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Elon Musk says Tesla ending Models S and X production, converting Fremont factory lines to make Optimus robots (www.cnbc.com)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 2 points 9 months ago (9 children)

I think that they were isolating Elon from real decision making for a long time but he finally took over and forced them to create the Cybertruck. To me it's not even clear if they are still able to design cars or if Elon completely destroyed their ability to function as a car maker. Shareholders apparently still believe they can create new products but we have seen any evidence of that in years.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (8 children)

    I mean, the Cybecab exists and is driving on public roads today with a driver for testing purposes, and without a driver on private roads. It might be a bit far to say suggest they can't design a car.

    The question isn't can they make a car, but is that car ever going to be allowed to legally drive on public roads as designed without a driver.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (3 children)

    No, the question is why does anyone give a fuck about robotic taxis at all? Waymo has been at if far longer, for real, and they are still losing money. There is no business model.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (2 children)

    That's a pretty wild and closed mind thinking to say there's no business model for it.

    I'm not saying Tesla can truly solve this problem, but lets just assume for the moment that they actually can solve self driving.

    Note: For anyone who questions this thesis, just to pre-empt people replying "but they can't do it", that is NOT what this discussion is going to be about, so get lost.

    Now that that is out of the way

    Waymo vehicles are retrofitted vehicles that are expensive to begin with, with more expensive hardware. The car itself is 70k+ and with retrofits its well over 100k. Jaguar and their suppliers have to earn a profit on the vehicle, and then Waymo has to pay on top of that to get it all customized. (edit: and pay for service which comes at a profit for the supplier as well)

    Tesla has designed a bespoke vehicle specifically for autonomous driving that is going to cost them less than 30k to build at scale including all the hardware, no retrofits needed. Everything from it's construction, interior, 2 seats vs 4 seats etc are all designed for this one exact purpose. They don't even have a steering wheel or pedals, and while the video could just be a gimmick, they've showcased a robot that is specifically designed to be able to clean this specific interior.

    Tesla can refine their own lithium hydroxide, to build their own batteries, which they claim (no proof) are cheaper than their supplier batteries for cost/kwh. That's not to say they could sell them for more profit than Samsung or LG or BYD, but that those companies put a profit ontop of their cells, and Tesla claims the cost is below that.

    So, they refine their own lithium now, could already make batteries cheaper than they could buy them from others before that, they build their own cars where they don't need to make a profit on the sale, which has been explicitly designed for this one use case and you still don't think there's any room for it to be profitable, IF they can actually solve the problem?

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    Checker Motors doesn't rule the world.

    Making taxi cars is not profitable.

    The corporate model is financially unviable because the capital owners rather than the drivers are taking all the risk.

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

    You are correct that Tesla takes on the risk, and that risk is immense, but that doesn't mean it can't be profitable.

    Keeping capital expenditures to build the CyberCab line separate for a moment.

    The cars are going to cost Tesla somewhere in the 20k-30k range to build with 0 profit. We know it'll be cheaper to build at scale than a Model 3 which they can sell for a profit at 37k USD so lets just say 30k.

    The average Lyft/Uber rides are somewhere between $15-$20, so given no driver, lets say the average autonomous ride at scale, is $10. Waymo's is currently almost $20, but scale is small so that should come down.

    That's 3000 rides to make up the base cost of the car, which means it's 8.22 rides a day for a year to cover the capital costs of the car, and Uber drivers typically do 15-30 rides a day, so the car could pay for itself in 100-200 days at $10 average rides.

    Beyond that, you need to cover all the additional costs like charging (they own the infrastructure so its industrial rate cost), service, operations management (e.g if a car gets stuck who goes to retrieve it in person like Waymo does), customer support etc etc.

    So if we say 30 rides a day because it can run 24/7, that's $300 a day per car in revenue to cover all the extra costs after the car is paid off in 100 days and start paying off the production lines.

    That seems doable to me, and this is probably pretty conservative (edit on ride count per day per car.)

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago (1 child)

    It's still under development and it's hard to tell what it will do when it hits the roads. What if it's total disaster like Cybertrack? They don't just have to design cars. They have to design cars that people want to buy.

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