Tesla teases a Robotaxi, are they crazy to give up off-lease plan?

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Elon Musk has now teased that Tesla will build its own custom robotaxi, at low cost. This is at odds with their brilliant plan to turn off-lease Teslas into robotaxis, letting somebody else eat up 40% of the depreciation. Will they do both, or do they have a new plan up their sleeve for a small one-person pod?

Read about this in my new Forbes.com story at Tesla teases a Robotaxi, are they crazy to give up off-lease plan?

Comments

Do all Tesla Shanghai profits stay in China?

Will Tesla ever be able to repatriate any profits earned in China to the United States?

How many Tesla automobiles made in China are sold in China versus exported abroad, and if Tesla has 4 factories currently producing Tesla automobiles, what percentage of total Teslas manufactured by the 4 Tesla factories does China production represent?

If parts and labor are the cheapest in China, and Tesla China exports automobiles abroad, what percentage of Tesla profits are from China?

Does the economics of Tesla China force Tesla USA to produce Tesla robotaxis in lieu of automobiles?

Or will tge PRC CCP encourage Tesla to source robotaxi design and production in Shanghai?

Today @RealDawnProject launches a nationwide TV ad campaign demanding NHTSA gov ban Full Self-Driving until Elon Musk proves it won’t mow down children

Electrek website states RealDawnProject failed to even activate FSD Beta properly during test.

But also saw a capture with FSD on. Need to see the full video, where is it?

hyperlink in pdf on project website

driveteslacanada dot ca/news/raw-footage-shows-tesla-fsd-beta-was-active-during-the-dawn-projects-tests-video/

Ralph Nader
Tesla’s major deployment of so-called Full Self-Driving (FSD) technology is one of the most dangerous and irresponsible actions by a car company in decades. See full statement.

new Deep Lane Guidance module copies the competition like Intel/Mobileye

highway city stack merge, new cameras, dms upgd, .... new hw
2024

any new info? - your post on Reddit 6 mos ago

Everybody knows the Tesla has poor quality cameras. And that Elon Musk promised they would make FSD work with the existing cameras. So he is motivated by pride to make that happen, but there is another reason.

If at some point they conclude they need better cameras (or worse, LIDAR) they will need to retrofit the cars of everybody who paid for FSD. That will be expensive and they definitely prefer not to do it and to only do it once. (New customers can be charged a price that covers this extra cost.)

So the motive is to keep trying to make it work until the day it becomes clear a better camera is required. That will probably be the day that other people are making it work with better sensors and they have to stop trying to do it. Otherwise, why not keep trying?

Unfortunately the consequence is that they will try hard to make it work with poor cameras, which is not the path to maximum performance.

On the other hand, this does not justify not putting better cameras in new models being shipped, as that would not be that expensive. But those better cameras would be a "crutch" that would let the team tempted to make it work with just those.

I don't see it working with the existing cameras. Only the front ones have any way to clean them, and they often get dirty or rain covered or blinded. The blindspot cameras are blinded by the turn signals at night to a large degree. You can do so much better now. No other team would hesitate to be using the best cameras they can get. BT

Samsung Electro-Mechanics Co., the electronic components unit of Samsung Group, has won a multi-billion-dollar deal to supply camera modules to Tesla Inc. for most of the US company’s electric vehicles.

The South Korean company beat other bidders, including crosstown rival LG Innotek Co. and Taiwan’s Primax Electronics Ltd., to clinch the deal estimated at between 4 trillion won and 5 trillion won ($3.2 billion-$4 billion), according to people familiar with the matter on Wednesday.

The agreement with the Electro-Mechanics arm of Samsung is believed to be worth in the region of $3.2 billion to $4 billion. It was first reported by the Korea Economic Daily – an outlet that has broken the news of previous partnerships between the pair – and will make Samsung the largest supplier of camera modules to Tesla.

The new deal is for Samsung’s version 4.0 camera modules, with 5 million pixels. These are claimed to show images that are five times clearer than Samsung’s previous 3.0 modules and would represent a significant step up in quality from those presently in use by Tesla.

With the deal, Samsung will supply 80 per cent of camera modules used by Tesla. LG Innotek will supply the other 20 per cent.

The contract will see Samsung supply camera modules for the Model 3, Model S, Model X, Model Y, Tesla Semi and the Cybertruck.