Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer • Hacker News Board

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

#101

Post by hef19898 » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:13 PM UTC

matz1 wrote: post #67

dragontamer wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 argume…

Vertical integration. Tesla can have the chip solely focused on their specific needs. They ignore google/waymo because they won't sell them the chip anyway.

Vertical integration is dead in the automotive sector for decades. There are Ford Motor Companies of old anymore with their proper plantation to get the rubber for their proper tyres. And there are reasons for that, hard learned ones. Not sure why that would be any different for chips.

First, the likes of nVidia have a much larger customer base and thus a better risk profile. Also, chips are their core competency. And second, running your own chip production is capital intensive, not so great when you are already in a tight financial situation.

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

#102

Post by username223 » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

Nokinside wrote: post #23

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.

It seems to be completely pie in the sky type of thinking. The only rational -non delusional- reason I see for the talk is if Musk does it to get better financing terms before the self driving hype dries down. I think taxi services without driver are coming but the the secret sauce is remote human operator working together with high level of automation. Driver is the main cost of taxi service. If you get one operator…

> It seems to be completely pie in the sky type of thinking.

Agreed. This is just more of the usual Musk hype. Maybe he will get some geofenced taxi service going in a suburb of Phoenix, where the roads are wide and straight and the weather is always sunny.

> the secret sauce is remote human operator

New startup idea: Instead of paying people to mine WoW gold 14 hours a day, pay them to pilot taxis via a low-latency satellite link. "Hi, I'm 'Joe' from 'The Bronx,' and I will be your taxi driver today."

> If you get one operator to remotely oversee 20 highly autonomous vehicles

This doesn't work, because the situations that require human intervention will also require near-human reaction times. That's not possible for a single human herding 20 cars.

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

#103

Post by hef19898 » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:16 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #90

dragontamer wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ASICs are all well and good when you can afford them AND when you have the volume to sustain them. The main issue is that Tesla can't afford them. They have $2.2 Billion in cash remaining and are currently losing money at a rate of $700 Million/quarter. Tesla's cash reserves are nose-diving and they're busy doing vanity projects like a self-driving ASIC, when their volume of cars being produced is well under 300k / y…

All the more reason for them to go with the proven and far cheaper 14nm process node rather than 7nm (which Intel/MobilEye have had difficulties with as far as yields). https://www.techpowerup.com/248008/intel-at-least-5-years-be... EDIT: Corrected below. MobilEye is using TSMC even though they're owned by Intel.

More like all the more reason to source these chips from outside, I would argue

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

#104

Post by etrautmann » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:17 PM UTC

Reedx wrote: post #57

Judgmentality wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perhaps, but you can't dispute that humans don't have LIDAR. It's just a matter of time before AI can drive better than humans even if using similar vision. Especially in aggregate (e.g., factoring in distracted drivers).

Humans also have an unacceptable accident rate. The goal is to far surpass currently-accepted safety standards, and building a 3D model of the world at 10+ HZ can only help with that.

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

#105

Post by moogly » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:18 PM UTC

Reedx wrote: post #57

Judgmentality wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Perhaps, but you can't dispute that humans don't have LIDAR. It's just a matter of time before AI can drive better than humans even if using similar vision. Especially in aggregate (e.g., factoring in distracted drivers).

Humans don't only have vision. Humans have an ocular-vestibular system that makes it possible to perform SLAM[1]-like processing; when in motion, your balance and visual input like the parallax effect can help the brain build a mapped 3D volume and determine your position, orientation and velocity and your relation to other objects within that volume.

VSLAM, visual SLAM, which is what you have to employ if relying largely on vision-only, is so far cruder than that.

I'm sure Tesla has some sensor fusion that also employs GPS and short-range radar/ultrasonar to help.

You can get some velocity and positional data through GPS, but it will have quite a lot of latency and is very coarse (at least the commercially accessible part).

SLAM is much, much easier to do with LIDAR since that will give you a point cloud 3D model. With VSLAM, you have to infer the depth data and build it up over time, and it's a much harder problem to solve reliably. OTOH, LIDAR's Achilles heel is, however, heavy rain/sleet/snow. Waymo has shown off using deep learning to filter the bulk of the noise out, but it looks like it's still early days there.

Vision isn't great for sleet/snow either, to be fair.

[1]: simultaneous localization and mapping

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

#106

Post by hef19898 » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:20 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #86

dragontamer wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Launching in 2020 means two years (starting in 2018) of using the more expensive and slower Nvidia chip. You mean a cheaper and more industry established MobilEye EyeQ5 chip, with LiDAR capabilities, Tensor Units and all that good stuff. ------------ Let me ask you this: how many vehicles do you think Tesla will make in 2018 and 2019? A million? Two million? Do remember, 2018 Tesla made only 244,920 cars. 2019 Q1 o…

14nm is a sound move for Tesla exactly because their volumes are lower. All their cars will have the new chip installed as it's part of the safety features as well (and gives them margin whenever someone decides to do an upgrade on their existing vehicle).

With these low volumes the sound move would be to buy chips from someone else. Just like Aston Martin is sourcing engines from third parties. Heck, even Mercedes is using Renault engines and BMW used Peugeot engines in Minis for years. And engines are a core competency of both, BMW and Mercedes. Chips for Tesla, not so much.

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

#107

Post by dragontamer » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:23 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #93

dragontamer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Intel/MobilEye is using TSMC 7nm for the EyeQ5 chip. There won't be any issues. https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1333990 TSMC 7nm has already deployed the iPhone A12, the iPad A12x, and AMD's Radeon VII. Its mature and ready for mass production. ------- The problem with Tesla's 14nm chip is that their capabilities are about to be leap-frogged by a commercial-off-the-shelf solution in just a year. Note that…

Being potentially "leap frogged" in a couple years is only a problem if you're not planning on improving the chip in that time. Tesla is, in fact, planning on deploying an improved NN chip in 2 years (currently in development). They can use whatever process is available at that time. And thank you for the correction about Intel/MobilEye using TSMC instead. Of course, anyone can use TSMC, so there's less vertical inte…

> Tesla is, in fact, planning on deploying an improved NN chip in 2 years (currently in development).

So Tesla is planning to spend another $100 to $200 Million on this project? For another chip? That's 10% of its remaining cash (Tesla only has $2.2 Billion left)

I'm not convinced that Tesla has the cash for these projects.

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

#108

Post by hef19898 » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:25 PM UTC

rmah wrote: post #13

bryanlarsen wrote: post #6

Ford has $150B in debt. Toyota has double that.

Yes, but Ford has revenues of $160B and Toyota has revenues of $2,642B vs Tesla's $21B. More importantly, both Toyota and Ford are profitable. In fact, both Ford and Toyota have profits larger than Tesla's entire revenue stream.

And I would assume a better, read positive, cash flow. Then debt is not such a big problem.

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

#109

Post by ergothus » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:31 PM UTC

Robotbeat wrote: post #79

ergothus wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I realize you're joking, but this is actually kind of bothersome to me. Most of us give overly optimistic delivery dates without intending to. Over time we learn that we have this habit, so we pad in some time we think is unnecessary...and still give overly optimistic delivery dates without intending to. If you add someone INTENDING to give such poor estimates, the problem moves from the "expected and occasionally pr…

He's not intending to be over-optimistic; his goals are possible, he sees they are possible and says so, even if they're unlikely. And he repeatedly states his tendency to be over-optimistic, which RARELY is acknowledged by pretty much anyone else promoting a new advancement. "I think we can do this by XX. Granted, I've been over-optimistic in the past"... is refreshing honesty, not "lies." It's amazing to me that so…

> so many people interpret acknowledgement of one's own fallibility as lying.

I can't speak for others, but for myself I interpreted the bit about his bio saying this meant that it was the intention, not an honest assessment of what will occur despite intentions.

I mean, I'm TERRIBLE at estimation and despite all my efforts and awareness I still underestimate most everything. But when starting a company I wouldn't say "...and we'll have optimistic estimates!"

That said, I've not read the bio, and I may well have misunderstood the capsule summary. On the gripping hand, despite (or because of) all his undeniable brilliance at execution, Musk says and does a lot of things that are Not How I Would Do It, so who knows.

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

#110

Post by hef19898 » Wed, May 01, 2019, 6:38 PM UTC

notfromhere wrote: post #96

toomuchtodo wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have already delegated access to my Model S to other Tesla account holders through customer service (manual process). Seems to automate it is straightforward? Tesla could replace Turo for Teslas fairly rapidly IMHO (and possibly Zipcar!). Supporting Lyft/Uber functionality would of course be more effort, but also doable. This isn't trying to go to the Mars ( insert chuckle here ). Even if you discount full autonomy…

So Tesla is going to enter an industry that actively loses money based on an autonomy play that doesn't exist and isn't even legal on most U.S. roads?

Exactly what you would do to solve your cash flow and profit issues, isn't it?