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

[winfield100]

Bizarrely BMW seems to be doing better than the others and Stellantis is doing well with EU commercial vehicles, for that matter Daimler is doing a little there too, including in the NA truck market. Those point out the occasional bright spot but not really broad success.

@unk45
OT OT OT
well, it's the weekend so stumbled across this ?photoshopped? abomination for your amusement
(This msg will probably self destruct, (as would that ?engine?)
(surprised they didn't add a Stirling engine to it for _external_ combustion)

 

[AudubonB]

Mod:

Whoever wrote 3-6? days ago the post (or referenced another’s) describing the difference between American & European automakers’ and societies’ reactions towards Tesla’s (1) autos and (2) grid electrification innovations - primarily as defensive and oppositional, versus China’s - primarily as adoptive:

Would you please step forward by either linking or otherwise breadcrumbing it? Thank you.

 

[philw1776]

Please accept my apologies. I knew better. This AM I was reading about LNG markets and pipelines/ships/stprage so I had methane on my mind.
Better than ammonia I suppose, I have just altered the post.

I knew you knew better. Senior moment?

 

[mongo]

Mod:

Whoever wrote 3-6? days ago the post (or referenced another’s) describing the difference between American & European automakers’ and societies’ reactions towards Tesla’s (1) autos and (2) grid electrification innovations - primarily as defensive and oppositional, versus China’s - primarily as adoptive:

Would you please step forward by either linking or otherwise breadcrumbing it? Thank you.

Maybe this and @unk45's post it is replying to?
Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

 

[GhostSkater]

...because the MSM doesn't talk about it:

Porsche Whistleblower: “60% of all delivered Taycan have battery issues that caused replacements, damages and fires”

Taycan Battery Issues - More Context to my Teslarati Article

I agree, and from years ago and nothing came out of it

Might be conspiracy and governments hiding it because Porsche pays them or something, or might not and be overblown, just like FUD we experience with Tesla day after day

 

[jerry33]

It depends a lot on how "close to home" (CTH) is defined and driving patterns. Using a 50 mile radius, having a commute, and going on three or four road trips per year, then CTH might average around 50% (FWIW, this was my average for 20 years). Without a commute, CTH decreases dramatically, and geofencing becomes a real barrier. For the never or seldom go on trips case, CTH approaches 100%. This percentage will change if CTH is defined as a 25 mile radius. All this really means it depends on circumstances. Because most people have a commute and some seldom go on road trips, it's pretty obvious that most accidents will be CTH because most driving is close to home. (I'm not sure about the 90% part unless all cars, including those that are almost never driven, are included.)

 

[winfield100]

Nit
Toyota has not switched to methane CH4 but possibly to ammonia NH3. Methane burning emits carbon while ammonia does not. In reality ammonia might emit nitrous oxides which is not good AND ammonia is highly toxic. Toyota is on a Bataan Death March.
Love the kill users snark!
Continue..

OT OT OT
great.
rolling bombs, just wonderful, well thought out by Darwin awards

dump a few bottles of tincture of Iodine in the tank (without chokeing, we had a NH3 refrigerator, DO NOT CUT LINES!!)

NH3 plus I(odine) = (dangerous college pranks) =NI3
Nitrogen tri Iodide, is a contact explosive and _not_ to be messed with.

Nitrogen triiodide - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Usain]

The flip-side of the underlined statement is how the majority of collisions occur close to home (50-70 percent within 5-10 miles).

Yeah, did you hear the one about the guy who heard how most collisions occur close to home?

He moved.

The flip-side of the underlined statement is how the majority of collisions occur close to home (50-70 percent within 5-10 miles). Though an autonomous platform should not find itself falling into the trap of "familiarity breeds contempt" the way humans can and do.

An issue with geofencing is the possibility of some aspect of the software reaching a point where it assumes something to always be true. As long as that can be carefully avoided, opening one geographic area at a time could provide a proving-ground for autonomy to expand from a regulatory perspective.

In the long run, the aim should remain to have the AI deal with the world in an unrestricted manner in order to better duplicate and improve upon human capabilities.

But seriously, I'm pretty sure most collisions occur close to home because that's where we do most of our driving. On a collisions per mile basis, I believe we are better drivers close to home when we concentrate on the driving. I don't have stats to back this up, but I believe it's true.

I agree with everything else you said. When Tesla starts out its robotaxi service it will be geofenced by necessity. They can't just open it up to the whole nation at once. FSD will not be ready for that any time soon, but it will get there eventually.

What does seem to be proven is that FSD is better in California because the training is oversampled there. It follows that if you oversample in a smaller area like a single city, FSD would do even better there. So Tesla could just pick the city where FSD is already performing the best. Then concentrate even more training on that city to make it perform well enough to start a robotaxi service.

 

[Singuy]

We can tell the "controls" part is much smoother in V12 - the part that was heuristics previously. That's a great sign. Right now disengagements in V12 are higher than V11, but I'd guess that will match V11 the first half of this year. Look at how long its been since Elon's V12 demo till now - 5 to 6 6 months. Good progress, but not like it's mindblowing. So I'd expect the 2nd half of this year for V12 iterations to show disengagements at maybe 1/2 to 1/4 of V11.

Combined with the increased smoothness is probably enough to have a L2 product that is quality enough many people would pay some money for. The equivalent of autopilot for city streets.

But Tesla may have to lower subscription prices to engage more people - I would think this could increase overall FSD revenue and think it's an obivous move to boost margins a bit. Maybe they are waiting until it's good enough to do this?

The thing is, great L2 will boost margins a bit, but doesn't make life altering changes to the company valuation. That only happens if people think robotaxis are imminent. Realistically, there is a long road between great L2 and robotaxis. The disengagement rate has to be really, really low to be software capable for robotaxis. Like 1 critical disengagement every 10,000 - 100,000 miles. Not every 100-500 miles like currently.

So I'd rate there almost 0 chance Tesla gets close to that level (which the market would definitely respond to).

The real question is: can Tesla get to a point that the pace of change is so rapid that the market prices in future expectations years early? This is possible, but the rate of change would have to be much faster than it is currently. Part of that depends on how much compute do they have coming online. Last we heard it seemed like they 2x their compute (only). Way below the 10x-100x they are planning for. I was disappointed Elon did not respond to the question about compute limits on the earnings call. This insight is needed for any institutional investor to get more bullish.

I am watching the v11 vs v12 and to me, v12 has way less interventions, almost a magnitude less. V12 is sometimes doing weird things that will get ironed out, but v11 just gets stuck every 2 minute during heavy traffic with blockage while v12 doesn't. I finally see a path to fsd due to this.

Also note data sorting/prep is the most time consuming part of training now as planning and controls being learned by AI is dangerous vs hard coding. Plus every training sesson cost Tesla a few million dollars in opex.

 

[EQC_]

There was no reason to believe that any car manufacturer would OEM FSD at this point. It's not even a reliable level 2 system and they would need Tesla computers, cameras, and to feed data back to Tesla. Tesla would have to make adjustments for their brakes, size, control, etc.

Many said that was BS over a year ago. Solved FSD, sure, but not the Beta product we have now that 5-10% (optimistically) of the time drivers are forced to take over. My car uploads as many as 6 gb in a night after long drives. That's not feasible for most manufacturers.

We all know how slow the industry moves...even if a manufacturer decided today to license FSD from Tesla, it would be at least 4-5 years before they could start manufacturing a single, probably low-production model with all the necessary cameras, compute hardware, OTA update capability (for all vehicle systems), and full hardware/software integration of vehicle steering/brakes/acceleration, etc.

Ignoring predictions of Tesla's FSD capabilities in the near or far future, I believe any adoption by other manufacturers would have to be years away and very likely in small numbers initially...and that would put a cap on what Tesla could earn from other OEMs in any given year.

 

[Usain]

I object to shortcuts. Geofencing seems to me to be a shortcut with obvious limitations that don’t solve the problems that need to be solved. It’s akin to using an ICE platform to make an EV - yeah, works but has limitations that keeps it from being compelling enough to solve the larger problem - making it compelling on enough metrics, including pricing, to get everyone to buy one.

I just had a several hour debate with my father, who is getting to an age where he’s concerned driving will become unavailable to him for many age related reasons. Geofencing isn’t going to be enough for him for many reasons that may or may not apply to everyone his age.

Tesla is trying to solve for everyone, not just a specific group of people. The mission is for the world, not for people in select cities.

Yes, the mission is to solve FSD for everywhere. But to start a robotaxi service, you have to start somewhere, not everywhere.

It's not a shortcut. It's a necessity.

 

[Usain]

We don't know the rate of future FSD improvements.....But, isn't there a point where FSD shows enough progress (or merit) where robotaxis are not necessarily imminent yet, but it creates enough buzz to measurably impact demand for existing Tesla vehicles?

Yes.

 

[Gigapress]

Is my logic flawed here? Global domination is cool and all, but to reference an old forum poster (@Gigapress, you still around?), Global Optimization is what all the cool kids want!

I’m still reading sometimes but I’m currently working on long-form analysis on my expectations for sustainable aviation and how Tesla may or may not get involved.

Spoiler

I am confident Tesla will not design and produce aircraft, but I give it a 50% chance of Tesla entering the industry as a supplier of batteries, motors, power electronics or charging equipment to aircraft OEMs.

 

[Krugerrand]

It occurred to me that perhaps GEO fenced city busing could be viable? Bus routes stay constant, stops are constant, and busses remain within a small area of a city. A big a$$ Lidar on top of the bus is a non-issue. Would 24/7 busing then be an option? Could more buses be engaged on routes particularly during high volume hours so wait times are shorter, buses aren’t overcrowded and people are moved about quicker?

 

[2daMoon]

It occurred to me that perhaps GEO fenced city busing could be viable? Bus routes stay constant, stops are constant, and busses remain within a small area of a city. A big a$$ Lidar on top of the bus is a non-issue. Would 24/7 busing then be an option? Could more buses be engaged on routes particularly during high volume hours so wait times are shorter, buses aren’t overcrowded and people are moved about quicker?

Could an Optimus Bot be dressed up in a Police uniform (or as a Terminator) and assigned to provide (the appearance of) security on the bus?

I'm just wanting to increase Tesla's share in this...

 

[KBF]

If you think you're frustrated with Musk's behavior that cause stock crashes, his workers are even more fraustrated.

Not many people watched this entire thing but you should as this Asian guy is one of the few who survived 7 years on the AP team.

One thing to note is that the stock price absolutely affects the worker's mood and productivity according to him. He said many team members took out margin loans during the meteoritic rise of Tesla stock and after Musk decided to sell massive amount of stock, these workers were all margin called. It's probably the most frustrating thing ever when employees unlike us cannot just sell anytime to close their position but must wait till the windowed period.

So in theory, Musk should be more mindful about what he says and do if it's material to the stock price(lol I say material to the stock price and not really material to the company).

Elon also publically told everyone to never trade on margin. WS knows exactly what it takes to harvest those shares, and will pile on the FUD to get there whenever they can, and take advantage of anything they can. And even apart from that time when he sold shares, the stock price had rocketed up and down many many times before, especially in the early days, when no one at Tesla was making any inflammatory comments publicly or selling any shares.

It is financially pointless (but natural, I guess) for anyone who trades in options to complain about others when their gambles crash and burn. They have only themselves to blame. People aren't FORCED to buy more than they can afford. They choose to play a game they have no control over.

Taking personal responsibility is wise; that helps us learn and grow. Being wise enough to see what is in our control, and what is not, and acting accordingly, is even better. It's not easy, though.

 

[jerry33]

It occurred to me that perhaps GEO fenced city busing could be viable? Bus routes stay constant, stops are constant, and busses remain within a small area of a city. A big a$$ Lidar on top of the bus is a non-issue. Would 24/7 busing then be an option? Could more buses be engaged on routes particularly during high volume hours so wait times are shorter, buses aren’t overcrowded and people are moved about quicker?

I don't think so because a road can only hold so many buses. This was tried in Vancouver BC when the city was anti-car (before the rail transit system was built. They couldn't put enough buses on the streets because there wasn't enough street to put the buses on in downtown. Also there is a safety issue with no driver. Worst cases are a mafia like situation where a few criminals extort the passengers, or a shooter. A driver is in contact with the base so there is some deterrent.

 

[AudubonB]

Maybe this and @unk45's post it is replying to?
Tesla, TSLA & the Investment World: the Perpetual Investors' Roundtable

Close but it was neither of those. More succinct and elegant description of the different responses.

 

[2daMoon]

I don't think so because a road can only hold so many buses. This was tried in Vancouver BC when the city was anti-car (before the rail transit system was built. They couldn't put enough buses on the streets because there wasn't enough street to put the buses on in downtown. Also there is a safety issue with no driver. Worst cases are a mafia like situation where a few criminals extort the passengers, or a shooter. A driver is in contact with the base so there is some deterrent.

Sounds like a job for The Boring Company!

 

[jerry33]

Sounds like a job for The Boring Company!

I don't believe the Boring Company can go through water, and the way downtown Vancouver is situated, that would be a requirement, although not in every direction.