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I don't understand why they even attempt to push beyond even basic driver assistance. I'd buy a well built car with good battery tech and a decent cruise contro

I don't understand why they even attempt to push beyond even basic driver assistance. I'd buy a well built car with good battery tech and a decent cruise control and never look back. I don't mind driving for another 20 years if the car is reliable and has good enough range. Making my car clever is so far down on my car wishlist it's not even visible. The elephant in the room is that even if there are technological breakthroughs shortenig "FSD" from perhaps my pessismistic guess of 50 years to an almost laghably optimistic 20 years, the legal mess it will be stuck in will be at least as long as the technical one was. Tesla seem to make very competitive cars even without wasting money on self-driving ones. I'd try to keep that spot instead of risking it by going down the FSD rabbit hole.

tw04 6y ago
They already make that? FSD is an optional upgrade. While I would agree the FSD path is a dangerous one, if they crack it they also instantly justify their share price.
- alkonaut 6y ago
  I’m thinking they must be using a nontrivial fraction of their budget to develop self-driving tech. Money that could be used for advancing the advantage they already have. I think the fruitless pursuit of self driving will be what makes boring cars from traditional manufacturers catch up. Assuming no manufacturer reaches true full FSD within say 25-50 years, and the usable returns of such research diminishes, then the winning play would be spending as little as possible on it.
  - marvin 6y ago
    It's not obvious that Tesla's FSD program will fail. If it succeeds, the investment will have done exactly what you describe - advancing the advantage Tesla already has.
    - jsight 6y ago
      Yep, and they appear to be doing it for less money than their competitors too.
    - XorNot 6y ago
      There's a strong tendency in the tech world - and elsewhere but less so - to point to failures as an absolute proof something won't work, and to similarly use early successes as overly strong signals of viability. An example of this would be the "obvious" superiority of micro-kernel OS designs compared to monoliths. Which is not at all how things actually panned out with Linux - but the problem was never about the architectural choice, it was about the fact that OS designs are hard - and you need to do the work to solve all the little problems which crop up with your big idea. FSD is essentially going through the same thing, but the stakes are higher - FSD can kill people as a basic part of its function. We were always in a countdown till we started getting the first self-driving casualties. This is not of course to suggest that what Tesla is doing right now is okay, but I'd sure be cautious trying to read the winner of the next 20 years into it.
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  - codeulike 6y ago
    Tesla and SpaceX both take huge gambles on innovation. Thats kindof the point of both companies existence. Yes the FSD initiative could fail in many ways. Starship might be a dead end. Innovation is a gamble.
  - ericd 6y ago
    I don’t think they’re very bottlenecked by available money at this point.
ytdytvhxgydvhh 6y ago
Tesla doesn’t care what you (the individual) want. They care about increasing the size of their addressable market (elderly folks who can’t drive don’t buy cars - but they might if the cars could drive themselves). They care about driving up the average transaction price (not everyone spends every penny they can on their car - but they might if they could sleep in it while commuting/roadtripping). They care about creating recurring revenue sources. Once you buy a traditional car that’s that. But if your car gets rented out as a robotaxi on Tesla’s network, then Tesla gets a cut. I agree though. At the moment I’d rather just have a solid car with good adaptive cruise control.
- FireBeyond 6y ago
  > They care about increasing the size of their addressable market (elderly folks who can’t drive don’t buy cars - but they might if the cars could drive themselves). How many elderly folks care about sub 4 second 0-60s times?
  - Infinitesimus 6y ago
    That's 4s could mean much safer highway merging. Especially from those on-ramps with stop light to control merge flow.
    - FireBeyond 6y ago
      Do you honestly see the elderly population foot to the floor for sub 4s highway merging?
ablekh 6y ago
> I don't understand why they even attempt to push beyond even basic driver assistance. Well, this is, actually, quite understandable. Tesla and many investors in the company, especially Cathy Wood and her ARK Invest, assume high correlation between Tesla's future success or even survival with the success of the company's autonomous driving strategy, which, they argue, could win the lion's share of the global robo-taxi, robo-delivery and ride-hailing markets (with selling a relevant subscription service to future owners of FSD-enabled Tesla vehicles being IMO a secondary and insignificant revenue stream). This can be easily illustrated by reviewing some of the relevant ARK's open research materials[1-4]. Elsewhere on the Internet, a notable coverage of FSD that I'm aware of (though I haven't yet had a chance to review) is provided by Tesla investor and popular YouTube blogger Dave Lee, who offers multiple - as of today, I've counted five of them - detailed video interviews on Tesla's FSD on his YouTube channel "Dave Lee on Investing"[5]. [1] https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-ride-hail-update https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-ride-... [2] https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/ride-hailing https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/ride-hailin... [3] https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/autonomous-ridehailing-fees https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/autonomous-... [4] https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-price-target https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-price... [5] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi2G5aQTN0YwGIfnt1u7Nbg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi2G5aQTN0YwGIfnt1u7Nbg
- dehrmann 6y ago
  > assume high correlation between Tesla's future success or even survival with the success of the company's autonomous driving strategy, which, they argue, could win the lion's share of the global robo-taxi, robo-delivery and ride-hailing markets Except Waymo has better tech, is working toward a similar goal, and has a stronger balance sheet. Google has a history of dropping the ball on opportunities, but unlike cloud computing, they're already a leader in this space. People want Tesla to succeed and like the company's story, but it basically requires every other automaker to fail in order to justify its valuation. Or Bitcoin to hit $500k.
  - ablekh 6y ago

tw04 6y ago

They already make that? FSD is an optional upgrade. While I would agree the FSD path is a dangerous one, if they crack it they also instantly justify their share price.

alkonaut 6y ago
I’m thinking they must be using a nontrivial fraction of their budget to develop self-driving tech. Money that could be used for advancing the advantage they already have. I think the fruitless pursuit of self driving will be what makes boring cars from traditional manufacturers catch up. Assuming no manufacturer reaches true full FSD within say 25-50 years, and the usable returns of such research diminishes, then the winning play would be spending as little as possible on it.
- marvin 6y ago
  It's not obvious that Tesla's FSD program will fail. If it succeeds, the investment will have done exactly what you describe - advancing the advantage Tesla already has.
  - jsight 6y ago
    Yep, and they appear to be doing it for less money than their competitors too.
  - XorNot 6y ago
    There's a strong tendency in the tech world - and elsewhere but less so - to point to failures as an absolute proof something won't work, and to similarly use early successes as overly strong signals of viability. An example of this would be the "obvious" superiority of micro-kernel OS designs compared to monoliths. Which is not at all how things actually panned out with Linux - but the problem was never about the architectural choice, it was about the fact that OS designs are hard - and you need to do the work to solve all the little problems which crop up with your big idea. FSD is essentially going through the same thing, but the stakes are higher - FSD can kill people as a basic part of its function. We were always in a countdown till we started getting the first self-driving casualties. This is not of course to suggest that what Tesla is doing right now is okay, but I'd sure be cautious trying to read the winner of the next 20 years into it.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- codeulike 6y ago
  Tesla and SpaceX both take huge gambles on innovation. Thats kindof the point of both companies existence. Yes the FSD initiative could fail in many ways. Starship might be a dead end. Innovation is a gamble.
- ericd 6y ago
  I don’t think they’re very bottlenecked by available money at this point.

ytdytvhxgydvhh 6y ago

Tesla doesn’t care what you (the individual) want. They care about increasing the size of their addressable market (elderly folks who can’t drive don’t buy cars - but they might if the cars could drive themselves). They care about driving up the average transaction price (not everyone spends every penny they can on their car - but they might if they could sleep in it while commuting/roadtripping). They care about creating recurring revenue sources. Once you buy a traditional car that’s that. But if your car gets rented out as a robotaxi on Tesla’s network, then Tesla gets a cut. I agree though. At the moment I’d rather just have a solid car with good adaptive cruise control.

FireBeyond 6y ago
> They care about increasing the size of their addressable market (elderly folks who can’t drive don’t buy cars - but they might if the cars could drive themselves). How many elderly folks care about sub 4 second 0-60s times?
- Infinitesimus 6y ago
  That's 4s could mean much safer highway merging. Especially from those on-ramps with stop light to control merge flow.
  - FireBeyond 6y ago
    Do you honestly see the elderly population foot to the floor for sub 4s highway merging?

ablekh 6y ago

> I don't understand why they even attempt to push beyond even basic driver assistance. Well, this is, actually, quite understandable. Tesla and many investors in the company, especially Cathy Wood and her ARK Invest, assume high correlation between Tesla's future success or even survival with the success of the company's autonomous driving strategy, which, they argue, could win the lion's share of the global robo-taxi, robo-delivery and ride-hailing markets (with selling a relevant subscription service to future owners of FSD-enabled Tesla vehicles being IMO a secondary and insignificant revenue stream). This can be easily illustrated by reviewing some of the relevant ARK's open research materials[1-4]. Elsewhere on the Internet, a notable coverage of FSD that I'm aware of (though I haven't yet had a chance to review) is provided by Tesla investor and popular YouTube blogger Dave Lee, who offers multiple - as of today, I've counted five of them - detailed video interviews on Tesla's FSD on his YouTube channel "Dave Lee on Investing"[5]. [1] https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-ride-hail-update https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-ride-... [2] https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/ride-hailing https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/ride-hailin... [3] https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/autonomous-ridehailing-fees https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/autonomous-... [4] https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-price-target https://ark-invest.com/articles/analyst-research/tesla-price... [5] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi2G5aQTN0YwGIfnt1u7Nbg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCi2G5aQTN0YwGIfnt1u7Nbg

dehrmann 6y ago
> assume high correlation between Tesla's future success or even survival with the success of the company's autonomous driving strategy, which, they argue, could win the lion's share of the global robo-taxi, robo-delivery and ride-hailing markets Except Waymo has better tech, is working toward a similar goal, and has a stronger balance sheet. Google has a history of dropping the ball on opportunities, but unlike cloud computing, they're already a leader in this space. People want Tesla to succeed and like the company's story, but it basically requires every other automaker to fail in order to justify its valuation. Or Bitcoin to hit $500k.
- ablekh 6y ago