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Master Plan, Part Deux

tesla.com

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Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#161

Post by mtgx »

pdq wrote: post #139

I still don't understand the SolarCity part. Tesla is atop the best rated electric cars, and has a good trajectory toward that product line future, with lots of innovation ahead. Successful companies like Apple focus on best-in-class products, so Tesla is smart to continue focusing their resources into those product lines. Meanwhile SolarCity has been burning cash on a consistent basis [1], and is sitting in a hyper…

I think time will tell if the movement proves "foolish". However, there is one reason why this makes sense. Storage batteries and solar panels will go hand in hand for the vast majority of sales. So it makes sense for Tesla to want to control that half of the "solution" for renewable energy generation.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#162

Post by qaq »

Animats wrote: post #64

"A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5 to 10 fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2 year iteration cycle. The first Model 3 factory machine should be thought of as version 0.5, with version 1.0 probably in 2018." What that really means: Tesla is going to lose a ton of money per car on the Model 3, or raise the price, until at least 2022. T…

employees per car is irrelevant metric as business lines are totally different. Exclude people working on the charger network, dealerships and home products (powerwall) and then it will be more or less apples to apples comparison.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#163

Post by argonaut »

sudoscript wrote: post #66
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.

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

It is a supervised learning problem, but that doesn't mean it will be solved by just shoving large amounts of data into a black box algorithm. This is not MobileEye's approach, and it almost certainly is not Tesla's approach. The data is useless unless it is annotated (e.g. a human labels where the lanes are, where the obstacles are, what the bicylist is doing, etc.) - that's the bottleneck, not collecting large amounts of raw sensor data + driver actions.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#164

Post by argonaut »

paulsutter wrote: post #15

> 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. This seems very significant for Tesla vs competitors. Yes Google has a strong technology lead today, but how long will that last when Tesla is collecting more miles of data every day than Google has collected in…

What does that data give you? Raw sensor data + steering angle + acceleration/braking is not particularly useful in of itself. Nobody is trying to shove large amounts of data through a blackbox model and directly trying to predict car controls from images. This is not MobileEye's approach and almost certainly isn't Tesla's approach. The bottleneck is data that is decomposed and labeled in greater detail (lane markings, obstacles, bicyclist hand signs, etc) - and you need human annotators for that.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#165

Post by FreedomToCreate »

_s wrote: post #13

Uber is betting on car manufacturers to have autonomous driving in place, while it builds up a worldwide user base of logistics (moving people and goods from X to Y). It doesn't care if vehicles are driven by a horse or by electricity. Tesla is building the vehicles and energy source for the vehicles, and building the autonomy in to them, but it's betting on a user-base acquisition via hardware (vehicle) ownership an…

Good points except that we are a century, if not centuries from carbon fuel reaching a point where people start to worry. And companies like Toyota are investing in alternatives fuels like Hydrogen, so it not as straight forward as you state for Tesla.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#166

Post by elchief »

dcw303 wrote: post #55

> Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it I really like this, but the laws of supply and demand still apply. If you live in a sparsely populated area there's not going to be much for your car to do. Great for those in urban centres, but then if you lived there why bother owning at all when there will be more cabs to hail?

It's too bad you're forced to live in the wilderness then

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#167

Post by dpcx »

ams6110 wrote: post #113
paulsutter wrote: post #15

> 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. This seems very significant for Tesla vs competitors. Yes Google has a strong technology lead today, but how long will that last when Tesla is collecting more miles of data every day than Google has collected in…

It seems to me the data tesla are collecting are not unique. How many times logging the same driver driving the same 20 mile commute before you're in diminishing returns? With deliberately chosen conditions, scenarios, and routes, it seems to me Google could be collecting data that are just as useful although maybe covering much a smaller number of miles.

I don't know where you live, but my daily commute is never the same. They either start/end at different times, or I have to take different routes, or the weather is different. I think it would take a lot longer than 3 years before they start seeing actual diminishing returns on mileage collection.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#168

Post by seanp2k2 »

Vik1ng wrote: post #144
sjtgraham wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Semis spend a large part of their time driving at highway speeds where air resistance is at a maximum. Why would a self-driving cargo vehicle drive at highway speeds? A human truck driver can only drive 11 hours/day, an autonomous vehicle can be on the move 24/7 and so could travel at slower, more efficient speeds while completing trips on similar time scales. > To achieve useful performance an electric semi will n…

A semi travelling a very slow speeds would need his own lane or it would significantly increase the risk of accidents (unless every car on the road is autonomous). Solar on the roof is most likely rather insignificant and will also just add weight.

Re: solar on the roof, agreed that it wouldn't do much:

An ISO container that could fit on a truck trailer is typically 40'x8'. Solar panels are, on the sunniest of days, making 10-14 watts per square foot. This gives us:

40x8=320sqft assuming panels with no borders.

Assuming 14 watts per sqft (optimal conditions) we'd end up with 4,480 watts. Assuming 100% efficiency converting this into usable motion, we'd get 6 BHP. A normal semi truck has 350-600HP, so this is a drop in the bucket compared to their normal output power. As far as how much of that they use while cruising, I'd wager that it's much more than the 1-2% boost which solar-powered electric would provide (again remember that my calculations assume cloudless sky, no dust on panels, no weight or aerodynamic penalty, no maintenance costs, 100% conversion efficiency, etc).

They reason you don't see them is because it's not worth it. The aero mods under and behind the trailer on the other hand ARE worth it, and this claims that a specific version of a "trailer tail" gives a 6.6% boost to fuel economy at 65MPH: http://realtruckdriver.com/what-do-i-think-about-semi-truck-...

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#169

Post by mthoms »

ams6110 wrote: post #113
paulsutter wrote: post #15

> 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. This seems very significant for Tesla vs competitors. Yes Google has a strong technology lead today, but how long will that last when Tesla is collecting more miles of data every day than Google has collected in…

It seems to me the data tesla are collecting are not unique. How many times logging the same driver driving the same 20 mile commute before you're in diminishing returns? With deliberately chosen conditions, scenarios, and routes, it seems to me Google could be collecting data that are just as useful although maybe covering much a smaller number of miles.

I can't imagine that the data from carefully selected scenarios would be anywhere near as valuable as the data from random, unpredictable, real world driving.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#170

Post by na85 »

rjdagost wrote: post #132
danhak wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ford can have fewer employees per car because they're at full scale, they've outsourced nearly all their engineering and have outsourced their sales as well via an antiquated dealer model. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hf15nMnayXk

Say what you will about their "antiquated" business practices, but Ford consistently does one thing that Tesla never does: it turns a profit

Don't they lose money on every single model except the F-150?
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