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

[bdy0627]

Does that generally happen whilst driving? Or is this stuff you could've cleared before setting off? Not being snarky, just curious.

It happens while driving. My car is kept in a heated garage, so every morning the sensors are typically clear. When the roads remain bad, it doesn't take long until AP shuts off again, even when it is no longer snowing. Sometimes it's due to dirt with the slush, so then I need to wash the car/sensors to get AP working. I drive on 2 lane highways daily, so I'm perhaps the worst case scenario. The main highways get cleared pretty well after a snowstorm, 2 lane highways take longer.

 

[KarenRei]

U.S. sales benefit from GHG credit sales, which increased Q4 ASPs. Without the FCA income in Q1 the higher consumer ASP in Europe is thought to roughly counter-balance the lack of GHG.

What is hurting Q1 most is half of S/X sales missing, and over 10k units in transit. That's a hit of over $2b in missing revenue, and at least a $500m hit to GAAP income.

A lot of good things need to happen in Q1 for those two strong forces to be countered.

Don't get me wrong - I absolutely don't expect a profit, or even close to one. I just find the worst doom-and-gloom predictions, which are premised on what seem to me nonsensical automotive margins for Q1, to be unrealistic.

Tesla's ability to continually reduce production costs has been the huge story with the Model 3 over the past year which the shorts consistently got wrong. It was incomprehensible to them that Tesla could go from ~-20% margins in Q1, to ~0% in Q2, to ~20% in Q3, to ~20% in Q4 with a significantly lower ASP. To predict that Tesla is just suddenly going to stop reducing Model 3 costs - or even, to go backwards - is not in accordance with history. Or logic.

IMHO.

 

[mongo]

Do you currently have to pay attention and monitor the environment and the system's performance?
If Yes its still SAE level 2, if No, then its SAE level 3.

Level 3 allows you to watch a movie, read a book, etc because you no longer have to pay attention.

Level 3 requires that you can take over in some finite time.

Level 3 – Conditional Driving Automation

The sustained and ODD-specific performance by an ADS of the entire DDT, with the expectation that the human driver will be ready to respond to a request to intervene when issued by the ADS.

When it gets to the point that drivers do not need to override NoA, and are forewarned that they will need to, then it is effectively level 3.

There are ~10 billion neurons in the human visual cortex

Nope, between 140 million
Visual cortex - Wikipedia
And 538 million per hemisphere
[Number of neurons and synapses in the visual cortex of different species]. - PubMed - NCBI

Another list
number of neurons in V1 (adult human primary visual cortex)

 

[bdy0627]

I will repeat that all of this Go and Chess history is totally irrelevant to "self driving" because *we don't actually know the rules for driving* -- or at least Tesla staff don't! As soon as a suitable set of rules is devised, the problem is essentially solved, yes. But devising that set of rules is very, very hard. I don't think we've ever tried running a neural net on a game with unspecified rules which the computer isn't told and which the humans argue about.

I mean, I think it's embarassing that they're still working on computer vision and object classification. They are deluding themselves if they think solving that solves self-driving; that's just a prerequisite for even being able to *start* work on self-driving.

Tesla does appear to be far ahead of everyone else, and if they manage to simply implement automatic emergency braking that ends all "run over pedestrian" crashes, they'll have an insurance goldmine on their hands.

But "sleep in your car" self-driving is a bridge too far for the near future; from what I can tell they still haven't really started on the corner cases.

Do you really think we are THAT far from sleeping in the car on the highway? Give navigate on autopilot even another 12 months and I find it hard to believe we would need hands on for highway driving.

 

[Fact Checking]

The third one is the killer factor: it makes sense to hire a train crew for hundreds of passengers, and the labor cost will be a comparatively small part of the trip's total costs.

And I say that while I consider train driving to be one of the most soul crushing jobs, a role that should be automated away. But the economic arguments in favor of automating train driving are not overwhelming.

 

[bdy0627]

It is not on mad Max, however I feel the system is already suggesting to many unnecessary lane changes already, especially near an exit. It would suggest I overtake the car in front of me when the exit is less than a mile away with my current setting. The system can't seem to make up its mind and there were times I cancelled EAP near exit thinking "wtf are you doing car?". When there's light traffuc the system work wonders and really feels like level 3.

I don't have mine on mad max. It sounds like it is the case that we are on the cusp of level 3 in moderate traffic but not in heavy congestion. I would love to hear more from those in dense cities using NoA. How is it doing? Judging by my experience, I thought highway level 3 was basically here. Maybe it's not for many.

 

[Mobius484]

View attachment 396796

Percy? U must have kids...

My autopilot nearly always shuts off when some snow collects on the front of the car.

You can spray rust oleum “never wet” on the front fascia to help mitigate this problem. Your welcome.

 

[Fact Checking]

Don't get me wrong - I absolutely don't expect a profit, or even close to one. I just find the worst doom-and-gloom predictions, which are premised on what seem to me nonsensical automotive margins for Q1, to be unrealistic.

Tesla's ability to continually reduce production costs has been the huge story with the Model 3 over the past year which the shorts consistently got wrong. It was incomprehensible to them that Tesla could go from ~-20% margins in Q1, to ~0% in Q2, to ~20% in Q3, to ~20% in Q4 with a significantly lower ASP. To predict that Tesla is just suddenly going to stop reducing Model 3 costs - or even, to go backwards - is not in accordance with history. Or logic.

IMHO.

Note that @luvb2b actually got Q3 mostly right.

Yes, the estimates are intentionally conservative, because:

• There are a lot of discretionary decisions by Tesla management that are unpredictable to us.
• There are a lot more moving parts in Q1 than measurable parameters, so we are guessing. One big question are the AP and FSD upgrades, the other the Model Y order cash flow. We also don't know the FCA schedule.
• Tesla has a historic track record of running up opex and some other bad surprises as well. None matter to the long term story, but they can sour individual quarters.

But then again I could easily be wrong.

 

[bdy0627]

Okay, to start off I object to the very premise, since it entirely negates all of Tesla's cost reduction progress over half a year..



And my point is that this is nonsense. You're saying that since Q3 - where Tesla had a margin of over 20% - Tesla's production has gotten less efficient?

Model 3 margins in Q4 stayed at over 20% despite the ASP dropping significantly from Q3. Meaning a significant drop in the base price. Which has beyond doubt gone even lower yet. Musk has made several statements that indicate that the base SR costs less than $35k to make now (but barely); it was $38k near the end of Q4. Even at an average production cost of $41k, an ASP of $54k would mean a 32% margin.

Do I think they're going to have a 32% margin? No. But 18,5%? Less than Q4 but with a higher ASP? As though Tesla's production process has gone back in time, and completely ignored the reduction in raw materials costs? Please....

You make a good point about improvements in manufacturing. On the other hand, I wonder what Luv's reasoning is for the lower GM. He has been pretty close in previous estimates.

 

[bdy0627]

Back on the road again. Between the Supercharger and the Autopilot, road trips in my 3 are a dream.

And people who don't own a Tesla yet really don't understand that it is going to keep getting better and better and better and better...

 

[MarcusMaximus]

I understand keeping expectations in check, but no way is this just a drive through the parking lot. He would be absolutely laughed at. Raising the price of FSD 1 week later with that kind of demo? I don't see it.

Not quite just a drive through the parking lot, I’m imagining more of a course with simulated intersections, etc. Or maybe a geo-fenced area immediately around the HQ.

I will note, though, that even just showing current features would probably blow a lot of people’s socks off. There’s been virtually 0 coverage of NoA, particularly with lane change confirmations turned off. Even among those who know of the feature, I suspect a lot of them don’t grasp what that means in practice.

 

[Bladerskb]

Level 3 requires that you can take over in some finite time.

Yes SAE L3 requires the manufacturers to provide the driver with notice and adequate enough time to transition control from the car back to the driver (for example 10 secs)

When it gets to the point that drivers do not need to override NoA, and are forewarned that they will need to, then it is effectively level 3.

Level 3 requires the driver not the pay attention or monitor the environment or the system's performance. So until you can read a book or watch a movie while on NoA then its still Level 2.

Nope, between 140 million
Visual cortex - Wikipedia

Are you using wikipedia with a source from 1994?

 

[bdy0627]

Regarding Tesla's progress to Level 3 autonomy, I see some posters here making statements like were already there. That's just not true and hopefully through this post I can bring you back down to reality. I use NOA frequently and 2019.8.5 was a big jump in capability however there are still many gaps in functionality that prevent it from being a true Level 3 system. Just in the last few days driving around the Twin Cities I've encountered multiple scenarios where I the human had to take *immediate action* (not the graceful handoff with warning that Level 3 requires).

1. Taking a left hand exit, the car started to exit, then served back (for an unknown reason) so I had to take control to make my exit. It has worked before in that spot but not that day.

2. In Minneapolis area there are a ton of dual purpose exit/on ramp merge lanes that combine cars exiting at 75mph with cars entering at 40mph that are ridiculously short (like 100 feet) that NOA cannot handle at all. These are very difficult for human drivers as well. Sometimes NOA is smart enough to warn me that it won't be able to handle this via a "Unsupported maneuver warning" but other times it just tries and fails in a bad way.

3. NOA is only as good as the maps it's based on, and the maps are not being updated frequently enough. There's an exit lane that I need to take frequently but it's not aware that it's there so it takes a different route. In other parts of town, there's long term (2 years) construction projects on the interstate that have altered the exits and routes you can take. It's been this way for a year already but NOA has no knowledge of them.

For NOA to become L3 capable it will require some sort of crowd sourced mapping data from the cars on the road. I do think Tesla's vision system has improved leaps and bounds but other areas seem immature and I'm not sure they have the right software teams in place to solve all these data / computer science problems that need to be solved to enable L3 driving, which are separate from the vision problem.

Lastly, one of my biggest frustrations is that I cannot even set waypoints, so if I enable NOA it will drive me the way it wants to go and I have no way to set the route.

Thanks. That's helpful. My perception has been skewed by driving on highways with light to moderate traffic and relatively easy interchanges. It really has been quite smooth here, but not perfect. Looks like we've got a ways to go yet.

 

[MarcusMaximus]

Okay, to start off I object to the very premise, since it entirely negates all of Tesla's cost reduction progress over half a year..



And my point is that this is nonsense. You're saying that since Q3 - where Tesla had a margin of over 20% - Tesla's production has gotten less efficient?

Model 3 margins in Q4 stayed at over 20% despite the ASP dropping significantly from Q3. Meaning a significant drop in the base price. Which has beyond doubt gone even lower yet. Musk has made several statements that indicate that the base SR costs less than $35k to make now (but barely); it was $38k near the end of Q4. Even at an average production cost of $41k, an ASP of $54k would mean a 32% margin.

Do I think they're going to have a 32% margin? No. But 18,5%? Less than Q4 but with a higher ASP? As though Tesla's production process has gone back in time, and completely ignored the reduction in raw materials costs? Please....

One wrench thrown in here is that they also lowered prices since Q4.

 

[Buckminster]

Thus: ~10 G neurons x 10 K synapses x 10 FLOPS = 1 PFLOP

Yeah but 0.9 PFLOP is thinking about S3X...

 

[bdy0627]

Percy? U must have kids...



You can spray rust oleum “never wet” on the front fascia to help mitigate this problem. Your welcome.

No paint issues with it?

 

[goinfraftw]

Note that @luvb2b actually got Q3 mostly right.

Yes, the estimates are intentionally conservative, because:

• There are a lot of discretionary decisions by Tesla management that are unpredictable to us.
• There are a lot more moving parts in Q1 than measurable parameters, so we are guessing. One big question are the AP and FSD upgrades, the other the Model Y order cash flow. We also don't know the FCA schedule.
• Tesla has a historic track record of running up opex and some other bad surprises as well. None matter to the long term story, but they can sour individual quarters.

But then again I could easily be wrong.

Personally, and to be fair, I don't think anyone is going to have any idea how this company is valued over the next year as it transitions into a growth software/tech company as an incumbent in potentially (if not already proven to be) multi-trillion $ industries.

 

[Cherry Wine]

To that I would argue that the butter adds more mass to one side of the CG, causing it to rotate downward, so that is explained by simple Newtonian physics .

OT: Where can I get a high-res version of your avatar? It's fantastic.

The original news release:

"With a number of very exciting developments coming in the weeks and months ahead, Tesla will host investors on the morning of April 19th at our headquarters in Palo Alto to provide a deep dive into our self-driving technology and road map."

So I would assume it will still be in the morning (PDT), but 22nd now.

One thought: market is closed 4/19, making the morning of 4/19 outside of trading hours. No idea if this was instrumental to the timing or not, but that could shift the event to PM of 4/22.

 

[EVNow]

FYI, google’s project wasn’t initially an internally developed project. They hired the researchers that won the initial DARPA challenge. So they started with an existing code base which included lidar. If they had started from a clean sheet they might not have used lidar...

But the question is - if solid state Lidar was as cheap as it is now - would Tesla have used it ?

 

[Bladerskb]

Both on the raw collection and validation (FSD with nags) sides of things.
400,000 AP capable cars now, soon to be 500k. If 40% buy FSD, that is 200k validation vehicles. With a 30 mile average commute, that is 30 million miles of data per work week. 1.5 billion miles per year.

How is it 1.5 billion miles per year if only 0.01% are uploading according to verygreen? I don't understand?
Validation? Sure definitely...Raw collection? huh?