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

[StealthP3D]

old news. a few weeks old.

Why is it that when a magazine that is funded by advertising revenue from fossil cars decides the Model 3 is superior to the fossil competition, it is considered "old news" in under 3 weeks. But when a Tesla has a rare fire it is valid news for at least 148 weeks and is cited endlessly by people trying to make the case that all Teslas are fire hazards?

Don't bother responding, I already know the answer.

This just goes to show how superior the product is and why there will be no "demand problem" for a long time to come.

 

[Skryll]

Tesla should offer to provide the loaners.

Drive a P3D for $800 for two months until you can lemon-law your etron

 

[RiverCard]

Solar takes additional $$$ to install. One of the factors for Natural Gas may be that most of the power is from coal, so heating directly with gas may be better for overall emissions. Geothermal would provide a COP boost, but max temperature is less than with combustion (also a cost boost). Perhaps they'll transition to solar in the future.
Coal's steady retreat from power generation gets underway - Chinadaily.com.cn

During China's rush to industrialization (and concomitant need for energy) over the last several decades, China's central planning bureaucracy eschewed spending the extra funds to deploy Best Available Technology (BAT) in new generation plants such as super critical units, electrostatic precipitators, bag houses, low Sulphur blends, last dispatch of lignite-fired facilities, etc. Not only does BAT increase capital costs, it also reduces thermal efficiency.

"China’s heavy use of “subcritical” coal plants has exacerbated the issue, since such plants are notorious for burning coal in a dirty and inefficient manner. Efforts have been made to clean up coal production by renovating old coal-burning facilities, and some Chinese sources estimate that China will possess the world’s largest high-efficiency coal power system by 2020.

Households also contribute to China’s emissions problem. While urban household CO2 emissions predominantly come from natural gas and liquefied petroleum gas, coal contributes to over 65 percent of China’s rural household emissions. Furthermore, roughly 72 percent of the electrical power generated in China in 2015 came from coal-powered plants, making coal the primary contributor to household CO2 emissions." How is China's energy footprint changing? | ChinaPower Project

Since China appears to have recognized the environmental consequences of past decisions, there may be an un-tapped opportunity for Tesla, while operating GF-3, to market to the politburo Tesla's sustainable vision products such as stationary storage and high-tech (Silevo?) solar cells and roofing tiles.

 

[MP3Mike]

Drive a P3D for $800 for two months until you can lemon-law your etron

I didn't even think of that, that would almost 100% make every one of those qualify for a lemon-law return. They wouldn't even have to wait two months, in most states 30-days out of service makes you qualify. I wonder if they are going to make people sign some kind of waiver before they are given the loaner and $800 card?

 

[ZeApelido]

Do you think Tesla computer + cameras/other senors draw more power or Waymo's computers and all the sensors ?

Obviously Waymo's. This isn't really relevant to the point though.

 

[M3Rider]

Anybody thinks macros will go down tomorrow because there was no "deal" with Mexico?
Or as long as Trump thinks there is and does not impose tariffs the existence of the deal should not matter?

 

[ZeApelido]

I heard it was a personal hygiene issue - no time for showers.

I heard the lack of toilet paper was the last straw.

Literally, there was no more straws either

 

[ZeApelido]

You are a little confused here. It's not cameras that map the position of objects/pedestrians, it's the computer, the camera just sends the visual data. LIDAR FSD needs cameras too and the combined system is still having trouble with consistency. The recent LIDAR pedestrian death? That was because the system was so unpredictable the engineers had to turn off the automatic emergency braking (to avoid very serious phantom braking events). LIDAR has serious problems in terms of integrating the LIDAR data into the other data streams. Some serious computational power is needed and that's why development teams who chose to go the LIDAR route are up against a wall.

I am just relaying what the Lidar PhD Engineer said.

 

[ZeApelido]

Pffft. I'm surprised it was previously rated as high as it was given the management chaos and erraticness. Of course, with the stock price dropping, everyone's pay effectively dropped too. I figure this is basically just reverting to reality -- there must have been more than a little bit of bubble/cult thinking in the previous ratings.

Tesla Uberbulls:

#2 ranked place millenials want to work? Yay! So important.

Massive drop in Glassdoor ratings? Meh who cares.

 

[Zaxxon]

I picked up my Raven P100DL Model S on Saturday. The new suspension is incredible. On standard mode there is still no significant body roll, but the car just eats up bumps on the road like a real luxury car. Very quiet too. When I change it to Sport setting, which matches what my previous Model S performance vehicles had, the ride is much more bumpy (you just get used to that as a driver when that is all you have). The ride of the Raven is much, much smoother and nicer than our Model 3 vehicles (which drive like go-karts). I think the new suspension will bring new customers who thought the previous Model S did not have a comfortable enough ride for a luxury vehicle.

I picked up my Raven X on Saturday, as well. I am not super experienced with fancy suspensions so I didn't pipe up earlier--was waiting till see what others thought.

But I agree completely with @rdalcanto on this. The standard adaptive damping is supremely smooth. Sport feels a lot like the car is on coils, which is rather amazing for an air suspension.

The range upgrade got most of the Raven press--and for good reason. But the suspension is fantastic. It is definitely a step up from the prior offering. You get to have your cake and eat it, too.

Loving the car so far.

 

[neroden]

Anybody thinks macros will go down tomorrow because there was no "deal" with Mexico?
Or as long as Trump thinks there is and does not impose tariffs the existence of the deal should not matter?

I would say the latter is correct. All the businessmen care about is "no stupid tariffs". So nobody tell Trump that there was no deal, OK? Let him believe that there was a deal.

 

[Hock1]

I used to think Reuters was a respected news agency - now I think they are absolute garbage! Every day they post hit jobs against Tesla.

Reuters' willingness to aid and abet FUD and to spread outright lies have been for sale for quite a while now. In fact, when I was a broker circa 2000, I made the exact comment you just made. " I used to think Reuters was a respected........., etc ". So it has been a while.

 

[ggr]

OT



NTSB: Uber Self-Driving Car Had Disabled Emergency Brake System Before Fatal Crash

I will say lidar is great for collision avoidance, which is why a scaled down version is used on factory autonomous guided carts.

The carts in the Tesla factory all use ultrasonics, not Lidar. I can't speak to any others, that is the only factory I've visited for many years.

 

[wipster]

I would be careful making replies like that. It sounds a LOT like what I have read in the comment section of a Fox News article about a Tesla catching on fire. I'm no expert on the HF subject (to same the least), but just because you're seeing one station on fire doesn't mean much really. Oh, and I have absolutely NO desire to see HF succeed - I just hate to see people here acting like the Fox News crowd.

A joke that reflects my distain for the absolutely asinine use of hydrogen as a fuel for automobiles does not mean I'm acting like the Fox News crowd. What has occurred in Norway after this explosion illustrates the dangers of hydrogen filling stations. A battery burning in a Tesla won't shut down the company, but an explosion at a single hydrogen filling station is tantamount to the Hindenburg! While I may have used humor to show my opposition to having one in my neighborhood, that doesn't change my opinion that I would fight tooth and nail to having one installed in my neighborhood. While burning hydrogen as a fuel may not emit CO2, it would be way too expensive to even attempt to make the infrastructure as safe as the supercharger network or even a gas station for that matter.

You are free to express your opinion, but I really do not appreciate being insulted by the comparison.

 

[SPadival]

Bloodsport Capital: You are next! on Twitter

Aaand he is gone ... this is almost poetic. Congratulations everyone (including the concern trolls that I have put on ignore)

Twitter

So the demented tslaq twits didn't take to kindly of our shining light on their barrage of FUD campaign:

"TMC $TSLA Investor Forum has decided to weaponize @TwitterSafety policy the moment it was announced. My advice to $tslaQ is to stop engaging and subscribe to @Paul91701736 block list. No amount of data, facts, reason, or logic will change a fanatic in a cult."

They even posted screenshots of your post! Funny stuff.

 

[Doggydogworld]

Is that real data or simulated ?

Real left turns. 15 million miles with a left turn every couple miles or so.

What you have overlooked, and what Waymo and Cruise has probably not overlooked but simply doesn't have available is the method of fleet learning/training on a fleet of hundreds of thousands of Tesla cars running various versions of their neural networks:

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I have not overlooked this. I very specifically gave an example where Waymo struggles despite ample training data. You ignored this point and trotted out the time-worn "Tesla has billions of miles" cliché.
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• Tesla has the ability to test neural network functionality in 'shadow mode' and measure how they react in real cars and real environments - while being in a safe sandbox that isn't allowed to drive.
  
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• ​

Shadow mode is open loop, which has been shown to be pretty worthless for driving decision training. It is useful for many other things, of course.

Your assumption that there's absolutely no advantage to Tesla and that they are not taking advantage of it is both false and naive.

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Tesla has an undeniable advantage collecting edge case data. For example, Waymo recently hired a retired police horse so they could train and test their "horse-handling" because they don't encounter horses that often in normal driving. Tesla can leverage their fleet to capture much more horse data than Waymo. Advantage Tesla. Yay! But we're not talking about horses. Unprotected left turns are not an edge case. Waymo has plenty of left turn data. "Billions of miles" is not a magic wand.

Part of it could be, as Musk keeps repeating and the experts keep scoffing at, that taking the obvious approach of relying on Lidar for 3-D sensing leads to a local optimum that is very hard to improve on.

Experts scoff because it's nonsense.

Musk is a trailbreaker, he doesn't waste time trying to understand or copy what others have done. Sometimes this "first principles" approach serves him well Sometimes not - e.g. his laughably naive view of the Toyota Production System which led Tesla to brink of catastrophe.

Another is that having a fully integrated approach, from the silicon layer and neural network all the way up to human-driven case-by-tricky-case learning, results in a fundamentally superior solution.

Google has TPUs and has invented multiple vision neural networks. Tesla uses an old Google Inception NN. Waymo makes their own lidars. There's no evidence Tesla has some "tight integration" advantage.

Tesla has some clear advantages. But so does Waymo. I don't see any here who acknowledge the latter. That's not smart investing.​

 

[mongo]

OT (but today was green so people are maybe more forgiving)

Google has TPUs and has invented multiple vision neural networks. Tesla uses an old Google Inception NN. Waymo makes their own lidars. There's no evidence Tesla has some "tight integration" advantage.

Tesla has some clear advantages. But so does Waymo. I don't see any here who acknowledge the latter. That's not smart investing.​

Tesla has a huge integration advatage: driver in the loop. If you think of the deployed fleet as another step in the NN training process, Tesla can do development no one else can. Release, check results, tune, test on sim, test internally, release, repeat.

 

[Christine69420]

I would be careful making replies like that. It sounds a LOT like what I have read in the comment section of a Fox News article about a Tesla catching on fire. I'm no expert on the HF subject (to same the least), but just because you're seeing one station on fire doesn't mean much really. Oh, and I have absolutely NO desire to see HF succeed - I just hate to see people here acting like the Fox News crowd.

True - care should be taken. But there is a difference. When a Tesla catches fire it's obviously bad. But what happened on the Hydrogen stations was a powerful explosion. Which is much scarier. And with more potential for serious damage on it's surroundings.

I've been to my local fire brigade on a safety day. One thing they demonstrated was igniting a LPG flask so that the propane gas flowing out burned. No explosion. Just a controlled flame. If you do the same thing with hydrogen you get an explosion since hydrogen + oxygen from the air + open flame = explosion. I remember my science teacher demonstrating this back in school.

Where petrol fits on this scale I do not know. But I would much rather have propane in my car than hydrogen. But neither beats the batteries in my TMX.

Wow! Hindenburg car. Now there is a term that may stick to fuel cell cars. I haven’t heard that one before.

Yes this incident really spooked me! But it turns out no hydrogen cars were filling up. So I guess I must retract the Hindenburg car comparition. The explosion probably happened in the fully automatic machine generating hydrogen at the filling station.

 

[Unpilot]

Nav On AP on city streets is available on current build of software available to all in the fleet - if you know how to enable it

Basically the autonomy day demo. But, still WIP.

Hacked Tesla Full Self Driving - Tesla Autonomy Day to San Mateo : teslamotors

What hack...how?

 

[EVNow]

What hack...how?

green on Twitter

I am kind of busy with work and behind on my twitter postings and replies (will catch up later). Just wanted to link to this collection - I provided instructions to a person in CA to replicate demo day route video on stock firmware ap2 car: