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

[generalenthu]

My comments on the Dawn project from Dan.

TL;DR - He used to be a Tesla bull in 2014, owning a Roadster and Model S, which I was shown. This seems to be a play by TSLAQ/competition and I expect Tesla to hit back due to the relationship Elon and Dan have.

Spoiler: Longer version

I used to work with Dan, thought very highly of GHS and once briefly considered an offer to work for them. I've been to their HQ in Santa Barbara a few times and I wonder if they still have the T-rex skull in the lobby? Anyway, GHS is the leader in flight critical software and yes, any software is hackable, but they've never been hacked at level 6 (nearly every plane you've ever been on runs their software at the lowest levels...so be grateful; BIOS and embedded bring up machine level code). I do expect that GHS did sign on some companies that is 'competing' with Tesla and that is what provoked the article and specific wording. I have lots more data on this, but as most have already stated, this doesn't seem motivated for public good. It honestly makes me sick, and I'd bet his employees as well, to think that the apparent lust for money is behind this as opposed to holding public safety at the highest level.

Interesting to hear the flight software connection, since that's Missy Cummings' background as a pilot. Looks like someone wanted to set it up for her to come swinging at Elon.

 

[garrett5688]

In contrast Waymo had one accident every 339 thousand miles up to Sept 2020.

“Waymo’s driverless cars have driven 6.1 million autonomous miles in Phoenix, Arizona, including 65,000 miles without a human behind the wheel from 2019 through the first nine months of 2020. . . In total, Waymo’s vehicles were involved in 18 accidents with a pedestrian, cyclist, driver, or other object. “

Waymo’s driverless cars were involved in 18 accidents over 20 months

Waymo released a safety report outlining the accidents and near-collisions its cars encountered in the years they've been driving in Phoenix.

venturebeat.com

Lol I think that’s a pretty seriously unfair comparison

 

[MC3OZ]

including 65,000 miles without a human behind the wheel from 2019 through the first nine months of 2020. . . In total, Waymo’s vehicles were involved in 18 accidents with a pedestrian, cyclist, driver, or other object.

It would be interesting to know how many (if any) of these accidents happened with no driver behind the wheel.

Especially considering Waymo is operating in a Geofenced location, with (I think) not overly challenging road and traffic conditions.

 

[bkp_duke]

The US govt gave Tesla a nearly zero interest $400M loan to scale their operations. I think it was posted here a while back.

Elon said they paid the loan back because the terms of the loan were egregious. So bad that Tesla didn't want to have anything to do with the gov. His words, not mine.

 

[dhrivnak]

The US govt gave Tesla a nearly zero interest $400M loan to scale their operations. I think it was posted here a while back.

True but Ford, in the same program got $5.9 billion. I wonder which company invested wisely?

 

[TheTalkingMule]

Elon said they paid the loan back because the terms of the loan were egregious. So bad that Tesla didn't want to have anything to do with the gov. His words, not mine.

That's not how I remember it, but the point of my reply was that the US govt isn't sabotaging Tesla. It's more of an anti-lubricant perhaps, but not actively hindering anything.

And Elon has a tendency to disregard support once it's necessity has passed. Not that I have a problem with that characteristic, in many ways it's vital.
Just that the DoE loan was needed at the time it was dispensed. CA was quite helpful to Tesla before it became an unbearable tax burden and covid bummer.

 

[jw934]

Elon said they paid the loan back because the terms of the loan were egregious. So bad that Tesla didn't want to have anything to do with the gov. His words, not mine.

What Elon said on not taking the money from both Germany and US governments:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1464394944395857920

 

[deffu]

That's not how I remember it, but the point of my reply was that the US govt isn't sabotaging Tesla. It's more of an anti-lubricant perhaps, but not actively hindering anything.

And Elon has a tendency to disregard support once it's necessity has passed. Not that I have a problem with that characteristic, in many ways it's vital.
Just that the DoE loan was needed at the time it was dispensed. CA was quite helpful to Tesla before it became an unbearable tax burden and covid bummer.

yeah, the loan was in Obama time. Biden is obviously more pro union and tsla is not his priority. but tsla doent need gov life support anymore.

 

[FireMedic]

Lol I think that’s a pretty seriously unfair comparison

Unfair to whom? Tesla doesn’t have remote oversight drivers and is deployed across a diverse swath of unique unmapped driving environments.

Surely it’s an apples and oranges comparison but to say it’s biased unfairly against waymo tech is absurd to me. Tell me how I’m wrong, I am genuinely interested to know what I’m missing.

Bottom line; Tesla vision ADAS is 10x less likely to be involved in an accident and I do believe that’s a valuable statistic.

 

[EVCollies]

Yes, big ramifications. They had to retrain the entire perception network to work with the different camera input. They did it becasue processing the raw images took 13ms out of a 27ms total time budget. Using unprocessed images will require a bigger neural net (10 bit versus 8 bit images) but presumably the bigger NN will be faster and more precise than the old way.

TSLA CEO recognized this challenge and plotted a better plan.

GM and F CEO had no idea what this meant and kept golfing.

 

[Cosmacelf]

TSLA CEO recognized this challenge and plotted a better plan.

GM and F CEO had no idea what this meant and kept golfing.

Others have given disparaging remarks about the big changes the FSD program has undergone. However if you paid attention to the Tesla AI day presentations, you’d have realized that it was going to take a while and need a bunch of optimizations. As I said at the time, Tesla had been racing to get workable code out the door, but there were a bunch of obvious (to them) optimizations they hadn’t had time for that they were going to have to get to. We are seeing them implement these, and pretty quickly I might add. By mid year, it’ll be passable, I think. End of year, pretty good.

 

[Artful Dodger]

That's not how I remember it, but the point of my reply was that the US govt isn't sabotaging Tesla. It's more of an anti-lubricant perhaps, but not actively hindering anything.

And Elon has a tendency to disregard support once it's necessity has passed. Not that I have a problem with that characteristic, in many ways it's vital.
Just that the DoE loan was needed at the time it was dispensed. CA was quite helpful to Tesla before it became an unbearable tax burden and covid bummer.

Lol, you have a short memory! This topic was discussed here at length just 6 weeks ago when Tesla announced it would not seek €1.1B in EU grants for the Berlin battery factory.

ALEX on Twitter: "Tesla waives over € 1 billion in battery production subsidy for Giga Berlin. $TSLA My take: Tesla won't take subsidies they don't need even if they could get them — It's all about accelerating the world's transition to sustainable energy & integrity. https://t.co/p2J7YcSOE7" / Twitter

Elon tweeted about the reason why, which goes back to their experience with the $465M DOE loan: (Nov 27, 2021)

Elon Musk on Twitter: "@ajtourville We learned our lesson with $465M DoE loan received in 2010/2011 – onerous terms exceed value of money received. That’s why we paid it back so early, despite an early repayment penalty." / Twitter​

 

[StealthP3D]

So they offer 10K to everybody who can name one of the other car vendors with drive assistence software?

Unfortunately, the $10,000 only goes to the first person. That's a small fraction of the $150K+ cost of the full-page ad.

 

[2daMoon]

Just a reminder for everyone, as disappointing as it may seem, tomorrow is not Monday.

This week, for Nasdaq, Monday falls on Tuesday.

Keep HODLing
and
Carry on!​

 

[lafrisbee]

Where is Elon

 

[mblakele]

What the Mittelstand wants
from The Economist

“Bureaucracy is costing German business around €50bn ($57bn) a year,” says Mr Völz. Over the last decade parliament has passed three legislative packages to ease the bureaucratic burden on the Mittelstand. But little real progress has been made. According to Nikolas Stihl, head of the supervisory board of Stihl, the world’s leading maker of chainsaws, excessive bureaucracy helps explain why Germany is 30 years late with big infrastructure projects such as the feeder road for the 55km railway tunnel that is being dug beneath the Brenner Pass linking Austria and Italy. “We don’t know any more how to implement big projects,” sighs Mr Stihl.​

In case you thought Tesla’s Berlin project was alone….

 

[ggr]

yeah, the loan was in Obama time. Biden is obviously more pro union and tsla is not his priority. but tsla doent need gov life support anymore.

Actually the loan and the whole program was under the George W. Bush administration.

Mod: both posts violate the "naming a politician rule". Maybe another mod will delete. --ggr

 

[WarpedOne]

Mod: both posts violate the "naming a politician rule". Maybe another mod will delete. --ggr

We came to a point in time where the most influential things that directly and most affects us all must not be talked about.
Forbidden, taboo, heresy ... we can only discuss the lesser things, less important things.

Humans already went through such times, we now refer to them as dark ages.
The priesthood changed... their names changed.

 

[UnknownSoldier]

We came to a point in time where the most influential things that directly and most affects us all must not be talked about.
Forbidden, taboo, heresy ... we can only discuss the lesser things, less important things.

Humans already went through such times, we now refer to them as dark ages.
The priesthood changed... their names changed.

If it were still possible to engage in any sort of political discourse with any decent level of civility, open-mindedness, and ability to accept opinions other than your own without immediately reacting with hostility and hatred, then sure it would be fine to talk about it.

We are now well past that point, on the Internet and in our real lives. So at this point it's better to just ban political discussion in places where the subject is not explicitly political. When human beings are again capable of having a sane, rational, intelligent political discussion with completely strangers on the Internet, then maybe such bans should be lifted. Until then, this is how it is.

 

[-=buzz=-]

Dunno where that reference came from, but wouldn't driving in reverse on the freeway (after doing a 180 quickly)
also help when the frunk latch (on a non-recalled model S) becomes unhinged, blocking all front view?

Just to satisfy your curiosity, the PT Cruisers odd/ugly shape actually has better aerodynamics when driving backwards...