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Tesla is committing automotive suicide

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Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#101

Post by worik »

Nevermark wrote: post #76
TacoCommander wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Parallel steps: Step 1: SpaceX IPO Step 2: Trillion dollar payout Step 3: Nothing matters any more

SpaceX is rockets, now global satellite internet, ... To credibly harness off-world resources at any scale, there are going to need to be automated refueling depots and many kinds of robotic automation for resource extraction. With the Asteroid Belt looking amazing for quantity and accessibility of resources. That would also completely remove the lid on how many $ trillions of market cap SpaceX could accrue. So I fin…

> With the Asteroid Belt looking amazing for quantity and accessibility of resources.

Watch out universe, here we come!

What could possibly go wrong, mining asteroids? An awful lot, when we start messing with orbital dynamics in the asteroid belt.

But Space X can externalise those risks. It will probably be centuries before disturbed orbits start to threaten Earth... So who cares?

Me.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#102

Post by falcor84 »

TacoCommander wrote: post #45
netsharc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk's incentive pay has a 10 million full self-driving subscription. Step 1: > discontinu[e] the basic lane keep + adaptive speed cruise control Step 2: Redefine "Full Self-Driving" to be those things. Charge 50 cents per month subscription or whatever. Step 3: Get 10 million subscribers. Step 4: 100 billion dollar payout! (Number pulled out of my butt)

Parallel steps: Step 1: SpaceX IPO Step 2: Trillion dollar payout Step 3: Nothing matters any more

>Nothing matters any more

Something tells me that Musk isn't the sort of person who'd ever be satisfied. It's easier for me to imagine him like Mr. House from Fallout, trying to control everything over centuries.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#103

Post by amluto »

Analemma_ wrote: post #86
ultrarunner wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My brother bought a Tesla recently. They dicked him around with delivery, and he had to pay a ton to get charging infrastructure installed at his house, but it's fast so he's happy. On a recent visit, he finally showed me the car, and it was hilarious how janky the final product is. Everything seems cobbled together-- a good example is that there's apparently two separate voice assistants (plus his phone) and none of…

I have a 2022 Model 3, and the hilariously tragic part is that the voice assistant was great and basically never gave me any problems until they shoved Grok into it, whereupon it broke completely. I never use it anymore, they effectively removed a feature from my car.

Whoa, did Tesla pull an Apple? Siri used to work okay on the iPhone, but once it got LLMed it frequently sits there indefinitely while failing to make any progress on even the simplest commands.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#104

Post by EthanHeilman »

amelius wrote: post #47
this_user wrote: post #10

They had the first mover advantage, but then Musk lost interest in the company and let it just sit there for the last five years or so without making sure that they have a future-proof product pipeline and that those products are actually being delivered on a reasonable schedule. Now they are increasingly turning into an EV also-ran while their moonshots are unlikely to work out any time soon. Realistically, he shoul…

The problem is that EVs are basically a solved problem. There isn't any technological advantage to be gained, since the technology in an EV is very basic (+) compared to ICE vehicles. So then it comes down to manufacturing, and there China is king. (+) Except for the battery, but that's a very long term battle with very tiny steps.

EVs are a solved problem, but as amelius notes the real tech is the battery. Tesla + Panasonic has a built in advantage in terms of battery manufacturing. Tesla has a massive amount of capital, if they put it into reducing and scaling manufacturing of vehicles and batteries, I think they could probably win. Now maybe Telsa has looked at the numbers and decided they can't win and are choosing to pivot rather than die a slow death.

I don't think that is what is happening here. Instead, Tesla is continuing the strategy that brought them to this disaster of going all in on driverless. That isn't a bad strategy, but if they get the timing wrong a third time, they destroy the company and they have gotten the timing wrong on this twice already. This strategy has two downsides:

1. AI has no real moat and Tesla has largely pursued commodity sensors, meaning that other than EVs+battery tech (which Tesla appears abandoning), robotaxis have no hardware or software moat.

2. They could use network effects to win, in which case their competitors are not other car companies but Uber and Lyft. Uber has been pursuing the same long term strategy at Tesla.

Now by itself, going all in robotaxi, is risky but could work if they time it right. Tesla isn't going all in on robotaxi since they are splitting the effort between robotaxi and Optimus robots.

It is likely that the experience Tesla gets with Optimus robots will help other robotics companies, but unlike robotaxis where the timing might (but probably won't work), the timing is clearly isn't right for Optimus.

It seems like the motivation here is that Musk is aligning Tesla to a narrative that justify the absurd stock price, even if that narrative isn't reality.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#105

Post by AlexandrB »

z3ratul163071 wrote: post #79

This "Elon Musk lost interest" is very, very naive take. Actually I think this new directions demonstrates how great decision making they have at Tesla. Today and even more in the future they have no way of competing with the Chinese manufacturers. It is simply physically not possible. So they are rightfully pivoting and moving away from the race to the bottom that is ensuing.

The S and X were the luxury models. They're keeping the cheap ones. It sounds like they're jumping headfirst into the race to the bottom instead of pivoting away from it.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#106

Post by thewebguyd »

api wrote: post #22
p-o wrote: post #2

What makes this move even more incredulous is that none of the two market they want to move towards are proven markets: - Waymo is generating less than 150m in 2025. - Consumer robotics is an absolute unknown. How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation.

Consumer robotics strikes me as an engineering tar pit so deep it leads to hell. If full self driving is hard due to the long tail of unusual special cases, this is orders of magnitude worse. Take FSD but multiply the number of actuators and degrees of freedom by at least 10, more like 100. Add a third dimension. Add direct physical interaction with complex objects. Add pets and children. Add toys on the floor. Add r…

> Will people really be willing to pay thousands to tens of thousands for a home robot with significant limitations?

The answer to that is no, probably for the foreseeable future. The robot demos we have no can't even fold laundry or put dishes away without being teleoperated. Both extremely basic tasks that any household robot would be required to do, along with other messy jobs that put it at risk as you said: taking out the trash, feeding the pets, cleaning up messes, preparing or cooking food, etc.

The price it would have to cost with current tech would be astronomically more than just hiring a human, and they would almost certainly come with an expensive subscription as well, whereas I can hire a human to come in and clean my home weekly for about $200/month.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#107

Post by gilbetron »

socalgal2 wrote: post #88
p-o wrote: post #2

What makes this move even more incredulous is that none of the two market they want to move towards are proven markets: - Waymo is generating less than 150m in 2025. - Consumer robotics is an absolute unknown. How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation.

I'll bet that's what people said to Steve Jobs when they were making the iPhone - PDA sales are 0.01% of PC sales in 2006

And also what people said to Dean Kamen when he was making the Segway in 2001.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#109

Post by fintler »

the_sleaze_ wrote: post #4

BYD is slapping the EV industry around like a gorilla, Tesla simply cannot compete in any meaningful way. Waymo has achieved profit per unit and people are happy to see driver-less taxis in their city and pay for the service. Tesla also cannot justify valuations based on automotive sales/subscriptions alone - they were always going to have to pivot. They're in a tight spot and they need to do something drastic.

BYD uses slave labor.

"In the dormitories of the Jinjiang Group, the company hired by BYD to carry out the work, there were no mattresses on the beds, and the few toilets served hundreds of workers in extremely unhygienic conditions. The workers also had food stored without refrigeration.

The Brazilian Labor Prosecutor's Office (MTP) also accused the companies of withholding the workers' passports and keeping 60% of their wages; the remaining 40% would be paid in Chinese currency."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BYD_Brazil_working_conditions_...

It's hard for any company to compete with that (I hope they don't).

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#110

Post by q3k »

dzhiurgis wrote: post #99
p-o wrote: post #2

What makes this move even more incredulous is that none of the two market they want to move towards are proven markets: - Waymo is generating less than 150m in 2025. - Consumer robotics is an absolute unknown. How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation.

Tesla processes as many miles in 2 days as Waymo in its entire lifetime. Waymo will be crushed in few years.

We've been hearing this 'Tesla has so much data!! Tesla FSD and robotaxis any day now!!' bullshit for probably a decade now.
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