If there's a consensus on how to moderate Mihkel I'm happy to do it, I just wasn't sure if it was a problem.

I hope they are leading the R&D for more efficient battery technologies, such as Li-air, which is an order of magnitude better, and opens the floodgates for economic use across multiple sectors. Not sure about environmental impact, though. Developing the PowerWall infrastructure is probably more important than the battery technology itself, because Li-ion will be in solid decline within 10 years.

Obviously battery technology will vastly improve in the upcoming years. More efficient solutions are necessary. Who will be the driver of it and where we will see the most improvements is difficult to tell at the moment.

Tesla already disrupted the space and their brand name will force others to rethink their strategy. The German carmakers are in trouble now - for the moment it's only VW but BMW already admitted to some of it IIRC and others will follow. It will reset their focus on EV imo.

I don't think there's a problem with him on the whole. We don't agree on much, but that's not cause for any kind of mod involvement and he chilled out pretty quick on the "wtf you're not even technical don't talk to me" answers.

I think he just saw the post in one of the threads he frequents (can't remember which one) that said something like "yeah, people (maybe specifically referring to TS?) who are obnoxious and opinionated tend to get more attention in BFI" and has run with it.

Tooth, is it time to short tsla again?

I don't see an obvious trade, turtle. Musk and his analysts have made everything about the "future", as always, and the sheep buy into it, which is what makes this stock so great. I don't see many positive catalysts in the near future, and while there's lots of risk in the next earnings - they're still not producing a single Model X if you listen very closely to the last conference call - that's a while away.

I think it'll slowly bleed down, but nothing tradable beforehand. Tesla's normally a "wait for news" and then trade the news. The last short, the disastrous Model X reveal with the stock near all time highs and news of an Apple car was a fairly rare situation, ripe for correction.

Today's action was just following the market down, nothing special.

Not sure how this effects the stock price. But came across this article and thought of this thread.

https://t.co/Pb1VJoqGj7

A very bullish view on Tesla, Google, etc. vs the old car makers.

https://medium.com/backchannel/the-a...e-ba1867c9f0d7

It's an idiot article. There are reasons why Tesla might escape from its current near death status, but he touched on none of them. A lot of what he says simply isn't true. The major car makers are years ahead of Tesla for example on software and autonomous driving; they haven't released it because they're not willing to make the roads a dangerous place to do some showboating/get driving data in attempt to avoid expensive R&D. Tesla's autoparking for example is hilariously bad vs others.

I think Apple has a decent chance of mass producing a car, if they choose to. Hundreds of billions of dollars, deep knowledge of large scale supply chain logistics, can get you there. They already have battery volume on par with Tesla, for example (which makes you realize how hilariously small Tesla is). Apple could simply buy Ford if they wanted to, for less than 1/4 of their cash pile. Ford already have the scale and the capital and the know how and the supplier relations to profitably make millions of cars a year.

Tesla claims that supply chain problems are a bottleneck and constant bugbear; if Musk is telling the truth, this is a problem Apple won't have; because of their money and volume, they can demand whatever terms and efficiencies they want. And they are expert at squeezing suppliers and getting them to sign horrible contracts (just look at GTAT); Musk on the other hand seems to be a bit of clown when it comes to developing reliable supply chains.

There is zero chance of Tesla threatening any established makers. Car companies are highly nimble, well capitalized entities with high quality engineers, billions/year on R&D, and succeeders in a cutthroat business which has few equals.

More efficiency is not really necessary but will happen. A top of the line Tesla now has 265 mile range. A leaf with 2 battery packs has over 200 mile range. The batteries consider costs too, you start adding nickel or cobalt and the price rises fast. Powerwall are not really necessary if you live on the grid, it would be nice to have backup power though. The Model X and the new consumer model puts a lot of risk for shorts imho.

On the contrary, the Model X is gold for shorts. It's why Tesla has fallen from $260 to where it is today, despite Musk's desperate spinning/lies.

It's a total mess: over engineered, too expensive, horrible design decisions (that created supply chain problems), etc.

That they completely ****ed up their third model, even 2 years behind schedule, does not bode well for future releases.

TS,

why are you always bringing up two things:
- superiority of established carmakers
- price of Model X being too high

Neither points are valid.
The three US car giants were bankrupt if the government wouldn't have intervened on a large scale (Ford was the only one that wasn't but I wouldn't rule out a chain reaction if the others weren't bailed out).
No way are established carmakers further ahead on autonomous driving, I refuse to believe it. The CEO of Volkswagen called autonomous cars a hype.

The Model X costs as much today because it's only available as fully optioned - a move that makes a lot of sense.

The major manufacturers had working autonomous vehicles in DARPA's urban challenge like 8 years ago

Yeah the post is so ridiculous I couldn't even bring myself to answer. Tesla isn't even in the race.

Musk relies on people with no clue about anything to buy into the hype; Spurious shows how well it's working. He recently hyped up autonomous again, said he was going for "fully autonomous" as soon as possible and "making it a priority". This is just complete bull****; Tesla is not going to be first, second, third or fiftieth to full autonomy. They'll buy a software and sensor and map package from a third party a long time behind other people, as long as another car maker doesn't get there before Google et al.

His current crapware can't even stay on the road, and keep trying to take exit ramps if you're in the right lane. No joke. Oh and after erroneously taking the exit ramp, it doesn't slow down when the exit ramp curves, taking the corner way too fast and requiring intervention to stop a crash.

His algorithms aren't even as sophisticated as stuff that was fully solved 10 years ago. It's a complete joke.

Don't you think it's a bit bitter.

The facts are:
- 1st to get worldwide approval for autonomously driving cars
- No deaths so far (you predicted them to happen, so far none of this happened)
- Other carmakers aren't even close


The stuff you mostly talk about is just non applicable non-sense. The mere fact that you believe Ford to be a better acquisition target than Tesla shows how skewed your views are in this.

You can admit that you hate Musk and be done with it. Maybe you think he is an idiot, the simple fact that he funded four billion dollar companies makes your opinion pretty hard to prove.

Cite 1/3.

You made up 3 so I'll excuse that. But par for the course.

No, I think you're a ****ing idiot. When I tell you something straight out, listen. You're wasting my time (and yours).

Your statement is false. Example: Tesla forced to disable autopilot features for Hong Kong drivers.

This is pure luck, and also because they've dialed back the features quite quickly as the total morons at TSLA finally saw what a deadly disaster they were creating. You should read the TSLA Motors Forum. This is where car owners talk. There are many threads on this, and lot of TSLA lovers who think this is a disaster waiting to happen. TSLA cars:

- Wrongly take off ramps and don't slow down on the curve
- Wrongly take off ramps to DEAD END ramps
- Can't lane change safely, as the hardware isn't even there
- Erroneously recognize parked cars as a threat, slamming on the brakes
- Can't recognize red lights; runs straight through them.

And that's just a fraction of the errors they make - stuff that was solved many, many years ago by other car companies and Google.

Here's just one of hundreds of posts on the Tesla Motors Forum from real owners, who love Tesla and their cars. Have a read:

Again, this is one post of hundreds.

Congratulations, you're really stupid about this. See the list above. Tesla can't even do what autonomous cars could do 10 years ago. It's a total farce, a PR stunt designed to put TSLA ahead of the curve in the minds of total morons (read: you). Meanwhile, other carmakers and Google have highly advanced prototypes that can drive flawlessly in all the scenarios where TSLA is failing terribly (and dangerously) and have millions of miles.

TSLA doesn't even have the sensors on their car to do autonomous driving; let alone the hundreds of thousands of lines of complex debugged code, human-modified machine learning from terabytes of imaging data, or any advanced algorithms; they have a simplistic hacked together algorithm with limited resources that can't even the most basic things, like spot red traffic lights, or keep driving straight on a highway rather than follow the off ramps. It's a complete joke; it probably wouldn't even come third at an MIT grad student contest. That you don't see this (I guarantee you everyone reading this does) just shows how out of touch with reality you are. That they put it out at this stage in this state just shows how desperate they are, and how bad their judgment is.
You have no clue how the car industry works. The fact that you think a car maker that loses $4000 a car and makes 50,000 cars is a better acquisition than a company with a P/E of 12 and profitability makes 5 million cars (100 times more!) just shows how skewed your views are. You're a Musk butt sniffer without a critical thought in your head, and it's pathetic.

I don't mean to be rude, but you have ZERO clue about anything in this space, including TSLA, and yet you keep posting and posting despite being told what reality is.

He's not an idiot, he's a very smart man - a solid businessman (in businesses that suck up tax dollars), and brilliant - absolutely brilliant - self promoter and PR man. He's Donald Trump level of brilliant. He's also a deeply desperate and dodgy stock promoter in my opinion.

I, for one, changed my opinion of Elon Musk based on TS's breakdowns in this thread,

It's probably worth noting Tesla's willingness to turn its customers into lab rats and guinea pigs will give it a massive data advantage (if they are collecting the data).

Google ADC has logged a million miles... Teslas will have tens of millions of miles before the end of 2016.

I'm curious which major car maker you think is lightyears ahead of Tesla on autonomous driving up to say level 3, which is to say self-steering and adaptive cruise control. I've driven the Mercedes system, the Infiniti system and seen videos of one or two others. The Mercedes system is the only thing that is remotely close and it is far, far worse that the Tesla version.

Similarly, the parallel parking system works better for me that either the Lexus, BMW or Ford systems and seems roughly identical to the Mercedes version. You don't have to put the car into "search" mode -- it just recognizes the space whenever you slow down. It got some bad press when it was first released because people didn't read the manual and didn't understand it spends the first 48 hours in "learning mode" and can't recognize spaces very well until that is complete.

This is mostly untrue or a mixture of things that were true when it was first released and exaggerations. It initially took exits in very specific circumstances. There had to be no dotted lines denoting the exit lane, just open road; you had to be in the rightmost lane; and it needed a poor lock on the stripes to the left. Since then, they've been collecting data whenever you take over from the autopilot and updating the detailed maps -- most of the exits it took in the first couple of weeks it now ignores. I personally haven't had it try to take an exit in probably 3 weeks now.

The cruise control actually does slow for ramps. In fact, I find it somewhat annoying because it is more conservative than I am and I find myself goosing the accelerator pedal because it is a bit too careful for my taste. It doesn't slow for every ramp, but it slows for many of them. By and large, you are expected to resume driving for yourself once you take the off-ramp anyhow.

They've said this, but they haven't done it yet. Nobody knows what it is supposed to mean anyhow. We think the only change they are planning is to turn off autopilot when they detect you aren't sitting in the driver's seat any more.

I'm on there. I've discussed the off ramp thing already. There are people who are concerned about the lane change, but I think they are silly. It is true that it is possible that a car could be approaching you from behind at a much higher rate of speed than you are traveling and could rear end during the lane change, but it is an extremely remote possibility in my opinion. They'd have to ignore your turn signal and time it just perfectly so it didn't activate the side collision systems and pretty much just obliviously drive into the back of you. I've never seen the parked car problem, but I've seen a couple of reports of it happening in some kind of edge case. It isn't trying to read stop lights and stop signs yet. That is promised for a future version.

Google doesn't really recognize them -- they have to be pre-mapped. Nobody else does it that I'm aware of.

When we talk about TACC on TMC or elsewhere, that refers to the original pre-autopilot stuff -- that was just adaptive cruise control. The thread about TACC is way out of date, you need to look at autopilot threads.

FWIW, I know a MIT grad who works for Tesla and I'm pretty sure he thinks it is a lot more impressive than any of his grad school projects. The interesting thing is that they are accumulating data very, very quickly. Their fleet drives about as many miles as the Google cars have in their lifetime in a couple of days. Being bold enough to put it in the field and start collecting detailed mapping data is a significant advantage.

I do tend to agree with you that people get a little crazy when it comes to Musk worship and that they have serious challenges ahead of them, but I think you underestimate some of what they have achieved.

I'm not sure you realize how advanced autonomous driving is. None of it has found its way into consumer cars because it's not 100% foolproof. Having a Nissan for example follow the off ramps, or fail to recognize motorcycles, or fail to heed traffic lights, is just dangerous. Musk doesn't care and doesn't have the money or time for research, so he's using his customers as crash test dummies. The fact that he's put out a hilariously not-ready technology doesn't mean he's ahead - he's far behind. Musk is a cowboy taking desperate risks to stop his stock from tanking; other car companies are more responsible. Musk also has the advantage of a small number of wealthy, intelligent first-adopter users, tolerant of faults and bugs; autopilot at TSLA's hilariously unsafe and buggy level would be a disaster if rolled out by a major car company.

As for other car makers, here's Nissan for example:

This is light years ahead of TSLA, who is unable to do these very simple things. The hardware isn't even attached to do this, let alone the years of data gathering and machine learning of objects. They are many, many years behind. I'm not sure why people bother to disagree; this is simply a fact.

You're correct, but it doesn't matter. There are hundreds of posts detailing all manner of dangerous and hilariously buggy behavior. For example, from yesterday:

This is just clownishly buggy. This is most basic of capabilities. This is four days ago:
This is just a joke, man. You can see by how it acts that it hasn't even solved the most basic problems that were solved years ago by others, and should have been solved before putting it on the road. The experience on highways in well marked, well mapped areas with a high concentration of TSLA cars (parts of SF, NY-Atlantic city, etc) might be quite good, but that's meaningless in terms of how far they are in autonomous research.
I believe it to be totally irrelevant for more advanced autonomy. Proper autonomy is about object recognition, which is incredibly complex algorithms + machine learning of terabytes of image data + millions of man hours programming/classifying. Musk has done zero on this (none of his cars even have the sensors).

One day ts , when tsla is trading at 55 dollars a share , hope you get the correct props here for that (and hopefully a ten bagger or two as well )

Do people really believe that fully autonomous cars will be driving around within 10 years ?

They seem much further in the future than that. I get they have some pretty advanced stuff out now, but there's just so many corner cases to tackle that it will be a long time before these things are sorted out in my opinion.

Five I'd say, for many areas. You just have solve the edge cases well enough that there's no danger, and it can get itself out of trouble.

It'll come first to places with well marked roads, possibly with helpful municipals/state roads departments who will fix up any problem areas and mark changes/roadwork in a way autonomous cars can navigate. And where there are high resolution maps available (probably San Francisco and Tokyo).

Autonomous driving will actually be bad for Tesla's business. For one, there's zero possibility they'll get there first, doubly so because of the employee poaching by well funded competitors. No serious autonomous car person would want to work for Tesla anyway; they're years behind and lack the funding and history to do anything cutting edge.

For two, autonomy destroys Tesla's edge (which consists nearly entirely of the joy of owning a high performance electric drive); interiors and comfort and cost/unit will be what matters, and Tesla is awful at both due to lacking the scale and capital and supplier relationships.

The TSLA autonomous car thing is just brilliant PR and nothing more. Half of America believes Tesla is leading the way in autonomous cars, thanks to how they've spun the news and the gasping fanboys have run with it.

Just need to get it better than your worst drivers (olds and youngs) to have legitimate use case. It appears the autopilot is already functioning and rapidly improving.

SDC don't need to be "perfect", they just need to be better than what we have (which is pretty horrible).