There are some autonomous cars with lidar out there where the lidar is so powerful it can wreck a camera close up, but is still safe for eyes.
Switch up FaceID to use a more powerful laser which will wreck the phones camera, and start making webcams for non macs that are required to have this in them for Teams to work.
A thing would need to officially be a flop to be considered squandered like the Cybertruck is looking like.
They might have a few failures ahead of them yet though, but you can’t call a mid flight project squandered.
Edit: e.g part of that loss could be attributed to them finalizing and now starting production at the megapack factory at Shanghai. Short of Elon backlash stopping sales of their commercial batteries, that won’t be squandered and will make a billion or two or three in profits this year.
The article doesn’t say they’ve never made a profit on any of their cars. If that’s what you got from that, you should try reading it again.
Also, if you make 1 billion in profit on something, and then spend 2 billion researching and developing and setting up a factory to build a new product, you end up with a loss of 1 billion. That does not mean your first thing is unprofitable. This is pretty basic stuff.
The vehicles are profitable, they just didn’t provide enough profit this quarter to cover their R&D and capital expenditures for growth.
Edit: Sorry, and in case it wasn’t clear, their R&D and capital expenditures dwarf the ZEV credits every quarter.
Not a single tesla vehicle has ever been profitable as an actual vehicle.
This honestly couldn’t be further from the truth.
Tesla’s vehicles once ramped have always been extremely profitable (except probably the CyberTruck as it hasn’t properly ramped due to low demand)
Any losses you see are due to their aggressive growth involving capital expenditures and research and development. It’s not that the vehicle isn’t profitable.
The ZEV credits are just bonus money that they can then leverage to expand faster.
Edit: If you want to try and see this another way that might make sense… The Model S and X were very profitable, but they didn’t make enough money to fund the expansion for the Model 3 and Y. Ditch the Model 3 and Y, and remain a boutique luxury car company, and they would posted profits instead of losses. It wasn’t the cars losing money, it was the growth. The ZEV credits accelerated that growth immensely by giving them more breathing room.
There are other electric semi trucks out there, but none (at least as of last year) compare in specs and capabilities. The big issue is their power consumption is much higher than the Tesla Semi which has been repeatedly validated by their testers as even better than what Tesla advertises. Efficiency will be king in this kind of business.
Worse efficiency = less range = more batteries = less load capacity = less money per delivery
E.g this is from DHL
Over a two-week trial period this summer, DHL Supply Chain USA took a thorough look under the hood of the Tesla Semi, integrating the e-truck into 3,000 miles (5,000 km) of normal operations out of Livermore, California. The trial included one long haul of 390 miles (625 km) – fully loaded with a gross combined weight of 75,000 pounds (34 metric tons) – confirming the Tesla Semi’s ability to carry typical DHL payloads over a long distance on a single charge.
During the trial, the trial vehicle averaged 1.72 kWh/mile operating at speeds exceeding 50 mph (80 km/h) on average for over half its time on the road. The result exceeded our expectations and even Tesla’s own rating.
Putting the Tesla Semi to the test allowed us to validate whether it could travel 500 miles with a fully loaded trailer and see what our drivers thought of the truck’s performance. We were encouraged by how quickly they gained confidence with the vehicle and leveraged the Tesla’s smart features to help improve performance, comfort, and the overall driver experience.
Edit: Just some examples… I don’t know if these have been verified in use unlike the Tesla, so all theoretical based on the advertised miles/battery size.
And those are all shorter range at that.
Edit: I should also add… we don’t know the price of the Tesla Semi. Its possible that its ridiculously priced and the increased efficiency is negated even over the life of the vehicle compared to the other trucks. That’s a big unknown given these are pilot vehicles.
He also said Canada is ‘not a real country’ so…
The dual motor was originally announced at 50k
Single motor rear-wheel drive with 250 miles of range, 7,500-pound towing capacity, and 0–60 mph capabilities in under 6.5 seconds, for $39,900
Dual motor all-wheel drive with 300 miles of range, 10,000-pound towing capacity, and 0–60 mph in under 4.5 seconds for $49,900
It’s probably going to happen in June like they said, it’s just a matter of how long before something really bad happens and they have to stop, because something bad is probably going to happen. But it probably is imminent, temporarily.
Putting my LG G Flex which had a boot loop problem due to a soldering issue on the battery solved the problem temporarily!
Edit: oh also that was the freezer
Their insurance is (was?) kind of like that as well if you get the saftey score one. While some things are more general and concrete like following distance, time of day driving, they have one for forward collision warnings.
I’m not sure how much time you’ve spent in a Tesla, but that system is notorious for going off incorrectly. It’s specifically really bad with parked cars on the side of the road on turns. So you’re driving along a city street with cars parked on the side and it goes off and now your insurance premiums are more expensive.
I don’t think you could find a single Tesla owner who hasn’t had multiple false warnings, and consistently in certain circumstances.
So someone of course starts a lawsuit and Tesla initially defends itself, but just last week or something like that, it’s no longer part of the safety score
It goes further than that. They can track how people interact with the page, order of buttons pressed, if or when they abort a workflow etc. You can go as deep down the rabbit hole of analytics and optimizations as you want.
I’d want whatever the warranty was to be the same plus the miles.
So if it’s 5 year 50k miles and I get it at 1k, I 'd want 5 year 51k miles.
Even at these lower prices, Tesla makes more money on their EVs than their competitors. That’s part of why the others haven’t been able to expand and compete as quickly. Expanding an expensive vehicle becomes a bigger liability as you have less pricing room. GM is only planning to have their first EV profitable year this year, and I’ll believe it when I see it.
The Cybertruck is probably another story though, I don’t know if that’s profitable at the lower than expected sales rate.
Edit: E.g the Bolt everyone loves from GM never made GM money. That’s why they didn’t sell more. They did learn from it though so it wasn’t a total loss for them.
Samsung: god damnit, now we have to use the $0.30 washer instead of the $0.29 washer and itll last at least 10 years longer!
That’s 10s of millions in extra sales lost!
The only people he’s going to have to upgrade are those who purchased it. In the past there’s been some small claims court cases where someone won about being upgraded for a subscription, but if that is truly a concern, Tesla could stop the subscriptions for a few years and let the cars age out. They have no obligations to offer a subscription, it wasn’t a thing when the original promise was made.
Also, they only need to upgrade cars when it’d actually be capable. The promise is to upgrade cars to capable hardware, not upgrade cars with every hardware iteration, so as long as hw4 can’t actually do it, they’re likely in the clear as well.
Given most people don’t think they can actually make fsd work, then they’re in the clear.
If they somehow make it work, the upgrade cost is going to be peanuts compared to the insane amount of money they’d start printing.
So it’s not much if a story.
Edit: also worth mentioning, he’s been pretty clear over the years that FSD is going to cost a lot more money once it’s available for real. So if he does have to upgrade everyone who pays for it (lets assume they stop subscriptions to avoid that issue), even if that means upgrading all HW4 cars as well because it needs HW5, he can jack the price up more to help cover the upgrade cost. No one should be under the illusion that purchasing FSD will be cheaper than it is today if they succeed.
I’m pretty much on board with getting rid of software patents as they are absolutely ridiculous, but I don’t think we should necessarily get rid of the rest, but they do require reform.
Yikes that’s a bad rate.
It would be nice to get rid of it, but it will cost a lot more money that no one wants to pay even if it’s actually a good use of it.
The Cybertruck doesn’t violate any US laws, there’s nothing to disallow it, and independent testing gave it 5 star saftey rating.
And while OEMs do self certify, they get spot checked to ensure compliance. There’s too many new vehicles and variants for the NHSTA/EPA etc. to ever check every single one in detail.
Edit: and if you really wanna get into it, most of the other OEMs everyone wants to love actually put defeat devices for said spot checking to lie and kill us sooner with bad air for $$$
Next thing you know he’s going to say WordPress isn’t used by anyone.
I wouldn’t really called it a solved problem when waymo with lidar is crashing into physical objects
https://www.msn.com/en-us/autos/news/waymo-recalls-1200-robotaxis-after-cars-crash-into-chains-gates-and-utility-poles/ar-AA1EMVTF
It’d probably be better to say that Lidar is the path to solving these problems, or a tool that can help solve it. But not solved.
Just because you see a car working perfectly, doesn’t mean it always is working perfectly.