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Musk Can’t Dodge Tesla Cash Woes Any Longer

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

#111

Post by dragontamer »

matz1 wrote: post #99
dragontamer wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon Musk is pretending like Tesla can make money from this self-driving taxi idea. You can't make money from self-driving Taxis if Google/Waymo simply offers a similar service for cheaper right next to you. And yes, Google/Waymo has the vertical integration thing all figured out too. Now if you think that maybe Tesla's chip is useful for its M3 customers... sure. I strongly disagree with that fact, but you're certai…

>if Google/Waymo simply offers a similar service for cheaper right next to you Right, if , tesla currently has the advantage being ahead, they have self driving (at some level) currently deployed for masses.

And Waymo has self-driving, with 10,000 miles per 2 or 3 disengagements... deployed right now in Phoenix Arizona.

Safety drivers are still necessary for both. But the number of times the safety-driver interacts in Waymo/Google's car is way way less.

EDIT: Actually, I'm not sure about Tesla's numbers. I heard 1 per 3 miles but I couldn't prove it through a google search. In any case, Tesla doesn't seem to be bragging about its disengagement rate, so I bet it isn't very good.

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

#112

Post by dwighttk »

bryanlarsen wrote: post #7
overcast wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh come on, he's got a whole seven months!

19 months from now is also next year. And "as soon as" means "maybe". And as all parents know, "maybe" means "no".

For what it is worth Musk said: “I think we will be feature complete, full self-driving, this year – meaning the car will be able to find you in a parking lot, pick you up and take you all the way to your destination without intervention, this year. I would say I am of certain of that. That is not a question mark.”

That’s 7 months, not 19.

(The rest is good :)

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

#113

Post by Someone »

camjohnson26 wrote: post #48
tachyonbeam wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

“Fooling investors” can also lead to law suits that cost Tesla and Musk lots of time and attention, and, in extreme cases, may lead to Musk spending time in jail.

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

#114

Post by [deleted] »

close04 wrote: post #98
toomuchtodo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be sleazy and untrustworthy and still be smart and right. I wouldn't use VC funding as signaling, considering how many VC folks blindly funded Theranos (which wasn't just outright fraud, but abusive pursuit of whistleblowers). It's fairly clear machine vision is going to surpass LIDAR in the near future (taking capability and cost into account), doesn't take a robotics expert to see that.

Probably has nothing to do with the fact that a lot of LIDAR related tech and research now belong to Waymo and Uber. Add to this the cost of LIDAR and it starts making sense that anyone (re)starting in this field would avoid LIDAR and go for the cheaper and more accessible option.

[deleted]

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

#115

Post by toomuchtodo »

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?

Do you lose money if someone else owns the cars and you're just facilitating transactions with software you own and infrastructure you must operate regardless to provide service to your vehicle owners?

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

#116

Post by [deleted] »

close04 wrote: post #98
toomuchtodo wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can be sleazy and untrustworthy and still be smart and right. I wouldn't use VC funding as signaling, considering how many VC folks blindly funded Theranos (which wasn't just outright fraud, but abusive pursuit of whistleblowers). It's fairly clear machine vision is going to surpass LIDAR in the near future (taking capability and cost into account), doesn't take a robotics expert to see that.

Probably has nothing to do with the fact that a lot of LIDAR related tech and research now belong to Waymo and Uber. Add to this the cost of LIDAR and it starts making sense that anyone (re)starting in this field would avoid LIDAR and go for the cheaper and more accessible option.

[deleted]

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

#117

Post by Robotbeat »

hef19898 wrote: post #106
Robotbeat wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The thing is that no one makes a chip like Tesla wants that is tailored to their workflow. Tesla, by going with the 14nm process and inexpensively licensing core IP (i.e. for the ARM cores) and only customizing the NN portion, is able to keep chip dev costs low enough so that in the end they're saving a little money on unit costs, getting a power/performance benefit, and as a bonus is building in-house expertise that enhances their value as a company. That's not a bad plan, IMHO.

Also, a side note, but maybe it was a bad idea for BMW to use Peugeot engines in the Mini... I've not heard good things about them... (Which is irrelevant to the point at hand, of course.)

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

#118

Post by Robotbeat »

dragontamer wrote: post #107
Robotbeat wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It's effectively coming out of the cash they were sending to Nvidia, so the effect on cash flow is actually positive.

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

#119

Post by agumonkey »

mplewis wrote: post #66
agumonkey wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't buy his claims that lidar is non necessary and even inefficient at sdv ?

Elon/Tesla have a vested interest in making sure LIDAR isn't required by law for self-driving vehicles. In addition, his NN-camera-powered-cars are still trying to drive themselves into highway barriers.

Yeah but back to its point, he argued lidar was not optimal for "computer vision", do you think it has limits that would be shadowed by multi camera NN analysis ?

That he's doing bad PR is another point (that we can discuss also but is harder to comment on objectively)

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

#120

Post by tim333 »

moogly wrote: post #105
Reedx wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 la…

Tesla had a vid of their system doing that quite well https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=8324
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