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Tesla is committing automotive suicide

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Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#71

Post by mekdoonggi »

notfried wrote: post #50
p-o wrote: post #2

What makes this move even more incredulous is that none of the two market they want to move towards are proven markets: - Waymo is generating less than 150m in 2025. - Consumer robotics is an absolute unknown. How can the transition be rationally justified? Let alone the valuation.

Except that it doesn't need to be consumer to start off. You can build specialized robots that deliver value at a massive scale. Imagine a "Prep Cook" at a restaurant, there are millions of these around the world. If the Optimus can do that job for a price of $1,000/month, that's likely to be more efficient and better quality than a human can do. And there has to be many jobs like this.

A million robots making $1k a month is $12b a year, but you need to actually produce the robots, maintain them, train the AI, own the data centers.

Also, if you take 1 million jobs, do you think that might cause demand to drop for services?

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#72

Post by [deleted] »

TacoCommander wrote: post #35
this_user wrote: post #10

They had the first mover advantage, but then Musk lost interest in the company and let it just sit there for the last five years or so without making sure that they have a future-proof product pipeline and that those products are actually being delivered on a reasonable schedule. Now they are increasingly turning into an EV also-ran while their moonshots are unlikely to work out any time soon. Realistically, he shoul…

The end game is the SpaceX IPO which will make him a trillionaire, and then he doesn't need Tesla any more.

[deleted]

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#73

Post by TheCondor »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #54
jjice wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a newer Corolla that's pretty much the absolute floor of the base model (LE with I believe minimal packages) and it has all the technology one would expect now, all while having physical buttons where it matters. Lane assist and adaptive cruise control are table stakes now.

Indeed, I have a 2023 Corolla. The dealer didn't like it when I said "LE" stands for "Low End" as a joke (it means Limited Edition). The technology for such a low end car is impressive. In addition to adaptive cruise control and lane keeping, the display shows the speed limit not by consulting a map but by reading the signs as you drive down the street. They call it RSA, Road Sign Assist. It also uses the camera and…

Makes you wonder. Technology usually becomes less expensive. Car companies have used it as a differentiator for years though. There are giant cost differences between like a base line Tundra and a top of the line and the mechanicals are the same; it's more price for luxury and more tech.

Seems like Toyota is about to make a big Lexus pivot in the next year or two.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#74

Post by RankingMember »

mekdoonggi wrote: post #37
api wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Consumer robotics strikes me as an engineering tar pit so deep it leads to hell. If full self driving is hard due to the long tail of unusual special cases, this is orders of magnitude worse. Take FSD but multiply the number of actuators and degrees of freedom by at least 10, more like 100. Add a third dimension. Add direct physical interaction with complex objects. Add pets and children. Add toys on the floor. Add r…

Also, how will these robots make money? They are a less capable human. Humans who aren't skilled don't make much money.

Once large swaths of the planet have been rendered uninhabitable from human activity, we'll require them to continue extracting profit from those areas. (this is a downer comment but also realistically the first thing that came to mind when trying to think of a use for them).

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#76

Post by Nevermark »

TacoCommander wrote: post #45
netsharc wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Musk's incentive pay has a 10 million full self-driving subscription. Step 1: > discontinu[e] the basic lane keep + adaptive speed cruise control Step 2: Redefine "Full Self-Driving" to be those things. Charge 50 cents per month subscription or whatever. Step 3: Get 10 million subscribers. Step 4: 100 billion dollar payout! (Number pulled out of my butt)

Parallel steps: Step 1: SpaceX IPO Step 2: Trillion dollar payout Step 3: Nothing matters any more

SpaceX is rockets, now global satellite internet, ...

To credibly harness off-world resources at any scale, there are going to need to be automated refueling depots and many kinds of robotic automation for resource extraction. With the Asteroid Belt looking amazing for quantity and accessibility of resources.

That would also completely remove the lid on how many $ trillions of market cap SpaceX could accrue.

So I find it ironic that Tesla is moving away from cars as product, and still talking up humanoid robots, which as yet are not a product, and as research don't seem to have an edge on anyone.

ALSO: Data centers on the moon make more sense than data centers in orbit. Obviously where latency isn't king, but compute is. Simple cooling sinks, dense (low local latency) expansion, dense (efficient) maintenance, etc.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#77

Post by rkagerer »

1970-01-01 wrote: post #42
ndr42 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Cannibalize meant in this case to have product that will kill one of your other products (in this case the back then cash cow iPod would be killed by the iPhone). I don't see this in Tesla.

The Y and 3 do everything the X and S do. I don't see how they could keep making them without eating away sales.

Not really. The Y doesn't even come close on towing capacity.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#78

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

modeless wrote: post #18

It's business as usual for Elon. This is his main strategy. He always goes all in on risky technology that people say won't work. People said it about EVs. They said it about reusing first stages. They said it about Starlink's phased array antennas. Now he's going all in on self driving. It's obvious that self driving turns personal transportation into a service business. So that's where he's going. Yeah, if you don'…

I'm more and more inclined to suspect that XEverything is some kind of money laundering scam, where the world's richest people throw money at Musk because of his politics - which they hope will make them even more money. And not because of his technological promises, which are increasingly ridiculous and unbelievable based on more than a decade of his own public statements.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#79

Post by z3ratul163071 »

This "Elon Musk lost interest" is very, very naive take.

Actually I think this new directions demonstrates how great decision making they have at Tesla. Today and even more in the future they have no way of competing with the Chinese manufacturers. It is simply physically not possible.

So they are rightfully pivoting and moving away from the race to the bottom that is ensuing.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#80

Post by api »

duskwuff wrote: post #67
foobarian wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think if they are teleoperated they could make sense, or at least more than the device-local versions

A teleoperated robot is little more than a human worker with extra steps. (And an expensive, clumsy human worker at that.) I can't imagine many situations where that would make sense instead of having a human do the work in person.

The only places it does is where humans can't easily go: space, underwater, hazardous industrial sites, etc.

It can occasionally make sense for high skill stuff where the shortage is people who can even do it, like remote surgery.

In your house? That's silly. It'd be 100X more expensive and complicated than just hiring a housekeeper so you could... hire a remote housekeeper?

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