anthonyj
Stonks
They don’t want it to breakout. They’d rather keep it in this range and rake in millions going long and short
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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Great, now I feel like a topologist (to whom a coffee cup and a donut are identical).
Topology - Wikipedia
JustAaronnoraA
Member
We defended 335 pretty good today, if broke down around 319R tomorrow we'll see 300 fast before bound regardless of macros.
Gali (Hyperchange) introduced a nice new site: HyperCharts
It's still beta. The menu shows more tech/growth companies (not all filled in yet).
It's still beta. The menu shows more tech/growth companies (not all filled in yet).
Yesterday I thought about TSLA, I think at this point, the most important factor that will impact the company's valuation is full self-driving. It seems to me that Tesla expect to release self-driving within a year. There are three separate questions:
1. What's the probability that Tesla will release full self-driving within a year or so?
2. If they do release this feature, how good will it be? can it handle 99% of situations?
3. If this general AI based self-driving actually works, how will that affect the company's valuation?
My answer for 1 and 2 is "very likely". For the third question, I think IF it works, it will not just double the stock, it will actually help Tesla to achieve the trillion dollar market cap within 8~10 years. The impact will be about 10 fold.
For this reason, I ignore Goldman Sachs etc. They are way too shortsighted. I just keep adding shares. Added a few thousand shares in the past few weeks. Also sold some cash covered Puts. Will buy more shares later. I'm not a fan of betting for the bottom. I like to keep adding shares.
The reason why I think self-driving is coming is not just a wild guess. It's based on the following reasons:
a. The HW 3.0 is set to release to production in a few months. This will increase processing speed by 1000%, and allow a much more powerful neural network. We might see a coast to coast demo this year.
b. On the SW side, my Model 3 basically can drive on highway now. I'm sure it will drive much better with HW 3.0 and SW 10.0.
c. Next, Traffic lights and stop signs will be handled. Then it's turning. Nothing AI can't handle.
Thats odd. How do they provide heat then? Heat via resistance? Only "100%" efficiency, thats very inefficient. Heat pump system can provide easily 2.0 - 4.0 COP ("200%" - "400%" efficiency).
It would be a surprise to me if they use a separate system for heating, because providing heat to the cabin is just air conditioner running in reverse i.e. cool the outside world, dump heat in cabin vs cool the cabin, dump heat to outside world
They use a PTC air heater for the cabin, and an immersed electrical coolant heater for the battery. (In the S&X, the Model 3 uses the motor/inverter ran in an inefficient state to create heat for the battery.)
The problem is that in a Tesla you may need to provide heat to the cabin and cooling to the motor at the same time. (or vice-versa.) Not to mention that the AC is normally run with defrost and heat in the winter to dehumidify the air.
Fact Checking
Well-Known Member
Agreed.
Note that regarding c) there has been a leak 2 weeks ago that Tesla's own FSD testing team is already testing a HW3 FSD version in real traffic that recognizes traffic lights, stop signs and performs left and right turns, and which FSD version appears to be working just fine for the Tesla employee who tested it, except for 'valet mode' at arrival where the car would self-park and then get summoned - which didn't reliably work yet in the summoning phase:
"Had the opportunity to speak with a Tesla employee sometime in the past week who is part of the employee test program for full self driving. Apparently everything is working well at this point (stop signs, street lights, left turns, right turns, etc.) The only consistent bug he has had is "valet mode", where the car will drop off the occupants and find its own parking spot. While that part works fine, it had some issues coming back (refused to saying obstacle detected). He has a model x, and the instrument cluster is 2 parts, the right side shows a debug feed for fsd and the left side is normal
Additionally, they have a top down 360 view working for autopilot debugging to show the locations of cars and signs. He also noted that someone successfully got an mcu to mcu2 replacement done, but they were told not to do it anymore. All it required was a pin out change. They are also testing an oled display for the mcu to fix yellow banding."
There was only a single FSD disengagement event, according to the leak:Additionally, they have a top down 360 view working for autopilot debugging to show the locations of cars and signs. He also noted that someone successfully got an mcu to mcu2 replacement done, but they were told not to do it anymore. All it required was a pin out change. They are also testing an oled display for the mcu to fix yellow banding."
"One other thing I forgot to mention is that the only time he had to intervene was when he was in the middle Lane of three lanes that were taking a left turn. The cars on both sides were drifting to the right so the Tesla also drifted to the right. Lane lines weren't that clear. He noted that the Tesla did the safe thing but not the legal thing"
"he noted that he didn't really need to take over but he did"
Note that the person who reported this (Pranav Kodali) is a maker of Autopilot data screen capture based videos, so a verifiable person who is very well informed about Autopilot internals - it's not just a random anecdote. Here's his YouTube channel:
FWIIW I looked over his comments and double checked all the things I could, and it all seems legit, knowledgeable and honest.
So I give this leak reasonably high credibility, and yes, I very much agree that a big FSD surprise is possible in 2019.
Not advice.
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humbaba
sleeping until $7000
Urm... HW 3 being more powerful helps with computer vision, but it isn't clear it really alleviates many of the problems.
"basically can drive on highway now" -- I did this a couple of weeks ago. Exciting for beta, monumentally unready for prime time. Basic things like not being able to handle many/most entrance/exits (veers right thinking it is staying in the middle of the lane), or steadily maintaining center lane despite being on the inside of a curve next to a semi (rational drivers will drift away from the semi, even if it means hitting the lane boundary).
I love it. It needs more than new hardware.
If you think "traffic lights and stop signs" are all that needs to be handled... wow: no need to listen for other vehicle horns? No need to deal with flagmen in construction zones? No need to properly handle traffic that doesn't follow expected lane markings (common for construction zones) or have lane markings (common following construction) or has conflicting lane markings (common for construction zones). No need to handle emergency vehicles (like the officer pulling over for a tail light being out, brake lights not working, etc.)
If FSD is officially released this year that will be very bad for Tesla, it is so far from ready that it isn't funny.
(And Tesla appears to be far ahead of the pack... no one is close)
In the recent Fully Charged episode where they drove the VW ID Neo prototype in South Africa (oh, the irony...), the German engineer in the car said they will use CO2 for the heat pump. I even made the joke in a comment somewhere, that if a pipe leaks, the VW ID will be the first EV with local emissions. They really can't help themselves, can they? Even their EVs will fail emission tests...Note that the bad low temperature (below freezing point) behavior of heat pumps is not an inherent property of heat pumps, but that of the commonly used refrigerant gas R-134a (formerly HFC).
If a different refrigerant gas is used then no resistive heater is required.
Ironically the best such refrigerant gas I'm aware of is ... CO₂ in hypercritical state.
There's even a commercial product with a CO₂ heat pump: a German company making high-end geothermal heat pumps. (The advantage of CO₂ in a geothermal solution is that it replaces the separate glycol loop as well.)
Anyway, AFAIK the solution is patented by that German company, which limited the more widespread use of CO₂ refrigerant in heat pumps.
humbaba
sleeping until $7000
Great information and I respect the source. But this still does not address significant limits to Tesla's FSD. What I'm hopeful for is significant improvements without official FSD.Agreed.
Note that regarding c) there has been a leak 2 weeks ago that Tesla's own FSD testing team is already testing a HW3 FSD version in real traffic that recognizes traffic lights, stop signs and performs left and right turns, and which FSD version appears to be working just fine for the Tesla employee who tested it, except for 'valet mode' at arrival where the car would self-park and then get summoned - which didn't reliably work yet in the summoning phase:
"Had the opportunity to speak with a Tesla employee sometime in the past week who is part of the employee test program for full self driving. Apparently everything is working well at this point (stop signs, street lights, left turns, right turns, etc.) The only consistent bug he has had is "valet mode", where the car will drop off the occupants and find its own parking spot. While that part works fine, it had some issues coming back (refused to saying obstacle detected). He has a model x, and the instrument cluster is 2 parts, the right side shows a debug feed for fsd and the left side is normalThere was only a single FSD disengagement event, according to the leak:
Additionally, they have a top down 360 view working for autopilot debugging to show the locations of cars and signs. He also noted that someone successfully got an mcu to mcu2 replacement done, but they were told not to do it anymore. All it required was a pin out change. They are also testing an oled display for the mcu to fix yellow banding."
While not mentioned in the leak, I suppose speed limits are recognized as well.
"One other thing I forgot to mention is that the only time he had to intervene was when he was in the middle Lane of three lanes that were taking a left turn. The cars on both sides were drifting to the right so the Tesla also drifted to the right. Lane lines weren't that clear. He noted that the Tesla did the safe thing but not the legal thing"
Note that the person who reported this (Pranav Kodali) is a maker of Autopilot data screen capture based videos, so a verifiable person who is very well informed about Autopilot internals - it's not just a random anecdote. Here's his YouTube channel:
FWIIW I looked over his comments and double checked all the things I could, and it all seems legit, knowledgeable and honest.
So I give this leak reasonably high credibility, and yes, I very much agree that a big FSD surprise is possible in 2019.
Not advice.
And despite my serious reservations I've thought about trying to scrape together the $3k for FSD pre order in order to get the new hardware because I expect it to help EAP.
I think with govt regulations it may take a few years still. Though, I'm excited by the agile incremental improvements and they are learning through the software development iteration about hardware changes and new requirements to support FSD. The fact that they are training the neural network to learn the stop signs, etc. it's all in the right step. Lately, Elon has been delivering on his promises on the EAP + FSD and over the past few years I've noticed the improvements in my AP2.0 Tesla...phenomenal!
Fact Checking
Well-Known Member
What limits do you mean? It appears the FSD team is testing it currently with no geofencing hacks. It's Andrej Karpathy's new unified vision neural network doing its magic on 10x-20x faster hardware.
Here's what Tesla's AI director Andrej Karpathy said about the new FSD neural networks three months ago, on the Oct 23 earnings conference call:
"Hi, everyone. My name is Andrej Karpathy. I'm the director of AI here at Tesla. And my team trains all of the neural networks that analyze the images streaming in from all the cameras for the Autopilot. For example, these neural networks identify cars, lane lines, traffic signs and so on. The team is incredibly excited about the upcoming upgrade for the Autopilot computer which Pete briefly talked about.
So in other words, we are currently at a place where we trained large neural networks that work very well, but we are not able to deploy them to the fleet due to computational constraints. So, all of this will change with the next iteration of the hardware. And it's a massive step improvement in the compute capability. And the team is incredibly excited to get these networks out there."
So in other words, we are currently at a place where we trained large neural networks that work very well, but we are not able to deploy them to the fleet due to computational constraints. So, all of this will change with the next iteration of the hardware. And it's a massive step improvement in the compute capability. And the team is incredibly excited to get these networks out there."
So when Karpathy said that "we trained large neural networks that work very well", he was very robustly informed: they can both run the new network in shadow mode on AP 2.5 at a lower frame-rate, and they can also re-run captured video and sensor feeds on supercomputers simulating HW3.
The leak confirms that FSD is indeed working well on deployed HW3 as well.
I.e. it's the highest grade FSD solution "soon" on the market, including Waymo's.
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humbaba
sleeping until $7000
I completely agree that 2019 will/should be exciting for FSD related developments, and I am very much looking forward to them. I just really hope they don't jump the shark and release an official FSD before it is really ready.
humbaba
sleeping until $7000
I gave a variety of issues in another post, but a common theme is construction. Any long Interstate trip will almost certainly go through construction or encounter accident situations.
I expect the 10 fold improvement of HW3 to significantly improve computer vision, but I also seriously doubt it will be sufficient. A rock in the wrong place is currently invisible and I don't see HW3 being enough improvement to change that. Its supposed to handle four times the resolution at higher rate -- it will no doubt be better, but there is just so much gap. For driver assistance systems it is looking sharp and getting better. For even interstate limited FSD... it has a long ways to go.
[edit to add: no doubt the solution farthest along. Waymo is (currently) a joke, as is GM Cruise. When you are limited to a small number of fixed routes in a small area with a small number of destinations and still can't achieve full autonomy something is wrong.]
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jhm
Well-Known Member
Sorry, my riff was not really aimed at your post, just joking around.
If this guy can point you to public sources that can be evaluated, we can look into this. I have no idea what sort of data he has or how he is analyzing it. I am a statistician myself and can tell you that there many ways to draw faulty conclusions from data, especially if you are looking with some kind of biased agenda. So even if he has access to good data, there is no what to know that valid analysis has been performed. This is why we prefer publish work. The data and analysis needs to be open to scrutiny from those competent to review such work. Comparing one brand against another is problematic because there can be many other variables, from driver behavior to geographical differences that can cause differences in rates that have no real bearing on the underlying safety of the vehicle itself. So very good care must be taking in evaluating even basic statistics.
Three sources for same news - 90 minutes ago:
Bloomberg: Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Electrek: Tesla is giving a Model 3 away to a hacker who can crack it
BGR: Tesla wants researchers to probe the Model 3 for security bugs as part of a hacking contest
Bloomberg: Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Electrek: Tesla is giving a Model 3 away to a hacker who can crack it
BGR: Tesla wants researchers to probe the Model 3 for security bugs as part of a hacking contest
All S and X use a 6 kW electric resistance heater that is incorporated into the motor and battery's temperature control system
Fact Checking
Well-Known Member
If what the leak reported is true, that a typical commuting route will be mastered by HW3 FSD with no disengagements whatsoever, that will be a game changer.
Remember how quickly Tesla HW2.5 Autopilot caught up to the MobilEye neural network ASIC solution and has no by most reports surpassed it in the spring of 2018 - using commodity hardware. With their own ASIC they'll be able to run much larger neural networks, which will be better for the existing functionality and smarter (new functionality).
Neural networks are improving a bit like the singularity, along an exponential path. For decades chess computers had no chance beating reasonably good human players - and then "suddenly", within a couple of years, the world chess champion was beaten by a computer chess player. Today you can beat the world chess champion with a chess program running on a laptop.
Automotive FSD evolution will be very similarly exponential IMO.
But yeah, I agree that Tesla should approach this carefully and systematically - and I think they are doing exactly that.
For example I'm pretty certain Tesla could have created a coast-to-coast FSD demo with zero disengagements in Q3 2018 already, using their HW3 prototype boards plus GPS geo-tagged adjustments like Waymo uses.
They didn't, because they want to release a robust solution with generic FSD.
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