rjdagost

Serious question- what is Tesla's technological advantage with batteries? I always hear people say that Tesla batteries are above and beyond all competitors, and then I read articles like this which make me doubt that claim: https://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/cars/article-7364605/Tes...

I would be more sympathetic to your argument if Tesla marketed Autopilot as a driver assistance feature. But that's not at all how they market it. When you go to Tesla's Autopilot page, you immediately see a video of a Tesla driving itself- the user doesn't touch the steering wheel for minutes as it navigates complicated scenarios: https://www.tesla.com/autopilot

Tesla's own Autopilot page video has this disclaimer in bold at the very start of the video: "THE PERSON IN THE DRIVER'S SEAT IS ONLY THERE FOR LEGAL REASONS. HE IS NOT DOING ANYTHING. THE CAR IS DRIVING ITSELF". Then there are multiple videos of Elon Musk driving hands-free on Autopilot for extended periods of time, like this one:

https://youtu.be/MO0vdNNzwxk?t=123

So Tesla can bury whatever carefully worded legalese they want in their terms and conditions, but they know that these videos will get shared and watched millions of times, and that they strongly convey the message that "Tesla's drive themselves on Autopilot". These videos set the expectation of how Autopilot should function, and I don't blame Autopilot users for not understanding this.

I got a similar vibe- I think the article is fiction, or at least primarily fiction. Everything fits too perfectly into the narrative the anonymous author is telling. And the ending is just too cute to be believed.

Thanks for the links. Their "Vehicle Safety Report" is literally 3 sentences! I expected such a report to have much more detailed information in it.

Tesla made some very big claims in their recent autonomy day event- basically, they claimed that they are years ahead of competitors, while operating on "hard" mode (no lidar). And yet, a number of participants in the short autonomy day demo rides claimed that the support driver had to disengage the autopilot.

Has Tesla provided any evidence which shows evidence that they are in fact far beyond competitors?

A Twitter user who rooted his Tesla claims that autopilot disengagement reports are very small (< 1 KB) and do not contain any actual sensor data, just things like GPS coordinates, speed, heading, etc.: https://twitter.com/greentheonly/status/1096322810694287361

Not the kind of information that you use to train computer vision algorithms. I found his claims to be an interesting read.

This wasn't reported much, but Tesla also expanded their ABL (Asset Based Lending) credit agreement by $500M in March 2019: https://ir.tesla.com/node/19561/html

Without that, they would have $500M less cash on hand. They shipped half of their cars in the final 10 days of Q1. Finances must have been pretty tight at the start of March. That was around the time they announced they are closing all stores, firing sales personnel, and in general tightening the belt significantly. They also had the Model Y reveal in the middle of March, presumably to raise capital via deposits. Cutting prices multiple times towards the end of March must have helped to move a lot of metal, at the expense of gross margin.

Speaking of the Model Y, I also found it suspicious that on the conference call Elon Musk wouldn't divulge the number of deposits. When the Model 3 deposits were skyrocketing he talked about the reservation count frequently. I can only suspect that the number of Model Y deposits isn't so impressive.

I disagree with your "text is superior" stance. You assume that the point of a phone call is to enhance "shared knowledge building", but that's often not the case. A phone call is meant to communicate something directly, and that "something" may or may not be knowledge that should be spread through the team. Phone calls have disadvantages, but so does text. There is information that gets lost when we reduce our communications to text. I find it to be much easier to infer someone's mood and intent when I talk to them vs. reading chat messages. There is no universally better communications mode.

I think the worst part of it (as the article mentions) is that it feels like you are doing something productive when you're using Slack, but the majority of time you're actually not. You're generating conversations, notifications, and in general producing tangible output that for me is subconsciously gratifying. That hooks me in to using the service even though consciously I know that I'm not getting real work done.

For myself, Slack is such a time waster that I'm at the point where I only check on it periodically. I tell coworkers that if there's an emergency that needs to be tended to right away, just text, call, or talk to me in person. If there's something that can wait, email is better. After 2+ years of using Slack on several different teams, I have yet to see any enhanced group communications. I do however see massive amounts of distractions and failed concentration. I'm sure "I'm doing it wrong", but this has been my experience with Slack.

There are many scenarios I could posit, but I'll pick one. Let's say your pre-revenue start-up needs a product for sale within 4 months, because that's your company's runway. There's a lot of work to do and limited resources, but if you don't meet that deadline your company has no product to sell and you are out of a job. Are you really arguing that it's poor leadership to say: "we have a hard deadline- the product must be ready in 4 months"?

There are many such hard deadlines in life, and failing to recognize them and motivate your team to meet them is poor leadership.

Having had a front-row seat to the data, what's your take? Do you think Tesla's Autosteer helps, hinders, or keep accident rates unchanged?

The cave diver (Vern Unsworth) is suing Musk for libel... the case is working its way through the courts now: https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-diver-vern-unswort...

Musk is trying to get the case dismissed as being just a big joke, after he repeatedly challenged Unsworth to sue him.

For myself, I was surprised by how low-level Tensorflow was. I found that basic operations (things like saving and reloading a trained model) were much more difficult than in Keras, scikit-learn, or other machine learning libraries. Using Tensorflow feels sort of like computing derivatives with limits.

We could go back and forth on this all day, but I don't think you would say these vehicles are good drivers if you have actually driven amongst them. I recommend that you follow one of these Waymo vehicles if you're ever in Chandler or in Mountain View. Being extremely hesitant is not good driving. Slamming on the brakes when a newspaper blows in front of your car is not good driving. Take a left turn behind one or go to a four-way stop behind one. I really hope Waymo improves.

I hear what you're saying about the letter of the law and all, but the fact of the matter is that at big intersections people don't drive that way in any country that I've been to. Waymo cars have an annoying tendency to just abruptly stop in the middle of intersections when they clearly have the right of way- scenarios when a human driver would rightfully not stop. So I do blame them for causing totally unnecessary traffic snags.

My brother lives in the neighborhood where this public beta testing is occurring. Folks, let me tell you from first-hand experience- these cars are terrible drivers. They are extremely hesitant, and because of this they cause traffic backups and delays in places where safety is compromised. You better hope you are not behind one when they perform a left-hand turn onto a busy street, because you are probably going to be waiting a while. They stop in seemingly random situations where human drivers would never stop, like a bicyclist standing way off the side of the road (talking to someone) with his bike pointing towards traffic. People have told me they've been in the middle of a turn behind a Waymo car, when all of a sudden the car just randomly stops for no apparent reason, leaving them stranded in the middle of the intersection as the light turns red. The default reaction for a Waymo car under any sort of ambiguity seems to be to just stop (literally) until the ambiguity resolves itself. Unfortunately this causes considerable confusion and traffic backups for human drivers.

I understand why Waymo is proceeding cautiously. But you really get the impression that the technology has a long ways to go. People in Chandler are pissed because this fleet of cars is a huge nuisance and is in fact less safe for human drivers who are sharing the road. I have no doubt that autonomous vehicles will be safer than human drivers someday, but that day is definitely not today.

SpaceX executives have stated several times that their company is profitable. But, when SpaceX was trying to do a $750M debt raise just last month, their internal financials were divulged: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-11-08/musk-said....

It's a company running in the red. Unfortunately EBITDA is still negative (much less earnings). The jury is still out on whether or not SpaceX's approach is in fact commercially viable.

Some argue that allowing residents of high tax states to deduct more from their federal taxes is in effect a subsidy to high tax states. Why should someone who lives in Washington or Texas (no state income tax) have to pay more in federal taxes than if he lived in California (highest state income taxes in the USA)? This never seemed equitable to me.

You are absolutely correct. I do long distance bicycle rides through rural areas. When you've been riding for hours without signs of civilization (other than the road itself), a Dollar General that pops up in the middle of nowhere is a godsend. You CAN get fresh food and healthy groceries there at good prices. Whole Foods it ain't, but I wouldn't expect that due to the different income levels of the shoppers of the respective stores. I give Dollar General and related stores a lot of credit- they have found a way to thrive in underserved markets.

The author has apparently never shopped at a Dollar General or a Family Dollar, because she thinks that these are dollar stores, and she doesn't seem to know that these stores sell many types of products other than food. It gives her article the tone of uninformed snobbery- "I don't even know what these stores sell or for how much, but I know what is best for poor communities".

In Tulsa, barbecue bologna is a local specialty. It's delicious and definitely worth trying it if you're in the area.

A lot of longs loaded up on Tesla shares because they believed his "funding secured" tweet. Are you OK with them losing their shirts, too? Because many of them did.

Often I will do some prototyping with scikit-learn and then write my own implementation in numpy / scipy for something that goes into production. But I have used scikit-learn in production as well without issue. I have used MATLAB a bit and it is quite nice for figuring things out / prototyping. But the issue I have with it is that it's not typically intended for production software. So then you often need to reimplement your MATLAB code in whatever "platform" language you're using. That's why I've largely transitioned away from MATLAB.

scikit-learn does have its share of inconsistencies and strange omissions, but I have found it to be much, much easier to use than the alternatives.

I get why Euler angles are not ideal (gimbal lock). But what are the advantages of quaternions over rotation matrices?

What data does Tesla actually collect? They are very vague on this point, but people act as if a Tesla driving around is collecting the same quality of data as a Google self driving car. On this point I am highly skeptical.

It is not odd that the tides have turned against Musk. What is odd is that it took this long for the tides to turn against him. That a company is still around after incinerating cash so rapidly and consistently for ~16 years is an incredible feat. There is big money betting against him, but there is also big money betting for him.

Most of Musk's troubles are of his own doing. He took enormous risks in rushing the Model 3 to production and frankly they have been disastrous. His SEC troubles (which are just starting) are entirely of his own doing.

The French government claims that fatherhood is determined by society, and not biology. That is a very unscientific law.

There's a lot of speculation as to why Elon claimed to not want or need additional capital raises. Some people claim there is an ongoing, undisclosed SEC investigation which prohibits them from issuing more shares. Others claim that parts suppliers will cut off credit unless they can show a sustained profit. Others claim that Moody's and S&P will cut Tesla's credit rating to "effectively in default" if they can't show a sustained profit this year, which will trigger institutional investors to dump their holdings. I have a feeling we will find out the real reason before too long.

I used to work in the automotive industry. It is common to push suppliers for price reductions on existing and future agreements. But I have never heard of partial refunds on past sales. This is not a smart game of chicken to play. If your suppliers don't think you are able to meet your obligations, they will rapidly cut you off from all credit (if not stop doing business with you all together). And if suppliers require upfront cash for parts deliveries then Tesla is in big trouble due to their high negative cashflow.

Also, a move like this could trigger additional credit downgrades. Institutional investors (the main holders of Tesla stock) are much more likely to dump the stock if ratings agencies further downgrade Tesla's creditworthiness. I'd be surprised if Tesla were bluffing here- I think this is either pure desperation or "fake news".