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If FSD Beta decides to drive into a tree, and as driver I slam on the brakes, disengaging fsd beta, but car still hits the tree, is it an accident on fsd beta or not?

If, when you hit the tree it falls over, but, you were unable hear it because of the excellent sound damping design of the car, did the tree falling make a sound?
 
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IMHO yes and no: They had a problem integrating radar with camera output, because radar didn´t know where things were vertically. So they got rid of that problem and saved some money. The high resolution radar that is coming now allows for better sensor fusion so it is worth the extra money.
The lack of vertical radar resolution was apparently only one of the problems. Another issue was the difficulty in integrating information coming in from the cameras with information coming in from the radar. Sensor fusion is a difficult area. Perhaps this also applied to integrating feeds from the ultrasonics. I'm sure the R&D teams don't just give up on the underlying problems, even if the decision is made to swerve round the problems from time to time. I'm sure we'll find out more in due course.

(In the meantime I'm keeping an eye on the extent to which the second-hand Tesla's available locally do - or do not - have ultrasonic sensors fitted. I'd rather not touch-park an expensive vehicle in these streets.)
 
ByD needs to be at least at 10% operating margins using Chinese workers, building in China, and selling to mostly the Chinese. If not then it's a DOA trying to compete in western markets. Once they set up shop paying westerner wages and putting up with their capex cost and red tape, BYD will go back to losing massive amounts of money.

Tesla is at least around 12% in Western countries 20+% in China for OM.
Since there is no public data on profitability market by market, how can you make these assertions. As for BYD are you assuming their business is only passenger cars?

As I have at least implied, if not said directly, I am not a great fan of BYD passenger cars. I am a fan of their busses, trucks and battery technology in some applications.

We should be promoting the Tesla mission here. That also means recognizing other companies that have similar goals.

FUD is undesirable, even when it relates to some company other than Tesla.

When the Nicola, Rivian etc have negative margins calling that out is not FUD.

Claiming BYD cannot succeed because their margins are more like legacy OEM’s than like Tesla’s is not factually likely, much less proven. Positive cash flow is a more relevant measure of their prospects, as it always is the best measure of survivability.
 
Since there is no public data on profitability market by market, how can you make these assertions. As for BYD are you assuming their business is only passenger cars?

As I have at least implied, if not said directly, I am not a great fan of BYD passenger cars. I am a fan of their busses, trucks and battery technology in some applications.

We should be promoting the Tesla mission here. That also means recognizing other companies that have similar goals.

FUD is undesirable, even when it relates to some company other than Tesla.

When the Nicola, Rivian etc have negative margins calling that out is not FUD.

Claiming BYD cannot succeed because their margins are more like legacy OEM’s than like Tesla’s is not factually likely, much less proven. Positive cash flow is a more relevant measure of their prospects, as it always is the best measure of survivability.
You should tell that to BYD, in which they have multiple times spread lies about Tesla for the sake of sales while Tesla have nothing but trying to partner with them for the sake of the mission.

Also I have been speculating most Chinese manufactures will be DOA in western countries because we have yet to have an example of a brand from China that have succeeded besides being in the commodity market. Brand image, which gives company free margins just for the sake of being positive on the brand, is no where to be found for Chinese companies. We see this even in China, as people are willing to pay more for just the Tesla brand vs domestic brands, hence why they try so hard trying to destroy the Tesla brand. The only thing I have seen the Chinese to fight this is by branding their products as western sounding brand like "Canadian Solar", which has nothing to do with Canada.

So yea they can go F themselves.
 
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942 comments and you're only just learning about cost decline curves and Wright's Law?

Congrats - you're one of today's lucky 10k.
View attachment 918778

Lol.

I’m definitely missing something here. Happy to be the one hearing about something for the first time. Just trying to figure out what that something is.

Now, back to that 8x figure. Batteries cost around $100/kWh to produce today. 8x this is $800/kWh. A 2013 Model S had a 85 kWh battery. The cost of the battery alone was $68k. And the car was selling for, what, $90k? And the scale of production was a couple of thousand units per month if my memory serves me correctly. Hence my comment that Tesla could make money only with government incentives.

Maybe what is implied here is that it cost Tesla less than $68k to produce the battery? So the 8x was industry average and didn’t apply to Tesla necessarily?

Please do educate me.
 
Lol.

I’m definitely missing something here. Happy to be the one hearing about something for the first time. Just trying to figure out what that something is.

Now, back to that 8x figure. Batteries cost around $100/kWh to produce today. 8x this is $800/kWh. A 2013 Model S had a 85 kWh battery. The cost of the battery alone was $68k. And the car was selling for, what, $90k? And the scale of production was a couple of thousand units per month if my memory serves me correctly. Hence my comment that Tesla could make money only with government incentives.

Maybe what is implied here is that it cost Tesla less than $68k to produce the battery? So the 8x was industry average and didn’t apply to Tesla necessarily?

Please do educate me.
18650 cells from Panasonic cost Tesla about $140 per kWh in 2013. The real genius move by Tesla was to eschew automotive grade pouch cells used by Nissan Leaf for example and go with consumer grade 18650 cells from Panasonic. Tesla engineered safety at the pack level. At the time that was considered too risky a move by legacy auto. Panasonic had acquired Sanyo’s lithium ion cell business a few years earlier and had excess capacity. I believe they might have already written off the battery plant. They not only gave Tesla a sweetheart deal, they also invested in the company. The alternative was to shut down the plant. That plant is still running today supplying cells for the model S/X
 
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Lol.

I’m definitely missing something here. Happy to be the one hearing about something for the first time. Just trying to figure out what that something is.

Now, back to that 8x figure. Batteries cost around $100/kWh to produce today. 8x this is $800/kWh. A 2013 Model S had a 85 kWh battery. The cost of the battery alone was $68k. And the car was selling for, what, $90k? And the scale of production was a couple of thousand units per month if my memory serves me correctly. Hence my comment that Tesla could make money only with government incentives.

Maybe what is implied here is that it cost Tesla less than $68k to produce the battery? So the 8x was industry average and didn’t apply to Tesla necessarily?

Please do educate me.
A decade from today is more like a 6x decrease so my mistake. It's almost a 9x decrease from the article from 2020.

 
In 2013 it was a mess. Tesla didn't have much of a supply chain and vertically integrated or die. However despite all that they managed a positive gross margin of over 20% from all the chaos. Tesla didn't even know how to manufacture cars at mass scale then. So it's a miracle how they ran such a lean ship and I have no idea wtf these start ups are doing today.

I don't think it's useful to compare 2013 Tesla with 2023 EV startups. The market is totally different: the EV market in 2013 was a rounding error and EVs were at best a novelty for environmentally-minded rich people or techie weirdos, barely elevated from a garage project.

Standards of what people expect from an EV have also shifted enormously in the 10 years since (in large part because of Tesla), and the EV market is huge now, with EV companies commanding higher valuations at earlier stages.

Comparisons of "when Tesla was doing this in 2013..." or "when Tesla had this market cap..." seem like apples and oranges.
 

Tesla Giga Shanghai Further Optimizes Car Deliveries in China by Adding Railroad​


TLDR: “The transportation of Tesla cars by train has a number of advantages. The company has the ability to quickly and cost-effectively deliver a lot of cars to the far regions of China. This in turn significantly reduces the company's carbon footprint by not requiring fuel to be burned by the trucks that deliver them.”
 
Regarding the Mission...

This article on Teslarati shows Rivian making progress on development of another in a range of versions of their delivery van. I hope this goes well and that Rivian can remain viable in the market going forward. Tesla needs support from all other EV manufacturers to achieve their goal of world domination, er, accelerating the transition to renewables.

 
Could be a something burger but too early to tell if it's just a few disgruntled buyers.

I remember byd was ranked pretty low in the Chinese reliability survey but many said they were complains due to missed deliveries...maybe just shareholders painting a rosey picture.




Survey from OCT 2022


These are all such low numbers compared to something out of an organization like JD Power’s dependability study, granted this seems to be measuring complaints rather than service fixes etc which is interesting.

#1 in the latest JD Power study is Lexus with 133 problems per 100 vehicles, that would
be 13,300 issues per 10,000 lol
 
  • Funny
Reactions: FireMedic

Tesla Giga Shanghai Further Optimizes Car Deliveries in China by Adding Railroad​


TLDR: “The transportation of Tesla cars by train has a number of advantages. The company has the ability to quickly and cost-effectively deliver a lot of cars to the far regions of China. This in turn significantly reduces the company's carbon footprint by not requiring fuel to be burned by the trucks that deliver them.”

This reminded me that some time back I read about China plans to open a rail connection to the EU that bypassed Russian states. It would be another path to deliver Teslas to that part of the world in addition to shipping via the Suez Canal.

Looking forward to seeing this ramp up of rail shipments continue to grow, because there is still that demand problem to address. Tesla can't deliver them fast enough to satisfy the demand.

Edit: Found this graphic for Show-and-Tell...

3c236dbd-50d5-44b1-916a-2a0956fcc8d8_dd4d9faf.jpg
 
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I don't think it's useful to compare 2013 Tesla with 2023 EV startups. The market is totally different: the EV market in 2013 was a rounding error and EVs were at best a novelty for environmentally-minded rich people or techie weirdos, barely elevated from a garage project.

Standards of what people expect from an EV have also shifted enormously in the 10 years since (in large part because of Tesla), and the EV market is huge now, with EV companies commanding higher valuations at earlier stages.

Comparisons of "when Tesla was doing this in 2013..." or "when Tesla had this market cap..." seem like apples and oranges.
You talk as if 2013 was am easier environment for Tesla when tier 1 suppliers laughed EV companies out the door, the world was recovering from a deep recession, battery packs were expensive, and the charging infrastructure was nonexistent.

The standard however haven't changed. No one said having a gross margin of over -100% is fine except retail stock pumpers. These "start ups" are decades old, Lucid being only 4 years younger than Tesla. So let's stop making excuses for poor execution.
 
These are all such low numbers compared to something out of an organization like JD Power’s dependability study, granted this seems to be measuring complaints rather than service fixes etc which is interesting.

#1 in the latest JD Power study is Lexus with 133 problems per 100 vehicles, that would
be 13,300 issues per 10,000 lol
How you get decimal complaints is beyond me out of 10k cars. So the number maybe percentages and not actually number of complains.
 
If, when you hit the tree it falls over, but, you were unable hear it because of the excellent sound damping design of the car, did the tree falling make a sound?
That would be funnier if Tesla had sound deadening/insulation as good as the other brands. Which I don't think it does. (doesn't stop me or huge numbers of other people choosing Tesla... but still)
 
Since there is no public data on profitability market by market, how can you make these assertions. As for BYD are you assuming their business is only passenger cars?

As I have at least implied, if not said directly, I am not a great fan of BYD passenger cars. I am a fan of their busses, trucks and battery technology in some applications.

We should be promoting the Tesla mission here. That also means recognizing other companies that have similar goals.

FUD is undesirable, even when it relates to some company other than Tesla.

When the Nicola, Rivian etc have negative margins calling that out is not FUD.

Claiming BYD cannot succeed because their margins are more like legacy OEM’s than like Tesla’s is not factually likely, much less proven. Positive cash flow is a more relevant measure of their prospects, as it always is the best measure of survivability.
BYD will be fine as long as they can ensure the motors and batteries short out just after warranty is up. That's what we call precision engineering.
 
You talk as if 2013 was am easier environment for Tesla when tier 1 suppliers laughed EV companies out the door, the world was recovering from a deep recession, battery packs were expensive, and the charging infrastructure was nonexistent.

The standard however haven't changed. No one said having a gross margin of over -100% is fine except retail stock pumpers. These "start ups" are decades old, Lucid being only 4 years younger than Tesla. So let's stop making excuses for poor execution.

No, I'm not saying it's easier. But the market cap comparisons specifically are going to be misleading: gaining some small traction as an EV startup these days gets you a way higher valuation than it would have in 2013. So a $1B EV company today is likely nowhere near as far along as a $1B EV company in 2013.