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Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

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Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#341

Post by Anchor »

MegaButts wrote: post #329
Anchor wrote: post #312

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Imagine a car company that sells cars that may kill people driving them. And imagine that it would actually be one of the most common accident type that kills people. Would you be okay with that? The thing is, every product is working and not working at the same time to a degree. It is only a matter of statistics - are we better off with or without the product.

The difference is, until recently, nobody knew the statistics for self-driving cars and how often they disengaged (by the way, Tesla is doing horribly in this regard). The information for traffic deaths has been public for decades. Again, my emphasis is on the point that Elon Musk is spinning the information to his advantage. He has no interest in bringing attention to the shortfalls of his technology, only to sell t…

But he does bring the shortfalls to public attention, he has repeatedly said that driver's should not view current version of the system as self-driving vehicle, for example.

His plan is to evaluate the self-driving capability by comparing its performance to the human drivers, in shadow mode, perfect the technology to surpass human driver (10 times safer, per his comments), then present statistics from that to the relevant authorities (who should be qualified to evaluate any claim they make on these grounds), and only then proceed to release the self-driving technology to market.

I disagree that he is first a salesman. He is an engineer - and as an engineer he knows that anything he sells has to work or the product - and the company - does not last. He knows that very well, and has bet his fortunes on his engineering skills.

He is a salesman only second. And that is why this can actually work.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#342

Post by zild3d »

Robotbeat wrote: post #46
spyspy wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when they seriously start releasing electric vehicles They've been "serious" for a long time. Chevy has been selling the Volt since 2010. If they were going to muscle out Tesla they would have done it by now. And it's not just about technology. Tesla has the customer reputation that companies like GM will never have again.

I own a Volt. Best car I've ever driven. GM doesn't care much for it. The only advertising they really do for it basically is trying to steal EV customers from Nissan's Leaf. Really dumb. And the dealers don't like it because 1) they don't know how to service them and especially 2) they almost never need servicing. If you run almost exclusively on electric, you only need like 4-5 oil changes in the entire life of the…

Is there something special about the brakes? Less maintenance needed makes sense, but I would have thought the brakes are no different than gasoline cars?

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#343

Post by koreyb »

radiorental wrote: post #253
koreyb wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ford doesn't do batteries, solar, supercharging stations, autopilot tech, etc. Delorean produced 8,583 vehicles. :) But I get your point.

> autopilot tech On the contrary. They're well along that path. Not sure what solar has to do with cars. And charging stations? Do you think that's profitable secret sauce?

Let me know when Ford autopilot is available on the street. They did buy Argo, but current Ford projections are saying 2021..

"whether Tesla is the next Ford or the next Delorean" Tesla is neither of these because it is more than a car company. It is vertical integration that incumbents can't match at this point.

? Yes, of course. You must not own an electric car.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#344

Post by koreyb »

When did it become cool to write poorly like Trump?

Or vertical integration..as well as protecting Elon's investment by bailing out SCTY.

It was $3.25bn because they held the note on leased systems. Under TSLA they shifted to selling solar shingles outright.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#345

Post by thrillgore »

coryfklein wrote: post #265
flexie wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of any product I'd rather have than a Tesla. I think Tesla will sell millions of Model 3. Which other car is 400,000 people waiting patiently to buy for two years, even putting down a $1,000 deposit? Tesla is doing to traditional car manufacturers what Apple did to Nokia.

How about retiring 2-5 years early? That's about what you get if you invest the $35k instead...

My life priorities will be different when i'm 59.5 years old compared to now.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#346

Post by robbiep »

Arizhel wrote: post #238
robbiep wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why leave town? why jump on a ship and sail to unknown horizons? why get out of bed in the morning? Some people like the idea of adventure and the unknown. Practical realities be damned

That's nice, but no one can afford to go establish a colony in orbit around Saturn by themselves; that money has to come from somewhere, and it's a huge amount. That means you need to justify that expenditure of resources, and get other people to fund it. Personally, I'm not willing to work my ass off to spend a bunch of my money funding such a project. An automated probe, sure; a mission to investigate the potential…

Well, good thing it looks like it's going to be largely private hands doing the work, and there'll be no shortage of volunteers. You and your lack of adventure can stay exactly where you are :)

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#347

Post by karussell »

colordrops wrote: post #193
forgotpwtomain wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> environment as well It's not going to do anything great for the environment and we've been over this on previous Tesla threads (years ago). Driving electric cars instead of hybrids in areas where the electricity is primarily derived from unclean sources is not better than hybrids for the environment.

What would you propose instead?

Instead of the battery the less toxic way would be hydrogen based engines.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#349

Post by Arizhel »

nickjarboe wrote: post #340
Arizhel wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, but the problem here is that it seems unlikely that it'll be affordable to set up a self-sustaining colony any time in the foreseeable future without the resources of a large nation-state. And again, remember my previous post is talking about (and questioning the idea of) colonizing places other than Mars and the Moon (see the line about "except for a couple of somewhat-convenient places"), which are certainly…

I agree independent space stations make more sense than anywhere but maybe Mars. Using small, near-Earth asteroids for bulk resources at first seems likely. But for political autonomy, near Earth is unlikely. Earth's political systems will have a high incentive to have some control over massive objects moving very fast near the planet.

They don't have to be that near Earth. Just nearer than the outer planets, the asteroid belt, probably Mars, etc.

Besides, if it's strategically placed, it could easily threaten Earth with kinetic projectiles if Earth's political systems attempt to take control of it. Military units inside a deep gravity well have an enormous disadvantage to those outside the gravity well.

Re: Tencent buys 5% of Tesla

#350

Post by Arizhel »

robbiep wrote: post #346
Arizhel wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's nice, but no one can afford to go establish a colony in orbit around Saturn by themselves; that money has to come from somewhere, and it's a huge amount. That means you need to justify that expenditure of resources, and get other people to fund it. Personally, I'm not willing to work my ass off to spend a bunch of my money funding such a project. An automated probe, sure; a mission to investigate the potential…

Well, good thing it looks like it's going to be largely private hands doing the work, and there'll be no shortage of volunteers. You and your lack of adventure can stay exactly where you are :)

It's not a matter of willing workers, it's a matter of funding. The problem is if you start demanding money in the form of taxes. I find it highly dubious that one rich person could fund such an endeavor all by himself; this kind of thing is a project of enormous magnitude, and just as with the Apollo missions, normally require the funding only possible with a very large nation-state, which gets that funding from taxes and has to answer to its voters.

If you can fund a Mars colonization mission all by yourself, then more power to you. But I just don't think it's possible, at least not any time soon. As a species, we haven't even managed to do any better than landing 3 men on our very nearby Moon for very short missions. We have zero experience in building and living in actual offworld habitats. It's never been done, not even in the one place where it's so close by that a rescue mission wouldn't be hard to do. The closest we've come is Biosphere II, a glass building in the Arizona desert, and that was a big failure.

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