I think the argument, equipment-wise, is that humans drive ‘safely’ with only two cameras on a swivel.
From a sensor standpoint, advantage already goes to the car/computer on that one.
Obviously we have very good pattern-detection and image recognition software running upstairs. Right now, advantage: human.
Our reliability/attention, not so good. Advantage to the computer on that one.
Elon’s argument is that the second point is just a software/computational problem, and once it’s solved, will result in a superior driver than humans.
Personally, I think he underestimates the timeline that will happen in, and the amount of computational power required.
I’ve sat in a prototype (not Tesla) that could follow a line on a map without driver’s input. I was told (after I figured it out and asked) that it used a ~$60K high-precision GPS receiver for this. My guess is it was the most, and probably the only expensive piece of hardware on that car. Seemed like a stupid “let’s just throw a bunch of money at it” approach to solving the problem.
GPS is not “needed” and neither is LiDAR. It’s the combination of sensor inputs that matters. High precision GPS does cost a lot, not sure about $60k though. Also, GPS can easily be jammed and disrupted by nature and man. In Sept of last year, some GPS were knocked out and there’s one recorded incident of someone that almost wrecked due to it.
2.25B. they sold 20% of it to SoftBank for $2.25B. I’m sure there’s a way to look at that as a positive… But if GM actually made $16B over the last 12 months (they actually did not, that was excluding very large charges) they wouldn’t have to sell off 20% of future profits of what is expected to be the part of the company with the most future profit growth (much larger numbers have been thrown around as current and expected future value of Ford Mobility by analysts, for example) for such a paltry amount.
The 20% run up in GM stock price celebrating ownership share dilution is strange to me, but I’m probably missing something…
My original statement said they didn’t make that amount after very large (“one-time”) charges. They showed a net loss for 2017 on the 10K.
Agreed they have a strong cash flow. Assume they won’t have large charges again, even though every couple years in the past… But there’s not a long history to look at the large charges since shareholders were wiped out 100% not long ago. I wasn’t saying Tesla’s in a better position. No comment on Tesla.
GM numbers look better on the paper, but they are not growing fast like TSLA. Therefore, TSLA will be more favored by Wall Street. My money is on TSLA (especially now that Model 3 is outselling all luxury cars and even economical EV such as Bolt).
It makes sense as you buy a company primarily for expectation of future performance. Sunk costs that already occurred don’t affect future performance (Except in a pattern. If there’s often been large one time charges, it seems to make sense to expect a certain amount of them to continue to occur.). But that doesn’t make them irrelevant losses, they come out of the value of the company’s assets, which you are buying along with their potential future profits.
Slightly edited your quote, but in my early dabbling into individual stocks, this has been my conclusion. The reports aren’t even internally consistent, which to me, is insane.
Well I wasnt really meaning to say they had to sell it. I then mentioned I just didn’t see what the benefit was to selling off the profits to the foreign investment fund. As a F shareholder I’d certainly be upset if Ford sold part of mobility to SoftBank for a couple $B when they have much cash on the balance sheet.
The short term share price movement seems to indicate many are happy with the deal, anyways.
Currently thinking about buying some AT&T stocks since the merger news made T go down this morning. Why do you see this merger being bad for T shareholders? I see it as a great opportunity for AT&T to diversify away from telecom and go into media content. They can combine TIme Warner and DirectTV Now service into a powerful streaming company that can take some shares away from NetFlix…
If T-Mobile’s merger with Sprint gets approved, I see Verizon getting hurt the most and they will cut their dividends. At this point, I rather take a higher risk on Sprint for their ability to take a full advantage of 5G with their massive spectrum.
Management screwed the pooch by putting all their chips on ramping-up old-school energy production, just as renewable energy became cheaper than fossil fuel energy production.
