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Master Plan, Part Deux

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Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#451

Post by tigroferoce »

sgc wrote: post #410
ams6110 wrote: post #327

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More electric vehicles will get on the road when there is a realistic economic rationale to buy them. Without the subsidy, an $80,000 car that can only go 200 miles is a lot less appealing.

Hence they are subsidized. People with a bit of forward vision realize that without an economic incentive today, there may not be an economic rationale tomorrow, since the technology will not miraculously develop itself.

What I think people do not realise is that incentives to adopt cleaner car are just one side of a coin.

The alternative would be making petrol-car drivers paying for the actual costs of cars including healthcare for diseases related with pollution, possibly at any level of the production chain and so on.

Hidden costs are often cut away and offloaded on community (I couldn't find anything specifically related with cars (didn't have time to look for), but for comparison here's a short video that shows the real costs of meat https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZDsSnpYZrw). Incentives make it a little bit more explicit. While it may be true claiming that Teslas cost would be higher without incentives, for sure Ford's car would be way more expensive if everything had been taken into account.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#452

Post by shasheene »

Hopefully Tesla will be able to achieve this new plan. Looking back at the first 'master plan' from 2006, it's clear that it failed pretty badly as Tesla Motors wasn't close to being able to self fund its goals over that time.

Since the first master plan was published in 2006, Tesla Motors has raised money privately (during its near death experience in 2008), sold a 10% stake to Daimler (which was recently divested), went public which has a side effect of raising even more (though the main reason to IPO in most cases liquidity to existing investors), and since then have continually raised money from the public market every year or two. There's probably private and public capital raisings since 2006 that I'm forgetting too (and they raised other capital streams like debt, such as the DoE loan)

The very lofty stock price of Tesla in recent years has helped it fund Model S, Model X and Model 3 designs, development, manufacturing (at large scales) and delivery, as well as the building of a large battery factory which Tesla owns a stake in. This constant fund raising has kept Tesla alive and I don't argue that it was very good corporate governance by Elon Musk and team to get Tesla Motors to where it is now (approaching the delivery date for the first Model 3 shipments and having a huge capacity to manufacture battery packs).

However, it's still a failure in its attempt to bootstrap the funding of Model 3 based on sales of previous models.

Of course, Tesla and SpaceX has consistently ended up achieving great things, even if the timeline is optimistic and the budget ends up blowing out. But issuing stock and eventually debt can only stretch Tesla so far. Hopefully Tesla can become a more sustainable business before that happens.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#453

Post by tigroferoce »

akira2501 wrote: post #77
thucydides wrote: post #23

> "When used correctly, [partially autonomous driving] is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves" If you're an American, you're twice as likely to die with a steering wheel in your hands as you are to die at the hands of a murderer. Human-driven vehicle deaths cause grave second-order suffering for families and friends - and hurt the economy. A shift to technologies safer than human-driven ca…

> If you're an American, you're twice as likely to die with a steering wheel in your hands as you are to die at the hands of a murderer. Human-driven vehicle deaths cause grave second-order suffering for families and friends - and hurt the economy. If you're an American you're more likely to die from suicide than you are from motor vehicle related injuries. You're more likely to be poisoned than to die in a motor veh…

I wonder how many of those cancers are due to petrol car pollution ;-)

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#454

Post by TorKlingberg »

ishi wrote: post #440
greendestiny wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

Tesla seems quite willing to massage their telemetry data until it shows what they want it to show.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#456

Post by codeulike »

shasheene wrote: post #452

Hopefully Tesla will be able to achieve this new plan. Looking back at the first 'master plan' from 2006, it's clear that it failed pretty badly as Tesla Motors wasn't close to being able to self fund its goals over that time. Since the first master plan was published in 2006, Tesla Motors has raised money privately (during its near death experience in 2008), sold a 10% stake to Daimler (which was recently divested),…

Was self funding ever part of the plan? One can take it for granted that the company has to survive economically for the plan to work, but besides that why say the plan must be funded in a particular way?

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#457

Post by greendestiny »

doppel wrote: post #439
greendestiny wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"boring but safe."

But seriously, the most important part of that sentence 'safe' is absolutely unproven.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#458

Post by codeulike »

Vik1ng wrote: post #144
sjtgraham wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Semis spend a large part of their time driving at highway speeds where air resistance is at a maximum. Why would a self-driving cargo vehicle drive at highway speeds? A human truck driver can only drive 11 hours/day, an autonomous vehicle can be on the move 24/7 and so could travel at slower, more efficient speeds while completing trips on similar time scales. > To achieve useful performance an electric semi will n…

A semi travelling a very slow speeds would need his own lane or it would significantly increase the risk of accidents (unless every car on the road is autonomous). Solar on the roof is most likely rather insignificant and will also just add weight.

Who said anything about solar on the roof of a truck? I think you are misunderstanding.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#460

Post by nickez »

ams6110 wrote: post #101

My points of skepticism: 1. Semis . A typical long haul semi gets well under 10MPG. In some cases not much more than half that. They are heavy and need a lot of energy to move. A Tesla Model S weighs 4650 lbs and has a range of a couple of hundred miles. A semi truck can weigh up to 80,000 lbs. That is a lot of weight to get rolling and a lot to pull up a grade. Semis spend a large part of their time driving at highw…

> 1. Semis

I think that highways in the future will become electrified and then teslas semis will be able to charge as they go on the highways.

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-23603751

https://www.scania.com/group/en/worlds-first-electric-road-o...

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