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Tesla Talk

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Comments

  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 8,051 Mod ✭✭✭✭liamog


    Contrast Uber as the current model, they make money by connecting paying drivers to move consumers. The drivers bring their own car.

    In a future robotaxi model, you remove driver wages as a primary cost, if the robotaxi company is making their own cars then you also remove vehicle acquisition costs as a primary input. Tesla have a charge point operator business so don't even need to make money on the charging of the car.

    If the company is using electric cars that leaves vehicle manufacturing, energy, and maintenance as the only costs. If an investor believes that Tesla will achieve that in a timeframe that suits there require for a return on investment, they you can see why they would value the company so much higher than Uber.

    I've said it a few times, I believe that if Tesla achieve their robotaxi goals they will stop selling cars to consumers. Why sell a car with an 8% margin, when you can use the manufacturing capacity to build a taxi and make 8% on every single journey.

    I don't have any money invested in Tesla, as I don't think they'll achieve it at scale in a time frame that suits me.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,085 ✭✭✭✭listermint


    Tesla cannot do FSD or robotaxi without radar / lidar. It's not possible at all. It's voodoo science.

    At best with their current technology stack they can cover specific mapped and videoed cities and get licenses for that. But even that would be hard to do with camera and AI image examination. There's far too much emphasis and showmanship put on their capabilities when they aren't doing the basic right. Are they the best in image recognition at scale? Probably yes. Can FSD work on that alone. Not at all.

    We don't talk about that enough because the bears seem to rule the information roost.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,395 ✭✭✭sk8board


    that’s correct, but it doesn’t show the true retail ownership, only who controls the shares.

    If you trade Tesla on robinhood, you don’t own the shares on an individual basis, the HOOD institution does.
    It’s actually hard to estimate true retail ownership because of that, but generally it’s thought to be about 55%, 13% Musk (he’s sold a lot), and 28% institutions



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,395 ✭✭✭sk8board


    I read something recently that if you strip out the auto business from Tesla and look at all the other projects and things in isolation, all massively delayed or eventually canned - it’s a textbook ponzi - finding one project after another to keep giving people hope and prop up the price.


    it’s worth remembering that this is a company that investors once valued at twice its current SP, and also that on a 3 years view is down over 30%, while something as generic as a global ETF is +55% in the past 3 years (SWRD for example).
    you have to go back to the 2020 Covid rally (that rose all stocks), to find a true Tesla meme rally.

    Retail is never patient, because they don’t trade on fundamentals, they trade on hope and the presumption that they know what they’re doing.

    I gave the example before that if you bought Bank of Ireland at the bottom of the Covid crash in May 2020, it has outperformed Tesla since, and even paid a dividend in the past 3 years too



  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 8,051 Mod ✭✭✭✭liamog


    If you ask the question is vision and general knowledge enough for a car to be driven in a new area, I think the answer has to be yes based on the fact that we have millions of drivers doing so every day. Claiming it's not possible at all is a very large claim. Claiming it's not feasible in the short-term future makes sense.

    Lidar is a good technology and much cheaper than it used to be, it's use is to obtain depth information to map into a 3d world. We know that can also be achieved by using offset vision and computation, 3d projection from more than 1 video is no longer on the list of particularly hard things to do.



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,085 ✭✭✭✭listermint


    the answer is no, i work in the image tracking technology sector. Dirt, Rain , Darkness knocks out much of your processing capabilities. This alone means that cameras are not 'the sensor' they form only part of real FSD. These are factual things



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,395 ✭✭✭sk8board


    it’s a fundamental weakness with cameras for sure.

    Even in the days of the “appreciating asset/robotaxi” lies, FSD only had a take rate in the US of 5%, @ $12k, and virtually 0% outside the US.
    more recent data from May on the $99 subscription model suggested a take rate of just 2% after the free trial, and potentially less still after month 1 as some people forgot to cancel until they saw the charge. The main reason given was that after using it, people just couldn’t see how it was worth the money.

    I think that’s Tesla’s biggest problem with FSD - by the time it’s usable, people won’t value it nearly as highly as expected - and it’ll still be a US system - it won’t be a concern for Irish drivers in the next decade.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,395 ✭✭✭sk8board


    Fortune’s Christiaan Hetzner also reports that nearly half of the $1.89 billion Tesla earned before tax accrued from the sale of regulatory CO2 credits, could be on the chopping block should Former President Donald Trump be reelected. ”

    I guess this might help explain the $45m/month Musk support for Trump - it’s buttons compared to his personal loss of wealth if those credits are binned.



  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 8,051 Mod ✭✭✭✭liamog


    Your claim is that there will never ever be a development in imaging sensor technology that allows water or dirt to be removed from the surface of a lens, some kind of wiper that can remove liquids and solids, and that's why vision-based driving can never work.

    I don't take issue with your thought that it's not practical today, but to claim it as fact or voodoo science that it will ever be possible is ridiculous.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,085 ✭✭✭✭listermint


    It's voodoo science. Your saying fsd success is predicated on a window wiper.

    It seems you don't have enough understanding of the limitations of image processing and environmental conditions including but not limited to rain, dirt , sunshine and obviously... darkness.

    It's all show man razzmatazz to say they can create a robotaxi without addressing the fundamentals of additional basic sensors which allow the image processing to partner up and enhance its decisions.

    At the very best Tesla can license their image processing to others they're great at it they've lots of data gathered But they simply cannot have that alone do fsd nor robotaxi. I hope your choosing your investments wisely...



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  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 20,102 ✭✭✭✭cnocbui


    You are reiterating exactly the mistake Musk made, which was to infer that something humans can do is likely trivial and something current gen tech can be made to replicate. It's conceit of epic proportions. The original cost premise of Tesla's original business case was that the cars would be entirely made by robots.

    Musk face-planted on that massive error so hard he spent months living in Tesla offices trying to bully the staff into enabling his massively flawed 'vision' and under estimation of human abilities, then gave up and accepted only humans could do the job and had to transform a factory built for robots to one where humans did the work.

    You and Musk are severely underestimating the computing power needed to process images in a way that obviates the use of LIDAR.


    It's simplistic nonsense. An adult human knows what everything in their visual field is and important charateristics of every one of those thousands of 'things'. We have a specialised and fast memory sub-system entirely dedicated to this and can distinguish a real child from a cut out, a real cat from a toy cat and we can do something no AI system can begin to, which is anticipate scenarios as to what the movement of these things might be in the future, which requires General Intelligence.

    All this current AI hype is just that, because the 'I' is a misnomer, it's not intelligence. Here's a doozy from Microsoft:

    Driving the way humans do it requires general intelligence, something I don't believe tech is remotely in sight of achieving or replicating.

    A good example of this would be: I was in a town, after dark, travelling down a slight hill approaching a crosswalk, parked cars on the left. I noticed a girl, about 9-10 years of age sprinting down the footpath to the left in the same direction I was headed. FSD, and no version of it that is likely to exist this century, could know that a child of that age might behave recklessly, nor could it anticipate that the crosswalk was the likely destination of the girl nor could it anticipate that the slope would give the girl more speed than might be usual or put all these things together from very brief visual cues, limited to just snippets of the top of a head briefly seen through the windows of the parked cars.
    I anticipated the child would get to the crosswalk before me and that she would possibly dash across without looking, and that's what happened.

    A robo-taxi in China recently bumped into a pedestrian; the excuse fielded was that the human didn't follow the rules.

    You can state no one can rule out what FSD will be able to do, which might be true in the literal sense but it's wrong in the practical sense. FSD is predicated on the human visual system being easy to replicate, which isn't remotely the case, and on the task of driving being simple, which it is anything but.



  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 8,051 Mod ✭✭✭✭liamog


    Not really, you've made the mistake of thinking I've claimed it's possible today. I haven't, I'm saying it's doable at some point in the future. @listermint is claiming it's voodoo and fact that a vehicle can never be driven purely using a vision-based approach. I don't think that's true. At least you've limited the scope of it not being possible to the next 76 years.



  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 8,051 Mod ✭✭✭✭liamog


    I think the fundamental of whether FSD is successful or not won't be predicated on whether or not it has radar/lidar. I think the challenges of delivering self-driving vehicles that work at level 5 is far more on the software and regulatory side. Whether the 3d model of the world is generated from a lidar point cloud or binocular video input isn't a big challenge that needs to be overcome.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,601 ✭✭✭wassie


    Its interesting you mention the Tesla bears, because the focus is on the automotive, where increased EV competition, especially from China, was always going to impact their marketshare going forward. Combine this with a general slowdown in EV sales growth (not decline), then the it doesnt look good.

    Although it is still dwarfed by Automotive, Tesla Energy is doing very well. Just google Tesla Megapack for news articles - they have big contracts globally including US, China, Canada, France, Australia



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,085 ✭✭✭✭listermint


    It's not a 3D model. Its live. Major distinction.

    And regulation won't allow it let alone insurance. Hence I call it voodoo in its current format.

    They could as I said license their video technology to other marques though as a part of an overall actual fsd system.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 3,395 ✭✭✭sk8board


    this is a business with a $700bn valuation lads - it’s going to take a lot more than energy, solar, roadster, robotics, cybertruck, semi, Ai, Optimus, FSD, robotaxis, affordable EV and so on. Have I forgotten anything?

    (Edit, I forgot the 3 and Y!)

    Musk promised 6 things last night on the call for ‘later in 2025’ 🙄🙄, and guess what - an actual car isn’t one of them, meaning core revenue will continue to fall, and that’s whats weighting on the SP this week too.

    Even If you break out the energy business, the most bullish of musketeer bulls places a $36/share price on future value of the business, which means it may at some point be worth 15% of the business - that’s still a $125bn business in its own right btw!



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,668 ✭✭✭maidhc


    Aside from all this; what precise problem is a robotaxi addressing? In large cities mass transit is a far better solution to getting people from a to b. For people who need a car, driving the vehicle isn’t as onerous task, and for “manned” taxis, it doesn’t seem the highest margin role to be automating.



  • Registered Users Posts: 883 ✭✭✭JOL1


    New car(s) were mentioned in this weeks Investors call ..extract below from Musk's statements

    "We won't get too much into the product road map here because that is reserved for product announcement events. But we are on track to deliver a more affordable model in the first half of next year."

    'With respect to Roadster, we've completed most of the engineering. And I think there's still some upgrades we want to make to it, but we expect to be in production with Roadster next year.'

    Am not debating how accurate timelines are but set out above for clarity relative to your comments



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 34,085 ✭✭✭✭listermint


    But they said they abandoned the affordable model last year.

    He's not to be trusted as per his own I'm giving Trump 45 m per month. Oh no I'm not. Yes I am I have created a super PAC then no I'm not it's media making it up.

    He wrote all of that himself on his own twitter page...

    So his words don't carry weight as much of what he says is not real or a springling of the truth.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,399 ✭✭✭positron


    Robotaxis (if possible, tesla/waymo whatever, I am talking about the core idea) will change the way the world buys or owns cars.

    You don't need to buy a car if you can get one to come and pick you up as reliably and impersonal as only robots can do. You can also afford more car when your car can go and work as taxi when you are busy with life.

    The way our towns, roads and even houses are designed could change as parking space doesn't have to be near anything.

    Robotaxis could augment public transport - addressing public transport's 'last mile' problem.

    It will be almost as significant as switching from horses to cars all those years ago.



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  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 8,051 Mod ✭✭✭✭liamog


    Cities that have excellent mass transit still have taxi services.



  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 8,051 Mod ✭✭✭✭liamog


    Which regulations won't allow a vehicle control system that operates without lidar or radar?



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,668 ✭✭✭maidhc


    Fair enough. It’s dafter than I allow my mind go to. We live in a world where auto wipers and full beams only work half the time,“isa” has a mind of its own and road sign recognition is hit and miss.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 6,399 ✭✭✭positron


    It's indeed beyond our capabilities right now. But Telsa is betting on AI - similar to ChatGPT and generative AI, if you can harvest and come up with a model and algorithm that constantly learns and improves from driver actions around the world - ignoring the massive computing power required to do so - will ultimately result in an amazing AI solution.

    Given nvidia / etc keeps pushing the technology, it's beyond the realm of possibility that we will get there eventually - may be in 2 years, may be in 20 years, but eventually we will / have to, right?



  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 39,706 Mod ✭✭✭✭Gumbo


    Am I the only one that doesn’t want FSD. I don’t want to be ferried around. I want to drive.



  • Registered Users Posts: 883 ✭✭✭JOL1


    And in a world where rockets blast for space only to land back on the very spot where it took off 20 mins before to be reused time and time again..only because someone believed it possible. Many failures before success, each one an oportunity to learn..but all requiring an open mind.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 1,620 ✭✭✭Conar


    Replying to Gumbo....

    Definitely not the only one. I want FSD to drive me home from the boozer, and home from work after nights. Til then I want to drive my car.



  • Registered Users, Registered Users 2 Posts: 7,668 ✭✭✭maidhc


    yes, but it only took 80 years from the point Wernher von Braun figured out how to make it go down with the pointy end to make it land on its tail!



  • Moderators, Motoring & Transport Moderators, Regional East Moderators Posts: 8,051 Mod ✭✭✭✭liamog


    I'd love a use case where I drive to the airport then the car drives itself back home, it's very niche and I don't think any manufacturer will offer that to consumers.



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  • Moderators, Society & Culture Moderators Posts: 39,706 Mod ✭✭✭✭Gumbo




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