BYD vs. Tesla China Race

Investment Analysis Clubs Macro Economic Trends and Risks
41

I concur.
I think most of the saved $ from day to day ownership, will go to the MaaS operator.

One current expense I’ve not seen discussed - car insurance and its web of interconnected businesses, and the affect of AVs and MaaS on that whole group of workers, JCs, etc.

Current auto insurance coverage is a serious drain on individual and family finances, especially for younger drivers.

Local franchises for auto insurance are a major source of local “middle class” entrepreneurs and employment.

:raising_hand_man:
ralph

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42

Eh. Maybe. It depends on how it’s structured.

Musk is has talked about MaaS as a consumer-purchased Level 5 software product in connection with their previously-purchased Teslas, which privately-owned cars they end up putting into a ride-share network. That’s a high-margin structure. But again, there’s no guarantee that’s how MaaS actually ends up being implemented.

Cruise is right now trending more towards a different model, one where the autonomous cars operate as taxis that are owned by the parent company - not individuals. That’s not necessarily going to be a really high margin business, since you’re going to have to own a lot of metal (and probably a fair bit of real estate as well).

There might really not be a massive amount to be made in this field, in the long term. Sure, if someone had been the first to make a major, major breakthrough in the field, there might have been a huge windfall for them. But it’s starting to look like that might not happen for anyone. The road to a full Level 4 autonomous system is so far looking more like a long, slow steady slog of incremental improvements, with lots of similarly-situated competitors having to run big outlays and fighting for market share all the way.

BTW my quote was if MaaS is much cheaper than people owning their own cars, it will likely be hugely disruptive. I suspect the first part won’t end up being the case.

43

It seems vastly unlikely that people are going to take their $100,000 cars and put them on the road to pick up teenagers going through the drive thru at McDonald’s and eating burgers in the car, sick children throwing up in the back seat, or Susie and Johnny humping in it at a drive-in. (Uber is different, because I’m in the car with the passenger.)

Further, I’m pretty sure it isn’t a business at all, except in a few isolated cases where it makes sense. The sweet spot might be urban cores with high density and no place to park, but neither of those is true in the suburbs, and they’re extremely not true in rural areas where it could take a half hour to call ahead for a car.

People will pay for convenience, and not having a car at your disposal is decidedly inconvenient. I note that ZipCar and similar ride-sharing services haven’t really taken the world by storm, and “taxicabs” seem to work at scale only in the largest metropolitan areas.

I could probably save money going to a laundromat, but having my own washer dryer, even at the cost of a couple thousand bucks is wayyy better. Intercst has demonstrated that renting is usually better than buying, yet people long to own their own. It will be a funny little business, with attendant problems (dirty cars, congestion pricing and then sparse use at other times, storage, etc.) but Musk is as far off with this prediction here as he is in how to run a social media site.

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44

That is not what Musk said. He said sales to the public of truly self-driving cars will not happen with cars Tesla makes. Barra says the same thing for GM and they are working on it.

https://electrek.co/2019/07/08/tesla-will-stop-selling-cars-full-self-driving-elon-musk/

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45

He’s said lots of different things at different times. For most of the last several years, he’s described his robotaxi fleet as the existing installed base of already-sold Tesla’s that become robotaxis with an OTA update and a Tesla Network-type app:

“Next year for sure, we will have over a million robotaxis on the road,” said Musk on October 21, 2019. “The fleet wakes up with an over-the-air update. That’s all it takes.”

It was only earlier this year, apparently, that Tesla started really talking about having a bespoke vehicle designed for taxi use rather than converting all the existing fleet into robotaxis. I wouldn’t be surprised if the practical concerns described by Goofy, but raised by nearly everyone thinking about this concept, affected that change in strategy.

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46

I’m slightly more optimistic, but only slightly. Uber and Lyft are going strong, which is basically renting out your car. Whenever I’ve used those services the cars appear quickly, which suggests lots of people are doing it (I think part of it is that people don’t calculate the full costs of ownership…)

Part of the reason it works is that drivers can rate their passengers (and vice versa) which tends to reduce the number of freaks (they ride the E Line instead). But unless the owner inspects the vehicle after each ride, there is no way which rando threw up in the back. So I dunno. If I had a robo-taxi capable car I wouldn’t rent it out.

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47

My Tesla has an interior camera that I can view from the Tesla app on my phone.

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48

Sure. But it doesn’t show you the back seat floor, for example. (or even the front seat floor)
Which could have a spilled soda or mud from shoes.

Robotaxis might become a thing. But doubtful it will become very big very quickly.
The costs will be higher than projected. And the number of people that completely ditch their cars will be a small percentage.

Mike

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49

It doesn’t. In fact the image is pretty crappy. But I assume future vehicles built to be robotaxis will have all sorts of better ways, including more and better cameras, to monitor the suitability of the vehicle for giving rides.

But we aren’t going to see widespread robotaxis on regular roads for quite a while. I believe that not a single commercially sold vehicle on the road today will ever be capable of being a robotaxi. This despite the dream that’s been touted of changing all Tesla’s on the road today into robotaxis with a software download.

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50

Question to anyone thinking robotaxis will happen without some kind of indemnity from sexual assautls or regular assaults and deaths inside the taxis.

Who pays the victims?

Now think about the insurance.

My biggest cost, bar none, was insurance when I and two other guys (an ex- Navy Seal on dayshift) , a big ole Indiana farm boy and me at night taking over two biggest taxi companies in Key West and while at it having to fire about 80% of drivers who refused to wear shoes, shirts with sleeves, no open shirts, etc. (mandated by the City of Key West).

Our three biggest costs:

  1. Insurance
  2. Maintenance
  3. Cleaning every 12-hour shift

I don’t care if your car has a camera system. There are plenty of idiots who will wear baclavas, knock out the window at a stoplight, reach in grab articles or punch a passenger.

If Tesla’s “Armor Glass” can’t stop a slow pitch steel ball from smashing the glass, how about bullets?

Criminals pull up on a rival gang riding in a robotaxi, and let loose with soon to be concealed carry weapons with no permits needed for concealment in Florida. Blast, blast, blast, shoot the battery, let the car immolate, while your driver and gang - all in baclavas - are shown with false tags and the car is a different color because of coming tech which allows you to change the color of your car with a quick prompt on your computer screen in the car.

The last thing anyone in $TSLA stock will see in the next 10-years is any workable FSD that our FTC, NHTSA, NTSB, FCC, etc, will all approve. Tesla has ruined its name staking Musk on increases from $2,000 all the way to $15,000 for simps buying into the robotaxi promise and that Tesla is a month away from real Level-5 FSD.

p.s. You will laugh when you read the minutes from the court deposition where plaintiffs’ lawyers questions some Tesla bigwig Engineer and he could not answer basic stuff Engineers on Twitter are laughing at. FSD for Dummies doesn’t explain how it works, it explains how many people allow themselves to be duped by the cult of personality:

And during the few moments that we have left we wanna talk right down to earth in a language, that everybody here can easily understand

Look in my eyes, what do you see?
The cult of personality
I know your anger, I know your dreams
I’ve been everything you wanna be

I’m the cult of personality
Like Mussolini and Kennedy
I’m the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality

Neon lights, Nobel Prize
When a mirror speaks, the reflection lies
You won’t have to follow me
Only you can set me free

I sell the things you need to be
I’m the smiling face on your TV
I’m the cult of personality
I exploit you, still you love me
I tell you one and one makes three

I’m the cult of personality
Like Joseph Stalin and Gandhi
I’m the cult of personality
The cult of personality
The cult of personality

Neon lights, Nobel Prize
When a leader speaks, that leader dies
You won’t have to follow me
Only you can set you free

You gave me fortune
You gave me fame
You gave me power in your God’s name
I’m every person you need to be
I’m the cult of personality
I’m the cult of
I’m the cult of
I’m the cult of
I’m the cult of
I’m the cult of
I’m the cult of
I’m the cult of
I’m the cult of personality

I snagged this meme from an ex-Tesla fanboi on Twitter recently. He sold his car, he sold his stock, and he’s part of the Tesla lawsuit being adjudicated right now.

elon musk 1
elon musk 1680×680 54.1 KB

p.s. I did not have the heart to tell the poor incel tricked by Musk that you never call a stripper that name, or “peeler” either. You do that, and you might get slapped in the face at an Adult Entertainment Club - and then you will be bounced by their huge Emotional Control Techicians (aka Bouncers - Bouncers are called bouncers, and that is what all caps E.C.T. means on the back of polo shirts in the best bars with humor.

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51

You might want to listen to this talk on autonomy given by Ashok Elluswamy before you dismiss him. Court testimony is really not the right thing to use to judge an engineer’s competence. No engineer, in court, is going to admit much familiarity with somebody else’s jargon, if for no other reason than such questions will lead inevitably to gotchas of one kind or another. The safest answer is always something like “That’s not terminology we use. What exactly do you mean by it?” Unless you’re talking about standardized units or something like that.

Of course it likely won’t make any difference to you because 1) you haven’t a clue; and 2) you seem to have bought into so much BS that you’re immune to anything factual.

On the other hand, it remains true that Tesla’s FSD isn’t of much use to anybody in its current state. It’s moderately useful on the highway, especially in rush hour. If you have a medical emergency or fall asleep while driving, you’re far more likely to survive safely if you were driving with it turned on. And long drives are much less tiring because you can pay attention mostly for exceptional events rather than on tedium like lane-keeping and speed. But it’s nowhere close to full autonomy, and has shown little progress recently.

-IGU-

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52

Yeah, I’ve lived ~50 miles north of Boston (southern NH) my whole life… ya know, watchin the daily drwama awn the nitely nooz unfold in Southie, Raveeah, Dawchestah… :wink: Go Bruins!

FC

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53

Pure nonsense. What he said was PR crapola (to sell more cars) and pretty much everyone with a brain knows it. The current technology (then AND now) is not capable of meeting the requirements for autonomous driving. If it (existing tech) was, then we would have it. Nobody is doing full autonomous driving (other than very experimentally), so we KNOW Musk is full of it (as usual).

54

Of course. But until fairly recently AIUI, that was still where Tesla was directing its AV efforts - towards bringing full autonomy to their existing product lines, both new cars and existing cars on the roads. Tesla pivoting to developing a separate design for robotaxis is a shift.

It’s a shift that makes sense - if nothing else, it’s a concession to reality in the regulatory space (which is already authorizing Level 4 systems), no matter what is technologically feasible. We’re probably close to seeing a number of Level 4 systems coming to Cities Near You (or at least on clear-weather days on specific roads below certain speeds), and if Tesla wants to be visibly part of that, they likely need their own Level 4 system and not wait for the Level 5 that Musk has been over-optimistic about.

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55

That is how we all know he was blowing smoke (or whatever). The design and specifications for a long life product is significantly different than a standard consumer product. Used to work in industrial mfg. Reasonable life of that equipment was reasonably 30-50 years. Sure, there was required ongoing maintenance–but that was true for every manufacturer. Major rebuilds–maybe. Depends if there were problems that caused the machine to fail and thus require a rebuild.

The car companies will have much better vehicles (meaning better quality components and internal appointments for passengers) for their commercial MaaS. Designed for their ease of maintenance and repair–because that is the only way they can keep their ongoing costs down. It also means those vehicles will NOT be sold to the public because they are designed for facilities dedicated to maintaining the MaaS system.

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56

MaaS will likely complement car ownership rather than fully replace it, with the consequence that households will own fewer cars and put on less mileage/year on the ones that they keep. The average US household owns two cars with about a quarter owning 3 or more. This means that MaaS can substantially reduce the number of private cars even if most households still own one.

Having been in rush hour traffic in places like LA and the DC beltway I can say that being able to read the paper during the commute in a robotaxi has pretty strong appeal. Be happy to pay for that service while keeping a car at home for the rest of the family to use. One less car in the garage frees up a lot of storage space and is one less thing to worry about.

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57

I’m surprised at how much speculative energy on this board has been devoted to AVs.

I don’t follow it closely but I work heavily with data in a related area and I’m very skeptical of how soon and widespread autonomous vehicles will arise. Caveats bolded above could rule out most cases.

Here are two supporting data points of how slow autonomous driving might roll out.

I recently read an article (Google Cloud Introduces Shelf Inventory AI Tool for Retailers - WSJ) about Google trying to automate the visual reading of retail inventory on shelves with cameras and AI (an image classification problem). They are several years away from something like approaching full production (“It could take three to six years for computer-vision shelf checking to become more mainstream.”) Walmart abandoned a similar project (https://www.grocerydive.com/news/google-cloud-artificial-intelligence-inventory-tech-retailers/640611/ ). Image classification of inventory on shelves is a vastly simpler use case than autonomous driving, but part of a similar overall problem set. This tells me that use cases such as very general autonomous driving (which likely includes most in-town and near residential area situations) are quite far away.

Ford “CEO Jim Farley said development of the vehicles at scale was “a long way off.””. See (Ford Puts Brakes on Development of Fully Autonomous Cars). Others like GM and Google continue to invest billions with plodding results (Ford Abandons the Self-Driving Road to Nowhere | WIRED).

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58

I think it’s because a few of the AV companies (Waymo and Cruize, and I think Argo) are already offering autonomous taxi service to the public in several pilot markets. So while we’re a long way off from AV’s being something “widespread,” they’re already a thing in the world that you can use in certain places under certain conditions.

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59

Last I heard, they shut down due to lack of new investment (from Ford?).

60

True - but so would doing the same thing in your own autonomous car.

As noted in the prior post, we’re probably further away from privately owned AV’s than robotaxis. But once Level 4 autonomy gets pretty well established, privately owned AV’s won’t be far behind. And at that point, whether MaaS has a meaningful effect on private car ownership will depend a lot on cost and convenience.

Providing service to lower density, suburban areas is going to unavoidably involve a fair amount of deadheading. AM and PM peak hour demand for the commute is going to outstrip the number of vehicles that can be offered as robotaxis (robobusses might be another story). It may end up being pretty expensive to use a robotaxi to travel from the 'burbs to the central business district and arrive at around 9:00 a.m. And there are inconveniences to using robotaxis, as opposed to your own vehicle, that will offset some of the benefits.