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Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

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Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#91

Post by snuze »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #73

I know at least one person that's decided not to buy a Tesla simply because their future is so murky and is not sure if they will be around for repairs. That's a problem they need to tackle now before it spirals out of control. Also, it seems to me that Tesla should work with one of the big three automakers on manufacturing. Tesla has spent a lot of resources reinventing car manufacturing and yet they can't produce a…

“Tesla has spent a lot of resources reinventing car manufacturing and yet they can't produce a vehicle that meets their needs.” Where are you getting this information? Design and manufacturing influence one another. None of the “leaders” in automotive space outsource their design or manufacturing. You need to control and master both to compete in this space. Perhaps you can take the Apple route and outsource the labor (Foxconn), but Apple still controls much of the manufacturing process such as introducing friction-stir welding to shrink the iMac or introducing unibody aluminum machining to the MacBooks and iPhones.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#92

Post by eanzenberg »

kinghajj wrote: post #87
eanzenberg wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Guess people like fiddling through an ipad while driving a 2 ton machine at highway speeds? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Looks like Tesla drivers are becoming the "Toyota Camry/Prius" drivers of the past.

I've found that the majority of functions needed when driving are available through the steering column's stalks, left/right buttons, or voice commands. If I ever do need to use the touch screen, I can activate TACC & Autosteer, and glance back and forth between the screen and road while finding the next button to press. And for the common functions, I've developed an awareness of the button locations, so I can press…

Maybe I'm not familiar with what the steering wheel buttons do in a Tesla.

Volume, change stations, change tracks, voice command (siri), adaptive cruise control (including mph selection) and auto-steering are available on my steering wheel in my BMW. In the middle of the car, climate zone and drive modes are available as physical buttons and knobs.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#93

Post by MegaButts »

jklinger410 wrote: post #71
MegaButts wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was stating his opinion, but I'll just quote him directly: > We'll start with the bitter truth. The "shadow driver that just sits there in the computer comparing notes and sending discrepancies and interesting events to Tesla" is a myth. I used to think people just misunderstood Elon, but now I believe Tesla lies about it on purpose I really did not mean for my comment to be inflammatory (hence the disclaimer and i…

The thread then goes on to not support this statement very well. Including a Tesla employee disagreeing with him directly.

If we're starting with the assumption that Tesla is lying about shadow mode, which is the entire premise of the claim, it would not be surprising for a Tesla employee to disagree. Obviously this is one of those you-can't-win scenarios, so I fully understand the Tesla employee could be acting in good faith, but that alone is no more evidence than the original hacker's claim that it doesn't exist considering the context.

I consider it a very interesting thread where someone went looking for proof of shadow mode and couldn't find it. Maybe his conclusion is a little extreme, and I guess people thought I was trying to derail a Tesla thread with FUD when really I was trying to share an interesting piece and someone else's better-informed opinion (which is why I worded it the way I did). I sort of consider it similar to saying "expert A believes that..." but I guess I communicated that poorly.

For what it's worth, I'm glad people are actually looking at the source and critiquing it.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#94

Post by abledon »

kolbe wrote: post #59
abledon wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ugh! the amount of supervised training data that would generate is staggering.

Hence why many investors don't mind that Tesla isn't generating wonderful cash flow. If there's a reasonable expectation that this data collection will lead to full autonomy, then Tesla should price their cars at whatever level is necessary to move their maximum production into consumers' hands, even if it were a loss (which it's not). And even if they don't use the data to train, they can use it as an argument for h…

Do you think they keep all that data on premise or use AWS/Azure/GCP?

edit: probably AWS [1]

[1] https://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/3027077/hackers-hi...

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#95

Post by mrep »

leesec wrote: post #22
boldslogan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

neat. I would say im optomistic on this actual self driving stuff. But coming from almost no machine learning knowledge, doesn't this make tesla way ahead of google/waymo and others? Because they can simply check when they failed and tweak. I'm just curious if it does make them way ahead, and if so how much more ahead? Is this driving a car vs horse wagon levels?

Which company is in the lead is a very contentious topic it seems. This one specific feature doesn't seem to push it one way or the other. But IMO Tesla has the best approach and has a huge lead on the data collection pipeline. No other self driving company has even close to as many cars to test on / gather data from.

> But IMO Tesla has the best approach and has a huge lead on the data collection pipeline.

Not only that, but by using cheap hardware that consumers can reasonably afford, they really only need to get to level 3 (eyes off so you can work/entertain but driver still in the seat) for it to be massively beneficial for everyone who commutes to work.

Waymo pretty much requires level 4 as it's too expensive to be sold as a consumer car and nobody will be in a taxi when it is driving between customers.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#96

Post by Retric »

tempsy wrote: post #7
bryanlarsen wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Buy on rumours, sell on news". The stock is up about 50% since its low a month and a half ago when rumours of good deliveries started. A small pullback is expected. But maybe not 12%.

Still down 40% from 52 week highs.

Still up over 10x since 2010...

It’s really a question of when bought/shorted if things are looking good or bad.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#97

Post by leesec »

bllguo wrote: post #90
leesec wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The contentious part is that Waymo doesn't have a product yet. It's easy to imagine something is better when you can't actually use it. In truth there are only 3 self driving products that I know of available today. Tesla's Autopilot, GM's Supercruise (only on CT6), and commma.ai's openpilot. Of those Autopilot is easily the best. I never know why a source would matter in these cases as the writers of these sources u…

That is a great point. Would you agree that the _narrative_ is that Waymo has the superior tech right now? Or did I misjudge that? I suppose I used the wrong word. Any expert or well-informed opinion is what I was after.

Yes I would agree Waymo owns the narrative and a lot of it is based on their disengagement stats. I wouldn't say those tell the whole story.

They are also completely different approaches, i.e. Waymo using LIDAR and Tesla relying on cameras as the primary sensor.

But the major question is can LIDAR _ever_ be financially feasible, and if so can it become feasible faster than camera gets good enough at vision. Right now the sensors on the Waymo van probably cost more than the van itself.

That's either a very expensive purchase for the consumer or a very large amount of cap-ex Waymo would have to put up for a fleet of self-driving taxis.

And if it turns out cameras were the right choice, or visa versa, that means the opposite company would have spent a LOT of their R&D funding on the wrong tech, and would be way behind.

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#98

Post by martinald »

new_realist wrote: post #30
danhak wrote: post #11

Looks like the cash situation is finally under control. They generated over $600 million in FCF in Q2. Compare this to only $200 million by Ford over the same period, also announced today: https://s22.q4cdn.com/857684434/files/doc_financials/2019/q2...

They sold a lot of existing inventory (as in, cars sitting on lots) this quarter. That generates cash. Loss is more than $400M on record sales. Tesla has a demand problem and is discounting cars in order to maintain the growth story.

Why is this being downvoted? The only reason FCF was generated was because they had a lot of inventory undelivered that was produced in Q1 that got delivered in Q2 instead. This isn't a sustainable way to generate cash.

There is now $11bn of debt and $4bn of accounts payable on the balance sheet. It's costing not far off $1bn a year to service that debt, plus they are also very reliant on capital markets to roll over this debt every year or so. If there was a significant decline in corporate debt markets and Tesla couldn't roll the debt over, they would be out of cash very quickly (regardless of the losses).

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#99

Post by kinghajj »

eanzenberg wrote: post #92
kinghajj wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've found that the majority of functions needed when driving are available through the steering column's stalks, left/right buttons, or voice commands. If I ever do need to use the touch screen, I can activate TACC & Autosteer, and glance back and forth between the screen and road while finding the next button to press. And for the common functions, I've developed an awareness of the button locations, so I can press…

Maybe I'm not familiar with what the steering wheel buttons do in a Tesla. Volume, change stations, change tracks, voice command (siri), adaptive cruise control (including mph selection) and auto-steering are available on my steering wheel in my BMW. In the middle of the car, climate zone and drive modes are available as physical buttons and knobs.

The stalks and buttons on the Model 3 can access all of those same features, as well as adjust the follow distance for adaptive cruise control. Climate settings are through the screen, via a fan symbol button in the center. That pops up a temperature selection slider with buttons to increase/decrease the setpoint, and (de)sync the driver/passenger set points. Press the button again, and you get a full screen with more settings (auto-flow vs manual, air stream splitting and direction, etc.)

Re: Tesla Q2 2019 Letter

#100

Post by leesec »

dkonofalski wrote: post #64
boldslogan wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

neat. I would say im optomistic on this actual self driving stuff. But coming from almost no machine learning knowledge, doesn't this make tesla way ahead of google/waymo and others? Because they can simply check when they failed and tweak. I'm just curious if it does make them way ahead, and if so how much more ahead? Is this driving a car vs horse wagon levels?

Probably not way ahead but definitely ahead. Waymo has hundreds, if not thousands of fleet vehicles driving all day, every day around various parts of the country too and they can also check when people took over or when the brakes were hit. I think Tesla's approach is a little neater and nicer but that's just an opinion.

Tesla has hundreds of thousands driving and growing rapidly?
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