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- A driver who believed Autopilot could drive him home despite his being drunk. The car drove the wrong way on the highway and killed another innocent victim of Musk's hype.
- Autopilot rear-ending a merging vehicle and killing another innocent victim, a 15-year-old.
- Autopilot slamming into a broken down vehicle on the highway. When the Tesla driver left the wreck she was hit and killed by another car.
- Autopilot speeding through a T-junction and crashing into a parked truck.
"If somebody doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company."Elon Musk, 24th April 2024
The Results
In Tesla’s biggest problem: cars, Drew Dickson looks at Tesla's first quarter results:Of Tesla’s total quarterly sales of $21.3bn, 82 per cent were indeed “automotive revenues” while the rest were energy and services.82% of $21.3B is $17.5B, so Tesla has almost an entire quarter of unsold cars on hand.
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Tesla burned through $2.5bn of cash in the quarter. Inventories grew by over 10 per cent to $16bn.
One problem is that Musk's persona as an extreme right-wing troll has been putting off the key Tesla customer demographic, well-off liberals who care about climate change. Another problem is that Tesla lineup of models is old and expensive. Tesla used to recognize that they needed a cheaper product but:
A cut-price Model 2 was first teased at the 2023 Tesla AGM, with Musk saying in January that it would be in production towards the end of next year, but the expected spring product announcement never came.The resources that could have developed a Model 2 or refreshed the existing models instead went to develop the "Incel Camino", the Cybertruck. This isn't just a $82K laughing-stock, but a manufacturing nightmare that will be lucky to sell 20% of Musk's 250K/year projection, especially since it cannot be road-legal in either of Tesla's #2 and #3 markets (China and EU). It will definitely be a drag on the results for some time. So the Models S (2012), X (2015), 3 (2017) and Y (2020) will have to soldier on for a while.
Tesla now states it is “accelerating” plans, though as with the Cybertruck it’s easy to mistake the accelerator for the brakes. The notion that a Model 2 might be built in new factories in Mexico or elsewhere have been replaced with vague commitments to retool existing infrastructure and production lines.
This aging product line isn't attracting customers:
Shrinking margins on shrinking sales hit earnings per share:Extreme pricing pressure is forcing affordable vehicles on Tesla, irrespective of whether it chooses to launch one. Amid a lack of demand for EVs in general, and Teslas in particular, its quarterly automotive revenues were down nearly 13 per cent over the past year and by over 19 per cent sequentially.
- Sequential growth in units sold was down 13 per cent sequentially.
- Tesla’s price per vehicle, excluding regulatory credits and leasing or finance income, was $38,924.
- This was down 13 per cent from $44,642 last year, which itself was down 11 per cent from $50,037 the previous year.
“Clean” automotive margins (which exclude regulatory credits and leasing income) were down from 29.7 per cent in the first quarter of 2022, to 18.3 per cent in the first quarter of 2023, and again to 15.6 per cent in the first quarter of 2024. If you back out the new IRA US tax credits (which Tesla doesn’t seem to disclose) then automotive gross margin looks to have fallen even further, to around 14.1 per cent.
GAAP EPS was down 53 per cent year-on-year, accelerating from the 23 per cent drop in the first quarter of 2023. Even using non-GAAP EPS it’s a 47 per cent decrease over the past year.
In the summer of 2022, when the stock was above $300 share, analysts were expecting Q1’24 EPS of $1.80. Instead, they got $0.45. That is a 75 per cent downgrade to expectations.
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Tesla released its 10-Q, a quarterly report that provides a more detailed view into the company’s financial position. For several years running, Tesla has provided regular updates in these statements on how much revenue it’s taken in from customers and not yet fully recognized. Some of this deferred revenue relates to a work-in-progress product: Full Self-Driving, or FSD, for short.
Tesla’s deferred automotive revenue amounted to $3.5 billion as of March 31, little changed from the end of last year. Of that amount, Tesla expects to recognize $848 million in the next 12 months — meaning much of the performance obligations tied to what it’s been charging customers for FSD will remain unsatisfied a year from now.
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In these filings, Tesla also reports how much deferred revenue it’s actually recognized — and the Austin-based company has consistently undershot its own forecasts. It has recognized $494 million of deferred revenue in the last 12 months, short of the $679 million that it projected a year ago.
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The carmaker reported this week that its operating margin shrank to 5.5% in the first quarter, the lowest since the last three months of 2020. The measure of profitability was at 16% when Zachary Kirkhorn, Tesla’s then-chief financial officer, said during an earnings call that it was key to the company.General Motors operating margin is 7.35%. But not to worry, Tesla isn't a car company, its an AI and robotics company:
“As a management team here, we’re most focused on what our operating margin is,” he said in January 2023, in response to an investor question on a different earnings metric. “That is what we’re primarily managing to now.”
If the auto business is worth 3 or 4 times the multiple of a Stellantis or Volkswagen, then it would get a forward PE of, say, 20x. That’s more than generous for a business the CEO talks about as a legacy sideline.Tesla will definitely issue more shares, for example after the 13th June shareholder vote when they will reward Musk's corporate experiments in robotics and AI by reinstating the $56B incentive package cancelled by the Delaware court.
Street numbers for Tesla are consistently far too high but even using the 2024 consensus EPS of $2.64, Tesla would be worth just over $50 per share. Using today’s diluted shares (and assuming that they don’t issue more, which they will) that works out to a market cap of $181bn.
Tesla’s fully diluted market cap at pixel time is still $580bn. Simplistically, that means shareholders are already paying around $400bn for corporate experiments in “robotics and AI”, along with anything else Musk has or tries to conjure up.
Pumping The Stock
About 70% of the stock price is based on Musk hyping the technology. Thus for Musk it is more than twice as important to pump the stock as it is to sell more cars. He has to follow two strategies:- Make the results look better in the short term by increasing margins. The obvious way to do this is to cut costs, even though this will reduce profits in the longer term. After all, in the longer term Tesla isn't about selling cars, it is about AI and robotics.
- Distract people from looking at the results by unleashing the hype cannon.
Cutting Costs
The knee-jerk reaction of US companies to bad quarterly results is to lay off staff, but they generally target the less successful parts. Elon Musk not so much:Even Tesla's harshest critics must concede that the company's Supercharger network is its star asset. Tesla has more fast chargers in operation than anyone else, and this year opened them up to other automakers, which are adopting the J3400 plug standard.Like most of the recent desperation moves, this was Musk's decision:
All of which makes the decision to get rid of senior director of EV charging Rebecca Tinucci—along with her entire team—a bit of a head-scratcher. If I were the driver of a non-Tesla EV expecting to get access to Superchargers this year, I'd probably expect this to result in some friction. Musk told workers that Tesla "will continue to build out some new Supercharger locations, where critical, and finish those currently under construction."
The decision to cut the nearly 500-person group, including its senior director, Rebecca Tinucci, was made by Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk in the last week, according to a person familiar with the matter.In return for gorvenment subsidies, Tesla had been turning Superchargers into a separate business:
Access to high-speed charging is critical to EV adoption, and Tesla invested billions of dollars into developing a global network of Superchargers that became the envy of other automakers. It’s also a critical driver of Tesla sales, and the carmaker pointed to the division’s growth during its first-quarter results just last week.But maybe Musk couldn't resist a chance to mess with the competition:
“Starting at the end of February, we began opening our North American Supercharger Network to more non-Tesla EV owners,” Tesla said in its shareholder deck.
The Musk-led company has also signed charging partnerships with carmakers including Stellantis NV, Volvo, Polestar, Kia, Honda, Mercedes-Benz and BMW. It’s not clear who will now oversee Tesla’s partnerships with those companies. GM, Volvo and Polestar were all due to open NACS chargers to their customers in the immediate future, according to Tesla’s website.
The job eliminations mean Rivian, Ford and others have lost their main points of contact in Tesla’s charging unit shortly before the kickoff of the busy summer driving season. Tinucci was one of the main executives building and managing outside partnerships and was thought of highly, two people who had worked with her inside and outside of Tesla said.Musk Undercuts Tesla Chargers That Biden Lauded as ‘a Big Deal’ by Craig Trudell suggests a political motive:
In addition to potentially compromising budding partnerships with other carmakers looking to tap Tesla’s chargers, another consequence of Musk’s move may be undercutting Biden’s EV push in the midst of his reelection campaign. Presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump has repeatedly attacked electric cars on the campaign trail and predicted a “bloodbath” for the auto industry if he isn’t elected.Faced with a huge short-term threat to his wealth Musk isn't concerned with the longer term, when unlike robotaxis, Superchargers could have been a nice little earner:
Tesla had been building a tidy charging business over more than a decade. BloombergNEF estimates that the company delivered 8% of the public charging electricity demanded globally last year. Before Musk’s surprise decision, the researcher was projecting that Tesla’s annual profit from Supercharging could rise to around $740 million in 2030.Musk may already be having second thoughts:
That level of earnings is now likely out of reach, as BNEF’s estimates assumed Tesla would accelerate the pace of installations through the end of the decade. Musk had given indications this was the plan.
The move will slow the network’s growth, according to a person familiar with the division, who asked not to be identified discussing private matters. There already are discussions about rehiring some of the people affected in order to operate the existing network and grow it at a much slower rate, the person said.Way to motivate the team, Elon!
Musk believes the future depends upon robotaxis but:
Many Tesla fans had been holding out hope that Musk would debut a cheap Model 2 EV in recent weeks. Instead, the tycoon promised that robotaxis would save the business, even as both of its partially automated driver assistance systems face recalls and investigations here in the US and in China.Cutting off communication with the regulators who will have to approve robotaxi service isn't likely to help. And if there was another technology critical to Tesla's success it would be batteries:
Delivering on that goal is more than just a technical challenge, and it will require the cooperation and approval of state and federal authorities. However, Musk is also dissolving the company's public policy team in this latest cull.
Earlier this month, Tesla engaged in another round of layoffs that decimated the company and parted ways with longtime executive Drew Baglino, who was responsible for Tesla's battery development.Jonathan M. Gitlin rounds up reactions in What’s happening at Tesla? Here’s what experts think. He quotes Ed Niedermeyer:
Car companies "go bankrupt because A, they overinvest in factories, and then demand falls off. Which... that fits the profile," said Niedermeyer. "And B, they don't invest in products. Not investing in products is sort of a longer-term cause, and the proximal cause is [that] demand falls, and you've been investing in too many factories, and you get crushed by those fixed costs. So those cases that are common across most auto industry bankruptcies are certainly there."Musk isn't listening, because he is still firing people:
But with almost $27 billion of cash on hand, that shouldn't happen any time soon. "The thing that is really hard to understand is that if you have tens of billions of dollars in cash but you're losing market share and you're losing margin, losing pricing power, and all the other things that are happening with the business—you don't cut your way out of that problem," Niedermeyer continued. "That's the confusing part about all this. What would you use that cash for if not to solve those problems? And yet, instead, they're cutting.
"One of the things I've said for a really long time, and I think this is what's happening, is that an automaker is not really real until they survived a serious downturn," Niedermeyer said. And while the broader economy looks fine, EV sales are battling a strong negative headwind. "The car game is a survival business. You can capture more upside than the other guy in the good times. And that can be really good for your stock. But if you do that by not investing in the things that protect you in the downturn, it doesn't matter. And you're just another one on the list of defunct automakers,"
On Sunday night, even more Tesla workers learned they were no longer employed by the company as it engaged in yet another round of layoffs. ... The latest round of layoffs has affected service advisers, engineers, and HR.
Hyping The Technology
The Washington Post team's Faiz Siddiqui and Trisha Thadani report that Tesla profit plunges on price cuts, but company unveils plans for affordable models:CEO Elon Musk, who has a unique penchant for redirecting the conversation, used Tuesday’s earnings call to deflect from the poor numbers, focusing instead on the company’s commitment to artificial intelligence and a fully autonomous car. Details on Tesla’s apparent new offerings — which include the “more affordable models” and the “cybercab” — were scant and did not address how the company would overcome the technological and regulatory hurdles ahead.`Musk has form when it comes to hyping his technologies and companies. His tweeting that funding had been secured to take Tesla private at $420/share led to a settlement with the SEC that is still in place:
The supreme court on Monday rejected an appeal from Elon Musk over a settlement with securities regulators that requires him to get approval in advance of some tweets that relate to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he leads.The hype is starting to wear thin but not yet with the markets, as Brandon Vigliarolo points out in Musk moves Tesla's goalposts, investors happily move shares higher:
Elon Musk has a strategy and you may have seen it before: When things aren't going well, he'll say something wild to take everyone's eyes off the trouble, and raise share prices with dreams.Last year Tesla shipped 1.8M vehicles. There are 6 years left to the "end of the decade". Musk is promising to ship an average of at least 3M vehicles/year, all of which would be enrolled in the robotaxi fleet. Even if this were plausible, one has to question where all the riders would come from for a fleet 2.5 times bigger than Uber's global driver list. Note that in the US 36% of adults have used Uber or Lyft, so the market is already close to saturated. I'm sure we all remember that:
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The first quarter of 2024 didn't go well for Tesla, either economically or reputationally. As we reported earlier, sales fell, net profit tumbled off the same cliff Tesla's stock price earlier careened over, and production and deliveries decreased as well.
But give Musk a chance to toss out a flash grenade and he'll do just that: This time around with some wild predictions about his automaker producing a "purpose-built robotaxi" dubbed the "Cybercab," and Tesla's latest vision for the future as one in which it is focused on "solving autonomy."
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"It's like some combination of Airbnb and Uber, meaning that there will be some number of cars that Tesla owns itself and operates in the fleet … and then there'll be a bunch of cars where they're owned by the end user," Musk said. He added the fleet will likely grow to include "several tens of millions" of vehicles by the end of the decade.
Musk spent plenty of time in the 2010s claiming he'd have one million robotaxis on the road by 2020.Pumping the stock full of hype is a Musk habit:
Getting in trouble over "Full-Self Driving" claims? Stick a guy in a robot suit and call it Optimus to distract shareholders. Fail to get FSD realized this year - again? Just kick it down the road. Journalists calling him out on his nonsense? Rant about the "woke mind virus" and the media on Twitter.Vigliarolo isn't alone. In Musk Sells the Tesla Dream, But Don't Ask for Details Liam Denning notices a detail from the earnings call:
Of course, Optimus has been nowhere to be seen and was barely mentioned during the call. Likewise, Tesla's dreams of tens of millions of robotaxis on the road in the next six years rests on the need for serious technological breakthroughs the automaker has failed to make despite years of trying. Oh, and a ton of permits if this is to operate in the States, at least.
There was an odd tweak to the low-cost vehicle strategy Tesla laid out in March 2023, when management talked about cutting costs in half with revolutionary manufacturing methods. Now, Tesla talks about melding aspects of next-generation platforms with its existing ones in the new models, enabling the company to build them on existing manufacturing lines. To be clear, that is an intriguing possibility, offering efficiencies to reduce stubborn costs.Tesla is starting to have serious competition:
But also to be clear: It won’t deliver a $25,000 Model 2 anytime soon — “this update may result in achieving less cost reduction than previously expected” — and also isn’t what Tesla talked about only a year or so ago. It is a major overhaul of strategy requiring details.
So consumers — some of whom are turned off by Musk’s incessant posting on X, the social platform he owns, and by his controversial political comments — have a lot of choices when it comes to buying an electric car. Tesla’s share of the EV market in the US was roughly 51% in the first quarter, Cox says, down from almost 62% a year earlier.To respond to this competition, Tesla has understood for a long time that they needed a $25K Model 2:
The competition is even fiercer outside the US, where Chinese carmakers dominate. About half of all EVs sold globally are Chinese brands — BYD, the top brand within China, sold more cars than Tesla did in the last quarter of 2023, though Tesla regained the lead in the following quarter.
Musk first teased about such a car in September 2020, saying a series of innovations Tesla was working on would enable it to make an EV at that price within about three years. As recently as January, Musk said Tesla was “very far along” with work on its lower-cost vehicle.But as always, Musk's schedule was just a fantasy, and then the need to pump the stock took over:
Then, in early April, Reuters reported that Tesla had shelved plans for the cheaper vehicle to prioritize its robotaxi, creating bedlam among investors. The tension within Tesla over Musk’s desire to focus on the robotaxi is nothing new. It was chronicled by Walter Isaacson, who wrote in his book published in September that the billionaire had “repeatedly vetoed” plans to make a less-expensive model. Musk refused to give any details about a new, more-affordable model when asked about them by analysts on the first-quarter call.My guess is that it has dawned on Tesla that, without the resources sunk into the Cybertruck, they simply can't build a $25K car and make money, unlike the competition:
China’s EV advantage is in batteries — the most expensive part of an EV. They’re much cheaper in China because of the country’s control of the mining and processing of component materials such as lithium, cobalt, manganese and rare earth metals. UBS analysts say BYD had a 25% cost advantage over North American and European brands in 2023. Its cheapest model goes for $10,000. Tesla’s cheapest Model Y — the world’s best-selling car of any kind last year — is about $35,000 in the US after accounting for federal tax credits.China's other advantage is in driver assistance technology:
“Chinese EVs are simply evolving at a far faster pace than Tesla,” agrees Shanghai-based automotive journalist and WIRED contributor Mark Andrews, who tested the driver assistance tech available on the roads in China. The US-listed trio of Xpeng, Nio, and Li Auto offer better-than-Tesla “driving assistance features” that rely heavily on lidar sensors, a technology that Musk previously dismissed, but which Tesla is now said to be testing.
The Robotaxi Rescue
According to Musk the thing that will transform Tesla's profitability is a robotaxi. Lets assume for the moment that, despite being dependent only upon cameras, Tesla's Fake Self Driving actually worked. In Robotaxi Economics I analyzed the New York Times' reporting on Waymo and Cruise robotaxis in San Francisco and concluded:These numbers look even worse for Tesla. Last year Matthew Loh reported that Elon Musk says the difference between Tesla being 'worth a lot of money or worth basically zero' all comes down to solving self-driving technology, and the reason was that owners would rent out their Teslas as robotaxis when they weren't using them. This was always obviously a stupid idea; who wants drunkards home-bound from the pub throwing up on their Tesla's seats? But the fact that the numbers don't add up for robotaxis in general, and the fact that Hertz is scaling back its EV ambitions because its Teslas keep getting damaged because half of them are being used by Uber drivers as taxis, make the idea even more laughable.Even for Waymo, it turns out that replacing a low-wage human with a lot of very expensive technology (Waymo's robotaxis "are worth as much as $200,000"), and higher-paid support staff isn't a path to profitability.
It is true that Tesla's robotaxis would be cheaper than Waymo's, since they won't have the lidar and radar and so on. But these things are what make the difference between Waymo's safety record, which is good enough that regulators allow them to carry passengers, and Tesla's safety record, which is unlikely to impress the regulators.
The regulators have a lot of reasons to be skeptical. Back in 2021 they started investigating Autopilot:
The U.S. government has opened a formal investigation into Tesla’s Autopilot partially automated driving system after a series of collisions with parked emergency vehicles.Since then the evidence has piled up, as the Washington Post team report:
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NHTSA says it has identified 11 crashes since 2018 in which Teslas on Autopilot or Traffic Aware Cruise Control have hit vehicles at scenes where first responders have used flashing lights, flares, an illuminated arrow board or cones warning of hazards.
At least eight lawsuits headed to trial in the coming year — including two that haven’t been previously reported — involve fatal or otherwise serious crashes that occurred while the driver was allegedly relying on Autopilot. The complaints argue that Tesla exaggerated the capabilities of the feature, which controls steering, speed and other actions typically left to the driver. As a result, the lawsuits claim, the company created a false sense of complacency that led the drivers to tragedy.Musk claimed they would never settle these cases, but:
Tesla this month settled a high-profile case in Northern California that claimed Autopilot played a role in the fatal crash of an Apple engineer, Walter Huang. The company’s decision to settle with Huang’s family — along with a ruling from a Florida judge concluding that Tesla had “knowledge” that its technology was “flawed” under certain conditions — is giving fresh momentum to cases once seen as long shots, legal experts said.The regulators move slowly but they keep moving:
Meanwhile, federal regulators appear increasingly sympathetic to claims that Tesla oversells its technology and misleads drivers. Even the decision to call the software Autopilot “elicits the idea of drivers not being in control” and invites “drivers to overly trust the automation,” NHTSA said Thursday, revealing that a two-year investigation into Autopilot had identified 467 crashes linked to the technology, 13 of them fatal.Last December, the NHTSA forced Tesla to recall more than 2M vehicles because Autopilot:
has inadequate driver monitoring and that the system could lead to "foreseeable misuse,"The agency suspects the recall wasn't adequate:
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration disclosed Friday that it’s opened a query into the Autopilot recall Tesla conducted in December. The agency is concerned as to whether the company’s remedy was sufficient, in part due to 20 crashes that have occurred involving vehicles that received Tesla’s over-the-air software update.The recall involved an over-the-air update, but Tesla's attitude to regulation showed through:
the agency writes that "Tesla has stated that a portion of the remedy both requires the owner to opt in and allows a driver to readily reverse it" and wants to know why subsequent updates have addressed problems that should have been fixed with the December recall.What is the point of a safety recall that is opt-in and reversible? Clearly, it is to avoid denting the credibility of the hype. The NHTSA is not happy:
In a separate filing, NHTSA detailed findings from its investigation that preceded the December recall. The agency found that Autopilot didn’t sufficiently ensure drivers stayed engaged in the task of driving, and that Autopilot invited drivers to be overconfident in the system’s capabilities. Those factors led to foreseeable misuse and avoidable crashes, at least 13 of which involved one or more fatalities, according to the report.The NHTSA is skeptical that the recall was effective:
“Tesla’s weak driver-engagement system was not appropriate for Autopilot’s permissive operating capabilities,” NHTSA said. This resulted in a “critical safety gap” between drivers’ expectations and the system’s actual capabilities, according to the agency.
But NHTSA says it knows of at least 20 crashes involving Tesla Autopilot that fall into three different categories. It says there have been nine cases of a Tesla having a frontal collision with another vehicle, object, or person, for which there was time for an alert driver to have avoided the crash. Another six crashes occurred when Teslas operating under Autopilot lost control and spun out or understeered into something in a low-grip environment. And five more crashes occurred when the driver inadvertently canceled the steering component of Autopilot without disengaging the adaptive cruise control.The agency is giving Tesla until July 1st:
NHTSA also says it tested the post-recall system at its Vehicle Research and Test Center in Ohio and that it "was unable to identify a difference in the initiation of the driver warning cascade between pre-remedy and post-remedy (camera obscured) conditions," referring to the supposedly stronger driver monitoring.
to send NHTSA a lot of data, including a database with information for every car it has sold or leased in the US, with information on the number and dates of all Autopilot driver warnings, disengagements, and suspensions for each of those vehicles. (There are currently more than 2 million Teslas on the road in the US.)Finally, Mike Spector and Chris Prentice report that In Tesla Autopilot probe, US prosecutors focus on securities, wire fraud:
Tesla must also provide the cumulative mileage covered by Autopilot, both before and after the recall. NHTSA wants Tesla to explain why it filed an official Part 573 Safety Recall Notice, "including all supporting engineering and safety assessment evidence." NHTSA also wants to know why any non-recall update was not part of the recall in the first place.
U.S. prosecutors are examining whether Tesla committed securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its electric vehicles’ self-driving capabilities, three people familiar with the matter told Reuters.This is all about Autopilot, but Fake Self Driving has problems too, as the Washington Post team reported in Tesla worker killed in fiery crash may be first ‘Full Self-Driving’ fatality:
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Reuters exclusively reported the U.S. criminal investigation into Tesla in October 2022, and is now the first to report the specific criminal liability federal prosecutors are examining.
Investigators are exploring whether Tesla committed wire fraud, which involves deception in interstate communications, by misleading consumers about its driver-assistance systems, the sources said. They are also examining whether Tesla committed securities fraud by deceiving investors, two of the sources said.
The Securities and Exchange Commission is also investigating Tesla’s representations about driver-assistance systems to investors, one of the people said.
Two years ago, a Tesla shareholder tweeted that there “has not been one accident or injury” involving Full Self-Driving, to which Musk responded: “Correct.” But if that was accurate at the time, it no longer appears to be so. A Tesla driver who caused an eight-car pileup with multiple injuries on the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge in 2022 told police he was using Full Self-Driving. And The Post has linked the technology to at least two serious crashes, including the one that killed von Ohain.The regulators still approve Waymo's cautious and well-engineered robotaxi effort. Uber's and Cruise's robotaxi efforts flamed out. Given the lack of sensors, the history of crashes, the fact that their "autonomy" technology is still at level 2, and the resistance to regulation, why would any regulator approve even the testing, let alone the revenue service of a Tesla robotaxi?
After Robotaxis, What?
Now that the effectiveness of the robotaxi hype is starting to fade, it is time for Musk to roll out the next shiny object. Dan Robinson reports on it in Elon Musk's latest brainfart is to turn Tesla cars into AWS on wheels:EV carmaker Tesla is considering a wonderful money-making wheeze – use all of that compute power in its vehicles to process workloads for cash, like a kind of AWS on wheels.Seriously? Unless you're a gig worker for Uber or Lyft, who clocks 56 hours/week sitting behind the wheel? I can't believe that Musk is under-estimating the potential here:
The Elon Musk-led outfit said in its recent earnings conference call for calendar Q1 that it had noticed its vehicles spend a considerable amount of their time just sitting there not moving. Many pack in a decent amount of processing power, so why not get them to do something useful and earn some cash for the company as well?
Speaking on the conference call, Musk said that he thought most Teslas were probably used for about a third of the hours in a week.
"And now that we have already paid for this compute in these cars, it might be wise to use them and not let them be, like, buying a lot of expensive machinery and leaving to them idle. We don't want that. We want to use the computer as much as possible and close to like basically 100 percent of the time to make full use of it," Elluswamy said.Tesla is currently selling around 2M vehicles/year, so "at some point" will be sometime in the 2070s, by which time the vast majority of the vehicles Tesla has shipped will have been scrapped, and even if they still work 50 years of Moore's law will have made all but the last few obsolete.
"It takes a lot of intelligence to drive the car anyway. And when it's not driving the car, you just put this intelligence to other uses, solving scientific problems like a human or answering dumb questions for someone else," he added.
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"If you get, like, to the 100 million vehicle level, which I think we will at some point get to, and you've got a kilowatt of usable compute – I think you could have on the order of 100 gigawatts of useful compute, which might be more than anyone, more than any company, probably more than any company," he mused.
Robinson starts thinking about the details:
Of course, all this compute capacity isn't sitting conveniently clustered together in a datacenter. It is distributed here and there, reached via a cellular connection in each Tesla, or possibly via Wi-Fi if the car is on the owner's driveway.
So the model Tesla would be looking at is perhaps more akin to edge computing, such as Heata in the UK, which uses heat from servers in homes to provide domestic hot water and rents out the compute capacity via cloud company Civo.
Among the issues we can see is that Tesla would be effectively using electricity that the car owner has paid for to run any workloads while it is idle, so would they get a cut of the money generated?
Yes, it seems. CFO Vaibhav Taneja, said "the capex is shared by the entire world. Sort of everyone owns a small chunk, and they get a small profit out of it maybe."
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IDC Senior Research Director for Digital Infrastructure Andrew Buss said the idea sounds technically feasible, but the potential downsides are perhaps too big to justify it being actually implemented.
"They'd not even be edge processing nodes as the code and data would have to be centrally managed and stored and then packaged and sent for processing before being returned once complete," he told The Register.
Other downsides include third-party code and data running on a private asset, Buss said, and if taking power from the battery, this would accelerate the degradation of these, which are the single most expensive and crucial part of a Tesla and need to be kept in as optimal a shape as possible for longevity and consistency of range.
In other words, Tesla might well find that implementing this idea may prove more trouble than it is actually worth for the returns it generates.
And as The Register noted after the earnings conference, Elon has a habit of throwing out wild ideas when things aren't going well to distract the punters and energize investors. This could well be one of them.
51 comments:
Ananya Bhattacharya reports that Indians who pre-ordered Teslas in 2016 are giving up and chasing refunds:
"Within hours after the company opened its pre-booking portal for India in April 2016, Gondal, a fan of Elon Musk and Tesla, paid $1,000 (then 66,237 rupees) to pre-book the Tesla Model 3. ...
For almost seven years after that, Gondal, founder and CEO of health-tech startup GoQii, patiently waited for his Model 3. By 2023, when there was still no sign of the car, he decided to cancel his booking — and that was the start of another ordeal.
Gondal had to chase Tesla’s India executive over emails for six months before he received his refund in June 2023. “There was no communication, no emails. And even years later, there was no apology [from the company],” he told Rest of World.
Tesla still does not sell its cars in India — the third-largest auto market in the world."
Bloomberg reports that Tesla Ramps Up Job Cuts in China as Sales Slowdown Bites:
"Additional layoffs began earlier this week, extending cuts in mid-April that were part of the electric vehicle maker’s pledge to slash global headcount by more than 10%, said the people, who asked not to be identified as they’re not authorized to disclose the information publicly.
The latest move affects a range of departments including customer service staff, engineers, production line workers, and the logistics team at Tesla’s Shanghai plant — home to more than half the company’s global production, according to the people. The layoffs last month more directly impacted sales representatives, they said."
Will the last person leaving TESLA - turn out the lights.
The conclusion of Kevin Williams' long and detailed I Went To China And Drove A Dozen Electric Cars. Western Automakers Are Cooked is:
"If the U.S. and Europe get what they want—a crackdown on Chinese imports—it doesn’t feel like it would result in better cars. It feels like it would keep buyers of those markets locked to cars that aren’t executed as well. It’s nakedly protectionist because deep down, all of the Western auto executives and some hawkish China pundits understand that Chinese EV and PHEV models are more compelling than what European, other Asian, and American brands have come up with.
I’ve seen it with my own two eyes. We’re cooked."
Zeyi Yang's How China is regulating robotaxis isn't good news for Tesla:
"American and Chinese robotaxi companies are both under pressure to start making money. Considering the advanced hardware and software in a robotaxi and the human intervention still needed to operate and maintain them, robotaxi rides have much higher costs than taxi rides today, which makes the business hard to scale up.
...
In December 2023, China’s first regulation on commercial operation of autonomous vehicles went into effect. It sets some ground rules for different kinds of vehicles: roboshuttles or robotrucks still need to have in-car safety operators, while robotaxis can use remote operators. The ratio of robotaxis to remote operators cannot exceed 3:1, and operators need to pass certain skill tests. There are also rules specifying what data the companies need to report when accidents happen."
Wait, what? Craig Trudell reports that Elon Musk Pledges to Grow Supercharger Business He Just Decimated:
"Elon Musk touted plans to expand Tesla Inc.’s Supercharger network just over a week after firing almost all of the roughly 500 people who ran the business.
Tesla will spend “well over” $500 million on growing its network this year, Musk said on X, the social media network he owns. Ten days ago, the automaker’s chief executive officer wrote that Tesla planned to add chargers at a slower pace and focus more on uptime and existing locations."
Anyone who believes Musk's statements about the future after all this time is incapable of learning from experience. And, "to decimate" means to kill off one in ten. He fired the entire organization.
Reuters reports that Eight hundred protesters attempt to storm German Tesla factory:
"Protesters opposed to expansion of the US electric vehicle maker Tesla’s plant in Grünheide near Berlin clashed with police as some of them attempted to storm the facility on Friday.
Some 800 people took part in the protest, according to the organising group Disrupt Tesla, which claims the expansion would damage the environment."
"And, "to decimate" means to kill off one in ten. He fired the entire organization."
To be fair didn't Musk say he was going to layoff 10% of Tesla? Then they're just part of the 1-in-10 being eliminated. I'd imagine back in the day that anyone talking specifically about the dead Roman soldiers after a decimation would refer to them as having been decimated, and not just reserve this term for the entire cohort.
Re: Robotaxis. It reminds me of the scifi tropes where people are used as cheaper general-purpose computers for tasks. Do autonomous taxi companies have reason to believe that the computational and equipment demands for autonomous taxiing will ever be cheaper in sum on an ongoing basis than human drivers? I guess at the very least there's a market for people who don't feel comfortable driving with another person.
1) My comment about decimation referred to the headline, which specifically says that Musk decimated the Supercharger organization, which he completely destroyed.
2) Musk appears to have already done a double-decimation on the whole of Tesla global.
3) Evidence from Cruise and Waymo is that their robotaxis are not making money.
"1) My comment about decimation referred to the headline, which specifically says that Musk decimated the Supercharger organization, which he completely destroyed."
Yes, this was my point. You'd say of those specifically murdered in a decimation that they were decimated. You'd not just say that the cohort was decimated. E.g. when pointing to a mass grave following a decimation the Roman would say to the other Roman that those people had been decimated, instead of some more convoluted circumlocution saying that the legion had been decimated and that those bodies in the mass grave were the 1-in-10 chosen to be killed.
So here, saying that the Supercharger organization within Tesla was decimated is okay in my book as the decimation itself is of the larger organization. Maybe not technically accurate in the Roman way, as Tesla employees were not split into units of 10 to determine who would be eliminated. But it's been a few thousand years since anyone has properly done a Roman decimation, and yet we still use the word.
I used to be hypercritical of this use of decimate as well, but have started to feel more generous given the caveats of the term.
"2) Musk appears to have already done a double-decimation on the whole of Tesla global."
Has Musk finally under promised and over delivered?! Not to make light of this, as it sucks to be terminated. I have been, and lost 15 pounds in 14 days. Immediate terminations deliver a shock to the system that is not healthy. Chronic stress from a gradual phaseout is also bad, but it can be done in such a way that it's healthier than a termination (even with pay). I wish the government would calculate out these costs to the economy like they do other economic shocks. Maybe we'd get some legislation favoring employee-rights, temp agency regulations, and employee-controlled workplaces over oligarchy-controlled workplaces.
3) Not surprising for the reason of R&D testing. Will this remain the same as it leaves the R&D stage? As you indicate this may depend on regulations. Regardless, either costs have to come way down, and I don't know enough about computation and sensors and insurance and regulatory requirements to know if this is possible, or they need to start charging a premium and only sell services to those willing to pay that premium.
The "right-sizing" continues. Fred Lambert reports that Tesla’s head of Cybertruck manufacturing is out:
"Tesla’s head of Cybertruck manufacturing has left the company. It’s unclear if he was involved in yet another round of layoffs or if he left on his own accord.
...
At least 10% of the workforce has been let go, but Electrek has heard that as much as 20% of the entire headcount could be gone by the time everything is said and done.
Tesla’s automotive business, including charging and manufacturing, as well as new product launches, took the biggest hit as Elon Musk appears to be transitioning Tesla away from its EV manufacturing roots to focus on autonomous driving products.
Now, the latest Tesla executive to leave is Renjie Zhu, director of manufacturing in charge of Cybertruck production."
Jonathan M. Gitlin confirms the brilliance of Musk's long-term strategy in Elon Musk laid off the Tesla Supercharger team; now he’s rehiring them:
"But last week, Musk announced that Tesla would spend more than $500 million building out more chargers, just days after saying the focus would instead be on uptime at existing locations. And to do that, Tesla will need to rehire a whole bunch of people.
That started with Max de Zegher, who was an executive under the previous head of Supercharging, Rebecca Tinucci. (At the time of the layoffs, Electrek reported that Musk got rid of the entire team because its Tinucci did not lay off enough workers on her own.)"
How much of a manufacturing nightmare is the Cybertruck? The line is supposed to produce 2500 vehicles/week, but AP reports:
"Tesla is recalling 3,878 of its 2024 Cybertrucks after it discovered that the accelerator pedal can become stuck, potentially causing the vehicle to accelerate unintentionally and increase the risk of a crash.
...
The recall involves model year 2024 Cybertrucks made between Nov. 13, 2023 and April 4, 2024, according to the NHTSA.
That is 3878 vehicles in 20 weeks, or 194/week, or 8% of capacity. Tesla claims they are now producing 1000/week, but even if you believe that the line is running at 40% of capacity and thus losing a whole lot of money.
It isn't just Tesla's autonomy that the Feds are skeptical of. Ashley Belanger reports that Feds probe Waymo driverless cars hitting parked cars, drifting into traffic:
"Crashing into parked cars, drifting over into oncoming traffic, intruding into construction zones—all this "unexpected behavior" from Waymo's self-driving vehicles may be violating traffic laws, the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) said Monday.
To better understand Waymo's potential safety risks, NHTSA's Office of Defects Investigation (ODI) is now looking into 22 incident reports involving cars equipped with Waymo’s fifth-generation automated driving system. Seventeen incidents involved collisions, but none involved injuries."
And Keith Laing reports that Spate of Self-Driving Probes Points to US Setting Higher Safety Bar:
"The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration initiated two probes just this week into Waymo and Zoox, the driverless technology subsidiaries of Alphabet Inc. and Amazon.com Inc. While the circumstances are different for Tesla Inc. and Ford Motor Co. — their vehicles offer driver-support systems that require constant supervision — what the companies share in common are car crashes that drew the attention of an agency tasked with rooting out safety defects.
The investigations point to a more hands-on approach by a regulator that’s been relatively forbearing of automated-driving systems until recently. While executives and bureaucrats alike have touted the technology’s potential to make roadways safer, NHTSA has steadily accumulated information on how the systems are actually faring on streets and highways. It’s now setting a high bar — in Zoox’s case, for example, the agency initiated a defect probe after just two crashes resulted in minor injuries."
Richard Speed reports that Tesla self-driving claims parked in court:
"Tesla is facing a lawsuit over claims made about its self-driving technology after a US judge rejected the company's motion to dismiss the case.
Although Judge Rita Lin dismissed some of the claims, the order [PDF] clears the way for disgruntled Tesla owners to pursue action based on the company's increasingly specific boasts about what its cars are capable of and the cross-country driving abilities that are forever just around the corner."
Mike Masnick's Musk’s ExTwitter Fumbles Copyright Law, Loses Data Scraping Lawsuit explains that:
"Internet companies have been pushing to argue that their terms of service can block all kinds of scraping, perhaps relying on the eventual injunction blocking HiQ. Both Meta and ExTwitter sued a scraping company, Bright Data, arguing that its scraping violated their terms of service.
In January, Meta’s case against Bright Data was dismissed at the summary judgment stage. The judge in that case, Edward Chen, found that Meta’s terms of service clearly do not prohibit logged-off scraping of public data.
Now, ExTwitter’s lawsuit against the same company has reached a similar conclusion.
This time, it’s Judge William Alsup, who has dismissed the case for failure to state a claim. Alsup’s decision is a bit more thorough. It highlights that there are two separate issues here: did it violate ExTwitter’s terms of service to access its systems for scraping, and then, separately, to scrape and sell the data."
Judge Alsup writes that Twitter wasn't injured:
"Critically, the instant complaint alleges no such impairment or deprivation. X Corp. parrots elements, reciting that Bright Data’s “acts have caused injury to X Corp. and . . . will cause damage in the form of impaired condition, quality, and value of its servers, technology infrastructure, services, and reputation” (Amd. Compl. ¶ 102). Its lone deviation from that parroting — a conclusory statement that Bright Data’s “acts have diminished the server capacity that X Corp. can devote to its legitimate users” — fails to move the needle (Amd. Compl. ¶ 98). To say nothing of the fact that, as alleged, Bright Data and its customers are legitimate X users (subject to the Terms), the scraping tools and services they use are reliant on X Corp.’s servers functioning exactly as intended."
Kevin T. Dugan adds to the downward price pressure with Who Wants 30,000 Used Teslas?:
"At the start of the year, after Hertz announced it was selling off its fleet of Teslas — backtracking on a plan to buy up 100,000 of the electric vehicles — the news sounded good for Bijay Pandey, a 34-year-old self-employed data worker in Irving, Texas. “I have another vehicle, and I was trying to add one for my wife because gas prices were too high,” he said. When he found out that it came with a $4,000 tax credit — even better. “That’s what attracted me,” he added. So, the day after Valentine’s Day, he bought a red 2022 Long Range Model 3 with 70,000 miles on it. It ended up costing just about $25,000, not a bad deal for a car that can sell for about $47,000 new."
There were a whole set of problems:
"Hertz said that it would swap the car for Pandey, but for about two months he waited — making $500 payments on his auto loan — before getting a replacement. “I realized why they were trying to get rid of those Teslas,” he said. “If anything happens to a Tesla, then the bill is too high.”
Edward Ludlow got a free 30-day trial of Fake Self Driving and reports on the experience in Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ Struggled Soon After Leaving My Driveway. He notes:
"I drove several hundred miles with this system engaged, and while I lived to tell about it and was impressed at times, I can confirm that it doesn’t live up to the name. In fact, FSD tended to have trouble assisting me almost immediately after leaving my driveway. ... The system doesn’t make vehicles autonomous, and you the driver are required to have your hands on the wheel and eyes on the road at all times.
My test drives ranged from trips to the grocery store, jaunts to Napa and commutes back and forth between my home outside San Francisco and Bloomberg’s bureau on the Embarcadero. I was unable to make the more than 25-mile journey without at least a few disengagements per trip.
...
After trying it out, I have a hard time seeing how Tesla will make the jump from a consumer car you own and must supervise at all times, to a robotaxi that entirely drives itself. Being part of the experiment was interesting, but not all that comforting."
I don't think I'm happy about those scrapping decisions.
Everything posted to social media is, at minimum, copyright both the original poster and licensed to the social media company by the poster. This copyright and license should be inviolate under copyright laws. Fair use exemptions obviously exist for things such as search engines. But it has to be demonstrated that Bright Data's copying (aka scraping) is for a fair use purpose in order for it to be legal.
Google was rightfully sued for similar practices, though I guess the dismissal of Authors Guild, Inc. v. Google, Inc. shows that copyright protection isn't all it's cracked up to be in the US.
I'm curious why they Meta/Musk didn't make a claim that this copying directly impacts their ability to resell the same copyrighted content that they have duly licensed.
Awareness of the gap between Tesla and TSLA is spreading even to Bloomberg, see Liam Denning's Musk Loses Autonomy in Race for Tesla Robotaxis:
"No one values autonomy more than Elon Musk. Except, perhaps, other Tesla Inc. bulls. For example, RBC Capital Markets’ base case valuation for Tesla is just over $1 trillion — roughly double the current valuation — of which less than 6% relates to the manufacture and sale of electric vehicles. Some $627 billion of it relates to “robotaxis” — a figure bigger than the entire current market cap.
...
Investors recently added $82 billion to Tesla’s market cap in a single day on news that Chinese officials had granted tentative approval for deploying its driver-assistance systems there. Much as that lifted spirits, what a perfect example of the power that bureaucrats have to make, break or delay robotaxi ambitions. In pivoting to autonomy, Musk has placed more of Tesla’s fortunes in the hands of public officials and processes beyond the routinely accommodating environs of the boardroom and the stock market."
It is no wonder that Hertz is dumping its Teslas. Not merely are they extraordinarily expensive to repair, and their resale value is collapsing, but customaers who rent them are in for a nasty surprise, as James Gilboy reports in Hertz Charging a Tesla Renter for Gas Was Not an Isolated Incident:
"Last week, we reported on a customer who was charged $277 for gasoline his rented Tesla couldn't have possibly used—and now, we've heard from other Hertz customers who say they've been charged even more.
...
Fellow Hertz customer Toan Le reported an even worse experience with their Tesla rental earlier this month. They told us they prepaid $329.83 for a week with a Model 3, and returned the car expecting to pay only $25 for Hertz to charge it. Le was then apparently billed $690.32, some of which was redundant billing for the rental they say they'd already paid for.
To add insult to injury, their invoice (shown here) indicates more than two thirds of that, $475.19, was a fuel charge, which was applied in addition to the $25 charging fee. They also faced a $125.01 "rebill" for using the Supercharger network during their rental, which other Hertz customers have expressed surprise and frustration with. Charging costs can vary, but a 75-percent charge from a Supercharger will often cost in the region of just $15."
The article has other similar stories.
Timothy B. Lee was able to compare Waymo's robotaxi service to Tesla's Fake Self Driving in San Francisco and reports in On self-driving, Waymo is playing chess while Tesla plays checkers:
"During a 45-minute test drive in a Tesla Model X, I had to intervene twice to correct mistakes by the FSD software. In contrast, I rode in driverless Waymo vehicles for more than two hours and didn’t notice a single mistake.
So while Tesla’s FSD version 12.3 seems like a significant improvement over previous versions of FSD, it still lags behind Waymo’s technology.
...
Safely operating driverless vehicles on public roads is hard. With no one in the driver’s seat, a single mistake can be deadly—especially at freeway speeds. So Waymo launched its driverless service in 2020 in the easiest environment it could find—residential streets in the Phoenix suburbs—and has been gradually ratcheting up the difficulty level as it gains confidence in its technology.
In contrast, Tesla hasn’t started driverless testing because its software isn’t ready. For now, geographic restrictions and remote assistance aren’t needed because there’s always a human being behind the wheel. But I predict that when Tesla begins its driverless transition, it will realize that safety requires a Waymo-style incremental rollout.
So Tesla hasn’t found a different, better way to bring driverless technology to market. Waymo is just so far ahead that it’s dealing with challenges Tesla hasn’t even started thinking about."
The whole report is well worth reading.
Bloomberg reports that :
"Tesla CEO Elon Musk largely avoided questions about bringing a low-cost electric vehicle to market during a remote appearance Thursday at the VivaTech conference in Paris."
The robotaxi better be a killer business ...
Feds add nine more incidents to Waymo robotaxi investigation by Kirsten Korosec starts:
"Federal safety regulators have discovered nine more incidents that raise questions about the safety of Waymo’s self-driving vehicles operating in Phoenix and San Francisco.
...
The additional nine incidents include reports of Waymo robotaxis colliding with gates, utility poles, and parked vehicles, driving in the wrong lane with nearby oncoming traffic and into construction zones.
The ODI said it’s concerned the robotaxis “exhibiting such unexpected driving behaviors may increase the risk of crash, property damage, and injury.” The agency said that while it’s not aware of any injuries from these incidents, several involved collisions with visible objects that “a competent driver would be expected to avoid.” The agency also expressed concern that some of these occurred near pedestrians."
The Washington Post's Trisha Thadani and Ian Duncan report that Major robotaxi firms face federal safety investigations after crashes:
"All three major self-driving vehicle companies are facing federal investigations over potential flaws linked to dozens of crashes, a sign of heightened scrutiny as the fledging industry lays plans to expand nationwide.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) announced this month that it would examine two rear-end collisions involving motorbikes and vehicles operated by Amazon’s Zoox, which is already testing cars without steering wheels or brakes for passengers to operate.
A few days later, the agency opened a probe into robotaxis operated by Waymo, owned by Google parent Alphabet, over 31 incidents that included ramming into a closing gate and driving on the wrong side of the road. A federal investigation into GM’s Cruise — launched last year after one of its cars hit and dragged a jaywalking pedestrian in San Francisco — remains open, even as the company began a return to public roads this month in Phoenix.
...
But as the incidents pile up, the agency is under increasing pressure from lawmakers, labor unions and road-safety advocates to be more proactive, rather than resorting to investigating after things go wrong.
“Innocent people are on the roadways, and they’re not being protected as they need to be,” said Cathy Chase, the president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety."
Musk's plan for endangered species:
"If we make life multiplanetary, there may come a day when some plants & animals die out on Earth, but are still alive on Mars
The carnage in the used Tesla market continues, as Jonathan M. Gitlin reports in Used Teslas are getting very cheap, but buying one can be risky:
"The launch of a new electric vehicle these days is invariably met with a chorus of "this car is too expensive"—and rightfully so. But for used EVs, it's quite another story, particularly used Teslas, thanks to a glut of former fleet and rental cars that are now ready for their second owner.
"Due to a variety of reasons, Tesla resale values have plummeted, making many Tesla models very affordable now. Plus, for some consumers, an additional $4,000 Federal tax credit on used EVs may apply, sweetening the deal even further. Buying a used Tesla can be a great deal for the savvy shopper, but there are significant things to look out for," says Ed Kim, president and chief analyst at AutoPacific."
And if you miss one of the "things to look out for" remember< Teslas are extremely expensive to fix. That's why Hertz is dumping them.
So much for Musk's "never settle" policy. Trisha Thadani reports that Tesla settles another defect case, avoiding jury for second time this year:
"Tesla settled another case linking a passenger’s death with an alleged vehicle design defect, records show, the second time in less than two months that the automaker has avoided a jury trial just days before it was set to begin.
The lawsuit, filed in 2019 and settled for an undisclosed amount Friday, alleged that a Tesla vehicle suddenly accelerated in downtown Indianapolis in 2016, then burst into flames after it collided into a tree and adjacent parking structure."
Lawrence Fossi has two great posts about Musk's attempt to override the Delaware court:
- Why Did the Tesla Board Attempt to 'Ratify' Musk's Obscene Options Package Instead of Granting a New One?:
"For Tesla, granting Musk a brand new compensation package that matched the 2018 award would assure that the company would show massive losses for many years to come. And for Musk, such a package would create targets that would be all but impossible to achieve."
And:
"Musk does not want a new package. He cannot replicate the stock pumping feats that he performed for the 2018 version. Therefore, even if it’s a dangerous choice, already facing legal challenges from Tornetta and all but certain ultimately to fail, the ratification effort is Tesla’s only choice if its board of directors is determined to give in to the petulant demands for a massive additional stock grant from its man-child CEO."
And:
"Moreover, because Musk’s stock option plan is “non-qualifying” (a consequence of owning more than 10% of Tesla), his options would be taxed at ordinary income rates upon exercise, and then again at capital gains rates upon sale. Even worse, while I’m no tax expert, my understanding is that the difference between the value of the options and their fair market value would be taxable even at the time of their receipt.
So, in effect, the ratification effort is not merely an effort by Tesla to dance around inconvenient accounting truths, it is also an audacious effort by Musk to engage in income tax avoidance."
- The Dark Stain on Tesla's Directors:
"The gambits to “ratify” the compensation package awarded to Elon Musk in 2018 (the 2018 Grant) and to reincorporate Tesla in Texas now being attempted by Tesla’s Board of Directors are the most shameful acts of corporate governance I have ever witnessed. They combine a terribly unfair price with a hideously flawed process and immensely misleading disclosures."
Bob Woods reports that the $25K Tesla is finally here in EV slump, Hertz fire sale take used Teslas to 'no haggle' $25,000 price:
"Hertz has plenty of electric vehicles, especially Teslas, that it's motivated to sell since pulling back on its aggressive EV plans, at what the rental car company calls 'no-haggle' prices.
Nationwide, in most major metros, that means an average sales price of around $25,000, but they are now older models in a market where battery and mileage performance will increase each year.
Used EV prices plummeted by as much as 31.8% this year, according to automotive research firm iSeeCars."
The headline of Rani Molla's Everyone hates Tesla except people who already own one sums up the result of YouGov polling:
"Tesla owners seem to like their cars about as much as owners of other brands do, but everyone else seems to hate them. Americans generally feel more neutral or positive toward other car companies.
While public sentiment hasn’t appeared to sway those who already own Teslas, it could become a problem trying to get new people to buy them. That’s bad news for a car company already struggling with its sales."
The graphs in the post are revealing.
Richard Speed's Tesla's Autopilot false advertising tussle with California DMV must go to trial is more evidence that Musk's lies are slowly catching up with him:
"If the accusations are proven, several remedies are available, including compensating Tesla owners and prohibiting the sale of the vehicles in California."
Brad DeLong's To Understand Elon Musk’s Descent, Look at His $46 Billion Pay Package is a must-read:
"The divergence between what the economy needs from companies, especially technology companies, and what financial capitalism incentivizes managers and venture capitalists to pursue is a substantial weak point in our system for advancing our society. Incentivizing our captains of technological industry by offering them great wealth if they become celebrity internet and flame war-provocateurs will turn out to be significantly worse for growth and prosperity than even the neoliberal financial capitalism we once knew."
In the medium term JP Morgan Chase is skeptical of robotaxi economics:
"JPMorgan Chase analysts, including Ryan Brinkman, released a report mentioning a conversation they had with Tesla's Investor Relations Director, Travis Axelrod.
Brinkman stated that despite Tesla's confidence in the commercialization and profit prospects of Robotaxi, this business is unlikely to generate substantial revenue for the company in the next few years. Brinkman cautioned investors not to have overly high expectations for short-term revenue from Robotaxi."
Lawrence Fossi has continued posting about Musk's attempt to defy the Delaware court, and they all make fascinating reading:
- Musk Is Stuck in Delaware
- The Dirtiest Lie in Tesla's Proxy Statement
- The Tesla Party Was Fun; Now Comes the Hangover
The American Geophysical Union reports on yet another Musk externality in Satellite 'megaconstellations' may jeopardize recovery of ozone hole:
"When old satellites fall into Earth's atmosphere and burn up, they leave behind tiny particles of aluminum oxide, which eat away at Earth's protective ozone layer. A new study finds that these oxides have increased 8-fold between 2016 and 2022 and will continue to accumulate as the number of low-Earth-orbit satellites skyrockets."
Is this a record? Jon Brodkin reports the Cybertruck is averaging a recall every 2 months in Tesla announces third and fourth Cybertruck recalls:
"Tesla has announced two more recalls of the Cybertruck, both of which affect over 11,000 vehicles produced since the car first became available late last year. Cybertruck owners will need to bring their cars in for service because of faulty windshield wiper motors and a cosmetic piece that could come off the vehicle while it's being driven."
AP reports that Tesla ordered to stop releasing toxic emissions from San Francisco Bay Area plant:
"Tesla must fix air quality problems at its electric vehicle manufacturing facility in the San Francisco Bay Area after racking up more than 100 violations for allegedly releasing toxic emissions into the atmosphere over the last five years, an air quality board said Tuesday."
Any bets on whether Musk will comply?
Fred Lambert reports that Tesla is upgrading the Cybertruck’s electric motor:
"Tesla is now upgrading the Cybertruck’s electric motor with a more “efficient and reliable” motor.
Tesla has started to contact some early Cybertruck owners to tell them that they will change their electric drivetrain.
...
It could be as simple as Tesla finding some optimization through reviews of early Cybertrucks, and now the automaker is binging back some of its early motors to see if it can find further optimizations.
However, it could also be Tesla finding a problem with the existing drivetrain, and this is a soft start of the retrofiting program."
The WaPo's Trisha Thadani and Gerrit De Vynck's Cyclists can’t decide whether to fear or love self-driving cars gets where I am:
"But Bay Area cyclists who have firsthand experience with the futuristic technology are wary, according to interviews and a Washington Post analysis of nearly 200 complaints about autonomous vehicles submitted to the California Department of Motor Vehicles since 2021.
...
But some resent being guinea pigs for driverless vehicles that veer into bike lanes, suddenly stop short and confuse cyclists trying to navigate around them. In more than a dozen complaints submitted to the DMV, cyclists describe upsetting near misses and close calls"
The article is about really autonomous vehicles, which as a regular cyclist in Palo Alto I rarely encounter. My problem is that the city is invested with Teslas, and I have to treat each of them as under the control of Tesla's notoriously buggy Fake Self Driving. I didn't sign up to be Musk's crash test dummy, but there is nothing I can do to stop members of the cult of Musk using the software in situations it was never designed for.
Dana Hull and Edward Ludlow report that Tesla Delays Robotaxi Rollout in Blow to Musk’s Autonomy Drive:
"The roughly two-month delay has been communicated internally, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the information hadn’t been publicly announced. The design team was told this week to rework certain elements of the car, one of the people said.
Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk set the initial Aug. 8 date for the event months ago, and optimism about the spectacle has contributed to an 11-day streak of gains that added more than $257 billion to Tesla’s market capitalization. The stock fell as much as 8.3% in intraday trading Thursday after Bloomberg News first reported the delay."
By "rollout" they mean show a prototype. Remember the "rollout" of the Cybertruck was in November 2019, and it was first delivered (not ready for prime time) in November 2023, four years later. Tesla isn't serious about a robotaxi service, it is serious about using hype to pump the stock.
Dave Lee catalogs the flaws in Musk’s Robotaxi Plan Shows He Gets Cars But Not People:
"The first is the belief that millions of Tesla owners will gladly send their own vehicles out to pick up members of the public in return for a share of the fare. To the Tesla owners reading this, I ask: Would you? Would you send out your car — which can’t have any of your belongings in it, unless you want them stolen — to go pick up the fast-food-eating, drunk-puking, sex-having general public?"
The car would need to be thoroughly cleaned each day. Income for owners would most likely be paltry because the model only works if it undercuts Uber. Zero driver costs will help, but insurance will likely be high, not to mention any other associated fees cities will look to levy on a new mode of transportation. The times at which potential ride-share earnings are at their highest, such as at rush hour or for the school run, are likely the same times drivers will want the car for themselves."
Note that one of the reasons Hertz abandoned its fleet of Teslas was their extraordinarily high repair costs, which must be figured into the robotaxi economics.
Craig Trudell reports that Tesla Analyst Nearly Crashes While Using ‘Full Self-Driving’:
"William Stein, a Truist Securities analyst with a hold rating on Tesla’s stock, took this as his cue to test-drive one of the carmaker’s vehicles, and narrowly avoided a crash.
...
Stein concluded that the version of FSD he tested was “truly amazing, but not even close to ‘solving’ autonomy,” alluding to language Musk has repeatedly used."
Thomas Claiburn reports that Tesla that killed motorcyclist was in Full Self-Driving mode:
"Washington State Patrol investigators have found that the Tesla involved in the death of a motorcyclist on Friday, April 19, 2024 was operating in Full Self-Driving (FSD) mode.
...
Washington State does not permit self-driving vehicles to operate, with the exception of companies that have entered into certified testing arrangements with the Department of Licensing. Currently, Loftis said, Nvidia, Waymo, and Zoox are certified to test self-driving cars in the US West Coast state.
...
As of June 2023, Tesla's Autopilot (a subset of FSD capabilities) had reportedly been involved in 17 fatalities and 736 crashes."
Jonathan M. Gitlin gets it in Elon Musk says Tesla is an AI company now. Here’s how plausible that is. TL;DR not very. He quotes Ed Niedermeyer, author of Ludicrous: The Unvarnished Story of Tesla Motors:
"Niedermeyer noticed a change in Musk during that most recent investor call. "He's saying the quiet part out loud... he's talking about valuation, and it makes it really clear that that's the game for him. So from a car company perspective, where we've ended up with Tesla is totally bizarre, surreal, illogical, whatever. But as a historian of Tesla as a company, it makes perfect sense," Niedermeyer said.
...
This is no longer really a car company. This is really a stock promotion—I know this is the oldest cliche for long-time Teslaheads, but it's a stock promotion company that is increasingly, implausibly masquerading as a car company," Niedermeyer said."
Jonathan M. Gitlin's Tesla Full Self Driving requires human intervention every 13 miles is not a surprise:
"The partially automated driving system exhibited dangerous behavior that required human intervention more than 75 times over the course of more than 1,000 miles (1,600 km) of driving in Southern California, averaging one intervention every 13 miles (21 km).
AMCI Testing evaluated FSD builds 12.5.1 and then 12.5.3 across four different environments: city streets, rural two-lane highways, mountain roads, and interstate highways.
...
"But its seeming infallibility in anyone's first five minutes of FSD operation breeds a sense of awe that unavoidably leads to dangerous complacency. When drivers are operating with FSD engaged, driving with their hands in their laps or away from the steering wheel is incredibly dangerous. As you will see in the videos, the most critical moments of FSD miscalculation are split-second events that even professional drivers, operating with a test mindset, must focus on catching,” Mangiamele said.
The dangerous behavior encountered by AMCI included driving through a red light and crossing over into the oncoming lane on a curvy road while another car was headed toward the Tesla. Making matters worse, FSD's behavior proved unpredictable—perhaps a consequence of Tesla's reliance on the probabilistic black box that is machine learning?"
Tinsae Aregay reports that GEICO is Terminating Insurance Coverage of Tesla Cybertrucks, Says “This Type of Vehicle Doesn't Meet Our Underwriting Guidelines”:
""GEICO, the second-largest vehicle insurance underwriter in the US, has decided it will no longer cover Tesla Cybertrucks. The company is terminating current Cybertruck policies and says the truck “doesn’t meet our underwriting guidelines.”
Jonathan M. Gitlin reports that Tesla FSD crashes in fog, sun glare—Feds open new safety investigation:
"Today, federal safety investigators opened a new investigation aimed at Tesla's electric vehicles. This is now the 14th investigation by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and one of several currently open. This time, it's the automaker's highly controversial "full self-driving" feature that's in the crosshairs—NHTSA says it now has four reports of Teslas using FSD and then crashing after the camera-only system encountered fog, sun glare, or airborne dust.
Of the four crashes that sparked this investigation, one caused the death of a pedestrian when a Model Y crashed into them in Rimrock, Arizona, in November 2023."
How many investigations will it take before NHTSA actually does something to protect innocent road users from this menace?
Gitlin concludes:
"The stakes are high for Tesla. If NHTSA determines that the company's camera-only strategy isn't capable of delivering on the promises repeatedly made by Tesla CEO Elon Musk, it can force the automaker to issue a recall. This could involve having to retrofit the cars with new hardware at great expense or require disabling FSD, which would deprive Tesla of a critical revenue stream and perhaps even force its investors to come to terms with reality.
While the company's valuation has long since entered meme stock status, decoupled from the fundamentals of the underlying business of making and selling EVs, after last week's "emperor's new clothes" robotaxi reveal there are signs that the market is finally starting to pay at least a little attention."
I'll just leave these here.
Elon Musk peddles debunked 2020 election conspiracies at first solo town hall supporting Trump
Attention, Prosecutors: Elon Musk Is Breaking Federal Voting Law
Tesla, Warner Bros. sued for using AI ripoff of iconic Blade Runner imagery.
From the "Lucy and the football" department comes Victor Tangermann's Elon Musk Admits That Teslas With "Self-Driving" Computers May Never Be Able to Actually Self-Drive:
"Tesla CEO Elon Musk has finally said the quiet part out loud: he's worried that the vast majority of Tesla vehicles currently on the road won't be able to actually drive themselves after all, even if buyers paid extra for hardware that he claimed at the time would allow them to do just that.
The current generation of the EV maker's lineup makes use of HW3 computers, an assembly that acts as the brain of the car, which has been around since 2019 and required customers with HW2 to pay an additional $1,000 for a retrofit.
...
"There is some chance that HW3 does not achieve the safety level that allows for unsupervised FSD," he added.
Translation: all the times Tesla has vowed that all of its vehicles would soon be capable of fully driving themselves may have been a convenient act of salesmanship that ultimately turned out not to be true."
The article features another example of Musk's credibility problems:
"The good news is that existing customers who shelled out $8,000 for the Full Self-Driving package would get an upgrade "for free," Musk promised during the call. "And we have designed the system to be upgradable, so it’s really just sort of switch out the computer thing — the cameras are capable."
Unfortunately, as Electrek points out, there's a good chance he might be wrong about that, because HW4 uses different power and camera harnesses. Fitting the differently shaped computer may also be a challenge.
Musk himself admitted that "we don’t actually know the answers" to whether HW3 is indeed upgradeable."
Put simply, HW4 would likely need to be adjusted — at the least — to make it work in existing HW3 cars, and the company would need to swallow an enormous expense to provide all these upgrades for free."
The guy is a genius at stringing the suckers along.
our life in his hands. Ian Duncan and Aaron Gregg's Crashes involving Tesla’s Full Self-Driving prompt new federal probe reports that:
"Full Self-Driving is available in most Teslas in the United States, about 2.4 million vehicles, according to regulators, though not all of their owners have opted to buy the FSD package. About half of Tesla owners were using the FSD system in the first quarter of this year, and that figure was still increasing, Musk said in April. The package costs $8,000, or $99 a month."
Is that scary enough for Halloween?
Bradley Brownell illustrates the joys of Tesla ownership in Youtuber's Tesla Model S Plaid Loses Nearly $100,000 In Value In 2 Years:
"Conner’s 2022 Model S Plaid cost a whopping $140,940 after options and fees to buy. Since the car was delivered he has driven it an impressive 37,191 miles. A recent tweet on Twitter from Kyle shows Tesla’s trade-in value for the car is a paltry $46,400. In just two short years the car’s value has tanked $94,540, or $2.54 per mile in depreciation."
The depreciation isn't just driven by Tesla's continual price cuts but also by:
"the terrible long-term quality of the cars the company builds. Conner himself admits that his Model S Plaid “feels like it’s falling apart.”
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