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Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

jalopnik.com

421–430 of 634 posts

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#421

Is it just me, or are these numbers almost low enough to be labelled positive PR? > The Tesla files contain more than 2,400 self-acceleration complaints and more than 1,500 braking function problems, including 139 cases of unintentional emergency braking and 383 reported phantom stops resulting from false collision warnings. The number of crashes is more than 1000. A table of incidents involving driver assistance sys…

The overall safety numbers for Teslas speak for themselves. Teslas are some of the safest cars to own.

Obviously these issues should be solved, but net-net, Teslas are very very safe.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#422

Is it just me, or are these numbers almost low enough to be labelled positive PR? > The Tesla files contain more than 2,400 self-acceleration complaints and more than 1,500 braking function problems, including 139 cases of unintentional emergency braking and 383 reported phantom stops resulting from false collision warnings. The number of crashes is more than 1000. A table of incidents involving driver assistance sys…

It’s not the burden of society to prove the dangers of the technology we purchase on behalf of the businesses that sell it. We recall consumer products for danger well below the numbers reported in the article above. A vehicle on the road should be held to an even higher standard.

I am wary of the word “society” when it means in this case “a counsel of my design”, but otherwise agree with the sentiment.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#423

Is it just me, or are these numbers almost low enough to be labelled positive PR? > The Tesla files contain more than 2,400 self-acceleration complaints and more than 1,500 braking function problems, including 139 cases of unintentional emergency braking and 383 reported phantom stops resulting from false collision warnings. The number of crashes is more than 1000. A table of incidents involving driver assistance sys…

It’s not the burden of society to prove the dangers of the technology we purchase on behalf of the businesses that sell it. We recall consumer products for danger well below the numbers reported in the article above. A vehicle on the road should be held to an even higher standard.

Safety testing has proven that Teslas are incredibly safe - probably some of the safest cars on the road. Both in crash tests and accidents per mile driven.

If someone is claiming that there is a safety issue despite the existing data, then yes, the burden of proof moves to them to validate their new claim.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#424
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elons point on cars being worth 5x as much with self driving shouldn’t be dismissed. If a car that costs $25,000 to manufacture all of a sudden can be driven 40-50 hours a week automatically, how much is that car now worth? So I totally disagree on that end, as do most investors given teslas enormous valuation.

>Elons point on cars being worth 5x as much .... all of a sudden can be driven 40-50 hours a week ... Look at it this way, assume humans drive, or need to be driven/travel, X miles per year. Today, assuming a car drives Y miles per year, the market needs X/Y cars. Given your argument, with self driving, a car runs nY miles per year, the demand for car will drop to X/nY , basically 1/n of before or maybe a little more…

Self driving will increase demand, not decrease, as it will displace other less popular modes of transit. Why call an Uber or taxi after a night at the bar when you can just have your EV drive you home?

Why make a medium-distance flight, when you can just sleep in the back of your EV as it cruises down the highway overnight? (This will pare well with lay flat front seats what would allow turning the car into something like one of those airline sleep pods).

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#426
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point being they could eliminate the human drivers and take the whole revenue instead of sharing it. From ridesharing company PoV right now they are only taking 30%-50% of the revenue, and they have gaps in meeting demand due to resourcing challenges. The business model is pretty solid if self driving taxis work even if its only in urban and suburbs

Except that currently all the drivers also manage the inventory of physical cars, and all maintenance, and all legal liability. The parent's question is a good one. Owning and operating a fleet of cars is the core competency of a rental agency , not a ride-hailing app.

Just a ride sharing app cannot reach the scale and revenue to justify the investments they have attracted. It is not realistic to raise $25+ Billion[1] just to be a pure SaaS startup.

Both Uber and Lyft[2] run rental businesses already, the model works where you can rent a car on a weekly basis just to drive on their apps, they cover maintenance and other services.

Uber will have to find a way to maintain their growth, and Lyft probably will be acquired by a rental network. The result is the same vertical integration.

[1] Uber's equity investment so far. SaaS startups can be valued lot more even $100s of billions, but pure tech companies do not raise that kind of cash. Stripe for example despite its delayed IPOs and ESOP issues has only raised $8B.

[2] They own some of the inventory and rest are from partners I believe.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#427

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a manufacturer is selling millions of cars, I think it's better to judge their safety using statistics rather than some qualitative reasoning. Are Teslas measurably less safe than other cars? I.e. is the accident probability per km driven on a Tesla higher than on another car? I haven't seen any data suggesting that, but I'm happy to be corrected.

>When a manufacturer is selling millions of cars, I think it's better to judge their safety using statistics rather than some qualitative reasoning. Why do you think that? If we used statistics to guide criminal justice policy we’d be in big trouble

The statistics are the best part of criminal justice policy. DNA tests, Blood typing, fingerprint matching all run on statistical analysis. Much better than the memory of a witness.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with statistics, you just need to maintain an appropriate threshold for where you draw the statistical line.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#428
post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that currently all the drivers also manage the inventory of physical cars, and all maintenance, and all legal liability. The parent's question is a good one. Owning and operating a fleet of cars is the core competency of a rental agency , not a ride-hailing app.

> and all legal liability. People really do not understand that the Companies like Uber, Airbnb and Deliveroo make a huge amount of money from offloading liability - it's suddenly not Deliveroo's fault that the guy delivering your pizza in London does this on illegal, unroadworthy e-bikewith no insurance, and in case of a crash he is liable. Airbnb routinely rents out apartments in blocks that have this forbidden in…

Self-driving won't make a difference to this structure though ?

The pitch Tesla (if you believe them) keeps making is we could rent out our cars when we don't use it to the rental networks. We still own the car ( and the liability ) and unlock RoI.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#429
post #55

IMO Tesla would be better if they focused solely on making good EVs, rather than also trying to become the leader in self-driving. I get that they're trying to create a wider moat against their competitors, but if their self-driving software are found to have systematic failure modes in them as these internal docs seem to suggest, then that could very well do more harm to their reputation in the long run.

Elons point on cars being worth 5x as much with self driving shouldn’t be dismissed. If a car that costs $25,000 to manufacture all of a sudden can be driven 40-50 hours a week automatically, how much is that car now worth? So I totally disagree on that end, as do most investors given teslas enormous valuation.

It’s not worth 5x!

Cars driven commercially like that are worth less money.

Take a hybrid Toyota Camry that’s driven as Taxi almost 25 hours a day.

Are they worth more? Do they command a premium?

No, they do not. And at the end of they short useful lives their value goes to zero.

You could argue that self driving cars don’t need drivers, and so can be driven 24/7 at less cost of labour.

Even that eventuates, and we get a world where car ownership is significantly on the decline, it just means they sell less cars.

As we’ve seen with most technology commodity products, price tends to be forced downwards.

So maybe Elon is right, and a self driving car is worth 5x. But it’s not obvious to me, and I’m wary of people like Elon talking up his own book. He is a proven loser and fantasist, but also a very successful billionaire. :-/

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#430
post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elons point on cars being worth 5x as much with self driving shouldn’t be dismissed. If a car that costs $25,000 to manufacture all of a sudden can be driven 40-50 hours a week automatically, how much is that car now worth? So I totally disagree on that end, as do most investors given teslas enormous valuation.

Elon doesn't actually believe that Tesla cars are about to quintuple in value now, any more than he did 7+ years ago when he first started saying it; that's just marketing BS. > So I totally disagree on that end, as do most investors given teslas enormous valuation. Yes, and most Gamestop investors think the company is going to be the next Amazon. Buying a popular meme stock doesn't make their predictions right.

>Yes, and most Gamestop investors think the company is going to be the next Amazon. Buying a popular meme stock doesn't make their predictions right.

Unrelated but GameStop should combine combine games plus what RadioShack used to be for 'us', for modern times / tech / electronics

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