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Master Plan, Part Deux

tesla.com

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Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#101

Post by ams6110 »

My points of skepticism:

1. Semis. A typical long haul semi gets well under 10MPG. In some cases not much more than half that. They are heavy and need a lot of energy to move. A Tesla Model S weighs 4650 lbs and has a range of a couple of hundred miles. A semi truck can weigh up to 80,000 lbs. That is a lot of weight to get rolling and a lot to pull up a grade. Semis spend a large part of their time driving at highway speeds where air resistance is at a maximum. To achieve useful performance an electric semi will need a lot of batteries which will reduce its cargo capacity (Federal law regulates the maximum gross weight), which reduces its value to freight companies.

2. Autonomy. I think this will take a lot longer to achieve than planned, both technically and socially.

3. Enable your car to make money for you. I don't want anyone using my car. Legal liability is one reason. As owner of the car, I am liable for damage it causes. So legal liability laws will have to change. If I need to go somewhere, and my car is not here, I don't want to wait for another one. I don't want to get my car back from another user and find food wrappers strewn about and used condoms under the seat. I feel that my car is an extension of my home. It's personal space that I don't want to share with random strangers.

YMMV.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#102

Post by dpc59 »

lallysingh wrote: post #75
sudoscript wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also millions of miles of fleet learning a day, which Uber doesn't have, since they don't own the cars. Self-driving cars is a supervised learning problem, and he who has the data wins

There's also the matter of that laser scanner on some cars - usually costing more than the car...

http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-george-hotz-self-driv...

people are trying to fix this problem too

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#103

Post by kilroy123 »

> We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day.

So he is essentially say, in at most five in a half years, they'll be ready for fully self driving cars?

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#104

Post by JoshTriplett »

manachar wrote: post #39
stephenitis wrote: post #20

I hear about bus drivers and truck drivers getting into accidents due to drowsiness enough that it's a constant worry whenever I'm on the highway next to one. I wonder if I'd feel safer if i saw a Tesla Semi knowing that were wasn't a human behind the wheel. Should autonomous vehicles be identified as such (special lights or label) so that real humans can know not to be erratic around it?

This comment reminds me of the various (likely apocryphal) laws when cars were still new and shared the road with cars. Cars we considered the new weird thing that needed to take special steps to not spook horses or their riders/drivers. Now, of course, the situation is reversed and horses often are required to have special visibility gear to be seen more clearly by cars. So, perhaps in the future there will be some…

> So, perhaps in the future there will be some sort of indicator light that turns on when the idiot driver turns on manual driving mode so you (edit, or your car!) can give them a wide berth.

Agreed. Don't mark the autonomous vehicles. Mark the ones to be more concerned about: the ones with a human driving.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#105

Post by mulcahey »

j0e1 wrote: post #90

Haven't seen such a clean, crisp plan that has been implemented flawlessly by a company. Makes me reconsider how I should think the next time I'm asked to write a vision/mission statement for anything-company/product.

Now let's just wait and see if SpaceX's full vision comes to fruition.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#106

Post by d_t_w »

"Coal is the future" - Tony Abbott, Australian PM, 2014.

There are many things to take from Musk's master plan part deux, but the most important for me is the intent and aspiration.

I live in Australia, the leadership here is absolutely dire both political and economic. A relentless cycle of vested mining interests and climate change deniers espousing at length on the cattle exports to Asia suffering if marriage equality is passed.

Maybe Musk succeeds, maybe not, but here's someone with vision, a plan, and he's going to have a fair swing at it.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#107

Post by throwawaymsft »

aerovistae wrote: post #6
jpeg_hero wrote: post #4

Meh. Sure, stuff sounds neat, but where are you going to get the capital from? Another secondary share offering? I guess the most concrete thing I saw was new factory for Model 3. Shouldn't that be your only priority? Not designing an electric semi truck on paper to entice Joe Q Public into stepping up for another secondary share offer?

I swear to god he could do it all just as described and there will still be people who have nothing to say but "meh." Blows my mind.

Some people will always be petty. It says more about them than the object of their critique. You can cure cancer and someone will complain it took you long enough.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#108

Post by bane »

I'm always surprised when we get insight into Musk's plan, not because they're complicated but because they always come across as "no duh, why aren't we already doing these things? weren't we already on track to do these things decades ago?"

As much as the Internet transformed society, I also can't help but feel like we were on the track to have achieved these things and got distracted by our global communications and selfie-cat picture delivery network and are only now starting to come to our senses as the ubiquity has occurred and the ecosystem of necessary applications has become fleshed out, matured and developed a commercial angle.

If you look at his pre-hardware days, he built basically a e-phonebook when paper phonebooks were still all the rage and a couple payment companies. Both no-duh companies in hindsight.

Musk's plans feel like he's taking a derailed train, applying some common sense grease (solar panels on electric cars? MADNESS! Reusable rocket stages instead of throwing away the entire ship? ~~CRAZY!~~) and getting our civilization going again.

He's also really really public about his plans and telegraphs his moves years in advance...and yet very few seem able to execute anywhere near his league.

I sometimes feel if things had shaken out differently and Steve Jobs was younger than Musk and was running a successful Apple, Musk might try to recruit him with a "do you want to sell cat picture delivery boxes for the rest of your life, or do you want to come with me and change the world?"

I don't know if Musk is going to succeed in the long run, and I hope serious competition finally shows up (because that makes each of his industries healthier), but seriously,

it's about fucking time.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#109

Post by thucydides »

akira2501 wrote: post #77
thucydides wrote: post #23

> "When used correctly, [partially autonomous driving] is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves" If you're an American, you're twice as likely to die with a steering wheel in your hands as you are to die at the hands of a murderer. Human-driven vehicle deaths cause grave second-order suffering for families and friends - and hurt the economy. A shift to technologies safer than human-driven ca…

> If you're an American, you're twice as likely to die with a steering wheel in your hands as you are to die at the hands of a murderer. Human-driven vehicle deaths cause grave second-order suffering for families and friends - and hurt the economy. If you're an American you're more likely to die from suicide than you are from motor vehicle related injuries. You're more likely to be poisoned than to die in a motor veh…

There are 30,000 motor vehicle deaths in America each year. In perhaps 30 years, fully autonomous vehicles could cut all of that needless carnage to nearly nothing.

And what about the hundreds of thousands of injuries we'll be spared?

Worldwide, fully-autonomous vehicles will be a public health victory on the scale of vaccines or antibiotics.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#110

Post by ams6110 »

danhak wrote: post #24
jonny_eh wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uber's been likely working on self-driving cars, potentially in partnership with Google. What Tesla has as an advantage though, is an assembly line to produce lots of quality cars. In other words, Tesla will likely be ready for the future of transportation before Uber.

Tesla's other advantage is a global fleet that is actively logging millions of real-world miles a day. I don't think that can be understated at this stage.

As owner of a Tesla is it possible to opt-out of this logging? Or is it a required condition of buying the car?
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