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Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

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Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#131

Post by gamblor956 »

snuze wrote: post #116
BoorishBears wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm so tired of this unapologetic Tesla hand holding. > No other company has the infrastructure to be able to do that. Because they don't want it. They don't want AP regressions we've already seen happen. They don't want engineers testing code out on real people's lives. You really think other companies just don't know how to send OTA updates to an ECU or other car components? I could literally put that together with…

As someone in the industry (with domain knowledge), I can tell you that you are oversimplifying the problem and ignoring Tesla’s advantage and leadership in this space. Other manufacturers have to account for legacy systems/designs, it is not as trivial as you make it sound.

Tesla has to account for legacy systems and designs, since they refresh models all the time without even bothering with distinct ("set in stone") model identifiers (like year). For example, there is no such thing as a "2018 Model 3" as there were multiple variants released over the year with changes over the year, not including the range-based option packages.

In fact, Tesla's legacy systems are actually a disadvantage perspective, since they have to account for a much larger range of hardware configurations than do legacy automakers.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#132

Post by nisten »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #128
nisten wrote: post #113

In 2017 Intel acquired mobileye( the makers of the autopilot radar in the early Teslas), for 15.3 Billion. That begs the question, if Tesla were to sell their autopilot system tomorrow, , given it's safety record, amount of training data, and new FPGA processor IP, how much would it be worth? 15, 20, 40? This is why I find their delivery numbers completely and utterly irrelevant to company value. This is a just a tec…

Tesla has 11bn in debt, alongside other obligations like warranties. If they can't make the car thing work, and their autopilot tech sells for as much as mobileye, shareholders are going to be wiped out in the event of liquidation. How the cars are selling and what margins they're getting matters a great deal, even if you believe that the long term value comes from autopilot.

Looking at the competition, ford, VW, Mercedes. Their battery production numbers look pretty mediocre. Also their cars are less and less competitive in a rising carbon market.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#133

Post by gamblor956 »

mehrdada wrote: post #86
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #73

I know at least one person that's decided not to buy a Tesla simply because their future is so murky and is not sure if they will be around for repairs. That's a problem they need to tackle now before it spirals out of control. Also, it seems to me that Tesla should work with one of the big three automakers on manufacturing. Tesla has spent a lot of resources reinventing car manufacturing and yet they can't produce a…

> I know at least one person that's decided not to buy a Tesla simply because their future is so murky and is not sure if they will be around for repairs. That's a problem they need to tackle now before it spirals out of control. I’m sure there is one person that made a decision on that basis but I’ve heard many more not-real customers speculating about this as if they were in the market, but they very clearly wouldn…

A company that is production constrained does not need to lower the price of its products. It can keep the price the same or even increase prices. This is basic economics.

Tesla has already lowered the price of its vehicles 3x this year...

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#134

Post by icanhackit »

BoorishBears wrote: post #105
jtchang wrote: post #68

Being able to test your code out in the real world and dark launch a feature gives Tesla a ridiculous advantage. No other company has the infrastructure to be able to do that. Plus they can even tell if the decision the neural net made was wrong because I assume even Tesla knows you got into an accident. And this over thousands of cars. The speed at which they are collecting data is unprecedented.

I'm so tired of this unapologetic Tesla hand holding. > No other company has the infrastructure to be able to do that. Because they don't want it. They don't want AP regressions we've already seen happen. They don't want engineers testing code out on real people's lives. You really think other companies just don't know how to send OTA updates to an ECU or other car components? I could literally put that together with…

Running the latest neural net build in a shadow mode pitted against the real world driver and relaying back telemetry where the shadow NN took an opposing action is a little more sophisticated than pushing out an ECU update.

I think you're being a little uncharitable or simply don't understand what Tesla are doing.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#135

Post by nisten »

abduhl wrote: post #119
nisten wrote: post #113

In 2017 Intel acquired mobileye( the makers of the autopilot radar in the early Teslas), for 15.3 Billion. That begs the question, if Tesla were to sell their autopilot system tomorrow, , given it's safety record, amount of training data, and new FPGA processor IP, how much would it be worth? 15, 20, 40? This is why I find their delivery numbers completely and utterly irrelevant to company value. This is a just a tec…

Which car company do you imagine Tesla would have "just bought out"? Keep in mind that Tesla couldn't even raise enough money to buy out themselves, not even at the incredibly discounted price of $420/share.

Actually they could and did raise enough to buy themselves out and have done so every time.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#136

Post by leesec »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #115
leesec wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I would agree Waymo owns the narrative and a lot of it is based on their disengagement stats. I wouldn't say those tell the whole story. They are also completely different approaches, i.e. Waymo using LIDAR and Tesla relying on cameras as the primary sensor. But the major question is can LIDAR _ever_ be financially feasible, and if so can it become feasible faster than camera gets good enough at vision. Right now…

Waymo quotes $7500 per car for the LIDAR unit, which is financially feasible today for consumer vehicles, even if it only supplied level 3. It's trivial for a level 4 robotaxi. But only once the software works. Even discounting aesthetics, Tesla couldn't have bolted it on to every car sold in the hope that it'll work in a few years time. They'd be bankrupt by now. They were forced to use cameras if they wanted any in…

That's just one LIDAR, count how many are on their vans. (I think 5)

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#137

Post by navigatesol »

jaimex2 wrote: post #107

Looking healthy to move along for Chinese factory, Model Y and pickup truck later this year. I like that they don't stop moving even if it scares a few investors with heavy capex spending on their next products.

Heavy capex spending???

Did you even look at the financials? It doesn't even cover depreciation!

Edit: Downvoters want to explain how $250mm is "heavy capex spending" in the automotive world, particularly in a "high growth" company?

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#138

Post by reitzensteinm »

nisten wrote: post #132
reitzensteinm wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tesla has 11bn in debt, alongside other obligations like warranties. If they can't make the car thing work, and their autopilot tech sells for as much as mobileye, shareholders are going to be wiped out in the event of liquidation. How the cars are selling and what margins they're getting matters a great deal, even if you believe that the long term value comes from autopilot.

Looking at the competition, ford, VW, Mercedes. Their battery production numbers look pretty mediocre. Also their cars are less and less competitive in a rising carbon market.

You're making an argument that Tesla is going to sell cars. That's fine.

But previously you said delivery numbers don't matter because autopilot is valuable. That's what I was responding to and could not be more wrong.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#139

Post by WheelsAtLarge »

snuze wrote: post #91
WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #73

I know at least one person that's decided not to buy a Tesla simply because their future is so murky and is not sure if they will be around for repairs. That's a problem they need to tackle now before it spirals out of control. Also, it seems to me that Tesla should work with one of the big three automakers on manufacturing. Tesla has spent a lot of resources reinventing car manufacturing and yet they can't produce a…

“Tesla has spent a lot of resources reinventing car manufacturing and yet they can't produce a vehicle that meets their needs.” Where are you getting this information? Design and manufacturing influence one another. None of the “leaders” in automotive space outsource their design or manufacturing. You need to control and master both to compete in this space. Perhaps you can take the Apple route and outsource the labo…

https://www.forbes.com/sites/lensherman/2018/12/20/tesla-sur...

To start with, this article of many articles on the subject. Plus Musk has spoken on the subject too.

Manufacturers have known for decades that over automation is a problem. The dream is to put raw resources at one end and get a finished product at the other without humans touching any of it. The closer you get to total automation the harder it gets to do it. There's a fine line that must be found.

Tesla has not shown that they have found the best manufacturing process so they should get help.

Also, it is almost never the best practice to produce a product 100% in-house. It requires too many resources and it's very hard to do it at the lowest cost especially in low quantities. They aren't producing their product 100% in-house but from what I've seen in the past they've tried to produce as much as possible in house. Like I said there's a fine line that needs to be found.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#140

Post by umeshunni »

navigatesol wrote: post #81
toomuchtodo wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is that Youtube video fake? The ~90k vehicles Tesla sold this quarter? "Fake news"? I have no excuses, just proof of hundreds of thousands of Tesla vehicles on the road, and billions of dollars worth of manufacturing capacity running. Come back in a year we shall.

> The ~90k vehicles Tesla sold this quarter And made less revenue than last quarter. Brilliant. Is the 1 billion dollars lost this year after saying profits forever fake? The lawsuits from whistleblowers? Months long waits for parts? The miniscule growth after slashing prices greatly? The securities violations? Tesla Solar selling the least it ever has? I could care less about some factory shell in China. They told y…

> And made less revenue than last quarter. Brilliant.

They made $5.3B this quarter and $3.7B last quarter.

Where are you getting your numbers from?

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