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

Tesla is committing automotive suicide

electrek.co

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 458 posts

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#91

Post by TylerE »

api wrote: post #80
duskwuff wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Except the remote house keeper can be in some super locl 3rd world country where the prevailing wage is a few bucks a day.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#93

Post by wg0 »

amelius wrote: post #47
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 problem is that EVs are basically a solved problem. There isn't any technological advantage to be gained, since the technology in an EV is very basic (+) compared to ICE vehicles. So then it comes down to manufacturing, and there China is king. (+) Except for the battery, but that's a very long term battle with very tiny steps.

This is a very realistic analysis which isn't going to be very popular.

The battery progress is more an accidental discovery than research problem alone.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#94

Post by throwawayqqq11 »

api wrote: post #22
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.

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…

The first MVPs dont need to reach parity to human autonomy, they only need to enforce that humans do the cheap work.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#96

Post by [deleted] »

ultrarunner wrote: post #70
amelius wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is that EVs are basically a solved problem. There isn't any technological advantage to be gained, since the technology in an EV is very basic (+) compared to ICE vehicles. So then it comes down to manufacturing, and there China is king. (+) Except for the battery, but that's a very long term battle with very tiny steps.

My brother bought a Tesla recently. They dicked him around with delivery, and he had to pay a ton to get charging infrastructure installed at his house, but it's fast so he's happy. On a recent visit, he finally showed me the car, and it was hilarious how janky the final product is. Everything seems cobbled together-- a good example is that there's apparently two separate voice assistants (plus his phone) and none of…

[deleted]

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#97

Post by rchaud »

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.

Regular IPOs usually have commitments from pension funds, mutual funds, private equity firms and other institutional investors secured in advance of going public. How many of those parties would be interested considering that SpaceX really only has one main customer whose business isn't guaranteed considering his political partisanship?

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#98

Post by hinkley »

jjfoooo4 wrote: post #40
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…

I recently read Origins of Efficiency by Brian Potter, and one of the interesting things it talks about is the path of the Model T. Ford invested heavily in an in-house, highly optimized production pathway for the Model T. Other manufacturers sourced a lot of their parts from vendors. This gave the Model T a great advantage at first, but they had a lot more trouble than competitors in coming up with new models. Ford…

I think I read somewhere that the model T went something like 12 years without substantial changes to its design.

Ford wouldn’t have known about The Innovator’s Dilemma and possibly not about Sunk Cost Fallacy.

Deming had to go to Japan to get his ideas taken seriously and it nearly bankrupted American manufacturing that they wouldn’t listen to him.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#99

Post by dzhiurgis »

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.

Tesla processes as many miles in 2 days as Waymo in its entire lifetime. Waymo will be crushed in few years.

Re: Tesla is committing automotive suicide

#100

Post by hinkley »

burningChrome wrote: post #64
TacoCommander wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Or the Boring Company which most people have also completely forgotten about.

Because it’s boring.
Post reply on HN