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mlhm5

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6 hours ago, rperez817 said:

 

In the case of Model S, responsive steering with good road feel, minimal body roll, instant power delivery (no lag), excellent braking, smooth & steady ride, and exceptionally low NVH. All that plus the interior comfort and spaciousness of a full size-ish luxury sedan.

 

Fixed

Edited by twintornados
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8 hours ago, CurtisH said:

 Perhaps we will have to agree to disagree. 

 

No problem CurtisH sir, I respect your preferences. When it comes to driving enjoyment, some drivers prefer a raw and visceral experience, others prefer refinement and balance. Nothing wrong with either.

 

Tesla Roadster (both the original Lotus based car as well the upcoming model designed by Tesla) may be more to your liking than the currently produced Tesla vehicles.

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On 1/4/2020 at 4:02 PM, mlhm5 said:

Tesla is all about transitioning off fossil fuels and the biggest driver is battery cost and performance and IMO, you will see on Tesla's 2020 investor day the announcement of a million-mile battery. IMO, it will first go into the semi. Just imagine a semi with a million-mile battery with virtually no service costs. Of course, Tesla may be late with complete self-driving, however they will be first and then 3.5 million semi drivers are out of a job.

 

That is, if they ever come out with the semi they showed what - 2, 3, 4 years ago now?

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38 minutes ago, rmc523 said:

 

That is, if they ever come out with the semi they showed what - 2, 3, 4 years ago now?

 

It was 2 years ago this passed November.  As much as I conpletely disagree with Musk and how he runs Tesla, seeing the semi out in the wild is pretty cool.

 

https://youtu.be/dP0vIH8r-tE

Edited by blwnsmoke
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Here is the first half of a two-part conclusion to an excellent multi-article analysis of Tesla. It is the most balanced thing I've read about the company. I categorize it as somewhat positive overall (the author refers to himself as an enthusiastic, but not cultish, Model 3 owner), but starkly aware of the Tesla's shortcomings and high risks.

 

Some exerpts:

 

"Unlike internal-combustion-engine (ICE) car producers, Tesla is vertically integrated; thus it is not just a designer, assembler, and marketer of cars, it also manufactures most of the parts (including the battery and self-driving CPU) that go into its cars, and it also owns the retail stores that sell Tesla vehicles to consumers (unlike ICE carmakers, it doesn’t wholesale cars to dealerships). This path, though potentially more rewarding and maybe even necessary, is both difficult and risky. This business model creates very high fixed costs and thus requires a higher escape velocity (number of cars produced) to reach profitability. To make things more difficult, Tesla is still young for a car company, and excellence in car production comes from iteration. Tesla’s production techniques are still improving." ...

 

"You don’t need to have a great imagination to see a future in which Tesla needs to raise a few billion dollars of capital. By that point its cash will be gone, and debt investors alarmed by nearly $15 billion of debt and unending losses will refuse to lend. Equity investors, exhausted by promises made but not kept, will punish the company with a valuation that will make the capital raised incredibly dilutive, thus basically impairing anyone who bought shares of Tesla at current prices. There is also a scenario where the company is down on its luck with financial markets, the stock price has fallen to, let’s say, $50; Tesla’s market capitalization is down to around $10 billion (to pick a nice round number); and an ICE car company or a Silicon Valley neighbor buys it. From today’s price that would result in a 75% permanent loss of capital.  And then there is the scenario where Tesla achieves escape velocity, turns profitable, and starts minting money. At this point Tesla’s success will again depend not only on its own prowess but on the strength of its competitors. As I discuss in great detail in my previous Tesla articles, it is not a foregone conclusion that every ICE automaker will successfully transition to become a profitable EV maker." ...

 

"Tesla’s stock is now around $200 (sticking with round numbers again), and I can see a scenario where it crashes to $50 over the next few years or skyrockets to $1,000 over the next decade. Which is a 75% downside and a 500% upside." ...

 

"The reason I took you on this theoretical journey is to show you that at today’s price Tesla is worse than a casino gamble, because aside from highly suspect estimate of upside and downside, we have a hard time assessing our chances. Though I suspect some of my readers will have strong opinions on the probabilities involved, I don’t. If Tesla’s stock price declines to $50, then as long as you’re comfortable with my (highly hypothetical) best and especially worst-case scenarios, the best case at this point offers a 20x upside (from $50 to $1,000) and there is zero downside at the $50 price. At that price you really don’t have to have a brilliant insight into what lies ahead for Tesla."

 

https://contrarianedge.com/why-we-dont-own-tesla-stock-and-no-were-not-bears/

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6 minutes ago, Gurgeh said:

"Tesla’s stock is now around $200 (sticking with round numbers again), and I can see a scenario where it crashes to $50 over the next few years or skyrockets to $1,000 over the next decade. Which is a 75% downside and a 500% upside." ...

 

https://contrarianedge.com/why-we-dont-own-tesla-stock-and-no-were-not-bears/

 

Not sure when that article was written (mid-2019?), but TSLA is at $450 and seems to be climbing,,,,

 

HRG

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18 hours ago, Gurgeh said:

Wonder what the odds are of Tesla getting regulatory approval, anytime in the next decade, for driverless 80,000-lb. semis on autopilot hurtling down interstates shared with conventional vehicles?

 

I don't think the odds are good. In the U.S., the whole regulatory aspect of autonomous trucks remains the biggest hindrance to their widespread deployment. And for expanding real world testing. One of the major issues currently is that regulations aren't even close to being harmonized across all 50 states.

 

As with AVs in general, right now the technology is far ahead of the legislation and regulatory framework needed. https://www.dcvelocity.com/articles/20190917-self-driving-truck-technology-is-outpacing-legislation-and-regulation-in-many-states--cscmp-panel-says/

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18 hours ago, Gurgeh said:

Wonder what the odds are of Tesla getting regulatory approval, anytime in the next decade, for driverless 80,000-lb. semis on autopilot hurtling down interstates shared with conventional vehicles?

 

You have a better shot at seeing pilotless cargo planes going point to point for Fedex, UPS, USPS etc, etc...at least in that arena, the airspace can be dedicated to that type of flight without other planes in the corridors...

 

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46 minutes ago, HotRunrGuy said:

 

Not sure when that article was written (mid-2019?), but TSLA is at $450 and seems to be climbing,,,,

 

HRG

 

Yes, I noticed that as well. Must have been written some months ago but I've been following the article's installments as they become available for free reading. 

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On 1/6/2020 at 2:29 PM, Gurgeh said:

Wonder what the odds are of Tesla getting regulatory approval, anytime in the next decade, for driverless 80,000-lb. semis on autopilot hurtling down interstates shared with conventional vehicles?

Just make sure there is no fire truck in front of it with its lights on.

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Forgetting safety for a minute - let's say you have a fleet of autonomous semis on the interstate and the bridge collapses.   Cops close it down at the previous exit and tell everyone to make a U turn and drive the wrong way back to the exit and up the on ramp.  How is that going to work?

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25 minutes ago, akirby said:

Forgetting safety for a minute - let's say you have a fleet of autonomous semis on the interstate and the bridge collapses.   Cops close it down at the previous exit and tell everyone to make a U turn and drive the wrong way back to the exit and up the on ramp.  How is that going to work?

 

It would be a case where the company that is running the autonomous fleet that is tracking the vehicles sends a signal to the autonomous rigs in that particular area to pull over and await further instruction. Each autonomous truck would either A.) be taken over manually at the site of the truck by a driver to re-route off the affected closed area, or B.) be controlled remotely by a person that could re-route the truck off the affected closed area via remote control similar to a drone pilot.

In that case, I would probably prefer option A.

Edited by twintornados
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17 minutes ago, twintornados said:

 

It would be a case where the company that is running the autonomous fleet that is tracking the vehicles sends a signal to the autonomous rigs in that particular area to pull over and await further instruction. Each autonomous truck would either A.) be taken over manually at the site of the truck by a driver to re-route off the affected closed area, or B.) be controlled remotely by a person that could re-route the truck off the affected closed area via remote control similar to a drone pilot.

In that case, I would probably prefer option A.

 

At least you've offered a reasonable solution instead of just saying "AI!   AI!"

 

I'm not sure A would be logistically feasible outside of small controlled areas.  B would seem more logical since you could have a small group of "pilots" in a central location.  Of course that requires good network connectivity and bandwidth.

 

I'd prefer to see someone in the truck that could at least be alerted to take over when something unexpected occurs.  You know, like every jumbo jet flight since the 70s.

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