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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

#241

Post by claudeganon »

caconym_ wrote: post #230
claudeganon wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What universe are you living in? Can't be the same one I'm in ... I feel the same when I see people falling for all the marketing hype around Musk and his companies. He’s definitely inherited Jobs’ capacity for reality distortion. But Apple is still chugging on long on that, despite years of quality and design problems, so who know how it will all pan out.

If you want to argue that Tesla is overvalued, there are perfectly reasonable arguments to be made in that vein. But comparing them (well on their way to half a million vehicles delivered) in the general sense with a company that folded after selling 50 cars is just absurd, and makes you look like a crank. It overshadows any trace of validity in whatever you're saying. What about SpaceX? Their technical achievements…

Look, despite all your overwrought labels and name calling, I don’t have as much personally invested in Musk’s success as you do. If he lives up to his hype, great, if he doesn’t, maybe we can move more quickly into an economic reality where people aren’t so invested in cults of personality as being core to valuations.

As to Space X, I don’t fall for the notion that their engineering accomplishments are somehow solely dependent on Musk. A lot of really talented people work there and have done some really incredible feats of engineering. If those were regularly attributed to them instead of with Musk, I would have greater respect for the whole enterprise.

Whether the direction they’re pushing things, the privatization of space exploration and it’s underlying research, is a good thing, is also a separate conversation that I doubt you or I would agree on.

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

#242

Post by _ea1k »

perl4ever wrote: post #231
nickpeterson wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t plan on buying a Tesla anytime soon, but the amount of critics that seem to hate everything they do is stunning to me. They are producing an electric car you can buy. They basically forced other companies to produce electric cars you can buy. It’s awesome. Be a little kid again for just a minute...

"They are producing an electric car you can buy. They basically forced other companies to produce electric cars you can buy. It’s awesome. Be a little kid again for just a minute..." This seems like a proverbial "reality distortion field" to me. The Tesla model 3 came out about 7 years after the Nissan Leaf, didn't it? And given a reasonable budget, it's arguably still not an example of a car "you can buy". Yes, ther…

TBH, I think the idea that the Leaf from 7 years ago is in the same segment requires some distortion of reality. The Leaf is not nearly as sporty, had a much lower range, and also had a much less reliable battery.

The modern Leaf fixes these problems by being as expensive as a Model 3, and its still slower.

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

#243

Post by _ea1k »

rrss wrote: post #152
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.

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?"

They didn't. They had been saying for years that it would require a computer upgrade that could be done with a service visit, and that the service visit would be free for people who purchased the "FSD" option.

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

#244

Post by Invictus0 »

ec109685 wrote: post #105
Invictus0 wrote: post #32

Seems like these components were authorized at the height of the self driving hype cycle as a way of future proofing the cars--that is, the owner could download a self-driving software update and the hardware would already be ready for it. In retrospect, this looks foolish: doing self driving without a LIDAR is borderline unethical. I wouldn't be surprised if newer models do away with these ASICs until the software i…

Huh? Even without full level 5 self-driving, these chips allow Tesla to control steering and breaking in many situations. Humans don’t have lidar and we are able to navigate the world. If the windows of the car was replaced by a low latency screen, showing exactly what we’d see if we looked out the window, we could drive just fine, so cameras do provide enough data to self drive. You just need a smart processor.

The bar is not "being able to navigate the world". The bar is doing so 10x more safely than a human, and currently the human deaths-in-car-crash rate is something like 1.2 per 100 million miles driven [0]. For scale, that is the same distance from the Earth to the sun, and equivalent to 4000 trips around the equator. I understand it is theoretically possible to beat this without a LIDAR but you are seriously understating the difficulty of this task when you say you just need a smart processor.

[0]: https://www.iihs.org/topics/fatality-statistics/detail/state...

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

#245

Post by ilikehurdles »

nickik wrote: post #208
ilikehurdles wrote: post #94

While I don't expect the results to be that much different, I feel like Tesla teardown should be compared to a BMW, Audi, or Lexus teardown. The cutting edge electronics stuff is usually tried first on the luxury brands before it trickles down into economy models. A brand like Toyota or VW has to ship at magnitudes greater scale and at much lower price points. Manufacturers have much less breathing room for component…

At least in comparison to the i3 the Tesla was way more advanced. Its all in the Munro teardown, and the i3 was billions of $ investment for BMW.

I agree! But newer BMWs have some hands-free driving and driverless parking features along with traffic jam and lane keep assist plus a good chunk of interior and drivetrain/suspension tech, things you won't find to that extent in a ~$20k-ish range vehicle.

I expect that they're behind Tesla on most electronics, but my complaint was that comparing an economy brand like Toyota or VW with Tesla isn't an apples-to-apples comparison for a lot of reasons.

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

#246

Post by rblatz »

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.

For these sorts of problems I love to break out a comparison of Netflix vs Blockbuster. Blockbuster was incapable of competing with Netflix because of competing internal and external pressure. Blockbuster at its heart was a franchise, and to compete with Netflix they’d have to abandon their franchisees, and cut them out of deal.

Toyota is too dependent on their supply chain to piss them off by bringing too much in-house. Eventually they will get there but it’s going to be a slow delicate transition, because I don’t see Toyota taking a massive leap and reshaping the way they do things from top to bottom.

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

#247

Post by hef19898 »

perl4ever wrote: post #237
hef19898 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I have no idea what they should do/should have done, but if your advice was correct, then it seems like existing manufacturers could have done the same. If so, then how would Tesla compete? If they couldn't, as they seem to have struggled, why would Tesla be different? Maybe the secret is marketing, and the extra engineering is kind of like a MacGuffin. Essential, but the details don't matter.

Traditional car makers have to develop a decent EV, there Tesla has had a huge head start. Tesla has to figure out automotive mass production, there the situation is the other way round.

Now, traditional car maker are catching up in terms of EVs. While Tesla is improving on the production side. So Tesla's window of opportunity is closing, slowly but surely. Marketing obviously has an impact in that as well.

So Tesla risks, and has risked, a huge window of opportunity. Simply by ignoring the hard learned automotive lessons because of disruption, Musks genius and such. Which was a stupid thing to do, Tesla had the automotive world on EV tech, throwing that away... is stupid.

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

#248

Post by ilikehurdles »

pmorici wrote: post #164
xvf22 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The leather is tied to the range in the model 3.

False, you cannot buy a Model 3, or any Tesla for that matter that doesn't have leather. There was a planed cloth seat for the model 3 but they scrapped that.

Is it real animal skin? As someone who opts out of leather interiors in cars, and knowing that Tesla sells well to the SV crowd, I'm surprised that there'd be no way to buy a tesla without killing some cattle.

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

#249

Post by caconym_ »

claudeganon wrote: post #241
caconym_ wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you want to argue that Tesla is overvalued, there are perfectly reasonable arguments to be made in that vein. But comparing them (well on their way to half a million vehicles delivered) in the general sense with a company that folded after selling 50 cars is just absurd, and makes you look like a crank. It overshadows any trace of validity in whatever you're saying. What about SpaceX? Their technical achievements…

Look, despite all your overwrought labels and name calling, I don’t have as much personally invested in Musk’s success as you do. If he lives up to his hype, great, if he doesn’t, maybe we can move more quickly into an economic reality where people aren’t so invested in cults of personality as being core to valuations. As to Space X, I don’t fall for the notion that their engineering accomplishments are somehow solel…

> I don’t have as much personally invested in Musk’s success as you do.

I don't own any Tesla products, nor do I have any direct investments in any of Musk's companies. Also, I think the guy is a literal maniac and I'd never want to work under him. I think you're far more invested in your viewpoint than I am.

> As to Space X, I don’t fall for the notion that their engineering accomplishments are somehow solely dependent on Musk. A lot of really talented people work their and have done some really incredible feats of engineering. If those were regularly attributed to them instead of with Musk, I would have greater respect for the whole enterprise.

I never said they were "solely dependent on Musk." You brought up, and I quote (with emphasis mine), the "marketing hype around Musk and his companies." I haven't mentioned Musk at all until this comment.

Reality distortion intensifies, eh? It seems that the one you're really trying to convince is yourself (via some very flimsy straw men), and it's not my job to make you see reality objectively. Good luck.

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

#250

Post by ilikehurdles »

_ea1k wrote: post #242
perl4ever wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"They are producing an electric car you can buy. They basically forced other companies to produce electric cars you can buy. It’s awesome. Be a little kid again for just a minute..." This seems like a proverbial "reality distortion field" to me. The Tesla model 3 came out about 7 years after the Nissan Leaf, didn't it? And given a reasonable budget, it's arguably still not an example of a car "you can buy". Yes, ther…

TBH, I think the idea that the Leaf from 7 years ago is in the same segment requires some distortion of reality. The Leaf is not nearly as sporty, had a much lower range, and also had a much less reliable battery. The modern Leaf fixes these problems by being as expensive as a Model 3, and its still slower.

The modern leaf is close to $10,000 cheaper than a Model 3. $31600 vs $39990.
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