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

[Tim S]

They're staffing up the new service centers.

I see Buffalo hiring but not Rochester or Syracuse. :-( Hope this doesn't mean they've been silly enough to open Albany and Buffalo and nothing in between.

I had Tesla Mobile Service rotate my tires today in Albany. The tech confirmed a service center is opening soon in Rochester.

 

[AcesDealt]

He also said that existing Teslas will increase in value as self-driving capabilities are added via software, and will be worth up to $250,000 within three years.

It is certainly interesting to ponder the implications of how Tesla should go about running its business if one were to literally think this is true. Would you spare battery capacity for powerwalls? Would you sell cars anywhere bu those jurisdictions where the network is legal? Would you sell the cars to anyone? Would you pay ford to build cars?

 

[Krugerrand]

Was I ever?

The mark of a wise person is the ability to listen to accurate, useful applicable information even if it comes from a disagreeable source.

And the mark of a wise person, who wants to be heard, is to pass along and share information they want to convey in a manner that is acceptable and welcoming to others.

I don’t think you want anyone to listen to you because then you wouldn’t be able to go on about how you know more than they do.

Admit you're wrong and we can put it to bed.

1. There’s no evidence that I am wrong. Sorry, not sorry that I’m not taking your word for it.

2. I think we both can go to bed with the matter unresolved and sleep like the dead.

 

[Krugerrand]

Sigh...In the words of RK..."can't we all just get along"

In the words of Arya Stark: Not today.

 

[Unpilot]

In the words of Arya Stark: Not today.

Yeah I figured not.
But there is always tomorrow!

 

[Remus]

New Tesla Blog: More Advanced Safety for Tesla Owners

Bravo Tesla! This is big data at work ladies and gentlemen.

 

[EVNow]

I think Tesla has set its system up for solving every 9 of accuracy to take slightly less staff time and slightly less annotated data than the previous 9. However, every 9 will require a 10x larger fleet to experience enough rare incidents to collect enough data to solve them. This is because for example if the first 9 required data collection, software and training to solve 1000 scenarios, you can solve the next 9 by solving another 1000 scenarios which are on average 10x less common. Every scenario should require a fixed number of annotated training examples and hence staff time to solve. The reason each 9 takes slightly less time than the last is because as the system builds up a larger and more varied set of scenarios, its solutions get more generalised and solving one problem is more likely to improve accuracy on a different problem.

Actually, every nine requires more edge cases to be solved (not sure whether exponentially higher or linearly). This is because each of those edge cases happen more infrequently than the earlier ones (if they have prioritized correctly !). Essentially this is the "long tail" problem.

Note the 9s that Tesla is solving for are not image recognition accuracy. It is something more like probability of avoiding a shadow mode discrepancy/disengagement/accident per mile. This accuracy will be far higher than individual image recognition accuracy because sensor fusion and driving policy both compensate for weakness in the more granular image accuracy rates (particularly if camera & radar accuracy probabilities are independent).

Right - they are basically solving for accidents (or mistakes) per million miles. This is where it becomes increasingly difficult to figure out what are the next top 100 cases to solve. They get a lot of disengagements / shadow errors from the fleet. Millions every day. How do they analyze and then synthesize the data without watching each video and manually categorizing ?

Karpathy was talking in the youtube video about how the problem has shifted from software algos to data. These are the kinds of data issues that need to be solved - and automated - in order to make FSD possible.

In a way it is similar to the problem Youtube, Facebook & Twitter are facing.

Google manually reviewed a million suspected terrorist videos on YouTube

 

[Krugerrand]

Hahahaha. YES.

View attachment 403505

I’d prefer to pick my horn sound from Fart Mode.

 

[Krugerrand]

Yeah I figured not.
But there is always tomorrow!

There is indeed!

 

[Zhelko Dimic]

I can't argue with that. I have 2018 Model X 100D with FSD and Navigate on Autopilot will surely get you in accident or worse if you don't keep an eye on it. My hope is that they are holding out the "good stuff" that EM is talking about and we will get that sometime this year and it will be much better than the current iteration.

Sorry about the link...someone else posted the fixed on.

What we're seeing as current FSD, and what is future FSD shown during the investors day, are two different generations of software that sure, have the same origin, but targets are wildly different, and some approaches to problem solving have diverged for sure.

My sense (from being in software long time) is that current FSD is probably starved for talent and investment and it's been like that for good last few months (at least 3 ), if not a full year.

So while I too expect full 100% solution is going to take years, I expect 90-95% solution is probably within striking distance, and if not this year, it will happen for the next. I don't think we have any chance of gauging progress until they start releasing FSD on HW 3.0, and this will take few months. While new FSD on HW3.0 is more advanced, it's still probably way less tested and less qualified for a real rollout. During this year, I expect to see rollout that will dazzle, and become a car demand and FSD uptake lever, if not yet solution that will be close to robotaxi concept.

 

[EVNow]

OT



Oh, don't get me wrong -- the world went car-crazy in the 1950s and that's reversing. We may get back to the personal-vehicle-ownership rates of the 1890s. However, personally owned vehicles are certainly not becoming obsolete. In rural areas, no credible alternative to personally owned vehicles has EVER been proposed. Rural areas will continue to exist.

People talking about "transportation as a service" as if it's going to take over everything and replace personal vehicles have, uniformly, never lived in a rural area. It's an eyerollingly dumb idea for someone living on a farm. The logistics and economics of it don't work.

(In the old old days, your personal vehicle doubled as a work vehicle, and was called a "horse")

True - rural (and even exurban) areas will need personal vehicles. BUT, the question is with potentially much reduced volume, is it possible they will continue to get inexpensive vehicles to buy. May be they go back to horses

ps : FSD has been here for long. One of my uncles who used to run a small farm had - in typical Indian village fashion - bullock carts. He would just sleep off in the cart after his work in the town and the bulls would pull the cart safely to his house in the village.

 

[SPadival]

One of the shorts took notes of the CC with investors arranged by Govt Sachs. I have edited out the ad hominem :
Personally thrilled about the highlighted part

1/ Notes from the $TSLA call with deal underwriters. Elon and Zach on call, Elon did most of talking. The gist of the call was that autonomy is the key to the Tesla story "this is the transformative element...this is how $TSLA becomes $500B market cap company" - Elon

2/ Elon - "magnitude of this is hard to overstate". Autonomous cars will generate $150-200K of gross margin. Says regulators will want to see billions of miles of data that show that autonomous is safer than manual to approve it.

3/"We don't expect to spend this capital, want to have it as a buffer" - Elon
Zach reiterated guidance for Q2 and the year
"We think service quality is generally quite good, except for collision repair." Elon

4/ Will make decision on Model Y factory in next week.
If in Fremont, will add another tent and convert some inventory space to production.
Also claimed they will expand paint shop south to do more volume. Anyone seen any permits for this????


5/ Started taking orders for UK recently. Will open up other RH drive markets soon. Expect RH drive cars to begin shipping in next few weeks.
Sees opp to grow demand in US states where there is little or no service capacity at present.

6/ Says S&X demand up since refresh, claims Q1 orders weak because people knew the refresh was coming..
Elon: "Tesla's like the leakiest company on Earth"

7/ Elon claims Panasonic relationship is "pretty good...a little disappointed they haven't reach full capacity yet"
Working to bring on other suppliers in China, don't want to be cell constrained again.

Hey, you remember all of those short theories about Elon being a hair's breadth from a margin call due to owing surely a billion dollars (at least!), and this spelling the imminent doom of Tesla?

Yeah, about those theories...

View attachment 403255

Some deers bears got caught staring at the headlights today

 

[DS 5/15]

I haven't been following this but is there any consensus on the short term? Up or down? My home buying aspirations are hoping back up to a reasonable level soon. BTW, home prices in this part of the SF bay area are tumbling quickly, not sure what that says for the economy. The housing market was crazy a year or so ago with huge overbidding and all cash or forget about it.

 

[Silent Ludicrosy]

I haven't been following this but is there any consensus on the short term? Up or down? My home buying aspirations are hoping back up to a reasonable level soon. BTW, home prices in this part of the SF bay area are tumbling quickly, not sure what that says for the economy. The housing market was crazy a year or so ago with huge overbidding and all cash or forget about it.

​

 

[AcesDealt]

One of the shorts took notes of the CC with investors arranged by Govt Sachs. I have edited out the ad hominem :
Personally thrilled about the highlighted part




Some deers bears got caught staring at the headlights today

View attachment 403520

What time was that call at?

 

[Causalien]

Sooo GF 3 is almost done..lol.

RayTesla on Twitter

Heh WTF china. Is that bigger than GF1?

 

[Causalien]

What time was that call at?

Ugh. Why is Mark Spiegel parroting my thoughts. Smeagle, stop stealing my research and twist it into bear thesis.

 

[Papafox]

Advertising the new shares available at $243 opens up a world of possibilities for manipulation. The shorts, of course, would love to pull the stock price back into the 230s and make this stock offering unattractive. What is to prevent them from doing so?

I suspect expectations of a successful cap raise and an apparent bottoming out on this latest descent will both bring some upward pressure on the stock price, but how do you really judge the money and the effort that the shorts might put forward during the next week? Hopefully some friends of Tesla are standing by and ready to do some buying if the manipulations get too great.

The best solution would be to see a few days of nice climbing, because when volumes are high and the stock price is rising, the shorts tend to lack the horsepower to reverse.

 

[DS 5/15]

View attachment 403530
​

Yeah, I figured as much, lol

 

[scaesare]

Unless you have a static set of IP addresses, like I do, IP addresses change due to NATing.

Well, actually DHCP....