Fuel cells are the future, not batteries.
No, they arent
Tesla to raise $1B
151–160 of 334 posts
Re: Tesla to raise $1B
#152As an investor of Tesla who bought into Elon's vision I've been getting more and more nervous about how the company is actually run at this point. A modern car company is as much of a production and supply chain company as it's a product and tech company. I get the feeling that due to Tesla being cutting edge in the tech department it led to all the supply chain/production problems being treated as if they are speed…
Although I applaud your skepticism, I think it's misplaced. My first job out of University was working for Daimler-Benz when they owned Chrysler. I was a front line eng supervisor at the plant level focusing on In System Damage, Federal Torque and a host of other quality issues that were plaguing the company at the time. I dealt directly with it so I can tell you, Supply Chain is not that big a deal to fix. They will…
What did you do save them money?
Re: Tesla to raise $1B
#153Earlier quoted context omitted.
It would probably be easier to have charging stations with people hot-swapping batteries, than charging station with extremely fast charge times. It would be a task that could be automated right out of the gate too.
I like this idea too. Because battery positioning within a car is quite important (at least what have read about the teslas it is) there could be a smaller 100km (60 mi) range swappable battery that is easy to remove and replace.
It might even be feasible to have a system like a drive-through carwash, that instead lifts specially compatible EV's, remove the old battery "strip" from the lower portion of the car, and then install a new one. If it could get down to 3-5 minutes, especially if your car could interface with the "hut" so you don't need to be in it...
Re: Tesla to raise $1B
#154As an investor of Tesla who bought into Elon's vision I've been getting more and more nervous about how the company is actually run at this point. A modern car company is as much of a production and supply chain company as it's a product and tech company. I get the feeling that due to Tesla being cutting edge in the tech department it led to all the supply chain/production problems being treated as if they are speed…
I absolutely love Musk and the idea of Telsa. Hell, I would love to get me a Model S, if I could. But I completely agree with you. I think the Model 3 will end up costing way more that $35k, to turn a profit. The timeline will slip and it won't come out until 2018. The whole solar city deal was premature. I think Musk knows this isn't going to work, at least for a while. I think he knows Telsa is going to have a more…
I think the Model 3 will end up costing way more that $35k, to turn a profit.
That's Tesla's biggest risk - they can't deliver profitably at the price point they pre-sold at. The Model 3 is an ambitious car to sell for $35K. Tesla is not a "lean manufacturing" operation; their head counts at the auto plant per car sold are currently quite high. They'll probably get that figured out eventually, but meanwhile, they need the high margins of luxury cars.
The timeline will slip and it won't come out until 2018.
Probably. They're claiming "late 2017" now, and new orders won't be processed until 2018.
The whole Solar City deal was premature.
The Solar City operation has political problems. It assumes Government subsidies for solar, which may be going away for political reasons.
Re: Tesla to raise $1B
#155Earlier quoted context omitted.
Supposedly that's the case, but since they switched away from Mobile Eye they are still trying to reach feature parity with AP1 at this point. It was supposed to take 2 months, but viola, 6 months later they are still struggling and there are many YouTube videos out there showing how terrible and unsafe it is. It still lack many features of AP1 such as automatic lane changing and blind spot detection at this point. L…
Self driving tech is (still) a really hard problem, unlike what people are lead to believe looking at the dozens of company jumping on the bandwagon and releasing cool looking videos. People look at that recent video of the Tesla car doing a full A to B drive and they're like, wow, that's awesome! Then, they ask themselves, hmm, I wonder why Google hasn't released anything after a decade of research. And realize too…
Yeah, but no. This isn't about the autopilot not being like on the video, it's about the autopilot being worse than it used to be. The really hard problem already had a better solution.
Re: Tesla to raise $1B
#156As an investor of Tesla who bought into Elon's vision I've been getting more and more nervous about how the company is actually run at this point. A modern car company is as much of a production and supply chain company as it's a product and tech company. I get the feeling that due to Tesla being cutting edge in the tech department it led to all the supply chain/production problems being treated as if they are speed…
AP2 is truly dangerous. It's incomprehensible they would release something like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UZ1XLqc5IUg I guess it's a good reality check for autonomous cars when you take away the LIDAR toys. One rather important point is that the car often doesn't realize it is screwing up, because quelle surprise, realizing you don't have a correctly detected lane can be just as difficult as detecting one…
That video supports what I've suspected: the SV self-driving car projects are training on wide American roads in perfect Californian weather, so that's where they might work. Put one of these things on a poorly-paved rural road or a snowy mountain pass, or in a driving rainstorm, and it will disengage and/or kill you.
Just today I drove by a temporary orange sign saying "X St. closed; use Y St. detour," which I'm sure would have confused a fully autonomous vehicle. I bet we'll get fully autonomous cars to drive on existing roads about the same time we create strong AI.
Re: Tesla to raise $1B
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
>Supply Chain is not that big a deal to fix. They will sort out there problems there, they just imo need a few vets from a traditional car company. Tesla have been trying to and they are still running into many problems, many industry veteran hires and tens of thousands of cars sold later. I have talked to many people who have worked/work in production as well, and unfortunately they don't share with you the same opt…
Isn't Elon a sort of supply chain pariah at this point though? His learnings from SpaceX and Tesla so far probably make him one of the most experienced people in modern supply chains.
Not sure 'pariah' was the word you were looking for?
Re: Tesla to raise $1B
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was an exercise in creative problem solving. I'd query the data to find out where on the line the most (costly x incidence) problems were occurring and then devise a solution. If a worker was scratching the paint every time he put his tool down the secure a fastener, we'd get a heavy rubber guard fabricated, change his man assignment and have him put down the guard before he did his little peice, or even better ch…
Let me guess when asked why they said "that's how we've always done it"
Haha, yep. That or a complaint about their man assignment changing and it being hard to keep up.
Re: Tesla to raise $1B
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tesla doesnt make batteries they just package the cells, anyone can do this if the market demands it. Automotive companies are quite good at supply chains.
You dont know what youre talking about. They do make batteries. 2170s are rolling off the gig assembly line as we speak. They are already in their products. Please think before you speak.
you are correct, my bad. I did think before I spoke though so that was not necessary. It is interesting how angry people get when you say anything negative about tesla. And my point stands that anyone has access to battery technology - Samsung sdi and LG chem can scale up with any partner just as tesla and panasonic could
Re: Tesla to raise $1B
#160Uber as a ponzi scheme of ambition
1/ Basic premise was they keep highlighting their entry into larger and larger markets and so investors keep ponying up $ for the ambition. 2/ First, it was taxis
3/ Then, it was taxis + logistics
4/ Then taxis, logistics, vehicle ownership
5/ Then taxis, logistics, vehicle ownership, autonomous
6/ Then taxis, logistics, vehicle ownership, autonomous, trucking
7 / Then taxis, logistics, vehicle ownership, autonomous, trucking, drones
8/ I might have the order wrong but each spins Uber into addressing an even larger Total Addressable Market
9/ While they never actually own even the first one (taxis) yet. But investors love the ambition and keep ponying up.
10/ Hence, the ponzi scheme of ambition
https://twitter.com/asanwal/status/820365771834531841"
It's hard to say whether Musk is doing something similar or not. Satellites, boring company, mars mission, electrified grid, etc....Obviously, Kalanick is much different than Musk, but I can't help but feel pattern recognition creeping up on me.