Rivian S-1
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Neither Tesla, nor Rivian are doing something wrong if people believe their narrative and invest in such a future.
Rivian, on the other hand, has not met the promised future on any timeline yet. Perhaps they will, but their past experience does not leave me with such high confidence.
This kind of “going public” setup seems ridiculous. It’s like there’s a room behind the curtain with some kind of money laundering or backhanded deals being brokered and the company itself is just a ‘front’ to look busy.
With the latest estimated Q3 production numbers for Tesla they will now have a 1 million annualized rate of car production and it will be growing annually at around 50% for many years to come.
(FYI : The numbers came out, real number is 950' annualized.)
I'm sure there is a place for Rivian if they can execute,- I will not argue that the price of Rivian is right, but I would interject that the marketplace is shifting and dramatically so.
The most reasonable argument is that the stock market does not view the automotive incumbents as competitive against new electric car companies and this shows in the valuation.
The old auto companies have not innovated, and now they are being out innovated. Their market share are in free fall and there is a lot of possibility for startups to grab a share of the market.
Here's the latest from Germany;
Translated quote from VW Brand CEO Ralf Brandstätter;
'It is urgently necessary that a new course is set in Wolfsburg. Future competition with Tesla's new Gigafactory will be brutal. The electric car pioneer sets new standards in car production.. ..For example, a Model 3 is built in 10 hours, more than 3 times as fast as a VW ID.3 in Zwickau. This puts Tesla in another dimension in terms of productivity and profitability'
(The ID series of cars were the supposedly Tesla Killers from VW)
From ;
https://www.businessinsider.de/wirtschaft/kampf-gegen-gruenh...
some more context;
That would explain the panel gaps.
On a more serious note, where I think Tesla is way above the other (old) manufacturers is in software, the Germans especially have treated the software as something extrinsic to building a car until now (for good reason, given the circumstances) but this has changed once EVs came into play, you have to have top-notch software developers and top-notch software execution in order to get everything out of a car battery.
I see what you mean about money floating around. But does it ever reach a point where there is a common sense counter-weight that maybe the latest pets.com is not worth the GDP of a small country.
I think Tesla’s stock is overvalued but I’ve momentum traded it a couple of times (especially when Elon’s tweets seem upbeat a couple of days before earnings are announced). Sure I think I’m buying at inflated prices but I’m guessing I can sell at even more inflated prices.
Ah yes .. the oblivion>reality optimisation the modern world has been gifted. Never ceases to create interesting use cases.
You're smarter than me with trading/finance. I cannot educe much sense from any of it these days - and don't have the kahunas to trade on vibe.
Weirdly, my only finance buddy (buys shares for super companies) actually cautiously observes a company's history and their management before investing in stocks. Maybe that'll become the move again once the asset bubble collpases.
Nikola: Big time Fraud
Lucid: Producing cars, no charging network, can they scale?
Rivian: Producing cars, no charging network can they scale?
Big Auto: Producing cars, no charging network, have scale for everything but batteries.
Tesla: Producing cars, scaling including battery production, MAY be able to live up to their valuation, have charging network
So the EV IPOs are IPO'ing to be inferior peers to Big Auto.
And waiting in the wings are the chinese EV manufacturers. At some point they'll invade the US, especially if LFP chemistry hits 200 wh/kg which they have in labs but not in production.
Remember that for cheaper cars, Big auto loses money. The ICE drivetrain is already unprofitable for Big Auto for the historical consumer format, which is why everything is SUV these days.
EVs have the potential to deliver a car whose drivetrain is half the cost of an ICE, once batteries get cheap enough. LFP 200 wh/kg basically guarantees a substantial cost advantage of a consumer EV platform over ICEs that ICEs can't overcome, especially given the low-end torque advantages of the driving experience.
The 200 wh/kg enables a profitable small EV car. Big Auto won't fight that, and the startups won't either, because they are obsessed with SUVs.
The Chinese are basically all-in on LFP, because their market is super small cheap LFP cars. Once the density scales the practical use of LFP to US sized cars (Tesla Model 3s, which are small sedans and not really US-SUV platforms are already LFP) then there will be invasions.
At least Rivian has Bezos as a backstop, in Bezos's strange quixotic quest to produce companies that are close to but fundamentally inferior to Musk's, and Amazon as a vendor for the van platform.
To me, the big future in automotive is the mobile home. With housing costs exploding due to constrained supply, and a generation fundamentally economically disenfranchised, and with the convergence of broadband 5G/starlink, solar, batteries, and self-driving (at least on highways), the value proposition to young people for a mobile apartment is strong. I think it will start replacing the apartment as the preferred choice out of college. I mean, why cohabitate with four people in a cramped apartment when you can have your own mobile van that drives you to work if you have to, or drives you anywhere else you want to if you don't have to? Drops you off in an urban area and drives off to a cheap/free place to park, picks you up when you need it? Plus with the e-bike revolution for super flexible urbun and suburban mobility...
E.g. this recent video by MKBHD https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXzuFprlyrw
This is incorrect, they should hit 10k+ deliveries by the end of the year.
The S1 only has data until 9/30/21.
First deliveries have been made to employees, first "real" customers will be in november and they are required to hit their initial Amazon requirement by December.
The idea that they have sold 0 is wrong.
I haven't been following Rivian closely, but I was quite impressed by their PR event with Youtube folks recently https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGqexebCcUo - it definitely seems like a real, capable vehicle. Add to that their orders from Amazon (and presumably others at some point), and it seems like a plausible company.
Now, whether they have the margins and cash reserves to handle volatile markets / logistical concerns to survive long enough to become a long-term player, I'm not sure.
They can survive for 3 years and sell zero cars.
I know folks are saying Trevor and Nikola Motors have some sort of ground breaking hydrogen tech - but some of these other folks, despite their market caps, seem like so much trash and hype.
Not sure these folks will turn out better, but at least there seems to be something of some substance here from folks with some experience.
Because a reference never hurts:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2020/09/nikola-admits-prototype...
So, they have "ground breaking tech" in a dead-end technology then? The energy losses required to power vehicles with hydrogen are much greater than losses with electric batteries (there was a recent article on HN that really drove this point home for me). Seems like the only folks pushing hydrogen these days are folks that made bets on what turned out to be the wrong tech (cough, cough, Toyota).
Batteries are neat, but I'm not sure they scale.
Also much of the weight is carbon and oxygen. LiFePO4 also (obviously) is substantially iron and phosphorous.
Li-Ion battery production had been growing at double-digit percentage for decades. I think they've proven you wrong many times over.
Finally, electric cars charge at ~96% efficiency, while hydrogen is something like 40%. I, for one, am not interested in paying 3x per mile.
The Tesla Model S weights about 2100kg.
The Tesla Model S battery weights about 540kg.
This means that a 1500kg car is forced to pack an additional 540kg to be able to store energy. That's an additional 30% of the mass that you need to accelerate and brake.
People do care about that. In the very least, the battery mass is responsible for an effective drop in energy efficiency of around 30% just to cart someone around.
> Finally, electric cars charge at ~96% efficiency, while hydrogen is something like 40%. I, for one, am not interested in paying 3x per mile.
This claim has little substance and credibility. For starters, if you factor in how much additional energy you need to waste just to pack along a massive half ton battery, you'll eventually realize that the effective energy waste of a EV is not much different than the hydrogen one.
I mean, the point of a EV is not to have it parked on the driveway, charge a battery, and proceed to boast about how that was very efficient. Your goal is to move around, and moving that massive half ton beast of a battery along with you wastes a lot of energy too.
Also, battery efficiency is around 80%, which naively sounds a far improvement over fuel cell's lauded 40% efficiency. However, a Li-Ion battery weights half a ton and represents around 1/3 of a EV's mass, which also requires energy to be moved around. For reference the fuel cell of a Toyota Mirai is only 40kg, less than the weight of an adult passenger. Once you do your math you'll quickly notice the effective energy use is not that different.
And then there's the cost argument. The typical back-of-the-napkin figure for how much EVs cost to run is around 500€/year. Even if you bump that up to twice the cost, that price is eclipsed by the huge markup that you're already paying for an EV. I mean, a Tesla Model S costs about a century worth of energy bills before it even gets it's tires dirty.
Playing the frugality card with the current batch of EVs lacks any credibility and is, at best, being penny wise and pound foolish.
I think this is the wrong angle to look at the issue.
A 2100kg EV requires 25% of its total mass to support the energy storage, generation and transfer in order to provide a range and performance profile people are generally happy with.
What is the fraction for a new ICE vehicle with similar profile? The combustion engine weighs... how much? Then add the weight of a 60% full fuel tank to allow for roughly the average deadweight haul between refills. Then include the weight of the exhaust system.
And finally, we have to include the weight of the drivetrain. How much of the total weight in an ICE is dedicated to power transfer from engine to wheels? How much in a modern EV?
Energy storage and generation is only a part of the picture, getting it to the wheels is what makes a car actually perform its function. We should include these numbers to get a meaningful comparison.
>> This claim has little substance and credibility.
The efficiency of hydrogen fuel cell vehicles versus battery vehicles is considered in some detail in this video [1]. The conclusion [2] is that, in the best case, the energy efficiency from power generation to road for existing or near future hydrogen fuel cell vehicles is about 25%, compared to about 65% for typical existing battery vehicles.
It's not nearly as simple as that because electric cars have regenerative braking, and because the energy doesn't all go into acceleration. A lot (probably most, depending on how you drive) goes into wind/rolling resistance at a constant speed and that doesn't depend much on mass.
I'm still convinced hydrogen is scam greenwashing natural gas, though.
Mold in a petri dish grows at an accelerating rate, until it doesn’t
My conjecture is that there’s not enough lithium/etc in the world to store the energy the transportation sector requires
small cars, passenger trains, sure. but freight is a different animal. we’ll see.
Whether it seems crazy is evidence of unfamiliarity, not whether it is actually crazy. Is it really any crazier that continually pumping every car with juice made from literal fossils?
At least the battery is continually reusable — and at the end of its useful life, over 90% recyclable.
I have no idea what the CO2 impact would be and don't really care that much ("cutting CO2 will reset the climate to some state we like" sounds like wishful thinking and most of the talk in this space is ideologically coloured I don't even want to pay attention) but the improvement in urban living is going to be undeniable.
When the pandemic arrived here back in March 2020, and nearly everyone suddenly stopped leaving their home, it was eerie: the air where I live (in the middle of a major urban area) suddenly smelled as if I was in a rural area. It was something I wasn't expecting to see so soon; I have for a long time been rooting for EVs to arrive and make the air quality better, but unfortunately EVs are simply way too expensive yet (so far, I only have seen an EV once, and it was an i3 with a range extender; and I do live in a major metropolitan area).
Don’t get me wrong, electric is much better, i’m only nitpicking since you said “eliminating”
There's also the idle engine rumbling noise while waiting at stoplights, which does not exist on electric cars.
These comments show a failure to understand what does hydrogen mean and why did it popped up as an alternative to ICEs to begin with.
Hydrogen is presented as an alternative energy store that is clean, renewable, and can leverage existing infrastructure and, perhaps more importantly, consumer patterns and mental models, with little to no change.
Energy efficiency is not a concern with hydrogen, or even a relevant talking point, because the promise of being able to generate it through renewable sources means it has no implication on its carbon footprint or even pollution. Also, it was a topic that was actively being researched and thus, much like photovoltaic panels, its efficiency was likely to go up.
We also need to keep in mind that hydrogen was closest to production and mass adoption a few years ago, and we need to remind ourselves that not so long ago the idea of widespread supercharger stations and affordable electric batteries with enough storage to power a small family car was very close to a pipe dream.
In my opinion, the only reason hydrogen why hydrogen hasn't been mass adopted was the colossal investment in marketing and R&D that a few private companies made in electric vehicles in general and Li-Ion batteries in particular. In the future we might very well look back at hydrogen in a similar way that a few years ago, when ICEs were the only game in town, we looked at the EVs from the late 19th/early 20th century and we wondered why were we so close but still missed the boat.
A few places have tried to build a hydrogen network with. Metal embrittlement is a real problem and storage is not straightforward, even after you've produced it.
https://electricrevs.com/2019/06/11/recent-explosions-shutdo...
Hydrogen hasn't been adopted because it is expensive, dangerous, difficult to store and not as efficient as electric. With advances in batteries in the last few years it is definitely on the way out and electric is the clear winner here.
The point is that energy efficiency is only one factor among all other. For example, it makes little difference if you blindly tag a 80% efficiency tag on a EV if afterwards you have to waste twice the energy to cart along a massive battery.
> If the efficiency is half that of electric, you can power half the cars you could with electric with existing energy supplies.
The point that you're missing is that said cars are also far heavier (the battery on a Tesla Model S weighs half a ton alone which contrasts with Toyota Mirai's 40kg fuel cell), which requires far more energy to move around. What matters is how much energy you actually waste while driving, because that's where all the energy is going.
> Hydrogen hasn't been adopted because it is expensive, dangerous, difficult to store and not as efficient as electric.
I disagree with any of those points, specially as some of them like the safety scaremongering are far-fetched, as they aren't really grounded on the real world.
The critical difference between EVs and hydrogen was that EVs benefitted from a fantastic marketing and PR push, investment in infrastructure and R&D effort from private companies pushing EVs that was able to budge the status quo and made them acceptable to the public in spite of their major drawbacks such as massive cost, autonomy restrictions, and long charging times.
This foot-in-the-door was further compounded by the way some states decided to invest heavily in EV subsidies and public infrastructure, which was completely absurd, unrealistic and politically impossible in the recent past.
EV's recent mass adoption acceptance is not a technical feat but a social and political one which happened to leverage a specific technology.
I'm not sure about Tesla, but according to specs I found, but Kia e-Niro with 400 km range is 1737 kilograms, 400 km range Hyundai Kona Electric is 1685, 500 km range WV ID3 is 1730 ... while Toyota Mirai is 1825 kg and my ICE Jaguar is 1950 kg.
Long story short, I'm not convinced it's so simple.
Hydrogen is an energy store. It doesn't typically exist by itself in nature and must be produced.
Thus the answer for your question is any and all renewable energy sources.
https://www.energy.gov/eere/articles/hydrogen-clean-flexible...
Neither electricity nor pre-charged Li-Ion batteries exist in nature by themselves, thus it's precisely the same problem.
I know hence the question.
to answer my question, which is also in the article you've kindly posted:
"Currently, most hydrogen is produced from fossil fuels, specifically natural gas"
Which is the point I'm getting at. Its cheaper to split natural gas than it is to do electrolysis.
What I have discovered is that state of the art electrolysis is about 80% which is far higher than I had remembered. Alas, fuel cells are still 40-60% efficient, so we could still be looking at terrible round trip efficiency.
Hydrogen might one day be the storage medium of choice, but its not yet. I suspect we'll have working fusion before we have practical grid scale hydrogen, let alone wide scale hydrogen cars.
I think it's safe to say that Rivian had the resources to go finish bringing its products to market.
They’re already starting out at 10% of Tesla’s market cap and a valuation higher than most auto companies. Let’s say they become the next Tesla in a decade. That would be 25% growth per year which is good, but comes with a lot of risk compared to Apple, Google, Amazon, etc.
Tesla also launched before the rest of the industry was shipping competitors. Rivian will be facing near immediate competition.
Does Rivian have secret sauce others can’t replicate? I haven’t followed them so I truly don’t know. Tesla has massive battery manufacturing, a great brand, a supercharger network, and a decade head start. What makes Rivian special compared to what Ford will be shipping in its F-150 Lightning? Or what so many companies will be shipping in the coming years?
Third, they don't really compete with Ford, they compete with Land Rover and Jeep and they are the first brand to bring something to that segment of the market that's electric.
Plus I've seen the car and it's an awesome vehicle, I have no crystal ball but I'm willing to bet they'll do well.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compact_Modular_Architecture_p...
I don't think they are anything much more than marketing nowadays, same as Abarth and Cupra.
They have yet to build a fully independent ev first platform.
The founders of Polestar now runs the Cyan racing company which is the official racing partner of volvo and geely...
https://www.media.volvocars.com/global/en-gb/media/pressrele...
Simply put it they'd sell a ton of them. The Dodge/Mustang brand will always have traction among a certain demographic but their design language looks tired.
New generations are looking for something which has the design of the Polestar_1.
Also the elephant in the room: Everybody wants and touts EVs, up until it's their turn to make a purchase, then the tradeoffs in terms of price, look and build quality make themselves feel strongly.
Name a good looking EV.
The EVs hypercars such as the Rivian or the Tesla Roadster Rocket do not count
The Lucid even...that's not a hypercar but it fits the supercar definitions in all markets which aren't NYC or LA
This baby instead... https://www.motorauthority.com/news/1125529_review-2020-chev...
At 59,995$ MSRP. Gas for sure, but who cares?
Okay. Porsche Taycan, Porsche Taycan Cross Turismo, Audi e-tron, Audi e-tron GT, Audi Q4 e-tron, Skoda Enyaq, Hyundai Ioniq 5, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60, Ford Mustang Mach-E, Jaguar I-Pace, Mercedes EQS, Mercedes EQE, Honda E, Mini E, Fiat 500e.
I would also add the Lyriq (which is gorgeous), the Polestar 2, the R1T, and then just say the Honda E again from your list twice, because WOW, what a timeless design. It is just a Concept car...actually executed.
Almost all of them look exactly the same as petrol or diesel cars. Sometimes the grill looks different as they don't need air-cooling. Is that a big deal?
What's the unique design of a Polestar 1? It's the same old basic low-rise sedan/saloon design that everyone's bored of isn't it?
Looked sort of toy-like, not like a typical truck.
They're shipping the founders edition preorders in November.
Yeah, most of them are like "I've never been off-road in my life but this truck seems legit. Here's a photo of me in the trunk."
I'm still excited and wish them much success.
And although they haven't sold any consumer cars yet my understanding is they're currently delivering vans to Amazon as we speak.
EDIT: I'm not saying that Rivian would be as good a purchase as Moderna but... yeah. This sort of thing has become way more common in recent years. This is definitely the high-risk / high-reward area of investing: buying companies that you don't even know work or not yet (Moderna IPO'd in 2018, long before COVID19 even existed. There was pretty much no way to know it'd be the miracle drug to a non-existent disease just two years later)
On the other hand: Moderna's success shows why the stock market is a magical thing. The money pumped into Moderna through the IPO allowed it get the money needed to build up its research facilities, in effect preparing for COVID19 even before the disease appeared.
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"Going public" means one thing and one thing only: the company wants money, and they think bonds (aka: borrowing money from a bank) is a bad value. Its still up to the investor to decide if giving money to the company is a worthwhile trade.
If there's lots of jubilance, companies can extract money from shares better than from bonds.
That's why the investor needs a sharp and savvy mind. I think Rivian is a good company btw, but the rumored IPO prices are insane. You need to be both a good company and at a good price to be worthy of buying.
A bigger issue for me was the fact that the trucks completely disappeared when they hit (IIRC) Central America. They loaded the bikes into a bus and drove them across Mexico (which didn't speak well of the Harleys either).
All that said I still reserved one.
Did we watch the same show?
They thoroughly explained how this was 100% about safety and the real risk of getting kidnapped in Mexico, even adviced by locals, when Ewan wanted to do the drive by himself.
Mexico isn’t exactly known to be a overly lawful society.
It's obviously a bit promotional in nature, but it does show what the future is going to look like for Electric off roading / back roading
Ben Sullins also had a video I enjoyed https://youtu.be/4nge_JzJSUc
The Amazon fleet partnership is very positive and several other deals in Europe too. However, Rivian just needs other ways to utilise its technology just like what NIO is currently doing in China.
If Rivian follows that path and avoids being just a generic EV maker, then its stock is a straight buy in my books but I would hold for now and see what the competitors (especially Lucid Motors) are also doing first in October.
I'm surprised they didn't price a bit lower so they could guarantee a first day pop. At this price, many of the people I know who have loved Rivian for years will not be buyers. I'll be curious if there are enough others to support the valuation. I believe it will be the second most valuable car company after Tesla?
I guess we'll see for sure once these cars get torn down and analyzed by third parties, but Lucid's drivetrain tech does look fairly promising so far.
Recently I moved out of the city towards rural life and this type of vehicle will give me all I need, including good cornering for fun (due to mix of air/hydraulic suspension). Definitely looking forward to purchase (may be second gen) EV truck.
For the American market they will face serious competition from Ford and other truck manufacturers who have brand recognition and solid fan base.
Truth to be told, it was stagnant for last 10 years:
- adding more buttons increases user's fatigue and decreases feature discoverability. With cars getting more integrated into various software features, there is no going back from touch.
- no voice interaction UX or a very bad one
Perhaps several programmable buttons for advanced users would be nice. But that depends on whether user really needs those custom routines and actions.
Could it be because it was really good?
Today UX/UI Design is treated as decoration and the main audiences are corporations or software developers.
You can check MBUX as an example of clutter, complexity and bad taste visuals. Just another outsourced design job in the name of corporate profit over product design.
The motivation behind a single touchscreen (from the horse’s mouth) is the gradual move to full self driving. Given that all Teslas are capable of fully autonomous driving, pending software, it doesn’t make sense to pollute the car interior with controls that will become obsolete during the lifetime of the car, not even accounting for extra cost associated with manufacturing dozens/hundreds of extra parts.
Now if others are copying it without understanding why it’s done that way, it’s on them.
The current stable driving assistant systems must be secondary to real driving. They are capable of critical prevention and effective safe-nets and when done properly they reduce risk tenfold. Idea of beta-testing on the public roads by creating consumer disinformation is outrageous and must be stopped.
It is beyond believe, how regulations are soft towards applications of technologies with direct effect on human lives. My area of expertise is in UI/UX and the simplest logic possible is called ergonomic prerequisite.
Every system must exist as a 100% functionality before some form of control surface is introduced. Every control surface must be human oriented. In car UX, the main function is driving and everything that reduces risk of removing focus from the road is good UX, everything that creates distraction and complication is not only bad UX - it is dangerous.
In car touch interfaces are exciting for people who hate driving and love their phones. This is the main selling point. It is the result of marketing driven design and enormous amount of production savings (when removing physical controls for dedicated functions) as a business motivational vector.
This will not work long-term. The Idea of vehicles as a SaaS platform also will not work. This will be CX hell and people will reject it.
Everyone driving the FSD Beta knows pretty well what they're doing and what the whole thing means, hence the very strict criteria the drivers must meet to have that feature enabled, so I don't know what disinformation you're talking about.
Calling it outrageous, dangerous, etc doesn't make it so, and evidently, after many month of FSD Beta, there is yet an accident to be reported resulting from use of it, in a world where every Tesla accident makes it to front page of the news. Is it an accident waiting to happen? Well, every time you get into your car, you're entering the accident lottery. It's all about the likelihood of getting into an accident and so far numbers are in Tesla's favor.
And how do you imagine a system whose improvements relies heavily on real world data is meant to obtain it without large scale participation? Have a hundred employees doing rounds in a test track?
The way I see autonomous driving through being well informed, and not speaking based on outdated intuitions, Tesla's pushing the envelope just enough to make meaningful progress toward full self-driving while not overly putting people at risk.
> It is beyond believe, how regulations are soft towards applications of technologies with direct effect on human lives.
Heavily regulating something that's in its infancy is the surest way to kill it. Those people who are constantly bitching about why robo-taxis aren't here yet even with lax regulations, can be certain to dream of it for the rest of their lives should walls be put up too early.
> In car touch interfaces are exciting for people who hate driving and love their phones.
Not only. I drive a M3 and I love driving it. I don't use my phone and nor find the urge to. I enjoy the lack of clutter, and the beautiful large screen when I need to use it. Every other car I sit in, feels like a 60s Russian rocket and stresses me out. Even Tesla's own Model S and Model X feels too cluttered now with the extra driver's dash screen.
> This will not work long-term. The Idea of vehicles as a SaaS platform also will not work. This will be CX hell and people will reject it.
Ye, that's what they said about SaaS on the Internet. Who would, in their right minds, give up control of their service and store their data and code at the mercy of a third party. Saw how that turned out.
An example/analogy. If I am in the position of creating technology for automation I will implement the proven practices in aerospace industry, you have plenty of innovation and effective (with some exceptions in recent years, hello Boeing) regulatory process. Testing autonomous vehicles on the public road is dangerous and non productive in any way or form (except gathering data cheaply).
> And how do you imagine a system whose improvements relies heavily on real world data is meant to obtain it without large scale participation? Have a hundred employees doing rounds in a test track?
Exactly. Last time I checked R&D is corporate responsibility not public data exploit or "free work". People don't get it at all. If you will use my driving data, you must pay me or give me some incentive. I work for money, you are selling expensive product so how about half the price?
> Heavily regulating something that's in its infancy is the surest way to kill it. Those people who are constantly bitching about why robo-taxis aren't here yet even with lax regulations, can be certain to dream of it for the rest of their lives should walls be put up too early.
Again, your argument is weak. Example: Texting and Driving statistics: https://www.simplyinsurance.com/texting-and-driving-statisti...
The technology must be produced and tested to death, before is introduced to public roads. Touch interfaces implemented without any concern of ergonomic prerequisite are proven distraction and risk.
>Ye, that's what they said about SaaS on the Internet. Who would, in their right minds, give up control of their service and store their data and code at the mercy of a third party. Saw how that turned out.
Again, the big and bold SaaS brush, yep I see how this is turning out. You can check the sales stat of NAS servers in recent years or resurrection of the flip phone.
People are stupid, until they are not. Information Security and Control will be the defining factor for businesses in the near future.
Yes, some people got madly rich on marketing Cloud and AI scams and "user generated content", so what?
This sounds as Davos idea of the future. You will own nothing and you will be happy.
Sorry, but not at all.
SaaS services have use-cases. Moving everything to SaaS model is clear madness.
Where are the accidents after many months? None, so nope, not dangerous just because you think it is.
> Exactly. Last time I checked R&D is corporate responsibility not public data exploit or "free work". People don't get it at all. If you will use my driving data, you must pay me or give me some incentive. I work for money, you are selling expensive product so how about half the price?
Oh so it's money problem now. If Tesla paid people for Beta testing, it'd be fine? So you're ok for people to allegedly (which I don't agree with anyway, but most of the rest of you do) risk each other's lives as long as they get paid.
Well, you can say the same about Apple, Google and pretty much any other company that runs Beta testing. People rush to do it for free and wait in line. They are compensated by having access to latest and greatest without waiting.
You think getting paid means they are not exploited? How about paying you for you kidney. That's OK? You don't seem to understand what being exploited means.
> The technology must be produced and tested to death, before is introduced to public roads. Touch interfaces implemented without any concern of ergonomic prerequisite are proven distraction and risk.
Stop with the blanket statements. Where are you numbers that shows Tesla's are getting into more accidents? You don't have it because it's not only there but it's the opposite. Tesla's get into far less accidents that general fleet (those numbers on Tesla's report).
> You can check the sales stat of NAS servers in recent years or resurrection of the flip phone.
You look at a jump in NAS servers and flip phones and conclude that they're going to take over SaaS and slabs? Go look at the relative jump and magnitude of SaaS increases too.
> Yes, some people got madly rich on marketing Cloud and AI scams and "user generated content", so what?
Ye, the fact that a one person with a few bucks can now access what was only available to few multi-nationsal a decade ago is a scam. Do you also think the Earth is flat and COVID is a hoax?
> Moving everything to SaaS model is clear madness.
If you're actually trying to do something of value, and someone takes off a huge payload off your shoulder so you can get there faster, you'd be a fool to not do it. Time is the ultimate currency here and anything that buys you time is a win. So in principle, SaaS, IaaS and any other XaaS is a win.
The only time it's not a win is if one is either mandated to keep sensitive data in-house, or runs such a large/custom workload that no other provider can economically meet.
No. I care for human centered design. I care about technology with responsibility without data exploitation. I care about privacy and transparency. Your arguments are apologetic in my view and confirm the state of current affairs. As a consumer I reserve my right to vote with my wallet. And I will never succumb to this perverse product design philosophy that SaaS model is trying to propagate outside the effective and usable territory.
>If you're actually trying to do something of value, and someone takes off a huge payload off your shoulder so you can get there faster, you'd be a fool to not do it. Time is the ultimate currency here and anything that buys you time is a win. So in principle, SaaS, IaaS and any other XaaS is a win.
There is no "professional" lingo that can hide the core business ethics behind this race for "eating and dominating the world". Faster? For what? May be tomorrow you will rationalize mass control with chip implants, because it is "progress" and this will get you faster toward the ultimate life goal : corporate profits.
What a dream. We will see how this "futuristic projections" unfolds. Remember: Implementation is a key to success.:)
That is idealism, definitely necessary in small quantities but what moves things forward is pragmatism. The former is more of a guide than a prescription. E.g. human centered design is costly - when you're pushing the envelope, you can't have everything in utmost polish (and a mere glance at any part of history of new tech should make that obvious).
Responsibility without data exploitation: again, pragmatism - if Tesla is still doing this in 10 years, then ye, I'd find it questionable, but right now, Tesla is the only entity on which to build hope on, if you actually believe and care about what they're trying to achieve. If you don't or think it's all for Elon's pocket, then you're mistaken (with plenty of proof around) and I hope you spend some time to challenge your beliefs.
Privacy: this one's actually a balancing act. You want perfect privacy, go in the woods and hunt. In SaaS case, you trade some privacy for time and money saved.
> Your arguments are apologetic in my view.
I'm not sure how to express it without it sounding that way!
> Faster? For what? May be tomorrow you will rationalize mass control with chip implants, because it is "progress" and this will get you faster toward the ultimate life goal : corporate profits.
Pick 10 things your life depends on today (some hints: medicine and medical tech, transport, ...) and you'd be hard pressed to find any of them that don't trace back to so called "corporate profits" in capitalist nations. It's not the ultimate goal as you put it. It's the requirements to be in the game. If you wanna make large scale impact, you need capital, which comes from investors whom you need to keep happy. That's not to say no one goes in for the money, but if you spot a smart person who's earning it the hard way, it should be a good signal that they're not doing it for the money (hint: leading the first publicly traded car company in over half a century where every other ones in the country have gone bankrupt - many easier paths to making butt load of money faster).
Moving forward everyone will have this idea, and will not share freely like in this moment. People don't care, "Because they have nothing to hide", wait and see what they will do when realize how someone is profiting over this big time. People are stupid until they are not.
Second point: Security. All our software is big security risk. We don't have a single os created with memory safe language in mind. In the future everything will be hackable and exploitable. You can check what is going on in Apple camp, today. Not tomorrow.
There are powers in the corporate world who don't want to see this as a problem, they care about marketing, sales and profit. All of this will crumble to the ground.
In near future treats will be bigger, that's why your idea is "optimistic" and mine is realistic.
On human centered design....I am not interested to argue at all.
They are not. Please stop propagating this falsehood.
An analogy with a SaaS is having a full featured service that’s available 99% of time and dismissing it as every other toy service out there, only because it’s not available 99.99% of the time. That’s the situation with Tesla more or less. Granted the march towards more 9s is going to take some time.
EDIT: I looked up the "Tesla admitting level 2" and it's in regards to their *current* Autopilot software that's been around for years, not FSD Beta which is currently only rolled out to a few thousand people in US. So seems like you're not understanding the difference between Autopilot and FSD Beta. I recommend again that you watch "FSD Beta 10" videos on Youtube since you evidently have not.
EDIT: removed hostile comment
It literally does. SAE levels [1] are very clear in terms of who is in control, human supervision/take over expectations and Operational Design Domain. It’s not at all about mistake percentage, so the SaaS analogy is irrelevant.
At the end of the day, if you’re still in level 2, it means you’re not fully autonomous because you can’t take passengers from point A to point B and handle mistakes, including safely pulling over when necessary. Tesla is nowhere close to doing this.
Yes it is and SaaS is very relevant. The very page you've linked lists all sorts of "features" up to level 2 but level 3 and up is all about whether the driver should take over if the car asks them to. In fact, re-reading the levels, FSD Beta is at level 3 because:
- You are NOT driving when the features are active (the car accelerates, stops, turns, gives way, negotiates with traffic, waits for pedestrians, changes lanes, follows navigation, etc.).
- When the feature requests, you must drive. Check. FSD Beta will prompt the user to take over at times when it can't figure out the way forward.
- These features drive under limited condition and won't do so if conditions aren't met. Check too. FSD Beta will only become available when it has a good sense of the environment.
Well, thanks for the refresher. So FSD Beta is clearly at level 3 now.
Thanks for making my point for me and conceding autonomy is, in fact, determined by who's responsible for safe operations and not just mistake percentage improvement.
> In fact, re-reading the levels, FSD Beta is at level 3 because:
> - You are NOT driving when the features are active (the car accelerates, stops, turns, gives way, negotiates with traffic, waits for pedestrians, changes lanes, follows navigation, etc.).
Clearly, you either didn't read the chart fully or didn't comprehend it well because you are going against Tesla's own claim that FSD is level 2. You also spectacularly missed the biggest condition why it's still level 2.
SAE level 2 in the chart says says:
> You are driving whenever these driver support features are engaged — even if your feet are off the pedals and you are not steering
> You must constantly supervise these support features; you must steer, brake or accelerate as needed to maintain safety.
Last I checked, FSD requires constant driver supervision and hands on the wheel. Tesla is very clear about this. So it is, in fact, level 2 by definition.
The key difference with level 3 is it doesn't require constant supervision — meaning a driver can read a book or watch a movie — and the system will alert in advance within a reasonable amount of time for a driver take over. Of course, nobody can really determine what "reasonable amount of time" is for a safety alert, which is why level 3 remains the most ambiguous of all the SAE levels.
You should really try to inform yourself of SAE level basics before spreading misinformation about a safety critical system.
Moving from supervising the car to not supervising the car isn't a binary flip where suddenly in one software revision, you can take a nap while yesterday you couldn't. It's a spectrum. And that's why SAE levels between 2 and 3 are poorly describing this (not to mention how poorly level 2 itself is defined, as it covers a huge range of functionality, from something a bunch of cheap sensors can achieve with graduate level of CS knowledge to something Tesla AI has achieved with FSD Beta which has required custom computers, millions of miles of driving data and some of the biggest brains in AI world).
Since it's a spectrum, the only variable changing is how likely it is you as the supervisor need to take over control *because* your car either made a mistake or was about to. That's all it's reduced to — how often does you car make a mistake. That's all level 3 and up is. All the descriptions and charts do nothing but fog up this, which is unfortunate. Once you have a car that makes very few mistakes, you don't need to supervise it because the probability of it making mistakes is less than you as a human driver at which point it's a better driver than you anyway.
You can of course argue that reduction in mistakes is itself functionality. Well, I make a distinction between continuous and minor refinements and major enabling technology, like vector reconstruction of 3D space from images of cameras, or AI based route planning, which given more data, can plan better.
As far as I understand from Tesla's progress, they need to merely cover ever more corner cases to go up the levels.
And on the topic of supervision: whether you have to keep your hands on the wheel or otherwise supervise the car has a lot to do with policy and regulation. You can have a car today that is safe enough to drive while you asleep and good luck trying to sell it without telling the customers they must stay alert. This basically makes level 3 as defined in SAE subject not only to actual capabilities of a car but the regulatory environment in which it's sold.
I think this is the crux of the disagreements here. You say they need to merely cover more corner cases, while I think many (including myself) think that this endless list of corner cases is the primary almost-insurmountable problem.
From what I've seen of Tesla FSD (and competitors), these systems do pretty well in highly structured and orderly environments during clear desert weather. In order to deal with chaos in a blizzard etc, we're going to need far more than just a few tweaks. At this point, none of these companies are even doing any testing in extreme environments. They're still trying to stop their cars from hitting pedestrians in well lit areas on known crossing points. [1]
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That’s a very strong claim that needs to be substantiated with evidence.
Do you have evidence of a ‘Full Self Driving’ Level 5, Robotaxi without a steering wheel made by Tesla Inc. existing on the roads today?
I was under the assumption that 'Level 5' robo-taxis were coming in 2020 but it seems that we got something else called 'FSD' that still requires driver intervention and is admittedly 'Level 2' by Tesla Inc.
So where are the Level 5 approved Tesla robo-taxis?
Yes it is. I even told you what to search for exactly and I've already pasted direct links to some of them in a sibling post.
> I was under the assumption that 'Level 5' robo-taxis were coming in 2020
Be prepared to be disappointed again and again when it comes to cutting edge of tech. You're not waiting for the next Xbox.
No it is not. Even if one did search, there is not one video that describes what Tesla Inc. promised or predicted in 2020 which was a Level 5 approved Tesla Robotaxi.
> Be prepared to be disappointed again and again when it comes to cutting edge of tech. You're not waiting for the next Xbox.
Did you not realise that you just admitted that you don't know where the Level 5 approved Tesla Robotaxis that was supposed to be due for 2020 were?
Tesla claimed it was 5 years ago:
https://www.tesla.com/blog/all-tesla-cars-being-produced-now...
But it wasn't. And it still isn't.
accidents. All Teslas are capable of fully autonomous accidents.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jrWH_0YA5XM 'Tesla Autopilot Hits a Deer (and I think it will happen again.)'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HSeIOg4SyOg
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=krKkuIEMXHI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZebkknqGkxE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0_eKr8jnNo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pHM6xY2Ys4U
Oh and I have personally avoided an accident so far when a whole bunch of cars on the highway slammed on the break and autopilot sounded an alarm and braked. So there you go.
1 Mountain lion runs across, cant see car slowing down at all despite what the description text says. Cat barely makes it and car keeps going.
2 Bird almost hits windshield. Owners own description is he took over.
3 Property and "funny home videos"
4 Well, what do you know. EXACT SAME situation as in Jessa Jones clip happens at @2:20 "all of a sudden a deer ran out onto the road but autopilot didn't react at all, gracie's applied the brakes only moments before impact but it was too late " Living creature hit, $4500 bill an 2 weeks without the car. @6:30 plows into road debris roughly size and shape of a human lying on the road. @9:00 finally a human, on a crosswalk, 50 meters in front. @11:00 Coyote, zero reaction and human takes over to avoid accident.
5 @3:30 At first looks like Tesla finally detects animal on the road, but no. It simply reacts to car in front (braking for the animal) and starts accelerating as soon as the car in front moves on, almost driving over the small deer in the process.
Tesla seems to be really good as spotting cars, and might even have a special case for humans on crosswalks, but every single clip with animal ends with accident or human taking over. 4 @6:30 shows what would happen if an unconscious person fell on the road.
Off topic: I love clip 4 @11:50. Hitting small wooden post at 20mph = totaled Tesla :o
Where do you hear about all the time Teslas saved lives? You don't, because even throwing evidence in people's face, they only list the fuck-ups.
I rest my case.
That was me searching for a minute. If you actually care to learn something, you'd spend a few hours of your own time looking for what's actually true. If I was to go out of my way to show good examples (which I'm not going to do, for your lazy ass), you would say something like "oh great, my 10 year old nephew can do that".
So I'm not gonna bother with you pal — I'll convince people on the fence, they'll take care of convincing you.
Enjoy your video games.
All new ones are. There's still old ones out there that didn't ship with the HW3 computer and haven't yet had it retrofitted.
In particular if one juxtaposes that strategy against what I perceive to be a general anti John Deere sentiment around here vis-a-vie subscriptions and their always-on products.
We expect that a significant portion of our initial revenue will be from one customer that is an affiliate of one of our principal stockholders.
If we are unable to maintain this relationship, or if this customer purchases significantly fewer vehicles than we currently anticipate or none at all, our business, prospects, financial condition, results of operations and cash flows could be materially and adversely affected. To date, we have generated minimal revenue from the initial sales of our R1T vehicles and have not generated any revenue from the sales of our other vehicles. Our future success depends on us commencing commercial sales and attracting a large number of customers for our vehicles. In the near-term, however, we expect that a significant portion of our revenue will be from Amazon Logistics, Inc. (“Logistics”). Amazon is the parent company of both Logistics and Amazon.com NV Investment Holdings LLC (“NV Holdings”), which owns approximately % of our voting power as of , 2021. In February 2019, we entered into a commercial letter agreement with Amazon, and in September 2019, we entered into a related framework agreement with Logistics. We refer to these agreements, together with any work orders, purchase orders, related agreements and amendments thereunder or thereto, collectively, as the “EDV Agreement.” Under the EDV Agreement, we and Logistics have agreed to collaborate to design, develop, manufacture, and supply EDVs and/or certain component parts and related services for use in Amazon’s last mile delivery operations. We also have agreed under the EDV Agreement that until the fourth anniversary of when Logistics first receives EDVs (the “Initial Delivery Date”), whether or not Logistics purchases any EDVs from us, we will exclusively provide last mile delivery vehicles to Amazon, and from the fourth anniversary to the sixth anniversary of the Initial Delivery Date, Amazon will have a right of first refusal to purchase last mile delivery vehicles that we produce. Under the EDV Agreement, Logistics has the right to decide how many EDVs to purchase, which may be fewer than expected, or delay the delivery of such purchases. Certain factors outside of our control may influence Logistics’ decision as to the number of EDVs to purchase from us and the timing of delivery, including Logistics’ ability to deploy a charging infrastructure across their delivery stations.
Rivian’s starting to ship their trucks, and initial reviews seem very positive, so it could also be good timing for them.
>We are highly dependent on the services and reputation of Robert J. Scaringe, our Founder and Chief Executive Officer.
Person A buys stock S at time t0 because he thinks it will be more valuable to person B at time t1.
Person B buys stock S at time t1 because he thinks it will be more valuable to person C at time t2.
...and so on.
Buying a small-volume of stock in company X provides no tangible value. You aren't getting a seat on the board with a few thousand dollars. Obviously, things like dividends and retirement tax-breaks have value, but I'm talking about pure speculative investing.
My question to the investors out there: Why should be there be a person C or D who buys the stock from you in the future? In the extreme case, you could buy stock X, and then never find someone to buy it from you.
For example: Five years ago, I thought Tesla had a 30% chance of failing, 20% chance of being bought by a major auto manufacturer (for let's say ~30B), 30% chance of turning into a major auto manufacturer (est value ~100B), 10% chance of turning into the top auto manufacturer (est value ~300B), and 10% chance of turning into something that transcended auto manufacturing (est value ~1T). If you multiply this out, you get an expected value of 0+6+30+30+100 = 166B. At the time the market cap was around 40B, so I thought it was underpriced and bought some. Obviously I'm glossing over some things, but it's sensible enough and should illustrate how you can get there.
In terms of the notion of "what if you never find someone to buy it from you?" The short answer is that that's extremely unlikely. The longer answer is that you can also just price that into your probability distribution, but because of the low likelihood it's unlikely to affect your price much.
FWIW I don't know much about Rivian, but my sense is also that they are overpriced. You could go through the same little exercise above for Rivian and see if you agree. To summarize what my distribution would look like, I think they have a much higher chance of failure than Tesla in my example above (because they're much less far along), and not enough potential upside to justify the valuations being discussed. But I could easily be wrong.
> Ms. Ford English was appointed to our board of directors in May 2020 and stepped down from our board of directors in May 2021.
> Mr. Hinrichs stepped down from our board of directors in May 2020.
> Mr. Jameel stepped down from our board of directors in July 2021.
> Mr. Kaul stepped down from our board of directors in July 2021.
> Mr. Sheriff stepped down from our board of directors in May 2021.
My concerns about this are entirely selfish of course. If I bought a bed locally it would have been about $3k. The same bed on Amazon was $700 including mattress and frame. I buy locally when it makes sense and what I want is available but sometimes it just doesn't make sense. Amazon only uses UPS here.
A hybrid solution does sound like a great idea. Are Rivian planning on doing this?
Is that common in your area? I do live in the city, but in my entire life I have never seen a Tesla on the side of the road.
It's reasonable to expect (and reality appears to deliver) long and low-maintenance life from an electric vehicle [0]. There are, of course, issues of keeping the battery warm enough and cold weather climate control. One of the big advances in the Model 3 is using a heat pump for heating where previous models (and most other electric cars, like the Bolt that I drive) use a resistor.
Further mechanical improvements in insulation and thermal management will probably continue to push cold-weather performance quite a ways further. It is, however, always going to be a challenge. Your ICE vehicle produces quite a huge amount of waste heat which can be redirected to the cabin or the glass. And, of course, they're not completely immune to the cold themselves. Places with really serious winters have parking spaces with electrical outlets for engine block heaters. Those will continue to have utility in an electrified future to keep batteries warm and charged.
Personally I'm very excited to see urban delivery trucks electrify sooner rather than later. They're doing a lot of stop-and-go and idle a lot. And they don't drive very fast. So they're super-obvious low-hanging fruit that will really help reduce noise and air pollution in cities. Plus, cargo loading times are long enough to significantly mitigate charging times. Mid-range last-mile delivery in rural areas will be a little bit harder, but still seems plenty achievable with technology we have right now. Long haul seems more difficult and the benefits over a hybrid less clear.
In all cases, however, there's no excuse for being stuck on the side of the road for want of energy. All road vehicles, regardless of their source of energy, indicate how much they have left. Running out is an operator error.
[0] https://electrek.co/2018/07/17/tesla-model-s-holds-up-400000...
It could be something like different cooling system that is very well isolated from the outside world and can maintain a controlled internal climate with little power or whatever.
I have faith in that it’s a fixable issue that requires just a bit of time.
Initially they might have to do heavier vehicles or change fleets half way through the day or something like that. Or have a small ICE to extend range
The picture alone made the battery drop by around 3%, and after a minute I turned the screen on again for a very short time, afterwards the battery dropped from 80% to 8% in less than 5 minutes.
I had this phone on my handlebar for a couple of times at down to -7°C (19.4°F), as well as another one (I have my daily driver mounted for podcasts and photos and another cheap one as a Garmin replacement for tracking) and had never seen this before nor afterwards.
[1] - https://www.naf.no/elbil/aktuelt/elbiltest/ev-winter-range-t...
Perhaps long routes in freezing temperatures will be a niche where hydrogen fuel cells turn out to be useful, or maybe just incremental improvements of existing battery tech and management will suffice.
I assume searching the web for “us ipo RSS feed” will answer your RSS feed question.
I know that's let's concrete but it's real.
Journeys into remote areas would require a bit of planning as to where, when and how to charge. But that's not that different from driving a petrol car. If you run out of petrol in the middle of nowhere, it's just as bad as running out of battery because you are stuck in the middle of nowhere with no easy way to fix it. The difference is that an electric car will tell you how much range it has and is pretty accurate about it and be able to guide you to the nearest charging point.
But if you insist on draining the tank or battery until there's nothing left before you top up, then yes, you are going to be taking a risk. Simple suggestion: try not to do that. If the absolute worst happens and you ignore all the warnings the car gives you, the solution would be to charge the battery. For example from another EV (some models actually support this). By driving up to somebody's house and begging for permission to plug in. Etc. Absolute worst case is you'll be towed away by somebody shaking their heads to a place where the car can be plugged in. People would be shaking their head because it would be your own fault.
Now some people have a genuine need for hundreds of miles of range because where they are going there is nothing. The good news is you can fix that. Put up some solar panels, truck in some batteries, etc. Easy to do. I imagine, many logging operations will end up doing exactly that sort of thing.
Of course it is! I can go pretty much anywhere in the CONUS and not have to worry about running out of gas because gas stations are everywhere. In the few cases where they aren't, there are usually clear indications, e.g., "next gas station 50 miles ahead" signs. Or if I'm that concerned, I can take a 5 gallon can full of gas with me.
> you are stuck in the middle of nowhere with no easy way to fix it
I've stopped to give people rides to the gas station (where you can rent/borrow a gas can) when they ran out. Probably won't be feasible with electric for quite some time.
Sure, people should plan their trips, but please don't make a false equivalence between gas & electric in this regard.
It's much easier to install and maintain a charging station in a remote area than it is to install and operate a gas station.
I think the downsides are that carrying extra fuel is easier (although it wouldn't surprise me if extra batteries you can load onto the truck become a thing), and also that the refill time is much worse.