61–70 of 705 posts
I didn't understand what enables them to get rid of aisles inside buses? People still need to reach their seats right?
The buses could have falcon wing doors, just like the Model X: http://i.imgur.com/40o2Uvd.jpg
> 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…
Not sure how they came up with 6 billion as the magic number, but if that's accurate, that's very soon. It also helps that there are no real government stakeholders in preventing the proliferation of self-driving cars. People just need to generally believe that they are much safer than human drivers, which of course is not true yet.
"So, in short, Master Plan, Part Deux is: - Create stunning solar roofs with seamlessly integrated battery storage - Expand the electric vehicle product line to address all major segments - Develop a self-driving capability that is 10X safer than manual via massive fleet learning - Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it" I take this as... Having solar powered superchargers power autonomous sem…
What that really means: Tesla is going to lose a ton of money per car on the Model 3, or raise the price, until at least 2022. That's realistic. His two top production guys quit when he announced 2018 as the delivery date for the Model 3. His new production head, from Audi, may have given Musk a reality check.
Tesla produced about 50,000 cars in 2015 with 13,000 employees, about 4 cars per employee. Ford produced 3.2 million cars in 2015 with 187,000 employees, about 17 cars per employee. Toyota produced about 9 million cars with 344,000 employees, about 26 cars per employee. So Tesla needs to get their productivity per employee up by 4x - 7x to play with the big guys. Clearly Musk has done the same calculation.
Now, though, he's admitting that they can't do it by 2018. This is prepping the stockholders for bad financial news. Tesla is going to burn a lot of cash through at least 2022.
There's no reason that Tesla can't get their productivity up to at least Ford levels in time. Ford has a much broader product line, and Tesla's car isn't that complicated mechanically. But it's not instant.
I was hoping to see another zero to one approach with the master plan where he is taking on some other industry goal. I totally get that part deux is still very, very ambitious and one that no other company can truly realize. But if we're just talking about Musk's master plan, I'm curious why he didn't talk about the synergies with his other company, SpaceX. Tesla and SpaceX both rely on vehicles & transport while Sp…
Solar harvesting in space sounds really cool, but how do you get that power back to earth? Even if there were a way, it's not necessary or effective. He's said very clearly that you could just have a giant square of solar panels in the desert and it would power the whole country. Why bother putting them in space? No advantage.
However, SolarCity IS likely to provide the panels for SpaceX's satellites, of course. So there is that form of solar harvesting in space.
To anyone who's paid close attention to Tesla and to Elon's various offhand remarks to the press and on Twitter, this was all easy to see coming, every bit of it. But now that he's confirmed it all officially: this NUTS . This is so awesome. The press is going to go crazy with this. I wonder what will happen to Uber...seems like it will be hard for them to compete with the rates of cars that don't have to pay their d…
Uber's been likely working on self-driving cars, potentially in partnership with Google. What Tesla has as an advantage though, is an assembly line to produce lots of quality cars. In other words, Tesla will likely be ready for the future of transportation before Uber.
I hear about bus drivers and truck drivers getting into accidents due to drowsiness enough that it's a constant worry whenever I'm on the highway next to one. I wonder if I'd feel safer if i saw a Tesla Semi knowing that were wasn't a human behind the wheel. Should autonomous vehicles be identified as such (special lights or label) so that real humans can know not to be erratic around it?
This comment reminds me of the various (likely apocryphal) laws when cars were still new and shared the road with cars. Cars we considered the new weird thing that needed to take special steps to not spook horses or their riders/drivers. Now, of course, the situation is reversed and horses often are required to have special visibility gear to be seen more clearly by cars. So, perhaps in the future there will be some…
Forgive me if this is a silly question but when he talks about "beautiful solar-roof-with-battery", is he talking about car roofs or roofs of buildings? An electric car with a solar roof that charges all day would be pretty cool.
That clicked when he talked about Tesla Semi. A roof installation on the trailer would make sense and might generate a 'useful' amount of power.
I hear about bus drivers and truck drivers getting into accidents due to drowsiness enough that it's a constant worry whenever I'm on the highway next to one. I wonder if I'd feel safer if i saw a Tesla Semi knowing that were wasn't a human behind the wheel. Should autonomous vehicles be identified as such (special lights or label) so that real humans can know not to be erratic around it?
> Enable your car to make money for you when you aren't using it I really like this, but the laws of supply and demand still apply. If you live in a sparsely populated area there's not going to be much for your car to do. Great for those in urban centres, but then if you lived there why bother owning at all when there will be more cabs to hail?