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> I say this because I interpret Tesla'a nonstop obsession with self driving as an admission they're in a race they will lose You don't need to interpret there

by sho_hn 4y ago

> I say this because I interpret Tesla'a nonstop obsession with self driving as an admission they're in a race they will lose You don't need to interpret there; it's one of the few things Musk has been relatively consistent and forthright in admitting to. EV technology alone is not a very wide competitive moat, it was clear that other OEMs would be able to catch up to it. The mechanical and electrical engineering required is not a big challenge for the supply chain and a lot of the components were already available off-the-shelf. I believe he has said something similar to "without Autopilot Tesla is worthless" or some sort of dramatic statement like this - it's supposed to be their competitive moat going forward, so there's a lot, no pun intended, riding on it and making the market believe it's going well. This is doubly true because Tesla is arguably not doing great at scaling out the stuff that makes the other OEMs be able to participate in the overall industry business model. Tesla has made very impressive strides in bootstrapping and building out a volume production network etc., but what other OEMs do in having stable and predictable schedules and refresh cycles for a number of underlying platforms and car lines is still a very different ball game. Just look at how long in the tooth the S/X and even the 3 are getting without a full makeover or how long the Cybertruck is taking. Also a full refresh cycle of the factory network when you switch from one carline gen to another etc. is a milestone Tesla still has to manage.

ChuckNorris89 4y ago
> "without Autopilot Tesla is worthless" There's nothing too special about their autopilot compared to what other manufacturers offer. Musk's fast and loose claims about what Autopilot cand do "in the next six months" or "around the corner" were overhyped exaggerations designed to sell cars at best or Theranos style lies at worse, hoping that by the time people wise up about the false promises, Tesla's engineers will have something to show for close enough to what he promised which will buy hem more time to create more hype to sell more cars. Rinse and repeat. The thing is Tesla can't maintain their wide moat as the other manufacturers are catching up. Grown up friends of mine were rabidly buying Tesla stock, basically putting their life savings into it, and when I asked them why, they kept telling me "because Tesla's innovations would make the other car manufacturers obsolete". Now they're pissed at him.
- rsynnott 4y ago
  > they kept telling me "because Tesla's innovations would make the other car manufacturers obsolete". Always thought this was a pretty odd belief, because this, generally, is not how things work. It's very unusual for a company to sustain a monopoly on _innovation_; where it happens it's usually down to the market being too small to justify the investment to catch up by others.
- VirusNewbie 4y ago
  What company has as good of an autopilot? The luxury car makers don’t seem to have one.
  - redox99 4y ago
    Autopilot (not FSD) is glorified lane centering + traffic aware cruise control. Most cars have this nowadays. Tesla's is among the best but others are up there too. Out of spec reviews has compared these systems among many brands. This Autopilot is pretty old Tesla technology, basically abandoned, to be replaced by their FSD stack which also handles cities.
    - treis 4y ago
      FSD does way more than glorified lane centering. It legitimately drives the car through city streets. It doesn't do it reliably enough that you can just set it and forget it but it's still a legit accomplishment.
      - redox99 4y ago
        I think you misread. Autopilot is the glorified lane centering.
  - nradov 4y ago
    Independent reviews indicate that GM SuperCruise is superior in most respects. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/test-driving-gm-ford-and-tesla-hands-free-systems.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/test-driving-gm-ford-and-tes... Mercedes-Benz is about to launch true level 3 autonomous driving technology, but it's not quite available for purchase yet. https://www.thedrive.com/news/mercedes-benz-gets-approval-to-deploy-level-3-driving-tech-in-nevada https://www.thedrive.com/news/mercedes-benz-gets-approval-to...
cheschire 4y ago
I seem to remember automated manufacturing was supposed to be his big thing. The other companies were bogged down with union labor and he saw an opportunity. Then the first gigafactory failed to fully automate the process and so he put all his chips on "cheap" autopilot that didn't require expensive vision hardware and could instead all run on video. Now that isn't panning out either. I don't know if there are any other places to fundamentally disrupt in the automotive space, but if there are, that's where Tesla will focus next I suspect.
- misiti3780 4y ago
  It is panning out, it's just not all robots, gigapress is a thing.
- mikeyouse 4y ago
  This never really made sense either -- labor is manufacturing's largest "avoidable" cost by far, so all manufacturers want to reduce the amount of labor to an absolute minimum. The machines Tesla were buying to automate their plants only existed because other auto manufacturers were already using them for the same purpose. Tesla thought they could extend their use to places where traditional manufacturers had decided against it -- for instance shaping/fitting body panels, but quickly learned why the GMs and Toyotas of the world had human input in those areas. Trying to "out automate" companies who make literal millions of cars per year was never a recipe for enduring margins. There are plenty of videos from even economy car assembly plants 15 years ago where robots did the entirety of the welding and humans were only involved for little bits of final assembly.
  - unshavedyak 4y ago
    Pretty funny considering even people who don't pay attention to him (like myself) are seeing repeated patterns of him walking into areas he doesn't know and thinking he knows better than all the existing industry/insider knowledge. Now i'm just trying to figure out of it's arrogance or ignorance at the root of his problems in this space.
    - 4y ago
cma 4y ago
At Battery investment day (a few years after Autonomy investor day) he said the opposite: that self driving wasn't worth much because competitors would follow in 2-4 years, and that their advantage was all about their new battery tech. The new Tesla-made batteries have come out now and are 20% worse energy density than Panasonic's.
- sho_hn 4y ago
  'Tesla founder Elon Musk said the key to his electric automaker's value is whether it can achieve self-driving technology, adding that the firm would be "worth basically zero" without it.' (https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basically-zero-without-self-driving-2022-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basica...) I guess it's a trope he trots out in different contexts. As for batteries, you hear much the same content at a variety of different OEM "battery days", which usually get much less coverage on places like HN however.
  - jonfw 4y ago
    X is the key to success in the automotive industry, where X equals the trait in which Tesla has the best market position right now
  - MDWolinski 4y ago
    Musk is a marketer. The keystone of any good Marketing is: "Sell What You Have." So it's Electrification. Then it's self driving. Then it's GigaPress. Then improved batteries. If Tesla ends up nailing level-5 autonomous driving, it'll be self driving again. Steve Jobs was very good at this as well. Here's the all-new iPod! Video? Who'd want to watch video on such a small screen? Next year, the all new video iPod.
- fallingknife 4y ago
  Who cares about power density? They are designed to lower $/kwh not kg/kwh.
  - maximus-decimus 4y ago
clouddrover 4y ago
> I believe he has said something similar to "without Autopilot Tesla is worthless" or some sort of dramatic statement like this Musk said, "The overwhelming focus is on solving full self-driving. That’s essential. It’s really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero": https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/elon-musk-solving-self-driving-difference-between-tesla-worth-a-lot-or-nothing/ https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/elon-musk-solving-self-drivin...
- FireBeyond 4y ago
  Fucking hilarious. 2022: "Our focus is on solving the problem." Musk in 2015: "Self-piloting cars are a solved problem." "I view it as a solved problem. We know exactly what we need to do and we will be there in a few years." Apparently it got unsolved along the way. Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-elon-musk-says-autonomous-driving-not-all-that-hard-to-achieve-1426624848 https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-elon-musk-says-autonomou...
Joeri 4y ago
I don’t get why tesla can’t just do the thing that originally made them successful: build really good electric cars, that people choose to buy over cheaper alternatives. Why do they need a competitive mote when they can just outcompete by doing things as they already were? AFAICT teslas are becoming worse instead of better, because of this obsession with gimmicks instead of excellence and customer satisfaction.
- n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
  >build really good electric cars, that people choose to buy over cheaper alternatives. From the perspective of an employee at another OEM, I’d say they already do that. They have several moats outside of autonomous gimmicks: 1) Charging network. Nobody comes close. 2) Infotainment software (combined with underlying architecture and in-house silicon). They have the best experience in the industry. Their architecture is streamlined unlike disjoint legacy OEM 15 ECU hell. The broad market doesn’t really understand how far ahead they are in terms of architecture. Any new OEM has a huge advantage of starting fresh. 3)Packaging and battery density. They have the best range. They have the best packaging (tons of trunk and frunk space), where as many other manufacturers end up with weird raised trunk floors and no frunks in their competitor products that also somehow get worse range. So yeah, I think Musk definitely undersells their lead in these areas. With no redesigns of the main models yet, they really could have focused a lot of effort on improving quality, interior materials, etc, but they instead poured money into the quagmire of autonomy.

by sho_hn 4y ago

ChuckNorris89 4y ago

> "without Autopilot Tesla is worthless" There's nothing too special about their autopilot compared to what other manufacturers offer. Musk's fast and loose claims about what Autopilot cand do "in the next six months" or "around the corner" were overhyped exaggerations designed to sell cars at best or Theranos style lies at worse, hoping that by the time people wise up about the false promises, Tesla's engineers will have something to show for close enough to what he promised which will buy hem more time to create more hype to sell more cars. Rinse and repeat. The thing is Tesla can't maintain their wide moat as the other manufacturers are catching up. Grown up friends of mine were rabidly buying Tesla stock, basically putting their life savings into it, and when I asked them why, they kept telling me "because Tesla's innovations would make the other car manufacturers obsolete". Now they're pissed at him.

rsynnott 4y ago
> they kept telling me "because Tesla's innovations would make the other car manufacturers obsolete". Always thought this was a pretty odd belief, because this, generally, is not how things work. It's very unusual for a company to sustain a monopoly on _innovation_; where it happens it's usually down to the market being too small to justify the investment to catch up by others.
VirusNewbie 4y ago
What company has as good of an autopilot? The luxury car makers don’t seem to have one.
- redox99 4y ago
  Autopilot (not FSD) is glorified lane centering + traffic aware cruise control. Most cars have this nowadays. Tesla's is among the best but others are up there too. Out of spec reviews has compared these systems among many brands. This Autopilot is pretty old Tesla technology, basically abandoned, to be replaced by their FSD stack which also handles cities.
  - treis 4y ago
    FSD does way more than glorified lane centering. It legitimately drives the car through city streets. It doesn't do it reliably enough that you can just set it and forget it but it's still a legit accomplishment.
    - redox99 4y ago
      I think you misread. Autopilot is the glorified lane centering.
- nradov 4y ago
  Independent reviews indicate that GM SuperCruise is superior in most respects. https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/test-driving-gm-ford-and-tesla-hands-free-systems.html https://www.cnbc.com/2022/12/21/test-driving-gm-ford-and-tes... Mercedes-Benz is about to launch true level 3 autonomous driving technology, but it's not quite available for purchase yet. https://www.thedrive.com/news/mercedes-benz-gets-approval-to-deploy-level-3-driving-tech-in-nevada https://www.thedrive.com/news/mercedes-benz-gets-approval-to...

cheschire 4y ago

I seem to remember automated manufacturing was supposed to be his big thing. The other companies were bogged down with union labor and he saw an opportunity. Then the first gigafactory failed to fully automate the process and so he put all his chips on "cheap" autopilot that didn't require expensive vision hardware and could instead all run on video. Now that isn't panning out either. I don't know if there are any other places to fundamentally disrupt in the automotive space, but if there are, that's where Tesla will focus next I suspect.

misiti3780 4y ago
It is panning out, it's just not all robots, gigapress is a thing.
mikeyouse 4y ago
This never really made sense either -- labor is manufacturing's largest "avoidable" cost by far, so all manufacturers want to reduce the amount of labor to an absolute minimum. The machines Tesla were buying to automate their plants only existed because other auto manufacturers were already using them for the same purpose. Tesla thought they could extend their use to places where traditional manufacturers had decided against it -- for instance shaping/fitting body panels, but quickly learned why the GMs and Toyotas of the world had human input in those areas. Trying to "out automate" companies who make literal millions of cars per year was never a recipe for enduring margins. There are plenty of videos from even economy car assembly plants 15 years ago where robots did the entirety of the welding and humans were only involved for little bits of final assembly.
- unshavedyak 4y ago
  Pretty funny considering even people who don't pay attention to him (like myself) are seeing repeated patterns of him walking into areas he doesn't know and thinking he knows better than all the existing industry/insider knowledge. Now i'm just trying to figure out of it's arrogance or ignorance at the root of his problems in this space.
  - 4y ago

cma 4y ago

At Battery investment day (a few years after Autonomy investor day) he said the opposite: that self driving wasn't worth much because competitors would follow in 2-4 years, and that their advantage was all about their new battery tech. The new Tesla-made batteries have come out now and are 20% worse energy density than Panasonic's.

sho_hn 4y ago
'Tesla founder Elon Musk said the key to his electric automaker's value is whether it can achieve self-driving technology, adding that the firm would be "worth basically zero" without it.' (https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basically-zero-without-self-driving-2022-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-tesla-worth-basica...) I guess it's a trope he trots out in different contexts. As for batteries, you hear much the same content at a variety of different OEM "battery days", which usually get much less coverage on places like HN however.
- jonfw 4y ago
  X is the key to success in the automotive industry, where X equals the trait in which Tesla has the best market position right now
- MDWolinski 4y ago
  Musk is a marketer. The keystone of any good Marketing is: "Sell What You Have." So it's Electrification. Then it's self driving. Then it's GigaPress. Then improved batteries. If Tesla ends up nailing level-5 autonomous driving, it'll be self driving again. Steve Jobs was very good at this as well. Here's the all-new iPod! Video? Who'd want to watch video on such a small screen? Next year, the all new video iPod.
fallingknife 4y ago
Who cares about power density? They are designed to lower $/kwh not kg/kwh.
- maximus-decimus 4y ago

clouddrover 4y ago

> I believe he has said something similar to "without Autopilot Tesla is worthless" or some sort of dramatic statement like this Musk said, "The overwhelming focus is on solving full self-driving. That’s essential. It’s really the difference between Tesla being worth a lot of money or worth basically zero": https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/elon-musk-solving-self-driving-difference-between-tesla-worth-a-lot-or-nothing/ https://electrek.co/2022/06/15/elon-musk-solving-self-drivin...

FireBeyond 4y ago
Fucking hilarious. 2022: "Our focus is on solving the problem." Musk in 2015: "Self-piloting cars are a solved problem." "I view it as a solved problem. We know exactly what we need to do and we will be there in a few years." Apparently it got unsolved along the way. Source: https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-elon-musk-says-autonomous-driving-not-all-that-hard-to-achieve-1426624848 https://www.wsj.com/articles/teslas-elon-musk-says-autonomou...

Joeri 4y ago

I don’t get why tesla can’t just do the thing that originally made them successful: build really good electric cars, that people choose to buy over cheaper alternatives. Why do they need a competitive mote when they can just outcompete by doing things as they already were? AFAICT teslas are becoming worse instead of better, because of this obsession with gimmicks instead of excellence and customer satisfaction.

n0tth3dro1ds 4y ago
>build really good electric cars, that people choose to buy over cheaper alternatives. From the perspective of an employee at another OEM, I’d say they already do that. They have several moats outside of autonomous gimmicks: 1) Charging network. Nobody comes close. 2) Infotainment software (combined with underlying architecture and in-house silicon). They have the best experience in the industry. Their architecture is streamlined unlike disjoint legacy OEM 15 ECU hell. The broad market doesn’t really understand how far ahead they are in terms of architecture. Any new OEM has a huge advantage of starting fresh. 3)Packaging and battery density. They have the best range. They have the best packaging (tons of trunk and frunk space), where as many other manufacturers end up with weird raised trunk floors and no frunks in their competitor products that also somehow get worse range. So yeah, I think Musk definitely undersells their lead in these areas. With no redesigns of the main models yet, they really could have focused a lot of effort on improving quality, interior materials, etc, but they instead poured money into the quagmire of autonomy.