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> but how to do it profitably. The cars are expensive. The maintenance is expensive. The ongoing cleaning, charging, and prepping of vehicles is expensive. Cons
by mrep 7y ago
> but how to do it profitably. The cars are expensive. The maintenance is expensive. The ongoing cleaning, charging, and prepping of vehicles is expensive. Constantly updating HD maps is expensive. Of course the engineers to keep everything running smoothly are expensive. And the small army of people you need to actually talk to and help customer
I believe that only applies to the waymo model where you go with the full time robo-taxi using top of the line hardware like lidar and which pretty much requires level 5.
The tesla model is to use cheaper hardware which they have proven is cheap enough that consumers will pay for. I believe they also only need it to be level 3 [0] for it to be a massive success (I know a ton of people that would pay the $6,000 for the FSD upgrade if it allowed them to watch a movie/work/text during their commute most of the time).
Granted, Tesla's tech has a lot to catch up but I wouldn't count their solution to the profitability problem out since they have a lot of more cars on the road collecting data/testing their algorithms, and I'm guessing they have a solution to the imperfect tech that ends up killing people problem (Selling their own auto insurance which they have already announced plans for and which will probably have special conditions for autopilot failures, and lots of cars running their quasi level 2 tech which they can use to lobby congressmen to limit liability for non-tesla drivers suability during autopilot failures).
But, as with all big tech predictions, who knows.
[0]: Level 3 ("eyes off"): The driver can safely turn their attention away from the driving tasks, e.g. the driver can text or watch a movie. The vehicle will handle situations that call for an immediate response, like emergency braking. The driver must still be prepared to intervene within some limited time, specified by the manufacturer, when called upon by the vehicle to do so:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#Levels_of_driving_automation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-driving_car#Levels_of_dri...
- nlowell 7y agoIt doesn't seem like Tesla knows how to make it profitable either, to be honest. Their current plan for profitability appears to be the million robo-taxi fleet by 2020 rather than the auto manufacturing business.
- leesec 7y agoI think it would seem insane for them to present this opportunity to make a ton of money (robotaxis), and not fully commit to it. I mean that they are positioning themselves as if they truly believe this is going to happen.
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoWhat other options do they have? It seems like they lost the bet that they were going to become profitable with the Model 3. Now they need a new big bet, or it all falls down.
- leesec 7y agoIt does not seem like that to me.
- asdff 7y agoThey have to stop pretending they are a luxury brand and release a cheap tiny little box with knobs instead of an ipad that will compete with the leaf or any other subcompact. The price is just too high right now, and if they can't get it lower then it sucks that they entered this market too early to benefit from the economies of scale on EV tech that might come years later. Any other automaker has other revenue streams to wait decades even for this to happen, but Tesla has 10 months to live.
- semi-extrinsic 7y agoBut there is no way that they can get the from-scratch design, engineering and production line of yet another model up to capacity in less than a year. And everyone knows this. OTOH, making bets on AI are much harder for investors to evaluate the reasonableness of.
- MegaButts 7y ago> They have to stop pretending they are a luxury brand and release a cheap tiny little box with knobs instead of an ipad that will compete with the leaf or any other subcompact. Believe it or not, the screens are cheaper. Other companies (most notably Volkswagen) are moving towards entirely digital interiors as well. They cite reasons for it being a better experience despite decades of research pointing out the importance of touch controls while driving to limit distractions, but most people believe it is because they are cheaper to build and service.
- dx034 7y agoPretty much every manufacturer is already selling tech similar to Tesla, they just don't call it autopilot but driving assistance. If that's our goal we could just stop researching self driving cars and put the money into EVs instead.