. This can be tapped to understand cause and effect.

Ah.... No. While some very simple neural networks (from the early days) can be understood what is happening under the hood, Something like Tesla's 4D neural network is going to be a black box for the most part. Yes, engineers do design layouts and layers, but very often the neural network finds it's own day despite the engineers layout.

 

[Singuy]

Doug has a way of pretending to be positive on a Tesla while subtly making you lose interest in owning it. He had some really good FUD around 35 minutes during his test drive. He says he's just blown away by the performance while being mortified that "regular people" are going to have access to this. He says
"You can see the headlines now, this is going to lead to some stuff."

The real kicker is when he adds "It doesn't require skill anymore to afford a car this fast." Huh? Since when did it require skill to afford the fastest cars? Maybe he is talking about the way Bugatti won't take your money until you prove to the salesman that you have good driving skills? Yup. that's right, Bugatti was always known for refusing to let bad drivers buy their cars Uh-huh.

Or maybe he's talking about how the ultra-rich are always born with a silver spoon in their mouth and with built-in performance driving skills?

Most cars this powerful has pretty strict pre-requisites...and that's the ability to shell out a few million and actually get one before the production of like 50 cars run out. Doug is right, this is the first car anyone can have access to with a little conviction when it comes to the leasing agreement. We have already see just model S running into trees from showing off. I don't see it as FUD and he is not the only one who said this car should be illegal (believe dragtime said the same thing, and a few of his buddies also said it too).

 

[MartinAustin]

Cramer says "I would buy Tesla now"

 

[Bouboule]

I think that doc is a good watch and can inform thinking but it's healthy to keep in mind they are not very comparable.

AlphaGo and the subsequent software is an AI that plays a game and has a very clear identifier for declaring an improvement, it wins.

AlphaGo can play itself, or its predecessor in a virtual environment to improve.

FSD is - at least as I understand it - two things. An AI developed to interpret visual input - Tesla Vision-, And hard coded rules for driving.

Tesla Vision can't really play against itself as I understand. I guess its possible that they could feed two models through a video clip and then whichever model had a higher degree of confidence about what it saw wins. But to validate it it needs to roll out to a test fleet and have users say "Hey this is way better, but it tried to drive through the concrete pillar under the monorail".

That process is much slower than a computer playing itself 24/7.

AI Day could prove me very wrong though.

Good points.
I also noticed that the last version of AlphaGo was playing against itself to get better and was like *sugar* FSD can't do that. But actually when you think about it, if a bunch of Tesla's drive on the street together, FSD will be "playing" itself.

Also, from my understanding, the metric for improvements is the number of disengage/km.

 

[BriansTesla]

Most cars this powerful has pretty strict pre-requisites...and that's the ability to shell out a few million and actually get one before the production of like 50 cars run out. Doug is right, this is the first car anyone can have access to with a little conviction when it comes to the leasing agreement. We have already see just model S running into trees from showing off. I don't see it as FUD and he is not the only one who said this car should be illegal (believe dragtime said the same thing, and a few of his buddies also said it too).

Years ago I was informed by a reliable Porsche dealership source that when the 930 Turbo first came out, most of the cars ended up going into a ditch backwards in the first week of ownership. I'm sure there were deaths.
Where's Ralph Nader when you need him?

 

[Sofie]

Solid FUD the last 2 days. Weirdly I see this as a bullish sign. Almost feels like it's the last hurrah before a big push upwards.

View attachment 697938

I can’t remember exactly, but was the FUD this bad just before the 2020 sky rocket we had right around June through Jan 2021?

 

[BornToFly]

I believe that AI day will only move the stock if Elon makes a comment to discredit the Autopilot FUD. Such as saying that in 75% of the cases being looked at Autopilot wasn't even on. The reality is that it is a Level 2 system, and therefore Autopilot has never been responsible for an accident, only the drivers have.

 

[PeterJA]

...It will be counterproductive long-term for the US and the legacy OEM’s themselves, if PHEV’s get equal benefits with BEV’s in the $3.5 trillion package...

Tesla Economist makes that argument in interesting detail.

 

[jkirkwood001]

No need to delete, it was good info and while the NTSB Isn't leading this investigation, they definitely encouraged it (and have praised the decision to open this investigation). Last year the NTSB urged NHTSA to develop driver monitoring standards for Tesla's system and even went as far as to place some of the blame of a fatal accident on NHTSA for not having driver monitoring standards.

It doesn't take any imagination to see where at least some of the pressure to investigate comes from.

Also, I really liked your anecdote @jbcarioca about leaving the NTSB meeting where an 'insignificant' Tesla engineer had given the most informed perspective on batteries, and immediately investing in Tesla.

Virtually everybody here has had a lightbulb moment where s/he went "whoa. this company is going to change everything." Mine was relatively late in 2017 when a friend accepted my offer to research new cars for her. While prioritizing her requirements, I said "are you interested in a hybrid?" She said "sure". So I started my research and, in a kind-a first principles way, thought, well if hybrid is better than ICE... what about pure electric?

Research, research. Hey, what about this fringe manufacturer Tesla?

Research, research, research.


Whoa.

This company is going to change everything.

 

[jkirkwood001]

Also, I really liked your anecdote @jbcarioca about leaving the NTSB meeting where an 'insignificant' Tesla engineer had given the most informed perspective on batteries, and immediately investing in Tesla.

Virtually everybody here has had a lightbulb moment where s/he went "whoa. this company is going to change everything." Mine was relatively late in 2017 when a friend accepted my offer to research new cars for her. While prioritizing her requirements, I said "are you interested in a hybrid?" She said "sure". So I started my research and, in a kind-a first principles way, thought, well if hybrid is better than ICE... what about pure electric?

Research, research. Hey, what about this fringe manufacturer Tesla?

Research, research, research.


Whoa.

This company is going to change everything.

Oh and she ended up going against my weighted quantitative analysis recommendation and buying a Subaru Crosstrek.

We didn't last.

I bought TSLA.
I bought Tesla.
I'm now a multi-millionaire.
Oh well.
Hope you're liking the Crosstrek!