Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 152 posts

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#41

Post by [deleted] »

dragontamer wrote: post #29
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A robotaxi isn't too far off if you limit where it can operate. It's not infeasible to train an automated driving system specifically suited to the streets of LA or wherever. Some place where it doesn't snow, doesn't rain often, and drivers/cyclists/pedestrians are fairly predictable (at least compared to someplace like Asia). Alternatively, a robobus, that is to say an automated system that drives from one place to…

Is Tesla really ready for a long protracted war against Uber, Waymo (aka Google), and other autonomous taxi companies? Tesla just spent (probably) ~$100 Million or so developing a 14nm chip, already obsolete (NVidia has a 12nm chip already, Intel/MobilEye has 7nm incoming 2020, and who knows what Google/Waymo got up their sleeves. Those TPUs are fully proprietary and fully to Google/Waymo's advantage). 7nm is deploye…

[deleted]

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#42

Post by dragontamer »

keithwarren wrote: post #38
dragontamer wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is Tesla really ready for a long protracted war against Uber, Waymo (aka Google), and other autonomous taxi companies? Tesla just spent (probably) ~$100 Million or so developing a 14nm chip, already obsolete (NVidia has a 12nm chip already, Intel/MobilEye has 7nm incoming 2020, and who knows what Google/Waymo got up their sleeves. Those TPUs are fully proprietary and fully to Google/Waymo's advantage). 7nm is deploye…

Asserting that Tesla is behind because they are fab at 14 instead of something smaller is so laughable you cannot be serious. Thermal profile and power, instruction set and a dozen other things are more important. Watch the autonomy day video on how the chip was built and why, will help a lot

> Watch the autonomy day video on how the chip was built and why, will help a lot

I watched it, and I'm calling them out on it. They focused their entire presentation on NVidia and completely ignored Google/Waymo and Intel/MobilEye Q5 comparisons.

Autonomy day was an obvious hype-fest that ignored the competition. Tesla was only looking at NVidia Xavier or Pegasus, but ignores the real giants in the field.

The arguments in that presentation were exceptionally poor. There's no way a 500W chip could be a problem in a car with 300,000W motors attached and 1000W air conditioners / heaters. It was obvious to me when they were skewing their examples to be absurd corner cases to make a point: 12mph stop-and-go traffic for many hours?

Yeah, as if the 300,000W motor would like 12mph stop-and-go traffic anyway. Its not like regenerative brakes are much better than 50% recycling of the energy btw, the stop-and-go condition is going to wreak your mileage regardless.

A 500W chip can be powered by a 75kW-hr battery for 150 hours. That's nearly a whole week of life. The thought that a Model 3 or Model S car would be scrounging for efficiency in the ~100W magnitude is completely laughable.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#43

Post by qroshan »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #14
brianpgordon wrote: post #2

> a fleet of self-driving vehicles that will make their way into the robotaxi service as soon as next year. So... are we living on the same planet? Does Musk seriously think that Tesla will have solved full autonomous driving, with no LIDAR, and have commercialized a functioning robotaxi service, by next year ? This is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it's like saying he's going to Pluto next week.

My theory is that it's going to work in the style of Zipcar, rather than Uber. The cars won't move without anyone in them, but you'll be able to reserve one, get in the drivers seat, and then it will drive you to your destination, presumably with human assistance should the autopilot disengage.

Bingo! Step 1) Only able drivers are allowed to rent, with hands on wheel and like you mentioned ZipCar style pickup

Step 2) Car will Come to you driverless, but you still need to drive. This car will drive very slow during summon. Since no one is inside the car, the risk to human lives are reduced (but still exists for other people)

Step 3) Driverless, but limited to certain blocks, weather conditions

Step 4) A more expanded version.

But all of these appear years away.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#44

Post by erikpukinskis »

Nokinside wrote: post #33
martythemaniak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla has gone ~15x since IPO. Unlike virtually every other tech-related IPO, it was possible for retail investors to invest in a risky, growth-oriented company. They IPO'ed at a 2.2B cap, meanwhile all major tech-related IPOs seem to be about 10B. If you're a retail investor looking for high risk/high reward stocks, Tesla was a rare exception. In most other cases, only large funds have access to growth companies lik…

If you a retail investor looking for high risk/high reward stocks, Tesla today is not what Tesla was during IPO. The need for more money and future stock dilution means that risk is significantly higher but reward is going to be lower.

> risk is significantly higher but reward is going to be lower.

Is that not true for all companies as they grow?

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#45

Post by martythemaniak »

Nokinside wrote: post #33
martythemaniak wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla has gone ~15x since IPO. Unlike virtually every other tech-related IPO, it was possible for retail investors to invest in a risky, growth-oriented company. They IPO'ed at a 2.2B cap, meanwhile all major tech-related IPOs seem to be about 10B. If you're a retail investor looking for high risk/high reward stocks, Tesla was a rare exception. In most other cases, only large funds have access to growth companies lik…

If you a retail investor looking for high risk/high reward stocks, Tesla today is not what Tesla was during IPO. The need for more money and future stock dilution means that risk is significantly higher but reward is going to be lower.

Well, you claimed he has not delivered for investors because he has not executed well on his plans. Tesla's plans have been on their website since 2006: https://www.tesla.com/en_CA/blog/secret-tesla-motors-master-...

Tesla has executed very well on those plans and delivered very handsomely for investors.

Now you're saying, today they are different. Are they? Or is it just simple 20/20 hindsight? Did you happen to invest at $17 and sell at $350?

There was even more skepticism of them before their IPO (ie, the famous "Tesla Death Watch" series from 2008) and I think they were in a far, far more precarious position back then.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#46

Post by Judgmentality »

DennisP wrote: post #40
brianpgordon wrote: post #2

> a fleet of self-driving vehicles that will make their way into the robotaxi service as soon as next year. So... are we living on the same planet? Does Musk seriously think that Tesla will have solved full autonomous driving, with no LIDAR, and have commercialized a functioning robotaxi service, by next year ? This is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it's like saying he's going to Pluto next week.

I've always been skeptical of skipping LIDAR, but a recent study at Cornell found that with binocular vision they could be almost as accurate as LIDAR, but with much cheaper hardware. https://www.therobotreport.com/researchers-back-teslas-non-l...

That study has been highly disputed by people in the field; the methodology is questionable at best for the claims they're making.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#47

Post by gamblor956 »

DennisP wrote: post #40
brianpgordon wrote: post #2

> a fleet of self-driving vehicles that will make their way into the robotaxi service as soon as next year. So... are we living on the same planet? Does Musk seriously think that Tesla will have solved full autonomous driving, with no LIDAR, and have commercialized a functioning robotaxi service, by next year ? This is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it's like saying he's going to Pluto next week.

I've always been skeptical of skipping LIDAR, but a recent study at Cornell found that with binocular vision they could be almost as accurate as LIDAR, but with much cheaper hardware. https://www.therobotreport.com/researchers-back-teslas-non-l...

The researchers found that analyzing the captured images from a bird’s-eye view, rather than the more traditional frontal view, more than tripled their accuracy, making stereo camera a viable and low-cost alternative to LiDAR.

I look forward to the day when cars have giraffe-necks protruding from their roofs, mounted with stereo cameras...

But until then, the researchers actually just confirmed that front-mount cameras are only about a third as accurate as LIDAR.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#48

Post by camjohnson26 »

tachyonbeam wrote: post #25
JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's either a lie or psychotic delusion, I refuse to believe he is that uninformed and ignorant about the current state of autonomous driving.

I think he's extremely optimistic and confident. He's been extremely successful so far, he's a billionaire, has done many things that nay sayers would have called impossible (ie: paypal, landing rockets, building electric cars with very competitive performance). It's not hard to see why Musk might believe he can do anything. He's taken big risks and gotten a lot of positive reinforcement over the last two decades. I…

It’s not over optimistic, it’s delusional and will not happen. Tesla doesn’t have self driving cars, what they demoed was a less restricted version of autopilot which had to disengage multiple times on the short, predefined demo route that investors rode on.

There’s an easy explanation. Musk knows that self driving is mostly hype at this point but he’s running out of cash and desperately needs a capital raise. If he can fool investors into thinking he’ll have self driving solved within a year maybe they’ll give Tesla the money it needs.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#49

Post by elorant »

mruts wrote: post #31
brianpgordon wrote: post #2

> a fleet of self-driving vehicles that will make their way into the robotaxi service as soon as next year. So... are we living on the same planet? Does Musk seriously think that Tesla will have solved full autonomous driving, with no LIDAR, and have commercialized a functioning robotaxi service, by next year ? This is so far outside of the realm of possibility that it's like saying he's going to Pluto next week.

Is it fair to ask at this point if Elon Musk is going crazy? His decisions of late seem unwise at best, irrational at worst. Maybe he should just concentrate on producing Model 3's and then the Model Y? Or what would be really cool would if Tesla could produce multiple car models... at the same time!

More like desperate. He has to hit targets that seem impossible otherwise he'll run out of cash.

Re: Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

#50

Post by dragontamer »

vtail wrote: post #37
dragontamer wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla's financials Tesla has literally never made a yearly profit in its life. Tesla hasn't even had positive yearly cash-flow for its entire life. The best Tesla ever got was Q3 / Q4 2018, a very modest profit of a couple hundred-million dollars. But this was very quickly wiped out by Q1 2019 with a $700 Million loss and $1.4 Billion negative cash flow. Tesla's financials are a complete disaster. Tesla's stock pri…

Can you apply the same logic to Uber/Lyft?

Yes, but Uber / Lyft loses less money than Tesla.

So Uber / Lyft will fail at a later date than Tesla will fail. Note that Uber/Lyft can potentially become profitable by simply raising prices, but there's no easy way for Tesla to raise prices. (In fact, they haven't really deployed the promised $35,000 M3 yet in wide numbers. Tesla's customers are still expecting price cuts... to get to the $35k number)

Post reply on HN