No industry counts the number of employees within a supply chain. It might be impossible and it's half the point in having separate SC entities...it's irrelevant to a car manufacturer how many miners various aluminium companies feel they need to hire, say.
In the end one would have to measure employees per value-add, so subtract costs for goods and services delivered.
Well you'd measure 'value addition' in revenue, and Income per Employee is already a metric used, but it still wouldn't extend beyond the bounds of your own company, as an entity in a wider supply chain/network.
Say what you will about their "antiquated" business practices, but Ford consistently does one thing that Tesla never does: it turns a profit
If this was the only thing that mattered for businesses, we wouldn't have Amazon as Walmart has consistently produced more net profit over Amazon since the last 22 years. 1 1. http://revenuesandprofits.com/amazon-vs-walmart-revenues-and...
A difference is that Tesla hasn't really managed to execute its original plan, in particular:
- Use that money to develop a medium volume car at a lower price
- Use that money to create an affordable, high volume car
Amazon is way better at making money to invest in growth. Tesla ?still? is in a fairly deep well, and will need investments to crawl out of it. Big question is whether they will.
This would imply that there isn't enough space for everyone. Is that true, though? It feels like most dense concentrations of people are created artificially - either directly through borders (e.g. Haiti vs Dominican Republic), or indirectly through economic limitations (have to live close to where jobs are and commute is too expensive etc). If so, then this is a solvable problem. One other point I wanted to address.…
No, that's not the implication. The implication is that each person wants space around their house, but would ideally be close to all the amenities they visit (like restaurants, doctors, groceries) in order to avoid wasteful transport - think a manor house with a village around it. But instead everybody builds space around their house and now they all live a long way away from everything they need to get to.
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
As I understand, Tesla has way bigger profits margins than Ford.
What the company does is reinvest the profits, instead of giving it back to shareholders. It makes a lot of sense in a growing market.
Google may have a lot fewer miles, but they're much higher quality miles. The sensor suite on their car is much superior, so they're getting much better data. Even if the eventual Google car uses cheaper sensors, the data they get from the superior sensors helps a lot training the algorithms.
I don't see how this will work though. Unless you plan to equip all those future cars with the same high quality sensors as those on the Google ones (which I've heard are prohibitively expensive). If those sensors eventually do become really cheap, then Tesla could use them too and negate any advantages Google might have had.
I think the main point would be to compare the images from the high-quality sensors with those of the low-quality ones, so that they can make good guesses to how accurate they are and what quality they can get away with.
> increased passenger areal density [on buses] by eliminating the center aisle and putting seats where there are currently entryways I can't picture the layout he's describing here - not sure if it's been discussed in more detail elsewhere - anyone got a better idea or a reference image?
The only way I could imagine it, is if it was describing a much smaller bus than we're currently used to, which I think he also mentions.
> Legal liability is one reason. As owner of the car, I am liable for damage it causes. So legal liability laws will have to change. This, at least in most of the United States, is not a correct statement of the law. Absent something like Negligent Entrustment[1] or Vicarious Liability[2], one's ownership of a vehicle does not determine if one is liable if damage is caused while another is operating the vehicle. Some…
I can't speak for everywhere, I'll admit. Where I live, the owner is responsible, as I have learned firsthand by involvement in several accident scenarios where the vehicle owner was not driving at the time. You must purchase insurance for each vehicle you own, and if you allow another person to drive your vehicle you retain the liability. I'm sure there are some exceptions e.g. if your vehicle is stolen, or in cases…
How is the liability with rental or lease cars though? I think that's the legal structure in which the Tesla car pool would operate in. If Tesla would lease out their own cars instead of sell them, they could make a lot of money too, plus lower the bar for a lot of people to drive it.
I'm not seeing it. That seems like a lot of doors to build.
Or one big door for the entire side of the bus…
Either way it'd be a lot heavier than the one, two or three doors that buses have these days. But then, weight probably won't be that big of a factor given how it'd need to have a floor full of batteries anyway.
Humans are the very definition of imperfection and thinking that you are capable of "correctly using a car" that is, never make the mistake that will cause a terrible accident is a big problem. It's probably why so much people keep resisting evolution like autopilot, they can't admit that even them can someday fail and crash. They believe that if they are good drivers they will avoid it. Sadly very good drivers die e…
"but in comparison it will never fail as often as human do" Ok I know this is my little cause of the moment, but seriously why are computers apriori better at anything? Sure they don't make poor life choices but they are absolutely at the mercy of the quality of the algorithms, sensors, operating system, training data and physical computational hardware.
Better is probably a poor word, but consistent at least. Even good drivers may run the speed limit and be "perfectly safe", but the autopilot will always stay at the speed limit and will always make the same choices in a given situation - there's no emotion or influence (alcohol, drugs, bad mood, etc.). In short, they are boring but safe.
Humans are the very definition of imperfection and thinking that you are capable of "correctly using a car" that is, never make the mistake that will cause a terrible accident is a big problem. It's probably why so much people keep resisting evolution like autopilot, they can't admit that even them can someday fail and crash. They believe that if they are good drivers they will avoid it. Sadly very good drivers die e…
"but in comparison it will never fail as often as human do" Ok I know this is my little cause of the moment, but seriously why are computers apriori better at anything? Sure they don't make poor life choices but they are absolutely at the mercy of the quality of the algorithms, sensors, operating system, training data and physical computational hardware.
Computers are not apriori better - you can always develop a stupid or buggy algorithm that fails often. But Tesla is working to PROVE (using real-world data) that autopilot is better than a human driver, and IMPROVE it constantly until it is ten times better.