4 ms·

This comment seems prescient. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19723650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19723650 "Take a moment and think about why ar

by ilarum 7y ago

This comment seems prescient. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19723650 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19723650 "Take a moment and think about why are they doing this event now. Elon is setting a stage for a capital raise, he's pitching the autonomy narrative after the Model 3 cash cow narrative failed. They're trying to convince investors (and customers) to give them money because money-printing autonomous taxi service is coming next year."

thiago_fm 7y ago
If they could do it for next year, why don't they just do it and profit alone, not selling the autonomous cars to anyone -- and make trillions? :-) It is probably because they can't
- oh_sigh 7y ago
  They kind of are - usually with car leases there is the ability to buy the car at the end of your contract, but not with new tesla leases(because they will put those vehicles into the autonomous fleet).
  - jsight 7y ago
    I'm a little more cynical about that, tbh. I feel like they will ultimately offer most of these to the leasee as a purchase option, they just aren't providing the buyout price up-front.
    - twoodfin 7y ago
      My guess is that they will enforce it on the assumption that most leasees will just re-up with a new Tesla. Meanwhile Tesla can get more heavily into the resale game and hit lower price points by selling the same car twice.
      - jsight 7y ago
        That is possible, I guess, but they've done really badly as a purveyor of used cars in the past. It doesn't exactly seem like a profit center for them.
- moduspol 7y ago
  Because they also need money now, so they started leasing Model 3 and telling lessees that Tesla will be keeping the car after the lease expires. They get money now and keep the car for use as a robo-taxi.
  - hi5eyes 7y ago
    "use as a robot-taxi"
    - moduspol 7y ago
      They're calling them robo-taxis, and who knows if they'll succeed, but I did want to point out that what they're doing isn't inconsistent with a company that genuinely believes in its near-future autonomous capabilities but also needs cash.
      - loceng 7y ago
        Likewise, they can still compete: as a driver would you rather be "driving" in a 99% of the time self-driving vehicles that's a Tesla, and as a passenger: would you rather order a vehicle from Tesla Network and know you're guaranteed to be picked up in a Tesla - with cameras for safety, security - in a quiet vehicle, etc. Tesla owning/controlling the whole supply line and at the scale they're ramping up for gives them advantage. And if they do reach fully self-driving first - and someone will have to lead the way and prove it enough for regulators to allow them on the roads - then they'll have everything else already in place to relatively speaking own/efficiently capture a large portion of the market.
  - specialp 7y ago
    What an outrageous hedge story that I am shocked anyone believes. Tesla needed to lease model 3s because - They were horribly late in delivering the car (and now claim they are going to have fully autonomous taxis by next year when they couldn't even deliver on a basic car on time) - They can't make the $35k car they promised without losing money - They have exhausted the market of people that will pay 50k for an electric car knowing the fuel savings will never make up for the premium so they have excess inventory - They now are low on cash, high on inventory so they make up this moonshot story to get people to invest in them again. Simply saying they are doing standard leases would be too honest. The day is going to come soon where the amount of people that believe the hype will dwindle and the debt will pile up even more where there is a liquidity crisis. It is essentially a legal pyramid scheme. I have to hand it to them though being able to convince a good amount of people that their leasing is actually ensuring a future supply of robo taxis is impressive. One day people will laugh at the outrageousness of that.
- loceng 7y ago
  If you have a game plan that you know will work (whether you believe that or not) and all you need is more capital to ramp things up, to reduce costs, and scale exponentially faster than competitors - it's smart to allow individuals to be or feel like they're making an investment by contributing to something like the Tesla Network; as Elon mentioned in the long presentation they recently did it will be good for them to get the capital upfront.
- WhompingWindows 7y ago
  They'd need millions of cars to make trillions of dollars. They can't afford the capital to buy millions of their own cars. They are primarily a car company, they sell cars, any additional revenue due to autonomous tech would be gravy on top of their current margins. They might raise prices, actually, if their cars are proven to be able to do ride-sharing autonomously.
studentrob 7y ago
How can they spend all the money on autonomy [1] while refusing to share any more data [2] beyond the couple of sentences in their "safety reports" [3]? This makes no sense. [1] https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=13330 https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=13330 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s [3] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport
senectus1 7y ago
how is that different to any other company that raises capital for shipping a promised product?
- objektif 7y ago
  It is not any different. It is just that there are a lot of people that dislike Elon particularly especially on Wall Street.
matwood 7y ago
> autonomous taxi service is coming next year. Are there any municipalities that have already passed regulations allowing driverless cars on the roads? Are any already working the regulations through the process? If the answer is no to both of those, there is no way autonomous taxis happens next year. Having "autopilots" crash while drivers are in the car also does not help the case.
- grey-area 7y ago
  Yes, it's already happening. Waymo is currently trialling driverless with passengers in Phoenix, Arizona: https://waymo.com/apply/ https://waymo.com/apply/ https://www.theguardian.com/cities/video/2019/mar/09/waymo-trials-its-self-driving-cars-outside-phoenix-arizona-video https://www.theguardian.com/cities/video/2019/mar/09/waymo-t... Initial trials will probably include humans if required to avoid needing laws passed (as I think Waymo is doing), I don't really see that as a huge obstacle, and once the human-supervised models can prove they are safe, it'll be easy enough to change regulations if required. I imagine Musk has had discussions with a few and felt emboldened to make his statement by that. Of course he constantly exaggerates, the projections of possible profit for owners were not realistic (at least in the next decade), and his timelines are about 2x faster than real life, so I'd be surprised if they have more than a small trial next year for this.
  - Faark 7y ago
    Also having sold the autonomous product already to customers ensures constituents will put a lot of pressure on politicians instead of the company having to do that lobbying by themselves.
- benj111 7y ago
  In fairness to the quoted comment, its creating a story to tell investors. If I come to you asking for $1 billion in funding. I don't tell you about the boring, low growth, probable outcome. I tell you about the exciting, new, unexplored potential market just waiting to be tapped. But no, self driving taxis aren't just around the corner.
loceng 7y ago
I wonder what this commenters thoughts are on valuations of Uber and Lyft - and at least Uber's plans, and perhaps valuation they're aiming for, is based on having driverless vehicles.
- hef19898 7y ago
  Tesla is operating in a different industry than Uber or Lyft. And while Uber and Lyft are only facing Taxi operators as incumbents Tesla is up against all car manufacturers. That makes a big difference.
  - jacques_chester 7y ago
    Indeed very different in terms of access to capital. Taxi markets are disjointed and divided, their access to capital is dwarfed by Uber's. Tesla does not have that kind of advantage over established carmakers.

by ilarum 7y ago

thiago_fm 7y ago

If they could do it for next year, why don't they just do it and profit alone, not selling the autonomous cars to anyone -- and make trillions? :-) It is probably because they can't

oh_sigh 7y ago
They kind of are - usually with car leases there is the ability to buy the car at the end of your contract, but not with new tesla leases(because they will put those vehicles into the autonomous fleet).
- jsight 7y ago
  I'm a little more cynical about that, tbh. I feel like they will ultimately offer most of these to the leasee as a purchase option, they just aren't providing the buyout price up-front.
  - twoodfin 7y ago
    My guess is that they will enforce it on the assumption that most leasees will just re-up with a new Tesla. Meanwhile Tesla can get more heavily into the resale game and hit lower price points by selling the same car twice.
    - jsight 7y ago
      That is possible, I guess, but they've done really badly as a purveyor of used cars in the past. It doesn't exactly seem like a profit center for them.
moduspol 7y ago
Because they also need money now, so they started leasing Model 3 and telling lessees that Tesla will be keeping the car after the lease expires. They get money now and keep the car for use as a robo-taxi.
- hi5eyes 7y ago
  "use as a robot-taxi"
  - moduspol 7y ago
    They're calling them robo-taxis, and who knows if they'll succeed, but I did want to point out that what they're doing isn't inconsistent with a company that genuinely believes in its near-future autonomous capabilities but also needs cash.
    - loceng 7y ago
      Likewise, they can still compete: as a driver would you rather be "driving" in a 99% of the time self-driving vehicles that's a Tesla, and as a passenger: would you rather order a vehicle from Tesla Network and know you're guaranteed to be picked up in a Tesla - with cameras for safety, security - in a quiet vehicle, etc. Tesla owning/controlling the whole supply line and at the scale they're ramping up for gives them advantage. And if they do reach fully self-driving first - and someone will have to lead the way and prove it enough for regulators to allow them on the roads - then they'll have everything else already in place to relatively speaking own/efficiently capture a large portion of the market.
- specialp 7y ago
  What an outrageous hedge story that I am shocked anyone believes. Tesla needed to lease model 3s because - They were horribly late in delivering the car (and now claim they are going to have fully autonomous taxis by next year when they couldn't even deliver on a basic car on time) - They can't make the $35k car they promised without losing money - They have exhausted the market of people that will pay 50k for an electric car knowing the fuel savings will never make up for the premium so they have excess inventory - They now are low on cash, high on inventory so they make up this moonshot story to get people to invest in them again. Simply saying they are doing standard leases would be too honest. The day is going to come soon where the amount of people that believe the hype will dwindle and the debt will pile up even more where there is a liquidity crisis. It is essentially a legal pyramid scheme. I have to hand it to them though being able to convince a good amount of people that their leasing is actually ensuring a future supply of robo taxis is impressive. One day people will laugh at the outrageousness of that.
loceng 7y ago
If you have a game plan that you know will work (whether you believe that or not) and all you need is more capital to ramp things up, to reduce costs, and scale exponentially faster than competitors - it's smart to allow individuals to be or feel like they're making an investment by contributing to something like the Tesla Network; as Elon mentioned in the long presentation they recently did it will be good for them to get the capital upfront.
WhompingWindows 7y ago
They'd need millions of cars to make trillions of dollars. They can't afford the capital to buy millions of their own cars. They are primarily a car company, they sell cars, any additional revenue due to autonomous tech would be gravy on top of their current margins. They might raise prices, actually, if their cars are proven to be able to do ride-sharing autonomously.

studentrob 7y ago

How can they spend all the money on autonomy [1] while refusing to share any more data [2] beyond the couple of sentences in their "safety reports" [3]? This makes no sense. [1] https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=13330 https://youtu.be/Ucp0TTmvqOE?t=13330 [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s [3] https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport https://www.tesla.com/VehicleSafetyReport

senectus1 7y ago

how is that different to any other company that raises capital for shipping a promised product?

objektif 7y ago
It is not any different. It is just that there are a lot of people that dislike Elon particularly especially on Wall Street.

matwood 7y ago

> autonomous taxi service is coming next year. Are there any municipalities that have already passed regulations allowing driverless cars on the roads? Are any already working the regulations through the process? If the answer is no to both of those, there is no way autonomous taxis happens next year. Having "autopilots" crash while drivers are in the car also does not help the case.

grey-area 7y ago
Yes, it's already happening. Waymo is currently trialling driverless with passengers in Phoenix, Arizona: https://waymo.com/apply/ https://waymo.com/apply/ https://www.theguardian.com/cities/video/2019/mar/09/waymo-trials-its-self-driving-cars-outside-phoenix-arizona-video https://www.theguardian.com/cities/video/2019/mar/09/waymo-t... Initial trials will probably include humans if required to avoid needing laws passed (as I think Waymo is doing), I don't really see that as a huge obstacle, and once the human-supervised models can prove they are safe, it'll be easy enough to change regulations if required. I imagine Musk has had discussions with a few and felt emboldened to make his statement by that. Of course he constantly exaggerates, the projections of possible profit for owners were not realistic (at least in the next decade), and his timelines are about 2x faster than real life, so I'd be surprised if they have more than a small trial next year for this.
- Faark 7y ago
  Also having sold the autonomous product already to customers ensures constituents will put a lot of pressure on politicians instead of the company having to do that lobbying by themselves.
benj111 7y ago
In fairness to the quoted comment, its creating a story to tell investors. If I come to you asking for $1 billion in funding. I don't tell you about the boring, low growth, probable outcome. I tell you about the exciting, new, unexplored potential market just waiting to be tapped. But no, self driving taxis aren't just around the corner.

loceng 7y ago

I wonder what this commenters thoughts are on valuations of Uber and Lyft - and at least Uber's plans, and perhaps valuation they're aiming for, is based on having driverless vehicles.

hef19898 7y ago
Tesla is operating in a different industry than Uber or Lyft. And while Uber and Lyft are only facing Taxi operators as incumbents Tesla is up against all car manufacturers. That makes a big difference.
- jacques_chester 7y ago
  Indeed very different in terms of access to capital. Taxi markets are disjointed and divided, their access to capital is dwarfed by Uber's. Tesla does not have that kind of advantage over established carmakers.