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Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

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

#151

Post by gdubs »

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…

I hear this fit and finish critique of Tesla often. But the whole package of a Tesla is clearly compelling to people, who are willing to pay a luxury price for it.

High end Volvo’s are a good example of old-school quality — gorgeous interiors, beautiful trim. But they’re still predominantly internal combustion engine era designs. The height of it from a luxury finish standpoint. But, Tesla’s different.

Maybe it’s that petro cars reached a peak, and the only way to really differentiate has come down to “door sound” and body panel alignment measured in nanometers.

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

#152

Post by rrss »

onepremise wrote: post #111
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...

> they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task. They did use off-the-shelf components. They performed poorly and they resulted to developing a custom die with the right components to handle the task of computer vision. They explicitly stated this in multiple interviews. The off-the-shelf solution was crap.

If it was so bad, why did tesla claim for years that all their cars were shipping with sufficient onboard capability for eventual "full self driving?"

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

#153

Post by SEJeff »

Causality1 wrote: post #84
blattimwind wrote: post #35

> https://www.ft.com/__origami/service/image/v2/images/raw/htt... Strikes me as a typical low-reliability design. Would be surprised if this unit lasts ten (or even five) years.

They are already breaking. The flash chips are wearing out because teslas obsessively log everything you do.

And that's been fixed in newer firwmare versions, per the hacker who fixes those in the first place.

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

#154

Post by clouddrover »

pmorici wrote: post #109
dontdoitpls wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The power of marketing is incredible. No one else could get away with Tesla quality at luxury pricing, but they sell vehicles.

The Chevy Bolt is priced the same as the Tesla Model 3 and has less 'luxary' features. For example if you want leather in the Bolt that's extra where as it is standard on the 3. Other things the Bolt doesn't have at that price are Autopilot, DC Fast Charging, etc...

The Bolt is not priced the same as the Model 3. Examples:

https://www.cars.com/for-sale/searchresults.action/?mdId=362...

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

#155

Post by cdumler »

rthomas6 wrote: post #132
onepremise wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> they could have used off-the-shelf components for the same task. They did use off-the-shelf components. They performed poorly and they resulted to developing a custom die with the right components to handle the task of computer vision. They explicitly stated this in multiple interviews. The off-the-shelf solution was crap.

What was wrong with using FPGAs?

Power and capability. Custom silicon means they can build the chip with all of the chip's surface being used for things their software needs (ie. extra surface for parallel computing and zero surface for unneeded features). They can also tune the chip with ops/watt in mind. Nvidia has touted their A.I. chips being x10 more powerful, but they also took twice the power to do it [1]. For an electric vehicle that lives on only the charge stored in its batteries, you want to use exactly as much power as you need to get the job done and no more.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19732974

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

#156

Post by SEJeff »

lb1lf wrote: post #41
iamphilrae wrote: post #16

My brand new Toyota C-HR comes with an entertainment screen that is not Retina display. Technology that has been out for half a decade and is found in the dirt cheapest of smart phones. It honestly doesn’t surprise me that the rest of their tech is so far behind.

-Toyota is rather conservative with regards to new technology, which IMHO is part of the reason they tend to score very well on all kinds of reliability barometers. (An almost fanatical devotion to quality and process control being another major factor!) Chances are you will still be able to buy that entertainment screen in 15-20 years' time.

    (An almost fanatical devotion to quality and process control being another major factor!)
They call it "kaizen" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kaizen

They even wrote a book in it, "The Toyota Way".

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

#157

Post by hef19898 »

aguyfromnb wrote: post #89
swiley wrote: post #12

6 years ahead electronics here means AI ASICs. I thought that was weird, I know Toyota cars have radar and I’m not sure about Teslas. IMO as an armchair observer the sensor array is far more interesting than any of this. Personally, if I were to buy another car (and hopefully I don’t have to any time soon) I’d want the processing electronics to be off the shelf not weird custom stuff that’s going to have all kinds of…

> I’m upset about this because it’s (IMO) more of a marketing thing (and maybe a way to have some leverage over 3rd party repair shops) and not really a technical improvement. The number of "tech people" that think Tesla has some chip building advantage over the likes of companies like NVIDIA is astonishing. Tesla's marketing compares their chip to older NVIDIA boards. NVIDIA has better tech available off-the-shelf:…

Yeah, tesla is dancing at to many marriages. AI chips, self-driving, automation. Instead of focusing on mass-producing EVs. had they done just that, developing a top notch EV (which they did) and leverage centuries worth of automotive massproduction for everything not purely EV related we would never have had any discussion about short sellers. But they didn't, so the jury is still out on it if ask me.

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

#158

Post by claudeganon »

codeulike wrote: post #133
claudeganon wrote: post #92

Realistically though, Tesla will got bought out by one of these larger companies, so they can integrate (while undoubtedly making worse) the underlying tech. Tesla hasn’t show any capacity to deliver quality cars at scale, nor provide service to them, whatever their ambitions. Combined with all their SEC problems, it’s reminiscent of Preston Tucker’s car company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker

Tesla sold 367,500 cars in 2019 (as of mid-January) Tesla's market capitalization is $93 billion, compared to $50 billion for General Motors and $37 billion for Ford No other car company is going to be buying them out unless they crash very very badly

Toyota’s market cap is more than twice that of Tesla, around 200 billion, and they sold 10 million cars last year.

I do expect Tesla’s is dramatically inflated, I have no idea if Toyota would buy them, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. If Toyota could successfully integrate all the Tesla stuff into their vehicles, it would also have a greater impact than anything Tesla will likely accomplish on their own.

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

#159

Post by SEJeff »

codeulike wrote: post #133
claudeganon wrote: post #92

Realistically though, Tesla will got bought out by one of these larger companies, so they can integrate (while undoubtedly making worse) the underlying tech. Tesla hasn’t show any capacity to deliver quality cars at scale, nor provide service to them, whatever their ambitions. Combined with all their SEC problems, it’s reminiscent of Preston Tucker’s car company: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preston_Tucker

Tesla sold 367,500 cars in 2019 (as of mid-January) Tesla's market capitalization is $93 billion, compared to $50 billion for General Motors and $37 billion for Ford No other car company is going to be buying them out unless they crash very very badly

That and the most obvious reality that love the guy or hate him, Tesla isn't Tesla without Elon. Unlike SpaceX, Tesla has to Gwynne Shotwell. It is Musk who drives the engineering (and causes an enormous amount of turnover as a result). It would be a hard sell for a lot of share holders (including Elon and Kimbal Musk) to take the temporary raise in share price of a buyout knowing it would tank the max upside of the company in the long term.

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

#160

Post by clouddrover »

rebelde wrote: post #102
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...

Oh, the article gives numbers! Tesla: $158/kWh Competitors: "more than" $200/kWh Model 3 SR+ has a 54 kWh battery. Tesla advantage = (200 - 158) * 54 = $2268 per car. Yes, an advantage today, but not too bad.

Volkswagen is paying less than $100 per kWh for their MEB cars:

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/08/business/volkswagen-trade...

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