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

[Mengy]

AT OT Does anyone else find the new style harder on the eyes? I tried dark mode and it doesn't help. Feels like the contrast between text box, quoted text, and page background isn't enough.

The text is a thinner font than before, and yeah it hurts my eyes a tad more than before too.

 

[lascavarian]

Funny thing: It turns out that Warren is not the only one doing wild future robotaxi valuations.

James Douma also has wild ideas about Teslas FDS/robotaxi valuation.
Couched in more cautious terms, and approached indirectly, but ... due to James science cred/background in programming, experts systems and AI, it is very impactful.
He does not provide a classic model, but a napkin model.
He refuses Dave's call for sharing his model, but leaves it to the audience to guesstimate based on his napkin math.

Spoiler-alert: The upper bound of James' estimate for robo-taxi earning is so high that he has is seriously considered sort of phase-change effects regarding that a such enormously successful future Tesla may have to change into another type of organization because it would at that point command the resources of several large and wealthy countries.

Above video is sort of the 'conclusion' or take away of a longer series of technical videos, where James is lecturing Dave and the audience.
If you don't have 1-2 day, the video below is perhaps the best: Condensed, and good explanations.

I haven't done any time markings on this, but the gist of the argument is the following.

We don't really know for sure that FSD is solvable. There still may be some corner cases so far unseen which may turn out to be intractable. Or really time consuming.
FSD It most likely solvable with camera only: What Tesla has shown indicates that FSD can be solved with cameras only with a high degree of certainty. Tesla now have pseudo-lidar down pat, called 'birdseye', based on either time-fusion of a single camera or multi-camera fusion - or both (perhaps with inter-relational verification)
So, rephrasing: It is not entirely a given that FSD can be solved, but if it can, camera-only works.
Dave tries to raise questions about competitors and poke holes in James' 'Tesla-pole-position'-arguments, but James very succinctly details how and why Tesla can scale easily and cheaply, and Waymo cannot.
Off course they can choose to scale - slowly and expensively. But they will be very vulnerable because Tesla has tremendous pricing power. James has Tesla's long term cost per mile at ~10 cent - all included.
Dave also repeats his sort of desire to still buy a nice Tesla FSD as a private person, but James gently talks him down by pricing FSD as being initially in the 100K-500K range - per car.
(Dave had the same discussion with two youtubers, Zac and Jesse ~two months ago where he sort of insisted and persisted that Tesla could and should sell him FSD at around 10K, even though they could earn 10-25X of that by keeping the car. I like Dave a lot, but that was not his shining hour.)

Short version:
Even though we don't know for sure if FSD can be solved, if it can, camera-only is enough (If you have very good sensor fusion AND a f**kton of data)
FSD may be solvable with lidar and camera also. He politely does not overly criticize lidar-driven solutions, saying there are good historic reasons but his statements about lidar solving for static object and position are damming, but not helping with moving objects and people - precisely 'cause he is so polite.

TLDR:
0. FSD may not be solvable - we cannot be totally sure - yet.
1. If Waymo and other companies with lidar-driven solutions can solve FSD then so can Tesla. Lidar == Pseudo-lidar.
But the converse is not true: If Tesla can solve FSD using only cameras then it does not follow that Waymo and other lidar-companies can also. (Off course they can in the primitive sense that they can just ignore all lidar input but that has not been their claim or strategy)
2. When Tesla (as is likely) solves FSD they will in the upper bound reach large-country-level wealth. Especially if the solve it first, and use the proceeds to consolidate their position by extreme and rapid scaling.

Nicely done thank you!

 

[chronoreverse]

OT Does anyone else find the new style harder on the eyes? I tried dark mode and it doesn't help. Feels like the contrast between text box, quoted text, and page background isn't enough.

Yeah, I find it harder on the eyes too. I set the font size to Large in preferences and it's a little better.

 

[capster]

Where's Lodger? Did he get lost in the shuffle

Perhaps he is not ecstatic to see the new reaction score which reset everyone to zero? He had very large numbers of positive reactions — likes, informatives, funny’s, loves, and helpfuls — from all of his posts.

Edit: Are the old scores still available somewhere?

 

[jerry33]

Yeah, I find it harder on the eyes too. I set the font size to Large in preferences and it's a little better.

Large works for me.

 

[Christine69420]

This was a fantastic day! But I find it hard to understand why people sold today when the rocket was climbing. Glad they did fuel the rocket though!

Yeah, I find it harder on the eyes too. I set the font size to Large in preferences and it's a little better.

Interesting. I have set font size to Small and the font is still so large that I have to zoom the page down to 67% to be able to read at all. Font is still too big after zooming.

But I guess they will get around to it.

PS Firefox Browser.

 

[jerry33]

This was a fantastic day! But I find it hard to understand why people sold today when the rocket was climbing. Glad they did fuel the rocket though!



Interesting. I have set font size to Small and the font is still so large that I have to zoom the page down to 67% to be able to read at all. Font is still too big after zooming.

But I guess they will get around to it.

PS Firefox Browser.

Check the font setting in Firefox. You might be double zooming.

 

[mickle]

AT OT Does anyone else find the new style harder on the eyes? I tried dark mode and it doesn't help. Feels like the contrast between text box, quoted text, and page background isn't enough.

The contrast in dark mode is too much and very annoying to read, I gave up on it. Bright white text on black is no good. Text should be slightly gray, or background less black. Too bad we just can't pick the background and foreground colors.

 

[15Peter20]

AT OT Does anyone else find the new style harder on the eyes? I tried dark mode and it doesn't help. Feels like the contrast between text box, quoted text, and page background isn't enough.

Well, I haven’t blinked once during trading hours today, so my eyes feel like boiled eggs wrapped in sandpaper, dipped in paint stripper. Are you sure that’s not your problem?

 

[corduroy]

The contrast in dark mode is too much and very annoying to read, I gave up on it. Bright white text on black is no good. Text should be slightly gray, or background less black. Too bad we just can't pick the background and foreground colors.

Yep, I hate to be "that guy" who complains about updates but the old dark mode was light grey on dark grey and a pleasing font. Heaven on the eyes compared to this.

 

[lascavarian]

CNBC new program “The Edge” discussing spacs and trashing Fiskr in the process. Could be interesting.

Calacanis (sp) gutting Bitcoin. More of a religion ...

 

[Prunesquallor]

So with other companies starting to manufacture the 4680s I am assuming they will ALSO sell to other companies and will be paying Tesla licensing fee? Has this come up? Is it material?

Tesla battery supplier LG to launch pilot 4680 battery line with a lofty goal: report

Recent reports from South Korea have indicated that LG Energy Solutions, a wholly-owned subsidiary of LG Chem, is building a pilot 4680 battery production line for Tesla. The pilot line is reportedly being constructed quickly, with the project potentially entering operations ahead of Japanese...

www.teslarati.com

Haven’t you heard? Everyone else is going Ultium/Solid State.

 

[Big Time]

️️️
So Pumped For Tmrw

 

[Pras]

CNBC new program “The Edge” discussing spacs and trashing Fiskr in the process. Could be interesting.

Even though I have some spac names, I take the pleasure that spacs are shielding tsla, at least a bit, from all the negative people out there.

 

[Joe F]

Since we’re ganging up on the new release, when I use an iPad, I zoom in on just the body of msgs, eliminating the left pane. Now, the poster name at the top of the post is gone, so I either have to forget zooming, or shift right to see who posted the pearls of wisdom.

 

[ByeByeJohnny]

The great thing about all these robotaxi valuations is that even if that fails FSD will still make enough that we can all buy Australia as our Island.

I've been preaching about how much the monthly subscription model will pull in for revenue for years. Finally on Friday I saw an analyst actually using that model in a spreadsheet and it was Rob Maurer no less. He's conservative on how many cars Tesla will make in 2030 though.

So either robotaxi happens and that's super great. Or it doesn't and it never goes much further than where the beta is now. Guess what, that's pretty great too if you do the numbers.

 

[ajax]

AT OT Does anyone else find the new style harder on the eyes? I tried dark mode and it doesn't help. Feels like the contrast between text box, quoted text, and page background isn't enough.

Yeah, my main complaint is the long width of the text box which makes it harder to read.

 

[lafrisbee]

OK I KNOW THE MODS HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR ME TO BITCH ABOUT THE NEW FORMAT. (And I've enjoyed making them wait, but here it is)
The"Like Dislike" totals at the bottom of each post are no longer providing any insight into whether the post is worth reading.
It used to be that I could quickly see how many of each reaction readers had posted. Now it just is a big lump of pastel color with a couple of names off to the side and then a "5 others" next to it.
It was useful before, now its a lump.

~~~In fact, the Mods also are learning the ins & outs of the new format just the same as everyone else so, for ONCE!, you are...safe....for...a....little...bit~~~~

 

[Norwalk79]

Congratulation Tesla comrades: Mark today Mar 9th 2021 is a big History day. Did Nasdaq ever gain 500pts at noon time? and Tesla gain $693 +$130 +23% at 6:36 PM ET. We have achieved the impossible comeback after being knocked down for a whole month Feb 9th – Mar 8. It is similar to several yrs ago people said it’s impossible to deliver 500K EVs in 2020, equal to the whole Europe EV sale in 2019.

It’s look like we are cloning the GameStop mission, also thought impossible this morning. Tesla has All the ingredients to deserve the $900 buy upgrade with the perfect rocket $1.9T Covid-19 help package. This is one in a lifetime chance to cripple the Tesla shorts for good so we can invest successfully for our family and our children. Every time Market go up for one day, the shorts attack the very next day because all buyers have bought their shares, so no one is around to protect the share price.

So dear Tesla comrades: the shorts have been shorting all over the market, particularly the EV stocks. They are vulnerable for consistent buying because they have to buy back borrowed shares at higher price. Tell everybody to keep fighting for this final battle until we get back our $900 dream going to $1000 by the end of this 2021

Good luck to all. Cheers

 

[Prunesquallor]

Q4 E-Tron. Seriously, WTF?