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Cake day: August 24th, 2023

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  • A thing would need to officially be a flop to be considered squandered like the Cybertruck is looking like.

    They might have a few failures ahead of them yet though, but you can’t call a mid flight project squandered.

    Edit: e.g part of that loss could be attributed to them finalizing and now starting production at the megapack factory at Shanghai. Short of Elon backlash stopping sales of their commercial batteries, that won’t be squandered and will make a billion or two or three in profits this year.


  • The article doesn’t say they’ve never made a profit on any of their cars. If that’s what you got from that, you should try reading it again.

    Also, if you make 1 billion in profit on something, and then spend 2 billion researching and developing and setting up a factory to build a new product, you end up with a loss of 1 billion. That does not mean your first thing is unprofitable. This is pretty basic stuff.

    The vehicles are profitable, they just didn’t provide enough profit this quarter to cover their R&D and capital expenditures for growth.

    Edit: Sorry, and in case it wasn’t clear, their R&D and capital expenditures dwarf the ZEV credits every quarter.


  • Not a single tesla vehicle has ever been profitable as an actual vehicle.

    This honestly couldn’t be further from the truth.

    Tesla’s vehicles once ramped have always been extremely profitable (except probably the CyberTruck as it hasn’t properly ramped due to low demand)

    Any losses you see are due to their aggressive growth involving capital expenditures and research and development. It’s not that the vehicle isn’t profitable.

    The ZEV credits are just bonus money that they can then leverage to expand faster.

    Edit: If you want to try and see this another way that might make sense… The Model S and X were very profitable, but they didn’t make enough money to fund the expansion for the Model 3 and Y. Ditch the Model 3 and Y, and remain a boutique luxury car company, and they would posted profits instead of losses. It wasn’t the cars losing money, it was the growth. The ZEV credits accelerated that growth immensely by giving them more breathing room.


  • There are other electric semi trucks out there, but none (at least as of last year) compare in specs and capabilities. The big issue is their power consumption is much higher than the Tesla Semi which has been repeatedly validated by their testers as even better than what Tesla advertises. Efficiency will be king in this kind of business.

    Worse efficiency = less range = more batteries = less load capacity = less money per delivery

    E.g this is from DHL

    https://www.dhl.com/global-en/delivered/responsibility/dhl-tests-tesla-semi-electric-truck.html

    Over a two-week trial period this summer, DHL Supply Chain USA took a thorough look under the hood of the Tesla Semi, integrating the e-truck into 3,000 miles (5,000 km) of normal operations out of Livermore, California. The trial included one long haul of 390 miles (625 km) – fully loaded with a gross combined weight of 75,000 pounds (34 metric tons) – confirming the Tesla Semi’s ability to carry typical DHL payloads over a long distance on a single charge.

    During the trial, the trial vehicle averaged 1.72 kWh/mile operating at speeds exceeding 50 mph (80 km/h) on average for over half its time on the road. The result exceeded our expectations and even Tesla’s own rating.

    Putting the Tesla Semi to the test allowed us to validate whether it could travel 500 miles with a fully loaded trailer and see what our drivers thought of the truck’s performance. We were encouraged by how quickly they gained confidence with the vehicle and leveraged the Tesla’s smart features to help improve performance, comfort, and the overall driver experience.

    Edit: Just some examples… I don’t know if these have been verified in use unlike the Tesla, so all theoretical based on the advertised miles/battery size.

    • Mercedes: 1.935 kWh/mile (310 miles)
    • Kenworth: 2.5 kWh/mile (200 miles)
    • Volvo: 2.05 kWh/mile (275miles)

    And those are all shorter range at that.

    Edit: I should also add… we don’t know the price of the Tesla Semi. Its possible that its ridiculously priced and the increased efficiency is negated even over the life of the vehicle compared to the other trucks. That’s a big unknown given these are pilot vehicles.





  • If it’s a L2 system the driver is always liable. The report just makes sure we know it’s happening and can force changes if patterns are found. The NHSTA made Tesla improve their driver monitoring based off the data since that was the main problem. The majority of accidents (almost all) were drunk or distracted drivers.

    If it’s a L4 system Tesla is always liable, we’ll see that in June in Austin in theory for the first time on public roads.

    The report never changes liability, it just let’s us know what the state of the vehicle was for the incident. Tesla can’t say the system was off because it was off 1 second before because we’ll know it was on prior to that. But that doesn’t change liability.


  • NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.worldtomemes@lemmy.worldThe Tesla Trolley
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    18 days ago

    It turns off, but it’s likely so the AEB system can kick in.

    AP and AEB are separate things.

    Also all L2 crashes that involve an air bag deployment or fatality get reported if it was on within something like 30s before hand, assuming the OEM has the data to report, which Tesla does.

    Rules are changing to lessen when it needs to be reported, so things like fender benders aren’t necessarily going to be reported for L2 systems in the near future, but something like this would still be and alway has.







  • Their insurance is (was?) kind of like that as well if you get the saftey score one. While some things are more general and concrete like following distance, time of day driving, they have one for forward collision warnings.

    I’m not sure how much time you’ve spent in a Tesla, but that system is notorious for going off incorrectly. It’s specifically really bad with parked cars on the side of the road on turns. So you’re driving along a city street with cars parked on the side and it goes off and now your insurance premiums are more expensive.

    I don’t think you could find a single Tesla owner who hasn’t had multiple false warnings, and consistently in certain circumstances.

    So someone of course starts a lawsuit and Tesla initially defends itself, but just last week or something like that, it’s no longer part of the safety score




  • Even at these lower prices, Tesla makes more money on their EVs than their competitors. That’s part of why the others haven’t been able to expand and compete as quickly. Expanding an expensive vehicle becomes a bigger liability as you have less pricing room. GM is only planning to have their first EV profitable year this year, and I’ll believe it when I see it.

    The Cybertruck is probably another story though, I don’t know if that’s profitable at the lower than expected sales rate.

    Edit: E.g the Bolt everyone loves from GM never made GM money. That’s why they didn’t sell more. They did learn from it though so it wasn’t a total loss for them.