I believe that assumption is correct, there's an order of magnitude more visual and other data available to a Tesla car than to a human driver: And that's just 6 cameras, they also have: yet another forward looking wide field of view camera, all cameras are more sensitive into the infrared spectrum than human vision, giving the car partial night vision capabilities, forward looking radar (one or two channels I believe), an internal camera (which could track driver eye movements/attention), sonar/ultrasonic sensors (8-10?), microphones, several gyroscopes (accelerometers - they could help sense road surface conditions), per wheel rotation sensors (which helps determine grip/slip) Which they could all use to improve the car's perception of the environment way beyond that of human perception. The primary limit/constraint is data processing performance.
Re-reading the PDF, indeed, it lloks like they used a well-to-wheel factor of 2.9. Taking this into account, I still get to an astonishingly high number of 110Wh/km. Let’s say this is competitive with an EV with one passenger, but as soon as you get to 2 passengers per EV it’s no contest. Background info: I looked this up because there are political parties in Belgium that want to expand public transport. Over the last few decades, a lot of train stations have been closed, and the frequency of trains has gone down (a lot). With the above data, if the frequency goes up without a corresponding increase in passengerkm (most likely, because it’s the unpopular timeslots that have been scrapped), you quickly come to the point that electric robotaxis with just one passenger are more energy efficient than trains. So the political idea that better public transport is better from a social and ecological point of view is not correct. From the ecological point of view it’s not correct because of the enegergy disadvantage mentioned above, and socially it’s incorrect because the most energy efficient solution will also be the cheapest solution.
The really interesting part about FSD is that any article or report in the media talks about Waymo in length but absolutely zero mentioning of Tesla. Its like they do not have even a driving assist system. Its does not come across hostile but just like they do not know. Ordering the 3 in Europe there was only an EAP option but none for FSD. Its the right move from Tesla not to offer it because once FSD is ready they can play with different service models and optimize revenue. Its like a full new product with different variations and options coming to the market and its pure SW with 100% margin on it. You bought the HW already. FSD beside Tesla Energy are two elephants in the room completely overlooked by the markets. Once they start making money and move it will appear like a huge surprise for most. That will be fun....
I'm a missing something this morning as pre market is looking good? Has no headlines run of Musk having a bad nights sleep and therefore Tesla is ruined and everyone must short?
OT A fascinating documentary about VW and their emissions defeat device Engine Trouble | Playing by the Rules: Ethics at Work
Trump is now threatening to close the border with Mexico. Does Tesla still have any Mexican suppliers ?
Here are some tidbits from Q4 2018 data: 03 Dec 2018, Mon: Tesla had a record attempt and produced more than 1,000 Model 3s. They had two 12 hour shifts working full time. 04 Dec 2018, Tue: One of the 12-hour shifts was off. 05 Dec 2018, Wed: The other 12-hour shift was off, presumably in preparation for a week-long record attempt. 06 Dec 2018, Thu: Produced 1,000+ Model 3s 07 Dec 2018, Fri: Produced 1,000+ Model 3s 08 Dec 2018, Sat: Produced 1,000+ Model 3s 09 Dec 2018, Sun: Produced 1,000+ Model 3s 10 Dec 2018, Mon: Produced 1,000+ Model 3s 11 Dec 2018, Tue: Production rate dropped to 500-750/day During 6-11 Dec, I estimate 6,068 units produced. On 7 and 9 Dec, they might have achieved 1,200 units/day. Based on that, when Tesla releases Q4 production and delivery details on January 2nd, I would expect to see statements like these: During the last month of the quarter, we produced over 6,000 Model 3s in a week We achieved 1,000 units steady Model 3 production rate per day The Model 3 production line has demonstrated the capability to produce 7,000 units per week For 1st statement: "In a week" should not be confused with "per week". In a week means in one of the weeks in December, which is what happened. For 2nd statement: 1,000/day doesn't mean 7,000/week steady production rate because production drops on weekends. Therefore 7,000/week steady production would be misleading and they might prefer 1,000/day. For 3rd statement: Capability of 7,000/week is correct because if they produced 1,200/day, it would extrapolate to 7,200 units in 6 working days. The critical term here is "to demonstrate capability". If they mention 7K/week, I'd expect them to talk about demonstrating capability instead of achieving a rate. Most people don't care about the exact wording but Tesla is actually very careful about these details. They do sometimes work full shifts on weekends at the end of quarters.
I don't think that's entirely correct, because: The outcome is not two states 'EVs or trains', but at least three states, including continued use of ICE cars. I.e. converting some passengers away from ICE transport to even the 'second most efficient' electric transport is a net win to the environment and the public at large. From the social service POV there's income classes and demographies that can use public transport but cannot use EVs either because they cannot afford one, or because of health (the young, the elderly, those working in inner cities with no cheap parking space available, etc.) and there are classes of passengers who simply prefer to use public transport because it's more time efficient: you can work or relax on a train - not while driving an EV - at least with current FSD solutions. These create additional efficiencies in favor of trains that are difficult to measure but are very real. There's no reason why the EV mass production revolution couldn't cover fixed track trains: There's no reason a passenger train has to be huge and has to weigh hundreds of tons - which is where much of the wasted energy comes from. Also, I believe the study didn't include regenerative braking (normal electric trains don't do it), which is a major component of Tesla's efficiency edge. (I'm sure @neroden can list more advantages of train networks.) So I don't think there's a fundamental conflict between expanding the train system and migrating to EVs. The important step is to get away from diesel and gasoline combustion - the rest are details that will sort themselves out naturally.
Very interesting data! Notes: December 3 was a Monday, i.e. first day of the week. Doing a 'stress test week' well before the end of the quarter, to determine throughput before ramping up the supply chain, is smart from an inventory management point of view: most of those cars produced between December 3-10 can still be delivered by December 31. Burst production stress-tests at the end of the quarter unnecessarily increase 'vehicles in transit' inventory figures. I'm wondering, can you share what the approximate source of this data is and how reliable you consider this data? Opt-in customer side VIN registrations alone cannot really shed light on Model 3 factory utilization and work shift schedules, right?
I haven't really looked into Waymo much. I know that it is a private company with roots in Google. Can anyone tell me why Waymo is valued at somewhere between $115B and 175B, which is essentially 2-3 times what Tesla is valued at? TIA.
I believe Waymo will IPO in 2019, once the current macro uncertainties are over. The Waymo valuation of $115b-$175b is mostly correct I believe: the difference to Tesla is that the big IPO underwriters have an interest in advertising the valuation advantages of Waymo FSD features, while in the Tesla case the same big investment banks are probably not positioned correctly yet to acknowledge those FSD advantages. Currently they are mostly counter-parties to $TSLA longs - so there are in quite a pickle. Note that in terms of FSD economics Tesla the car maker and owner of billions of miles of real-world FSD data from a fleet of 300,000+ FSD-ready vehicles has numerous strategic advantages over Waymo, which I don't think Waymo will be able to bridge, no matter how glorious their IPO is going to be. Tesla also made their own AI chip based on first principles, which puts them ahead of all the other hardware makers (with the possible exception of Intel/Mobileye who are holding their FSD status close to their vest). (This is one of the reasons why I valued the current $TSLA value "above $1,000" in the recent survey here.)