What other tech stock to consider?

[wdolson]

I agree that a lot of the price increases we are seeing now are temporary due to supply shortages coupled with increased demand. This should only last a year or so depending on the industry.

However, we are also seeing quite a bit of money printing with, at my count, three $1.8T relief bills/budgets. Couple that excess money along with labor shortages (partially government induced via generous unemployment benefits, and partially due to reluctance to re-join the workforce due to COVID) and we will likely see wage increases. That's the real scary part since while commodity prices will come down once supply chains are back to normal, wages tend to be sticky and do not generally come down.

So ... inflation is a worry.

I do agree that there are bargains to be had in the stock market right now - and probably in beaten down real estate areas like New York. Both investments are inflation hedges.

Personally I think the disincentive to work due to the unemployment benefits is a bit overblown. But the extra government spending does mean more debt taken on.

As for higher wages, it means your fast food is going to cost more, but ultimately I think it's a good thing for the overall economy. As money has moved to the top earners, that starts to strangle the economy. If 1000 people who are lower middle class or poor have en extra $1000, they will spend it in the economy where it will spread around. Money spent in the economy has a multiplying effect as it gets passed from person to person. It also generates income taxes every time it's spent. If 1 rich person gets another $1 million, they will likely rathole it somewhere and very little of it will be circulated.

It takes longer to get back to investors, but ultimately it's better for the overall economy. The money going into the economy at the bottom does end up working its way up the tree eventually.

The guy who created the GDP measure was adamantly against including the financial markets in the measure, but they got added in anyway. His argument was the financial markets are not part of the real economy and I agree with him.

If we factored the financial markets out of the GDP for each country the US would drop significantly. The tech sector in the US is still generating real wealth, and there are some other companies here and there creating real wealth too, but too much of the US economy is built around moving money around without actually creating anything of value.

We need financial markets and banks and all that goes with it, but we're fooling ourselves calling it part of the real economy. The real economy needs to be revitalized. Politicians call it Main Street over of Wall Street, but slogans aside, it is something real we need to rebuild.
It may not mean that the financial markets will be as robust for a while, but it will vastly help the long term health of both the real economy and the financial markets if we bite the bullet and do the work we need to do.

The infrastructure investment is one area that we need to do, but we also need to boost education in the right subjects. The US has some top universities, but we're letting people come here on student visas to get degrees and then forcing them to leave the country, even if they want to stay. We're also doing a poor job of educating people for the industries that need them.

Personally I think we should identify which areas need more graduates and allow people on education visas to convert those to green cards if they choose to use their education here on graduation plus subsidize the education of any American who can get into those programs, regardless of the ability to pay.

Short term it's an expense, but long term it will pay off for decades. The US did it before with WW II vets. Anyone who fought int he war who wanted a college degree could get one. It resulted in a generation moving into the middle class. My father was in that generation. He had been in college before the war, but lamented he didn't get a PhD in Mechanical Engineering on the government dime instead of finishing his photography degree.

He said that in his father's generation we had a lot of intelligent people working at technicians in industry because they couldn't afford a college degree. Most of their kids got engineering or science degrees and built the infrastructure we built in the 50s through the 70s.

It had the effect of making the US more of a white collar country, but those jobs also tend to pay more than blue collar jobs. We now have a shortage of workers in some white collar jobs that ends up sending jobs overseas.

Back in the 90s I worked on a cordless phone project (land lines) for a company that thought they were going to revolutionize land lines. The project released one product, but version 2 was canceled before they built anything. They were teamed up with a company in Singapore to make the phone part because the knowledge of how to make a cordless land line was completely gone in the US.

Today it's antique technology, but it was center of the phone market then. There is even less need now for land line expertise, but there are many other areas where there has been a brain drain because the US doesn't have enough engineers to work in that area. The US was the world leader in designing and making quite a few products and today the US neither designs or makes that product at all.

As an investor, some of these things may not be great for me short term, but long term I think they are great for both my investments as well as the overall economy.

 

[Discoducky]

IPOE has in their proxy statement the option to sell all shares for $10 cash each. Does this make any sense? It is currently trading at ~$15

 

[Cosmacelf]

IPOE has in their proxy statement the option to sell all shares for $10 cash each. Does this make any sense? It is currently trading at ~$15View attachment 663176

Yes it makes sense. That's generally how all SPACs work. The part you are missing is that all the original IPOE shareholders (usually institutions) bought in at $10/share. SPACs generally allow shareholders to go through with the merger or get back their money. But that part usually only makes sense if you had bought in at time of IPO at $10.

 

[Cosmacelf]

I guess I'd like to say a few things about "getting in early" and risk.

Stock market neophytes look at things like Tesla which has gone From $30 to over $3000 (pre-split) and think, that's what I want to do, get in early on the next Tesla. What they fail to realize is that back in 2012, Tesla was a VERY risky stock. Their Roadster was a financial failure by any metric and wasn't being manufactured anymore. The Model S which was just starting to be produced in small volumes (but had big capital expenses behind it since they had invested in a factory to produce 20,000 or more per year) was an all or nothing bet. If it didn't catch on, Tesla would be bankrupt. And based on many reports, Tesla almost did go bankrupt in 1Q2013 as scores of people deferred their orders due to bad initial press. That's how much of a knife edge Tesla was on.

So yeah, you too could have made a 50/50 bet on doubling your money or losing it all in 2012. There was a good reason the stock price was low then.

Today's stocks aren't any different. The earlier you get in on a company, generally the riskier it is. And don't forget valuation. We have been through a frothy early stage company valuation period where early stage companies are getting eye popping valuations. A company can be a good company to own, but not at any price. We are seeing lots of early stage companies with valuations similar to or being benchmarked against established players with solid distribution, brand name and operational advantages.

The only way to mitigate risk is through research. And even then, no amount of research would have predicted the 1Q2013 situation Tesla found itself in.

If you buy early stage companies without doing a lot of research, you are literally rolling the dice. Research helps a lot, but even then you should realize there are still risks.

But I do understand the allure of seeing a 10x stock appreciation in your account

 

[transpondster]

Has anyone looked into ESS sodium flow batteries. Ramez Naam is peddling his wares on Twitter as he is an early investor in the company and they are listing via a SPAC. I think his tweets are generally quite informative and the product looks quite compelling at first glance.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1390734978862915584

it seems Iron Chloride chemistry, downside seems mediocre DC-DC efficiency 70-75% probably comparable to pumped hydro.
Interesting interview

https://soundcloud.com/leadersincleantech%2Fcraig-evans-ess-73

still not totally sure if LFP can't outperform it, can't find (didn't searched too hard) numbers of their price per /kW/kWh.

 

[ZeApelido]

I guess I'd like to say a few things about "getting in early" and risk.

Stock market neophytes look at things like Tesla which has gone From $30 to over $3000 (pre-split) and think, that's what I want to do, get in early on the next Tesla. What they fail to realize is that back in 2012, Tesla was a VERY risky stock. Their Roadster was a financial failure by any metric and wasn't being manufactured anymore. The Model S which was just starting to be produced in small volumes (but had big capital expenses behind it since they had invested in a factory to produce 20,000 or more per year) was an all or nothing bet. If it didn't catch on, Tesla would be bankrupt. And based on many reports, Tesla almost did go bankrupt in 1Q2013 as scores of people deferred their orders due to bad initial press. That's how much of a knife edge Tesla was on.

So yeah, you too could have made a 50/50 bet on doubling your money or losing it all in 2012. There was a good reason the stock price was low then.

Today's stocks aren't any different. The earlier you get in on a company, generally the riskier it is. And don't forget valuation. We have been through a frothy early stage company valuation period where early stage companies are getting eye popping valuations. A company can be a good company to own, but not at any price. We are seeing lots of early stage companies with valuations similar to or being benchmarked against established players with solid distribution, brand name and operational advantages.

The only way to mitigate risk is through research. And even then, no amount of research would have predicted the 1Q2013 situation Tesla found itself in.

If you buy early stage companies without doing a lot of research, you are literally rolling the dice. Research helps a lot, but even then you should realize there are still risks.

But I do understand the allure of seeing a 10x stock appreciation in your account

Seems like the better bet is to find companies like TSLA in 2019, operating well with some hiccups but totally overwhelmed with FUD.

But perhaps that is suggest survivorship bias, maybe in many cases the FUD will actually bankrupt the company.

 

[wdolson]

I guess I'd like to say a few things about "getting in early" and risk.

Stock market neophytes look at things like Tesla which has gone From $30 to over $3000 (pre-split) and think, that's what I want to do, get in early on the next Tesla. What they fail to realize is that back in 2012, Tesla was a VERY risky stock. Their Roadster was a financial failure by any metric and wasn't being manufactured anymore. The Model S which was just starting to be produced in small volumes (but had big capital expenses behind it since they had invested in a factory to produce 20,000 or more per year) was an all or nothing bet. If it didn't catch on, Tesla would be bankrupt. And based on many reports, Tesla almost did go bankrupt in 1Q2013 as scores of people deferred their orders due to bad initial press. That's how much of a knife edge Tesla was on.

So yeah, you too could have made a 50/50 bet on doubling your money or losing it all in 2012. There was a good reason the stock price was low then.

Today's stocks aren't any different. The earlier you get in on a company, generally the riskier it is. And don't forget valuation. We have been through a frothy early stage company valuation period where early stage companies are getting eye popping valuations. A company can be a good company to own, but not at any price. We are seeing lots of early stage companies with valuations similar to or being benchmarked against established players with solid distribution, brand name and operational advantages.

The only way to mitigate risk is through research. And even then, no amount of research would have predicted the 1Q2013 situation Tesla found itself in.

If you buy early stage companies without doing a lot of research, you are literally rolling the dice. Research helps a lot, but even then you should realize there are still risks.

But I do understand the allure of seeing a 10x stock appreciation in your account

Any sure bet stock is going to be grabbed up by the pros who spend their entire lives analyzing the minutiae of the markets every day. In the 1990s there was a gold rush of internet stocks and some people made big money on stocks that eventually went bust by watching where the herd was going and staying a step ahead of them.

Stocks like petfood.com (or whatever it was, the guys with the sock puppet) were flying high at one point, and then utterly collapsed in a few months. The amateurs trying to get in on the "next big thing" drove up the stock, but it was the pros who were playing the crowd and knew when to bail out that crashed the stock.

Many companies that did start then are still around and some now dominate the market. Amazon started out selling books and most people thought they were nuts when they branched out into a broader range of products. In the early days of search engines, it was clear that somebody was probably going to dominate, but it wasn't clear who until Google demonstrated they had a better search engine. Before Facebook became synonymous with social media, a lot of social media companies came and went.

Just before the dot com bubble burst I saw an article predicting that the bubble was going to burst and which companies would survive. I recall agreeing with most of their picks and it turned out to be accurate. I wish I had money to invest then. Unfortunately I was in the first stages of some financial troubles that plagued me for a few years.

Stocks that become big successes like Tesla has often have a big fan base as well as the good fortune to be the right combination of factors at the right time. Over the long haul stock with a strong fan base can see a premium over other stocks. Apple enjoys a premium because it's a national brand with a large number of fans.

Qualcomm has benefited from the iPhone too, they make some of the key chips used in all cell phones. They are a good solid stock that has done well due to the success of the smart phone, but the stock doesn't get the extra boost from the fans.

Tesla will likely be a stock like Apple that enjoys an extra boost to its price because of the people who like the brand.

At the end of the day there are significantly more Qualcomms out there than Apples. And there are companies emerging today that may be the Qualcomm of tomorrow. Getting in now may make you a healthy profit in 5-10 years, but I don't see any emerging stocks right now that will likely have the fan base of Apple or Tesla. Something will come along eventually.

I'm not much into sports, but my father was a big baseball fan so I learned a lot from osmosis. Grand slams get the headlines in the news, but the teams that win consistently are the ones that have good pitching and the ability to string together a few singles in an inning. Take the grand slam if it happens, but don't spend your time striking out trying to hit a home run when a few singles will do you better in the end.

As for what's going to be big, pay attention to the public buzz. Don't get drawn in, but watch what people are talking about. That gives you some idea where the winds are blowing. Also pay attention to what the government is doing. Right now there is a lot of talk about an infrastructure package that involves something like the Rural Electrification Act for the internet. There is also talk of putting a lot of money into electric car and alternative energy infrastructure. If those pass, there will be lots of money going to companies the public has never heard of and most never will. But buying those stocks now will probably bring in a good return in a year or two. Not Tesla level growth, but definitely solid profits.

 

[Discoducky]

Any sure bet stock is going to be grabbed up by the pros who spend their entire lives analyzing the minutiae of the markets every day. In the 1990s there was a gold rush of internet stocks and some people made big money on stocks that eventually went bust by watching where the herd was going and staying a step ahead of them.

Stocks like petfood.com (or whatever it was, the guys with the sock puppet) were flying high at one point, and then utterly collapsed in a few months. The amateurs trying to get in on the "next big thing" drove up the stock, but it was the pros who were playing the crowd and knew when to bail out that crashed the stock.

Many companies that did start then are still around and some now dominate the market. Amazon started out selling books and most people thought they were nuts when they branched out into a broader range of products. In the early days of search engines, it was clear that somebody was probably going to dominate, but it wasn't clear who until Google demonstrated they had a better search engine. Before Facebook became synonymous with social media, a lot of social media companies came and went.

Just before the dot com bubble burst I saw an article predicting that the bubble was going to burst and which companies would survive. I recall agreeing with most of their picks and it turned out to be accurate. I wish I had money to invest then. Unfortunately I was in the first stages of some financial troubles that plagued me for a few years.

Stocks that become big successes like Tesla has often have a big fan base as well as the good fortune to be the right combination of factors at the right time. Over the long haul stock with a strong fan base can see a premium over other stocks. Apple enjoys a premium because it's a national brand with a large number of fans.

Qualcomm has benefited from the iPhone too, they make some of the key chips used in all cell phones. They are a good solid stock that has done well due to the success of the smart phone, but the stock doesn't get the extra boost from the fans.

Tesla will likely be a stock like Apple that enjoys an extra boost to its price because of the people who like the brand.

At the end of the day there are significantly more Qualcomms out there than Apples. And there are companies emerging today that may be the Qualcomm of tomorrow. Getting in now may make you a healthy profit in 5-10 years, but I don't see any emerging stocks right now that will likely have the fan base of Apple or Tesla. Something will come along eventually.

I'm not much into sports, but my father was a big baseball fan so I learned a lot from osmosis. Grand slams get the headlines in the news, but the teams that win consistently are the ones that have good pitching and the ability to string together a few singles in an inning. Take the grand slam if it happens, but don't spend your time striking out trying to hit a home run when a few singles will do you better in the end.

As for what's going to be big, pay attention to the public buzz. Don't get drawn in, but watch what people are talking about. That gives you some idea where the winds are blowing. Also pay attention to what the government is doing. Right now there is a lot of talk about an infrastructure package that involves something like the Rural Electrification Act for the internet. There is also talk of putting a lot of money into electric car and alternative energy infrastructure. If those pass, there will be lots of money going to companies the public has never heard of and most never will. But buying those stocks now will probably bring in a good return in a year or two. Not Tesla level growth, but definitely solid profits.

I learned a ton from my good bets (AMD, Intel) and stupid bets (yes, I was a fool that bought into pets.com and the sock puppet). I was at Dell at the time and made my move to sell tech stocks at the right time as I knew the technology, I knew the competitors, I knew that market. No emotion, no remorse when it went up after I sold, but I knew the decision was right.

I just didn't get the overall market, I'm still learning, mostly from wonderful TMC folks.

 

[wdolson]

I learned a ton from my good bets (AMD, Intel) and stupid bets (yes, I was a fool that bought into pets.com and the sock puppet). I was at Dell at the time and made my move to sell tech stocks at the right time as I knew the technology, I knew the competitors, I knew that market. No emotion, no remorse when it went up after I sold, but I knew the decision was right.

I just didn't get the overall market, I'm still learning, mostly from wonderful TMC folks.

My father came from a working class family. His mother tried to discourage him from going to college. But for some reason he became someone who thought like an old money rich guy. He didn't have any money to invest until after his mother died and he sold her house about the time I started high school, but he was talking about investing as far back as my memories go.

I learned a lot about strategies and I've mixed it with my understanding of group psychology to put my own strategic spin into it. But until last month my investments were so small I hadn't paid much attention to the mechanics. I had a large portfolio (a lot of different investments, not necessarily huge dollar amounts) dumped in my lap virtually overnight and so I've been learning a lot about the mechanics. I still have a long ways to go.

My strategies are also untested. I've made about a dozen small buys and I'll give them a year to see where they go. If they go sideways, I'll reevaluate my strategies. I won't lose much if I the worst happens. The bulk of the portfolio is fairly solid. If they go south, we probably have more to worry about than just the stock market.

I have hopes there is at least one home run in the mix, but I'll be happy if the bulk or all make some reasonable gains.

In some cases a big growth stock can be expected, even if you don't know which one. It was pretty certain in the late 90s somebody was going to perfect search engines, but initially Google was an also ran.

Many were also predicting that electric cars were going to become a thing, but nobody was sure if the new tech would come from a start up or a traditional automaker that rewrote the book. When the Model S was introduced that could have gone either way. The Leaf was out and it looked like Nissan might reinvent itself as an EV company. They had the knowledge about how to build cars Tesla didn't have.

Tesla could have easily turned out to be the next Fisker Karma which was a contemporary of the Model S.

Betting on Tesla in 2011 was a long shot bet. They had a big fan base which probably helped prop up the stock, but there were several ways the company could have been out of business by 2015. It's highly unlikely Tesla will fail at this point, but it was a tough road getting here.

Sometimes a company comes out with a revolutionary product nobody was expecting like the iPhone. Apple was doing well after Steve Jobs came back, but while things like the iPod took over their niche, they weren't revolutionary. The iPhone toppled the top phone makers within a very short time and the world quickly switched to smart phones which are much more than phones.

Unless there are leaks, people on the outside don't know a revolutionary product is coming from nowhere and when there are many horses in a race, picking the eventual winner is usually a judgement call.

There are also cases where an emerging technology could become a big deal or could end up being a minor change. There are lots of bold predictions about self driving cars right now, but it isn't guaranteed that it will be the dominate mode of transport in the future. A lot of things could derail the technology between legal concerns, the public being too wary of it to trust it, to technological limits that just can't stretch the tech the last step of the way to being able to completely eliminate the driver.

If the driver can never be eliminated, trained, professional drivers will still be needed for all the driving jobs done today and the huge cost savings predicted from self driving vehicles will never happen. It will become a convenience feature that allows drivers to rest their arms and maybe look away from the road briefly, but it will never be the revolutionary tech that people predict now.

On the other hand if fully automated self driving does become a thing, there will be a gold rush in the markets and people will be trying to pick the eventual winners from the also rans.

The next tech revolution may come from an unexpected direction. Maybe some inventor is putting the finishing touches on something that will become a revolution in the kitchen, or shipping, or some other tech few are thinking about.

 

[PeterJA]

...There are lots of bold predictions about self driving cars right now, but it isn't guaranteed that it will be the dominate mode of transport in the future. A lot of things could derail the technology between legal concerns, the public being too wary of it to trust it, to technological limits that just can't stretch the tech the last step of the way to being able to completely eliminate the driver.

You seem to like analogies and metaphors, so here is one. You see a freight train chugging down the track you are standing on, as it has done for decades. Do you bet that the train will derail, because hitting you "isn't guaranteed"? Or do you step off the track?

There is nothing that could derail self-driving cars from becoming dominant, other than the collapse of civilization.

Legal concerns are nonexistent. Customers sign an agreement that they understand the risks (just as with other potentially dangerous technologies) and liability ends for providers of technology that functions as designed. People die frequently from misusing dumb cruise control, but this has not stopped the technology.

Public acceptance concerns are nonexistent. Planes crash, but millions of people fly every year.

Unsolvable technological problems are so unlikely that concern about them is unwarranted. The history of Artificial Intelligence -- from IBM's Deep Blue (chess) to DeepMind's AlphaGo (Go) to OpenAI's GPT3 (language) to Tesla's FSD Beta (driving) -- points in one direction only: continued progress. It is only a matter of time.

 

[wdolson]

We live in a society where a significant percentage of the population believe things that are easily proven false like Bill Gates is putting microchips to track or control people in the COVID vaccine or things that are easily disproven about the 2020 election. One poll I just found said 28% of Americans believe Bill Gates is putting microchips in the vaccines.

Virtually everyone in the developed world has been exposed to fictional stories that hinge on an AI that becomes homicidal. It's impossible for AIs to form intent (now and possibly forever), but try convincing everyone of that. It's a more complex case to make than the microchips or election counter arguments. To anyone who really understands technology, they already know it. To those who don't really understand how their toaster works, it's a tougher sell.

People can deal with AIs that are bolted down to a factory floor and can't get to them, but there will be people who are afraid of self driving cars going Christine on them.

Right now electric cars and self driving technology is popular among early adopters and the early mainstream public. But there are a lot of people more conservative in their approach to new tech who are skeptical of both. At least half the people I know think electric cars aren't ready for mainstream adoption yet.

My own partner likes my Model S and sees it is superior in many ways, but she's still wedded to her Subaru Impreza. Part of it is that she likes smaller cars and none of the smaller EVs impress her much, but also she's talked about it being a good thing to have an ICE if the power goes out for a long time, despite the longest blackout we've had the last 30 years was about 8 hours. The longest I've ever dealt with was about 48 (Jan 20, 1993, Seattle had hurricane force winds that took down an epic number of power lines). And she's more of an early adopter than most people. She has one of the first Apple Macintoshes ever built in storage.

And ultimately it will be impossible to make self driving cars handle ever single situation they encounter in a way that doesn't get someone hurt. People do stupid things or get into impossible situations in cars today that get themselves or other hurt. But people are more willing to forgive the failings of other people than they are machines. Just like every Tesla accident was headline news for a long time, every FSD vehicle accident will be big news and there will inevitably be a few that people can argue a human could have dealt with better.

FSD cars will likely just become immobile if their sensors are too jammed to figure out what's going on. Pranksters will take advantage of that. Radar and Lidar system can be jammed with noise makers in the right frequency range. Visual sensors can be jammed with lasers or paint.

Navigation systems can be confused with erroneous information beamed at the car. Tell a car it's actually 200 feet further down the road than it is and it will try to make a right turn into a bus stop instead of at the street corner, then sit there in confusion because the bench is blocking the intersection.

If I can think of these scenarios off the top of my head, bad actors have probably thought of 50 more.

As I said, we can probably get to a point where self driving vehicles can do their thing without human intervention 99+% of the time, but regulators and a high percentage of the general public may rebel at the idea of letting vehicles loose on our streets with no driver. The huge cost savings envisioned from self driving cars only come about if drivers are eliminated. If you have to pay someone $15 an hour to sit and watch the computer do its thing, you aren't going to see big savings.

Lastly driving is the single biggest profession in the US and in many other countries. Legislators, especially now that there is a political shift going on are not going to be comfortable green lighting tech that puts millions of people out of work. The companies that employ those people will be pushing for it, but the general public won't be as thrilled with the idea.

In an ideal world where everyone has high risk tolerance and embrace new tech early combined with a flexible enough economy that can absorb millions of people who need to change professions very easily, FSD level 5 will become the norm very quickly as soon as the tech is there. But we don't live in that world.

 

[Cosmacelf]

We live in a society where a significant percentage of the population believe things that are easily proven false like Bill Gates is putting microchips to track or control people in the COVID vaccine or things that are easily disproven about the 2020 election. One poll I just found said 28% of Americans believe Bill Gates is putting microchips in the vaccines.

Virtually everyone in the developed world has been exposed to fictional stories that hinge on an AI that becomes homicidal. It's impossible for AIs to form intent (now and possibly forever), but try convincing everyone of that. It's a more complex case to make than the microchips or election counter arguments. To anyone who really understands technology, they already know it. To those who don't really understand how their toaster works, it's a tougher sell.

People can deal with AIs that are bolted down to a factory floor and can't get to them, but there will be people who are afraid of self driving cars going Christine on them.

Right now electric cars and self driving technology is popular among early adopters and the early mainstream public. But there are a lot of people more conservative in their approach to new tech who are skeptical of both. At least half the people I know think electric cars aren't ready for mainstream adoption yet.

My own partner likes my Model S and sees it is superior in many ways, but she's still wedded to her Subaru Impreza. Part of it is that she likes smaller cars and none of the smaller EVs impress her much, but also she's talked about it being a good thing to have an ICE if the power goes out for a long time, despite the longest blackout we've had the last 30 years was about 8 hours. The longest I've ever dealt with was about 48 (Jan 20, 1993, Seattle had hurricane force winds that took down an epic number of power lines). And she's more of an early adopter than most people. She has one of the first Apple Macintoshes ever built in storage.

And ultimately it will be impossible to make self driving cars handle ever single situation they encounter in a way that doesn't get someone hurt. People do stupid things or get into impossible situations in cars today that get themselves or other hurt. But people are more willing to forgive the failings of other people than they are machines. Just like every Tesla accident was headline news for a long time, every FSD vehicle accident will be big news and there will inevitably be a few that people can argue a human could have dealt with better.

FSD cars will likely just become immobile if their sensors are too jammed to figure out what's going on. Pranksters will take advantage of that. Radar and Lidar system can be jammed with noise makers in the right frequency range. Visual sensors can be jammed with lasers or paint.

Navigation systems can be confused with erroneous information beamed at the car. Tell a car it's actually 200 feet further down the road than it is and it will try to make a right turn into a bus stop instead of at the street corner, then sit there in confusion because the bench is blocking the intersection.

If I can think of these scenarios off the top of my head, bad actors have probably thought of 50 more.

As I said, we can probably get to a point where self driving vehicles can do their thing without human intervention 99+% of the time, but regulators and a high percentage of the general public may rebel at the idea of letting vehicles loose on our streets with no driver. The huge cost savings envisioned from self driving cars only come about if drivers are eliminated. If you have to pay someone $15 an hour to sit and watch the computer do its thing, you aren't going to see big savings.

Lastly driving is the single biggest profession in the US and in many other countries. Legislators, especially now that there is a political shift going on are not going to be comfortable green lighting tech that puts millions of people out of work. The companies that employ those people will be pushing for it, but the general public won't be as thrilled with the idea.

In an ideal world where everyone has high risk tolerance and embrace new tech early combined with a flexible enough economy that can absorb millions of people who need to change professions very easily, FSD level 5 will become the norm very quickly as soon as the tech is there. But we don't live in that world.

We also live in a society where a lot of people believe polls are accurate...

 

[PeterJA]

We live in a society where a significant percentage of the population believe things that are easily proven false like Bill Gates is putting microchips to track or control people in the COVID vaccine or things that are easily disproven about the 2020 election. One poll I just found said 28% of Americans believe Bill Gates is putting microchips in the vaccines.

Virtually everyone in the developed world has been exposed to fictional stories that hinge on an AI that becomes homicidal. It's impossible for AIs to form intent (now and possibly forever), but try convincing everyone of that. It's a more complex case to make than the microchips or election counter arguments. To anyone who really understands technology, they already know it. To those who don't really understand how their toaster works, it's a tougher sell.

People can deal with AIs that are bolted down to a factory floor and can't get to them, but there will be people who are afraid of self driving cars going Christine on them.

Right now electric cars and self driving technology is popular among early adopters and the early mainstream public. But there are a lot of people more conservative in their approach to new tech who are skeptical of both. At least half the people I know think electric cars aren't ready for mainstream adoption yet.

My own partner likes my Model S and sees it is superior in many ways, but she's still wedded to her Subaru Impreza. Part of it is that she likes smaller cars and none of the smaller EVs impress her much, but also she's talked about it being a good thing to have an ICE if the power goes out for a long time, despite the longest blackout we've had the last 30 years was about 8 hours. The longest I've ever dealt with was about 48 (Jan 20, 1993, Seattle had hurricane force winds that took down an epic number of power lines). And she's more of an early adopter than most people. She has one of the first Apple Macintoshes ever built in storage.

And ultimately it will be impossible to make self driving cars handle ever single situation they encounter in a way that doesn't get someone hurt. People do stupid things or get into impossible situations in cars today that get themselves or other hurt. But people are more willing to forgive the failings of other people than they are machines. Just like every Tesla accident was headline news for a long time, every FSD vehicle accident will be big news and there will inevitably be a few that people can argue a human could have dealt with better.

FSD cars will likely just become immobile if their sensors are too jammed to figure out what's going on. Pranksters will take advantage of that. Radar and Lidar system can be jammed with noise makers in the right frequency range. Visual sensors can be jammed with lasers or paint.

Navigation systems can be confused with erroneous information beamed at the car. Tell a car it's actually 200 feet further down the road than it is and it will try to make a right turn into a bus stop instead of at the street corner, then sit there in confusion because the bench is blocking the intersection.

If I can think of these scenarios off the top of my head, bad actors have probably thought of 50 more.

As I said, we can probably get to a point where self driving vehicles can do their thing without human intervention 99+% of the time, but regulators and a high percentage of the general public may rebel at the idea of letting vehicles loose on our streets with no driver. The huge cost savings envisioned from self driving cars only come about if drivers are eliminated. If you have to pay someone $15 an hour to sit and watch the computer do its thing, you aren't going to see big savings.

Lastly driving is the single biggest profession in the US and in many other countries. Legislators, especially now that there is a political shift going on are not going to be comfortable green lighting tech that puts millions of people out of work. The companies that employ those people will be pushing for it, but the general public won't be as thrilled with the idea.

In an ideal world where everyone has high risk tolerance and embrace new tech early combined with a flexible enough economy that can absorb millions of people who need to change professions very easily, FSD level 5 will become the norm very quickly as soon as the tech is there. But we don't live in that world.

As before, you are speculating based on very little data. Tesla's FSD doesn't use "information beamed at the car" (that directly controls steering like in your example). It doesn't use remote monitors like Waymo does.

Tesla's FSD will be much much safer than human drivers, which will be a powerful incentive for regulators. Businesses and the public will demand it because of its usefulness and low cost.

The public understands that planes sometimes crash, because each crash is headline news, but millions still fly. Irrational fear of AI will last 10 minutes until the fearful see friends and neighbors using the tech safely.

Vandals of car sensors will be arrested. That's what Law Enforcement is for.

New technology has been destroying jobs for centuries since the first Luddites. Can you think of a tech stopped because of it? I can't.

 

[redan]

ABML news, stock is up 20% today on news the company submitted a formal application to list its common shares on Nasdaq:

American Battery Metals Corporation Files Application to List on the Nasdaq Stock Market

RENO, NV / ACCESSWIRE / May 20, 2021 / American Battery Metals Corporation (OTCQB:ABML) (the "Company"), an American-owned lithium-ion battery recycling technology and advanced extraction company with extensive mineral resources in Nevada, which is in the process of changing its name to American...

finance.yahoo.com

 

[wdolson]

ABML news, stock is up 20% today on news the company submitted a formal application to list its common shares on Nasdaq:

American Battery Metals Corporation Files Application to List on the Nasdaq Stock Market

RENO, NV / ACCESSWIRE / May 20, 2021 / American Battery Metals Corporation (OTCQB:ABML) (the "Company"), an American-owned lithium-ion battery recycling technology and advanced extraction company with extensive mineral resources in Nevada, which is in the process of changing its name to American...

finance.yahoo.com

Glad I bought in when I did. It floundered for weeks, but I read somewhere that all the alternative energy and EV related stocks were floundering in part because Tesla was taking a beating. Now that Tesla appears to be headed back up, those other stocks are recovering too. The companies in that pack that also have genuine good news to report are going to rebound faster.

 

[JRP3]

The Proterra/Arclight merger should go through after the meeting next month.

 

[Brn2Run]

As before, you are speculating based on very little data. Tesla's FSD doesn't use "information beamed at the car" (that directly controls steering like in your example). It doesn't use remote monitors like Waymo does.

Tesla's FSD will be much much safer than human drivers, which will be a powerful incentive for regulators. Businesses and the public will demand it because of its usefulness and low cost.

The public understands that planes sometimes crash, because each crash is headline news, but millions still fly. Irrational fear of AI will last 10 minutes until the fearful see friends and neighbors using the tech safely.

Vandals of car sensors will be arrested. That's what Law Enforcement is for.

New technology has been destroying jobs for centuries since the first Luddites. Can you think of a tech stopped because of it? I can't.

Robotaxis (self driving cars) wont happen other than in limited numbers and/or places. For many years. At least not with Tesla cars. Some say Tesla is just a year away. Then tell me, where is the software? Shouldn`t they start talking about or teasing a bit about it? Even if it was two years away?
Why don`t they let their cars speak to eachother? They could have the cars drive themselves onboard boates to Europe etc. They dont even do that, which is far away from the public.
It`s because FSD is level 2 only, as they write themselves. This was all a hype put forward by Elon Musk many years ago, to get attention to Tesla. Nothing wrong with that, and he succeded!

My stock tip - EWS. Recycling of car tires. They have licenced their tech to Denmark where one company have started building a full size recycling plant. Market cap is next to nothing, risk is high, and so is potencial rewardDo you know how many gallons of oil one tire contains?

 

[PeterJA]

Robotaxis (self driving cars) wont happen...

Model S won't happen, said TSLAQ. Ditto Model X, Model 3, Model Y, Giga Nevada, Giga Shanghai, reusable rockets.

"Hype, vaporware, pump-and-dump, fraud, Potemkin village, muddy field, Elon's crazy fantasy."

Some folks don't seem to learn from experience.

 

[wdolson]

Model S won't happen, said TSLAQ. Ditto Model X, Model 3, Model Y, Giga Nevada, Giga Shanghai, reusable rockets.

"Hype, vaporware, pump-and-dump, fraud, Potemkin village, muddy field, Elon's crazy fantasy."

Some folks don't seem to learn from experience.

There are some things that only require logistics to happen; some things that require legislative changes to happen; some things that the science is proven, but require some further engineering to happen.

The Tesla cars to date did not require any advancements in science, or changes to laws to happen. There were some new technologies that were developed, but everything was done from existing science. The key question about Tesla's success was whether a start up car company was going to be able to navigate the extremely treacherous terrain of getting new cars from the drawing board to mass production in an environment with a lot of competitors already in the market. It was an incredibly complex logistics challenge, but it hasn't required any cutting edge science.

Landing rockets also proved to be a difficult challenge for SpaceX, but Elon worked out the entire thing on his return flight from Moscow when he and some other early SpaceX people went there to buy Russian rockets.

Full self driving vehicles has required several revisions of the hardware just to get to the starting gate. Elon thought that the cars built in late 2016 had all the hardware necessary to do FSD, but later figured out that they had vastly underestimated the computing power needed. Tesla brought in the top processor designer in the world (his designs are at the core of both the current AMD Ryzen and the Intel i series processors). He redesigned the processor to run FSD from the ground up to meet the new requirements.

A few years after introduction of that processor, FSD still hasn't happened because the software task is staggeringly complex. FSD is probably over 90% there, but the last edge cases are probably driving the programmers nuts.

I haven't been involved in this specific area, but I have a degree in Electronic Engineering and have worked most of my career in embedded systems and driving hardware with software. I was in the middle of the electronics testing for the Boeing 777 back in the early 90s. My job was on the side of creating the simulators to test the hardware, but I worked with people who were designing the stuff to go on the planes.

FSD is one of the most complex software problems ever attempted. Definitely the most complex ever to go into a consumer product. And the most complex intended to be used in the most congested places of our modern world.

Regulators are going to allow the tech to advance, but laws will need to change before level 4 FSD. Most jurisdictions now make it illegal to do anything that distracts you from paying full attention to the road. These laws became much more strict in recent years to curb people from texting while driving. At minimum those laws will have to change to some degree to allow the driver to be able to do something else while the vehicle drives itself. Otherwise, there will be zero benefit to FSD over current AP most of the time and few people will use it. The only time I think of using AP is when stuck in traffic or on long stretches of highway when I want to give my arms a break. The car is too much fun to drive otherwise.

As far as regulations go, regulator tend to be fairly conservative in their approach and are slow to approve new technology. Many car companies including Tesla have been pushing to eliminate external rear view mirrors for years. The Model X prototype had cameras for mirrors. But regulators have only approved electronic mirrors in a few places. And that's more straightforward than FSD.

The things Tesla and SpaceX has achieved: the Gigafactories, the cars in production, and reusable spaceflight are all things that match Elon's original visions for those achievements. It took longer to get to those goals than he predicted, but there were no major detours that required scrapping what they had done and completely starting over.

With FSD the problem has proven to be far more complex than Elon originally predicted and it has required a complete redesign of the processing hardware and a complete rewrite of the software and they still haven't released it.

Elon is a Physicist by training and he is good at working through how physical things like a car, rocket, or factory is going to work with his basic principles approach, but software is a different animal. In areas where Physics is not the dominant science underlying the thing, he has been rather poor at predicting the future. He was very wrong about COVID and may have done more harm than good with his Tweets. The path to FSD has also been badly delayed.

He's missed deadline predictions before, so it's possible FSD is another case of this, but it seems different to me. Even if Tesla gets FSD working, there is still the regulatory hurdles. Even Elon admitted several years ago that before FSD can get done regulators will need to change some laws.

We're way off topic here and I've had my say on this. Time will tell on this issue. I believe my initial comment was that I wasn't sure FSD was ever going to happen. A true skeptic is someone who has doubts, not someone who nay says everything. I'm the former.

Elon Musk is a brilliant industrialist, but that doesn't make him a genius at everything. He has misses as well as successes. It's possible he may pull off FSD, but it's also possible that the problem is too difficult to get to level 5 reliably either technologically or legally. There are a lot of unknowns.

 

[PeterJA]

...Elon is a Physicist by training and he is good at working through how physical things like a car, rocket, or factory is going to work with his basic principles approach, but software is a different animal.

Elon made his first millions in software (Zip2, PayPal). Yet again, your opinions are based on few facts.