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Tesla teardown finds electronics 6 years ahead of Toyota and VW

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431–440 of 460 posts

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

#431
post #271

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are misleaded. VW sees itself as mainly software company now. They don't do engines nor drivetrains, but they do heavy SW. This way they think they can control the technicians.

> VW sees itself as mainly software company now. Emission-cheating software?

You are forgotting that the emission cheating SW came from Bosch and was implemented and distributed by Bosch.

No, really, VW sees itself as mainly SW company. Told directly from one of its outsourced development houses.

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

#432

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…

Is this purely an aesthetic thing or is it an actual structural problem that has an appreciable effect on the day to day operation or reliability of the car.

Or is your argument more that if they can't fix the 'easy' things then that is an indication of more systemic problems with the integrity of the car

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

#433

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recognizing traffic lights is worth more than the cost difference.

As someone whose car recognizes traffic lights (though not with perfect accuracy), it is the most useless feature I've ever seen. Right along with recognizing garbage cans. I would not pay a dime extra for the visualizations, especially since they're quite inaccurate in many cases. So, many, cones, even when there aren't really any cones.

Does it stop for traffic lights and start for green?

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

#434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed. The wipers could be better. I haven’t encountered the unlocking problem though. What did Tesla say?

I haven't bothered asking Tesla to explain the unreliable unlocking, since it seems to happen to almost everyone else periodically, and some people quite a lot. I just take the phone out of my pocket and hold the door handle open for a while until it figures it out. After 10 or 15 seconds I usually just take out my wallet and use the RFID. I also started using sentry mode even in my garage, which helps tremendously,…

Do you kill the Tesla app on the phone regularly? It takes a bit for it to unlock the phone in that case. Did you try changing your phone? (Not to be offensive, just curious)

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

#435
post #242

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.

It's not in the same segment, but it's in the segment people pretend the model 3 is in - an electric car for the ordinary person.

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

#436

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You almost can't buy a car without at least a 6" screen for the infotainment outside of the cars trying extra hard to appeal to the budget market. That's exactly my point. Your only options are "nice car with touchscreen" or "mediocre car without". There's no opportunity for the market to, you know, actually speak.

Because the market already spoke a long time ago. It used to be the fancy infotainment screen was extra on cars. Turns out the take rate on those is high enough, so it just became standard.

But that's the thing: because the market spoke once a decade ago, does that mean there's no room for revisiting that discussion? Tastes change, technology changes, the economy changes, people change, everything changes.

It's much like the current 4k TV market. Once upon a time, The Market™ spoke in favor of putting "smart" functionality in TVs, and so manufacturers added computers with greater and greater complexity and visual pizazz and apps and such.

Then, the Chromecast and Roku and Fire TV and such became popular, and - better yet - ended up being much easier to upgrade as technology marched on (you only have to replace a $35-or-so dongle or box instead of having to replace a whole multi-hundred-or-thousand-dollar TV). On top of that, the cable companies started to dip their toes in offering these "smart" features in their own set top boxes, as did Nintendo/Microsoft/Sony with their gaming consoles, and there were and still are zero TVs able to replace either category of device. So now you have a bunch of TVs with smart features that go entirely unused (or, worse, actually break, taking the TV with it) because other devices offer better versions of those features and can actually be upgraded without replacing the entire TV.

Unfortunately, since The Market™ has already spoken, there is now to my knowledge exactly one 4k TV manufacturer that offers consumer-grade TVs without smart features (Sceptre), and certainly not on store shelves (I had to buy mine on Amazon, with all the risk of damage and theft that entails, and the only Prime-eligible one was the 50"). Literally every other 4k TV - including any at a brick-and-mortar store, be it Best Buy or Fry's or Wal-Mart or what have you - has smart features that cannot be removed and that are either 1) already outperformed by $20-100 devices on those same exact shelves or 2) going to be outperformed within a year because technology marches on and no TV offers a way to upgrade the computational hardware.

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

#437

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 just checked my garage. It looks fine. Which one of us is lying?

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

#438
post #29
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…

Tesla has radar in their cars, at least in my X. I think I read somewhere that the cheapest model 3 does not have it but I can't confirm that.

All Tesla cars have radar, starting with Autopilot V1.

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

#439

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pretty sure the Roadster and the Model S were the luxury cars, and the Model 3 was supposed to be the affordable, non-luxury one.

It’s in the same price range as an Audi A4, Mercedes C300, BMW i3, Audi TT, and Lexus ES. It’s an entry level luxury car. It’s twice as expensive as a Volkswagen Jetta, Toyota Corolla, or Honda Civic.

Yes, true. But generally electrics are much cheaper to own. Assume 12k miles a year and figure the cost to own for 10 years. Might be higher than the corolla or civic, but similar or better than the accord or camry. Generally it will be quicker, quieter, and safer than the competition and most (that can) would rather plug in at home than regularly visit gas stations.

So model 3 might be a luxury car, but the cost to own is clearly lower than any of the luxury cars you mention, except the BMW i3.

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

#440
post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI/ML components change rapidly. What happens if they decide to use an entirely different approach. They develop a new chip? Still seems excessive to develop custom chips for unfinished/experimental tech like self-driving: https://www.theverge.com/2019/4/24/18514308/tesla-full-self-...

Point is they are doing it. Tesla does it. Apple does it. Microsoft does it. They are all developing their on hardware, and it's paying off, especially in Apple's and Tesla's use case. Research and development is the cornerstone of new innovation. Who cares if it's new tech. Not sure what you mean by "unfinished". They have a product that works. It's new and could use improvements, but Point is, they are doing it and…

> This is why we have 'recalls'. Your car should continue to receive updates and improve as you drive it off the lot. Security updates are necessary, UI updates are necessary, performance and economy updates are necessary.

Did you ever try to rollout change to millions of units of anything, with individual owners of each item, operating in vastly different environments and with additional modifications from those owners?

Rolling updates is A HUGE issue, if you need reliability. It’s not a random app. It’s, for majority of the people, second most expensive purchase in their live (only behind a house). Messing up with that is very very risky.

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