Things are undoubtedly bad at Tesla. Its sales are dwindling. Its profits are plunging, as is its share price. There are regular protests outside its showrooms. The Cybertruck is a flop. And somehow, it’s actually a lot worse than that.
The 71% drop in net income it just reported may have been overshadowed by CEO Elon Musk’s announcement that he would be stepping back from his controversial duties at the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). But that drop is just one indication of serious financial sickness at the EV maker, problems brought on by falling sales for the first time in its history and falling prices for electric vehicles.
The bottom line problem at Tesla is its vanishing bottom line. A deeper look at its first quarter report shows it’s now losing money on what should be its ostensible reason for existence – selling cars.
It was only able to post a $409 million profit in the quarter thanks to the sale of $595 million worth of regulatory credits to other automakers.
But if the Trump administration gets its way, the company can kiss those regulatory credits keeping it in the black goodbye, too.
Not good. There’s still some remnant of the idealistic vision, hiding from the Nazi.
It’s going to be a disaster. Tesla “FSD” is glorified cruise control on level 2 on the autonomous driving scale.
It’s already a disaster. The economics don’t add up and the few on the road break down all the time.
don’t other truck manufacturers that actually know how to build a truck also make electrified models?
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
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.
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.
I tried fsd demo this spring and it’s getting pretty good. I wouldn’t use it but it was perfect on well marked roads. The thing is it made me realize just how poorly maintained our roads are and everything is an edge case. For example it didn’t stay in lane at one Intersection but the intersection was a weird offset plus the lines were all faded away. Although I also disnt give it any chance to recover so I suppose it could have been ok: Im not risking it not recovering
It might surprise everyone but mostly by staying in a well maintained well mapped area, like Waymo did. There’s no way it fulfills the claim of self-driving everywhere without more improvements
The robots is will have the next generation computer and higher resolution cameras which may help. However that also allows more overhead for the next ai update
I get what you mean but it’s still stuck at level 2 and it always will be. No matter how good it is, if you move your eyes from the road, it will eventually kill you. Cameras alone are not sufficient enough for autonomous driving.
I disagree with this assertion, because they’re correct that the only being that can currently drive is relying on vision. Vision alone is sufficient for driving.
But autonomous driving really hasn’t succeeded yet. We still have no idea what is required for autonomous driving or whether we can do it at all, regardless of sensors.
So you’re implying that we can definitely do autonomous driving but can’t do it the way humans do, whereas I say we won’t know the requirements until we find some that succeed, and we may never
Yeah sure. If you want the same bad results as humans deliver, in terms of crash rates, than it’s possible. I wouldn’t trust it. Also human vision and processing is completely different from computer vision and processing.
Presumably we have the intelligence to set requirements before something can be called self-driving - that’s usually what the fuss is about, whether the marketing is claiming it’s something it’s not.
If they fail with their approach, I’m fine with that, just like I’m fine if Waymo fails with their approach. Of either succeeds, why should I care how? Obviously there’s a problem if it runs over some old lady at a stop sign and drags them down the street but that’s clearly a failure for them
We already have that https://www.sae.org/blog/sae-j3016-update
Yes, we have the definitions, but I haven’t read about whether they’re effectively required. Is there a test, a certification authority, rules for liability or revocation? Have we established a way to actually require it.
I hope we wouldn’t let manufacturers self-certify, although historical data is important evidence. I hope we don’t aid profitability of manufacturers by either limiting liability or creating a path to justice doomed to fail
The thing is humans are horrible drivers, costing a huge toll in lives and property every year.
We may already be at the point where we need to deal with the ethics of inadequate self-driving causing too many accidents vs human causing more. We can clearly see the shortcomings of all self driving technology so far, but is it ethical to block Immature technology if it does overall save lives?
Maybe it’s the trolley problem. Should we take the branch that leads to deaths or the branch that leads to more deaths