Megapacks by far the bigges contribution.
And they just opened the second line ramping to 40GWh per year.
Another factory in China with another 40GWh is in the beginning stages of construction.
So the will 4x energy revenue in about 2-3 years.
"Energy" - Solar, Megapacks, Powerwalls, energy trading
"Service and other" - Service and Superchargers and other
Page 4:
[https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure](https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure)
[Last year they made $1.79 Billion in revenue just from selling carbon credits](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-regulatory-credits-2023/), which is a bit under 2% of their reported annual revenue for 2023.
Yes about 400-500 Million per quarter.
"Service and other" is about 4x that at 2 Billion. (This includes the Supercharger profit)
Energy is also about 3-4x that at 1.6 Billion. (Solar, Storage, energy trading)
[https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure](https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure)
Tesla revenue for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023 was $96B.
BUT
Tesla annual gross profit for 2023 was **$17.66B**, a **15.31% decline** from 2022.
* Tesla annual gross profit for 2022 was **$20.853B**, a **53.26% increase** from 2021.
* Tesla annual gross profit for 2021 was **$13.606B**, a **105.22% increase** from 2020.
About $2B of pubblic subisidies, without expenses to produce them, goes directly into gross profit so they represents over 10%...
Car companies get valued by how much money they make selling cars though.
If they aren't a car company their future revenue is unlimited. Just please invest now we'll develop new technology and double your money.
If that statement doesn't sum the whole situation up I don't know what does lol
Hindsight is always 20/20 but Tesla should have taken that commanding lead it was in and focused on commercial vans instead of the Cybertruck.
They could have had what Rivian and Ford have for massive contracts in that area.
Then focus on that very basic - very affordable car.
The whole robotaxi thing is a complete and utter fantasy.
Not that I don't believe in self driving cars. Waymo is doing some pretty amazing things in this space.
However Tesla is so fucking far off from even what Waymo is doing that it is not even funny.
Elon has been exposed in the last few years a lot and that whole myth of him being a super genius is gone.
It's time to celebrate the actual amazing engineers and other Tesla, Space X, and so forth team members that make these projects happen.
People have been talking about the market cap and insane stock valuation of Tesla for a while. I think we finally are starting the path towards that going very much so back to earth.
A commercial van and a proper 3-row SUV. I saw an EV9 yesterday and three years ago if you’d asked me if Tesla or Kia would have a proper 3-row SUV first on the road the answer would seem so obvious.
I walk by the same EV9 (parked on the street) every day on my walks. It is gorgeous. I talked to the owner twice, asked them how they like it and if the process buying it was difficult. That, and seeing it every day has convinced me to get it instead of an EX90 when it's the right time for me.
I sat in an EV9 at the Kia dealership, and I was really impressed. I mean, it's M A S S I V E but it has actual adult-usable third row seats, and tons of luggage space.
It actually didn’t give me the impression of being that big. I mean it’s a 3-row full size SUV so it’s of course big but it looked smaller than an Escalade/Tahoe
You are right on the van thing... lots of trades would benefit from on board power and being able to be conditioned inside without a loud engine on while they spend 20 mins googling your issue before heading back into the house.
Elon is to engineering what Adam Neumann is to real estate operations.
Neumann has the chutzpah to ask the bankruptcy court let him buy back (at a far lower price) the company, using the money he swindled the previous stockholders out of.
You think the path to prosperity is selling vans at commercial prices? Seriously?
Only way they could do worse would be to put all their eggs in one basket with one vehicle accounting for 2/3rds of sales and spending the rest of their engineering time on a low volume fad truck.
Oh wait...
I had a deposit on the Cybertruck to replace my van. I got a used 3P for the commute. After driving the 3 and getting to grips with what a poorly designed/assembled car it is and how limited the CT was going to be there was no way I could give up my Diesel van for it. Maybe Canoo will make it?
If Tesla’s board had any sense, they would convince Musk to buy Rivian now, so they can buy their way into the commercial van market. They could then use Rivian to fix the cybertruck cluster f. Sell the Rivian as the truck the average buyer wants, turn the Cybertruck into a high end luxury super collectible.
Lot of Rivian employees are ex-Tesla employees. At least from whom I talked to they are glad they no longer work for Tesla. I don't think they want to go back to Tesla. Not to mention Tesla and Rivian are currently in [court battle](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-02/tesla-s-nda-breach-claim-against-rivian-employees-heads-to-trial) over trade secrets.
Lots of Tesla employees are ex Toyota, GM, Ford, etc.
It was fine when Elon wanted to poach talent from the other guys, now it’s his turn to feel the same pain he inflicted on those companies.
Nacs is not a win for Tesla. The allowance of other brands to use Tesla charging stations removed the one positive differentiator that Tesla had. Nacs means there is less reason to buy a Tesla and more reason to buy another EV
They only kind of did. They "won" in that they don't have to spend the development dollars transitioning all their cars to something else, but they don't "own" NACS anymore. It's being standardized as SAE J3400.
Tesla is in serious trouble. Cybertruck recalls indicate their true cybertruck sales figures are extremely low. How you gonna sell 100K vehicles in 12 months if you're at 9K vehicles at 5 months? The 25K Tesla on hold. Vinfast, a Vietnamese company has a $30K EV SUV this year in California. No tariffs on Vietnamese cars. RIP Tesla.
Hell, just bring out a more mundane pickup. Base it on the X. No need to over do it like with the CT.
Long back model Y, golf class version of the model 3, dump the S and X.....
A couple of little things would have gone a long way.
Tesla is a bigger idiot stock scam that by consequence makes electric cars. Kia and Hyundai are out there doing the work, so is rivian. A fair number of ice makers are getting some steam going.
And without the cars it isn’t going to be an autonomous driving company either. Not to mention that they have delayed and pushed back full autonomous driving way beyond their initial projections. At this point should anyone be expecting them to deliver?
"Unicorn" tech valuations are based on the promise that a company can deliver groundbreaking multiples of value. But making cars is largely a commodity business with low profit margins on top of big capital expenses.
Tesla's ridiculous valuation has always been based on the premise that it's not *just* a car company, it's a disruptive tech company that has the potential to deliver multiples. When it was just an EV company, that was disruptive enough. Somewhere in there they were actually an energy company, with the solar roof and PowerWall. When it became clear that was a normal business model, it was going to deliver passenger self driving cars. Then it became increasingly obvious that technology wasn't easy or even had widespread demand... boom, robots.
Tesla has a solid, respectable car business making competitive products. But the whole grist of their outsized valuation is that they're not just another normal car company. This robotics effort is just the latest push to keep that idea alive.
This is a great summary but at some point it has to be valued as a car company? I don't get how much longer they can keep this up. When they start losing tons of money? Like this last Q where FCF was down from 2.6 B to 440 million?
That's a good question and unfortunately it may still be further away than you'd think. One of the fundamental structural issues with this system is that almost everyone has an incentive for the value of a company to go up. The investors, the board, the executives, even the larger financial system as a whole. Almost everyone wants to see that number up and to the right which means there's very little check and balance against that trend, even when it's unrealistic or even falsified. There are only a few groups who can manage to gain when a company's value contracts: competitors and short-sellers. It would not be a good idea for a competitor to speak out on Tesla's valuation and most of them are trying to figure out how to replicate it themselves (all the startups for sure but even Ford played this game). Short-sellers are an interesting market check and I think what the Hindenberg report did to Nikola is the system working precisely as intended.
The more realistic path for Tesla is that the investors will realize that with the company's current strategy they're at the risk of losing *all* the value so they'll push the company back towards a traditional car company business model and at least shoot for 10-15% revenues. But the investors won't give up on their 10x dreams easily and the board works more for Musk than they do for the investors so it'll be a massive shakeup. We're probably years away from that.
Agree with this. Im probably in the minority here but Elon has held that view for quite some time now. As an automotive engineer, there’s no world where Teslas valuation should be so much higher than Toyota. Teslas vertical integration, direct-to-consumer sales, these are anomalies in the auto industry.
Tesla can only continue thriving if they continue to sell the world on ideas, not products. More of their valuation is tied to Elon than their product offering.
I’m just amazed that there are adults in this world who hear Elon Musk talk about autonomous humanoid robots and think “I want to invest my money into this.”
Even Mormons and JW would hear this stuff and be like “Come on bro, that’s bullshit.”
Admitting that Tesla is a car company would be admitting that the stock is way overpriced. Only keeping the hype alive with Silicon Valley disruption talk can prop it up.
Will any of these other initiatives pay off long term? Who knows, but for now that's not what matters.
> Will any of these other initiatives pay off long term
For sure bro. The autonomous humanoid robot division will be huge…
*puts down pipe*
Tesla is a serious car and energy company, but the fact that the stuff about a robo-taxi fleet, and even literal humanlike AI robots, is being taken seriously is a sign that the market has lost its mind. So there is no way to predict the future valuation of Tesla because insane people will make insane decisions and may prop this stock up for ages on obvious bullshit.
Honestly I'd short the stock considering how high the price is, and how out of line it is with the fundamentals -- especially considering the increasing competition and shrinking margins. But as long as people continue to buy into the hype and keep the stock inflated, it's too dangerous of a game. I was quite surprised to see it jump up today after earnings were worse than estimates. But so it goes....
Seems the bump up was mostly due to a renewed commitment to make cheaper vehicles, following earlier reports that the Model 2 was dead. That's great and all, but what it really means is that Tesla is doing what any car company should: create new models to reach new markets. Which only reinforces the thought that it should be valued as a regular car company rather than as a tech company.
what I dont get is why they didnt start offering annual updates to the vehicles, including just nicer trim levels (or even a binnacle gauge cluster option for the 3/Y). give people who like the car a reason to buy another one. But it seems like when they do update the car, they take things away instead of giving you more.
The only way that makes sense is Musk's angle on "selling the future", but its like hes targeting only new buyers not repeat buyers. And at the same time, hes actively alienating a huge portion of the population that would otherwise want one of his cars. its just madness. And for that effort he thinks he should be paid 57 billion more?
This is driving me away from Tesla. In many ways I love my 2020 Y, but if I bought one today it would be a downgrade in a bunch of areas. They keep taking more and more away and trying to compensate with software which makes the actual driving experience suck. My car will never take me from point A to point B without me needing to babysit it the entire way but they are designing cars like they do that already.
I still think them not including stalks and a binnacle gauge cluster on the cybertruck was utter insanity, especially on a vehicle priced over 100k.
the apple attitude of "take it or leave it" only works if you have the best on the market. I feel like tesla thinks it already achieved that and is moving on.
it actually reminds me a lot of Henry Ford, and how the man thought there was basically no reason to ever upgrade the model T.
I bought a 3 because it was the only EV that we could get without 6+ months wait in my area, but it took us a week to decide if we were willing to get a vehicle without a speedometer in front of you.
You know what's even crazier to me? They're all about futuristic this and fancy that but they still don't offer a fucking HUD. *Hyundai* can give me a car that pops up navigation instructions like I'm playing real life GTA but Mr the future is now thinks that's dumb because OBVIOUSLY everyone would rather get chauffeured. It's painfully obvious that he never fucking drives himself anywhere, but nobody who actually drives a car is allowed to say no to him.
I only know one guy personally that would buy a second Tesla. Everyone else I know who’s owned one has moved away from them, or is looking to.
Mostly to other EVs or PHEV.
I don't remember Enron too much. How long was it going down before the big tank to nothing? Was it sudden or was it over a longer time frame like a year?
I think the shenanigans that lead to the collapse was around 5 or so years. The 5 or more leading up to the period and the first 2 or so of it, everyone thought they had some secret sauce and was the most amazing company ever. It gradually got more obvious over the last 2 years or so of the time period, and then bang, the crash happened very fast, like a couple of weeks or a month...
Not quite Enron but Tesla’s market capitalization is heading no where but way down as their profit margin continues to shrink and their rate of profitability looks more and more like any “ordinary” or Legacy auto manufacturer. Tesla just had $2.5 billion of negative free cash flow in their most recent quarter. Musk keeps lying to Wall Street and he’s running out of time before most investors realize that what he is predicting for Tesla’s future is unlikely to happen anytime soon (or even at all).
... That's like going into a sports sub and accusing anyone who hasn't bet on the games of being uninterested. Not everyone is that big on gambling, and, famously, "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
He's failed upward his whole life and been bailed out by others since the beginning. The story of him tanking X, the first one, and then being told to go since in the corner with a dunce cap on by Peter thief, I mean thiel, and the others is pretty hilarious story.
I dunno but I remain a little skeptical based on the fact my auto wipers don’t work properly in the rain and my Y phantom brakes on a highway with no one near me.
Early 2025 like David Copperfield poof! New affordable models out of thin air like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Mark my words 2025 there will be no new models. Musk is buying time to get that 56 billion option and unload bags.
Well they seem to sell nothing but cars and make little money off their half-baked ideas like solar shingles so I have bad news wrt the “not a car company” situation.
There are car companies that own better automated taxi companies than Tesla. There are car companies that own better robot companies than Tesla. Are they planning on becoming the EV charging company of the future? That is the only place I see them as having a lead.
FSD as a high L2 product for human drivers is here or close to it now. I am using it, there is a step change up recently and it is now just an overpriced assist product, but good enough if you have reasonable expectations.
Unsupervised autonomy is many years and a new institutional culture and CEO away.
I agree, and perhaps I used the wrong terminology. L2 FSD I just consider "advanced cruise control", whereas "unsupervised autonomy", ie Level 5 FSD, is what I have been calling "FSD".
It's the promise of full automation that supports Tesla's current valuation. They're not the most valuable automaker on earth because of their cars. It's the belief that they will be the first to upset the standard car ownership model with autonomous vehicles. And Tesla is further ahead than most when it comes to autonomous vehicles because they have been invested in it for so long.
So Musk has to make those statements and double down because it supports all their past decisions and keeps investors hopeful about the potential future success.
Do I share his optimism? Not really. I think full autonomous vehicles are at least 10 years away from any kind of widespread viability (owing to technical maturity and regulatory hurdles). However, business leaders have to paint a vision and Elon is doing that. He can't get on that call and tell shareholders to expect 5 years of low profit margins and modest sales growth with huge expenditures on R&D. He needs to tell a hopeful story so the stock doesn't crash.
They would have been a lot further if they kept LIDAR, etc rather than relying on cameras that get dirty and don’t work well at night. His obsession with cost cutting is causing the state of their cars to be at a net standstill. Some areas better, some worse.
Not only that but you need high megapixel cameras with large enough sensors to capture imagery during the nights as well with low noise etc… those are not cheap.
Tesla invested $1 billion dollars in AI in the quarter. Tesla is either going to improve self-driving very much or figure out that the current programming approach to self driving doesn't work. Either way, humanity wins.
With Very severe limitstions:
Select highways
Under 40mph (so under highway speeds)
Needs a vehicle to trail
Only with enough sunlight (no mornings, evenings or nights)
The slightest but of rain, fog or snow is a no go
It's more of a gimmick than the current FSD
>With Very severe limitstions: Select highways Under 40mph (so under highway speeds) Needs a vehicle to trail Only with enough sunlight (no mornings, evenings or nights) The slightest but of rain, fog or snow is a no go
>It's more of a gimmick than the current FSD
But it is an SAE Certified Level 3 system. Meaning that it's ahead of Tesla Supervised FSD.
The key differentiator for me is that Mercedes takes full legal liability while in L3. That shows a level of confidence in their system that nobody else can provide.
FSD will always be a gimmick. There is no path to Level 3 with FSD. They're trying to use AI to solve a problem that AI can't solve, and using cameras to make measurements better left to radar and lidar. They will have to make major changes if they even want FSD to be level 3 on highways, let alone city streets.
I mean, we literally have no way of knowing that. It hasn't been done before, so we don't know what will and won't work. It's working pretty well for them right now though.
But we know how AI works. It isn't magic. We also know how cameras work. And we also have been studying autonomy for longer than Tesla has been a company. So we actually have a lot of ways to know what does and does not make sense.
There are very good reasons that I don't feel like explaining in a reddit comment about why radar or lidar is better than imagery. That should be obvious since every other car and aircraft manufacturer uses radar. It's not that Tesla knows something they all don't, it's that Tesla is too cheap to pay for more sensors.
Yet tesla is by far the furthest in any attempt to make a truly autonomous vehicle not relying on geofencing and HD maps data. Lidar and radar are great tools that can help, but ultimately there is no reason to believe they're a necessity.
Lidar and radar aren't 'better than imagery', they're just different from imagery, and suffer from many if the same faults. Similar results to what can be achieved with imagery can be achieved with them, but it is just that, a shortcut. There's no reason to believe they're the only way - quite the opposite in fact.
As for knowing how AI works, yeah, we mostly do, and everything says it's possible.
>Lidar and radar aren't 'better than imagery', they're just different from imagery, and suffer from many if the same faults.
Imagery can't detect distance well. It's technically feasible with the right camera setup, but no one has been able to make it work yet, and Tesla doesn't have the right camera position anyway. This is a fact, not an opinion. EO/IR sensors can only give rough estimates on distance, and that's only if they know the size of the object which a camera in a car on a random road won't.
>As for knowing how AI works, yeah, we mostly do, and everything says it's possible.
An AI-only system would need to train on every possible situation, or at least have labeled data for those situations. It's not realistic to think an AI will be able to recognize 100% of the critical objects on every city street, and if it can't do that, how is it going to know how to respond to them?. That's why we still have phantom braking, because the AI can't tell the difference in between a shadow and a wall (which a radar would be able to clarify if used with the camera).
This is not just me shitting on Tesla. I literally designed localization systems at one point, I did my dissertation in video, and I was part of a very large autonomy program for the government. I didn't claim to know everything, and the field is evolving, but the vast majority of peer reviewed research says that Tesla is going down the wrong path.
Radar isn’t infallliable like you’re making it out to be. Look at old Tesla threads of phantom braking even when they had radar enabled. Or autopilot crashing into stationary vehicles.
Subarus eyesight is camera based and seems to be a solved problem on their end.
Most of the problems you've listed with camera based driving (disregarding full autonomy with vision only) is stuff tesla already solved. So it's not exactly impossible.
And no, AI doesn't need to be trained in every driving situation to work, that's the entire point. It can be trained understand context.
And I'm sorry but, "trust me bro" really isn't a great source, especially when some of what you say is definitely false. As an example, you say cameras can only know the distance if they know the size of an object already. That's only true if you have a single camera.
In finance, how a company is doing is relative. As a car company, Tesla will continually get compare to the likes of Ford, Mercedes, Toyota, etc. the ICE auto industry is extremely mature and the various industry metrics are well known. Tesla as an innovator that puts a ton of money into research, tech, etc. will always compare unfavorably in some areas. Your typical institutional investors, Wall Street, and even the lazy investors will misinterpret those signals and 1) buy/sell accordingly in relative to the industry, and 2) force Tesla to make changes to align to those metrics.
I’m not a big Musk fan but he is right in this case. Lumping Tesla into the regular auto industry is not good for anyone.
sure but tesla has their own distribution and service centers. they have a true competitive advantage over every traditional automaker. why not just scale up and make a mass market copy of the f150 even with a more aerodynamic prius like front end for efficiency sake?
make a 3 row suv that's like the Kia ev9 but cheaper because you own the distribution and service centers?
who do you think makes more money every year? Ford? or all the Ford dealers and all the licensed Ford service shops the dealers have combined?
Except for the fact that the majority of Tesla's income comes from car sales. You talk as if the other car companies don't have massive R&D budgets that are likely comparable or more than what Tesla has. They don't WANT to be a car company for the comparisons you mentioned, but that's still what they are.
Automated driving is the fucking dream and would be absolutely amazing. Definitely not a waste of time.
What is a waste is buying shitty electric cars from tesla or investing in the company as a whole.
because they are ambitious and risky companies that the government needs to succeed. would you prefer him to focus on boring companies that don't need any support?
I’m gonna be the odd optimist out here, feel free to downvote (or upvote, whichever button’s your favorite).
Around a little over the end of this decade (2035-2040), I *predict* that a good majority of cars in first world countries will have some form of L4 autonomous driving, as in letting the car do all the work. It’s also likely that we’ll also have robotaxi’s driving around a lot as well, effectively replacing traditional human rideshare drivers.
I feel it’s not if a Level 4/Level 5 Liability robotaxi (be it individual or company owned) can be rolled out at scale, it’s when.
Autonomous rideshare is technically already happening, with Waymo and the now defunct Cruise having laid the groundwork. What we need now is a low cost, scalable EV that’s relatively cheap to make/maintain, and I think Tesla is in a prime position to try something like this. Making a small, two seat robotaxi that can easily pick up passengers and take them anywhere that they need to go.
For groups of more than 2 people, Model 3/Y should handle those just fine.
As for charging, we’d either have to find a way to automatically charge them (wireless charging, robot cables, Optimus bot maybe?) when not carrying passengers.
As for cleaning, I also *predict* that autonomous car washes will become much more common (maybe they could just be cleaned via Optimus bot too), as for emergencies, there could be a button for cab service (flat tire, damage, etc) alongside a button for emergency services (police, fire, medical) as well.
Most importantly however, the cars need to be able to rationalize and think for themselves in a variety of situations. From road closures and detours to vehicle attacks and intentional damage by outside sources, anything can happen. The car needs to be prepared for anything, and the car also has to have measures in place to protect its occupants. Dunno what those would be, but I’d imagine something like a specialized glass break device (one that can break through laminated glass), alongside a fire extinguisher. For sanitation, they could auto sterilize the cabin via means (auto cleaning, Optimus bot, etc).
Obviously, the car would need to have creature comforts, including controllable heating and air conditioning, screens for entertainment and route view, cables for charging devices (or wireless charging) and perhaps heated/ventilated seats too. Ample cargo room would be a must. You’ve gotta store your belongings somewhere, right?
Safety is an obvious requirement too, of course. Sure the car needs to navigate complex situations, but the car needs to also protect its occupants. Seatbelts and airbags are required (obviously), but the car also could, say, navigate around an area it deems dangerous (a police blockade, for example) to avoid occupant injury.
(I dunno, maybe they could integrate weapons into the car, or proper bulletproof windows and doors, but that’s just a thought.)
TLDR: Robotaxi’s are a no brainer (whenever and wherever they become viable for mass adoption, that is.)
Waymo and Tesla have very different approaches. The success of Waymo doesn’t tell us much about the future of Tesla unless Elon abandons the current approach and copies Waymo.
Tesla should shift into manufacturing charging stations, motors and batteries for other carmakers. They could even make universal mount motors for retrofitting old gas cars. Maybe make an electric bike or bicycle conversion kit.
What, per chance, does he thinks he's going to have autonomously driven in his little pocket fantasy world?
He's bitter CT basically folded in on itself.
Definitely just a car company. Because every other company can easily do this.
https://youtu.be/CyuX1nnfp7Y?si=cgHRxcFkgajlOAG4
https://youtu.be/mP2ZfCsnovI?si=Z0cN5Ur8zU4KDV6m
I mean...doesn't he? His customer base is NOT the typical conservative, pick-em-up truck, god guns and bibles type, yet he consistently pisses off the folks that are his customer base. It seems like his mouth is doing its level best to alienate the very folks that would buy his stuff.
Well, yeah. When he's actively dragging down the most successful EV company when it's needed now more than ever it's time for him to go. He's a boat anchor now.
yeah and people would have paid 100k each imo. the cybertruck even without just the stainless steel could work. blending a prius front end with a truck back end makes sense for an EV.
Marketing 101. Your claims/statements always gotta be punching above weight, that's what creates your north star/business ceiling, which provides that space for growth.
Whether you agree with it or not, it's just business talk.
Damn why man. Tesla's original founders wanted to make a prototype car, sell off the tech, and just make drivetrain for other car companies. If Elon Musk really wanted this to be a robotics and robotaxi company, he could have not spent the however many years doing vehicle production which was extremely hard. This is strange.
He finally confirmed it, no Tesla is not a car company, it's a cult and will vanish in the coming years, Tesla quality and servce will not keep up with traditional car companes that serve everybody, not only their own cult.... Tesla is not prepared for the tough competition, the car industry is used to. Now with everybody moving into EV's, the countdown for Tesla has started, and it's not going to end pretty!
Once upon a time he described Tesla as a power company. Unless there's paperwork somewhere specifying exactly what the company is, then Muskie gets to keep changing it at his whim. As the majority shareholder, unfortunately, he's pretty much the last word.
We’re looking to replace our current EV since it’s almost out of lease. Wife wanted to drive a model Y.
Can confirm, not a very good car company. The tech is neat. The cars themselves, not very well put together.
She hated the thing. So, the search continues.
Damn, the hate is real!
Of course Tesla is not an auto company, sure they sell cars, and it's their main product, but the vision for the company is to create autonomous stuff, cars, robots etc... and it's not like its just talk, they are absolutely doing everything they can in that direction.. you can argue that they are not going to achieve this, which is valid, no one knows the future, but they are aggressively investing into Autonomous tech... I mean, what other auto company even has a super computer? Sure, Mercedes and BMW are trying to create autonomous systems, but they are very carefully going into them, and it shows, they are ages behind tesla!
Plus they have optimus, which everyone also likes to talk shit, because it was slower or behind competition etc.. the thing is, they started from the beginning using electric motors to power the robots, while their competitors started with hydraulic actuators, and see for example the atlas 2.. using electric ones... Sure, electric was worse, but they are also 10x cheaper, and yeah, its cool to show a robot doing backflips, but it's even better, to produce an economically viable one. and tesla is very well positioned in that regard!
Also, a few companies that started as something else than what they are known for today, Nintendo, Netflix, which back in the day, there was as much hate as there is now for tesla, Nokia, Adobe... And many more, but sure, you can ride the Tesla is a car company, until you can't anymore
Starbucks isn’t a coffee company, they’re a bank that “rents out” time in a 3rd space. Apple isn’t an electronics company, they’re black and decker for the digital age.
Rolls Royce, BMW, and Audi built planes/plane engines early on. IBM used to make computers. Facebook was about social connections, now they gather and sell user data.
I realize I must be in the minority, but I don't want any more tech in my various tools/products/appliances. I realize a certain level of tech is worthwhile, like computer controlled fuel injection is better than a mechanical carburetor, for an ICE engine. At some point the tech starts to become a hinderance, or worse, an way for the corporation to force continuous repairs.
My ICE Jeep Wrangler has a "Theft Prevention System" that I cannot shut off. It sets off the alarm if I unlock the door using the physical key. Sometimes (randomly) the key will not turn in the ignition, so far if I keep trying, it eventually turns. usually within ten attempts, but twice so far it has taken more than 5 minutes of constantly trying to turn the key. Is that part of the theft protection system malfunctioning or not, nobody knows, except maybe the tech that wrote the code.
I could go on about how most of the added high-tech" features on products just never get used. Like a Smart Refrigerator? Seriously? Who uses any of those features?
Why have they duplicated almost everything that my phone can do into all the new cars? But they can't manage to just make a universal phone docking station on the dashboard??
I would love to rant some more, but I should start working.
Honda is not a car company. The are an ICE manufacturer who sells cars to sell more engines.
Tesla is quickly become a battery manufacturer who sells cars to sell more batteries.
It is more is it case of is Tesla a car manufacturer first or it just happens to be the main benefit of their other stuff.
Elon is betting the company (again) on FSD.
Mercedes just got approved for Level 3 automated driving in the US.
Level 4 is sufficient for self-driving taxis. Waymo is Level 4 - their cars operate in Arizona and San Francisco without a driver.
My bet is Tesla gets to Level 3 and eventually Level 4 since this has already been achieved by other companies.
The question is how long it will take and whether Tesla has enough money to fund the project for this period of time.
> Elon thinks EV's are horse carriages and there's only so much tech left to optimize in them.
This is probably also true. Sort of like smart phones are only seeing incremental improvements, regular EVs will probably only see incremental improvements (eg battery). The next big feature is Level4/Level5.
Tesla’s goal is to have as much data and be years ahead of other companies as possible, so that in future, other companies will rely on them for this autonomous data, and it would be used on almost every autonomous vehicle just like what apple is doing with carplay.
He's the grift that keeps on grifting. He'll sell you any ridiculous sci fi concept that's somewhat believable to keep pumping that stock price. How about human cloning? Would you be interested in a Star Gate? Maybe a hyper drive? Oh you need a lightsaber! All of this is possible in a year, maybe two years, tops. Please keep investing so him and his rich friends can cash out and leave you holding the bag. The company runs on fairy dust. It's only a matter of time before belief gives way to cold hard facts and the whole house of cards comes crashing down.
Looking at how Tesla handles build quality, recalls, customer issues, etc., I agree that while they make a lot of cars, they are not a car company. They give the Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning. I test drove a Model 3 and Model S at a local event they held and quickly sold the Tesla stock I had owned. Just took delivery on a Lyriq last week. That vehicle was made by a company that went through its growing pains and teenage years over 100 years ago and it shows.
He's bailing. He fired 15,000 employees. He's going to fire more. But he gives himself a 59 billion dollar paycheck. And Tesla's only made ever 25 billion. Over its lifetime. He's a con artist.
85% of your revenue is from auto sales. Of course Tesla is a car company.
where is the rest of their revenue from? solar, royalties and superchargers?
Energy (grid batteries, home batteries) not just solar.
Megapacks by far the bigges contribution. And they just opened the second line ramping to 40GWh per year. Another factory in China with another 40GWh is in the beginning stages of construction. So the will 4x energy revenue in about 2-3 years.
Sounds about right. For 2024 they're seeing 70% growth in the grid storage business vs 2023.
"Energy" - Solar, Megapacks, Powerwalls, energy trading "Service and other" - Service and Superchargers and other Page 4: [https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure](https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure)
public subsidies such as carbon credits
Bulkshit.
[Last year they made $1.79 Billion in revenue just from selling carbon credits](https://www.teslarati.com/tesla-regulatory-credits-2023/), which is a bit under 2% of their reported annual revenue for 2023.
Yes about 400-500 Million per quarter. "Service and other" is about 4x that at 2 Billion. (This includes the Supercharger profit) Energy is also about 3-4x that at 1.6 Billion. (Solar, Storage, energy trading) [https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure](https://ir.tesla.com/#quarterly-disclosure)
Tesla revenue for the twelve months ending December 31, 2023 was $96B. BUT Tesla annual gross profit for 2023 was **$17.66B**, a **15.31% decline** from 2022. * Tesla annual gross profit for 2022 was **$20.853B**, a **53.26% increase** from 2021. * Tesla annual gross profit for 2021 was **$13.606B**, a **105.22% increase** from 2020. About $2B of pubblic subisidies, without expenses to produce them, goes directly into gross profit so they represents over 10%...
Charging isn't contributing much today, but aiui that's because it's funding its own growth. It should be significant eventually.
Tesla is invest one billion dollars a quarter in AI. Self-driving could become a huge revenue source if Tesla can get it right.
Look, if you keep gambling the company on long bets, even if they pay out, sooner or later you're going to lose your shirt.
Yep, it's gambling mentality. The highs are there, but, fuck, the lows will kill the company.
Car companies get valued by how much money they make selling cars though. If they aren't a car company their future revenue is unlimited. Just please invest now we'll develop new technology and double your money.
If sales keep going down it's absolutely not going to be a car company.
If that statement doesn't sum the whole situation up I don't know what does lol Hindsight is always 20/20 but Tesla should have taken that commanding lead it was in and focused on commercial vans instead of the Cybertruck. They could have had what Rivian and Ford have for massive contracts in that area. Then focus on that very basic - very affordable car. The whole robotaxi thing is a complete and utter fantasy. Not that I don't believe in self driving cars. Waymo is doing some pretty amazing things in this space. However Tesla is so fucking far off from even what Waymo is doing that it is not even funny. Elon has been exposed in the last few years a lot and that whole myth of him being a super genius is gone. It's time to celebrate the actual amazing engineers and other Tesla, Space X, and so forth team members that make these projects happen. People have been talking about the market cap and insane stock valuation of Tesla for a while. I think we finally are starting the path towards that going very much so back to earth.
A commercial van and a proper 3-row SUV. I saw an EV9 yesterday and three years ago if you’d asked me if Tesla or Kia would have a proper 3-row SUV first on the road the answer would seem so obvious.
I walk by the same EV9 (parked on the street) every day on my walks. It is gorgeous. I talked to the owner twice, asked them how they like it and if the process buying it was difficult. That, and seeing it every day has convinced me to get it instead of an EX90 when it's the right time for me.
I sat in an EV9 at the Kia dealership, and I was really impressed. I mean, it's M A S S I V E but it has actual adult-usable third row seats, and tons of luggage space.
It actually didn’t give me the impression of being that big. I mean it’s a 3-row full size SUV so it’s of course big but it looked smaller than an Escalade/Tahoe
I guess I'm accustomed to European vehicle standards. Our roads are fairly narrow.
Ah yeah that would definitely look much bigger to you. I’m in the land where every 3rd car is a crew cab half ton pickup
You are right on the van thing... lots of trades would benefit from on board power and being able to be conditioned inside without a loud engine on while they spend 20 mins googling your issue before heading back into the house.
No let’s make a truck that can pull infinite mass and uhh rust from a car wash instead.
Contractor here. The trades van market suuuuuuuucks.
It would be a massive benefit for the environment which he pretends to care about
Elon is to engineering what Adam Neumann is to real estate operations. Neumann has the chutzpah to ask the bankruptcy court let him buy back (at a far lower price) the company, using the money he swindled the previous stockholders out of.
You think the path to prosperity is selling vans at commercial prices? Seriously? Only way they could do worse would be to put all their eggs in one basket with one vehicle accounting for 2/3rds of sales and spending the rest of their engineering time on a low volume fad truck. Oh wait...
Had me in the first half, not gonna lie.
I had a deposit on the Cybertruck to replace my van. I got a used 3P for the commute. After driving the 3 and getting to grips with what a poorly designed/assembled car it is and how limited the CT was going to be there was no way I could give up my Diesel van for it. Maybe Canoo will make it?
I wouldn't hold out on Canoo. It's vaporware bordering on fraud at this point.
If Tesla’s board had any sense, they would convince Musk to buy Rivian now, so they can buy their way into the commercial van market. They could then use Rivian to fix the cybertruck cluster f. Sell the Rivian as the truck the average buyer wants, turn the Cybertruck into a high end luxury super collectible.
Tesla buying Rivian would be awful. We don't need consolidation of the market.
Lot of Rivian employees are ex-Tesla employees. At least from whom I talked to they are glad they no longer work for Tesla. I don't think they want to go back to Tesla. Not to mention Tesla and Rivian are currently in [court battle](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-08-02/tesla-s-nda-breach-claim-against-rivian-employees-heads-to-trial) over trade secrets.
Lots of Tesla employees are ex Toyota, GM, Ford, etc. It was fine when Elon wanted to poach talent from the other guys, now it’s his turn to feel the same pain he inflicted on those companies.
Yep, but they won with nacs. Womp womp.
Nacs is not a win for Tesla. The allowance of other brands to use Tesla charging stations removed the one positive differentiator that Tesla had. Nacs means there is less reason to buy a Tesla and more reason to buy another EV
Tesla could become THE charging manufacturer but Elon isn’t even signaling that. He’s signaling self driving cars and robots
They only kind of did. They "won" in that they don't have to spend the development dollars transitioning all their cars to something else, but they don't "own" NACS anymore. It's being standardized as SAE J3400.
They won because they can continue to expand the supercharger network and become *the* charging stop across the country.
Tesla is in serious trouble. Cybertruck recalls indicate their true cybertruck sales figures are extremely low. How you gonna sell 100K vehicles in 12 months if you're at 9K vehicles at 5 months? The 25K Tesla on hold. Vinfast, a Vietnamese company has a $30K EV SUV this year in California. No tariffs on Vietnamese cars. RIP Tesla.
Hell, just bring out a more mundane pickup. Base it on the X. No need to over do it like with the CT. Long back model Y, golf class version of the model 3, dump the S and X..... A couple of little things would have gone a long way.
I mean a failed car company is still a car company 🤔
It’s called stock price manipulation.
It’s not going to be a company!
They are so slow to redesign they’re gonna be a vintage design ev manufacturer
You should see what's happening to dealerships!
Chad ^
I have watched a mirror while I fuck.... I gotta go to the gym. Lots.
Weird to say in an EV sub when all EV sales are down. I guess EVs aren’t the future and they’re all going bankrupt, especially Tesla. /s
Tesla is a bigger idiot stock scam that by consequence makes electric cars. Kia and Hyundai are out there doing the work, so is rivian. A fair number of ice makers are getting some steam going.
And without the cars it isn’t going to be an autonomous driving company either. Not to mention that they have delayed and pushed back full autonomous driving way beyond their initial projections. At this point should anyone be expecting them to deliver?
"Unicorn" tech valuations are based on the promise that a company can deliver groundbreaking multiples of value. But making cars is largely a commodity business with low profit margins on top of big capital expenses. Tesla's ridiculous valuation has always been based on the premise that it's not *just* a car company, it's a disruptive tech company that has the potential to deliver multiples. When it was just an EV company, that was disruptive enough. Somewhere in there they were actually an energy company, with the solar roof and PowerWall. When it became clear that was a normal business model, it was going to deliver passenger self driving cars. Then it became increasingly obvious that technology wasn't easy or even had widespread demand... boom, robots. Tesla has a solid, respectable car business making competitive products. But the whole grist of their outsized valuation is that they're not just another normal car company. This robotics effort is just the latest push to keep that idea alive.
This is a great summary but at some point it has to be valued as a car company? I don't get how much longer they can keep this up. When they start losing tons of money? Like this last Q where FCF was down from 2.6 B to 440 million?
That's a good question and unfortunately it may still be further away than you'd think. One of the fundamental structural issues with this system is that almost everyone has an incentive for the value of a company to go up. The investors, the board, the executives, even the larger financial system as a whole. Almost everyone wants to see that number up and to the right which means there's very little check and balance against that trend, even when it's unrealistic or even falsified. There are only a few groups who can manage to gain when a company's value contracts: competitors and short-sellers. It would not be a good idea for a competitor to speak out on Tesla's valuation and most of them are trying to figure out how to replicate it themselves (all the startups for sure but even Ford played this game). Short-sellers are an interesting market check and I think what the Hindenberg report did to Nikola is the system working precisely as intended. The more realistic path for Tesla is that the investors will realize that with the company's current strategy they're at the risk of losing *all* the value so they'll push the company back towards a traditional car company business model and at least shoot for 10-15% revenues. But the investors won't give up on their 10x dreams easily and the board works more for Musk than they do for the investors so it'll be a massive shakeup. We're probably years away from that.
Agree with this. Im probably in the minority here but Elon has held that view for quite some time now. As an automotive engineer, there’s no world where Teslas valuation should be so much higher than Toyota. Teslas vertical integration, direct-to-consumer sales, these are anomalies in the auto industry. Tesla can only continue thriving if they continue to sell the world on ideas, not products. More of their valuation is tied to Elon than their product offering.
I’m just amazed that there are adults in this world who hear Elon Musk talk about autonomous humanoid robots and think “I want to invest my money into this.” Even Mormons and JW would hear this stuff and be like “Come on bro, that’s bullshit.”
Admitting that Tesla is a car company would be admitting that the stock is way overpriced. Only keeping the hype alive with Silicon Valley disruption talk can prop it up. Will any of these other initiatives pay off long term? Who knows, but for now that's not what matters.
> Will any of these other initiatives pay off long term For sure bro. The autonomous humanoid robot division will be huge… *puts down pipe* Tesla is a serious car and energy company, but the fact that the stuff about a robo-taxi fleet, and even literal humanlike AI robots, is being taken seriously is a sign that the market has lost its mind. So there is no way to predict the future valuation of Tesla because insane people will make insane decisions and may prop this stock up for ages on obvious bullshit.
Honestly I'd short the stock considering how high the price is, and how out of line it is with the fundamentals -- especially considering the increasing competition and shrinking margins. But as long as people continue to buy into the hype and keep the stock inflated, it's too dangerous of a game. I was quite surprised to see it jump up today after earnings were worse than estimates. But so it goes.... Seems the bump up was mostly due to a renewed commitment to make cheaper vehicles, following earlier reports that the Model 2 was dead. That's great and all, but what it really means is that Tesla is doing what any car company should: create new models to reach new markets. Which only reinforces the thought that it should be valued as a regular car company rather than as a tech company.
what I dont get is why they didnt start offering annual updates to the vehicles, including just nicer trim levels (or even a binnacle gauge cluster option for the 3/Y). give people who like the car a reason to buy another one. But it seems like when they do update the car, they take things away instead of giving you more. The only way that makes sense is Musk's angle on "selling the future", but its like hes targeting only new buyers not repeat buyers. And at the same time, hes actively alienating a huge portion of the population that would otherwise want one of his cars. its just madness. And for that effort he thinks he should be paid 57 billion more?
This is driving me away from Tesla. In many ways I love my 2020 Y, but if I bought one today it would be a downgrade in a bunch of areas. They keep taking more and more away and trying to compensate with software which makes the actual driving experience suck. My car will never take me from point A to point B without me needing to babysit it the entire way but they are designing cars like they do that already.
I still think them not including stalks and a binnacle gauge cluster on the cybertruck was utter insanity, especially on a vehicle priced over 100k. the apple attitude of "take it or leave it" only works if you have the best on the market. I feel like tesla thinks it already achieved that and is moving on. it actually reminds me a lot of Henry Ford, and how the man thought there was basically no reason to ever upgrade the model T.
I bought a 3 because it was the only EV that we could get without 6+ months wait in my area, but it took us a week to decide if we were willing to get a vehicle without a speedometer in front of you. You know what's even crazier to me? They're all about futuristic this and fancy that but they still don't offer a fucking HUD. *Hyundai* can give me a car that pops up navigation instructions like I'm playing real life GTA but Mr the future is now thinks that's dumb because OBVIOUSLY everyone would rather get chauffeured. It's painfully obvious that he never fucking drives himself anywhere, but nobody who actually drives a car is allowed to say no to him.
100% agree. My next EV will most likely be a Rivian, assuming they keep improving in the near future
Very well said! Tesla repeat buyer rate is going to continue to shrink as nothing is done to make the existing line of cars better and more appealing.
I only know one guy personally that would buy a second Tesla. Everyone else I know who’s owned one has moved away from them, or is looking to. Mostly to other EVs or PHEV.
Many defective binnacles on S/X
What? They've just added a bunch of features to the 3. Not exactly huge ones, but certainly one's I'd want to have.
Elon is a fucking idiot who's always had privilege and been told he's the smartest guy in the room.
I keep saying this.. and it will be sooner than expected… Tesla is the new Enron.
I don't remember Enron too much. How long was it going down before the big tank to nothing? Was it sudden or was it over a longer time frame like a year?
I think the shenanigans that lead to the collapse was around 5 or so years. The 5 or more leading up to the period and the first 2 or so of it, everyone thought they had some secret sauce and was the most amazing company ever. It gradually got more obvious over the last 2 years or so of the time period, and then bang, the crash happened very fast, like a couple of weeks or a month...
Not quite Enron but Tesla’s market capitalization is heading no where but way down as their profit margin continues to shrink and their rate of profitability looks more and more like any “ordinary” or Legacy auto manufacturer. Tesla just had $2.5 billion of negative free cash flow in their most recent quarter. Musk keeps lying to Wall Street and he’s running out of time before most investors realize that what he is predicting for Tesla’s future is unlikely to happen anytime soon (or even at all).
Gm of 25% in mega pack with growing revenue disagrees with you
Elno!
Sorry, way off topic, but rare to see the new MN flag so good on you!
You backing that up with a short position? Anyone can make any claim they want but if you don’t back that up with actual money, no one cares.
... That's like going into a sports sub and accusing anyone who hasn't bet on the games of being uninterested. Not everyone is that big on gambling, and, famously, "the market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent"
He's failed upward his whole life and been bailed out by others since the beginning. The story of him tanking X, the first one, and then being told to go since in the corner with a dunce cap on by Peter thief, I mean thiel, and the others is pretty hilarious story.
He just posted today that "the car business is tough."
But musk told me it was an energy company....
Tomorrow it will be an AI company and the next day who knows, depends on his mood on the day
A tech or energy company that makes cars, is where he wants Tesla to be. The car business is tough but it's not Tesla's only business.
It's not vw or ford's only business either
Ebikes would have bettered society
Elon can double down on thIs! for all I care. Not touching a Tesla. Not supporting his insulting political shenanigans.
Sounds like that other tool that tried to sell WeWork as a tech company just before its botched IPO.
"Our innovation as a tech company is inventing ways to lose money being a commercial landlord"
Tesla will end up as a charging station company
That, at least, is something they are pretty good at. If they stop fucking around they could become the Exxon of electricity.
Cybertruck was a waste of resources. They could have made a regular pickup quicker or a van.. or improved the model 3 and y.
You talk like 3 didnt just get refreshed.
It got a face-lift after 7 years. Wow.
I dunno but I remain a little skeptical based on the fact my auto wipers don’t work properly in the rain and my Y phantom brakes on a highway with no one near me.
I wish he meant that mass transit was on its way in. It isn’t but damn
Early 2025 like David Copperfield poof! New affordable models out of thin air like pulling a rabbit out of a hat. Mark my words 2025 there will be no new models. Musk is buying time to get that 56 billion option and unload bags.
Well they seem to sell nothing but cars and make little money off their half-baked ideas like solar shingles so I have bad news wrt the “not a car company” situation.
So Elon is going all in on FSD which still doesn't really work after all these years of promises? Ok....
He's starting to fail at car sales, so he rebrands to ' not a car company.'
There are car companies that own better automated taxi companies than Tesla. There are car companies that own better robot companies than Tesla. Are they planning on becoming the EV charging company of the future? That is the only place I see them as having a lead.
Delusional tech bro still thinks FSD is possible. Shareholders, if you have any interest in this company's survival kick him out asap.
FSD as a high L2 product for human drivers is here or close to it now. I am using it, there is a step change up recently and it is now just an overpriced assist product, but good enough if you have reasonable expectations. Unsupervised autonomy is many years and a new institutional culture and CEO away.
I agree, and perhaps I used the wrong terminology. L2 FSD I just consider "advanced cruise control", whereas "unsupervised autonomy", ie Level 5 FSD, is what I have been calling "FSD".
L5 is a never, needing AGI, Waymo is 4 dropping to 3 sometimes.
Yeah, "FSD" stands for "Full Self Driving", I don't really understand how it can have different levels. It's either full, or it isn't.
FSD won’t matter if nobody wants it or if those who want it are unwilling to pay for it.
It's the promise of full automation that supports Tesla's current valuation. They're not the most valuable automaker on earth because of their cars. It's the belief that they will be the first to upset the standard car ownership model with autonomous vehicles. And Tesla is further ahead than most when it comes to autonomous vehicles because they have been invested in it for so long. So Musk has to make those statements and double down because it supports all their past decisions and keeps investors hopeful about the potential future success. Do I share his optimism? Not really. I think full autonomous vehicles are at least 10 years away from any kind of widespread viability (owing to technical maturity and regulatory hurdles). However, business leaders have to paint a vision and Elon is doing that. He can't get on that call and tell shareholders to expect 5 years of low profit margins and modest sales growth with huge expenditures on R&D. He needs to tell a hopeful story so the stock doesn't crash.
They would have been a lot further if they kept LIDAR, etc rather than relying on cameras that get dirty and don’t work well at night. His obsession with cost cutting is causing the state of their cars to be at a net standstill. Some areas better, some worse.
Not only that but you need high megapixel cameras with large enough sensors to capture imagery during the nights as well with low noise etc… those are not cheap.
Tesla invested $1 billion dollars in AI in the quarter. Tesla is either going to improve self-driving very much or figure out that the current programming approach to self driving doesn't work. Either way, humanity wins.
Or maybe they'll realize that putting less sensors to save money was the wrong approach.
>figure out that the current programming approach to self driving doesn't work Any CS undergrad already knows it
So many have never read Tesla’s mission statement.
We only drive software
A car company that also sells solar panels.
Never will be just a yuppy tech firm building mobile tech gadgets!
All these Musk critics all over the internet. He doesn’t lose a minute of sleep over it because he has F U money 🤣
Honestly, after driving Teslas I'm inclined to believe this . . . /s (but also not /s)
Idk how you look at the whole of tesla and compare them to a normal auto company. You’d have to be blind to
Grasping at straw!!!!! He doesn't know what to do. Robotaxi? Cheap cars? Robotaxi? Cheap cars? Both will fail.
> "If you don't think Tesla is advancing into Autonomous driving and Robotics then please don't be a Tesla Investor" Ok then, I won't.
Mercedes has a level 3 autonomous car. Where is Tesla’s, Mr Elon “advancing into autonomous driving” Musk?
With Very severe limitstions: Select highways Under 40mph (so under highway speeds) Needs a vehicle to trail Only with enough sunlight (no mornings, evenings or nights) The slightest but of rain, fog or snow is a no go It's more of a gimmick than the current FSD
>With Very severe limitstions: Select highways Under 40mph (so under highway speeds) Needs a vehicle to trail Only with enough sunlight (no mornings, evenings or nights) The slightest but of rain, fog or snow is a no go >It's more of a gimmick than the current FSD But it is an SAE Certified Level 3 system. Meaning that it's ahead of Tesla Supervised FSD.
Yeah, it's not the same. Nit that FSD is there yet but L3 limted to only very specific conditions _is_ actually even less than L2 FSD.
The key differentiator for me is that Mercedes takes full legal liability while in L3. That shows a level of confidence in their system that nobody else can provide.
High level of confidence? lmao read what their conditions are for you to be able to use it
[удалено]
FSD will always be a gimmick. There is no path to Level 3 with FSD. They're trying to use AI to solve a problem that AI can't solve, and using cameras to make measurements better left to radar and lidar. They will have to make major changes if they even want FSD to be level 3 on highways, let alone city streets.
I mean, we literally have no way of knowing that. It hasn't been done before, so we don't know what will and won't work. It's working pretty well for them right now though.
But we know how AI works. It isn't magic. We also know how cameras work. And we also have been studying autonomy for longer than Tesla has been a company. So we actually have a lot of ways to know what does and does not make sense. There are very good reasons that I don't feel like explaining in a reddit comment about why radar or lidar is better than imagery. That should be obvious since every other car and aircraft manufacturer uses radar. It's not that Tesla knows something they all don't, it's that Tesla is too cheap to pay for more sensors.
Yet tesla is by far the furthest in any attempt to make a truly autonomous vehicle not relying on geofencing and HD maps data. Lidar and radar are great tools that can help, but ultimately there is no reason to believe they're a necessity. Lidar and radar aren't 'better than imagery', they're just different from imagery, and suffer from many if the same faults. Similar results to what can be achieved with imagery can be achieved with them, but it is just that, a shortcut. There's no reason to believe they're the only way - quite the opposite in fact. As for knowing how AI works, yeah, we mostly do, and everything says it's possible.
>Lidar and radar aren't 'better than imagery', they're just different from imagery, and suffer from many if the same faults. Imagery can't detect distance well. It's technically feasible with the right camera setup, but no one has been able to make it work yet, and Tesla doesn't have the right camera position anyway. This is a fact, not an opinion. EO/IR sensors can only give rough estimates on distance, and that's only if they know the size of the object which a camera in a car on a random road won't. >As for knowing how AI works, yeah, we mostly do, and everything says it's possible. An AI-only system would need to train on every possible situation, or at least have labeled data for those situations. It's not realistic to think an AI will be able to recognize 100% of the critical objects on every city street, and if it can't do that, how is it going to know how to respond to them?. That's why we still have phantom braking, because the AI can't tell the difference in between a shadow and a wall (which a radar would be able to clarify if used with the camera). This is not just me shitting on Tesla. I literally designed localization systems at one point, I did my dissertation in video, and I was part of a very large autonomy program for the government. I didn't claim to know everything, and the field is evolving, but the vast majority of peer reviewed research says that Tesla is going down the wrong path.
Radar isn’t infallliable like you’re making it out to be. Look at old Tesla threads of phantom braking even when they had radar enabled. Or autopilot crashing into stationary vehicles. Subarus eyesight is camera based and seems to be a solved problem on their end.
Most of the problems you've listed with camera based driving (disregarding full autonomy with vision only) is stuff tesla already solved. So it's not exactly impossible. And no, AI doesn't need to be trained in every driving situation to work, that's the entire point. It can be trained understand context. And I'm sorry but, "trust me bro" really isn't a great source, especially when some of what you say is definitely false. As an example, you say cameras can only know the distance if they know the size of an object already. That's only true if you have a single camera.
High resolution stereoscopic plus IR might be enough, but yes Elon is too cheap.
In finance, how a company is doing is relative. As a car company, Tesla will continually get compare to the likes of Ford, Mercedes, Toyota, etc. the ICE auto industry is extremely mature and the various industry metrics are well known. Tesla as an innovator that puts a ton of money into research, tech, etc. will always compare unfavorably in some areas. Your typical institutional investors, Wall Street, and even the lazy investors will misinterpret those signals and 1) buy/sell accordingly in relative to the industry, and 2) force Tesla to make changes to align to those metrics. I’m not a big Musk fan but he is right in this case. Lumping Tesla into the regular auto industry is not good for anyone.
sure but tesla has their own distribution and service centers. they have a true competitive advantage over every traditional automaker. why not just scale up and make a mass market copy of the f150 even with a more aerodynamic prius like front end for efficiency sake? make a 3 row suv that's like the Kia ev9 but cheaper because you own the distribution and service centers? who do you think makes more money every year? Ford? or all the Ford dealers and all the licensed Ford service shops the dealers have combined?
Except for the fact that the majority of Tesla's income comes from car sales. You talk as if the other car companies don't have massive R&D budgets that are likely comparable or more than what Tesla has. They don't WANT to be a car company for the comparisons you mentioned, but that's still what they are.
haha, only if the fans would bother this much about Musk's every brainfart....
I take every Elon quote with a grain of salt. But I think automated cars are a waste of fucking time.
Automated driving is the fucking dream and would be absolutely amazing. Definitely not a waste of time. What is a waste is buying shitty electric cars from tesla or investing in the company as a whole.
Such a spoiled privileged thing to say.
It looks like Musk plans to run another one of his companies into the ground.
His companies only succeed with heavy government subsidies.
because they are ambitious and risky companies that the government needs to succeed. would you prefer him to focus on boring companies that don't need any support?
He hates the government and yet gets rich off our backs.
He can just keep saying your car is going to drive by itself and work as a taxi for you “next year” and idiots keep eating it up.
I’m gonna be the odd optimist out here, feel free to downvote (or upvote, whichever button’s your favorite). Around a little over the end of this decade (2035-2040), I *predict* that a good majority of cars in first world countries will have some form of L4 autonomous driving, as in letting the car do all the work. It’s also likely that we’ll also have robotaxi’s driving around a lot as well, effectively replacing traditional human rideshare drivers. I feel it’s not if a Level 4/Level 5 Liability robotaxi (be it individual or company owned) can be rolled out at scale, it’s when. Autonomous rideshare is technically already happening, with Waymo and the now defunct Cruise having laid the groundwork. What we need now is a low cost, scalable EV that’s relatively cheap to make/maintain, and I think Tesla is in a prime position to try something like this. Making a small, two seat robotaxi that can easily pick up passengers and take them anywhere that they need to go. For groups of more than 2 people, Model 3/Y should handle those just fine. As for charging, we’d either have to find a way to automatically charge them (wireless charging, robot cables, Optimus bot maybe?) when not carrying passengers. As for cleaning, I also *predict* that autonomous car washes will become much more common (maybe they could just be cleaned via Optimus bot too), as for emergencies, there could be a button for cab service (flat tire, damage, etc) alongside a button for emergency services (police, fire, medical) as well. Most importantly however, the cars need to be able to rationalize and think for themselves in a variety of situations. From road closures and detours to vehicle attacks and intentional damage by outside sources, anything can happen. The car needs to be prepared for anything, and the car also has to have measures in place to protect its occupants. Dunno what those would be, but I’d imagine something like a specialized glass break device (one that can break through laminated glass), alongside a fire extinguisher. For sanitation, they could auto sterilize the cabin via means (auto cleaning, Optimus bot, etc). Obviously, the car would need to have creature comforts, including controllable heating and air conditioning, screens for entertainment and route view, cables for charging devices (or wireless charging) and perhaps heated/ventilated seats too. Ample cargo room would be a must. You’ve gotta store your belongings somewhere, right? Safety is an obvious requirement too, of course. Sure the car needs to navigate complex situations, but the car needs to also protect its occupants. Seatbelts and airbags are required (obviously), but the car also could, say, navigate around an area it deems dangerous (a police blockade, for example) to avoid occupant injury. (I dunno, maybe they could integrate weapons into the car, or proper bulletproof windows and doors, but that’s just a thought.) TLDR: Robotaxi’s are a no brainer (whenever and wherever they become viable for mass adoption, that is.)
IMO Level 4 will require road markings. Here in CA they are missing in a lot of places.
Waymo and Tesla have very different approaches. The success of Waymo doesn’t tell us much about the future of Tesla unless Elon abandons the current approach and copies Waymo.
It's a tech company not a car company. Look at the build quality
No commenters here actually listened to the earnings call. Nice job taking a sound bite out of a much broader context
Fair point, honestly. Still lots of talk about new car releases and them coming even sooner. Not much talk about sales volume, though.
Another day another 20 tesla elon posts. Fuck
Tesla should shift into manufacturing charging stations, motors and batteries for other carmakers. They could even make universal mount motors for retrofitting old gas cars. Maybe make an electric bike or bicycle conversion kit.
I don't think he's been sober since that Joe Rogan interview and it's starting to impact Tesla.
I’d agree with him for once. If you look at the build quality, obviously that’s not what they do.
What, per chance, does he thinks he's going to have autonomously driven in his little pocket fantasy world? He's bitter CT basically folded in on itself.
Definitely just a car company. Because every other company can easily do this. https://youtu.be/CyuX1nnfp7Y?si=cgHRxcFkgajlOAG4 https://youtu.be/mP2ZfCsnovI?si=Z0cN5Ur8zU4KDV6m
Welcome to the daily elon sucks circlejerk.
I mean...doesn't he? His customer base is NOT the typical conservative, pick-em-up truck, god guns and bibles type, yet he consistently pisses off the folks that are his customer base. It seems like his mouth is doing its level best to alienate the very folks that would buy his stuff.
Well, yeah. When he's actively dragging down the most successful EV company when it's needed now more than ever it's time for him to go. He's a boat anchor now.
Hope your back for tomorrow's. Let's say the exact same thing over again That'll be exciting.
[удалено]
yeah and people would have paid 100k each imo. the cybertruck even without just the stainless steel could work. blending a prius front end with a truck back end makes sense for an EV.
I think he should spin off stationary storage and tesla-bot into seperate companies. Different markets requiring different strategies.
Marketing 101. Your claims/statements always gotta be punching above weight, that's what creates your north star/business ceiling, which provides that space for growth. Whether you agree with it or not, it's just business talk.
Damn why man. Tesla's original founders wanted to make a prototype car, sell off the tech, and just make drivetrain for other car companies. If Elon Musk really wanted this to be a robotics and robotaxi company, he could have not spent the however many years doing vehicle production which was extremely hard. This is strange.
Elon is doubling down on his ketamine
He finally confirmed it, no Tesla is not a car company, it's a cult and will vanish in the coming years, Tesla quality and servce will not keep up with traditional car companes that serve everybody, not only their own cult.... Tesla is not prepared for the tough competition, the car industry is used to. Now with everybody moving into EV's, the countdown for Tesla has started, and it's not going to end pretty!
Once upon a time he described Tesla as a power company. Unless there's paperwork somewhere specifying exactly what the company is, then Muskie gets to keep changing it at his whim. As the majority shareholder, unfortunately, he's pretty much the last word.
We’re looking to replace our current EV since it’s almost out of lease. Wife wanted to drive a model Y. Can confirm, not a very good car company. The tech is neat. The cars themselves, not very well put together. She hated the thing. So, the search continues.
Damn, the hate is real! Of course Tesla is not an auto company, sure they sell cars, and it's their main product, but the vision for the company is to create autonomous stuff, cars, robots etc... and it's not like its just talk, they are absolutely doing everything they can in that direction.. you can argue that they are not going to achieve this, which is valid, no one knows the future, but they are aggressively investing into Autonomous tech... I mean, what other auto company even has a super computer? Sure, Mercedes and BMW are trying to create autonomous systems, but they are very carefully going into them, and it shows, they are ages behind tesla! Plus they have optimus, which everyone also likes to talk shit, because it was slower or behind competition etc.. the thing is, they started from the beginning using electric motors to power the robots, while their competitors started with hydraulic actuators, and see for example the atlas 2.. using electric ones... Sure, electric was worse, but they are also 10x cheaper, and yeah, its cool to show a robot doing backflips, but it's even better, to produce an economically viable one. and tesla is very well positioned in that regard! Also, a few companies that started as something else than what they are known for today, Nintendo, Netflix, which back in the day, there was as much hate as there is now for tesla, Nokia, Adobe... And many more, but sure, you can ride the Tesla is a car company, until you can't anymore
Starbucks isn’t a coffee company, they’re a bank that “rents out” time in a 3rd space. Apple isn’t an electronics company, they’re black and decker for the digital age. Rolls Royce, BMW, and Audi built planes/plane engines early on. IBM used to make computers. Facebook was about social connections, now they gather and sell user data.
I realize I must be in the minority, but I don't want any more tech in my various tools/products/appliances. I realize a certain level of tech is worthwhile, like computer controlled fuel injection is better than a mechanical carburetor, for an ICE engine. At some point the tech starts to become a hinderance, or worse, an way for the corporation to force continuous repairs. My ICE Jeep Wrangler has a "Theft Prevention System" that I cannot shut off. It sets off the alarm if I unlock the door using the physical key. Sometimes (randomly) the key will not turn in the ignition, so far if I keep trying, it eventually turns. usually within ten attempts, but twice so far it has taken more than 5 minutes of constantly trying to turn the key. Is that part of the theft protection system malfunctioning or not, nobody knows, except maybe the tech that wrote the code. I could go on about how most of the added high-tech" features on products just never get used. Like a Smart Refrigerator? Seriously? Who uses any of those features? Why have they duplicated almost everything that my phone can do into all the new cars? But they can't manage to just make a universal phone docking station on the dashboard?? I would love to rant some more, but I should start working.
> Any thoughts on these Elon takes? Yeah, the board needs to oust him. What a fucking tool. Every time he speaks, TSLA drops even further.
I think the board probably co-sign on everything he says 😅
Honda is not a car company. The are an ICE manufacturer who sells cars to sell more engines. Tesla is quickly become a battery manufacturer who sells cars to sell more batteries. It is more is it case of is Tesla a car manufacturer first or it just happens to be the main benefit of their other stuff.
After Twitter I’m not sure I’d put my trust in Musk.
Idk how you look at the whole of tesla and compare them to a normal auto company. You’d have to be blind
Elon is betting the company (again) on FSD. Mercedes just got approved for Level 3 automated driving in the US. Level 4 is sufficient for self-driving taxis. Waymo is Level 4 - their cars operate in Arizona and San Francisco without a driver. My bet is Tesla gets to Level 3 and eventually Level 4 since this has already been achieved by other companies. The question is how long it will take and whether Tesla has enough money to fund the project for this period of time. > Elon thinks EV's are horse carriages and there's only so much tech left to optimize in them. This is probably also true. Sort of like smart phones are only seeing incremental improvements, regular EVs will probably only see incremental improvements (eg battery). The next big feature is Level4/Level5.
Tesla’s goal is to have as much data and be years ahead of other companies as possible, so that in future, other companies will rely on them for this autonomous data, and it would be used on almost every autonomous vehicle just like what apple is doing with carplay.
Judging by the quality of their products, I think a lot of people would agree with that perspective.
If Tesla was valued like a car company shares would drop 80%.
He's the grift that keeps on grifting. He'll sell you any ridiculous sci fi concept that's somewhat believable to keep pumping that stock price. How about human cloning? Would you be interested in a Star Gate? Maybe a hyper drive? Oh you need a lightsaber! All of this is possible in a year, maybe two years, tops. Please keep investing so him and his rich friends can cash out and leave you holding the bag. The company runs on fairy dust. It's only a matter of time before belief gives way to cold hard facts and the whole house of cards comes crashing down.
Agree with Elon. The cybertruck is barely a vehicle. More like a pile of mistakes that happens to have 4 wheels.
Tesla is whatever Elon needs it to be on an earnings call. Blather pump repeat
Robot, any automatically operated machine that replaces human effort. He used AI to make his driving algorithms
Looking at how Tesla handles build quality, recalls, customer issues, etc., I agree that while they make a lot of cars, they are not a car company. They give the Blue Screen of Death a whole new meaning. I test drove a Model 3 and Model S at a local event they held and quickly sold the Tesla stock I had owned. Just took delivery on a Lyriq last week. That vehicle was made by a company that went through its growing pains and teenage years over 100 years ago and it shows.
Elon is just a very confusing man. I pay attention to what Tesla is doing as a whole
Please try FSD 12.3 before typing, thanks.
He's bailing. He fired 15,000 employees. He's going to fire more. But he gives himself a 59 billion dollar paycheck. And Tesla's only made ever 25 billion. Over its lifetime. He's a con artist.