Tesla and Uber Unlikely to Survive...
Discussion
jjwilde said:
And... the usual suspects on this thread move the goal posts yet again.
I still say if you think Tesla is a failure (or will fail) post about how you've shorted their stock, because you geniuses could make a small fortune if it crashes down to even half what it is now.
Can you pack in just repeating the same tired old trope again and again. It is *very* boring. I still say if you think Tesla is a failure (or will fail) post about how you've shorted their stock, because you geniuses could make a small fortune if it crashes down to even half what it is now.
This is a discussion thread. We are discussing the topic. If you don't want to contribute, just f
k off.Please can the finance bods help me understand something.
I interpreted last night as Musk offering new guidance for a targeted full year 2019 ESP of $0.00? This doesn't seem reflected in analyst downgrades to me. Or did I misunderstand what he means by cash flow neutral. Does it exclude stuff like ZEVs?
I interpreted last night as Musk offering new guidance for a targeted full year 2019 ESP of $0.00? This doesn't seem reflected in analyst downgrades to me. Or did I misunderstand what he means by cash flow neutral. Does it exclude stuff like ZEVs?
Edited by anonymous-user on Tuesday 23 April 17:03
sambucket said:
I interpreted last night as Musk offering new guidance for a targeted full year 2019 ESP of $0.00? This doesn't seem reflected in analyst downgrades to me. Or did I misunderstand what he means by cash flow neutral. Shouldn't there be an 8k? Does it exclude stuff like ZEDs?
I'm not an accountant, but if I said something was cash flow neutral, it would mean the money the company was receiving in revenue was broadly in-line with money being spent on developing that product.I've finally watched the whole presentation and I really don't know enough to comment on whether their timescales and financials for the self driving taxis are pie in the sky or realistic.
Their vision seems to have changed from making electric cars for the masses to leasing electric cars so they can take back the cars later and add them to some sort of taxi fleet which drives autonomously and is owned by Tesla with all profit going back to Tesla.
He actually twice called their own cars 2 tonne death machines and suggested humans shouldn't be allowed to drive them, only auto driving in the future.
Charging he suggests would be done automatically with the "snake" charger demo'd a while ago making a comeback. Car will trundle off to the charger and plug itself in.
I do admire someone who has such confidence in a long term vision and who is clearly balancing the push towards this long term goal with the real and present need to keep the cash flowing. The team of boffins they've assembled at Tesla are very impressive and I can't see why they can't achieve what their aiming for, just in the much longer term than a year or two he mentioned.
The interesting point for me was the lack of milestones, their previous autonomous driving showcase was to be a coast to coast trip with no human intervention. This hasn't been mentioned for a while and was supposed to take place in 2017 initially. He mentioned GPS would be used only ever as a supplement to self driving and not a primary input which means they can't just prepare the system city by city with mapping, it needs to be ready for every situation before it can be released in any situation.
It wasn't particularly pie in the sky stuff, I just think they'll have a tough time bringing this vision of an autonomous taxi fleet to reality.
Lastly, one of the attendees asked what was to stop someone like Uber just buying all the Model 3's and renting them out. Musk suggested Tesla have a clause that means you can only use your Tesla for ride sharing if you do so using the Tesla network (therefore 25% of fare going to Tesla). Did I misunderstand this, you can't use a Tesla for Uber driving?
Their vision seems to have changed from making electric cars for the masses to leasing electric cars so they can take back the cars later and add them to some sort of taxi fleet which drives autonomously and is owned by Tesla with all profit going back to Tesla.
He actually twice called their own cars 2 tonne death machines and suggested humans shouldn't be allowed to drive them, only auto driving in the future.
Charging he suggests would be done automatically with the "snake" charger demo'd a while ago making a comeback. Car will trundle off to the charger and plug itself in.
I do admire someone who has such confidence in a long term vision and who is clearly balancing the push towards this long term goal with the real and present need to keep the cash flowing. The team of boffins they've assembled at Tesla are very impressive and I can't see why they can't achieve what their aiming for, just in the much longer term than a year or two he mentioned.
The interesting point for me was the lack of milestones, their previous autonomous driving showcase was to be a coast to coast trip with no human intervention. This hasn't been mentioned for a while and was supposed to take place in 2017 initially. He mentioned GPS would be used only ever as a supplement to self driving and not a primary input which means they can't just prepare the system city by city with mapping, it needs to be ready for every situation before it can be released in any situation.
It wasn't particularly pie in the sky stuff, I just think they'll have a tough time bringing this vision of an autonomous taxi fleet to reality.
Lastly, one of the attendees asked what was to stop someone like Uber just buying all the Model 3's and renting them out. Musk suggested Tesla have a clause that means you can only use your Tesla for ride sharing if you do so using the Tesla network (therefore 25% of fare going to Tesla). Did I misunderstand this, you can't use a Tesla for Uber driving?
Smiljan said:
I've finally watched the whole presentation and I really don't know enough to comment on whether their timescales and financials for the self driving taxis are pie in the sky or realistic.
Their vision seems to have changed from making electric cars for the masses to leasing electric cars so they can take back the cars later and add them to some sort of taxi fleet which drives autonomously and is owned by Tesla with all profit going back to Tesla.
He actually twice called their own cars 2 tonne death machines and suggested humans shouldn't be allowed to drive them, only auto driving in the future.
Charging he suggests would be done automatically with the "snake" charger demo'd a while ago making a comeback. Car will trundle off to the charger and plug itself in.
I do admire someone who has such confidence in a long term vision and who is clearly balancing the push towards this long term goal with the real and present need to keep the cash flowing. The team of boffins they've assembled at Tesla are very impressive and I can't see why they can't achieve what their aiming for, just in the much longer term than a year or two he mentioned.
The interesting point for me was the lack of milestones, their previous autonomous driving showcase was to be a coast to coast trip with no human intervention. This hasn't been mentioned for a while and was supposed to take place in 2017 initially. He mentioned GPS would be used only ever as a supplement to self driving and not a primary input which means they can't just prepare the system city by city with mapping, it needs to be ready for every situation before it can be released in any situation.
It wasn't particularly pie in the sky stuff, I just think they'll have a tough time bringing this vision of an autonomous taxi fleet to reality.
Lastly, one of the attendees asked what was to stop someone like Uber just buying all the Model 3's and renting them out. Musk suggested Tesla have a clause that means you can only use your Tesla for ride sharing if you do so using the Tesla network (therefore 25% of fare going to Tesla). Did I misunderstand this, you can't use a Tesla for Uber driving?
Musk's responses to the later questions were quite worrying. He hesitated and improvised answers about leasing and liability. Dodging a question on why someone with capital wouldn't expand their personal fleet indefinitely. It did seem like he was actually making it up. Their vision seems to have changed from making electric cars for the masses to leasing electric cars so they can take back the cars later and add them to some sort of taxi fleet which drives autonomously and is owned by Tesla with all profit going back to Tesla.
He actually twice called their own cars 2 tonne death machines and suggested humans shouldn't be allowed to drive them, only auto driving in the future.
Charging he suggests would be done automatically with the "snake" charger demo'd a while ago making a comeback. Car will trundle off to the charger and plug itself in.
I do admire someone who has such confidence in a long term vision and who is clearly balancing the push towards this long term goal with the real and present need to keep the cash flowing. The team of boffins they've assembled at Tesla are very impressive and I can't see why they can't achieve what their aiming for, just in the much longer term than a year or two he mentioned.
The interesting point for me was the lack of milestones, their previous autonomous driving showcase was to be a coast to coast trip with no human intervention. This hasn't been mentioned for a while and was supposed to take place in 2017 initially. He mentioned GPS would be used only ever as a supplement to self driving and not a primary input which means they can't just prepare the system city by city with mapping, it needs to be ready for every situation before it can be released in any situation.
It wasn't particularly pie in the sky stuff, I just think they'll have a tough time bringing this vision of an autonomous taxi fleet to reality.
Lastly, one of the attendees asked what was to stop someone like Uber just buying all the Model 3's and renting them out. Musk suggested Tesla have a clause that means you can only use your Tesla for ride sharing if you do so using the Tesla network (therefore 25% of fare going to Tesla). Did I misunderstand this, you can't use a Tesla for Uber driving?
I think robotaxi is crap. But it does serve a valid purpose in shining a light on Tesla's progress to date, and also for impressing upon the public the possibilities for FSD. Lots of press generated today. If Tesla do extend a lead in FSD and achieve L5 first, I think monetising will be the least difficult part of the puzzle. So maybe it's valid to brush over it for now.
Edited by anonymous-user on Wednesday 24th April 00:34
Smiljan said:
I'd agree with you comments on Musk, he seemed a little less confident than normal. Maybe he was missing the confidence boost you get with an active agreeable audience. That crowd were pretty serious and very quiet, hard to read which maybe put him off his stride a bit.
I've not watched the latest presentation, but Musk has never really come across as confident in these situations IMO. He doesn't seem to be very natural in front of a crowd. I say that as someone who could be described as a Musk fanboy!
Tuna said:
Oh dear.
Here's how you train neural nets. You shove bucket loads of data into them, along with the 'correct' outcome you're looking for - and you compare that correct outcome with what actually happened. You do this for normal situations, and for the edge cases (of which, in a real world driving situation, there are billions). OK, so nothing controversial there.
But here's the thing - we know Tesla are not collecting all of the data. With 21 cameras plus radar etc, each car should be collecting gigabytes (if not terrabytes) of data on each and every journey Does your Tesla upload gigabytes of data every day? No, it really doesn't.
So Tesla are sampling. "Tell me when something interesting happened". But how do they know when something interesting happened? They're dependent on the same system that they're meant to be training to identify the right data to train on. Can you see the issue there?
Sure, they can look for extreme events - "My car had to brake hard unexpectedly... why was that?", but what about the journey where, due to a slightly shiny road surface, the car spent half the time driving way too close to the next lane? It's completely unaware that it's going wrong, and will not send those gigabytes of information back because everything was just fine - wasn't it? When you just sample real world data you also have to have a strong signal for what is the correct response from the neural network, and the cars themselves cannot generate that automagically.
Human drivers often drive distracted - looking at the stereo, shouting at the kids in the back, trying to fish the phone out from the side of the seat... and the vast majority of the time they get away with it because roads are relatively open and traffic is relatively predictable. Autopilot can do the same, for exactly the same reason - it's only once in a few thousand times that the distraction translates to a serious course correction, or an accident. But that means that there is no training data being generated to stop the autopilot equivalent of being 'slightly wrong'. We get away with 'slightly wrong' most of the time - right up to the point where a crash barrier, or a person is in the way and something really bad happens.
Tesla's training can certainly make AP safer - it can detect 'emergency' situations sooner and react better - because it can train from actual emergencies. But there is a huge question over whether it is getting the right data for 'normal safe driving' - because all that's being collected is random snapshots of journeys that didn't end badly. Not ending badly is not the same as driving safely.
The two points to make here are:
(1) How is Tesla going to be able to 'prove' its cars can drive themselves safely, if the only information they have is a small sample of driving situations? At the moment Tesla drivers are self selecting, and drive in a tiny subset of the nation's roads - that's not representative of the places the average taxi driver has to go. For Tesla's billions of miles of driving data (which is seriously filtered), the other companies are simulating trillions of miles. In the billions of miles that Teslas have driven, there should only be a few thousand incidents to train on - and only a few hundred accident situations. That's not training data, it's random samples.
(2) Given the burden of proof and regulatory compliance, how is Musk promising fleets of driverless taxis next year? You'd need cars in public testing four years ago to be able to hit that sort of promise. It's a promise so out there that it has to be questioned. As it seems to be a pitch to explain how they can get private individuals to finance a nationwide fleet of cars that Tesla themselves couldn't possibly afford, it looks perilously close to a pyramid scheme. That sort of naked financial manipulation requires a better proof of capability than "Of course we can do it.. because.".
You don't even know how many cameras the cars have yet think yourself some kind of nn expert lol. Here's how you train neural nets. You shove bucket loads of data into them, along with the 'correct' outcome you're looking for - and you compare that correct outcome with what actually happened. You do this for normal situations, and for the edge cases (of which, in a real world driving situation, there are billions). OK, so nothing controversial there.
But here's the thing - we know Tesla are not collecting all of the data. With 21 cameras plus radar etc, each car should be collecting gigabytes (if not terrabytes) of data on each and every journey Does your Tesla upload gigabytes of data every day? No, it really doesn't.
So Tesla are sampling. "Tell me when something interesting happened". But how do they know when something interesting happened? They're dependent on the same system that they're meant to be training to identify the right data to train on. Can you see the issue there?
Sure, they can look for extreme events - "My car had to brake hard unexpectedly... why was that?", but what about the journey where, due to a slightly shiny road surface, the car spent half the time driving way too close to the next lane? It's completely unaware that it's going wrong, and will not send those gigabytes of information back because everything was just fine - wasn't it? When you just sample real world data you also have to have a strong signal for what is the correct response from the neural network, and the cars themselves cannot generate that automagically.
Human drivers often drive distracted - looking at the stereo, shouting at the kids in the back, trying to fish the phone out from the side of the seat... and the vast majority of the time they get away with it because roads are relatively open and traffic is relatively predictable. Autopilot can do the same, for exactly the same reason - it's only once in a few thousand times that the distraction translates to a serious course correction, or an accident. But that means that there is no training data being generated to stop the autopilot equivalent of being 'slightly wrong'. We get away with 'slightly wrong' most of the time - right up to the point where a crash barrier, or a person is in the way and something really bad happens.
Tesla's training can certainly make AP safer - it can detect 'emergency' situations sooner and react better - because it can train from actual emergencies. But there is a huge question over whether it is getting the right data for 'normal safe driving' - because all that's being collected is random snapshots of journeys that didn't end badly. Not ending badly is not the same as driving safely.
The two points to make here are:
(1) How is Tesla going to be able to 'prove' its cars can drive themselves safely, if the only information they have is a small sample of driving situations? At the moment Tesla drivers are self selecting, and drive in a tiny subset of the nation's roads - that's not representative of the places the average taxi driver has to go. For Tesla's billions of miles of driving data (which is seriously filtered), the other companies are simulating trillions of miles. In the billions of miles that Teslas have driven, there should only be a few thousand incidents to train on - and only a few hundred accident situations. That's not training data, it's random samples.
(2) Given the burden of proof and regulatory compliance, how is Musk promising fleets of driverless taxis next year? You'd need cars in public testing four years ago to be able to hit that sort of promise. It's a promise so out there that it has to be questioned. As it seems to be a pitch to explain how they can get private individuals to finance a nationwide fleet of cars that Tesla themselves couldn't possibly afford, it looks perilously close to a pyramid scheme. That sort of naked financial manipulation requires a better proof of capability than "Of course we can do it.. because.".
Smiljan said:
Their vision seems to have changed from making electric cars for the masses to leasing electric cars so they can take back the cars later and add them to some sort of taxi fleet which drives autonomously and is owned by Tesla with all profit going back to Tesla.
They really haven't done that. I know that's what he said, but his aim was just to persuade people to buy the current tech now. And not allowing the option to buy the car via a lease is something all car companies do. It's very useful for hiding discounts and so preventing any changes in pricing from upsetting the second hand or cash-buyer market.
And that is something I believe Tesla are going to refer to tomorrow - I expect they will have found that frequent and erratic price changes on this type of carefully considered, high value purchase encourages many people to hold off from placing an order.
sambucket said:
Earnings are not important anymore.
That was the point of the presentation. Musk's message was "Ignore earnings, we're in a FSD land-grab that leads to a Brave New World and we're gonna win". The question is whether enough investors believe that or not (that FSD is achievable/the future, that it is a land grab, that Tesla can indeed win). If investors buy into it, you're right: they'll ignore earnings/cashflow/debt numbers and he's got a huge cheque to crush Google/Waymo/Uber's efforts. If they don't, those earnings are going to matter a great deal more than his promises.
I'm expecting a stshow tomorrow. Though one upside is that the 500k production guidance is looking a bit more realistic, now the pressure to make any profit is somewhat relieved.
I do wonder how retail investors feel about this. I'm comfortable holding as I'm just in for fun really. But if I had invested a significant amount, suddenly it's looking more like a binary bet than ever before, then I would be stting my pants right now. I'm sure many didn't sign up for a FSD company. They signed up for an EV company.
tshow tomorrow. Though one upside is that the 500k production guidance is looking a bit more realistic, now the pressure to make any profit is somewhat relieved. I do wonder how retail investors feel about this. I'm comfortable holding as I'm just in for fun really. But if I had invested a significant amount, suddenly it's looking more like a binary bet than ever before, then I would be s
tting my pants right now. I'm sure many didn't sign up for a FSD company. They signed up for an EV company.
AstonZagato said:
That was the point of the presentation. Musk's message was "Ignore earnings, we're in a FSD land-grab that leads to a Brave New World and we're gonna win".
The question is whether enough investors believe that or not (that FSD is achievable/the future, that it is a land grab, that Tesla can indeed win). If investors buy into it, you're right: they'll ignore earnings/cashflow/debt numbers and he's got a huge cheque to crush Google/Waymo/Uber's efforts. If they don't, those earnings are going to matter a great deal more than his promises.
That's a v good point.The question is whether enough investors believe that or not (that FSD is achievable/the future, that it is a land grab, that Tesla can indeed win). If investors buy into it, you're right: they'll ignore earnings/cashflow/debt numbers and he's got a huge cheque to crush Google/Waymo/Uber's efforts. If they don't, those earnings are going to matter a great deal more than his promises.
RobDickinson said:
A fleet of 1million mile capable self driving cars is completely within Teslas mission statement
If it happens we'll need far fewer cars and change to sustainability far sooner. (regardless of who achieved it)
Lmao. 1 million miles. From JD Power's 3rd most unreliable manufacturer. A car not recommended by Consumer Reports on the basis of reliability, specifically flaky trim, electrical problems and frequent suspension issues.If it happens we'll need far fewer cars and change to sustainability far sooner. (regardless of who achieved it)
Yes, EV tech removes an engine and gearbox from the equation, but you can't just claim that suddenly the life of the car will increase by a factor of 5 or more with no supporting data - no matter who's mission statement it's in.
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