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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2023

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  • This is what I’m talking about, that was from the investor call, which you didn’t read the transcript to, and have a cherry picked paraphrase.

    I can’t do the fancy formatting, but here’s the quote:

    I mean, I don’t know what our competitors can do, except we’ve done relatively better than they have because if you look at the drop in our competitors in China sales versus our drop in sales, our drop was less than theirs. So, we’re doing well. But I think Cathie Wood said it best. Like really, we should be thought of as an AI or robotics company.

    If you value Tesla as just like an auto company, you just have to – fundamentally, it’s just the wrong framework and if you ask the wrong question, then the right answer is impossible. So, I mean, if somebody doesn’t believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company. Like that is, but we will and we are and then you have a car that goes from 10 hours of use a week, like an hour and a half a day to probably 50%, but it costs the same.

    Here’s the question he was answering:

    OK. My follow-up, Elon, on future products. If you had nailed execution, assuming that you nail execution on your next-gen cheaper vehicles, more aggressive giga castings, I don’t want to say one piece, but getting closer to, say, one-piece structural pack, unboxed, 300-mile range, $25,000 price point, putting aside robotaxi, those features unique to you. How long would it take your best Chinese competitors to copy a cheaper and better vehicle that you could offer a couple of years from now? How long would it take your best Chinese competitors to copy that? Thanks.

    So for your nuance, I see something along the lines of “Our value isn’t in simply the vehicles, it’s in the FSD/robotaxi concept, so speculating on someone copying our car it won’t eat into our business because autonomous driving will be the best of everything.”

    Now, I don’t agree with all of that, but get some nuance in your life.


  • Yeah, their powerwall, and the Mega pack. Also yes, they brand themselves as an energy company. They make really, really big batteries. They also operate superchargers, which if you have experience with electric vehicles are streets ahead of any other charging networks.

    https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/virtual-power-plant

    And no, they don’t sell FSD for other cars, but it’s still an AI product they are selling to people for money, right now. Maybe in the future they’ll license it out to other people, but that’s pure speculation on my part.

    I’m not sure if you can buy their car batteries individually, haven’t looked into it, although I have looked into buying a used one and using that as a power wall, as it would be cheaper for shitloads of storage.

    I don’t like Musk either, but you’re willfully ignoring quite a lot of what Tesla does and has accomplished because of their mouthpiece. Talking about it requires nuance because they have done a tremendous amount of good, while making some suboptimal changes.



  • I own a Tesla because my engine died at 95k miles in my 2016 VW, with regular maintenance, and it was $11k for just the engine, not counting labor to install it.

    I could change it myself, and I could have bought a used engine for roughly $5500, but the economics of that dont work out.

    I’m willing to take my chances with a battery pack installation.

    Also, 200 miles range is 6x the average daily miles driven, so for almost everyone, it should be plenty! Unless you’re thinking we should mass produce solutions for the 1%?














  • I can’t figure out the “rules” for that situation, as they seem very fluid depending on the corner and the outcome.

    I wouldn’t have thought Lewis should have given the position back to Sainz, but l also watched Max barge Charles off there years ago with no penalty.

    While Max was clearly at fault for the collision, Lando was optimistic on a few of those attempts, my personal favorites being “He moved under braking!” Where max looked like he took a pretty normal line through the turn, and “He pushed me off!” When Lando locked up and blew through the corner.

    I can’t stand either one of them, so it was highly entertaining.