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Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable
- Thread starter AudubonB
- Start date
Some of the leaks in the past ~6 months would point in this direction, but I'd still put the probability somewhere around 30%.
Lyft/Uber are true cash burning operations: they are only growing because they are loss-leading against taxi companies. The problem is that anyone who can write an app and has money to burn can compete with Lyft/Uber, including existing taxi companies. There's literally zero competitive advantage in their business models and both the Lyft and the Uber valuations are ridiculous. The usual economies of scale simply don't exist for taxi companies, because you cannot scale human drivers in the Lyft/Uber business model. This is why we haven't seen big international taxi companies for 100 years - unlike many other businesses there's no big advantage for taxi companies to go global.
So I fully agree with @neroden that both Lyft and Uber are broken companies as long as they don't have functional, driver-less FSD cars.
The true business model for Tesla to follow is Airbnb - but that requires true FSD. So I think Tesla will (or should) only start Tesla Network if they get permission to run an FSD based service in certain carefully selected areas with a real driver (the customer) picking up the car, but with FSD allowing the car to slowly go back to the owner or to the next pickup point, empty, without a "safety driver".
So I think the Tesla Network will be introduced the following way:
"50% FSD Tesla robo-taxis with no dedicated safety drivers": a completely empty, driver-less and customer-less Tesla car in the Tesla Network will be FSD driving to the next pick-up point. It will be driving very carefully and timidly like Advanced Summon and NoA does today, but in larger city environments. Once customers at the pickup point enter the Tesla and start using it, one of them is expected to be the "safety driver", and they are responsible for and liable for driving safely during the trip. Once they exit the car at the destination, the car enters 'empty car FSD mode' again, and drives to the next pickup point.
This is a lot less risky in the legal sense, and FSD driving timidly won't annoy customers either - and that might make Tesla Network a reality. If the car gets stuck somewhere and has to pull over, or runs out of charge or gets stuck due to weather, then the owner (or a Tesla Network service technician) can still pick it up. A bit of "remote driving" done by trained Tesla Network personnel might also be permitted in certain jurisdictions and geographical areas, to safely park the car until a human can pick it up.
Note what a genius of a business model this kind of "50% robo-taxis" approach would be:
And yes, if Tesla can pull off this FSD model then raising the price of "professional FSD" (which allows your car to drive in the Tesla Network) to $10k or more would be absolutely warranted, plus a 30% share of revenues generated, plus various services offered (such as cleaning/maintaining the car).
- Most taxi customers, especially in the U.S., can actually drive cars, they just don't have their own cars around right then.
- Most would actually love and enjoy driving a Tesla.
- (Note the advertising effect: anyone can "test drive" a Tesla, simply by hailing a Tesla Network car... This puts the attempted elimination of the test drives at Tesla Stores in a different light.)
- I'd expect a combination of Chill Mode, Valet Mode and other safety measures to be present to avoid abuse, including full Sentry Mode while a customer is in the car to make sure any damage to the car is documented correctly.
- The Tesla Network might also offer a tutorial about how to drive a Tesla and limit acceleration during first recorded use of a Tesla by a new "driver", to make sure it's a pleasant experience for everyone.
- Customers who don't want to or cannot drive a Tesla (medical condition, alcohol consumption, etc.) might also request a dedicated safety driver to be present, with higher fares.
- Lyft/Uber wouldn't be able to compete with Tesla Network prices and economics, because the Tesla Network wouldn't be using any dedicated "safety drivers" or "driver", at all.
- Even if Waymo removed the safety driver they would find it hard to compete with Tesla, given how large the Tesla fleet already is, and how much cheaper Tesla's FSD solution is compared to the LIDAR solutions of the competitors.
If Tesla can pull this off, it's a gold mine, and I think Wall Street, despite their dislike and ignorance of Tesla, is going to finally recognize it as well. (I'm wondering whether @KarenRei agrees with this approach: the safety requirements for an empty FSD car driving to the next pickup point "carefully and timidly" are obviously different and can be weaker.)
Do I think that this is possible today with their existing neural networks, using the HW3 FSD computer? Yes, if limited to certain geographical areas and routes which are carefully vetted by Tesla for the car to be able to FSD-driving around empty in a safe fashion without endangering others. Then they can grow the areas/routes they support.
True historic photo of the Tesla Network:
If Tesla refines this "50% FSD" approach then the ICE vs. Tesla race would be over within 1-3 years, even without "complete" FSD functionality.
Whether Tesla is going to introduce such a Tesla Network ride-sharing and taxi business on April 22, I have no idea - but if they do and if it's offering real rides and a timetable to introduce the service then it would certainly create a justified buzz and wouldn't just be seen as hype.
Some remarks:
- I doubt that there will be a 50% robotaxi! Accountability and legal liability will not be shared! My guess 100% FSD robotaxi will be beta tested in a town and gradually rolled out nationwide then globally!
- Tesla model 3 and model Y interior is most probably designed with the removal of the steering wheel in mind!! The monitor will provide navigation and billing info!
- According to Uber's S1 filing 46% of trips are under 3 miles! This will help the transition nationwide!
- The economics of buying a Tesla for robotaxiing is out of this world! I have included a spreadsheet and would love to hear members critique! Whether you agree or not, it does show that there is so much profit on the table that will be shared between Tesla and the Owner.
Attachments
That'll be for making anti-matter for their batteries...
Krugerrand
Meow
On the Linette Lopez' story, as you might remember, 9 months ago she broke the Martin Trip story which claimed that Tesla put punctured batteries into the cars. Separately Trip claimed that these punctured cells could lead to short circuit and fires. Again, that was 9 month ago. One would think these 1000 cars would've developed some kind of issues by now. Incidentally that article claimed insane amount of scrap. See similarities?
Internal documents reveal Tesla is blowing through an insane amount of raw material and cash to make Model 3s, and production is still a nightmare
Switching gears to the latest story, if one assumes that daily usable output is not 3 M cells + 0.5 M of scrapped cells, as claimed by Lopez' source, but 3.5 M cells, the annual production rate works out to 23.4 GWh, or almost exactly 24 GWh claimed by Elon. This is too much of a coincidence. I think that Lopez' source is blowing smoke. Any other takes? Another coincidence is that 3M cells per day and around 10% ratio of MR would allow to produce ~62,950 M3, exact figure included in P&D report, i.e. 3M cells per day might be old data from Q1
Blowing smoke, farts and particulates. I’m sure there’s scrap. I’m sure there’s been times there’s been a good amount of scrap - like when you start a line up or there’s been a malfunction. I’m also quite sure there’s been improvements to reduce scrap over time to a more normalized/acceptable rate.
Breaking Source: April 22nd Autonomy Day Plans Reveiled!
Sources have leaked that Autonomy Day will simply be Elon Musk riding around in a self-driving car all day... With James Corden.
They'll be singing some of Musk's favorites like
Short Shorts by the Royal Teens
Africa by Toto
Rocketman by Elton John
And of course:
Electric Boogie!
Sources have leaked that Autonomy Day will simply be Elon Musk riding around in a self-driving car all day... With James Corden.
They'll be singing some of Musk's favorites like
Short Shorts by the Royal Teens
Africa by Toto
Rocketman by Elton John
And of course:
Electric Boogie!
I find it more likely that the coast to coast FSD demo will be unannounced - otherwise anyone with an anti-Tesla agenda could take to the road and attempt to obstruct the demo.
Maybe I stuck my voodoo pins in wrong doll?
I don't know about this AI thing at all. Pick Google translator, the best AI based translator. Chinese, Korean and Japanese related translation is complete garbage. While I am vacationing in France, just found out it's French translation is only adequate in the most common daily sentences, very often I got jiberish.
Note that Google specialized in natural language understanding and is widely considered to be the best AI company in the world.
Note that Google specialized in natural language understanding and is widely considered to be the best AI company in the world.
⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️
Village Idiot
I'd use the same actors in the tesla pickup, swap on-star with tesla network and let it sink in that this sci-fi scene from 2000 is finally reality.
Swampgator
Active Member
Sounds like Elon could buy the whole fund and make Einhorn go away
Some of the leaks in the past ~6 months would point in this direction, but I'd still put the probability somewhere around 30%.
Lyft/Uber are true cash burning operations: they are only growing because they are loss-leading against taxi companies. The problem is that anyone who can write an app and has money to burn can compete with Lyft/Uber, including existing taxi companies. There's literally zero competitive advantage in their business models and both the Lyft and the Uber valuations are ridiculous. The usual economies of scale simply don't exist for taxi companies, because you cannot scale human drivers in the Lyft/Uber business model. This is why we haven't seen big international taxi companies for 100 years - unlike many other businesses there's no big advantage for taxi companies to go global.
So I fully agree with @neroden that both Lyft and Uber are broken companies as long as they don't have functional, driver-less FSD cars.
The true business model for Tesla to follow is Airbnb - but that requires true FSD. So I think Tesla will (or should) only start Tesla Network if they get permission to run an FSD based service in certain carefully selected areas with a real driver (the customer) picking up the car, but with FSD allowing the car to slowly go back to the owner or to the next pickup point, empty, without a "safety driver".
So I think the Tesla Network will be introduced the following way:
"50% FSD Tesla robo-taxis with no dedicated safety drivers": a completely empty, driver-less and customer-less Tesla car in the Tesla Network will be FSD driving to the next pick-up point. It will be driving very carefully and timidly like Advanced Summon and NoA does today, but in larger city environments. Once customers at the pickup point enter the Tesla and start using it, one of them is expected to be the "safety driver", and they are responsible for and liable for driving safely during the trip. Once they exit the car at the destination, the car enters 'empty car FSD mode' again, and drives to the next pickup point.
This is a lot less risky in the legal sense, and FSD driving timidly won't annoy customers either - and that might make Tesla Network a reality. If the car gets stuck somewhere and has to pull over, or runs out of charge or gets stuck due to weather, then the owner (or a Tesla Network service technician) can still pick it up. A bit of "remote driving" done by trained Tesla Network personnel might also be permitted in certain jurisdictions and geographical areas, to safely park the car until a human can pick it up.
Note what a genius of a business model this kind of "50% robo-taxis" approach would be:
And yes, if Tesla can pull off this FSD model then raising the price of "professional FSD" (which allows your car to drive in the Tesla Network) to $10k or more would be absolutely warranted, plus a 30% share of revenues generated, plus various services offered (such as cleaning/maintaining the car).
- Most taxi customers, especially in the U.S., can actually drive cars, they just don't have their own cars around right then.
- Most would actually love and enjoy driving a Tesla.
- (Note the advertising effect: anyone can "test drive" a Tesla, simply by hailing a Tesla Network car... This puts the attempted elimination of the test drives at Tesla Stores in a different light.)
- I'd expect a combination of Chill Mode, Valet Mode and other safety measures to be present to avoid abuse, including full Sentry Mode while a customer is in the car to make sure any damage to the car is documented correctly.
- The Tesla Network might also offer a tutorial about how to drive a Tesla and limit acceleration during first recorded use of a Tesla by a new "driver", to make sure it's a pleasant experience for everyone.
- Customers who don't want to or cannot drive a Tesla (medical condition, alcohol consumption, etc.) might also request a dedicated safety driver to be present, with higher fares.
- Lyft/Uber wouldn't be able to compete with Tesla Network prices and economics, because the Tesla Network wouldn't be using any dedicated "safety drivers" or "driver", at all.
- Even if Waymo removed the safety driver they would find it hard to compete with Tesla, given how large the Tesla fleet already is, and how much cheaper Tesla's FSD solution is compared to the LIDAR solutions of the competitors.
If Tesla can pull this off, it's a gold mine, and I think Wall Street, despite their dislike and ignorance of Tesla, is going to finally recognize it as well. (I'm wondering whether @KarenRei agrees with this approach: the safety requirements for an empty FSD car driving to the next pickup point "carefully and timidly" are obviously different and can be weaker.)
Do I think that this is possible today with their existing neural networks, using the HW3 FSD computer? Yes, if limited to certain geographical areas and routes which are carefully vetted by Tesla for the car to be able to FSD-driving around empty in a safe fashion without endangering others. Then they can grow the areas/routes they support.
True historic photo of the Tesla Network:
If Tesla refines this "50% FSD" approach then the ICE vs. Tesla race would be over within 1-3 years, even without "complete" FSD functionality.
Whether Tesla is going to introduce such a Tesla Network ride-sharing and taxi business on April 22, I have no idea - but if they do and if it's offering real rides and a timetable to introduce the service then it would certainly create a justified buzz and wouldn't just be seen as hype.
I like the way you think FC! Here’s a slightly different take:
When the Tesla Network (TN) taxi is empty, going to the next customer, the “safety driver” is a TN employee sitting in a centralized office. When the customer enters the car, the customer becomes the safety driver.
The economics of this are still incredible versus Uber, because the time that an Uber driver is traveling from one customer to the other is a very small fraction of that driver’s day. TN would be reducing driver costs by 90%.
And technologically and regulatorally, Tesla doesn’t need to get much closer to FSD than it is already, since the car would always have a safety driver.
Also, to address any customer’s hesitancy about being a safety driver in an autonomous car, the customer will have the option to take full control and just drive the car conventionally (perhaps for a small fare increase to cover liability and inefficiency consequences of the temporary human control).
humbaba
sleeping until $7000
Am I missing something? Why are you comparing computer vision + autonomous driving to natural language processing? Other than both make use of machine learning there is nothing similar between them. And, for all the issues with defining the problems confronting driving, that is nothing compared to the difficulty of parsing a single language -- let alone translating between them.
Krugerrand
Meow
People drive aggressively because they are mentally or emotionally unstable in the moment. Yes, they are.
In a hurry because they didn’t get out of bed early enough, didn’t allow enough travel time, irritated by the task they are going to, too much going on in the day because they’ve overbooked, stressed about (fill in the blank), think they own the road and have no regard for all the other humans and on and on and on the list goes.
Some people are having epiphanies IN Teslas WHILE driving. I’ve shared a couple of those stories here as have others. The car is showing them a different way to live and view life. The car is giving them driving enjoyment that they’ve never felt before or cared about before. Yes, that is happening.
I contend the car is plenty aggressive and that it’s every other impatient, angry, rushing person on the road who needs to chill the heck out. NOT that the car/FSD needs to be more aggressive.
I contend that in the end the cautious, perhaps politeness, of FSD and the opportunity for people to take a load off and not have to ‘get up on the wheel’ is the path that should be taken and the end result aimed for. That makes happier people and increases safety on top of the safety garnered by FSD all on its own.
So you are think Tesla would exclude the largest part of people using these services? i.e. The ones that don't have a driver's license, so they can't be the safety driver... (Or the ones that are too drunk to drive themselves, etc.)
⚡️ELECTROMAN⚡️
Village Idiot
I agree. That’s why I didn’t get a performance model.
That assumes a cellular/ WI-Fi network robust enough to support safety critical applications.
Excuse me for suddenly being serious, but the joke doesn't work.
A margin call is a notice from the broker that additional funds have to be posted on a short notice, otherwise automated selling will occur immediately after the deadline.
That is incompatible with the stock holder giving notice of a sale of a specific number of shares weeks in advance.
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