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Elon: There are some constriants on our ability to expand in China.

(curious to think through the hypothetical possibility that China may not let Tesla introduce a next gen factory for production in China - and Tesla may remain restricted to the current factory. Maybe China more concerned with protecting domestic EV manufactures somewhat).
 
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They've always said that advertising was a lever they might pull when it was needed, but that it wasn't needed back then.
So why now? I'm going to guess that its the plan for the compact model with much larger mass production. It'll take a year to put together a good advertising plan for it, so they've got to start now.

Because the demand was hurt so much by the economic environment that Tesla had to drastically cut prices across the board, severely impacting margins. At one point they realized advertising would be a better use of money. I predicted a couple of months ago that Tesla would try advertising this year and possibly before Q2 earnings report. It doesn't take that long to start advertising. We may well see the first ads in the next couple of months.
 
still banned 🥱 I am still against paid for advertising at this point ... Elon gave in to the short term mob ... the people want advertising ...give them advertising :p

oh wait we don't have anyone working in Tesla that wants to wasted their time and talent ... let the You tubers do it

Um, I'm sure you meant to say, "Let the Twitterers do it" didn't you?
 
Will be interesting to see how the media treats Tesla after they receive those advertising dollars.

Twitter is the most likely to receive advertising revenue from Tesla, isn't it?

I honestly can't see Tesla spending a dime on MSM adverts after all the ill will from them. So, it may not be all that interesting to find Tesla still won't pay that ransom.
 
Twitter is the most likely to receive advertising revenue from Tesla, isn't it?

I honestly can't see Tesla spending a dime on MSM adverts. So, it may not be all that interesting.
But they don't know that...may cause some to reconsider printing that next hit piece, or at least softening it.
 
still banned 🥱 I am still against paid for advertising at this point ... Elon gave in to the short term mob ... the people want advertising ...give them advertising :p

oh wait we don't have anyone working in Tesla that wants to wasted their time and talent ... let the You tubers do it
I think what made Elon change his mind is not so much what we think of as "advertising" even though it probably will be paid advertising, but more, as the questioner posited, a way to make the general public aware of what Tesla's can do now, as opposed to everyone thinking 10 years in the past. Just this weekend at a retirement party I had 3 people who I call friends say that electric cars will never catch on because of the lack of charging capabilities. I told each that charging is never an issue if you own a Tesla because of the Supercharger (and destination charger) network, not to mention charging in your own garage or driveway. In fact, an associate just drove her Y with family of 7 comfortably from Eastern WA to LA (Peterson museum even!) and only spent more than 20 minutes charging because several children needed to go to bathroom! That kind of made them go hmmm...

But I believe Tesla will use the advertising medium as more of an educational tool than one for strictly sales. Marketing to the unread public can only take you so far and advertising that educates can help the entire BEV industry rise.
 
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German road side assistance (and much more) organisation ADAC concluded Model 3 is the most reliable EV

Tesla Europe on Twitter: "Comprehensive study by ADAC shows Model 3 is one of the most reliable mid-size vehicles → Die Tops und Flops der Pannenbilanz: Und wie schneiden Elektroautos ab?" / Twitter​

This is pretty huge actually, the ADAC is known beyond Germany for these tests.

... Model 3 has better reliability, and safety! Best way to protect your family: (also doesn't burn like ICE)

Timmy on Twitter: "@teslaeurope Not only one of the most reliable but also one of the safest in the world." / Twitter​

Cheers!
 
Solar roof is not important. Its just a pretty version of a product (solar panels) that the world can already produce enough of at scale. plus it was harder to deploy than tesla originally expected so hasn’t worked out and many would agree its probably ok to remain a niche effort at Tesla.

EVs, batteries, Bots etc are far more important products.
That's my point. Back when the solar roof was announced people on this board were hyperventilating talking about the total addressable market which would include all homes in the world, and as you've said, the solar roof has fizzled out. Hence, it's difficult for a lot of investors to get excited about new products like the Teslabot and AI that will require way more advanced technology.
 
And now for something completely different.. (before I forget to post, it's late here)

UK: Tesla/EV demand/supply related. Snapshot from a regularly sent email about dealer discounts on cars.

My View: NO EVs listed at all, 65 ICE models/trims. This is the first time I've seen zero EVs listed since EVs were first listed. I think EV demand is huge compared to supply. Obviously that bodes well for Tesla as the EV leader.

1) Toyota Yaris highlighted as deal of the month at £22,190 saving 16.5% (Yaris Cross 1.5 Hybrid Design 5 door CVT). Toyotas didn't used to be featured at all but have done recently. Other Toyotas at 11.5 to 18% discount - that's really high compared to previously. More models/trims too.

2) Audi, Cupra - big discounts on 23 ICE models/trims at 9-18%. Neither brand has ANY EV listings for discounts. Previously they had a few discounted EVs.

3) Hyundai/Kia ICE - 7-20.5% discounts on ICE (wow). No EVs listed, 7 ICE.

4) VW - no EVs listed for discount. 5-19.5 discount on ICE. Only 3 discounts under 11.5%, out of 13 discounted VWs. Normally they'd have 3-5 ID 3 & 4

By George I think they've got it!
 
That's my point. Back when the solar roof was announced people on this board were hyperventilating talking about the total addressable market which would include all homes in the world, and as you've said, the solar roof has fizzled out. Hence, it's difficult for a lot of investors to get excited about new products like the Teslabot and AI that will require way more advanced technology.

I could be wrong, but the issue with Solar Roof not meeting volume expectations is not technology related, but the intricacies of solar tile installations tailored to every individual house vs a far simpler modular solar panel install option. Not surprising that wide scale solar roof rollouts are focusing on new developments which feature standardized house designs.
 

I guess the main takeaway is that they are working on manipulation of small objects. Something Boston Dynamic Atlas has not been seen doing and we see very little of from bipedal robots. They manage to move pretty fast but not crush the egg showing haptics, so if the robot accidentally would step on a cat tail or something it might be able to stop before the cat screams. Imo very impressive. And also this helps a lot when interacting with soft objects.
Screenshot 2023-05-17 at 06.30.16.png



They show a basic feature extraction/detection algorithm used to learn the environment ie SLAM.
Screenshot 2023-05-17 at 06.30.06.png

Note that most keypoints are in smaller inner square of the images. Maybe they just crop the image at this point. The images seems distorted likely optimized to operate on shorter distances than cars.

Here we can see the camera setup of the robot:
Screenshot 2023-05-17 at 06.31.39.png

So basically 3 forward facing cameras, 2 sideways facing cameras and 2 downward facing cameras. No rear view, I would have thought that could be handy but I guess the robot will just turn the head/torso to make sure it will not hit anything if it's moving in that space. Seems like an Elon solution, the best part is no part. Anyway an interesting solution, God should take notice when he design humans 2.0.

Later we see some instruction:
Screenshot 2023-05-17 at 06.35.47.png

Not unlike this work... You can see that the human moves his legs when he is manipulating the objects, but the robot's legs remain fixed. So the robot has translated the movement to only use the upper body. We know that this method works, even just in small scale it quickly learns to master many tasks such as tying shoe laces. Tesla can scale this up and take it to the next level. The industry will need some time to process that this will happen and a lot faster than what most people think.

This image is a gold mine of information, we will see hours of youtube videos dissecting it:
Screenshot 2023-05-17 at 06.38.42.png

Those kids are living the dream, getting to play with some very expensive toys! They show that the robot finally managed to grab the soft object by itself and celebrate so I assume this was one of the first times it actually worked. Then they need to teach the system to do it repeatedly, I would guess the success rate is an S curve that their data engine is built to solve.

Later they show a setup where the robot is more successful so I guess now the robot has become better at manipulating objects and is training itself:
Screenshot 2023-05-17 at 06.42.43.png

Note the egg in the background. Clearly they thought eggs are very useful to test the system. Maybe an actual development goal is to be able to cook some eggs. Do I see a smiley face on the egg?! Maybe the egg is like a crash test dummy they are trying to protect, if they can avoid harming an egg then humans should be safe!

It seems like the robot is doing some slightly wasteful moves. I think for now they rely on imitating human moves from its movement library rather than optimizing for energy/time. Basically [how would a human return from this position to the start position], not [NN guided monte-carlo tree search to find the optimal path from start to end]. They will get there eventually, but for now it's imitation.

Finally we see the robots marching and there are more of them. I think that's the message they want to send. There robots are coming and there will be more and more of them:
Screenshot 2023-05-17 at 06.46.49.png
 
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I think what made Elon change his mind is not so much what we think of as "advertising" even though it probably will be paid advertising, but more, as the questioner posited, a way to make the general public aware of what Tesla's can do now, as opposed to everyone thinking 10 years in the past. Just this weekend at a retirement party I had 3 people who I call friends say that electric cars will never catch on because of the lack of charging capabilities. I told each that charging is never an issue if you own a Tesla because of the Supercharger (and destination charger) network, not to mention charging in your own garage or driveway. In fact, an associate just drove her Y with family of 7 comfortably from Eastern WA to LA (Peterson museum even!) comfortably and only spent more than 20 minutes charging because several children needed to go to bathroom! That kind of made them go hmmm...

But I believe Tesla will use the advertising medium as more of an educational tool than one for strictly sales. Marketing to the unread public can only take you so far and advertising that educates can help the entire BEV industry ride.
This.

The audience member who brought up the advertising subject sis so within the context of how many folks were simply unaware of how thangs have advanced or were under severe misimpressions (price, etc...), Undoubtedly having folks not understand does affect demand at some point, Elon didn't seem to indicate that we are at that point... it seemed more that he just wanted accurate understanding by people at large..
 
They show that the robot finally managed to grab the soft object by itself and celebrate so I assume this was one of the first times it actually worked. Then they need to teach the system to do it repeatedly, I would guess the success rate is an S curve that their data engine is built to solve.

There's some evidence that all the manipulation demos were done in real time. Optimus' left foot has an LED that blinks every second or so:

Screenshot 2023-05-16 at 4.23.50 PM.png