Is Tesla TOAST ?

[Mega]

They seem to be sacking LOTS of people & have reduced their order stock by 40% !

The only model 3 "Owners" are employee's.............& here comes EVERYONE Else.

[Mega]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

I hate to go all "Alex Jones" on you, but may be Musk was put up to this by "They"?
"They" want electric cars because they don't want to give REAL money (Gold?) to Saudi/Russia after the fall of the Petro-$ ?

In which case "They" might decide "Ok, job done".

Tesla's only party trick (except for getting sh1t loads of goverment grants) is its very quick (from a standing start) 0-100 times.................it could not ever complete 1 flying lap on a race circuit with out over heating & going into a "limp mode". Now with Porsche coming its GOING to have to do battle on a race circuit!..........& its going to lose.

Once Tesla is no long seen as "cool" & in fact a badly produced not ver good car that can't get anywhere near Porsche (or the others) on a track...its over.

..................and as for being unbeatable from a standing start:-

[Mega]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Resent Teslsa news
http://www.carscoops.com/2017/10/tes...ight-come.html

https://www.reuters.com/article/chrs...0O71MS20140521

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-1...ember-order-40

[lakedaemonian]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Early bird gets the worm.

But the second rat gets the cheese.

Tesla is neither the bird, nor the rat.

Tesla’s gross margins have dropped from 27.54% to just over 22% while their operating/net losses continue to accelerate faster than revenue.

By my math it looks like it cost Tesla nearly $9000 in losses for every car they sold in 2016.

You can only sell dollars for 0.50c until you run out of money.

[GRG55]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Finally some EVs that don't look "weird". Up uniting now the only truly elegant EV was the Model S.

As expected the mainline manufacturers are going to give Tesla a run. In looks, performance and sticker price.

[Techdread]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

But will they be self driving? that will be the killer feature of these cars.

[GRG55]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

But will they be self driving? that will be the killer feature of these cars.

LOL. The hype about EVs and "self driving" cars is surpassed only by the periodic revival of cold fusion.

Can a self-driving car be created? Sure. Can it be done without so many operating limitation conditions, and at a price point to allow practical and widespread adoption? Well that's the real challenge, isn't it.

One thing we all need to accept...this extended era of Central Bank creation of cheap and abundant money has resulted in possibly the greatest period of misallocated capital in human history. Greater than WWII in terms of gobs of money being pissed away on utterly unproductive and, now, often vanity driven schemes.

Until we reach the monetary system reset EJ wrote about extensively last decade (gawd has it been that long?), we are living through what I believe is the culmination phase of increasingly profligate, irresponsible and indiscriminate "investment" of seemingly cheap money by private citizens (property speculation, day trading) corporations (dilutive acquisitions, over leveraged balance sheets to support dividends, stock buybacks and C-suite compensation) and the public sector (military madness, flavour of the day subsidies for the well connected, bridges to nowhere).

This is what allows so many companies to chase the dream of EVs and/or self-driving cars; some of which have no background in vehicle design, development, production or customer maintenance support at all. Tesla is one of those. It is burning through capital at a prodigious rate. If that ever stops being losses of "zero-cost" capital, the game will be finished for Tesla.

[Techdread]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Self driving cars is not hype, gamer's and smartphone users have made a whole new slew of technologies which would be classed as sci-fi possible.
Nvidia is the company to watch in this space, the generation growing up now are used to sharing and these cars will be shared to offset costs, why would Uber need to pay drivers if they could have a fleet of self-driving cars.

Tesla I agree is probably a dud, but it has shown a viable possible future for cars, Musk's other initiatives are going to be world changing.

And there other companies out there who are making access to space cheap.

Open AI Musk's effort to give everyone access to machine learning.

[Techdread]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

AI looks like the next battleground for economics, as the upside is limitless and I mean everyone on earth literally being billionaires. The Chinese are pouring money into it and this directive has come from the very top.

I recommend reading/listening this https://www.amazon.com/Superintellig.../dp/1501227742 book to get up to speed on AI's Economic impact and why I have made that outlandish claim, its a bit boring in places but very well thought out.

The Chinese had a wake up goal when the Brits conquered their favorite board game.

You don't even have to show this AI how to play.

Agree that central Banks have squandered money, but we have always squandered money on stupid wars.
I think EJ said something about our central banks using AI/machine learning to manage the economy if true could mean that they could keep the ball running for longer than most realize.

Self Driving cars will happen if they are deemed safer than human drivers look to humans to get banned from driving, then everyone will have to upgrade.
Our economic system will change too, say good bye to capitalism when machines run the economy it will concentrate power in a few hands then the millennials will set us all free with their distributed trust systems.

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

why would Uber need to pay drivers if they could have a fleet of self-driving cars.

Because right now drivers take all the risk. They pay all the capital costs. They pay all the depreciation. They do nearly all the local sales and marketing. They are responsible for nearly all the insurance, maintenance, fueling, repair, cleaning, stocking, and liability costs. And for the privilege they are not even hired, they are contractors. They often earn less than minimum wage, receive no unemployment, worker's comp, or disability insurance, and they do not pay into social security or medicare.

For basically half of what it costs Walmart to hire the cheapest employee in America, Uber is getting not only a driver, but a car, mileage on the car, gas, cleaning, maintenance, repairs, insurance, stocking of waters and snacks, customer service, marketing and sales, the whole bit. That's not even counting weird situations. Obviously screwed up people vomiting, booting drugs, or worse; imprecise directions leading to confusion as to whose Uber is whose (I see this on the street at least once per week), the ability to make any sort of decision like that...

It will be nearly impossible for them to purchase all the cars with the lidar/gps self-driving systems and purchase all the insurance and hire staff to do all the maintenance and cleaning and fueling and repairs and local, street-level marketing and snack-stocking and all the rest for cheaper than the $5 per hour or whatever they pay now. Plus the whole rationale for surge pricing (to encourage drivers to work those hours) goes out the window when you own the fleet. And that's how they gouge customers best.

It sounds prima face like self-driving fleet vehicles would be a godsend. But I see it like the idea to turn McDonalds into an automat. If you work the job for a day, or really deeply think about what employees are doing all day, very little of it is grilling hamburgers, and very much of it is already automated. About a year ago I posted on that. I still think it's relevant.

[Techdread]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

This is a fight to stay relevant for Uber, if they don't do it one of the tech giants will.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohn.../#dc8d68257bbf

And few of the things you quoted can't be designed away.
The cleaning aspect can be dealt with by a trust system you dirty the car then you get down rated, have a depot where the cars get cleaned an recharged at the same time.

McDonalds is not a fair comparison, self driving cars open lots of opportunities for busy people, you could get the car to pick up your kids from school, take the wife shopping and then pick you up at the bar from work or earn you some money

[BK]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Sorry but it is really hard to believe this idea of self driving cars on demand is way more expensive to run than keeping your own vehicle.

1. High utilization of car = more wear and tear. Yes, all that idle time your car has sitting in the garage ensures its longevity. More time on road = more parts to replace. Machines wear out or at least any parts that move and have friction. I have to believe if you double the use rate of a car then you are doubling the costs of running the car.

2. Public buses and phone booths - anyone ever notice what a mess shared public services are - many people are not neat and clean.

3. Is there an advantage when we all attempt to access self driving cars at end of work day, coming home from night out, and other higher traffic times?

[dcarrigg]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

This is a fight to stay relevant for Uber, if they don't do it one of the tech giants will.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alanohn.../#dc8d68257bbf

And few of the things you quoted can't be designed away.
The cleaning aspect can be dealt with by a trust system you dirty the car then you get down rated, have a depot where the cars get cleaned an recharged at the same time.

McDonalds is not a fair comparison, self driving cars open lots of opportunities for busy people, you could get the car to pick up your kids from school, take the wife shopping and then pick you up at the bar from work or earn you some money

I think it's easier to imagine designing problems away than to actually pull it off--especially if people interact with the problem in question. People are messy.

But more than that, even if you can design problems away, I think you're still left with the crux of the issue that 1) it's more expensive to do so, and 2) the customer service levels are worse.

Fancy massage chairs can do what a masseuse can do, but they cost $2k up front instead of $100 per hour, and lots of people would rather pay for the human touch, even if it's ultimately at a premium.

Wealthy people will almost always want human servants in the service economy. That's the whole point of being wealthy. Money is only a tool to get people to do things they otherwise would not choose to do. Poorer people may suffer massive customer service declines. But they'll only do it if it's cheaper, particularly in terms of up-front costs.

I just don't see how self-driving cars check those boxes. It's not even really a technical argument, so much as a socioeconomic one. Customers will not want to be part of a rating system that can only punish you.

I mean now Uber has to not just buy a lot of expensive self-driving cars, but they need to buy depots all over the place to fuel and service and clean and maintain and store the things. Say Lyft doesn't bother and just keeps paying independent contractors $5/hour to do that for them, along with market and pay insurance and take liability and provide superior customer service that doesn't force you to be part of some draconian ratings scheme. Lyft instantly is more profitable and a preferable choice for most consumers in this scenario.

There might be some novelty thing, but I can't see the big market for it. We can barely keep city buses afloat with subsidies. Creating what is essentially a much less efficient fleet of micro-versions of the same business model seems a bit silly. Maybe something like that could work on a small scale in the densest population areas. But I can't see it working in suburbs, never mind rural areas...

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?

Self driving cars might be more difficult to achieve than it appears.
While we have some systems that behave well most of the time they remain vulnerable to spectacular failures in unusual circumstances.
Image classification systems are almost magically effective now, but they can still be fooled.
Same with artificial intelligence. Excellent mostly, but susceptible to gross errors especially when facing situations including an irrational human subject.

Here's one article typical of many that talk about the holes left in these systems

https://boingboing.net/2017/10/31/cl...e-fragile.html

[Mega]

Re: Is Tesla TOAST ?