Tesla Model 3 revealed

[London424]

walm said:

RobGT81 said:

So treating your car like a mobile phone or computer. Continually upgrading the OS. I like the thinking.

Awesome. So the battery will wear out in two years and it won't be able to run on new roads after 18 months.

JUST KIDDING!

And the charging cable will look like this:

[Tuna]

RobDickinson said:

Tesla stock up 7% on news they plan to scale to 500,000 cars by 2018 rather than 2020

http://electrek.co/2016/05/04/tesla-tsla-surge-mod...

Lots of interesting information in the detail of that report:

They've lost a couple of senior manufacturing/production guys (to Apple?)
They're aiming at 90,000 machines this year, but can only produce 30,000 in H1, so they're going to have to double their output in H2
On $1.6 billion revenue, they're loosing $75m in a quarter - lots of investment going on!

It's quite a precarious balancing act. If no-one else can launch a product that out shines the Model 3 in the next two years, their revenues are going to be huge. Good luck to 'em!

[98elise]

WestyCarl said:

babatunde said:

This goes back to my argument that Tesla is disruptive, they aren't playing by the set rules,

Yup, according to the Tesla dealer they want you to keep the car for 7+yrs. The cars are just a base platform and are "protected" for upgrades, these will come in the future via Wi-Fi. For example autonomous driving and summon mode.
They claimed it's crazy to have to replace your ICE car every 3 yrs just to get some new tech / slightly revised engine.

Musk has said he wants the drive trains to be good for 1m miles

[EricE]

98elise said:

Musk has said he wants the drive trains to be good for 1m miles

article said:

To clarify, the initial study by a “reliability engineer” found the “characteristic life” to be 50,000 miles. The second study, above, was worked by GCR using a free online software, which used the final odometer reading of the study data, concluding the characteristic life to be 57,000 miles before the drivetrain would need to be replaced.

source

[speedking31]

RobGT81 said:

WestyCarl said:

Yup, according to the Tesla dealer they want you to keep the car for 7+yrs. The cars are just a base platform and are "protected" for upgrades, these will come in the future via Wi-Fi. For example autonomous driving and summon mode.
They claimed it's crazy to have to replace your ICE car every 3 yrs just to get some new tech / slightly revised engine.

So treating your car like a mobile phone or computer. Continually upgrading the OS. I like the thinking.

Except it will be like when you bought a laptop and it had five different connectors, serial port, parallel port, video port. Then they invented USB so you bought a new one. Then the speed was increased. Then they designed micro USB and nano USB, and so on and so forth. Anyone who thinks a 10 year old EV can be given a new lease of life with a software upgrade will be sadly disillusioned. Why doesn't the same happen with phones now?

[98elise]

EricE said:

98elise said:

Musk has said he wants the drive trains to be good for 1m miles

article said:

To clarify, the initial study by a “reliability engineer” found the “characteristic life” to be 50,000 miles. The second study, above, was worked by GCR using a free online software, which used the final odometer reading of the study data, concluding the characteristic life to be 57,000 miles before the drivetrain would need to be replaced.

source

From the same article

article said:

the sample data is only pooled from those willing to fill out a survey, and users who have experienced reliability issues are naturally more likely to be willing to submit to a reliability study. The study doesn’t focus on only 2012 to 2013 model years, and including the 43 later-model samples skews the result of the quoted headline. If the study is to reflect all Model S vehicles sold, it only represents 0.3 percent of the vehicles sold from 2012 to today. Either way the study isn’t strict by any standard, and a very rough estimation.

There are loads of Tesla's over the 60k mark now, and there are no mass failures.

Its also an aim, not a claim for current drive trains. Its not difficult to make an EV drive train that will do 1m miles. Its not that difficult for an ICE which is massively more complicated.

Musk got a rocket to land vertically on a moving platform, so I tend to believe him when he makes engineering statements.

[Tuna]

speedking31 said:

xcept it will be like when you bought a laptop and it had five different connectors, serial port, parallel port, video port. Then they invented USB so you bought a new one. Then the speed was increased. Then they designed micro USB and nano USB, and so on and so forth. Anyone who thinks a 10 year old EV can be given a new lease of life with a software upgrade will be sadly disillusioned. Why doesn't the same happen with phones now?

Indeed. I don't know what 'new' things people expect their cars to be able to do when you change the software. Tesla have raised expectations by releasing their early models with quite conservative software (cautious of thermal limits etc. and missing some features), and then releasing 'upgrades' that allow the car to be driven a bit harder, do a few autonomous tricks. That's not the same as upgrading a car, and future models will have progressively less room for unlocking features.

People especially get confused about autonomous driving. No software upgrade will ever magically install the vast array of sensors needed to convert your semi-autonomous car to full autonomous driving, and I'd bet good money that the Model 3 will not be sold with that full set of sensors built in 'just in case' - not least because this isn't a fully solved problem, even in the cleverest research labs.

98elise said:

Musk has said he wants the drive trains to be good for 1m miles

Of course he does. In the real world, he's a long way from delivering what is actually a fairly meaningless statistic - 1m miles is something like 80 years of average driving. What he wants is not to have to service any cars under warrantee, the same as any car manufacturer. In other news, my pickup truck has done a quarter of a million miles and is still going strong.

[Tuna]

babatunde said:

This goes back to my argument that Tesla is disruptive

The commonly accepted definition of disruptive is: ..creates a new market and value network and eventually disrupts an existing market and value network, displacing established market leaders and alliances.

Tesla is selling cars to car drivers, using the same technologies that other car manufacturers are selling to the same car drivers. They have no choice but to scale fast if they're not going to go under ('go big or die trying') but even at full capacity, they're not about to put any of the existing manufacturers out of business.

That's not to say that the other manufacturers don't have their own problems - the industry is cut throat and some are already on a knife edge - but if they fail it won't be because Tesla has disrupted them.

[WestyCarl]

[quote=Tuna
Indeed. I don't know what 'new' things people expect their cars to be able to do when you change the software. Tesla have raised expectations by releasing their early models with quite conservative software (cautious of thermal limits etc. and missing some features), and then releasing 'upgrades' that allow the car to be driven a bit harder, do a few autonomous tricks. That's not the same as upgrading a car, and future models will have progressively less room for unlocking features.

People especially get confused about autonomous driving. No software upgrade will ever magically install the vast array of sensors needed to convert your semi-autonomous car to full autonomous driving, and I'd bet good money that the Model 3 will not be sold with that full set of sensors built in 'just in case' - not least because this isn't a fully solved problem, even in the cleverest research labs.

[/quote]

The Model 3 will have all the necessary sensors for Autonomous driving as did the model S when it was released. (apparently)

[Tuna]

WestyCarl said:

The Model 3 will have all the necessary sensors for Autonomous driving as did the model S when it was released. (apparently)

The Tesla S is 'semi-autonomous', as the Model 3 is also expected to be. That means it can do things like lane control and self parking, but not full navigation, junctions and pedestrian avoidance.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/semi-autonomo...

[walm]

Tuna said:

WestyCarl said:

The Model 3 will have all the necessary sensors for Autonomous driving as did the model S when it was released. (apparently)

The Tesla S is 'semi-autonomous', as the Model 3 is also expected to be. That means it can do things like lane control and self parking, but not full navigation, junctions and pedestrian avoidance.

http://www.caranddriver.com/features/semi-autonomo...

The S certainly doesn't but it is far from clear whether or not the Model 3 will have all the gubins necessary.
But you can bet your bottom dollar that Musk will be cracking the whip to get it all installed from launch.
http://fortune.com/2016/04/23/tesla-model-3-autono...
(TSLA only up 2.5% pre-market now...)

[EricE]

I don't think any production Model S on the market at the moment has the hardware required for fully autonomous driving. I'm not an engineer but they'll at least need some type of LIDAR sensor for that. I suspect it will be an option for the Model 3, maybe even a retrofit option announced at a later date.

[Tuna]

walm said:

The S certainly doesn't but it is far from clear whether or not the Model 3 will have all the gubins necessary.
But you can bet your bottom dollar that Musk will be cracking the whip to get it all installed from launch.
http://fortune.com/2016/04/23/tesla-model-3-autono...
(TSLA only up 2.5% pre-market now...)

Musk said:

He now (late 2015) expects fully autonomous Teslas to be ready by 2018 but notes that regulatory approval may take 1 to 3 more years thereafter.

Lots of speculation, you can read either way..

The implication I got from that is that the Model 3 will be 'feature complete' a year before they've got the tech ready, and up to five years before they get approval. Installing a full set of Lidar, cameras and other sensors in the right configuration before you've finalised the tech would be a very clever trick and a very expensive addition to a car you're trying to sell at half the price of the previous model.

I'm not saying it's impossible, but given how hard other players have been pushing for autonomy, and the consequences of getting it wrong, I'd be surprised if Tesla have a fully autonomous car ready for the mass market right now (which they'd pretty much have to, if they are to be manufacturing it in under a year).

Edited by Tuna on Thursday 5th May 14:50

[walm]

Tuna said:

That means the Model 3 will be 'feature complete' a year before they've got the tech ready, and up to five years before they get approval. Installing a full set of Lidar, cameras and other sensors in the right configuration before you've finalised the tech would be a very clever trick and a very expensive addition to a car you're trying to sell at half the price of the previous model.

Well perhaps we can come back and argue once the Model 3 is launched but isn't it likely he would have a damn good grasp of the hardware needed well before the software is fully road-ready?
You know, like the hardware on the Model S that allows the semi-autonomous stuff they only just switched on?

I'm no engineer but I spent several years in Silicon Valley with well funded companies achieving the unthinkable over very short time-frames.

Remember we are talking about Moore's Law type products (batteries, sensors, etc...) not really the traditional 7-year model cycle of regular cars.

You may well be right but I would happily bet he will be stuffing as much tech as he possibly can into those cars.

Imagine he sells anything like the numbers he is aiming for and then 5 years later they are worthless because fully autonomous just got approval and the Model 3 can't do it!!
And while a cutting edge LIDAR might be pricey now, that's because they aren't in any of the 80m cars sold today. (Well not many of them.)
Again like all the tech out there - price is going to drop like a stone!

[walm]

Ouch - a trusty Zero Hedge take-down: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-05/tesla-tum...

[babatunde]

walm said:

Ouch - a trusty Zero Hedge take-down: http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-05-05/tesla-tum...

I quite like Zero Hedge, however according to them all stocks and shares and indeed the world economy is a ponzi scheme and we sell everything buy GOLD and keep in under our beds, cause come the armageddon gold will be the one true God.

You can't value a growth company the same way as an established company, economics 101, while I suspect the market cap of Tesla has got ahead of itself the GM's of the world have billions of legacy debt and structure

Edited by babatunde on Thursday 5th May 19:38

[walm]

babatunde said:

I quite like Zero Hedge, however according to them all stocks and shares and indeed the world econpmy is a ponzi scheme and we sell everything buy GOLD and keep in under our beds, cause come the armageddon gold will be the one true God.

You can't value a growth company the same way as an established company, economics 101, while I suspect the market cap of Tesla has got ahead of itself the GM's of the world have billions of legacy debt and structure

100% agree.
But 20x PE in 2020e with 1.5m in volume and 2x the profit per car of GM??
With goodness knows how many equity raises between now and then?
Glad I don't HAVE to value growth stocks!!

[Tuna]

walm said:

Well perhaps we can come back and argue once the Model 3 is launched but isn't it likely he would have a damn good grasp of the hardware needed well before the software is fully road-ready?...
You may well be right but I would happily bet he will be stuffing as much tech as he possibly can into those cars.

Agreed this is complete speculation. I've got a similar background to you it sounds - cutting edge tech development for the last 20 years - and you're right that the unexpected can come from left field stuff that no-one else spotted.

The thing that makes me disbelieve that Tesla will be fully autonomous in the Model 3 is that Tesla themselves seem to be deliberately muddying the water when it comes to autonomy and rather overselling the features they have delivered. The Model S does pretty much what our Skoda does - except on the Skoda it's free with the standard model (£20K) and on the Tesla it's a £2,600 optional upgrade. That's very expensive for something 'built in'.

Looking at the latest research into fully autonomous cars, they are constantly iterating on the sensors to improve the car's ability to position itself and recognise road features and obstacles. It appears to be as much a hardware problem as software - and if you shift more to software, the processing power you need appears to go up exponentially. To me that seems to indicate that unless they have already solved fully autonomous driving they would have to be double guessing what the solution is in order to properly spec the car's hardware.

If they have solved fully autonomous driving they've managed to leap over teams that have been working with prototypes for years - yet the best Tesla appear to have achieved so far is just fairly standard convenience features. Checking their site, they're still actively hiring computer vision scientists... hmmm...

[FurtiveFreddy]

babatunde said:

I quite like Zero Hedge, however according to them all stocks and shares and indeed the world econpmy is a ponzi scheme and we sell everything buy GOLD and keep in under our beds, cause come the armageddon gold will be the one true God.

You can't value a growth company the same way as an established company, economics 101, while I suspect the market cap of Tesla has got ahead of itself the GM's of the world have billions of legacy debt and structure

Well, since I last bought some gold, it's gone up 4% and in roughly the same time TSLA stock has gone up 33%, so there's a missed opportunity for me.

[Mr GrimNasty]

"He [Musk] has not enough production capability, he has not enough batteries, and now he has not enough executives, so what does he do? He pulls production two years forward. That’s a showman. I love it."

"Chanos is also betting against SolarCity."

http://uk.businessinsider.com/jim-chanos-is-bettin...

As I've repeatedly said, subsidy sucking showman fail, forgive the pun, we are watching a slow car crash.

Lots of big 'renewable' type companies are hitting the end of the road. "No commercial value" in the technology. The one-time largest PV manufacturing company is about to go under, amongst others.

The EU has spunked 1Trillion of our money on green subsidies and CO2 emissions have gone UP. That's what happens when political interference imposes a poor engineering solution. The free market would have exploited fracking and gas in preference to coal and oil and useless windmills and PV, and CO2 emissions would have come down dramatically