Right, this is why no one ever buys a computer

Y'all do realize that the hype around this truck will ultimately be selling the vision on it being autonomous, right? It's not so much about whether it's economically viable or preferable to diesel today, but in a scenario where a driver is superfluous. He will pitch the increased safety/reduced liability, the ability to have a fleet of trucks running 24/7 since you now avoid labor laws around drivetime, and will pitch the economic value of not having to pay for the labor. Of course all of that will only be fully available in the v5 model due sometime between 2025-2032... Stock will run and run on those rosy projections that TS mentioned some optimistic analysts will tout as Tesla completely takes over short (and then long) haul routes with fully autonomous vehicles vehicles driving every freight and logistics company out of business in the same way Tesla will replace Uber in the consumer transport space once autonomous driving is achieved.

Musk is always selling the big picture vision of "imagine how disruptive this will be when we one day in the not too distant future get it right and work out the kinks". That euphoria should last just long for enough for some terrible numbers on the M3 to come out showing that Tesla is still struggling to figure out mass production of the core vehicle that was their intended target audience since the company's inception. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Yep. Burgeoning trillion dollar industry! Tesla takes the lead!

Just look at the hysteria about Tesla's "fully self driving" just a year ago, including from people who should know better. Some analysts even worked that into autonomous taxis, even though a) Tesla can't even make cars at a single automaker's volume and won't for a decade+ b) Tesla is at level 2, and a very buggy one at that, while other are at level 4 including real life deployed fully autonomous inner city taxis for their employees.

On a flight to DC this week I sat next to a director of DC firm that essentially lobbies/specializes in the laws around self driving vehicles


Was an amazing convo, he was pretty agnostic on issues of lidar vs sensors as well as the political arena wrt EVs, altho he acknowledged supports of his company are often pro environment because of the overlap.

He was mostly focused on he technical abilities and defining what capabilities truly represent each stage and what's reasonable and commercially viable. Physics PhD apparently for reference of what he focuses on.


When he asked what I thought timeline was for commercial self driving i said 5ish years for things like long haul interstate only trucking and 15+ years for significant commercial use. HE expressed that is a pretty optimistic viewpoint to have, and is likely much further out. Then discussed the phases of how autonomous driving would come to market, which presented a few points I didn't think about.


Anyways, when we talked about which company had what he basically said Waymo is so distantly ahead of GM and all other playerrs, and what they are launching in Phoenix no one else is close to.


When I mentioned tesla be basically said, in a very non biased way, that they don't really even consider to be in the space at all since nothing is interesting until lvl 4, very dismissive.

If autonomous highway interstate trucking were both technologically feasible and legal tomorrow, it would make even more sense to use a diesel.

Electric trucks currently are stupid. That's why there basically aren't any of them.

Which was my whole point; the Tesla Semi is pretty a much a pure PR play.

which doesn't mean it can't be successful. I could easily see someplace like Whole Foods (environmentally conscious customers, most deliveries to stores are probably short hauls) switching to all EV trucks. And as batteries get better they can start making economic sense for short haul trucking

TS,

At what point did you finally realize that cameras/processing power/etc wasn't the bottleneck in autonomous driving?

I think the deal with the semi truck is to try to reduce the pollution from millions of gallons of diesel fuel being burned. As far as the math, a lot of that depends on how much value you put on that pollution. If you calculate the value of the pollution as 0, then it will be hard to make the math add up. But if you put a large negative value to the pollution, then the electric truck might win easily.

Of course no electric truck is going to be able to match the range of a diesel truck any time soon. But I would think there are a lot of trucks that run a fairly predictable daily route that is 200-300 miles. In that situation an electric truck would be well suited, and might be better from a cost perspective due to the reduced cost of electricity vs diesel.

Do long range truckers really drive 500-700 miles without taking a significant break? That is 10-12 hours! I can't imagine doing that without taking a 1 hour break somewhere.

All of my comments above are about electric trucks in general. My confidence in Tesla successfully pulling off an electric truck anytime in the next few years is very low. I don't have much faith in their manufacturing skills at this point. But I think there is merit in the idea of an electric semi in general

Yea sure. I agree 100 percent.

"...and might be better from a cost perspective due to the reduced cost of electricity vs diesel. "

As we all know electricity is produced pollution free.

No one said pollution free. It doesn't matter whether electricity is pollution free. It matters whether driving an electric truck 1 mile has less pollution than driving a diesel truck 1 mile. And even if you are getting 100% of your electricity from a 1970s coal plant, I suspect the electric is going to win. Throw in some solar/wind/hydro/nuclear/natural gas and the electric will win by a large margin.

first 1000 roadsters require full payment of $250k, after that $50k

also taking $5k down payments for the semi w/o revealing actual cost that i can find

even more 0% interest loan money for tesla

Got to hand it to Musk, he's the queen of the vaporware pump.

Lol this is amazing


2019 to launch a semi that they can't build, don't state price, and biggest claim is the 0-60 time, lol


All in the name to get more cash

And The market loves it!


Sweet christ

Wait he set a 2019 launch date? Where are they even going to build it? There's no room at Fremont for a truck line if they even come close to 500K cars/year, which is supposed to be happening next year. You can't get a factory built and tooled in 1.5 years, let alone a new production line up for something as different as a truck - for which they have no experience.

He's just straight up defrauding investors at this point.

Maybe they solved the robotic air friction algorythym

Didn't watch but article on the street stated 2019 launch date

Yeah, 2019 production supposedly. Also solar powered “Megachargers” for the trucks will charge a 400 mike range in 30 minutes.

Limping 0-60 time, for a semi? Seriously Elon?

Tesla truck sounds pretty cool, looking forward to seeing it in a couple of years. Exciting!

Roadster is essentially a capital raise; Semi is long on hype short on facts.

0 - 60 time and speed up a 5% grade are both super lol.

Also the Megacharger that will do 400 miles of range in < 30 min (so like 800kw) is going to need to be co-located next to a power plant to meet that transfer pace. Demand charges alone will make cost/kwh super high if it's grid tied.

The electrek articles are going to be lol for awhile now


Funny side note, huge jump but leap puts actually got more expensive

The more I think about this Megacharger the more patently absurd it is.

Like approaching 'air friction of robots' absurd. I take that back, we're past that. It's worse.

If you had 5 charging bays at a station, which isn't like out of the question, b/c it takes 30 freaking minutes to charge, you would need an effing 10MW service. L. o. l. There aren't enough lulz.

An actual power plant, which you know is the size of, well a power plant, only produces 1000MW.

It's gonna be like when the switch was flipped at the Griswalds and like a million Christmas lights lit up and alarms start going off back at home base and someone has to flip the auxilliary **** just got real switch.

This isn't remotely true and just whole cloth fiction.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/a...ssarily-clean/

https://phys.org/news/2013-09-diesel...ers-urban.html

In short, you don't know what you're talking about and just posted something to justify your conclusion that you made up.



Good lol