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This report is great. It certainly rules out the, “everything is definitely on track“ scenario. But itoesn’t tell us anything beyond that. It simply comes down

This report is great. It certainly rules out the, “everything is definitely on track“ scenario. But itoesn’t tell us anything beyond that. It simply comes down to what Tesla is really trying to do. This could either be a “pump”, or it could be the normal shortcuts and growing pains that are part of an ambitious beta product. A couple of years ago I would’ve leaned much further towards beta product scenario, but I’m still not willing to rule it out at this point.

jtriangle 3y ago
Anything can be "on track" if you don't know what the track is. It's a meaningless statement to anyone but those that know. All you can really do is smile and nod, which, it's much more useful to spend your time not listening to this sport of speculation, and, if you must speculate, speculate on if the idea of an electric semi is viable in the first place. Personally, I think it is. It's a much harder engineering problem than a car though, so, it's likely to take awhile to become really viable, and longer still to get to a place a reasonable person would call "good". I'd also go sofar as to say, tech wise, we're probably not there yet. We need better batteries, and a means to charge them. That's been slow going so far, and likely needs some significant investment. Something like a billion dollar X-prize, or, make it 2 billion, for inflation reasons, for the first group that can demonstrate a battery tech suitable for mass manufacturing that's 2x current lithium ion cells at 1/2 the cost. That'd probably get us there in the next 5 years or so, give it another 5 to scale out, and the parallel tech developed trying to attain that prize probably sees things developing relatively quickly after that.
m463 3y ago
I have worked with prototype computers and the process is WASTEFUL. To the outside it looks like the systems are a mess. For example, proto systems usually don't have power management written, or fan control at the beginning. This means the machines run hot and noisy, consuming extra power and (safely) spinning the fans at full speed. maybe next proto will have a fan controller/firmware. You get prototype memory sticks. software is buggy. given that, I can imagine that batteries are probably ignored by the chassis and software guys. I'm sure the battery guys are in a lab somewhere writing firmware and working on charging/discharging and managing the batteries. also, I remember that tesla is spending a lot of work on the factory that builds the product, not just the product. These trucks are one-offs and probably assembled by hand, or poorly assembled by a prototype factory line. Now, that said I may be giving them too much credit. I remember talking to a guy who had worked at microsoft in the early dos/windows days and I said "the engineers at microsoft probably don't know the new release broke this other software, etc" and he told me I was naive, that ms had meetings where they said "how can we OWN this?" these were the days when starting windows you typed "WIN" at the C: prompt.

jtriangle 3y ago

Anything can be "on track" if you don't know what the track is. It's a meaningless statement to anyone but those that know. All you can really do is smile and nod, which, it's much more useful to spend your time not listening to this sport of speculation, and, if you must speculate, speculate on if the idea of an electric semi is viable in the first place. Personally, I think it is. It's a much harder engineering problem than a car though, so, it's likely to take awhile to become really viable, and longer still to get to a place a reasonable person would call "good". I'd also go sofar as to say, tech wise, we're probably not there yet. We need better batteries, and a means to charge them. That's been slow going so far, and likely needs some significant investment. Something like a billion dollar X-prize, or, make it 2 billion, for inflation reasons, for the first group that can demonstrate a battery tech suitable for mass manufacturing that's 2x current lithium ion cells at 1/2 the cost. That'd probably get us there in the next 5 years or so, give it another 5 to scale out, and the parallel tech developed trying to attain that prize probably sees things developing relatively quickly after that.

m463 3y ago

I have worked with prototype computers and the process is WASTEFUL. To the outside it looks like the systems are a mess. For example, proto systems usually don't have power management written, or fan control at the beginning. This means the machines run hot and noisy, consuming extra power and (safely) spinning the fans at full speed. maybe next proto will have a fan controller/firmware. You get prototype memory sticks. software is buggy. given that, I can imagine that batteries are probably ignored by the chassis and software guys. I'm sure the battery guys are in a lab somewhere writing firmware and working on charging/discharging and managing the batteries. also, I remember that tesla is spending a lot of work on the factory that builds the product, not just the product. These trucks are one-offs and probably assembled by hand, or poorly assembled by a prototype factory line. Now, that said I may be giving them too much credit. I remember talking to a guy who had worked at microsoft in the early dos/windows days and I said "the engineers at microsoft probably don't know the new release broke this other software, etc" and he told me I was naive, that ms had meetings where they said "how can we OWN this?" these were the days when starting windows you typed "WIN" at the C: prompt.