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

[azaz]

Yesterday, at a stop light, a bus turned right in front of me into my lane and expected me to back up. Luckily there was nobody behind me. Then there is the crazy mess I went through in a parking lot with illegally parked cars, cars stopped with blinkers on, a lane too narrow for two way traffic (with two way traffic)... And the other parking lot which combined this with a blind corner and cars making K turns to reach gas pumps. Plus the pedestrians of course. All in one day...

Full self driving everywhere is a fantasy. It will never, ever, ever happen. Not with humans on the road, and humans will always be on the road, except possibly on freeways.

yeah I don't see how FSD can ever make a left turn in Manhattan during the day much less in bad weather. you basically have to nudge, and nudge at the endless amounts of pedestrians walking to carve out a path.

 

[sundaymorning]

If I were in Elon's shoes when it comes to this situation. I'd tweet Trump.

"It is time you step up to your promise of protecting american interest from foreign invaders"

But that'd be waaay too dark. And so unlike Elon. Probably why I am not CEO of TSLA.

Tweet CNBC, CNN, NYT, LaTimes and SEC while he’s at it. This needs to be front page.

 

[sundaymorning]

yeah I don't see how FSD can ever make a left turn in Manhattan during the day much less in bad weather. you basically have to nudge, and nudge at the endless amounts of pedestrians walking to carve out a path.

This is why companies like GM, Waymo is struggling to make left turns, and I believe they do NOT make left turns as a result. Even with their geofenced tech their cars can only make right turns. The left turns are too complicated for them.

 

[sundaymorning]

Sure, but we shouldn't fight conspiracy with more conspiracy lol

It’s not a matter of conspiracy. Oil companies spend millions per year bashing EV.

Big Oil Makes A New Attempt To Kill Electric Cars

Christine Todd Whitman: Oil industry is 'peddling misinformation' about electric vehicles

• Reports against EVs are coming from oil-backed studies, leading to skewed public perceptions of battery-run autos.

 

[scaesare]

The 2170 cell also would allow for better use of space in the pack. The current car has room for the taller cells, which should allow for at least a Model 120.

The increase in height of 2170's only represents 7.6% more cell volume as compared to an 18650.

You aren't going to go from a 100 to a 120kWh pack based on that alone.

 

[Singer3000]

It’s not a matter of conspiracy. Oil companies spend millions per year bashing EV.

Big Oil Makes A New Attempt To Kill Electric Cars

Christine Todd Whitman: Oil industry is 'peddling misinformation' about electric vehicles

• Reports against EVs are coming from oil-backed studies, leading to skewed public perceptions of battery-run autos.

TSLAQ Twitter warrior Matthew Battle once let slip he was “well paid for playing on the internet all day”. Would be interesting to know by who.

 

[Mobius484]

Mathew is a good one to troll. Ha! Yes he admitted that. I like to remind him every now and then..

And that trumpery45 guy. Geesh. We need to stop talking about these loosers. Bringing down the quality of the thread.

 

[Ulmo]

azaz responding to @neroden ...

you basically have to nudge, and nudge at the endless amounts of pedestrians walking to carve out a path.

When I drove truck in Manhattan, I'd rev up real loud, put it in gear, and start letting the engine shake the truck as it started to crawl forward, then I'd push in the clutch to not hit the pedestrians just coming into my way, slam the squeaky brakes on keeping eye contact with the pedestrians, adjusting my smile to get the individualized responses from each pedestrian I think is right, only to swiftly come back to slowly letting off the clutch, straining the engine and once again letting the truck come forward a bit as I see the pedestrians see me and our eye contact shows that no one is in emergency. By then, the pedestrians start thinning out, and I slam the brakes on again, drifting up to a nice buffer space between me and the current set of pedestrians. Then, I repeat all of this from the beginning again, until I'm through.

Interpolate for autonomous EV car.


Uhhh, wait ........ that doesn't work like that.

yeah I don't see how FSD can ever make a left turn in Manhattan during the day much less in bad weather.

Left turn? That's nothing! Try a RIGHT turn in Manhattan!

I like doing it from the third from right lane ... the cabs turning right from the second from the right lane love yelling at me "HEYYY! YOU AREN'T SUPPOSED TO TURN FROM ANY LANE BUT THE RIGHTMOST LANE!!!" and shake their fists at me (as I laugh at their hypocrisy).


By the way, years ago I was on the record as saying cars ought to be able to figure out how to drive safely with enough good hardware and programmers. I still believe that. Having been a truck driver in Manhattan and a frequent hill car driver, I know all that that entails. Perhaps it's my embracing of the complexity that makes me think it's possible; whenever I see anyone throw up their hands at "how complicated it all is", I just think I've found someone who can't handle the complexity. It's really simple once you're smart and experienced enough. You just have to get there.

 

[Ulmo]

If I were in Elon's shoes when it comes to this situation. I'd tweet Trump.

"It is time you step up to your promise of protecting american interest from foreign invaders"

But that'd be waaay too dark. And so unlike Elon. Probably why I am not CEO of TSLA.

Elon could inform Donald of the issue (passive-aggressively assuming Trump should already know as if he is God is premature; first inform, then ask). The problem is that Elon doesn't want to be seen as getting help from Trump because a lot of Elon's friends are death cult Dems that don't want to see him succeed or work well with others. I've decided to just let Elon mire in his own self-inflicted segregation and compete the other car companies into a position where they have to come out with EV's, and someday someone will make an EV I want. But if he takes up your good idea, then by all means.

A guy who spends this much time bashing isn’t doing it alone, he’s likely being paid by a man behind the curtains

While I wouldn't be surprised if that were true, don't underestimate the dedication of the individual to any task.

 

[Ulmo]

The entry/exit dichotomy was ruled true, but largely unexecutable.

To me that just sounds like they're afraid. I could easily designate entries on all the local freeways to close.

US-I-CA-280: McLaughlin Ave (can use King or 10th), 4th Street (or 10th Street, 4th St preferred; 10th can use 4th or 4th can use 10th), Vine St (can use 4th or Bird), Meridian (can use Parkmoor & Leland), Winchester (I mean, really?! Can use Saratoga or Stevens), Wolfe (can use Anza or Larry, or alternatively take out DeAnza and they can use Wolfe, but with Lawrence right there, it's better take out Wolfe), 85: clean up that entrance at the end -- make it straighter at the merge; it is the pits, and take out the Foothill exit (quarry dump trucks always cutting you off as you accelerate); Foothill of course (they can use 85), meaning take out the whole Foothill interchange in all directions it seems; from there on up 280 doesn't get tight again until further up, somewhere near San Francisco; close about half those Daly City & Sod. Freaky exits. You get the point. I could pick all the entrances to close for all the local freeways.

 

[Ulmo]

This is backwards. Vehicles maintaining more space decreases congestion, not increasing it.

Stop Tailgating, It Only Makes Traffic Jams Worse

“Our work shows that, if drivers all keep an equal distance between the cars on either side of them, such ‘perturbations’ would disappear as they travel down a line of traffic, rather than amplify to create a traffic jam,” says Horn.

Of course, asking drivers to pay attention to their bilateral control is easier said than done. Instead, the researchers suggest that auto manufacturers add rear-facing sensors to cars and update their adaptive cruise control software. According to the study, if only a small percentage of cars used this feature it could dramatically reduce traffic jams.

I do this manually all the time. Lots of good drivers do it, to greater or lesser extents. We smooth out the noisy flow. Lately I'm too old and lazy to do it, but when the freeways are not insane, I try to do it. In fact, most of the best commuters on Highway 17 (the hilly part) are themselves quite good at it, whether the few % who actively or passively smooth it or the other % that just go with the flow sufficiently enough to not desmooth it, and I think most commuters are good at smoothing out traffic. There are some really insanely slippery busy rainy crazy days with heavy traffic that I've commuted home on 17 and there were NO SLOWDOWNS and LOTS OF TRAFFIC. Traveling with fellow commuters is definitely a treat worthy of a great smile. Note, as KarenRei quoted, it only takes a small percent of cars smoothing the flow plus a greater percent (nearly the rest of the cars) going with the flow of traffic to make this work.

By the way, another thing I do when driving is teach other drivers how to drive. There are lots of ways to do that. Every time I enter a new commute time slot I haven't been in for years (or ever), I have to teach the fresh drivers all over again. After some months of driving in that time slot (by example and other techniques), everyone in that time slot is really good (or at least good enough, as part of a whole system) at driving. Then, I get complacent and forget that I taught them, get in another timeslot one day without thinking about it, and suddenly I get confounded why no one is driving right, until I remember the massive labor I put into teaching everyone in my usual timeslot.

Add this to my description of how to drive in Manhattan, and I have to wonder if Elon has the manifest destiny thinking style capability to have a computer do this sort of thing.

The biggest commute problems we're having in the Bay Area and surrounding areas right now is we have Activists driving their cars in the fast lane slower than the car in front of them on purpose just to slow down traffic. I have no idea who had them go there, and why they keep doing it, but they're exactly the type of people you would expect to see in a La Raza protest against deportations. While I wish there was something I could do to teach them, the fact that they madly honk at me whenever I overcome their oppression by passing them on the right indicates to me that they are not teachable, but are being intentionally evil. There's literally nothing a car could do to fix that problem.

 

[Causalien]

The biggest commute problems we're having in the Bay Area and surrounding areas right now is we have Activists driving their cars in the fast lane slower than the car in front of them on purpose just to slow down traffic. I have no idea who had them go there, and why they keep doing it, but they're exactly the type of people you would expect to see in a La Raza protest against deportations. While I wish there was something I could do to teach them, the fact that they madly honk at me whenever I overcome their oppression by passing them on the right indicates to me that they are not teachable, but are being intentionally evil. There's literally nothing a car could do to fix that problem.

I think their reasoning is that everyone is equal, so exhibiting behaviors that proves your car is faster is elitist.

 

[Lycanthrope]

How many Model 3s did you see in Denmark for comparison? The I-PACE was probably flooring it earlier then realised its range was disappearing rapidly so slowed it down. I had this feeling in my LEAF quite a lot.

Only drove 50kms into DK, so didn't really get a chance to see, plus it was dark already. Left early in the morning to head back home home and at the only DK Supercharger I stopped at, there were 2 M3's charging, but I couldn't see if they were Danish plates or not (it's a weird setup with the newly installed 10 stalls 200m away from the 6 existing ones at another address, but counted as a single location of 16 stalls on the map...)

 

[Lycanthrope]

OK. That’s telling. A self closing charge port has no utility when a human charges the car, because you have to unplug and hang the cable anyway. It’s been added at some non zero cost in anticipation of robo-charging.

That's not true - I los count of the number of times with my old P85 that I forgot to close the flap and had to pull-over to get out and shut it - one time when I was already on the autobahn before I realised, so potentially very dangerous. It was particularly annoying as the navigation map wouldn't display until it was closed. My current X has the self-closing and it's on of my favourite features...

 

[Lycanthrope]

In 2020 or 2022, at the end of his term - the year depending on whether the term reduction proposal gets voted in. Sounds like they're trying to shrink the board.

Good to see that Jurvetson isn't standing for reelection.

Interestingly enough, this dovetails with what some institutional investors have been pushing for. They've been pushing to get Jurvetson, Gracias, and Kimball off the board, as they see them as Musk cronies:

A Tesla board member was ousted from his venture capital firm amid sexual harassment allegations - now there are calls for him to be booted from the automaker too (TSLA) | Markets Insider

I actually like Musk-yes-men being on the board. But that said, Jurvetson is problematic, and needs to go.

I wonder if this is part of a planned effort to get further buy-in from said hesitant institutionals...

I used to think that Kimball was there due to pure nepotism, but having heard him talk on some YouTube videos he seems like a really bright and smart guy with a lot of common-sense, so I revised my opinion 180°

Still don't see the added value of Murdoch. We thought his inclusion would lead to some better media reporting and this doesn't seem to have been the case.

 

[Buckminster]

Happy day before Autonomy Investor Day everybody!

 

[Lycanthrope]

I don't know if anyone else does this, but I only take over as a last resort. I am very interested in watching it figure things out, and maybe it learns more when I don't help it??? Child upbringing style I prefer, but then maybe Tesla doesn't catch my edge cases when they sumarginally succeed.

Same here! On my road trip end of last week I used EAP a lot - of course I'm on AP2.0 HW, so don't have NoA, but I used it a lot nevertheless. What's interesting is that it's always better than the previous road trip, usually because one, or more, FW update happen in-between.

So really no bouncing between the lane-markings any more, it's dead-centre with little deviation. Still too aggressive when slowing for up-coming traffic, it uses the brakes for that, the same could be done with region and be much smoother.

What was really impressive is that it navigates roadworks well now. German autobahn's are notorious for long sections of contra-flow with very narrow lanes, can be a bit hairy in a Model X, but where there were decent temporary (yellow) markings, I used AP and it was great. It was smart enough to lock onto the temporary lines too and ignored the existing (white-intermittent) lines.

 

[RobStark]

Alex from Alex on Autos took delivery of a $36k Model 3, base plus blue paint.

 

[[email protected]]

The way things are going, it's going to need to be a trilogy...

Big books.

 

[Artful Dodger]

I used EAP a lot - of course I'm on AP2.0 HW, so don't have NoA, but I used it a lot nevertheless.

I think you've got this wrong. AP on HW2.0 is capable of NoA, likely you don't have the update yet.

Perhaps other EU members can comment if NoA is approved for release+use in the EU yet?

FSD Computer will be available as a upgrade via Tesla Mobile Service in about 6 mths, per Elon. It will even be a free upgrade for those who have already purchased FSD.

Then your HW2 + FSD Cmptr Model X will be capable of all the latest FSD tricks (as will any HW2.x+ Tesla who's Owners have purchased FSD.)

But NoA is not a FSD Computer only feature. NoA has been running on HW2.x+ in the U.S. for weeks.

Cheers!