Musk endeavours

[Gilgongo]

Of course FSD may never happen, but the various testers of the latest version are more enthusiastic than in a long time & the neural net seems to have advanced to close to human level, but will need to get better.

Early adopters of speech recognition (similar in its day to the-future-is-now feelings about FSD) in the late 90's to early 2000's were very loyal to it in the hope that it would get better. But it just never did really, and now it's here (well, almost - which is the problem), hardly anyone cares any more. Wonder if that's going to happen to FSD? 99.999% fine, but that last remaining error point is forever too much to worry about. I'll just drive the damn car

[odysseus2000]

As there is currently nothing in the share price for FSD

An assertion without evidence, given that the Tesla market cap is several multiples of other car companies that sell more cars at higher margins with higher rates of growth.

But then you see that Tesla can't even deliver windscreen wipers that work :

https://insideevs.com/features/706288/t ... blem-musk/
As Elon Musk’s Tesla forges ahead with moonshot projects like self-driving technology and artificially intelligent humanoid robots, its customers are stuck struggling with a much more mundane issue: Their windshield wipers suck.

“It’s the single worst thing about the car, honestly,” one Tesla Model 3 owner commented on one of the dozens of Reddit threads on the matter. Other internet users identifying as Tesla drivers have called their wipers “trash,” “absolutely infuriating” and “utterly useless.”

This isn’t a new problem, mind you: Tesla’s wipers have been broken for years, sparking a relentless chorus of complaints that the EV maker has never sufficiently addressed. It’s an embarrassing problem to have for a car company that claims to be so technologically far ahead of its peers.

And all because they are trying to develop a robot system to switch on the wipers when it "sees" rain rather than just using a <$10 sensor like everyone else. And more to the point, they insist on shipping cars that don't work very well and hoping they can improve it with an OTA update rather than installing a sensor that works for customers now, and then replacing it with the vision system in new models as and when they have got it working.

Yes they save the cost of a sensor, but in the meantime their customers get a crappy experience.

Do you have evidence that FSD is currently in the share price.

Sure Tesla trades at a higher margin than legacy auto, but it is becoming dominant in BEV with very substantial growth ahead based on the current trajectory & with strong & growing charging revenues.

Additionally Tesla has potential growth from Optimus & has the only over the air updater that works reliably.

If you are selling 2 million cars per year, then a $10 part costs in aggregate $20 million, well worth saving.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Of course FSD may never happen, but the various testers of the latest version are more enthusiastic than in a long time & the neural net seems to have advanced to close to human level, but will need to get better.

Early adopters of speech recognition (similar in its day to the-future-is-now feelings about FSD) in the late 90's to early 2000's were very loyal to it in the hope that it would get better. But it just never did really, and now it's here (well, almost - which is the problem), hardly anyone cares any more. Wonder if that's going to happen to FSD? 99.999% fine, but that last remaining error point is forever too much to worry about. I'll just drive the damn car

Maybe, but similar was said about SpaceX’s many failures to re-use boosters, but now it is seen as a large competitive advantage.

Text to speech is not confined in the way FSD is & is being done with a tiny fraction of the onboard AI capability of a Tesla.

Clearly fsd has to work better than a human with high reliability. Perhaps the closest similar systems are airline auto pilot & cruise missiles. Both have to operate without flaws and are constrained by flight corridors etc & they work very well, perhaps FSD will reach similar levels of acceptance.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

2nd fly through of giga factory Berlin:

https://x.com/gigafactories/status/1763 ... DCpgdbFBxg

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Elon Musk sues OpenAI:

https://www.ft.com/content/6a4cfcd6-b39 ... ce23682996

Regards,

[scrumpyjack]

I see the lawyers who successfully got Elon's massive share award cancelled are seeking a success fee of $6 billion payable by Tesla in Tesla shares. They helpfully point out that the fee will be tax deductible for Tesla.

ps it works out at $288,000 per hour they spent on the case!

[odysseus2000]

Byd sales down heavily on a month-month comparison:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 024-02-07/

Clearly the Chinese economy is in trouble as evidenced by the collapse of Grande & this now looks to have spread to byd. It will be interesting to watch this develop.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Byd slashes prices of upgraded models:

https://www.arenaev.com/byds_price_chop ... s-3211.php

Regards,

[Hallucigenia]

Byd sales down heavily on a month-month comparison:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 024-02-07/

Clearly the Chinese economy is in trouble as evidenced by the collapse of Grande & this now looks to have spread to byd.

...except month-on-month comparisons are never very reliable, especially when it's the month containing New Year. And sure enough, you are omitting the fact that at a national level, "new energy vehicles" are up 78.8% yoy but down 38.8% mom, BYD are "merely" up 33.1% yoy.

So it's clearly a seasonal/year-end effect.

BYD (002594.SZ), opens new tab saw NEV sales at 201,493 in January, the lowest since March 2023. Its sales were up 33.14% from the year earlier but down 40.92% from December when BYD pushed inventories to dealers at the year-end to meet its annual sales target of 3 million units.

[odysseus2000]

Byd sales down heavily on a month-month comparison:

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... 024-02-07/

Clearly the Chinese economy is in trouble as evidenced by the collapse of Grande & this now looks to have spread to byd.

...except month-on-month comparisons are never very reliable, especially when it's the month containing New Year. And sure enough, you are omitting the fact that at a national level, "new energy vehicles" are up 78.8% yoy but down 38.8% mom, BYD are "merely" up 33.1% yoy.

So it's clearly a seasonal/year-end effect.

BYD (002594.SZ), opens new tab saw NEV sales at 201,493 in January, the lowest since March 2023. Its sales were up 33.14% from the year earlier but down 40.92% from December when BYD pushed inventories to dealers at the year-end to meet its annual sales target of 3 million units.

It might be just seasonal and year end. We will get a better steer as the months progress, but the Chinese economy looks to be struggling and BYD are cutting prices and their share price is well off its high:

https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/BYDDF/? ... C_0FpmAnlZ

Regards,

[Hallucigenia]

BYD are cutting prices and their share price is well off its high:

So when BYD does it, it presages imminent doom, but the same is going to jump-start growth at Tesla?

Shareprice of TSLA and BYD are both down about 20% in the last 6 months.

[odysseus2000]

BYD are cutting prices and their share price is well off its high:

So when BYD does it, it presages imminent doom, but the same is going to jump-start growth at Tesla?

Shareprice of TSLA and BYD are both down about 20% in the last 6 months.

The general theme on this board has been that BYD will kill Tesla & price cuts by Tesla were touted as evidence of Tesla’s doom & BYD success. The most recent data shows that BYD are also cutting prices which either means Tesla’s price cuts have hurt them, or the Chinese consumer has stopped spending. Other data is more supportive of the latter, but we will need a few more months of numbers to get a good feel for what is happening.

Regards,

[Howard]

"Tesla stock tumbles 7% as shipments slump, new price cuts announced, Tesla shares dropped to new multi-week lows as slowing China shipments and new price cuts there hint at troubles for the EV stalwart in the world’s largest car market."

"Tesla reported 60,365 vehicle shipments from its Giga Shanghai factory in February, according to preliminary data from China’s PCA (Passenger Car Association) via Bloomberg. The February shipments represent a 16% drop from a month ago, a 19% drop from a year ago, and the lowest shipment total since December 2022.

Tesla shares closed down 7.16%, its lowest close since Feb. 13."

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-st ... 46757.html

regards

Howard

[odysseus2000]

"Tesla stock tumbles 7% as shipments slump, new price cuts announced, Tesla shares dropped to new multi-week lows as slowing China shipments and new price cuts there hint at troubles for the EV stalwart in the world’s largest car market."

"Tesla reported 60,365 vehicle shipments from its Giga Shanghai factory in February, according to preliminary data from China’s PCA (Passenger Car Association) via Bloomberg. The February shipments represent a 16% drop from a month ago, a 19% drop from a year ago, and the lowest shipment total since December 2022.

Tesla shares closed down 7.16%, its lowest close since Feb. 13."

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-st ... 46757.html

regards

Howard

Currently down another 3%.

Last month had the Chinese new year, but there has been selling of all BEV companies. Possible rotation into AI & crypto equities.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

More on the Luddite attack on Giga Berlin:

https://www.autoweek.com/news/a60124905 ... on-attack/

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Musk to open source a version of Grok:

https://www.pymnts.com/news/artificial- ... -ai-model/

Wonder how msft, who spent a fortune on OpenAI, feel about this?

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Boring company to dig tunnels under giga Texas:

https://www.teslarati.com/elon-musk-the ... sla-texas/

Apparently new tunneling machines can tunnel at a rate of 1 mile per day.

Regards,

[Tedx]

I read recently that Tesla are planning to fit Starlink to Cybertrucks. They did say that latency was a bit of a problem at present, but they suggested that its the next step to self driving Teslas.

*This was one of those more speculative future technology type websites, so could (most likely!) be entirely speculative.

[odysseus2000]

I read recently that Tesla are planning to fit Starlink to Cybertrucks. They did say that latency was a bit of a problem at present, but they suggested that its the next step to self driving Teslas.

*This was one of those more speculative future technology type websites, so could (most likely!) be entirely speculative.

Could be fitted, but likely as an option as few cybertrucks will be used away from cell systems.

As I understand version 12, the idea is to create a car that can drive itself even if it has no internet connectivity, in the same way a human would, but aims & what happens do not always converge.

Regards,

[odysseus2000]

Interesting review of the Model 3 Highland by Munro (23 minutes):

https://youtu.be/20iGbWl46Tw?si=CR8r02BRdyOzgOAo

As always the new model is found to be a big improvement over what came before, even though what came before was praised as great.

Nevertheless, it is interesting to see the side impact door protection with a lug from the bottom of the door going into the cill & the reviewers comments on the handling & reduced noise with high end features found on a Cadillac & BMW for door hinges plus the removal of stalks from the steering column.

It will be super interesting to see the tear down of the Cyber Truck that is promised for the near future. Munro rate this as the best vehicle Tesla produce.

Regards,