Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 59 posts

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#41

Post by rsynnott »

mbac32768 wrote: post #9

Given the way AI is advancing it would be really dumb to not go hard on Robotaxi. That's it. That's the analysis. If you think AI progress is going to hit a wall or Tesla's AI in particular is going to hit a wall then sure spin up a Model 2 and prepare for a long grueling endless war with BYD.

I realise that it is most improper to read the article on this website, but the analysis in question was _very optimistic_ (IMO naively so) on the robotaxi aspect, in that it just assumed that it would happen and most people would want to use it; the analysis was negative on the _financials_.

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#42

Post by zelda420 »

apercu wrote: post #40
sneak wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans, however, are our friends (as is China, our biggest and most important trading partner) and everyone benefits from trade. Americans having access to more affordable high quality goods is a win for Americans. I’m not sure why people don’t realize this.

Are Americans buying "high quality goods" from China all day?

Isn’t nearly every tech worker on this forum using an apple product ‘Designed in California’ but actually made in china

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#43

Post by silverlake »

zelda420 wrote: post #42
apercu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Americans buying "high quality goods" from China all day?

Isn’t nearly every tech worker on this forum using an apple product ‘Designed in California’ but actually made in china

China earns relatively little per iPhone/Mac. The complex components come from other countries like Taiwan, Korea and Japan. Apple earns a hefty profit for marketing savvy, iCloud services, and perhaps financing. China makes a pittance for screwing all the parts together. Where would you prefer to be in this product pipeline?

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#44

Post by [deleted] »

true_religion wrote: post #32
sneak wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Americans, however, are our friends (as is China, our biggest and most important trading partner) and everyone benefits from trade. Americans having access to more affordable high quality goods is a win for Americans. I’m not sure why people don’t realize this.

The objection is that China is not a genuine trading partner that sees open and efficient markets as a good thing. They are instead the sort of trading partner that reminds people of the British Empire: they will produce all manufactured goods and you will handle all the more easily replaced aspects of the business from raw materials to soft services.

[deleted]

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#45

Post by 1970-01-01 »

Zigurd wrote: post #34
1970-01-01 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If BYD and China are dominant in the EV (hardware) war, then the long term strategic play is to dominate the FSD (software) war. Whether or not this is a bold strategy or massive mistake is yet to be determined.

The only deployed fully autonomous passenger vehicles are robotaxis with lots of sensors operating is carefully managed service areas. There is no "FSD war."

This is actually reinforcement to my point. Getting real wold momentum on FSD software is exactly what Elon wants. He wants to be ahead in this technology curve before anyone else attempts to scale it outside of taxis.

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#46

Post by apercu »

zelda420 wrote: post #42
apercu wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are Americans buying "high quality goods" from China all day?

Isn’t nearly every tech worker on this forum using an apple product ‘Designed in California’ but actually made in china

Yep, I buy an iPhone "all day" from China.

That's kind of a straw man argument. Go pick up every single cord, speaker, lamp, etc. in your house and look at the label.

That low quality shit that lasts a year is what I am talking about. Furniture used to be handed down for generations. Now, if you move apartments twice it falls apart.

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#47

Post by 1970-01-01 »

randomcarbloke wrote: post #22
1970-01-01 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If BYD and China are dominant in the EV (hardware) war, then the long term strategic play is to dominate the FSD (software) war. Whether or not this is a bold strategy or massive mistake is yet to be determined.

they already hobbled themselves by limiting their fsd to computer vision, no chance of dominating the fsd market when the competitors are already level with or superior.

I agree that a purely visual approach is weaker, however the new vehicles are expected to have many more cameras and using structured lighting to identify objects in near realtime. I won't count it out as that is an order of magnitude cheaper to scale if it becomes approved.

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#48

Post by Zigurd »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #45
Zigurd wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The only deployed fully autonomous passenger vehicles are robotaxis with lots of sensors operating is carefully managed service areas. There is no "FSD war."

This is actually reinforcement to my point. Getting real wold momentum on FSD software is exactly what Elon wants. He wants to be ahead in this technology curve before anyone else attempts to scale it outside of taxis.

What he "wants" is the hype to continue to prop up a pumped share price that looks increasingly vulnerable, nevermind his own experts saying it is financially incoherent.

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#49

Post by enslavedrobot »

TheAlchemist wrote: post #15

Such a shame that Tesla will need to report the Robotaxi rollout due to tariffs /s. I kid you not - this is a great excuse and they will 100% use it in some way. It's already clear for a lot of people that the numbers at Tesla don't add up. They were able to cut a lot of (legal and accounting...) corners when they were growing quickly, but it will be much more complicated now when they are contracting. Sure they can…

Well lots of institutions hold hundreds of billions worth of the stock. It's easy to forget that the easiest person to fool is yourself.

There were equally compelling reasons for me to think that Google, Amazon, and Apple were wildly over valued in the 2000s. I was dead wrong.

When evaluating a stock's value it's always important to look for reasons you're wrong instead of minimizing contradictory data.

One data point of interest is that for the past few weeks Tesla cars built in Texas have been driving unsupervised from the factory across the highway to the end of line facility on uncontrolled roads. So far 50k miles without incident. They are also driving unsupervised at the Fremont factory.

Re: Elon Musk shut down internal Tesla analysis showing Robotaxi would lose money

#50

Post by consumer451 »

detaro wrote: post #39
consumer451 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> or lack of regulatory environment. I’m really curious what they meant by this exactly.

Presumably places not having any legal concept of autonomous driving?

Thanks, I don't know why I didn't read it like that. This makes sense.
Post reply on HN