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

[Discoducky]

After hours comment. Lots of folks singing praises of FSB-beta with .69.x. I'll just offer a video to counter. Here's a phantom braking episode that I experienced last night. FSD was driving on a 45 MPH street with nothing (that I could see live or reviewing the video) to cause this behavior. FSD-beta not only "slowed" the car on the 45MPH street, but it took it to a COMPLETE STOP.

2022-09-16_23-34-57-front.mp4

This is "2022-09-16_23-34-57-front.mp4" by TBone on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

vimeo.com

I'm super excited about this product (obviously I'm driving FSD-beta), and it does some thing really well... but I still think there's plenty of work yet to go.

You took this video yourself?

 

[30seconds]

I made the critical mistake of letting my expectations rise for 10.69.2.2. Big disappointment. No improvements from 10.69.2. The stuff it screwed up with that version it still screws up with the new one.

And I tried a couple of other things which it screwed up. There's a place where it used to come to a full stop in an intersection while on a two lane (each way) divided road. Still does, braking from 40mph. No apparent reason. I also tried a local road which takes a right angle left turn with a really wide area (like a cul de sac) at the turn. No lane markings. It just came to a stop, confused about how to turn left to follow the route.

Anyway, once again, it seems to drive safely, just fairly uselessly if you want it to drive on its own. The rate of improvement is going to have to accelerate significantly if Tesla wants this to be functional FSD within the next few years.

FSD seems to be on a somewhat constant improvement path over last 2-3 years. Given how many times (many, many) the hype has been around this version or that version before being released (from Elon) I don't see why the next hyped version will be anything but an incremental advance on where we are now.

Progress is being made, but base on progress to date it seems that we are still 18+months or so from something that actually usable for "Full Self Driving"

 

[wipster]

Really OT...

Moderator: Okay, now that one I have GOT to let stay. But…in return you all get a story. I used to live in a very rural part of a not-rural state, just upstream from him, and deliberately would….umm…make my mark in the river, so to speak.
So if you’ve ever wondered where Keith gets both his longevity and his superpowers, you just might have been given a clue.
True story.

 

[Buckminster]

FSD seems to be on a somewhat constant improvement path over last 2-3 years. Given how many times (many, many) the hype has been around this version or that version before being released (from Elon) I don't see why the next hyped version will be anything but an incremental advance on where we are now.

Progress is being made, but base on progress to date it seems that we are still 18+months or so from something that actually usable for "Full Self Driving"

Time to build the RT ready fleet. The longer the base, the bigger the (paradigm shift) breakout.

 

[Krugerrand]

Adding 60,000 riskier drivers…. That’s pretty ballsy.

UNTRAINED riskier drivers.

 

[Big Time]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1572090491050799107

 

[gaswalla]

 

[MikeAtkinson]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1571981937417326595

OK, the statement from Elon was "Beta expanding to safety scores above 80 after 10.69.2.1 goes out"

He now has said "FSD Beta 10.69.2.1 looks good, extending to 160k owners in US & Canada"

Is this enough to call it or did you expect a slow rollout?

I'm not sure if 160K is supposed to be an additional 160K or if it's just 60K more than the first 100K.

I'm also not confident that 160K is enough to be all the people above 80 on safety scores that didn't have it.

Anyone want to guess the scale of that group? I'm not ready to call either of us wrong yet, but maybe the wisdom of the crowds can help us decide.

Elon has now clarified, all over a safety score in USA and Canada.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1572091244796329987

 

[CLK350]

I understand your point and don't argue that TSLA has the best charging solution. But that doesn't mean every EV maker has to have to have their own charging network (let alone unique plug). A decade ago, TSLA was the only practical game in town (along with a couple companies building glorified golf carts). There was no DC charging infrastructure at the time-TSLA was pretty much forced to develop that infrastructure in order to sell their cars. Fast forward and you have multiple companies developing charging infrastructure. There is much less need for every manufacturer to have their own system, when you have EVGO, Chargepoint and EA out there expanding quickly (quality/uptime are other issues). We don't see Chevy/Ford/Toyota gas stations, we don't need manufacturer-specific chargers on every corner.

However-not every charging company will survive and thrive, competition will kill those that can't compete on price and service. My personal hope is that Tesla builds out the SC network to support other manufacturers and become the Exxon of the charging world.

Realistically, the crux of the matter is that none of the ICE carmakers want EV's to succeed/ well they can't anymore, so they just want to slow down the EV evolution as much as possible. Thus their lack of interest in helping build a decent charging standard for EVGO, Chargepoint et al. In fact the low quality of these serves as an excellent deterrent for uneducated folks looking into EV's.

I can see Tesla becoming such a behemoth in a couple years in the charging space (once they deploy more non Tesla EV chargers) that they may just resell at some profit (recall Tesla's mission) their standard EV charger platform to EVGO et al, using whatever can be reused (power supply lines /RE stations etc) and letting those rebrand externally the Tesla SC's.

TL;dr V Bullish for Tesla 2-3 years from now in their energy /SC section

 

[Buckminster]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1572090491050799107

Optimus deadline is AI day.

Is smart summon also for AI day? Alternative could be deferred FSD payments in Q3.

 

[insaneoctane]

You took this video yourself?

Yes, just grabbed from my teslacam folder...

 

[Huskyf]

After hours comment. Lots of folks singing praises of FSB-beta with .69.x. I'll just offer a video to counter. Here's a phantom braking episode that I experienced last night. FSD was driving on a 45 MPH street with nothing (that I could see live or reviewing the video) to cause this behavior. FSD-beta not only "slowed" the car on the 45MPH street, but it took it to a COMPLETE STOP.

2022-09-16_23-34-57-front.mp4

This is "2022-09-16_23-34-57-front.mp4" by TBone on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.

vimeo.com

I'm super excited about this product (obviously I'm driving FSD-beta), and it does some thing really well... but I still think there's plenty of work yet to go.

Witch version the latest .2 or the .1

 

[insaneoctane]

Witch version the latest .2 or the .1

.1. I should have stated that in my original post. I just downloaded .2 this afternoon.

 

[Bet TSLA]

Elon has now clarified, all over a safety score in USA and Canada.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1572091244796329987

Yup. Seeing the updates happening at TeslaFi. From 2022.20.8 and .9.

 

[NicoV]

WRT electricity, we’re in a perfect storm caused not only by Putin weaponising energy, but also by technical problems in the nuclear power plants in France. France has over 60GW of nuclear capacity, of which currently only about 22GW is operational. France, which is historically a big exporter of electricity, is importing as much electricity as possible from the neighbouring countries. Germany is currently only generating 5GW electricity from gas, with a capacity of 70GW. France is currently importing 1.5GW from Belgium (which imports 1.25GW from The Netherlands), 4GW from Germany, 2GW from Switzerland, 1GW from Italy and 1.3GW from Spain.
EDF has stated that they wil get enough capacity up and running by the time it is needed in the winter, but for now, it is making EV driving more expensive than driving an ICE all over Europe. If EDF can’t fix their nuclear plants, it will start having an impact on EV (and Tesla) sales.
I’ve read that France only has 10GW import capacity, so they’re currently at 100% import capacity. The French are more at risk of having a cold dark winter than the Germans.

Already from the begin of the war, EU made agreements with the US to ship as much LNG as possible to Europe. Germany is building 2 LNG terminals at breakneck speed (now called ‘Tesla-speed’ in Germany), to be operational before the heating season starts.
This morning the news was that gas prices fell significantly on the news that Germany is a month ahead of plan in filling it’s gas storage: Gasprijs flink omlaag nu landen haast maken met vullen reserves
Basically it’s looking more and more likely Europe will largely succeed in preventing a gas shortage this winter.

A follow-up on my previous posts:
Despite the shutdown of Northstream 1, Germany is now at >90% gas stock levels. They need to be at 95% before the start of November by law. This level is sufficient to cover the gas usage of January and Februari, the two coldest winter months.
The European natural gas spot prices are going down the last couple of days, currently at 185 euro (compared to 350 euro during the august spike). Apparently caused by the new LNG (floating) terminals in Eemshaven (The Netherlands) becoming operational. No news yet about the new German LNG terminals. But Germany has stopped bidding on gas ‘at any cost’ (Echte test voor Europese solidariteit komt nog).
France has apparently increased it’s nuclear output, it’s now at 25GW (compared to 22GW in the mentioned posts). I swear I saw 28GW yesterday.
The news is dominated by stories about people having problems paying their utility bills, and what the governments are going to do about that. Other reports claim energy demand has already gone down by up to 20%. Most likely because industrial users stopped making their products because the high natural gas prices make production to costly. This causes shortages e.g. of bricks and other building materials.
It looks more and more likely Europe will be able to prevent a cold winter. But at a high financial cost.
The press now writes stories about EV’s being too expensive to charge. Tesla increased it’s Supercharging prices yesterday (again).

 

[lascavarian]

Thanks for this synopsis of some remarkable cooperation and progress. Although not in the EU, had a discussion over dinner about concerns for this Winter energy needs. This is hopeful

 

[JusRelax]

FSDBeta v10.69.2.2 - Memorial Park First Impressions Discussion | Chuck Cook (1 hr ago)

Near the end of his video, there was a disengagement while attempting to perform a forward-facing unprotected left, where it seems like the Tesla doesn't even perform a check for oncoming vehicles before attempting the left turn. I'm wondering if there used to be a specific case in the code for forward-facing unportected left turns that got removed, because Brandonee916 on Youtube ended up having his FSD Beta Tesla fail very similarly when attempting a forward-facing unprotected left turn as well. I'm hoping that this was a small bug that the internal FSD testers just missed - hopefully it is an easy fix on Tesla's side and they can issue a quick fix update relatively quickly.

 

[Speedr117]

FSD seems to be on a somewhat constant improvement path over last 2-3 years. Given how many times (many, many) the hype has been around this version or that version before being released (from Elon) I don't see why the next hyped version will be anything but an incremental advance on where we are now.

Progress is being made, but base on progress to date it seems that we are still 18+months or so from something that actually usable for "Full Self Driving"

They've rewritten it twice so far. The real understanding to this is the process: They come up with a solution they think will get them to Level 5, implement it, train and tune the AI to reach it's maximum success rate, then realize they need more information/a different approach, and start the process over utilizing new learnings and ideas. They started with straight pictures, then when to differentials between 2 pictures (frames), then went to video. Now they're onto an occupancy network. Each time, they get closer. This last one might be the one. We shall see, but there is a method to their madness, and to non-technical people, it can seem neverending...

 

[WarpedOne]

FSD is/will be never-ending.
To some it will never be good enough, to some it already is.

Asymptotic progress.

 

[UncaNed]

They've rewritten it twice so far. The real understanding to this is the process: They come up with a solution they think will get them to Level 5, implement it, train and tune the AI to reach it's maximum success rate, then realize they need more information/a different approach, and start the process over utilizing new learnings and ideas. They started with straight pictures, then when to differentials between 2 pictures (frames), then went to video. Now they're onto an occupancy network. Each time, they get closer. This last one might be the one. We shall see, but there is a method to their madness, and to non-technical people, it can seem neverending...

...explaining the discrepancy between Elon's optimism with each new release and our relative indifference - maybe these sort of successes lead Elon to extoll the virtues of with each great new version, which, while a very real, significant improvements behind the FSD programming scenes, makes relatively little overall noticeable difference to many Beta testers, leaving many of us relatively unimpressed despite the very real advancements behind the scenes.

TL;DR: autonomous FSD is still years away, but that's OK, Tesla will get it right eventually before anyone else does. (Yes, asymptomatic progress, and it's that last little bit that must be gotten exactly right before there's robotaxi).

(I'm not a Beta tester quite yet, with my crappy driving and high 70-barely 80% ratings)