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

Master Plan, Part Deux

tesla.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

501–510 of 705 posts

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#501

Post by Meegul »

argonaut wrote: post #164
paulsutter wrote: post #15

> We expect that worldwide regulatory approval will require something on the order of 6 billion miles (10 billion km). Current fleet learning is happening at just over 3 million miles (5 million km) per day. This seems very significant for Tesla vs competitors. Yes Google has a strong technology lead today, but how long will that last when Tesla is collecting more miles of data every day than Google has collected in…

What does that data give you? Raw sensor data + steering angle + acceleration/braking is not particularly useful in of itself. Nobody is trying to shove large amounts of data through a blackbox model and directly trying to predict car controls from images. This is not MobileEye's approach and almost certainly isn't Tesla's approach. The bottleneck is data that is decomposed and labeled in greater detail (lane marking…

I recommend watching this [0] ted talk on the subject. In it, you'll see that Google, last year, already had solved bicyclist hand signs, lane markings, unforeseen obstacles, etc. And they did it __without__ human annotators. Just some straight up convolution neural networks.

[0]: https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_...

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#502

Post by OliverJones »

pdq wrote: post #139

I still don't understand the SolarCity part. Tesla is atop the best rated electric cars, and has a good trajectory toward that product line future, with lots of innovation ahead. Successful companies like Apple focus on best-in-class products, so Tesla is smart to continue focusing their resources into those product lines. Meanwhile SolarCity has been burning cash on a consistent basis [1], and is sitting in a hyper…

I'm doing business (in my household) with both Tesla and Solar City. I can tell you this about Solar City: They're doing with roofing and power meters what Tesla is doing with vehicles. They're promoting a location-aware distributed electric-distribution grid.

We're lucky right now that the government's promotion of PV is putting the burden of power storage on the power-grid operators. Without net metering, this stage of PV would never happen. But net metering is essentially bad for the grid operators; they get paid nothing for storing power or sending it from a net producer to a net consumer. They will eventually prevail like they tried to do in Nevada earlier this year and buy power cheaper than they sell it.

But in the meantime the power grid companies haven't got a chance without competition. My home electric meter is as dumb as a box of hammers, even though I spend a lot of money with it and rely on it to keep my family safe in the winter. If that meter were capable of telling me when the power I used was coming from a peak-load diesel generator, I would happily turn off my electric stuff. But they can't do that now.

PV needs to use this window of opportunity to get going, and to get other power-storage solutions working. A Model S is one of those solutions: a gigantic battery with wheels and cruise control. To my way of thinking, systemwide integration is an electropolitical move worth making.

From a personal point of view, I can say that Solar City's sales and engineering teams are smarter and more committed than the people at other PV companies I spoke to. They are trying to build a scalable business rather than bopping from town to town installing stuff and moving on.

Will this work long term? Who knows? But it's worth trying.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#503

Post by chongli »

rjdagost wrote: post #489
puranjay wrote: post #348

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find the obsession with "turning a profit" when it comes to Tesla a bit weird, especially on this forum. Remind me again: this is Hacker News run by Y Combinator, right?

Remind me- is Tesla a for-profit corporation or are they a non-profit organization? Making a profit is sort of the main point, though obviously not the only point. They've been around since 2003 so it's not like they're a scrappy Y-Combinator incubator company.

scrappy Y-Combinator incubator company.

Right. What Tesla is attempting is orders of magnitude more difficult than your typical YC app shop with an exit strategy. I think they deserve a bit more slack than you seem willing to cut them. If it all blows up in their faces you can have your day with a smug "I told you so" but you won't be able to deny the benefits they've already provided to society via Musk's aggressive strategy and the effect that's had on the wider industry.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#504

Post by tikl1 »

restalis wrote: post #490
tikl1 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

"Sadly very good drivers die every day and not only because of someone else's mistake." Indeed, and that may often be because of taking warranted risks. It bothers me that when making comparisons of driving safety people tend to suffer from absence blindness and discount other important things like the death avoidance cases. Let's say you have a bleeding injured person which requires urgent access to a medical facili…

Well you can say it would be infuriating to be unable to take risks to save let's say your wife dying in the car but you can't argue that it's a GOOD thing to take those risks... who are you to decide that it is worth risking others lives to try to save one ?

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#505

Post by tikl1 »

kybernetikos wrote: post #444
tikl1 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Maybe eventually, but what I'm interested in is right now, does the tesla autopilot fail more often than a human driving in similar conditions. My suspicion is that it does.

I don't know for Tesla but I think google autonomous cars are already there, so Tesla must not be far.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#506

Post by gambiting »

na85 wrote: post #170
rjdagost wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say what you will about their "antiquated" business practices, but Ford consistently does one thing that Tesla never does: it turns a profit

Don't they lose money on every single model except the F-150?

The F150 is not even sold in Europe so I don't think Ford only loses money there :P I would imagine that Focus and Fiesta are quite profitable.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#507

Post by tikl1 »

Shivetya wrote: post #450
tikl1 wrote: post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

the autopilot system, if not every system similar that is offered these days, does the driving in conditions that are already likely the easiest a driver will encounter. the real shocking truth is none of these systems is capable of driving when even skilled drivers might need the assistance. think about it this way, car safety systems are designed to insure recovery of safe driving during some of the worst condition…

I'm not sure about this... Do you have sources on that ?

I'm pretty sure that on contrary, autonomous car constructors are actually testing their cars in the worst possible conditions even some that are unlikely to ever happen to anyone. At least it's what Google is telling about their test process.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#508

Post by codeulike »

shasheene wrote: post #478
codeulike wrote: post #456

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Yes, self-funding was a definitely the core part of the plan. Here's the original "master plan" text from 2006 [1] Build sports car Use that money to build an affordable car Use *that* money to build an even more affordable car While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options Don't tell anyone. I think the term "that money" ('that' is italicized in the original) is pretty clear he means…

OK, but swap 'investment' for money and it still makes sense. Does it seem likely that someone like Elon Musk would refuse to leverage investment and insist on funding all growth and r+d from profits only? That would take decades surely?

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#509

Post by Dowwie »

Note his last point: Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it.

I suspect Tesla won't be alone in that space. Good luck to those who are.

Re: Master Plan, Part Deux

#510

Post by bryanlarsen »

tikl1 wrote: post #424
kybernetikos wrote: post #415

> The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability. I don't think this is the correct comparison. A car used correctly is safe. We have huge numbers of road accidents because most people are unable t…

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…

> should it saves its owner or the kids in front of it?

If a driver ever has to make that choice, they were going too fast in the first place. You should never be going faster than the stopping distance to the nearest blind spot, unless you're driving on a controlled access highway.

Post reply on HN