We've pretty much broken the global supply chains with the pandemic, the responses to it, and everything else as the wheels of our global industrial civilization start grinding to a halt.
Even the "big boys" are struggling - Toyota has cut production roughly in half because they can't get chips. GM just announced they are shutting down most of their North American plants for two weeks because... they can't get chips.
Supply chains are broken. Basic electronic components, basic microcontrollers, are listed many places as "We don't have any, we don't know when we'll have any, don't ask" (coded as "52 week lead time" - I assume that's the maximum the system supports). You can't rely on getting stuff, and if you do get it, you can't rely on getting the same stuff in a month. This is before getting into any of the various global events that could really put a crimp on chip supplies...
Just once, I'd love to see Tesla be honest. "We have no idea if we're ever going to be able to make these at this point."
> your personality is built around always being right.
Amazing how effective this is. There is a C level executive at the Unicorn I work at that tweets Musk daily asking him for help or advice, of course getting no response. It's as if it's some sort of daily prayer.
Sounds like one of those "VC congratulate themselves" twitters where a bot goes through and surfaces good ones.
I've always wondered why celebs like Elon tweet. Do people not have close friends? Or is it that when Elon tweets he only sees his friends respond? All I see are troll accounts responding and it makes me wonder why anyone busy bothers.
I’m not a Elon Musk fan at all, but I thought it’s well known to pretty much add a factor of 10x to whatever his timelines or estimates are?
Though I would disagree with his personality built on being right - it’s built on being a futuristic visionary problem solver. Whether he’s actually solving problems, and whether they even need to be solved, that’s up for debate.
I am not a Musk fanboy either, but you probably haven’t seen the recent 3 part video “Starbase tour with Elon Musk”.
He states at least once that he is wrong all the time. At other moments he says other similar things (but sometimes more related to engeneering for example: “All designs are wrong… just a matter of how wrong”).
But I have to agree, before seeing that video I didn’t see him being so open to being wrong, and also not as technically involved or at least knowledgeable…
"Step one: Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are definitely dumb; it does not matter who gave them to you. It’s particularly dangerous when they come from an intelligent person, as you may not question them enough. Everyone’s wrong. No matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time. All designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong."
I read a lot about last century’s pandemic flu and in most cases people and governments reacted similarly, including the anti-mask protests and politicization.
This is true in general, but probably not for the Roadster. This is a low-volume, likely money-losing Halo product. They only ever made ~2500 of the original roadsters, and at quarter mil a pop, probably won't have a substantially larger run for these.
Main problem here is that the new Plaid has made this kinda irrelevant. The marketting pages for both the Model S and the Roadster list the same 0-60 times. They pretty much have to do that whiz-bang cold thruster magic they've talked about if they want this car to make any sense at all.
I suspect, most of all, that they don't have the capacity to make this many models in parallel - Plaid X, structural battery 3 and Y, cybertruck, semi. They're just not that large of a company. Sucks for car fans, but probably better for their bottom line if they just concentrate on their current offerings.
I mean, you could prefer a smaller, lighter, better handling vehicle even if it doesn't have more horsepower. That's traditionally what a sports car was.
I'm sure the Plaid model S is faster than an MG TC too.
Yeah, Model S Plaid is likely going to cannibalize sales from the Roadster for customers like me that just want a car with a ridiculous 0-60 time because accelerating like that from stop lights is fun as hell.
The only reason I don't have an S Plaid now is because the Model 3 Performance I'm driving now is already a larger feeling car than I want to drive. The Model S is a full-sized sedan, and I'd rather drive a 2-door coupe like my BRZ was. Also, being a convertible would be pretty sweet.
If you have a $60k-150k+ car then it’s not a huge deal.
A lot of tires have warranties too. I was getting my tires for 50% or less. (Michelin PS4S) Still had to pay for mount and balance but that’s how it goes.
what even is the issue with manufacturing? is it labor still? You would think at this point the virus has came and went through most working class neighborhoods and a lot of people are carrying antibodies and no longer all finding themselves too ill to work at once. At least that's the case when we look at working class neighborhoods in the U.S.
There was a worry that TSMC would have to reduce production because of a drought on Taiwan but that ended up not having any effect on production at all. For consumer electronics of the sort that TSMC makes the supply crunch has that a lot of people have been cooped up inside without any vacations to spend money on and demand for GPUs, etc, is way up.
For automotive chips, though, the problem is that there was a fire at the Renesas plant in Japan cutting into supply of those sorts of chips. And there were some mis-estimates of what demand would look like.
If its backlogged so much why can't they just cancel orders and refund customers? It seems like it might be worth the hit to just start from scratch and let new orders come in rather than be in this legendary bind trying to fight through the mess. Seems like this sort of thing would even be insured.
Any customer has been and is able to get a refund if they want. From reports of those have done so, money is returned within a week.
I can't imagine why anyone would expect Tesla to preemptively force refunds to all. I'm sure the first 10 or so pre-orders would be pissed to lose their serial number spot for no reason.
I’m not sure if you mean Tesla or manufacturing in general. But it’s not labor in general. It’s specific problems in specific places, and supply chains have dependencies on those places.
For example, Vietnam just went into lockdown. Less than 3% of the population is vaccinated.
> "We have no idea if we're ever going to be able to make these at this point."
Didn't they essentially just say something close to this in corporate speak?
It seems quite clear that they have every intention to make them, as soon as they're quite literally able to do so from a supply chain perspective.
I currently have 9 month lead times from near every contactable company in the world for some simple polyurethane products. If polyurethane production is that backed up and having to prioritize its largest customers with existing contracts... it's somehow not too hard for me to think that there might be some real trouble with materials for the roadster, especially given the fact they're trying to make something selling for roughly $250k that puts $1MM+ competitors to shame.
I did some quick googling and reservations for a signature 2020 roadster were able to be placed as of November 2017 for $50,000. At that time Tesla's stock price was around $60. (I'm assuming that price is adjusted for the stock split that occurred, correct me if I'm wrong.)
As of right now the stock is about $730. Had one purchased Tesla stock instead of reserving a roadster in 2017 it would now be valued at around $600k which is enough to buy 2 roadsters and change at $250k each. Who knows where it will be in 2023. If I recall correctly reserving a signature Model X was a similarly terrible investment vs buying the stock.
I've done the same type of math over buying Apple gear and working for income vs buying Apple stock and just hanging out in Thailand or Chile teaching English on the weekends.
Predicting the future is hard. Tesla almost went bankrupt multiple times. It's ok to have a car instead of a retirement.
Every time I buy Apple products I spend the same amount on AAPL.
Yes it gets expensive, but so far its been a very good investment - i wouldn't actually call it a strategy - method..
Since its very expensive - I don't buy as much hardware as I otherwise probably would.
The "interest" is the value added by being in a queue so that you can get $THING sooner than if you didn't reserve a spot.
Whether the value of the $THING (and having it earlier) actually justifies the opportunity cost of the deposit simply depends on the cost/thing/schedule and the buyer's wishes.
I needed a new vehicle earlier in the year, and the forums suggested I'd be waiting several months. Instead, I used a commercial broker. Didn't get to choose the colour, but one arrived (to my doorstep) in 2 weeks. So it seems just like in communist times there are waitlists for some and not others?
Not surprising. I'm still waiting for Tesla Semi, which was supposed to be released in 2019. But two years later, the production hasn't started. But hey, we got Tesla Bot.
“you will be able to complete your configuration as production nears in 2022.”[1]
Rivian is frantically trying to IPO for $80 billion during September. If possible, before they actually ship any trucks.
Meanwhile, Ford is coming out with the electric Ford F-150. They have 70,000 pre-orders. Also, the boring but useful Ford Transit commercial van is going electric.
I recall in the Jobs era of Apple that a lot of people bought a lot of products that were knockoffs of Apple products with the Apple-ness toned down. People really enjoyed those products and they wouldn’t necessarily have had them if someone hadn’t gone first.
I’m not comparing Elon to Steve, but I think with the possible exception of SpaceX much of what I appreciate about Elon is as a goad or a foil for other people to respond to.
He’s not actually making the electric F-150, but isn’t he really? In a way?
That’s one way to look at it, but the market was already headed this direction long before the Cybertruck was announced.
Rivian, for example, purchased their factory in like 2017 and it’s very likely that the F150 Lightning was in the works in earnest before that Cybertruck was sketched on a napkin since Ford was talking about and teasing working prototypes of the electric F150 before the Cybertruck was announced.
What Musk is great at, above his other talents, is being a great marketer IMO.
Maybe, but some governments are/were planning to ban combustion vehicles. There’s no doubt the big automakers are going to make profits off of their existing technology as long as possible.
It's honestly insane when you lay it out, the Tesla Roadster (1st gen) was produced 2008-2012, it took them until 2017 to even announce a successor, aiming to deliver in 2020. Now the deliver date is 2023 assuming that 2022 isn't a mega drama (yeah I'm sure that'll age well). And how does this come to us? Fucking twitter.
Elon Musk's companies have often produced good things, but I find it fascinating that a man who wants to be great, can't even be half-decent.
Hey Tesla folks, if you're reading this, when's that "full self driving" coming along for real? Or will it always be "later this year"? I'm baffled there's no class action lawsuit by now, especially by people who forked over $10K for a feature that doesn't exist.
Don’t listen to this person. Take all the time you need. The impatience of a few loud, litigious people is no counterbalance to public safety except where lunatics are concerned.
"This person" is a deep learning researcher who knows they aren't going to be able to do it with cameras alone. I want them to learn some humility and refund $10K to people, not deliver it per se. I myself didn't pay for "FSD" on my Tesla, of course.
Do you mind sharing some of your "Deep Learning Research" work?
"Sebastian Thrun. He told me the whole industry is about to reboot. And then I saw why he said that. He literally invented the modern autonomous car field.
He started Google’s autonomous team and told me he made a mistake going with LiDAR."
> Do you mind sharing some of your "Deep Learning Research" work?
To what end? I value my anonymity here. I wish there was a way to anonymously bet money on these outcomes. I'd bet you $10K (the cost of the thing) that there will be no "FSD" "later this year" like Tesla is promising.
It is also baffling that people still read Scoble who knows nothing about anything.
I respect Thrun. He's a brilliant researcher and a very smart man. I've read his "Probabilistic robotics" book. I can also tell you right now that he's _wrong_. There will not be purely optical FSD on non-modified city roads shared with humans in the foreseeable future. Highways? Maybe. But not city roads. The problem is exponentially more complex there. It is even more so on top of that if you have to _estimate_ rather than _measure_ distances to things. It is true that the LIDAR does not simplify it all that much, but LIDAR at least gives you a fairly good idea of where all the obstacles are so you could avoid them. That's what it's for. Cameras fed into neural nets have to _guess_ based on appearance of things and stereoscopy. They are also subject to all the other limitations of optical sensors: rain, snow, fog, dirt on the camera (anyone who has a Tesla knows the cameras get dirt on them pretty easily), and just plain not recognizing an obstacle if it's positioned in a way that the neural network just happened to not generalize for.
We (humans) can only do this purely optically because we have general intelligence and extensive knowledge about the world. The FSD computer in your Tesla does not.
Just FYI, many other high-level experts on this space like Anthony Levandowski who actually worked with Sebastian Thrun after meeting him at the 2005 DARPA Grand Challenge. Said the same thing.
There's a reason why I asked if you could share your work. Because those two individuals are clearly at the top of their field. If your thesis is correct, then it's easily worth 100+M if not 1B+ USD in value.
It's easy to be hyper critical, compared to actually being in the trenches trying to solve these hard problems.
In other words, "No."
We've pretty much broken the global supply chains with the pandemic, the responses to it, and everything else as the wheels of our global industrial civilization start grinding to a halt.
Even the "big boys" are struggling - Toyota has cut production roughly in half because they can't get chips. GM just announced they are shutting down most of their North American plants for two weeks because... they can't get chips.
Supply chains are broken. Basic electronic components, basic microcontrollers, are listed many places as "We don't have any, we don't know when we'll have any, don't ask" (coded as "52 week lead time" - I assume that's the maximum the system supports). You can't rely on getting stuff, and if you do get it, you can't rely on getting the same stuff in a month. This is before getting into any of the various global events that could really put a crimp on chip supplies...
Just once, I'd love to see Tesla be honest. "We have no idea if we're ever going to be able to make these at this point."