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Tesla Q1 2021 Results

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Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#511

Post by jccooper »

hooande wrote: post #234
cs702 wrote: post #132

Whatever you may think of Tesla and Musk, you have to agree that they've accomplished something rather incredible. Few would have thought this possible not that long ago: * 185K vehicle deliveries in Q1, +109% versus a year ago [a] * 2.7K supercharger stations, +41% versus a year ago * 24.5K supercharger connectors, +44% versus a year ago * 92 MW of solar generation deployed in Q1, +163% versus a year ago * 445 MWh o…

i'm not trying to be snide, but it's worth noting that so much of this is fueled by government subsidies and investments into electric vehicle technology. And the current administration is looking to at least double that investment. Things are going to be great for Tesla, but what happens when the subsidies stop? In a sense, a lot of Ford's growth was fueled by government investment in new roads. Ford kept growing af…

Tesla hasn't had the Federal tax credit for all of 2020. Most of the rest of their "subsidies" are local government deals, which are common to any large manufacturer.

There are foreign governments that do have sales support, but domestic sales remain about half their total.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#512

Post by deanak »

jiofih wrote: post #485
deanak wrote: post #467

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So the person responsible for keeping their family alive doesn't look away from the road trying to perform a very common task. A car is designed around the idea that maintaining the driver's attention on the road is the primary function. I am not sure what is driving the design of Teslas for the newer models. I like Teslas in general, but their decision to remove things like buttons and stalks from their vehicles is…

You’d imagine they would have engineers think about this stuff. Such dummies! Looking forward for that link of a death caused by operating the wipers. I haven’t touched mine (not Tesla) for years since they work automatically, maybe other families have special windshield wiper adjustment needs?

https://www.tesladeaths.com/

https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/2/26/21154502/tesla-autopilo...

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2021/01/waymo-ceo-tesla-is-not-...

Tesla resists efforts to prevent distracted driving, and also resists the consistent call from regulators properly set expectations for the capabilities of its autopilot feature. People are dying as a result. You'll notice that you won't find the same articles about GM's SuperCruise feature, because they don't oversell the feature and have more safety measures in place to make sure drivers aren't distracted.

Waymo's CEO even claims that Tesla isn't a competitor. There is an obvious conflict here, but he's not the only one saying that 1) Tesla will never have a fully autonomous driving system and 2) their existing autopilot feature is falsely advertised and dangerous.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#513

Post by dawnerd »

t0mas88 wrote: post #299
fy20 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

OP could be in Europe. German premium cars are a lot cheaper to maintain there (still more than a Toyota though), and somehow seem to have less issues than the US.

In Europe indeed, no idea why American BMWs are so much worse. There is also a huge amount of complaining online about the dealers, that could be part of the problem. Had a similar feeling driving a rental VW Passat in the US, it felt like they make a special US version. Most notable difference was a very very lazy feeling gearbox.

Funny you mention Passat. I owned one for a few years and it was pretty solid, was surprised esp. hearing all the negative towards VW reliability. But then I rented one in Florida that felt like it was about to rattle itself apart.

And just so I don't sound like a Tesla fanboy or anything, I got a Model S high mileage loaner that also felt like it was about to break apart at any second.

I guess Americans just can't make cars! I hear the Chinese made Model 3's are really solid

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#514

Post by feifan »

voqv wrote: post #303
feifan wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not entirely convinced it's a good idea, but one convincing argument I've seen is that sensor fusion is hard and it's not a priori clear which sensor to believe when they provide conflicting information. It's entirely possible that they get better predictive accuracy from vision-only data then in the analogous situations with vision+radar data.

The industry has been sensor fusion for decades. Training Autopilot neural networks to hallucinate road parts is easy but doing uncertainty estimation on simple radar measurements is hard? Also you still have to fuse the data from the multiple cameras. I'm almost doubting my entire knowledge in the field now when all of a sudden everyone just accepts that "sensor fusion is hard" statement.

I'd imagine sensor fusion in this context isn't a singular problem right? It seems entirely plausible that for Tesla's system, it's straightforward to integrate cameras where the resolution is known and data is homogenous in a certain way, and that it's hard to integrate and use radar data into that system.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#515

Post by feifan »

jgalt212 wrote: post #451
feifan wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same reason you have heating units in your house/building rather than at a municipal heating plant … people want to buy self-sufficiency for their house/building, and it's easier than scoping/building large-scale projects and running wires and dealing with municipalities.

self-sufficiency has a cost, hence my "economic" question. Also, steam transmission is way less efficient than electricity transmission.

It does appear people are willing to pay those costs :)

Also, electricity transmission appears to be much more expensive than generation. On my PG&E bills in California, delivery costs 2.5x as much per kWh as generation for 100% renewable power.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#516

Post by deanak »

natch wrote: post #487
deanak wrote: post #386

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A non-touchscreen way to operate windshield wipers. VW makes a car with an electric drivetrain, Tesla makes an electric drivetrain with a place to put people and things.

Teslas have a physical button that controls the wipers when needed. They also can run automatically. Finally they also can be operated via the touch screen, but I never use this last option. You seem to think it’s the only option, but that’s not the case.

In every safety system, there is a point where human intervention can override automated activity. In almost every car these systems have standard tactile controls so you can override through muscle memory in an emergency without taking your eyes off the road. (If you haven't noticed, even the icons used on stalks and buttons are standardized across the industry as a matter of safety). In a Tesla, overriding the auto sense wiper feature is available through an interaction with the touch screen at the precise moment when a driver should not be distracted (ie, when they are having trouble seeing through the windshield). As far as I know, they are the only auto manufacturer that doesn't stick with standard stalks for things that affect visibility (wipers/headlights/turn signals, etc).

This is why I don't think a Tesla is a feature complete car -- it simply lacks the common set of safety features found in every other modern vehicle.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#517

Post by arcticbull »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #471
arcticbull wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> His statements were not false and not about a company or stock. It is debatable if they were even positive. Correct, it's not about a company or a stock, which is something I led with in my initial reply ("In any other asset class this would be..." -- which I have since learned applies unevenly to security types although for the record I was talking about stock). I haven't said he committed a crime, and I do not be…

> I think it's pretty distasteful however to take advantage of the crypto community he claims to champion. That's not what I replied to. You said it was a pump and dump and blatant illegal market manipulation. > Your claim he's not actively working them into a froth is certainly at best a generous take. [1] This is a lie and another hallucination since I never said anything even remotely close to this. You said it wa…

> That's not what I replied to. You said it was a pump and dump and blatant illegal market manipulation.

I literally quoted my self when I said it would be illegal in a different asset. And yeah, of course he’s manipulating the price, I even showed a study where they evaluated such. And yes in my opinion he’s pumping the price so he can exit higher.

> This is a lie and another hallucination since I never said anything even remotely close to this.

> lol, you literally lied and invented something I never said.

Pretty sure this isn’t within the spirit of site rules.

You’re welcome to disagree with me but you’ll have to be civil if you’d like me to engage. There are other venues for leveling baseless personal attacks.

I suspect at this point your only goal is to win an argument at all costs, and it’s not a good look, so I’ll leave you to it. Enjoy your day!

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#518

Post by giobox »

carlivar wrote: post #211
habeebtc wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have two separate and (mostly) unrelated feelings. Musk has done something remarkable as you say. At the same time, the market cap is nuts and a portent of doom. Bigger than all car companies combined, by market cap? A market crash could take down Tesla and set back electric car adoption by 20 years.

A few years ago I'd agree it would be a major EV setback but there are so many other options now I don't think that's the case any longer. I'm very optimistic about Rivian. It's Tesla but without the ego thinking they are smarter than 50 years of manufacturing lessons.

It would still be significant even today. While more good quality dedicated BEV platforms are (finally) coming to market in cars people can actually buy, with the exception of maybe the Nissan Leaf this has only really started in earnest recently with stuff like the new Ioniq 5 platform from Hyundai and VW’s MEB architecture etc in the last year.

The next 5 years will see a big change for sure, but the legacy ICE automakers are still many years behind Tesla (often by their own admission - see VW CEO remarks on state of the VW groups car software platforms etc).

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#519

Post by deanak »

natch wrote: post #490
deanak wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://electrek.co/2020/08/04/tesla-wiper-controls-ruled-il...

That doesn’t take away the fact that the physical controls are there for the using. As well as automatic and voice controls. As with any car, if the driver chooses to look away from the road for any reason, they have to be responsible about it, and they did have other options here.

As I said in another reply, Tesla is the only company advertising automated driving and other features that don't work in edge cases which is bad news for staying alive, even if you aren't the person driving a Tesla. They are also actively removing standard physical controls that have been around for decades, and through design, they are training people to rely on a touchscreen device that is not consistent or reliable.

Sure there are people who also hit cruise control on a 96 Accord and expect it to drive itself, but Honda never told them that would work. These are the kind of realities Tesla should responsibly deal with as a mass market manufacturer, but they don't want to take the PR hit to accept accountability and potentially have to refund millions of dollars for a feature that doesn't work as advertised. They'd rather blame the drivers for as long as they can get away with it.

Re: Tesla Q1 2021 Results

#520

Post by dangus »

dagw wrote: post #499
cs702 wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your global figures for Ford and GM look wrong to me... but otherwise, I agree: If Tesla continues to grow at these rates, yes, eventually they will catch up with leading car manufacturers, all the way up to VW, currently the world's largest. Tesla's online manufacturing capacity at quarter-end was ~1.05M EVs/year (~600K/year in California, ~450K/year in Shanghai), which works out to a run-rate of 262K/quarter, vs. 1…

It's possible for Tesla and Musk to overtake the likes of VW in volume -- if anyone can, it's them. But it's not certain that they'll be able to do it. It's not certain they'll want to. Much better to stay a higher end brand and focus on "fun" and exciting high end cars people (and other car makers) aspire to, rather than trying to out compete Toyota and VW in making Corolas and Polos.

Don’t forget that the VW group and Toyota very much compete in the luxury market.

Porsche, Audi, Bugatti, and Lamborghini are all part of the VW group. VW is majority owned by the Porsche-Piëch family.

Toyota has Lexus.

Selling only luxury cars sounds appealing in terms of profit margin, but the automotive industry has a lot of complex systems with high development costs where economies of scale come into play.

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