I'm Shocked!

[legion]

Originally Posted by KC911

One of the reasons I "retired" back in '08...that POS outfit called EDS (the Motormeister of the IT world) was chosen as the outsource provider as executives dismantled my co. They were gonna be sucked up by HP, and I was just burned out on corporate bs like that after living it for 25 years. Could have kept my salary, etc. but I'd had enough so I walked....naw, I happily ran away . HP was once a great tech company with great products....no mas . They've since broken that POS off from the rest...

Legion, I read your other thread about M&A...didn't comment though...I lived it for 25 years...you were spot on .

And here I thought that Computer Associates was the Motormeister of the IT world. (I've never dealt with EDS myself. I have dealt with CA.)

My current favorite is dealing with startup vendors that promise us the moon and deliver--almost nothing. (And the executives that believe their completely unfounded sales pitches.) I differentiate them from older vendors that do the same because the startups honestly believe they can deliver. I have one right now where the vendor told us we'd be fully implemented by January 2017. (I told executives it was never going to happen, they told me to stop being a pessimist). It's almost a year later and we have 8 barely-working buggy prototypes. There was no way they could develop the ground-breaking software and build the hardware in 6 months for the promised rollout.

[VincentVega]

stop being so pessimistic

I think its clear electric cars are dead. Coal! New coal cars are coming. No 'lectric, just coal.

[widebody911]

Originally Posted by VincentVega

I think its clear electric cars are dead. Coal! New coal cars are coming. No 'lectric, just coal.

https://jalopnik.com/gm-once-built-these-fascinating-coal-powered-turbine-ca-1791842557

[Deschodt]

Originally Posted by GH85Carrera

The day an electric vehicle can travel 700 to 900 miles in a day and be 100% ready to go the next day just as far electric will take over. That is a long way off.

I get your point but 7-900 mi a day is a pretty extreme use case... Not everyone drives 12-15 hours a day ! ;-) Most people drive less than 100mi a day, and the accepted switchover range for an electric only household is about 300 miles - the cheaper cars will be there in a year or so. Right now it's only the tesla in terms of pure electric. Overnight recharging is no problem for that kind of range...

i would not be surprised if some recent discoveries in battery technology sped that up sooner than we all anticipate. I wasn't expecting self driving cars so soon, yet they're almost here...

I get it though. I love my E-golf for my daily commute: the torque, the silence when leaving the house at 6AM, the benefits like HOV lane access and 1/2 off the bridge, never visiting a gas station... But twice a week I still commute in my gas car just because I miss the sounds and handling... They're still toys until the range exceeds 300 mi (overnight rechargeable) and the price is only slightly more than a gasoline equivalent... It'll get there, I'm sure of it..

[911boost]

That Motorweek video is sweet! I like how off center the steering wheel seems to be.

[berettafan]

Originally Posted by VincentVega

stop being so pessimistic

I think its clear electric cars are dead. Coal! New coal cars are coming. No 'lectric, just coal.

Electric cars ARE powered by coal.




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Shaun @ Tru6]

I just tried to google electricity by source in the U.S. Seem the Energy Information Administration site is down.

https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/index.cfm?page=electricity_in_the_united_states

But this WaPo article has a very good interactive graphic just a little way down that allows you to click on the energy source and the graph recompiles by state.

The majority of electricity produced in MA is by natural gas, a little surprised by that. Coal is 6%

https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/power-plants/?utm_term=.90b267c24baf


Great stats as you scroll down.

Natural gas, coal and nuclear make up the vast majority of our electricity production.

[legion]

The post-mortem on Tesla will be case study in every college management class (possibly in the ethics unit).

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-02/model-3-hell-is-burning-tesla-s-other-projects

There will be no $35,000 Teslas in 2017.

The electric carmaker updated its website for customer reservations on Wednesday, including a table that shows the base Model 3 won’t be available until some time next year. That follows a painful earnings call for Chief Executive Officer Elon Musk, who described the company as being in the “eighth level of hell” (there are nine, in case you’re counting). The stock price fell 8.9 percent on Thursday, the most in more than 16 months.

People from key teams at Tesla are focused on fixing bottlenecks that have hobbled production, said Musk, who held his earnings call at the Nevada battery factory where he and co-founder J.B. Straubel are spending their days and nights. Despite earlier reports that it was the company’s California assembly plant that was gumming up the works, it turns out the famed Gigafactory is the heart of the problem. The reallocation of resources to fix the difficulties may be contributing to delays for Autopilot, the Solar Roof, the Tesla Semi, and the Tesla Network.

“Tesla’s cash burn is astounding, and time is ticking,” said Salim Morsy, an electric-car analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance. “They have some pretty urgent things to deal with, and we just don’t have any visibility right now.”

Here are five key products still waiting to catch an elevator out of the inferno:

1. The Model 3

The “$35,000 electric car” has been Tesla’s top goal and marketing calling card for years. It’s an important price point, competing with entry level luxury gasoline-powered cars like the BMW 3 Series and the Mercedes C Class. When you include a $7,500 U.S. tax credit, the price is cheaper than the average new U.S. car and more in line with a well-optioned Toyota Camry.

But on Wednesday’s call with analysts, Tesla pushed back its timelines for the Model 3 by three months. A production rate of 5,000 a week won’t be achieved until the end of March, rather than the end of next month. The $35,000 base model has been pushed back from November 2017 to sometime in 2018. (Tesla still plans to start selling a $49,000 long-range version with options to the public in time for Christmas.)

Perhaps the biggest warning flag: Musk would no longer give a timeline on when Tesla would reach a production rate of 10,000 a week. Last quarter he was unequivocal on that point: “What people should absolutely have zero concern about—and I mean zero—is that Tesla will achieve a 10,000 unit production week by the end of next year.”

2. The Solar Roof

A year ago this week, Tesla unveiled its remarkable solar shingles with much fanfare in Hollywood on an old set of “Desperate Housewives.” It began taking deposits in May. There’s still little indication of when the product might roll out. Tesla said things will move slowly in the coming quarter while it gets its new factory in Buffalo, New York, up and running. Then, the company said, the product will ramp up “in 2018.” That’s a wide window for customers trying to plan a roofing project.

Perhaps a better indication of where things stand is this: Tesla’s website currently shows job postings for 24 “lead roofer” positions—all in California. Each position, according to the descriptions, would be second-in-command of a small roofing team. Meanwhile, the amount of standard solar installations being done have dropped 42 percent compared with the same quarter last year, just before Tesla bought SolarCity.

3. Autopilot

A year after Tesla started charging $8,000 for a feature called Full Self Driving, there’s still no sign of a rollout of such features, and Musk hinted that a more powerful supercomputer may be needed to achieve its goal. On Wednesday, he said the current hardware can reach “approximately human-level autonomy.”

Musk concedes that the system will probably need to be significantly safer than the average human driver in order to achieve regulatory approval, so a hardware upgrade may be necessary. “We’ll have more to say on the hardware front soon, we’re just not ready to say anything now,” said Musk. As a consolation, anyone who has already paid for the option will get a free computer swap.

Tesla said new features will be coming for its less-ambitious $5,000 Enhanced Autopilot package in the next few months. Musk said the other hardware for autonomous driving—8 cameras, a radar and 12 ultrasonic sensors—will be sufficient. Other companies pursuing autonomous driving are also including expensive lidar kits. Musk was undeterred: “We are certain that our hardware strategy is better than any other option, by a lot.”
4. Tesla Semi

Tesla was set to unveil its first all-electric long-range semi truck back in September. Then it was moved to October. Then it was pushed until Nov. 16, explicitly so that resources could be diverted to deal with Model 3 problems.

Tesla reiterated the same unveiling date by press release Wednesday. However, it’s notable that such an integral and imminent product for Tesla didn’t even come up on the analyst call.

5. The Tesla Network

Tesla is working on a system that will allow owners to rent out their cars using what they’ve dubbed the Tesla Network. Once fully autonomous driving is achieved, the idea is that fleets of privately owned Teslas will function like a driverless Uber or Lyft, picking up and delivering passengers for a fee that will be shared between Tesla and the individual car owners.

In the shorter-term, the Tesla Network could function more like Zipcar. An owner could switch a setting online and open their car for someone to rent. The Model 3 uses key cards and Tesla’s smartphone app instead of a key, so in theory anyone could be granted access through an automated system.

The Tesla Network, which accounts for billions of dollars in long-term revenue in many analyst models, is supposed to be unveiled this year. With all of the bigger delays drawing the attention, it didn’t even get a mention on Wednesday.

[wdfifteen]

Originally Posted by berettafan

Electric cars ARE powered by coal.

Um, yeah.
I got it Vincent, I thought everyone did.

[legion]

How to raise quick cash? Pre-sell vaporware.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-10-25/can-tesla-make-up-for-autopilot-s-lost-year

A year ago, Tesla Inc. set up a hastily organized conference call between Elon Musk and reporters. Tesla had something big to announce—big enough for the chief executive to open the floor to questions. That doesn’t happen very often.

What followed wasn’t so much the unveiling of a new product as a plan for a product. Tesla’s driver-assistance platform, Autopilot, was about to begin a transformation to fully autonomous driving. Every Tesla would come with eight cameras, radar, 12 ultrasonic sensors, and a Nvidia Corp. supercomputer. Once testing and regulatory approval were complete, Musk said, the car would be able to drive entirely by itself.

“The foundation is laid,” Musk proclaimed. Tesla was so confident, in fact, that it started selling its “Full Self Driving” feature for an additional $8,000 on any new Model X or Model S. Tesla’s timeline was, as is so often the case, years ahead of what most believed possible. Barclays Plc analyst Brian Johnson called it an “overly hyped product update,” and Tesla stock dropped 2.2 percent the next day. Still, to start charging for the feature surely implied Tesla was very far along—right?

Maybe not. What followed were months of setbacks, delays, and in-house turmoil. A year later, there’s still no sign of Full Self Driving, and even the less ambitious “Enhanced Autopilot” hasn’t quite reached parity with an earlier, discontinued version. The head of Tesla’s Autopilot division left in January, and six months later his successor did, too. Meanwhile, Tesla owners who paid thousands of dollars for the options filed a class action lawsuit, alleging they were tricked into buying a feature that doesn’t exist and—in some cases—an unsafe car. Tesla has yet to formally respond to those disgruntled drivers who want refunds and punitive damages, and the case is currently in mediation.

When Musk, 46, was asked in January at what point Full Self Driving features would noticeably depart from Enhanced Autopilot features, he replied, via Twitter, “3 months maybe, 6 months definitely.” Nine months later, it has yet to happen. A Tesla spokesperson said last week that “while it’s taken longer than we originally expected to roll out all Enhanced Autopilot features, the feature already provides significant assistance to drivers,” and added that the company is making “rapid progress” on new updates.

But no matter when Full Self Driving becomes a reality or how the litigation ends, the legacy of over-promising and under-delivering has already besmirched the company’s success as an electric car maker and assisted-driving innovator.

Meanwhile, as Tesla tries to fulfill its promises, rivals haven’t been sitting still. General Motors Co., Volkswagen AG, Volvo AB, Daimler AG and a Renault–Nissan–Mitsubishi alliance are all promising 2018 vehicles with the features that once set Tesla apart. “Tesla had an early start,” said Salim Morsy, an analyst at Bloomberg New Energy Finance, “but there’s a huge amount” of money being pumped into autonomous electric vehicles now. “The releases we’re expecting from the Volkswagen Group or Volvo or Daimler in the next two years will have a big impact on Tesla,” he said.

Musk, well known for setting wildly aggressive deadlines and then missing them, averages being more than four months late on his predictions when it comes to Tesla. This “Musk Doctrine” of pushing the industry forward, while never setting a deadline he’s likely to meet, has worked in the past. Now, however, Tesla’s habit of falling far behind on promises is colliding with its first mass-market vehicle.

The Model 3, widely seen as central to the company’s survival, is already slipping from its schedule. Tesla took half-a-million reservations but has produced just 260 vehicles in its first quarter of production—far short of Musk’s projection of more than 1,500. Though it’s early days in the ramp-up of the Model 3, this is an especially dangerous time for Tesla to be testing the boundaries of consumer trust. Autopilot’s failure to launch as advertised hasn’t helped.

At a private event for Tesla owners in Amsterdam last week, this frustration felt by devotees broke into the open. “We’d just like to know: When is our Autopilot 2 going to be up to par?” called a voice from the balcony to Jon McNeill, Tesla’s president of sales and service, referring to Enhanced Autopilot. “Because that’s really what we need.”

“We’ve been behind, so I don’t want to make pure promises,” McNeill answered. “Safe to say, you will—I think—be pleased where we are over the coming weeks and months.”

How did Tesla end up here? It started with a bad breakup.

A year ago, Tesla was caught up in an ugly public spat with Mobileye NV, its partner on the original Autopilot. Musk had accused the supplier of trying to block Tesla’s efforts to develop its own capabilities for autonomous driving. Mobileye swiftly cut ties with Tesla and said it told Musk about “safety concerns regarding the use of Autopilot hands free.”

There was a very real question whether Tesla’s Autopilot could move forward without Mobileye. Those concerns were put to rest when Musk promised to bring out Full Self Driving mode. Tesla promptly replaced Mobileye’s tech with his own Enhanced Autopilot option, based on new technology the company dubbed Tesla Vision. It cost $5,000, twice as much as the previous version, but promised a higher level of autonomy for highway driving.

While Tesla warned there would be a “calibration period,” it told customers the feature would likely deploy via an over-the-air update to onboard Tesla computers in December 2016, two months after the big announcement. After that, owners were told to anticipate frequent updates until the car could handle virtually all highway driving autonomously, including lane changes.

The December deadline came and went. Key safety features that relied on the new hardware were delayed for months, including crucial components such as Automatic Emergency Braking, a life-saving technology that comes standard in all Teslas and helped establish them as the safest brand on the road. Auto braking wasn’t fully deployed until June.

Worse than the missing features, in many eyes, was that the new Autopilot experience itself was flawed, marked by cars ping-ponging within lanes and sudden, dangerous swerves. While some aspects of Autopilot had improved by the time Bloomberg test-drove a Tesla in July, the overall experience still wasn’t as good as the original with Mobileye. Improvements have since brought it closer, but not all the way. It’s still missing some features from the original version, including automatic windshield wipers and the ability to read speed limit signs.

“We had a bit of a dip, obviously, because of the unexpectedly rapid transition away from Mobileye,” Musk told a meeting of shareholders in June. “We had to basically recreate all the Mobileye functionality in about six months, which we did.”

When Tesla began offering Enhanced Autopilot last Fall, it also began taking orders for something more. For an additional $3,000, you could get the promise of Full Self Driving. The company released a video, which starts with a dramatic caption: “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

The meaning was clear: Full Self Driving is coming. A subsequent report from California regulators, however, showed Tesla had only just begun testing full autonomy in the state around the time the video was made, with drivers often taking control of the car. (It’s unclear whether the feature has been tested in other states with less stringent reporting requirements.)

“I felt the whole Full Self Driving video they posted was a big deception,” said Tom Milone, one of the class-action plaintiffs, in an interview. Like the other plaintiffs, he paid more than $100,000 for a Model S 90D in December and said that, based on the lack of progress with Enhanced Autopilot, he has no confidence Full Self Driving will ever be safely deployed.

“They are still selling the option to users that have no idea if and when it might ever become a reality,” Milone said. “It changed the way I feel about the company.”

When purchasing Full Self Driving, customers must check a box acknowledging that “self driving functionality is dependent upon extensive software validation and regulatory approval.” It’s a fair warning that this option is not yet available. But in the software industry, “validation” means testing a product that, from an engineering perspective, is almost ready or exists in a strong prototype form. Tesla’s implication in using this term is that at least some of these features should be on the verge of rolling out.

But so far there’s little indication that a true validation period—which in the case of Full Self Driving could require years and hundreds of test vehicles—has truly begun.

All of this figures prominently in the lawsuit. Hagens Berman, one of the preeminent class action firms in the U.S., is leading the charge for Tesla owners. Partner Steve Berman represented a dozen states in the $206 billion settlement with Big Tobacco, as well as victims of fraud by Enron Corp. and Bernard Madoff. The 72-page amended complaint filed in San Jose federal court alleges fraud in the sale of Autopilot features, with lead plaintiffs from California, Colorado, New Jersey, and Florida describing similar experiences of expectation, expenditure—and disappointment.

[legion]

Continued...

“Many owners report the Autopilot is essentially unusable and demonstrably dangerous,” the complaint states, referring to the versions rolled out at the beginning of 2017. The plaintiffs contend that rather than acknowledge problems, Tesla regularly posted optimistic notices of coming updates. The lawsuit refers to the self-driving technology as “vaporware,” tech jargon for software that doesn’t exist.

Dean Sheikh, one of the lead plaintiffs, was first introduced to Tesla when his wife was searching for a replacement for her 2006 BMW X3. In early 2017, an over-the-air update was sent to Sheikh’s brand new Tesla, allowing him to engage the Enhanced Autopilot. “The system operated in an unpredictable manner, sometimes veering out of lanes, lurching, slamming on the brakes for no reason, and failing to slow or stop when approaching other vehicles and obstacles,” Sheikh alleged. A second update didn’t significantly improve matters.

Tesla puts “safety at the core of everything we do and every decision we make,” the company wrote in a statement. By all accounts, the software is now much improved over when the lawsuit was first filed in April.

Almost a year earlier, in May 2016, a Tesla Model S crash in Florida killed the driver. The accident was blamed, in part, on the old Autopilot’s failure to see a semi trailer crossing its path. Tesla responded over the next few months with updates requiring more driver awareness and a radar upgrade that would have prevented the crash. This year, Edmunds again ranked Tesla vehicles by far the safest based on available active safety features.

During last year’s unveiling of Autopilot, Musk announced a planned demonstration drive from California to New York, with no driver interaction—not even to charge the battery. That’s supposed to take place before the end of this year. So far, Musk is sticking with that forecast, mostly. “It is certainly possible that I will have egg on my face,” he said on an earnings call in August. “If it’s not at the end of the year, it will be very close.”

Meanwhile, the competition is closer than it appears in his rearview mirror. GM is rolling out its impressive Super Cruise hands-free highway driving with the 2018 Cadillac CT6, as well as deploying a fleet of fully autonomous test vehicles in multiple states. The company recently became the first car maker authorized to test an autonomous fleet in New York.

GM will be ready to deploy driver-free cars “within quarters, not years,” analyst Rod Lache told clients in a note Sept. 24, putting it “potentially years ahead of competitors.” In the last six weeks, GM’s stock jumped 25 percent, adding almost $15 billion in market value.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based Tesla may still have the best driver-assistance program, outperforming such rivals as GM and Nissan in most driving conditions, but any lead it has in the quest for autonomy is probably measured by months rather than years. Before Tesla can move forward—let alone fully reclaim its self-driving crown—it must first catch up with its own promises.

[Por_sha911]

Originally Posted by legion

I'm no Musk fan. He's built an empire out of using government subsidies to produce relatively little while at the same time getting very wealthy. I'd have more respect for him if he hadn't involuntarily risked my money.

I predict that there will some day be a phrase "Musk Scam" that will be understood as much as the "Ponzi Scam".

[Jeff Higgins]

The man simply sold an immature product promoted by a corrupt media/government coalition to an uninformed public with their own money, skimming his salary off the top.

[Por_sha911]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

The man simply sold an immature product promoted by a corrupt media/government coalition to an uninformed public with their own money, skimming his salary off the top.

and that's the good points!

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

The man simply sold an immature product promoted by a corrupt media/government coalition to an uninformed public with their own money, skimming his salary off the top.

Skim is right, Elon Musk's 2015 salary was $37,584.

Marillyn Hewson's 2015 salary was $1,600,000 with total compensation of $20,200,000.

That's a dredge.

[Macroni]

Tesla store in Devon PA is overflowing w/ unsold inventory........ Inability to build 3 is another misdirection..... issue is the public has little electric appetite....

[Jeff Higgins]

Originally Posted by Shaun @ Tru6

Skim is right, Elon Musk's 2015 salary was $37,584.

You are not that stupid.

[ian c2]

Take as many grants as you can whilst playing to the press and givong sound bites that do nothing but turn stock prices upwards .

Nobody can get away with that , can they ???????

Yip .

[Shaun @ Tru6]

Originally Posted by Jeff Higgins

You are not that stupid.

haha, no, and like Marrilyn I am sure he has a total compensation package as well. He got $5M in 2012 that is supposed to last 10 years.

But what I think is funny is your post,

"The man simply sold an immature product promoted by a corrupt media/government coalition to an uninformed public with their own money, skimming his salary off the top."

describes the F35 perfectly, just a gender change.

Oh the outrage over $4B vs $400B.

[1990C4S]

Originally Posted by Deschodt

But Tesla has been branching out into battery manufacturing and they could very likely survive doing that instead...

There is nothing secret here. He puts batteries into a sealed case. Tesla doesn't make the batteries...