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Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

electrek.co

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Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#161

Post by scoofy »

AlexandrB wrote: post #134
scoofy wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really is wild that investments are driven by the marginal investor, not the median investor. 99% of us can think that Tesla is trash, but 1% of world investors is an absolute ton of capital.

You're more complaining that investors who don't own a stock have no influence on its price. Which is true, but I don't see a workable way to change that. The median investor in Tesla, on the other hand, seems to be happy with the situation since they're not selling.

I'm not complaining really, just think it's a explanation that describes the downward sticky nature of companies that can't seem to justify their valuations.

I agree that the median investor feels that way, I just think that the median Tesla investor (apart from passive broad based funds) is a tiny, tiny, tiny part of the market.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#162

Post by tobias3 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #13
blindriver wrote: post #4

I have over $100k in Tesla puts. There is no way Tesla survives this. They have plummeting sales every quarter, and Elon is pushing out a product that is going to get into an accident within the first week. Robotaxis are glorified Ubers and will never level up to Waymos. FSD is useless if you have to keep your eye on the wheel and road. I have a Tesla Model Y. It's my favorite car I've ever driven. I subscribed to FS…

Best of luck, I can't tell you how much I have lost having rational takes on Tesla that proved correct in reality, but ultimately immaterial to shareholders. Tesla stock is a cult stock. People buy it because it goes up. It always goes up. Wall street has long been clued into the brain damage and delusions it's core investors have, and are more than happy to play into the fantasy. Its a company of perpetual massive p…

> But just to be honest here, the people who have full on bought into the hype have made incredible amounts of money.

They'll only have made incredible amounts of money once they sell the stock for an incredible amount of money to a buyer that gives them incredible amounts of money. Before that they just have a share of the above empty promises.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#163

Post by jjav »

antisthenes wrote: post #52
moralestapia wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, tell that to Theranos' executives. Oh yeah, you can't, they're in jail.

Theranos never went public, so the quote about markets doesn't apply. I do agree with the general sentiment, however. If FSD kills a person, many executives, including the top dog, need to go to jail.

> If FSD kills a person, many executives, including the top dog, need to go to jail.

Remember that Musk (through "doge") just illegally dismantled the agencies that might've been able to hold Tesla accountable for safety violations.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#164

Post by FireBeyond »

cowthulhu wrote: post #16
blindriver wrote: post #4

I have over $100k in Tesla puts. There is no way Tesla survives this. They have plummeting sales every quarter, and Elon is pushing out a product that is going to get into an accident within the first week. Robotaxis are glorified Ubers and will never level up to Waymos. FSD is useless if you have to keep your eye on the wheel and road. I have a Tesla Model Y. It's my favorite car I've ever driven. I subscribed to FS…

Tesla has proven to be very good at lying, moving goalposts, and insisting that this time [x] is right around the corner. I don't know what would be different this time. They might launch it with, like, 5 cars total, or have it be 100% teleoperated, or limit it to side roads. They might require the passenger to sit in the drivers seat and take liability, or push it back a few more months, or only run it at 3AM when t…

> They might launch it with, like, 5 cars total, or have it be 100% teleoperated, or limit it to side roads.

All of these things. On a previous investor call, he said "10-20 Model Ys" would be deployed in Austin.

And that they'd all have remote operators.

And that fully autonomous would be geofenced (or in his words, "with some limitations", because he's allergic to that word).

It's "fully autonomous, driverless self-driving" that's actually heavily Mechanical Turk-ed.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#165

Post by FireBeyond »

xnx wrote: post #71
antisthenes wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Theranos never went public, so the quote about markets doesn't apply. I do agree with the general sentiment, however. If FSD kills a person, many executives, including the top dog, need to go to jail.

> If FSD kills a person, many executives, including the top dog, need to go to jail. It would be great to have that level of accountability. Drunk drivers that kill people barely go to jail: https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/man-gets-10-days-in-jai...

It's a quip, but scarily accurate - it has been said multiple times, "If you want to murder someone and get away with it, hit them with your car."

Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#166

Post by FireBeyond »

jjcm wrote: post #11

I own two Teslas, and drive between Portland and Seattle about once every 10 days, using FSD nearly the entire way. FSD has gotten amazingly better over the last year, it can and has taken me from driveway to driveway between two cities... when the weather is nice. As soon as there is any weather however, things start to fall apart. It's very clear to me that vision alone wont be the solution to FSD, and is the main…

Yeah, I don't expect that driving on wide laned, well-marked stretches of interstates like I-5 is problematic, especially in nice weather.

Let's try Pittsburgh in snow in December, and then see.

Mind you as recently as 12 months ago there were still videos of Teslas happily taking straight lines through roundabouts.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#167

Post by moogly »

monetus wrote: post #17
RajT88 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So - the cooked-ness of Tesla may depend on what you think Musk's goal was with Tesla. If you believe he was out to change the world - maybe he'll let Tesla die. It's unlikely they are going to accomplish much else at this point, better, smarter more experienced competitors are sweeping the board. If you believe he's out to make as much money as he can, he'll probably course correct at some point. Lidar it is clear w…

Elon has positioned adopting lidar as a personal defeat - I am curious if his ego would allow that course correction.

> If you need a geofenced area, you don't have real self-driving.

Elon Musk, 2019

Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#168

Post by gorpy7 »

misiti3780 wrote: post #77
blindriver wrote: post #4

I have over $100k in Tesla puts. There is no way Tesla survives this. They have plummeting sales every quarter, and Elon is pushing out a product that is going to get into an accident within the first week. Robotaxis are glorified Ubers and will never level up to Waymos. FSD is useless if you have to keep your eye on the wheel and road. I have a Tesla Model Y. It's my favorite car I've ever driven. I subscribed to FS…

I have had the exact opposite experience. I have been using FSD on HW3 for a few years and the latest version for me is much safer than me driving. I dont care about your opinions of him killing the brand, they are irrelevant. It's clear that the vision only approach will work, it may need more training data but it will get there. Good luck with your short! Last I checked there were 35K fatal accidents in the US ever…

I used to try it for a few drives after each release then revert to driving myself. with the newest version i let it drive a lot- and i’m on the older hardware. Everyone likes to bemoan the lying but every corp lies, at least with Tesla you get to point the finger instead of yell at a faceless mass. and if it’s 15 years of lying and a well known political target, then at some point it’s not lying- it’s a feature. people need to take some personal responsibility. also, of course, every day that goes by without a fatality is another day that all the naysayers should capitulate- but we won’t hear it. time and pressure will solve fsd sooner than later, i doubt there is a soul in here that doubts it, so there is also /that/ clock that is ticking.

Cars, one of life’s current greatest killers. by accidents and by pollution-hmmm, let’s run down that evil dude!

edited: made on writing mistakes

Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#169

Post by ivewonyoung »

RajT88 wrote: post #37
turnsout wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand how you could look at Elon's actions and think he has any interest in making as much money as he can. He's already made his money. Now he's gone full Howard Hughes. "I would like to die on Mars" is a direct quote.

Actions like leveraging the relationship with Trump to get the government to buy a ton of StarLink and Cybertrucks? Him and his companies hold a few billion in crypto, and is possibly one of the major holders of the Trump shitcoin? It appears to be self-dealing for profit to me, the Trump relationship being his path to his next hundred billion dollars in net worth. What does it look like to you?

> Actions like leveraging the relationship with Trump to get the government to buy a ton of StarLink and Cybertrucks

Source about the Cybertrucks?

Or are you just parroting debunked misinformation.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors

#170

Post by ivewonyoung »

horsawlarway wrote: post #10
iw7tdb2kqo9 wrote: post #6

Tesla had more chance to succeed than Waymo. It's impossible for Waymo to match Tesla in real world training and testing data. Somehow Waymo is winning.

Waymo chose an approach that seems geared towards actually doing the task. Tesla tried for the moonshot - They wanted a consumer car with cheap sensor hardware to perform the job. Trusting that computing "smarts" could solve the rest of the problem. I'm in Atlanta where Waymos have started popping up left and right - the sensor bank on these things is HUGE. You can spot 'em from way far off... Giant sensors on top. B…

Waymo is winning by losing money as fast as they can?

Have you looked at their financials? They're terrible.

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