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Tesla is committing automotive suicide

electrek.co

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Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#221

Post by cosmicgadget »

bottlepalm wrote: post #84

Give me a break. Tesla has 4 different, 4 person cars. It's redundant. In manufacturing and business, reducing variability is everything. Engineering and supply chain has now been freed from two entire SKUs. That's massive. In a self driving world, they don't really the Model 3 either. The best part is no part - well getting rid of two entire vehicles worth of parts that contributed very little to the bottom line is…

It's weird that you think people don't understand the concept of simplification, especially here. And that if someone says "that's an odd move" it must be because they can't grasp the idea of redundancy (between vehicles priced differently by a factor of two).

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#222

Post by Qwertious »

toephu2 wrote: post #17
misiti3780 wrote: post #12

I have to admit, I love my model S and have been very bullish of TSLA but this news makes me very bearish. There is no way they are going to make robots at scale in the next 5 years and the model s and model X are cool pieces of technology. If they dont start rolling out robotaxi extremely quickly to new locations, I cant imagine the stock going anywhere but down.

> There is no way they are going to make robots at scale in the next 5 years If you said 1 year okay I would believe you. But have you seen the advances in AI recently...? And the work done in robotics by other companies like Google and Figure? 5 years is definitely doable.

AI isn't the only bottleneck - even if the software problem was solved today, a robot arm competitive with human arms simply doesn't exist (and the only ones that have a hope of competing cost $16k each) - it turns out all those degrees of freedom makes the arm super fragile, and the human arm is filled to the brim with sensors (e.g. to figure out the weight of the item you're holding, or to tell when the teatowel is slipping or if you're gripping it tight enough).

(Source: construction-physics, if anyone wants to comment with the link)

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#223

Post by phil21 »

jjice wrote: post #20
z2 wrote: post #7

Tesla also announced they will be discontinuing the basic lane keep + adaptive speed cruise control they helped pioneer in cars sold going forward. But this is now a standard (free) feature even in basic vehicles like the Toyota Corolla. Why would they intentionally cripple their vehicles to the point hat they would be inferior to most cars today? Then I learned that Musk's incentive pay has a 10 million full self-dr…

I have a newer Corolla that's pretty much the absolute floor of the base model (LE with I believe minimal packages) and it has all the technology one would expect now, all while having physical buttons where it matters. Lane assist and adaptive cruise control are table stakes now.

Yeah, I rented a Corolla recently which was about as basic as it got - and within less than 90 seconds of entering the vehicle/driving I had everything I needed figured out.

CarPlay was trivial to pair up. Screen resolution was meh, but otherwise it Just Worked(tm).

Adaptive cruise was trivial to turn on and read the indicators for.

Lane keep assist was also overtly obvious - both if it was on, and how to turn it on/off.

The A/C controls were nice easily understood knobs and buttons.

Blindspot detection was standard, worked great.

Overall just a very intuitive vehicle.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#224

Post by youngtaff »

stickfigure wrote: post #150

Bipedal robots are dumb. A robot that can only walk around my house is still useless. A robot that can wheel or track or even park in front of my dryer and fold laundry would be incredible. Yet every demo is Robot Jumps And Dances, not Robot Does Something Useful. My theory is that bipedal motion is the "easy" problem, and fine motor control is the hard problem. That makes me bearish on Optimus: A car with questionab…

Chinese manufacturers were recently reporting that people were twice as efficient as humanoid robots

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#225

Post by fhdkweig »

ojagodzinski wrote: post #108
ai-christianson wrote: post #95

They might actually be going all-in on a robotaxi future, i.e. betting on a future where car-ownership is not the default.

in US? Country built around car-ownership?

It is built around driving cars, but not necessarily car ownership. From what I gather through movies and television, cities like New York City don't really have car owners, but there are a lot of taxi cabs. Now Uber and Lyft have moved into small towns that never had taxis.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#226

Post by vel0city »

bottlepalm wrote: post #84

Give me a break. Tesla has 4 different, 4 person cars. It's redundant. In manufacturing and business, reducing variability is everything. Engineering and supply chain has now been freed from two entire SKUs. That's massive. In a self driving world, they don't really the Model 3 either. The best part is no part - well getting rid of two entire vehicles worth of parts that contributed very little to the bottom line is…

Model X wasn't a 4-person car. It was designed to be a 6-7 seater, far bigger than the Model Y. The Model Y's optional third row is practically useless.

Its like arguing the Honda CR-V is the same kind of vehicle as the Honda Odyssey.

The real question is why continue having the Model Y and the Model 3, when those are so incredibly close in dimensions. The 3 is only 2" smaller than the Y in length. Just kill the 3 and make a cheaper trim level of the Y. $10k more to have a 7" higher roof and more features in the base model.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#227

Post by NetMageSCW »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #165
lallysingh wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GM didn't sell EVs for years after releasing the EV1. They didn't get any market advantage from the EV1 because they left the market after, for a long time.

We are in complete agreement here. They wasted their lead.

They didn’t have a lead. It’s like saying the DC-X was ahead in propulsive landing over F9, or the LG Prada had a lead over the iPhone.

Being first isn’t enough to establish a lead. You also have to be in competition, which means selling product.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#228

Post by MBCook »

nailer wrote: post #56
MBCook wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So? They could make the first working flying cars. They could work fantastically. And maybe one they release them we find out… no one wants flying cars. They sell 500 a year despite only costing as much as a normal car. Just because you can figure out how to do something doesn’t mean you’re going to make money at it.

Are you saying SpaceX doesn't make money? I have no idea about Neuralink but the first sounds pretty odd.

Where did I say that?

I was using the classic idea of the flying car as an example of a thing that has been out of reach as an as a product for normal people and may not actually be successful if it were to really be sold.

Replace flying car with whatever example you want.

To put it in a different way, you could be so busy figuring out how to do it that you don’t figure out that a business case doesn’t actually exist.

I wasn’t trying to comment on any of Musk‘s other companies specifically. Only that we don’t know if making robots will actually make money.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#229

Post by NetMageSCW »

snarf21 wrote: post #44
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.

My understanding is that the main reasoning for this isn't revenue growth but rather one of the big triggers for his $1T pay package (10 million FSD subscriptions).

Is that understanding based on any verifiable sources?

(It seems plausible, but all I’ve seen is speculation.)

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#230

Post by burnte »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #123
lallysingh wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The EV1 gave GM no advantage.

It wasn't the first modern EV?

Doesn't matter if it was or wasn't, it was a failure that GM never followed up with. Why it was a failure is also irrelevant, because whether you feel it was a technical failure or killed by GM, GM never did anything with the project or knowledge. Effectively it was a curiosity.
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