Tesla unlikely to Survive (Vol. 3)

[hyphen]

Elon challenging Putin to a duel...

https://mobile.twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1503327...

[Smiljan]

Putin will probably just have someone poison him or push him off a balcony like they do regularly to all sorts of folks.

Having said that Putin is a halfwit stuck in the 1980's and probably doesn't even know what twitter is.

[off_again]

Smiljan said:

Putin will probably just have someone poison him or push him off a balcony like they do regularly to all sorts of folks.

Not wishing to distract too much away from the thread here, but I had to remind someone here about what Putin has been doing across Europe (mainly the UK) to Russian dissidents and critics for years - specifically the Sailsbury poisonings....

Oh how quickly people forget - and I am pretty sure Elon forgot that Russian 'tourists' might want to visit him. I know he likes to spin a perception that he is somehow a man of the people and lives in a tiny house and doesnt have any personal trappings. However, his security team will be having kittens for sure.

[coetzeeh]

$757

Ouch.

[off_again]

coetzeeh said:

$757

Ouch.

To be fair, everyone is taking a bath at the moment.

What is confusing though - if oil prices are all over the place, shouldnt there be a better demand on those manufacturers that are EV exclusive? I know, I am taking a very complex situation and boiling it down to something very simple....

[Smiljan]

Materials costs, chip shortages and supply chain chaos is battering all manufacturers at the moment.

Brilliant time to open two new factories

[skwdenyer]

off_again said:

coetzeeh said:

$757

Ouch.

To be fair, everyone is taking a bath at the moment.

What is confusing though - if oil prices are all over the place, shouldnt there be a better demand on those manufacturers that are EV exclusive? I know, I am taking a very complex situation and boiling it down to something very simple....

If there's no consumer demand left to buy these vehicles in a major depression...

[Durzel]

off_again said:

coetzeeh said:

$757

Ouch.

To be fair, everyone is taking a bath at the moment.

What is confusing though - if oil prices are all over the place, shouldnt there be a better demand on those manufacturers that are EV exclusive? I know, I am taking a very complex situation and boiling it down to something very simple....

Tesla's share price has a significant "weight of expectations" burden.

[hyphen]

off_again said:

To be fair, everyone is taking a bath at the moment.

What is confusing though - if oil prices are all over the place, shouldnt there be a better demand on those manufacturers that are EV exclusive? I know, I am taking a very complex situation and boiling it down to something very simple....

Why should there be more demand on those that are 'ev exclusive'... Depending on overall factors there may be an increased demand for all evs. And the buyer will likely have a preference for the ev they can get delivered the quickest.

[Heres Johnny]

hyphen said:

off_again said:

To be fair, everyone is taking a bath at the moment.

What is confusing though - if oil prices are all over the place, shouldnt there be a better demand on those manufacturers that are EV exclusive? I know, I am taking a very complex situation and boiling it down to something very simple....

Why should there be more demand on those that are 'ev exclusive'... Depending on overall factors there may be an increased demand for all evs. And the buyer will likely have a preference for the ev they can get delivered the quickest.

If 100% of your products increase in demand thats better than 5% of your products increasing in demand. Thats also a simple explanation

But lets also put this into perspective, petrol and diesel in the UK have gone up about 20%, electricity has gone up 50%+. If we thought increasing fuel prices were a factor then we might need to rethink. Public charging costs are getting close to a moderately efficiency diesel. Even my home charging is getting very expensive as I can't have a smart meter and I'm looking at 10p a mile in the Tesla. Yes the diesel won't accelerate as fast, but if money is tight then all cars will be under pressure and a £25k 2 year old BMW 320d might be more preferable than any 40k EV

Edited by Heres Johnny on Tuesday 15th March 10:44

[ZesPak]

Heres Johnny said:

But lets also put this into perspective, petrol and diesel in the UK have gone up about 20%, electricity has gone up 50%+.

This.
If we want to get rid of most fossil fuels, evs can be powered by nuclear, windmills, solar,... So we have to move. But for now, the price of electricity, depending on the country you are in, is still very much tied to the price of oil or gas. In the UK, over 40% is from gas.

[off_again]

More price increases for Tesla again.

Base Model 3 is now $46,990, LR is $54,400 and Performance is $61,990
Model Y LR is now $62,990 and Performance is $67,990
Model S starts at $99,990 and Model X starts at $114,990

Pretty significant price increases through 2021 and now into 2022. Demand doesnt seem to be hit at the moment, but I do wonder how long before it does. $47k for a base model? Yikes. To be fair, they have upped the spec over the poverty spec ones from a few years ago, which made sense. But, and yes, I am sounding very dull here - Tesla is supposed to be the cheapest to make with the simplest 'disruptive' engineering (pressings etc) and the highest margin per car. How come they are passing on the cost to everyone so quickly?

But they are a company and they need to make money? Yeah, get that. Raw materials costs more? Yeah, I get that too. But other OEMs arent passing on these costs (lets take dealers out of the equation here - you have a choice to pay over or not). Tesla is sooooo good at making cars, how come the prices keep going up?

And yes, I am a stuck record.

[TameBritishMuslim]

off_again said:

Tesla is sooooo good at making cars, how come the prices keep going up?

Economics for Dummies: Price Elasticity of Demand

[off_again]

TameBritishMuslim said:

off_again said:

Tesla is sooooo good at making cars, how come the prices keep going up?

Economics for Dummies: Price Elasticity of Demand

Yeah, I know and I understand it. But, the Tesla Model 3 Standard range was a $36,200 car 3 years ago. Now its a $46,990 car. A few small changes and very slight bump in range. Thats a $10k increase in 3 years for THE SAME CAR. No refresh, no changed interior and only a few limited features improvements.

Now, if people are prepared to pay for this, thats a different question.

[hyphen]

Tesla fires employee who uploaded youtube video showing fsd flaws


https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/tesla-fired-employ...

[off_again]

hyphen said:

Tesla fires employee who uploaded youtube video showing fsd flaws


https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/tesla-fired-employ...

Yikes. And they pulled he FSD too (though the CNBC article says it was a perk). Nice.

For someone who is all for freedom of speech, Tesla seems to like suppressing things, hiding the truth and concealing crappy behavior. Wow, nice job.

What is disappointing is that the US and California both have anti retaliation laws, the Californian one is pretty strict too. But if he broke a condition of employment, there isn’t much he can do. Now if it’s not in writing though, I am sure he’s getting calls from lawyers constantly.

[b0rk]

off_again said:

More price increases for Tesla again.

Base Model 3 is now $46,990, LR is $54,400 and Performance is $61,990
Model Y LR is now $62,990 and Performance is $67,990
Model S starts at $99,990 and Model X starts at $114,990

Pretty significant price increases through 2021 and now into 2022. Demand doesnt seem to be hit at the moment, but I do wonder how long before it does. $47k for a base model? Yikes. To be fair, they have upped the spec over the poverty spec ones from a few years ago, which made sense. But, and yes, I am sounding very dull here - Tesla is supposed to be the cheapest to make with the simplest 'disruptive' engineering (pressings etc) and the highest margin per car. How come they are passing on the cost to everyone so quickly?

But they are a company and they need to make money? Yeah, get that. Raw materials costs more? Yeah, I get that too. But other OEMs arent passing on these costs (lets take dealers out of the equation here - you have a choice to pay over or not). Tesla is sooooo good at making cars, how come the prices keep going up?

And yes, I am a stuck record.

Large and I mean large amounts of moulded Aluminium when the price over the last two years has only gone in one direction really will not be helping to keep costs in check. Said large "pressings" which are actually diecast mouldings not cold pressed parts and are part of the USP around the simpler/easier/quicker assembly process, they have fewer bits to make a body shell. However what these will not be is particularly efficient from a materials usage perspective. The giga presses use natural gas to remelt the Alu FYI.
Remember legacy auto mostly use high strength steels that can be cold formed with highly localised usage of Aluminium or hot formed steel. Yes the cost of steel has gone up too but not in absolute terms by anywhere close to the same extent.

One tonne of Alu Alloy would trade on LME for roughly $1,400 usd in March 2020 now its $2,800 usd. Steel in comparison is roughly $1,500 usd today when in March 2020 is would have been $880 usd (ish). I don't know what long term supply deal Telsa have done on metals or how hedged they are but the scale of rises will impact at some point, same with natural gas too.

[Heres Johnny]

off_again said:

hyphen said:

Tesla fires employee who uploaded youtube video showing fsd flaws


https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/tesla-fired-employ...

Yikes. And they pulled he FSD too (though the CNBC article says it was a perk). Nice.

For someone who is all for freedom of speech, Tesla seems to like suppressing things, hiding the truth and concealing crappy behavior. Wow, nice job.

What is disappointing is that the US and California both have anti retaliation laws, the Californian one is pretty strict too. But if he broke a condition of employment, there isn’t much he can do. Now if it’s not in writing though, I am sure he’s getting calls from lawyers constantly.

The real issue here isn’t the employee, it’s machine learning and the potential unpredictable outcome you can get when you retrain after tweaking a few things. Wind the clock forward to when this really is driving us, a new traffic law comes into force like we’ve just had in the uk with respect to pedestrians crossing side roads, retain the model, and edge cases that once worked may well become death traps. AI and ML is a statistical process, a best fit algorithm, and at times it’s best fit is pretty bad. That’s what’s happened here, they’ve had a version that was meant to be everything that went before plus with a change to address some aspect and they put it out into the field. It was so bad they pulled it, they can make a tweak and try again. But how are they going to avoid that in the future when a bad release is driving people and is unknowingly dangerous? The whole iterate and deploy approach is going to grind to a stop the closer they get to approval.

[JonChalk]

Heres Johnny said:

off_again said:

hyphen said:

Tesla fires employee who uploaded youtube video showing fsd flaws


https://www.cnbc.com/2022/03/15/tesla-fired-employ...

Yikes. And they pulled he FSD too (though the CNBC article says it was a perk). Nice.

For someone who is all for freedom of speech, Tesla seems to like suppressing things, hiding the truth and concealing crappy behavior. Wow, nice job.

What is disappointing is that the US and California both have anti retaliation laws, the Californian one is pretty strict too. But if he broke a condition of employment, there isn’t much he can do. Now if it’s not in writing though, I am sure he’s getting calls from lawyers constantly.

The real issue here isn’t the employee, it’s machine learning and the potential unpredictable outcome you can get when you retrain after tweaking a few things. Wind the clock forward to when this really is driving us, a new traffic law comes into force like we’ve just had in the uk with respect to pedestrians crossing side roads, retain the model, and edge cases that once worked may well become death traps. AI and ML is a statistical process, a best fit algorithm, and at times it’s best fit is pretty bad. That’s what’s happened here, they’ve had a version that was meant to be everything that went before plus with a change to address some aspect and they put it out into the field. It was so bad they pulled it, they can make a tweak and try again. But how are they going to avoid that in the future when a bad release is driving people and is unknowingly dangerous? The whole iterate and deploy approach is going to grind to a stop the closer they get to approval.

^ So much this. It's not "Artificial Intelligence", it's a very complex set of human-made, human-written algorithms that need constant tweaking.

If it was "Artificial Intelligence" it would learn by itself, by experience and by instruction, not have someone root around in its brain and re-route its neuron connections.

fking marketing bullst.

[off_again]

JonChalk said:

^ So much this. It's not "Artificial Intelligence", it's a very complex set of human-made, human-written algorithms that need constant tweaking.

If it was "Artificial Intelligence" it would learn by itself, by experience and by instruction, not have someone root around in its brain and re-route its neuron connections.

fking marketing bullst.

I work in the cybersecurity industry and its a massively overused term. Most of what some marketing teams say is AI is little more than ML and some baseline processing. I am no AI expert, but I do agree - a lot of what the phrase is applied to incorrect.

Your comment about learning though something that I would point out though - AI, should, by definition, be constantly learning based on what it is seeing and what the driver does (taking control etc). Yet its down to the driver to 'report' the issue. Some videos show improvements, but every one that I have seen has been between versions, not on the same one. What I mean is that iterations of the version is improving, but its not learning specifically on each drive that it is doing - it should be able to understand what went wrong and then correct itself going forward - yet, from what I am seeing, this isnt happening. The algorithms are getting better, but I am not seeing learning going on.

I saw a great video about using AI techniques to teach cars to race on a small circuit - an old early 90's top-down racing game thing. Initially it was terrible and couldnt complete a lap. After thousands of laps, it was getting visibly better. Eventually, it was able to complete laps well when given guidance on what to learn and ultimately it was able to race itself and learn further. Was it true AI? Thats open to debate, but it was clear that it was learning discretely and improving on each iteration.

How many re-writes has FSD had again? How many hardware upgrades are needed to cope with the complexity?