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

[willow_hiller]

But even when Tesla thinks the problem is solved, I don't think they will let us take our hands off the wheel for at least another year after it quits making mistakes like running stop signs.

To be fair, those problems may be solved sooner than we think.

If you go back and watch that recent Chuck Cook video you referenced with the car running the occluded stop sign, it wasn't actually the occlusion that led to the failure. I went through the video frame by frame, and the visualization rendered the stop sign almost 2 full seconds, or 66 feet prior to running it: FSD Beta 10.69

So I think the vision system is pretty darn solid at this point. They just need to work on reliability and consistency of the driving policy in order to make use of that vision system.

 

[PeterJA]

...If you know of an AI breakthrough that will lead to full autonomy in months instead of years, please share.

Dojo.

Tesla releases new deep-dive presentations on its Dojo AI supercomputer

Tesla has released two new deep-dive presentations into its Dojo AI supercomputer ahead of its upcoming AI Day 2. You...

electrek.co

 

[betstarship]

They did it. They made a supercomputer into web service.

WTF

Edit: Hell, why not tack on a long-term vision for a real-time ML/AI protocol on the OSI stack.

 

[2daMoon]

Would it be possible for someone to debate them regarding their conclusion, Tesla, a lawyer, Elon, one of us, anyone?
It seems like someone needs to speak up professionally and in public audience about the absurdity of this.
It’s like calling someone something they’re not and then not giving them the respect to explain themselves in opposition of the accusation.

Somebody did speak up. Elon did when he Tweeted about how they are irrelevant.

Their ratings are based upon a careful evaluation of their profits rather than of the companies listed. Like Tesla's stance on advertising, the ratings agencies aren't getting anything from Tesla, so, will offer nothing in return for as long as they think it is something Tesla might someday pay for. Just like the mainstream media has done, for the same reason. Because, why not? That's how it has always been done, right?

Only, Tesla doesn't need them in order to thrive. Playing that game is but another reason legacy companies are doomed.

The ratings make no significant difference to the continued success of Tesla, only to us HODLers. Even then, the marginal difference we might expect from an investment grade rating could easily be offset by the SSDD squad of MMs and other manipulators' usual antics.

Personally, if push ever came to shove, I'd prefer to see Elon purchase the ratings agencies outright, and then shutter them. Toss the lot out on the street, lock the doors, and retire their brands forever. They are useless, irrelevant, and would not be missed if they went the way of the Dodo.

Maybe then the "Altman Z Ratings Agency" could be set up, funded in perpetuity by a benevolent trust to avoid the temptations that have bent the current crop into submission. (maybe run as AI to further avoid temptation)

 

[Bet TSLA]

Would it be possible for someone to debate them regarding their conclusion, Tesla, a lawyer, Elon, one of us, anyone?
It seems like someone needs to speak up professionally and in public audience about the absurdity of this.
It’s like calling someone something they’re not and then not giving them the respect to explain themselves in opposition of the accusation.

The way you deal with irrelevancies is to ignore them. Can we please stop giving them air?

 

[carterm2]

When my Tesla SPanel's gateway went down, my Tesla App managed to keep the solar production updated... the neighbors Tesla SP gateway picked up the signal from my SE Inverter. My gateway was replaced, without much of an interruption (discovery and solution took more time than I would have liked).

I imagine that there are more network affects coming, Tesla has a cellular network of millions of cars, and Starlink seems to be a possible provider, which should help connect drivers in-between cell networks. (Waiting for a tow truck would be a stretch...)

 

[WADan]

Not for long.

FSD will destroy the "competition is coming" story, likely soon.

A car that can drive itself nearly anywhere, at any time of day, at any legal speed, with zero human interventions and greater-than-human safety... will be major news that trumpets around the world. Every media outlet will repeat it, and ask which competitors are close to delivering the same capability. The answer will be no one.

How many buyers of new cars will want one without this capability? Not many.

When will this nuclear bomb hit the auto industry? The man who supervises Tesla engineers says this year.

I sincerely hope that you are right. But the man had been overly ”optimistic“ in the recent past.

 

[Singuy]

Not for long.

FSD will destroy the "competition is coming" story, likely soon.

A car that can drive itself nearly anywhere, at any time of day, at any legal speed, with zero human interventions and greater-than-human safety... will be major news that trumpets around the world. Every media outlet will repeat it, and ask which competitors are close to delivering the same capability. The answer will be no one.

How many buyers of new cars will want one without this capability? Not many.

When will this nuclear bomb hit the auto industry? The man who supervises Tesla engineers says this year.

Haha, no every news outlet will be silent until the first accident. Also every news outlet will criticize Tesla for enabling FSD without a proven track record that it will never crash (that's right, the highest bar in the world..NEVER CRASH), and then shows you footages from 7 years ago how it ran into something.

FSD is extremely divided. A lot of people doesn't understand how it'll save lives because they have rarely been in a car accident and think they drive just fine. They fear that it'll take life more because it's some robot driving and goes to show you how a Tesla ran into something...also the assumption is autopilot did it. There are also a group of people who thinks FSD takes over the car and you are at its mercy. My aunt in law was shaking her head the other day when she saw my Tesla. First thing she asked was..do you use autopilot? I read stories how it's dangerous.

The media has done enough to instill a whole lot of distrust in Tesla and FSD/Autopilot. Go read any comment section of a Tesla being in a car accident, people just assume it was autopilot even though 99% of the time it's just that old fashion crappy human driver being the culprit.

 

[Bet TSLA]

Not for long.

FSD will destroy the "competition is coming" story, likely soon.

A car that can drive itself nearly anywhere, at any time of day, at any legal speed, with zero human interventions and greater-than-human safety... will be major news that trumpets around the world. Every media outlet will repeat it, and ask which competitors are close to delivering the same capability. The answer will be no one.

How many buyers of new cars will want one without this capability? Not many.

When will this nuclear bomb hit the auto industry? The man who supervises Tesla engineers says this year.

Well, Elon has stopped even talking about "go to sleep in the back seat" autonomy. Now it's just wide deployment of something unspecified. As somebody who has paid for FSD three times now, I remain hopeful but unimpressed. Progress has been regular but incremental: there have been no real step changes.

And I believe that so long as FSD requires human supervision (i.e. is Level 2), then nobody outside of the Tesla community will be impressed in any meaningful way. "I can go to sleep in the back seat while my car drives me places" is understandable by anybody. "My car will do all the driving, but I have to watch it carefully all the time because it might otherwise kill me" is not something anybody will pay much for.

I'm not overly disappointed. I bought FSD because I wanted to watch a baby driving AI grow up. I've gotten my money's worth. But I doubt I'll be buying it again until it actually works, meaning what Elon envisioned and communicated in the beginning: a car that can drive anywhere on its own. "Wide deployment" of something inadequate means little to me.

And note that a level 4 geofenced car will be much more attractive to customers than a level 2 Tesla. If it's geofenced to the area you care about, that's good enough for many people.

 

[Doit]

Yes we know Tesla ran way ahead, faster than anyone could have imagined. This story is not the same just 2 years ago in which we were trying to defend Teslas market cap with a story and not profitability.

Credit agencies see legacy auto to be a risk for Tesla as they could be what Apple did to fit bit. It will take some time for them to realize it's not going to happen. But because this kind of thing happened many many times before, they are not going to discount the risk to be negligible.

If everyone saw teslas dominance as a sure thing, then everyone would have invested and we will have a lot of rich teslanaires running around but we don't. The majority of people believes in the competition story and daily look for demand softness.

The rationalization of Moody’s etc. not upgrading Tesla is on the border of absurdity.

We only need to take a look at this (previously shared here?) graph from Alexandra Metz, who was a VP and senior credit office of Moody’s Investor Service for 6 years (LinkedIn):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1564577718955454464

So let’s “analyze this”:
Until April 2013, Apple was rated as junk, when:

• Apple had $145 billion cash pile
• Apple announced plan to return $45 billion to investors via buyback and dividend in 2012, soon increased to $100 billions by 2015, ie 30 billions per annum for the next 3 yrs, and likely more thereafter
• Largest market cap since at least 2012 (Wikipedia: list of public corporations by market cap)
• etc
• etc

And yet, Apple was junk rated, until Moody’s gave Apple the diamond decorated authentication certificate of investment grade, magically at exactly the same date when Apple increased its cash return to $100 billion (Apple announcement, Moody’s upgrade).

How grateful and how overwhelmed with joyful tears were Apple investors with this Moody’s seal of approval! hallelujah!

So, just NO. Just don’t be ridiculous, as those “analysts” have been since a billion years ago.

The man said it all: they are “irrelevant.”

I would like to see Tesla give these thugs the middle finger by never issuing bond to pacify or rather, pay protection fees in exchange for an investment grade rating (which, BTW, was exactly what Apple did in the same month of April, 2013. How convenient!).

 

[SageBrush]

The qualitative factor about product breathe is not made up. From the autoline video I posted, the S&P guy said that in this industry, it is a known fact that high product diversity and constant refresh cycle sustain demand and increase brand loyalty. Subaru is kind of the only company that doesn't follow this mantra, however they don't make very meaningful sales and they chalk it up as a cult following. This is data collected from the past half a century. This is why he was so surprised that Tesla sustained demand and increased brand loyalty with no refresh schedules and with only 4 model of cars. This is brand new data. Is it going to be the norm going forward? Is it Tesla only? Is it such an outlier that it'll revert back to the mean? Nobody knows and they don't know what to do with this data but to have a wait and see approach.

I see, the analysts fear a stale product line. That is why the legacies should be junk rating.

As for Tesla
OTA = refreshes every month or so.
Continuous improvement

 

[CorneliusXX]

Kelvin Yang out with some juicy rumours around the next Shanghai factory. Supporting @Artful Dodger's thoughts on expansion in China. I wonder if this is the factory announcement that Elon has in mind or if the announcement relates to a location without an existing factory?

https://twitter.com/x/status/1566347304407375872

 

[Habakak]

The rationalization of Moody’s etc. not upgrading Tesla is on the border of absurdity.

We only need to take a look at this (previously shared here?) graph from Alexandra Metz, who was a VP and senior credit office of Moody’s Investor Service for 6 years (LinkedIn):

https://twitter.com/x/status/1564577718955454464

So let’s “analyze this”:
Until April 2013, Apple was rated as junk, when:

• Apple had $145 billion cash pile
• Apple announced plan to return $45 billion to investors via buyback and dividend in 2012, soon increased to $100 billions by 2015, ie 30 billions per annum for the next 3 yrs, and likely more thereafter
• Largest market cap since at least 2012 (Wikipedia: list of public corporations by market cap)
• etc
• etc

And yet, Apple was junk rated, until Moody’s gave Apple the diamond decorated authentication certificate of investment grade, magically at exactly the same date when Apple increased its cash return to $100 billion (Apple announcement, Moody’s upgrade).

How grateful and how overwhelmed with joyful tears were Apple investors with this Moody’s seal of approval! hallelujah!

So, just NO. Just don’t be ridiculous, as those “analysts” have been since a billion years ago.

The man said it all: they are “irrelevant.”

I would like to see Tesla give these thugs the middle finger by never issuing bond to pacify or rather, pay protection fees in exchange for an investment grade rating (which, BTW, was exactly what Apple did in the same month of April, 2013. How convenient!).

Apple's credit rating upgrade also occurred shortly after Jobs passed away. He was also not an establishment man. Elon should not give in to them and continue to disrupt. He should also not let the media silence him. They are the frauds misleading the population that can't think for themselves.

 

[Sofie]

Well, let’s see, hummmm…. If we just had a stand up comic to roast them. Who could do that….

Ugh! Forget I made that dumb post. I can’t delete it so just forget it, please.

 

[2daMoon]

Here is a little more light shining on our bright weekend.

U.S. EV adoption is happening faster than anticipated

EV adoption in the U.S. happening much faster than anticipated, according to an observation of research by Recurrent Auto

www.teslarati.com

 

[NicoV]

It doesn’t seem like the EU electricity prices are impacted a lot by the NorthStream 1 indefinite closure. The spot baseload prices (for tomorrow) are less than 0.40 euro, and most hourly spot prices are also below 40 cents. Unlike the 1 euro per kWh panic at the end of august.

 

[Usain]

To be fair, those problems may be solved sooner than we think.

If you go back and watch that recent Chuck Cook video you referenced with the car running the occluded stop sign, it wasn't actually the occlusion that led to the failure. I went through the video frame by frame, and the visualization rendered the stop sign almost 2 full seconds, or 66 feet prior to running it: FSD Beta 10.69

So I think the vision system is pretty darn solid at this point. They just need to work on reliability and consistency of the driving policy in order to make use of that vision system.

I agree with your analysis. The problem was not that it didn't see the stop sign. The problem was that it didn't see it soon enough, and more importantly, it didn't take the proper corrective action (driving policy).

As soon as FSD knew it had run a stop sign, it should have slammed on the brakes. And indeed, that's probably an easy fix.

But how many more edge cases like that are still out there? And after Tesla stops seeing failures, how long will it be before they let us take our hands off the wheel?

I contend that Tesla will be very cautious and stay at level 2 for quite some time.

 

[Usain]

Dojo.

Tesla releases new deep-dive presentations on its Dojo AI supercomputer

Tesla has released two new deep-dive presentations into its Dojo AI supercomputer ahead of its upcoming AI Day 2. You...

electrek.co

We need to be clear about what Dojo is and what it is not. Dojo allows Tesla to iterate faster. It does not come up with new techniques to solve real world AI.

The speed of the latter is limited by the speed of human ingenuity.

 

[winfield100]

Just to reiterate: Starship may launch this month. Tesla will show the latest for their AI-powered robot this month. It'll be the end of Q3 this month.

Happy Labor Day weekend, everyone!

looks like October.....

Starship-Super Heavy (Prototype) | Starship Flight Test 1

A Starship-Super Heavy (Prototype) rocket launched with Starship Flight Test 1 from Orbital Launch Pad A, Starbase, Texas, USA on Thursday Apr 20, 2023 at 13:33 UTC.

nextspaceflight.com

 

[The Accountant]

Credit agencies see legacy auto to be a risk for Tesla

. . and what's funny is the the truth is the other way around. Tesla is a risk to legacy auto.