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

[elasalle]

There is a hack that has shut down the dealer network almost completely. Also, several states use the company for registration. This means Tesla is probably done for the month in those states. Knock a few thousand off Tesla’s sales this quarter.

Glass half full -
red sea delays in Q1,
dealer n/w issues in Q2

Does this affect all car manufacturers or just Tesla ?

 

[SO16]

Glass half full -
red sea delays in Q1,
dealer n/w issues in Q2

Does this affect all car manufacturers or just Tesla ?

All in certain states like MI, WI and CO.

 

[Stretch2727]

There is a hack that has shut down the dealer network almost completely. Also, several states use the company for registration. This means Tesla is probably done for the month in those states. Knock a few thousand off Tesla’s sales this quarter.

Reference on the states that cannot issue registrations? The dealership issue is widely reported but I did not see anything on states that cannot issue registrations.

 

[EQC_]

Tesla should exit the solar business. All it’s doing is causing reputational damage and wasting money. If the future really is Optimus and robotaxi, wasting resources on solar makes even less sense. It seems Musk would rather keep up the charade than admit the Solarcity acquisition is a bust

On the other hand, I (knock on wood, don't want to jinx myself) had a great experience getting Tesla Solar + Powerwall, and having one app that makes the car, panels, and powerwall work together is quite nice.

I suspect there may also be eventual advantages to integrating Optimus into that same system...maybe he can recognize when there's excess solar power and do the vacuuming and other such chores at those times .

 

[Linkmeup]

Well, about to go on another vacation. Can't wait for the roadtrip to the new restaurant once it opens...which doesn't look like its long now!

Looking forward to 1 more week until end of Q2 2024!!

 

[CHGolferJim]

Couldn’t a random walk also result in a close +/- $5?

Hard to predict

 

[Tronguy]

Can someone explain to me why Elon talks compute in terms of Energy?

Fairly straightforward. Nobody sane would put a Cray in an automobile or in a cell phone, even if it gave the Best Performance in the World for whatever compute needs one would need.

Going along those lines, the amount of current a given performance device (say, measured in Floating Operations Per Second or something) goes down as the line widths in the device shrink. The typical power draw of a digital gate goes (very roughly) as P = VCC^2 * frequency * C, where VCC is the supply voltage for the gate, "frequency" is how often per second the gate changes state, and "C" is a fudge factor, but is hugely dependent upon the area taken up by the transistors involved. That area is, again, very roughly, the square of the line width (i.e., just how small can one make a transistor), given the usual capacitor equation of C = epsilon*A/d, where epsilon is the permittivity (8.854*10^-12 for permittivity of free space, and epsilon_r is the relative permittivity of the material in question). "d" is the distance between the base substrate and the gate of the transistor. The overall capacitance includes the capacitance of any traces in the die, as well.

But this "power" equation is the general reason that processors keep on getting more and more powerful in terms of compute as the line widths and VCC's of semiconductors shrinks down. The 8080 of the 1980's had a relatively huge die in it with line widths in the micrometers; the CPUs of the current day are in the sub-nanometer range. Essentially, improvements in photolithography drive the shrinkage, including going from daylight to UV to X-rays to reduce the wavelength of the light, giving better accuracy, and so on. It's fun being a silicon processing engineer.

Having said the above, algorithms have a lot to do with power consumption as well. CPUs in search of reasonable power consumption (think cell phones) will actually shut down huge amounts of the hardware (i.e., no clock) in order to save power; sometimes, this is done truly dynamically during processing. How far one wants to go down this pike depends upon how inventive one gets.

As I understand it, the driving computer in a Tesla (the one with all those NN hardware functions) draws a hundred+ Watts of power or so when it's running at full tilt. And this goes to another interesting point: For what they do, a dedicated NN bunch of hardware is more efficient than, say, a standard processor doing image recognition or what-all. Fewer bits are changing state, really, and that reduces power consumption. Trying to do what those NN chips are doing without actually using NN chips could likely be done - but it would take more hardware and more power to do it.

So, when Tesla is evaluating various solutions to getting Work Done (ha - and "Power", in this case, is right along with the definition of Physics Work!), they're doing a balancing act between improved line widths, improved hardware algorithms, improved software algorithms, segmenting problems different ways, turning stuff on and off (which slows down performance, since turning something on or off takes time, but maybe it's worth the power consumption reduction), and stuff that I haven't thought of off the top of my head yet.

Assuming that the Task At Hand (driving a car) is vaguely fixed in terms of compute needs, then how much hardware and what-all and how efficient it all is at what it does is vitally important: And that efficiency is, pretty much, on how much power the business uses. For somebody at Elon's level, that's a pretty handy measuring stick. And it wouldn't be just at Elon's level: It's a pretty good way to figure how well one is doing at the job.

Fun stuff.

 

[SOULPEDL]

Why would a Tesla sales technology use anything close to an ICE sales network? They don't even use SAP.
I'm calling FUD on this without further details. Or are you all talking registration system? That's next quarter sales by now with plenty time to catch up.

15,000 ICE dealerships affected (per Youtuber yesterday), potentially a lethal blow to some of them.
Are they all still down? There were 2 hacks in a row, it's very serious.

We should be celebrating folks, and sorry for the naïve ones involved. Then again, Dealerships were never going to really make it in the digital world, especially since they were such d***s every time I visited. (Some exceptions, my 70's GM Blazer was repainted for free out of warranty, really nice work too. Remember those days?)

 

[FreqFlyer]

This guy was spot-on with the Highland M3. His take on the rumored tesla van. Designed based on Semi V1, Semi V2 should debut soon, so the design may be tweaked. Another mainstream market for Tesla to be in and increase revenues and stock price.

It will be slow Tesla news till 8/8

https://twitter.com/x/status/1803396534932836402

 

[SOULPEDL]

Fairly straightforward. Nobody sane would put a Cray in an automobile or in a cell phone, even if it gave the Best Performance in the World for whatever compute needs one would need.

Going along those lines, the amount of current a given performance device (say, measured in Floating Operations Per Second or something) goes down as the line widths in the device shrink. The typical power draw of a digital gate goes (very roughly) as P = VCC^2 * frequency * C, where VCC is the supply voltage for the gate, "frequency" is how often per second the gate changes state, and "C" is a fudge factor, but is hugely dependent upon the area taken up by the transistors involved. That area is, again, very roughly, the square of the line width (i.e., just how small can one make a transistor), given the usual capacitor equation of C = epsilon*A/d, where epsilon is the permittivity (8.854*10^-12 for permittivity of free space, and epsilon_r is the relative permittivity of the material in question). "d" is the distance between the base substrate and the gate of the transistor. The overall capacitance includes the capacitance of any traces in the die, as well.

But this "power" equation is the general reason that processors keep on getting more and more powerful in terms of compute as the line widths and VCC's of semiconductors shrinks down. The 8080 of the 1980's had a relatively huge die in it with line widths in the micrometers; the CPUs of the current day are in the sub-nanometer range. Essentially, improvements in photolithography drive the shrinkage, including going from daylight to UV to X-rays to reduce the wavelength of the light, giving better accuracy, and so on. It's fun being a silicon processing engineer.

Having said the above, algorithms have a lot to do with power consumption as well. CPUs in search of reasonable power consumption (think cell phones) will actually shut down huge amounts of the hardware (i.e., no clock) in order to save power; sometimes, this is done truly dynamically during processing. How far one wants to go down this pike depends upon how inventive one gets.

As I understand it, the driving computer in a Tesla (the one with all those NN hardware functions) draws a hundred+ Watts of power or so when it's running at full tilt. And this goes to another interesting point: For what they do, a dedicated NN bunch of hardware is more efficient than, say, a standard processor doing image recognition or what-all. Fewer bits are changing state, really, and that reduces power consumption. Trying to do what those NN chips are doing without actually using NN chips could likely be done - but it would take more hardware and more power to do it.

So, when Tesla is evaluating various solutions to getting Work Done (ha - and "Power", in this case, is right along with the definition of Physics Work!), they're doing a balancing act between improved line widths, improved hardware algorithms, improved software algorithms, segmenting problems different ways, turning stuff on and off (which slows down performance, since turning something on or off takes time, but maybe it's worth the power consumption reduction), and stuff that I haven't thought of off the top of my head yet.

Assuming that the Task At Hand (driving a car) is vaguely fixed in terms of compute needs, then how much hardware and what-all and how efficient it all is at what it does is vitally important: And that efficiency is, pretty much, on how much power the business uses. For somebody at Elon's level, that's a pretty handy measuring stick. And it wouldn't be just at Elon's level: It's a pretty good way to figure how well one is doing at the job.

Fun stuff.

It is fun. Your Device Physics presentation would have been easier to follow if they also saw at least some foils, but point taken

This leads to a brand new question in Chip Hardware Design Rules. When the cost of Energy outpaces the cost of even more high-tech chipsets, it's an innovation recipe that's gonna explode! Pat understands this at Intel.

I realize the FABs are already expensive, but it seems to me there ought to be a chip design that takes a freakin month to manufacture, purely optical in nature, or some atomic level solution that would normally not be cost effective.

 

[UkNorthampton]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1804168942010749365

Looks like all fuel types, not just EVs.

Model Y being 40/334 (9.7%) for May and 11% for Year to Date SUV market share. Considering the large number of cars for sale in China, these seem like good numbers but not sure how this compares to previous quarters..

DriveGreenLiveGreen @DriveGreen80167
Latest Weekly Car Sales in China: Model Y Surpasses BYD to Become the Best-Selling Car and the Top-Selling SUV in May

In May 2024, the Tesla Model Y surpassed BYD to become the best-selling car, with 39,985 units sold. Year-to-date, the Model Y has reached 166,707 units.

Total SUV sales in May amounted to 334,260 units, while cumulative sales from January to May totaled 1,472,849 units.

 

[Tronguy]

It is fun. Your Device Physics presentation would have been easier to follow if they also saw at least some foils, but point taken

This leads to a brand new question in Chip Hardware Design Rules. When the cost of Energy outpaces the cost of even more high-tech chipsets, it's an innovation recipe that's gonna explode! Pat understands this at Intel.

I realize the FABs are already expensive, but it seems to me there ought to be a chip design that takes a freakin month to manufacture, purely optical in nature, or some atomic level solution that would normally not be cost effective.

Here's a real twist, what if SpaceX partnered with ASM and did Litho in zero gravity + zero contact? The machine could be made from freakin balsa wood up there. Dep, Spin, Etch all works still. I've had this idea for years, but ASM is so darn good at holding things still, still. In other words, whatever was too high-cost to develop in the past, is now up for bid once again IMHO. Shrink is the common logic, what if it's not dominant when using other tech? Way OT now...

I’ll keep this short. One of the Big Problems with going to even tinier line widths is that, what with the fuzzy nature of electrons and the question of “is the electron here-or over there?” Insulators don’t insulate, conductors don’t, and adjacent traces on the die interfere with each other.

What with current leakage and adjacent trace interference, characterizing gates, flip flops, and all, once a new line width/process is put into place turns into, sometimes, a multi-year task, where not only do the engineers work out prop delays and such, they also go back and tweak, well, everything, in order to make functional devices.

Worse, this low-level funning around sometimes has to be accommodated for in higher level tools like Synopsis, which translate between design tools like Verilog and VHDL (think: C++ for silicon), and sometimes the human brain.

So, designing really high performance silicon isn’t typically a month-long effort: it’s more like at least a year, or years. By lots of people.

The closest people get to Instant Design is to use things like Field Programmable Gate Arrays.. and even those require significant effort to route, place, and verify. And are much more expensive on a per unit and power basis as compared to purpose built silicon.

More fun.

 

[Curt Renz]

This is a Triple Witching Day, a quarterly expiration of options and futures. More interest than ordinary monthlies or weeklies. Option writing market makers and hedge funds with the ability to temporarily manipulate the TSLA share price, may want to target a closing price under $185. Perhaps even under $182.5.

 

[Snerruc]

Glass half full -
red sea delays in Q1,
dealer n/w issues in Q2

Does this affect all car manufacturers or just Tesla ?

All. Dealers are shut down by hack. Apparently, sales are frozen until the company hacked gets back up. 15,000 total.3 to 5 states. It’s a company called CDK that’s the cause.

 

[GhostSkater]

https://twitter.com/x/status/1804174548079714562

 

[SOULPEDL]

All. Dealers are shut down by hack. Apparently, sales are frozen until the company hacked gets back up. 15,000 total.3 to 5 states. It’s a company called CDK that’s the cause.

You are saying Tesla is also shutdown. Source please?

 

[SOULPEDL]

There is a hack that has shut down the dealer network almost completely. Also, several states use the company for registration. This means Tesla is probably done for the month in those states. Knock a few thousand off Tesla’s sales this quarter.

Some States, for Registration only. I don't see a problem here for Tesla - instead I see a win. EV% market share for the month/quarter will rocket.

From https://www.cybertruckownersclub.com/forum/threads/cdk-cyber-attack.19043/#post-342846

Says...

"I am in Grand Rapids MI and just for a call from the SC a few minutes ago. They can’t register any vehicles with the State of MI. They came up with a work around where a Tesla advisor will go with me to the SoS to register the car in person. So just got my pick up day for June 26 at SoS."

 

[Waiting4M3]

you can bet in situations like this Tesla will always be more nimble than OEMs, we've seen it when they retrofitted parts on Model 3s en-route to Europe on a RORO, during chip shortage, Sweden strike, it's the company culture that determines the outcome

 

[ggr]

top installation by power is at 38.7 mW

Units matter. ITYM MW, not milliWatts.

 

[TesslaBull]

1. This is Florida not Europe
2. Some of us can’t use the tax credit
3. Some of us BUY solar power from our utility for a very reasonable price.

1. It's all the same planet. If they can build roofs to last hundreds of years in Europe, so can we if we choose to.
2. There is no income limit for the federal solar tax credit. However, you need a large enough taxable income to claim the full credit. If you owe less in taxes than what your credit is worth, you can roll over the remaining credit to future tax years.
3. The person I was referring to has a $200/month electric bill which the $18k, 10kW system would cover. I wasn't talking about "some of us", I was addressing someone specifically.

Overall, your reply was pretty meaningless.