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Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

asia.nikkei.com

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Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#71

Post by DarmokJalad1701 »

Neil44 wrote: post #52
blacklion wrote: post #17

> The computer powers the cars' self-driving capabilities as well as their advanced in-car "infotainment" system. Now I'm scared. I hope it is mistake of Nikkei and these two subsystems doesn't have anything in common, including power supplies.

Yep to put it a different way they seem to be saying that having Spotify running on the same ECU as the driving AI is what puts them 6 years ahead.

This is absolutely false. The new FSD chip is specifically made for Neural net inference tasks. It has a custom instruction set with ~18 instructions. Even before that, they used an NVIDIA Drive PX unit for NN inference.

The in-car entertainment system is run on a separate Intel Atom based computer. The ECU controlling the car itself is completely separate from both of these. You can reboot the main display of the car while driving on Autopilot and it will still perform the same.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#72

Post by BooneJS »

radu_floricica wrote: post #49
kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Automotive grade components have to survive greater temperature extremes and vibration for 10+ years. Disposable consumer products don't operate in the same sphere. Tesla has been burned by using consumer grade screens.

This used to be a good excuse, but somehow it starts to ring hollow. Ipads are as near indestructible as any hardware I've seen - drop'em, scratch'em, give'em to toddlers to play with. By comparison a car screen kinda lives a sheltered life.

Cars see radically different temperatures. Park a car in Phoenix for 8 hours in the sun, or let it sit overnight in Anchorage. My iPhone can’t be left on the dash in sunny weather without overheating. Even in the Bay Area, commuting home with Waze forced me to mount it on an AC blower with the case off.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#73

Post by have_faith »

iamphilrae wrote: post #40
hyperbovine wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How often do you replace your phone? How often do you replace your car?

Exactly that my point. My car is brand new, the model is brand new, yet it’s screen looks like it’s out the bargain basement of an LCD factory. In 5 to 10 year’s time when I replace the car, it’ll look even worse!

> In 5 to 10 year’s time when I replace the car, it’ll look even worse!

Not to be pedantic, but it will be the same usable screen, you will just have been sold higher expectations by then. An unfortunate byproduct of progress. Things are good enough until one day they aren't :)

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#74

Post by latortuga »

codingmess wrote: post #68
KaiserPro wrote: post #48

This is grand, apart from the build quality of the mechanics is ~10 years behind. Go to a tesla showroom, Look at the doors of the model three. Note that they don't line up. Look at the paint job, notice that there are bumps and chips, especailly on the edges of the doors. This is on a _demo_ car, stuck in a showroom. these should be perfect. Even a budget Kia has better build quality than this. Its not the isolated…

Even 10 years ago, normal cars had doors that line up, and proper paint jobs.

This is a brand new car company that has built manufacturing from scratch. 10 years ago, car companies had been manufacturing cars for decades. This stuff doesn't happen overnight.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#75

Post by tim333 »

They didn't really need to tear down a model 3 to see the HW3 computer, they could have just watched last years Tesla presentation. Also I don't know how they calculate 6 years - Nvidia will probably have something comparable they can buy within a year or so.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#76

Post by aguyfromnb »

soygul wrote: post #18

Article praises Tesla's custom AI chip. It is something many criticize as a waste of development resources, while they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task. Tesla's real advantage is their battery production. No one else can compete with them on battery price or production volume at a similar quality: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/teslas-competitors-play-catc...

>Tesla's real advantage is their battery production

Battery pack production. Tesla purchases batteries from Panasonic and LG (and thus is susceptible to that supply).

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#77

Post by cma »

wil421 wrote: post #54
soygul wrote: post #18

Article praises Tesla's custom AI chip. It is something many criticize as a waste of development resources, while they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task. Tesla's real advantage is their battery production. No one else can compete with them on battery price or production volume at a similar quality: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/10/teslas-competitors-play-catc...

Battery production seems like a problem that can be solved right now with money. VW and Toyota could partner with a 3rd party (like Tesla and Panasonic) and build factories. Custom silicon seems like a much harder problem for VM/Toyota. Unless a supplier can build something for them I don’t see either company innovating like Tesla. Basically Tesla’s secret sauce is the Tech not the EV components.

> Unless a supplier can build something for them I don’t see either company innovating like Tesla.

Mobileye?

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#78

Post by michaelbuckbee »

James_Henry wrote: post #42
bovermyer wrote: post #24

Note that the "we cannot do it" quote is not referring to the technology itself, but rather to the fact that to adopt Tesla's pattern, the legacy auto companies would need to ditch their supply chains. That's not something they can do without pissing off a lot of people.

The answer to this, I would think, would be to have a small part of the company whose soul purpose is to disrupt the larger company. Then Toyota and VW might have built Tesla in house without supply chain worries. When their in-house Tesla-like company proved a success, they could reasonably afford to upend their old supply chain: self-disruption.

Maybe worth noting that GM tried this with it's Saturn brand - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_Corporation

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#79

Post by DarmokJalad1701 »

blacklion wrote: post #17

> The computer powers the cars' self-driving capabilities as well as their advanced in-car "infotainment" system. Now I'm scared. I hope it is mistake of Nikkei and these two subsystems doesn't have anything in common, including power supplies.

They are wrong. The ECU driving the car is separate from the computer running neural net inference (either the NVIDIA drive PX or their newer FSD computer), which is in turn separate from the display or "MCU" which controls the entertainment system which is based on an Intel Atom CPU.

Re: Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

#80

Post by LoSboccacc »

> Industry insiders expect such technology to take hold around 2025 at the earliest.

there's many interpretations. the most obvious is that industry insiders were wrong about their expectations, since the technology has reached the market this early. the other is that the 6 years estimate is way too generous, given production units exists, and late adoption cycle is usually two years. the third is this is a "my darling tesla" advertisement.

somehow I am more inclined to sit between position one and two, especially since the productization of ai chips is already in the works[1], but still.

[1] https://www.technologyreview.com/s/613305/this-chip-was-demo...

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