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

[ruralectric]

This is a critical part of the car and seems that not enough future proofing was done.
Tesla's Screen Saga Shows Why Automotive Grade Matters
I agree that if that happens outside the warranty period, then Tesla might be ok, but do we want the company to cut corners like that? Would you be comfortable knowing that key parts of the car like screen or battery did not have enough stress testing to determine whether they'd last? I'm hoping that Tesla learned a lesson and will apply that lesson going forward, whether that's solar roof or MXWL tech in the battery.

FYI Regarding the author of the piece referenced above, Edward Niedermeyer, be aware that this person has a history with Tesla:

A Grain of Salt

 

[omgwtfbyobbq]

I have several questions related to MXWL acquisition and wondering what people think.

1. How will this affect the partnership with Panasonic? Would Tesla license technology to them and say "we want you to start using it and sell us cells cheaper by this much..." or start making cells on their own and say bye-bye to Panasonic? If they start building out their own production capacity and Panasonic sees it and understands that the contracts will not be renewed...how will that affect the ongoing production/partnership? Given that likely there are no other buyers with expertise to assemble cylindrical cells into batteries, so Panasonic is screwed once they lose Tesla as a customer?
Anybody thinks that Panasonic should be concerned and be discussing the strategic direction with Tesla right now?

2. The timing of implementing the new tech. I've seen some outrageous assumptions that Y will have MXWL tech in batteries when it starts production, but seriously...

Why is Tesla not selling solar roofs en masse? Every time someone asks, Elon says that they need to do a lot of testing to ensure that the product can last the warranty term. Which is a sound approach. Given the recent fiasco with installing not automotive-grade 17 inch screens into S/X, which started yellow-ing and now require replacements(or whatever reconditioning they can come up with), it seems prudent to do all that longevity/stress/etc. testing
Given all this, anybody thinks 1.5 years is enough to put a tech from the powerpoint into the real batteries? I'm thinking 4-5 years would be a moderate expectation.

3. The battery investor event.
I think it is not in Elon's interest to give hard estimates on MXWL tech making it into real cars.
If he says 3 years, I may cancel the Y order and wait 1 more year. Anybody here thinks he should be transparent and make some promises?

Panasonic IMO saw the writing on the wall a while back, probably last year sometime, and I'm sure it factored into their partnership with Toyota. Not that they wouldn't have done that anyway given their history of making prismatic NiMH cells for Toyota, but they may have waited a bit longer and/or put in a bit more into their Tesla partnership if Tesla wasn't as interested in acquiring Maxwell.

Toyota and Panasonic to jointly make electric-car batteries, explore solid-state tech (Updated)

Tesla is likely purchasing Maxwell to help them get into cell production themselves and to integrate Maxwell's capacitors (caps) into their power electronics. Handling cell production on their own vertically integrated side is advantageous for obvious cost/scale-related reasons. Integrating Maxwell's caps directly into their power electronics will likely allow them to see significant benefits across their whole EV lineup, especially on their halo products (Roadster), and more importantly IMO, it could open up a whole world of cell suppliers they wouldn't be able to utilize without having those caps integrated into their power electronics to ease the burden on whatever not quite up to their own/Panasonic spec cells they can buy.

If you replace "bank" with "battery supplier" and "money" with "EVs" from this clip at 3:15, that's Tesla. They just want to make EVs.

I also wouldn't buy into the idea Neidermeyer's claim about Tesla using non-automotive grade parts. There are several posts like this one in the S forum about older the screens in older cars not having the issue. Odds are it's a supplier issue, and is speculated to be because of the adhesive being used.

screen discoloration

Having said that, Tesla's likely holding back on solar roof production for quality/reliability/durability verification. It's one thing to replace 17" displays in some S/Xs. Having to replace who knows how many solar roof tiles would be nuts.

 

[JusRelax]

He took apart 3, not S/X I believe. And I don't recall him saying he took apart the screen. I don't think Tesla makes it. Regardless, don't think he did the longevity testing to be able to comment on it.

Per TheDrive's article, the screen is made by Innolux (part #G170J1-LE1).

 

[jerry33]

I also wouldn't buy into the idea Neidermeyer's claim about Tesla using non-automotive grade parts. There are several posts like this one in the S forum about older the screens in older cars not having the issue. Odds are it's a supplier issue, and is speculated to be because of the adhesive being used.

The older screens leaked goop, they fixed that, but there was yellowing. New production run with improved screen is supposed to fix the yellowing. Personally, yellowing is better than leaking goop. No one has put that size of screen in a car before, not really surprising that there is a learning curve. Testing != real world for a few years.

 

[SpudLime]

OT.

My two favorite videos of Tim Conway. May he Rest in Peace.

 

[SW2Fiddler]

If Maxwell is all that people think it is, I wonder why they were unable to attract interest from another potential buyer? Supposedly they shopped themselves around but others weren't interested.

It’s obvious.
Their ProtoType was better than their PowerPoint.

 

[Tim S]

FYI Regarding the author of the piece referenced above, Edward Niedermeyer, be aware that this person has a history with Tesla:

A Grain of Salt

Thank you for that link. After reading that from Tesla, I give zero credibility to anything written by Edward Niedermeyer.

 

[uselesslogin]

Which is probably why the deal has been held up so long. The big holders of Maxwell, and those that influence them, make more money from the very businesses that Tesla is disrupting. Giving Maxwell to Tesla is like cutting their own throats.

Has it though? My company is being acquired in an all stock deal that was announced about the same time. It won't close until late summer.

 

[abasile]

What to do with these options... sitting on massive losses right now

View attachment 407545

In addition to everything else, don't forget that Tesla is expected to unveil a pickup truck this year. If it's well received, that could be a real stock catalyst. As to options in general, I prefer selling options to buying them. The house usually comes out ahead.

Why is Tesla not selling solar roofs en masse? Every time someone asks, Elon says that they need to do a lot of testing to ensure that the product can last the warranty term.

Elon has backpedaled a bit, and has recently given 30 years as the lifetime of the solar roof as opposed to the life of the house. Personally, I would not want a solar roof if it's not going to last any longer than a decent composite roof. Tesla's black Panasonic solar panels look nice enough and are a much better bargain. Composite roofs can be walked on when needed, they can be repaired by any decent roofer, and they're relatively straightforward to modify if you want to add a new vent or skylight, etc. The current solar roof is really just a niche product, in my opinion, at least until costs can be greatly reduced and longevity can be improved.

 

[M3Rider]

FYI Regarding the author of the piece referenced above, Edward Niedermeyer, be aware that this person has a history with Tesla:

A Grain of Salt

Gosh, is there a thread of blacklisted "journalists"?
Pravda+restraining orders+rebuttals by Tesla?
Hard to keep track of them.

 

[S3XY]

Yah. Not sure what the differences are but American versions can’t come into Canada.

Something's different. When I take mine up to Canada it seems to drive a lot better than the Canadian ones around me.

 

[EVNow]

FYI Regarding the author of the piece referenced above, Edward Niedermeyer, be aware that this person has a history with Tesla:

A Grain of Salt

I believe you are missing a sack.

 

[Beltsbear]

Lidars are also super dangerous to your eyes. They can permanently damage your retina. So if you are living in a city where you have a lot of LiDAR testing going on. I suggest to wear laser safe glasses or just always look away when LiDAR is passing.

If this is true, lidar makers and users will face big lawsuits.

 

[Fact Checking]

You can't solve vision 100%. At least not with neural nets.
Lidar can detect things your vision NN misses, or misidentifies. It's just an extra layer. It costs too much for consumer cars and you can't sell 50-100k performance sedans festooned with bulbous protrusions. But the cost is negligible for a robotaxi that can generate 30-50k/year of revenue. And nobody cares if their robotaxi has obviously visible safety equipment. In fact, most would prefer it.

This argument is wrong on so many levels:

• It assumes that robotaxi revenue is so high that it amortizes any purchase price fixed cost, which is not universally true:
  • There are very significant geographical area, seasonal and daily fluctuations in taxi demand: there are ski towns were off-season traffic is just a fraction of winter traffic, there are vacation towns where half of the year's tourist traffic is concentrated into just two months, etc., etc. Increasing the fixed cost of the robotaxi fleet unit reduces the pricing efficiency in these otherwise lucrative markets.
    
  • Tesla owners might not want to dedicate their vehicles to robotaxi revenue 100% of the time - just like a very significant percentage of AirBnb owners share their property only intermittently. Why should their car look ugly just because they are renting out their car for taxi services while they are at work?
• It repeats the fallacy of security, that 'just another layer of security' is important and is amortized of high robotaxi revenue (which is a flawed assumption in itself). By your argument robotaxis should have bullet proof glass, armor plating and other "security" features as well, because cost doesn't matter when robotaxi revenue is very high?
  
• Your argument ignores that it's a zero sum game: on a $150k ASP robotaxi a $50k expensive LIDAR system is crowding out other, more cost efficient vision sensors: the car could have even more radars, even more and better cameras, higher processing power and a whole host of other features that improve vision. I.e. LIDAR can make an FSD car less safe, all other things equal, because the money spent on LIDAR could be spent on more effective vision sensors. Basically the only thing LIDAR is good at is that it provides a shortcut in building a 3D scene of the environment, i.e. it is hiding the flaws in the regular camera based vision system.
  
• Your argument ignores that most proposed mass-market LIDAR system have a limited field of view - not even Waymo does 360° LIDAR AFAIK. This means that traffic at ~60-90° or steeper angles to the vehicle are typically not detected via LIDAR by the proposed LIDAR based FSD cars. This makes intersections, left turns and right turns awkward, and makes LIDAR based pedestrian and bycicle detection coverage incomplete and less safe.

 

[kbM3]

So, my question is why would a custom built robotaxi cost more to build than a base Model 3? Any ideas?

Elon also mentioned special tire design and customized to be highly efficient. Tires could be 2x more expensive, but last 3x miles for example.
He did say Model 3 based.
Maybe rear seat screens would be nice.

 

[EVNow]

So, my question is why would a custom built robotaxi cost more to build than a base Model 3? Any ideas?

Others have given a lot of possibilities … but I'd think about it like this.

They needed to give a number to do the calculations around how much money TN can make. So, I'd look at 38k as a very rough estimate of what they need to do - larger battery, more miles, ruggedized interior, more communication hardware etc. If they are more than rough estimates, then, EM is really serious about getting FSD working next year.

 

[M3Rider]

Elon has backpedaled a bit, and has recently given 30 years as the lifetime of the solar roof as opposed to the life of the house. Personally, I would not want a solar roof if it's not going to last any longer than a decent composite roof. Tesla's black Panasonic solar panels look nice enough and are a much better bargain. Composite roofs can be walked on when needed, they can be repaired by any decent roofer, and they're relatively straightforward to modify if you want to add a new vent or skylight, etc. The current solar roof is really just a niche product, in my opinion, at least until costs can be greatly reduced and longevity can be improved.

Decent composite roofs don't last 30 years, only until the next hail.

Panels are hail resistant (probably solar tiles too).

So, if you had your house flooded couple of times, I think insurance companies won't be eager to sell you flood insurance again.

If you had your roof replaced a few times due to hail...and every time you have to pay few $K extra to take solar panels off and then put them back on...well, this cost will exceed the solar tiles paid for @ construction after 2-3 replacements.

Seems insurance companies are moving to a model where your copay is 10% or more of replacement cost, not a fixed amount.

Anyway, I think if solar tiles cost comes down a lot, you may only need 1 instance of hail during the 30 years to make solar tiles more economical if full replacement costs are factored in.

 

[ruralectric]

I believe you are missing a sack.

Sorry, I don't get it. Missing a sack?

 

[S3XY]

I wonder what shadow mode learns from my driving. I use the whole lane and more, depending on traffic. If there is a pot hole or even rough pavement, I avoid it while still staying in my lane. If there is a bicycle, I give it wide berth if there is no oncoming traffic. One thing that I don't like so much about NOA and TAAP is its unremitting commitment to the center of the lane.

There's a street around the corner from me that has so many potholes/patches that I literally straddle the center line to avoid as many as I can. If it's learning in shadow mode from me I feel sorry for anyone that uses AP there. Luckily they start repaving it next week so I'll be retraining it to drive correctly for the next few years.

 

[davecolene0606]

He took apart 3, not S/X I believe. And I don't recall him saying he took apart the screen. I don't think Tesla makes it. Regardless, don't think he did the longevity testing to be able to comment on it.

Yeh, second thought, he was talking about the 3.

Fire Away!