Elon's Tesla Earnings Call Comments | Tesla Motors Club Podcast #66

Hey there.

Welcome to another TeslaMotors Club podcast.

My name is Lewis.

I'm Doug,And I'm like,In today's episode, we'llcover a number of topics such asthe cyber taxi reveal was delayed.

Elon gives us some insightinto XAI versus Tesla AI.

And FSD 12.

5 starts going wide to normalpeople, but not me, unfortunately.

All that and more inepisode 66 starts now.

Gentlemen, we're back.

we'reback.

while.

Oh man.

Normal people are getting it.

No longer just the specials.

I am so unspecial, I don't haveit yet, even though there areother non specials that do.

So, you know.

Yeah.

So it's been a little while.

Been aI've been, outta townGlobetrotter.

Traveling the globe.

Yeah.

I had a, friend's wedding togo to in Sweden, , and I wentthere for about a week and then.

Denmark for about a week, ThenI went to the Netherlands andvisited, @dpeilow , he used to bea, one of our, moderators on TMC.

He's, , from the UK.

And he works for the,European Space Agency.

interesting guy.

So I was in the Netherlandsfor about a week.

And then, stopped inIceland for three days.

And, now I'm back.

But I'm so discombobulated.

It wasn't even just The differenttime zones is also, , up north andit's summertime close to the solstice.

The days are so long, the sun doesn'tset till like 11 PM and then it'sstill light out pretty much all night.

And so it's a very,Discombobulating.

time I was that north,I was in Denmark in winter.

And so it was just darkand bleak everywhere.

It's just like, there was no light.

man, it was so cold.

So at Least you went at a better timeof year where it wasn't miserably cold.

Oh yeah, it occasionally rained,but the weather was actually quite nice.

, nowadays you hear about peopledoing , cool cations or whatever.

Basically, going to a placelike Scandinavia during thesummertime when, in Maryland, itwas like 100 something degrees.

And of course, inCalifornia, it was reallyit's been hot lately.

Yes.

Yeah.

But it was nice, 60s,70s, pretty nice weather.

I was there.

In Iceland, it was actually . wet

and cold, like 50 degreesfelt pretty cold whenyou're getting rained on,would happily take that right now.

the neat thing I noticed just,from traveling is a lot of, Tesla's,a lot of EVs, the VW EVs and someother Chinese things I didn't quiterecognize, but, lot of Teslas and, , alot of Teslas as working vehicles,, Tesla taxis , , And even police cars.

so that was neat to see.

Before the show, youbrought up street chargingyeah, yeah.

that's pretty interestingbecause from my HOA.

I get nasty grams.

If I'm charging in the street,they take real offense at it.

So,in the Netherlands, I stayed forthe most part in a smaller town, likemaybe a half hour train ride to Amsterdam.

sort of , classic, medieval town.

Where you have these, buildingsthat are 400 years old.

And, that country, and I noticedthis in most of the Scandinavia,but, , particularly in the Netherlands,it's bikes are the main thing.

Bikes are howpeople get around.

love bikes.

sometimes the bike lanes areas big or bigger than the car lanes.

Bikes get more preference toeven, I think pedestrians,They do?

you have to yield to them.

, but yeah, residentially youhave, , curbside charging and, , aswe talked before that the model inEurope for the type 2 connector isthat, , you provide your own cable.

, so there are just these pedestalsand you plug in and, I think rightnow where I was, they were free.

They might cost more later, but thisis in front of your house, like on yourstreet, there'll be 1 or 2 of those.

I'd like that.

There can be the issue though, myfriend was complaining, like, Oh, thisguy who has a plug in hybrid, he plugs hiscar in and then just leaves it there, youknow, that's like the worst thing, , butthere are some more around the block.

, , part of the reason they,did that model is because.

They had a mixture of competing, , plugstandards, , cause they had the carsthat were coming from Japan and the US had what we call type one connector.

It's, the Yasaki connector.

That's company thatwas that form factor.

Here, we call it the J 1772 plug, eventhough that's just the name of the IEEEstandard.

Good old J plug.

right.

So , the main thing about thatis that's a single phase plug.

but in Europe, , they're usingthree phase and three phase makesa lot more sense for their chargingbecause they can charge, 11 kilowattsat, 16 amps, but it's three phase.

240 volts, three phase.

and there was also a type three connectorfor a while that was, promoted by theFrench, they always, try to be different.

that didn't add any functionality, exceptthat it had shutters, , which is somethingthat the safety conscious people, getup in arms about, like, oh, you shouldn'tbe able to touch the pins, , so there'llbe like the mechanical shutters, whatthey call them getting in the way,but there's no point in that becausethere's already this pilot signal thing.

There are already, , safety featuresbuilt in to the J 1772 standard.

,so anyway, the pedestal would justAnd then if people have their own cable,then on one side is type two and on theother side, it could be type one or twoor three, so that was part of the reasonthat people carry their own cable.

, and then, the other thing isthat it prevents, vandalism.

It's agood idea.

Yeah.

It's a really good idea.

Actually, I'm thinking that'dbe a great idea around some ofthe urban environments here.

Yeah.

So dude, this place I stayedat the Netherlands, , it wasthis town called Leiden, whichhas a lot of, physics history.

Einstein spent a lot of time there.

I saw the house that Lorentz lived inThat's cool.

and there's a,bar across the street from there.

And he and Einstein would hang outthere and discuss physics or whatever.

Bohr and, , Einstein thatwould hang out there.

So anyways, it was a cool place andit felt like kind of a paradise.

I mean, , canals everywhere andpeople just hanging out laying bythe canals bikes and EVs and greengrass and and the temperature wasn'ttoo hot, I had a nice time there.

And then, I went to Iceland before Ileft one of the neat things aboutIceland, it's right on the splitbetween two tectonic plates, right?

It's , the North American plate and theEurasian plate that are separating there.

, there are other places like inCalifornia where the plates are, goinginto and underneath each other.

Here it's, separating.

So you get, magma coming out and, thewhole country is increasing at therate of about an inch a year, , butthey have all this geothermal energy.

So EVs are popular there becauseelectricity dirt cheap , and theyhave the nice hot springs what wasinteresting to me, I stayed atthis Airbnb there just on my own.

And while it was nice, washing my hands.

I'm like, what's that smell?

and it smelled like, kind of egg smell.

Yeah.

And sometimes you get that, , if you havean electric, , water heater, there's amagnesium, , sacrificial anode in there.

And when that starts to go bad, , yourwater can start to smell like eggs, soI was wondering if that was the issue,but then I realized, especially after.

Doing a nice big tour around, some geysers and stuff, youwould just smell that same smell like,oh, yeah, of course, this is the hotsprings , and I found out, part of , theirpower system, at least in Reykjavik,they distribute hot water as a utility,you think about you get your water, butthen you heat it and then you use it.

No, they're just givingyou hot water year round.

You have two services.

So you have the cold water,which is amazingly great.

Glacier melt, so it's very clean.

No chlorine in it.

Just tastes great.

You get it straight from the tap andit's super cold from the tap, andthen you have this hot hot water.

That, smells a bit like eggs, has asulfur smell and it's really soft too.

you're trying to rinsewith that hot water.

It just feels like your hands areStill soapysomething there, yeah.

Yeah, but that's what you showerin and it's pretty nice actuallybecause basically you shower in thisnice spa water, but yeah, when you'rewashing your hands, if you want tofeel like they're not soapy end uphaving to rinse with the cold waterand you're freezing your hands off, butotherwise it's pretty, it's pretty nice.

, so anyway,Interesting.

some years ago, I think theytry to do some hydrogen economytype stuff because they havesurplus, , electricity and guess what?

It didn't work.

And if it didn't work there, why dowe think it's going to work anywhere?

You know, where, we haveto , spend all this money on, um,or something.

Yeah, it's not like solar and, wind.

, not like making those things is free, youknow, it costs money to make that stuff.

, and if hydrogen, it's a third efficient,, roughly as just using batteries directly.

Then, when you have the spacefor three times as many,solar panels or wind turbines,but now here you have an environmentwhere there is surplus energy, , and stilltheir hydrogen economy didn't work there.

So why are you still pushing it?

Anyway, that's my conspiracytheory about the hydrogen stuff.

Yeah, For sure.

And we've covered that inprevious episodes so we shouldnot dig into that again.

No.

Okay.

Well, welcome back.

, sounds exciting.

I definitely miss , my time there.

I'm glad you made it through all theairport drama and everything elsewith all the stuff being shut downYeah, I missed thatincompetence.

airport drama.

SoExcellent.

So , the main thing we wantto cover is recently theyhad the, Tesla earnings callfor Q2for the investors and thebig shots get to ask questionsand get some feedback onActually, at leastthe way Tesla does it.

I mean they do have the big shots,but They do have a means forretail investors to ask questions.

, I forget the name of the service, but, people can basically put a questionthere and it gets voted up or down.

And so Tesla is better about itbeing a bit more democratic, though.

You could argue that, it'smostly Tesla fans that do that.

, and so Elon is more interested intheir questions, , but often theirquestions are much more educated than,the analyst questions, though, feellike the analysts have gotten better.

Certainly at the beginningwhen, people weren'tevenThey didn't understandEVs at all or the industry.

Yeah,Yeah, I didn't evenunderstand any of these peopleright.

questions, butthese days I think they're pretty good.

Now the analysts are driving Teslas.

Quite possibly.

So I heard a few, good questionson the call and definitely feltlike gain some insights out of it.

I guess one of the biggest oneswas, what do we call it now?

The cyber taxi, the robo taxi, the cybercab, the I've heard so manynames.

during the call.

I think I heard Elon say Cybertaxi, which is the first time Iheard him say that so does thisthing actually have a name earlier?

He said cyber cab out of nowhereCyberCab, and healso called it RoboTaxi.

Robotaxi we've heard for years.

That was the original name.

Of course, the Robotaxi wassupposed to be my model three, right?

that was the original intent.

Why you can't buy back your lease.

whatever you call it, factthat the name changes is not reallyconcerning, but it's two minds of it.

It's like, okay, they don't reallyhave a name for the thing yet.

they don't have athingyet.

Mm hmm.

Well, , like you said,he said cyber taxi , recently.

And that was kind of ourfirst time hearing that term.

they also mentioned theypushed back the reveal.

Two months, right?

So it was from August to October.

, that almost makes it feel more real to me.

In the fact that , one, they'vechanged the name for some reason.

So they've come up with,here's a name for something.

And two, it's not like, Oh yeah, by theend of this year, sometime we'll have it.

It was like deliberately we'removing it by this much and it'sa reasonably short time period.

So I almost feel like maybethey're getting somewhere withthis.

the sense is that theyactually have something to show.

It's like, instead of a guy dancing aroundin a suit, which, you could do tomorrow,assuming you've already ordered the suit.

when he said August 8th it soundedout of nowhere and it was probablythe first time whatever engineersthat are going to be responsible forgetting this together heard it too,, August 8th is a, good date in Asia.

It's, eight is a very auspicious number.

Verylucky.

yeah, lucky extra lucky.

not for the engineersthat just heard it that day.

maybe not,but then, yeah, pushingit back two months, okay.

Two months isn't six months.

Two months is like, we have something weneed just a little bit more time.

this is Tesla time though.

So,it's a reveal.

It's not a release, right?

It's not.

Right.

But tends to be some kind of demo.

, so hopefully we seesomething reasonable, but,,Mike: Oh yeah.

I mean, , obviouslythey're not ready.

, it's not going tobe a real self drivingvehicle, , unless it's heavilygeo fenced or something.

to be fair, Elon said at,some point during this call, he'sbeen overly optimistic in the past,but he does feel like Full selfdriving will actually be working notnecessarily by the end of this year,but next year, it is a realistic thing.

he will be shocked if theydon't have it next year.

I'm sure he would have been shockedfour years ago too, that it didn't haveagain, take it for what you willjust, , he made a joke about him alwaysbeing optimistic and being wrong in thepast, but , he keeps talking about 12.

5 being this big, revolutionary improvementand, they feel like they're getting there.

Let me ask you a question, Lewis.

Do you think with the rebotaxi, cyber taxi, whateverthey want to call it, they'llroll out hardware 5?

So that's a good question.

, , it depends what it means, but yes, I dobelieve that hardware five will be inwhatever vehicle they produce that isI could seethat be thejumprare.

Right.

I, whatever vehicle they producethat is supposed to be selfdriving that isn't for you to buy.

I do believe that'll bea hardware five vehicle.

Yes.

.

Which, , hardware five is expected to benext year sometime, right?

which gives FSD a fighting chance.

We already had this discussiona bit in the previous episode, right?

Because of the coincidental timing of.

What he thought hardware five would comeout and, , when we might get a cybercab or whatever you're going to call it.

I think thatwas our conclusion already, right?

We'll see.

yeah, I'm still standingby , the level, , five is, six yearsout at least or something like that.

we won't actually have fully selfdriving anywhere kind of vehiclesTill the end of the decade.

the other thing that he reiterated.

in this call, , basically stakingthe whole company on this.

If, you don't believe Tesla'sgonna achieve autonomy, youshouldn't be an investor.

He did say that.

The reality of that argumentis that yes, if you really dohave it, then, potentially thewhole business model changes.

And you're a super Uber,an Uber, Uber, if you will.

and you're selling a service instead ofa car, basically , what we said before.

But the thing is rightnow you're a car company.

Okay.

And, , I would like them to concentratea little more on being a car company.

I mean, you can do both.

, you have enough cash to do both.

But, , maybe keep the eye onthe ball a little bit more.

Okay.

, and consider customers, , , whatcustomers actually want,obviously want lower prices.

, the Cybertruck is interesting as a Halovehicle, but that's not, , what themajority of people want.

It's not your bread and butter.

Right.

And even in the existing lineup, which isa great lineup, , having, , 3YSX, thoseare, good core, , Type vehicles hittingdifferent segments of the market, butthey need to be, regularly refreshed.

, and they do get, , minor changesand updates, , over time, but,there should be some kind ofrefresh every couple of years,Right.

it shouldn't just begetting rid of things that peoplewant, like there really shouldbe.

Stalks.

Yeah, people want their stalks.

And, um, know, I should mention, , thereis a thread on TMC, by Richard C.

, And he says, customer choiceis key to financial success.

, maybe, , but I, think there'ssomething to what he's saying.

, and again, from our, point of view.

And I'll say our, as a sort of collectivething in terms of the mission statementof TMC is really for , the customersand, , supporting existing customers.

And, , customers want, turn signals,,what theirstalks and , some might not want them.

Okay, fine, but make it , an option.

And if it costs money, chargemoney for it, we'll pay for it.

People want it.

,and if you go through his, thread, he'sUh, some people want those things too,, Ithink probably a Tesla the first car I'veever owned that had ultrasonic sensors.

I just used to, , typically drovevery old, fun cars that didn'thave those kind of safety features.

I was lucky to have, airbags that,you know, staged airbags or whatever.

But certainly user interfacethings like the turn signal, whichis, right in the right spot,doesn't make sense to get rid of it.

And I don't think you're savinganything by getting rid of it.

And you are, that he pointsout, potentially losing a goodnumber of sales by not having it.

I mean, Mike, you had somecomment on that, like your wifewon'tdrive the Highland.

Yeah, she absolutely refusedto even get in the Highland.

Won't have anything to do with it.

And one of the reasons we bought the Yright now is this the last gen that wethink will have stalks, the new, Juniperrefresh supposedly won't have them.

Yeah.

,Mike: She's just not into it and nor amI tend to think I could getused to it.

But,I'm used to it.

Honestly, I'm used to it, but theinterface is not as convenient,like with turn signals again,especially in roundabouts and stuff.

But it is what it is.

And so your solution is just notthe signal or what,in the roundabouts.

honestly, my solution is.

I pay a lot of attention whenI'm in a roundabout to mysteering wheel more so than Ishould.

that's not aRealistically,,I am like hyper vigilantkeep both hands on it, wherenormally I drive with onehand on the yoke, right?

It's not even awheel.

but in a roundabout, I do twohands, and I am vigilant on it, andto make sure, I put my thumb whereit needs to be before I even turnthe wheel, so that I'm ready togo, because otherwise, it's like,while it's mid turn, when I'mlike, you're not finding that.

thing in the turn,Elon's counterpoint tothat, Lewis, is you should beusing FSD anyway, so why are youeven driving?

okay, is, FSD gonna safely getout of a roundaboutI'll say is, where I live,roundabouts are usually in parkinglots, Which is often where I'm goingthrough them to which I cannot use FSD.

I Only liveabout 20 minutes from the Tesla factoryand headquarters in Texas, of course.

So hopefully that's the thingthat they address at some pointdon't get it.

why can't you use FSD in the parking lot?

because it's notmapped properly, right?

Like self driving in a non roaddoesn't reallywork.

Great.

it works for me in parking lots,but I think they are mapped somehow.

it knows where the lanes are.

So.

Gotcha.

Mine won't workinn the Vons parking lot.

It completely freaks out whenit pulls into the driveway.

Too many carts, cars, and people.

Yeah, I guess it dependswhether or not it's mapped.

That used to be an issue with , summon,, when we first got, , summon, not justthe moving forward and back, but Iguess smart summon, , , I feel likeit's been nerfed, but, , when we gotit early days, like it was much moreaggressive and it would do stuff.

, I think there was some hack wherepeople were like, oh, it's notworking well in my parking lot.

And then people would go to Googlemaps and like actually add lanesand stuff, user submitted map.

And then , somehow theTesla would know the map.

So it's using Google maps and itwould actually use the map thatpeople were putting on parking lots.

I feel like a lot of parking lots got,mapped because of people using summon,it used to be a lot, more aggressive,but it also did stupid things tolike, , I tried it and , Ran over atree branch and was dragging a treebranch by the time I could see the car.

I was like, oh,Sure,Oops,well,to be fair though, the otherargument is I don't use FSD muchif my wife's in the car because shedoesn't feel comfortable with it.

And so usually when I'm goingto those places, she's with me.

So I mostly use FSD when I'm by myselfin the car or if I'm with friends, withmy wife, I usually just drive because.

as she hears the noise, she getsanxious.

you say friends and thefirst thing that pops in myhead is supervised driving.

I'm going, I don't see those2 being in the same sentence.

Yeah.

To be fair, when I'm doing thatwith others in the car, it's usuallylike a, Hey, let's look at thiscool feature and we're focusedon the self driving.

little show and tell.

Yeah, exactly.

There was video that one of youguys shared, from reddit that had a carkind of freaking out, in the parking lot.

Well, it's taken by someonewho doesn't know, right?

By some bystander and it's some car in aparking lot and it's moving on its own,but it's just kind of sitting there.

It's, it looks like it wants to back upat one point, but it's just kind of stuck.

That was Seb thatdonated the video..

Yeah, okay.

Well, thanks, Seb.

basically it's just a video of a car.

It's not even worth seeing really, butpeople are just like, What is it doing?

There's nobody in there.

But it's just, sitting there.

I'm pretty sure that's somebodyusing summon the parking lot.

But also the car isn't working very well.

I use something when it first cameout and I thought it was great.

remember, , our previous hosts justtalk about picking up his dates with itYeah, yeah,it's a good party trick.

when it first cameout and it'd be raining andit would come pick me up.

Actually for a while,it didn't work at all.

Tesla said it was someknown firmware issue.

And I'm like, well, yeah, I'm notpaying for this feature and, , , theydidn't do anything to fix it for me.

But after some software updates,eventually it started working again.

But I only say working in quotesbecause It's just not great anymore.

Like I'll find it, we'll just quitor is too slow to get started.

And then, I'll be walkingtowards it and summoning it.

And by the time I get there, it'spretty much still in the spot andit's just pulled out a little bit.

And I was like, okay, what was the point?

But it used to be really useful,especially if it was raining or yougo to someplace like home Depot, forsome reason, the entrance is always.

like 100 yards from the exit, so youpark near the entrance and then youcome out and you got your stuff.

Yeah, walk all the way back.

Yeah.

and it might be raining.

So it'd be nice.

Oh, summon the car.

And I did that back in20 21 with no problem.

And it would just come to where I was,but now it's just way too hesitant.

, and it just ends up quittingbut now you're blockingtraffic in the parking lot.

I gave up on smart summonwhen I couldn't get it towork in our work parking lot.

the concrete that the structure is madeout of apparently blocks cellular signalOh,the car would either notrespond at all or it'd roll likea foot and then say, I'm done.

I can't go any further.

When I first startedusing it was really impressive.

, I'd have it parked in someother part of the parking lot.

It would come up.

I'll be sitting theretalking to somebody and just,,keep talking to him.

And then thecar pulls up.

coasting up.

cause it used to just cometo you now you have to put aspot on the map for it to go to.

Okay.

It's nice to have that optiontoo, but the come to me was,faster, , and, , yeah, it's just,nowadays I just don't find it usable.

So I don't know what happened.

, maybe, too many accidents or rollingover curbs or something , and theyjust nerfed it to make it safer,but it's basically not usable now.

So we're still waitingfor that promise, right?

The summon also what they calledreverse summon, which is basicallyyou getting out of the car andit go parking itself somewhere.

that wouldbenice.

wouldbe nice.

Yes.

I agree.

yeah.

So when, when is that happening?

Cause I paid for it.

Yeah, well, , good luck.

, I guess we move on to some of theother insights and things that , wegot out of the earnings call.

, there's some questions around, , XAI.

And if you remember, there wassome drama where it leaked out thatNvidia had a large shipment of,GPUs ready to go to Tesla, andthey diverted them to XAI instead,Who's they?

Elonbasically Tesla chose todivert the cards to, , XAI insteadof Tesla themselves using them.

, and so, an analyst askedabout, the priorities here,you know, what are you doing?

, and basically there's a fewinteresting things that came out of it.

One, , specifically on the GPUs,, Elon said, well, look at the time.

The data center was full.

We literally had nowhere at Teslato put in or use those cards so wecould have received them and theywould have sat there for, , weeks,months, whatever, not being used.

, so , it wasn't himprioritizing XAI over Tesla.

It was simply Tesla can't use them now.

So XAI can use them now.

So XAI shouldget them.

and he gave usthat explanation before.

Mmbut as you mentionedit, , I'm wondering, well, whopaid for them though?

Exactly, right?

and then the other argument is, okay, sowhen Tesla is ready for them, are theynow then going to be waiting for cards?

Because, He also spoke about howcompetitive and how difficult it isto get the high end, NVIDIA GPUs.

Everybodywantsthem.

Everybodywants them.

They can't make them fast enough.

, they can't ship them out fast enough,which is why when Tesla had some, theygave them the XAI because XAI needed themso bad and Tesla couldn't use them yet.

, so he did mention that they're buildingout the data center and , they'll beturning on more things in the Tesladata center or something like that.

So, okay, cool.

Do you have video cards ready to go?

He didn't get into thatnecessarily, but, it was someinteresting insights into it.

Let me just ask though, justthinking about it you're talkingabout it, so say Tesla already boughtthose cards and they can't use them.

, his argument was that it didn'tmake sense for Tesla to just stickthem in a warehouse somewhere.

, I'm not sure that's exactly true, right?

I mean, they'd have them now.

, I don't know how fast the nextversion or the better version comesout, but, , that's still an asset.

Tesla, as anindependent company, couldhave sold them to somebodyelse.

haveProbably made money at it.

no, definitely.

Right.

if they'rethathighdemand.

we don't know.

Maybe they did.

Maybe XAI bought themfromTesla.

We don't know that.

Okay.

that's probably not a competitive bid,They probably didn'tpay as much as they could haveYeah.

So just thinking about Tesla asan independent company and a boardand a CEO that have a fiduciaryresponsibility to Tesla, not tosuper brand Elon, but to Tesla.

, does that make sense , that XAIwould be able to just scoop them up?

Probably not.

it's, just feeling like, insome ways Tesla and I mean, I guessthat's what we're getting to, , aswe continue to talk about this topic,it's, it's competing a bit with XAI.

hmm.

I think , you shouldbe acting within Tesla's best interest,right.

how that's Tesla's best interest.

it's definitely,hard to know, right?

We don't know the details.

We just hear what gets leakedout to the media and then whatElon, how he responded toit.

The interesting thing is, Elon didstart talking about XAI researchersand, , the folks working there and Teslaand basically made a fairly compellingcase of, look, Tesla is my priority.

He tried to hire these folks for Tesla.

He tried to get those , , machinelearning researchers.

He tried to hire these, very,, prestigious, well known, veryskilled AI researchers for Tesla.

he tried to do that and he couldnot get them to work there.

, in fact, , the reason XAI existsper Elon is because the only wayhe could get this caliber of.

Individuals, or at least this groupof individuals, not to say therearen't better individuals thathe could have gotten separately.

, but he couldn't getthem to work for Tesla.

They wouldn't work for Tesla.

They would only do it working for astartup and primarily focused on AGI.

,and so again, how Elon talked about itI gleaned from it is, , , two primaryfactors: one, Tesla is a big company,? And their valuation is one of the largest

in the world, . , not to say that Tesla

can't suddenly be worth a lot more, right?

If Optimus comes out andthey get self driving, right?

Yeah, they could be way bigger.

However, if you have a company that'sworth, , 100, it's a lot easier to becomeworth a thousand times more than that.

Then it is if you're already worthmany billions of dollars or hundredsof billions of dollars to be wortha thousand times more than that.

So as an engineer, right?

I work in industry, notin auto, but in tech.

, when I work for startups.

A big part of that potential paypackage is I can make millionsof dollars if I work at a smallercompany that then does well andgrows versus working at a big companythat the rate of growth is limited.

, the flip side is big companiesgenerally can pay more.

It just depends.

? , so anyway, so he tried to hire

these individuals and one of thereasons they wouldn't do it isthey want to work in a startup.

They want to work in an environmentwhere they have a potential,much bigger upside, right?

Where they can turn around andget, , tens of millions of dollarsor more out of it if it does well.

The other thing, the way that he said itis they really want to work on AGI, right?

So that's AGI is what we wouldtraditionally think of as AI,like just a self aware, actualgeneralized AI, , concept.

So like a human and a computer,if you want to think of itthat way, to some degree.

, and so they want to work on thatproblem, and that is not the sameproblem as focusing on full selfdriving and autonomous drivingand what Tesla is focused on.

Now they're related, there'soverlaps, they need the sameGPUs, as we've made clear.

, and they need a lot of the same typesof researchers and brilliant minds andpeople that work on those problems, butthe problem itself, , the search space,or , the area of like, where you needto focus on for AGI is much bigger thanthe problem for FSD and self driving,not to say that's not a huge problem.

It obviously is.

there's overlap, butthere are differences.

And so to get those types of researchers,they don't want to work on self driving.

So anyway, it's a very interestinginsight at least from my perspectiveit sounds like Elon wanted to get thesetypes of individuals, either thesespecific individuals or, , researchersof their caliber or , skillset.

And he could not get them togo to Tesla and likely probablycould not get them to go to X.

, but he could get them ifhe started a new company.

Was focused on AGI and I feel likethat's maybe a thing that he didspecifically just to lock up thistalent because it is a problem thatElon cares about AGI in general, right?

It is a thing that he wants to influence.

So anyway, that was just a veryinteresting insight that I got outof listening to his answers to thesequestions, , on the call.

my sense was.

XAI was really just a response toopen AI, ? Open AI was getting a lot

of traction in the public , , andElon wanted to be there too.

, it's interesting though, , if webelieve, okay, my assumption, and thenif we believe what Elon was saying, that.

He basically wanted todo that within Tesla.

Mm hmm.

I mean, it's interesting to thinkabout like, if Tesla was doing a chat bot?

, would that make sense if Teslawas working on a chat bot?

, I suppose if you said, Oh,well, this is.

Yeah, I was gonna say it could be part ofwhat we're using for Optimus, or maybe,Tesla would have its own Siri type thing,where you could talk to Tesla , and, driveme to this place, whatever I would like,navigation to be a little bit smarter.

In terms of when I'm trying to findsomething, because often , I'll put in, goto Safeway and then the Safeway gives meis 20 miles away instead of prioritizingthe one that's right next to me,the other thing about it, though,and, talking about the NVIDIAGPU is also, I, we know thateverybody is in this space, right?

, all major companies, Apple, , Microsoft,of course, Facebook meta, , andthey're all having to buy NVIDIA's,GPUs, ? And so obviously they're all

gonna wanna make their own, ? Because

they don't want to be a slave to Nvidia.

, Nvidia obviously is doinggangbusters right now,?

, and of course Tesla is workingAnd, , as we heard in the.

4th quarter earnings call, for theprevious year for 2023, , the basicsense we got is that dojo wasn't workingas well as hoped and that, actually,we do need to get those NVIDIA cards.

and I wonder then, gee, , how far ahead isNVIDIA, ? Because they got all the money

right now because they're doing so well.

And so you would think, this istheir bread and butter now, makingthese GPUs for this application.

So you know that they're got to beputting tons of resources and makingthe better ones and continuing to bebetter and better and better, Now,Tesla's designed their own chips before.

But they're not NVIDIA, right?

They're not as focusedin this , as NVIDIA is.

So they're trying to make their ownthing, Dojo, and that makes sense.

And, The Tesla bulls are like, okay, well,, then Tesla could sell Dojo to, whateverMeta or they wouldn't, but, you know,unless they got the cage match out of theway or whatever.

But,um, , the idea that, Oh, then Tesla canbe a major competitor to NVIDIA, but Idon'tSure.

NVIDIA is probably so far ahead.

can you give me some insight there?

So to be fair, I agree withyou, I thought it was very interesting.

I learned a lot about, where they arefeeling they are with dojo right now.

But I'll preface and say, Teslais not alone in trying to do this.

So obviously Nvidia is the marketleader and they've been themarket leader for GPUs for manyyears, despite my AMD , family.

I used to work at, global foundries.

Used to make AMD stuff.

AMD bought ATI, you know, thebig two companies were ATIRight.

and NVIDIA.

NVIDIA has been the leaderforGPUs For, a longtime.

But obviously Microsoft hasgot to be trying to make their ownat this point.

.

Louis: But Google.

has their own, right.

It's called TPUs.

tensor,Apple has theirown, , built off of ARM.

So they basically have, Apple Silicon.

It's not exactly GPU, but thereis a lot of GPU stuff in there.

Intel has been working on ittoo, ? They're coming in from the

CPU side, but they're essentiallybuilding GPUs in their chips.

, so it's, not like, Oh, , it'sjust Tesla trying to reinventor come up with this new thing.

And there's a lot of othercompanies too, just, I'm justnaming a few of the big ones.

right.

what Tesla's trying to doisn't inherently wrong, but thechallenge is, like you said, NVIDIAhas the money and the expertiseat a scale that nobody else does.

, so It's really hard to compete with them.

Now , what I feel like a lot of thecompanies like, for example, whatGoogle originally did with their TPUsand what Tesla was trying to do withdojo, , is that they're looking atit from, well, yes, NVIDIA is doing,you know, general purpose GPUs.

And if I can specialize and focuson the thing that I really need,then I have a huge advantage.

The problem is What's happened in machinelearning and with AI, , developmentis that because of, , essentiallytensors, , are tensors mathematically.

And because of, how neural netswork and the modern approaches,how LLM, the architectures andGPTs and all that kind of work.

, with transformers, essentiallythat general purpose thing kindof works for everything anyway.

And NVIDIA has also done a good job.

I should specify in makingspecialized units on their GPUs.

So , there are general purpose,but they also do have specializedcores that are really good atcertain types of operations.

So the bottom line is, , yes,in theory it's good.

And I do think it's good thatthere are companies competingand putting money into it.

, but it's really freakinghard to beat NVIDIA.

it's going to be hard for a while.

Now, I don't think Nvidiawill stay at the top forever.

Every big company, when they getthat current lead and they get to acertain point, they get lazy, they getcomplacent, they're kings of the world.

And then another, somebody willcome out ofnowhereI would, say that the mainthing that happens is , thatinnovators dilemma again, right?

Some kind of change is going to happen.

but they're focused in onthe thing they're doing andthat's still making the money.

And then it's a risk for them tochange because , there might be anew model, instead of transformers,it might be something else.

Right,but for them to start doingthe other thing, maybe that starts toinvalidate what they're currently doing.

And so,They want toprotect what they have.

They don't want tocannibalize themselves.

Yeah, so my point isthat, , everybody's tryingto make their own thing.

And somehow Nvidia is just,they're kings of theyeah, they're the king of the world.

, and Tesla, Tesla.

They're notIntel, but they'reright.

of things.

So, the interesting thingout of the call in his comments wasthat, , Elon is very optimistic very.

, pro, , Tesla and what they'recapable of doing, obviously he'stheir CEO, he wants them to do well.

So he's generally going to spinthem in the most positive light youcan, whenever a situation comes up.

So it's very shocking to me forhim to basically come out and say,Yeah, NVIDIA is really impressive.

Their high end chips are really good.

And pointed out that, Tesla's chipsare not competing with NVIDIA's chips.

, not even close by the way in which heframed it and that they almost aren'teven sure that they'll be able to, butthat they still value Dojo and theystill are looking at putting moneyinto it and doubling down on it purelyout of the fact that you can't getenough Nvidia chips because they're socompetitive and everybody wants them.

So it's almost like, well, this isthese other chips that we can get moreeasily and use them because we can't getthe better ones, that everybody wants.

Huh.

an interesting take,at least, , that's how Iinterpreted , hisdoes that balance out cost wise,this is a, I guess a common issuecost of developing something in houseversus buying it from somebody else.

Buy it from somebody else.

You get their markup and, whateveroverheadd and their profit.

But, doing it yourself,there's certainly some risk.

Especially if you can't doit as well, and obviously they'renot manufacturing themselves.

It tendedto TSMC in Taiwan.

So that's actually the thingthat helps in this space is the factthat none of them are making their chipsare actually physically making them.

So, including NVIDIA, none ofthem are actually making thechips TSMC predominantly is thecompany that manufactures themand how that generally works.

Is companies like TSMC areimproving their technology nodes.

So all the work they do forTesla and all the work they dofor NVIDIA essentially helps everybodybecause they improve their processand how they're able to do things.

And then what they do is they generallysell their technology nodes to thesecustomers and go, look, I have thismuch capacity at two nanometer or thatI can do this type of gate or whatever.

Anyway, the improvement, the moneythat goes into NVIDIA and Tesla andeverybody else is helping everyone.

, you're right though.

They're still overhead.

They have their own chip designers.

They have their own, , hardware folksthat are, , coming up with concepts andworking on these problems and then alsolike building the data center and all theother, like, it's not just a chip, right?

It's all the other things involved andall the software that goes into it.

So there's definitely a cost for Tesla.

I think it's good that they're willingto put research dollars into it.

, and they're developing things and it'sgood that they're improving and they'redoubling down, but it's feels like it'sa bet that didn't really pay off in theway in which they were hoping just becauseof how far ahead NVIDIA is for everyone.

but , I don't think it's a badthing for Tesla that they have dojo.

And I think that, I'm happyto see that they're going tocontinue investing into it.

The, ethos of Tesla hasbeen vertical integration.

We own everything top to bottom.

So doing your own chip tiesinto that rather well.

even if they don't do it as wellright now, that doesn't say theycan't do it well in the future,but they can certainly move a wholelot faster.

If they have a change.

It's definitely apotentially a better, longerplay like a perfect parallel tothis whole conversation is Apple.

So, for example, Apple for yearsand years, they used power PC andthey used IBM to make their chipsand they had their own Apple chipsand then they switched to Intel.

And myself included,everyone was like, thank God.

Thank you for moving to Intel becauseIntel was so far ahead and they werejust so much better and suddenly Macswere great and things were workingwell and all this other kind of stuff.

And then a few years ago, forthose in the know, Apple switchedto what's called Apple Siliconagain, which is basically ARMchips.

series,at first I was just like,no, why you're so stupid, Apple.

Whywould you do this?

Except what we've learnedafter a few years is it wasabsolutely the right choice.

Apple Silicon.

I have, I literally have a Mac booknext to me that is an Intel andI have a Mac book that is AppleSilicon.

I have the right next, you know,is awesome.

and Apple Siliconis killing it right now.

Because the things that ARM allowedthem to do and the things that theyfocused on in the design is all aboutpower and efficiency and heat andall these other things.

Which are really useful.

So it, could pay off, , five yearsfrom now, 10 years from now, wheresuddenly it's like, Tesla is a genius.

And it's so good that they had dojoand they were doing all this becauseit suddenly makes things way easierand cheaper to do what they're doing.

, as it didin my opinion, with AppleSilicon, we don't know, honestly,one of those things we can'tknow until itin the apple case, , Intelhad stagnated, right?

Exactly.

Intel one of the few companies thatactually does their own manufacturingand not getting the benefit ofeverybody else's, like TSMC does.

So their.

Shorter nanometer, , processes , werejust stuck, And not getting anywhere.

, and then at the same time, apple had beenalready developing their own chips for theiPhone where, these are portable devices.

, , they have to be energy efficient andmaybe not so high power in terms ofcompute, even though that was continuingto increase, and then along with theiPad too, uh, So, they basically plentyof practice and I was like, okay, let'sscale this up into a proper processorwhere we can, have some thermals where,you can make it hotter and, , have aheat sink and whatnot, then you can startgetting performance as well as efficiency.

So, general sort of, you know, andI had this feeling when I wentto this, uh, , AI conference, Iguess a couple of years ago now,Intel, man, they, had a goodThey dropped the ball.

they had a good runthe ball.

Yep.

trying to go ARMnow, Microsoft is on theirway as well.

Windows 11 already compilesforARM.

Linux has done it too,Linux is on ARM.

Yep.

Mac is on ARM.

once your normal guythat buys his Windows machine,once that's on ARM, what's Intel doing?

maybe Intel needs to do their ownARM and start paying those royalties.

is an interesting thing.

, I could go on and on, but I won't.

and having, , worked insemiconductor, I do love the industry.

So, it is possible, but as Doug didpoint out, there is a differencehere where basically Apple movedoff of somebody that was stagnating.

And one of the advantages is thatTSMC as the world leader foundry withbleeding edge, they could make thingsthat, the previous vendor couldn't,, while TSMC is making Tesla's chips,they're also making NVIDIA's chips,so there isn't another pivot there thatyou're not getting another advantage byhaving your own chip from that perspectivenecessarily, but,not to get too off topic,but let me ask about AMD.

Are they, still using GlobalFoundriesor do they use TSMC as well?

They useThey use both,because the AMD model, another way thatthey were doing better than Intel isthat they have that chiplet model, right?

Which maybe can add some latency becauseyou have like little components, butman, can that increase your yield?

?

If you make your chip smaller, And then,you just package them together, yourlittle pieces together.

Uh, just seems like prettysmart way to do things.

for those that remember whateverit was 10 years ago ish, not quite whenAMD suddenly stock went through theroof and things were going well, so theycame out with these Zen architecture.

I actually still worked in the industry atthe time and was there when that happened.

, but yeah, so they basically cameout with an innovative architecturefor stuff that was super goodon the server side and,low power device side.

But yeah, we'll see where it goes.

So dojo is not down and out yet, butit was eye opening to see that Elonacknowledged, how critical, , Nvidia,, GPUs are in, , developing, , AI.

For both FSD and for AGI.

And so both XAI andTesla need those chips.

, and , it'll be interestingto see how that goes.

I will say I was a little surprisedbecause, , Tesla was talking about,Elon mentioned the data centerand all those types of problems.

I know they have deals with Oracle'scloud cause Larry Ellison was onthe board of Tesla at some pointand they have, , deals there.

And I know Oracle has donea lot for buying GPUs.

So I'm not sure which part of itis necessarily Tesla's dedicateddata center versus just theircloud provider that they're using.

, but, we'll see , the, , developmentis there, the advancement is coming,,and related to that and what we5, which has started tocome out for some of thelucky, some of you out therethat are luckier than me.

and we'll hopefully start leveraging.

think interesting about this 12.

5 rollout is that it's onlygone to people with hardware 4.

Yes, boo.

I have hardware 3 in my carThat makes us kind of sadbecause, hinted right atThe annual shareholder meeting.

That there's fork coming but Ithought it would be a while from nowAnd it's feeling like that fork is alittle earlier since these are onlyrolling out on those hardware 4 carsnow starts to make me feel like I'mgetting left in the technology dustbin.

and I saw some grumblingabout it on Twitter.

, , Chuck, Mr.

Left turn, , I saw him saying, well,, I'm buying a new Tesla and he boughta new, Model Y, because those arethe first cars that are getting it.

And he put it like he's specificallygetting it so that he can be testing 12.

5.

And what's interesting too is that,his left turn, like literally Teslasends people out to do that left turn,I guess, because It's somehow special.

it's an edge case.

And so here he is buyinganother, Tesla specifically because 12.

5 is only available on that vehicle.

And then I saw some other folks, , thatwere a long time Tesla fans, but thatare starting to feel a bit burnt at thispoint, this one guy, said, well, , I'vebought, several Teslas and I've bought FSDon it every time and, haven't gotten whatI paid for, and I have to buy another carThey keep offering totransfer my FSD, by the way.

I've gottenanother email, like not thatlong ago in the last few weeks.

that was like transfer your FSD.

If you buy anothercar.

SoI would hold out for itto actually work though, right?

I'm very happy with myplaid despite the FSD where it is.

but yes, I find it frustratingthat it's only hardware 4 cars.

I don't think they've worked it yet.

I don't think we're going tobe stuck we're hardware 3 isnot going to get the next gen.

, if they did that, it would bepretty bad in my opinion of likethe backlash that they would receivebecause Elon has repeatedly saidhardware three will get it.

It's just, it won'tnecessarily be as safe.

what could be the reasonsthen for rolling it out this way?

There's a few things.

One, , it could be due totechnical limitations, obviously.

. That is what you're fearing.

, it could be the camera signalsthey need, the , higher res, bettercolor space, that kind of stuff.

Or the camera positioning,Or the slightly better processing,better processor.

So there's more throughput, for hisdecision making that being said, I don'tthink that what they're doing so far islimited to that, you know,, personally, Idon't think they're hardware limited yet.

I don't think the processor limitationis really going to be the main factorthere Again, I could be wrong, butfrom what I've read, a lot of theimprovement in hardware 4 over hardware3 is in the redundancy that they have.

They kind of brought back having twodifferent systems running in parallel.

So they have redundancy of thedecision making and it allows themto do more of the shadow testing.

So for example, it's possible thatthis model is beefier and they wantto do more shadow running in parallelof models to see what would happen.

So that's why they want the betterhardware that has the redundantsystems and then once they'resatisfied with how it's working andthis version is what it looks like.

And they don't need to do asmuch parallel testing on it.

Then they'll it to the wider,, hardware three folks and others.

That's what I think the primary reason is.

Again, I have no insight intoknowing that, that is accurate.

. It might be just copium on my part

because I have a hardware three, plaid.

I'm expecting, 12.

5 to go out in the next, Iwant to say two months widely.

Certainly this year, , but we'll seeElon seems to indicate that, he's beenoptimistic in the past but he saidbasically he will be surprised, likegenuinely surprised that they don'thave full self driving next year.

Well, I'll besurprised if they do do it.

and meYeah,exactly.

I'll be surprised that they do have it.

I'll be happilysurprised.

but , he seems to indicatethat 12.

5 is a revolutionary improvementover the others, which he often does.

, if you read Twitter Reddit TMC andall the other places where people post.

It basically some peoplethink it's the second coming.

and some people think that it's,terrible and horrible and it sucks.

So, as always, whoknows?

it's such a mixed bag in terms ofthe reactions of people that have used it.

, it does tend to correlate to, , howmuch of a fanboy people are.

, but, I've seen people saying,Oh, that's really great.

But I've heard some people say , even 12.

was a step back from 12.

3, and, , with 12.

5, the kind of quirks that you readabout are like, When the car is sittingat a red light, it seems like it'simpatient, like it starts inching up,when the other traffic has stopped moving,it's like it's anticipating , , thelight to change, which is a very humanthing to do,avery human thing to do.

Right.

but also pretty annoying if you'renot the one doing it, so I'd want that,dialed out., Perhaps that's something

that, showed up in the training.

We'll see.

To be fair, I have 12 4.

I haven't used it enough to haveenough of a difference of opinionfor 12 3., nothing's jumped out at

me of like, oh, this is terribleor, , oh, it's way better or wayworse.

but yeah, so 12.

5, that was supposed to be the bigdeal one.

So according to Elon,I just put severalhundred miles on 12.

3 and highway miles s.

It's awesome.

It's really well behaved highway.

In town, it still sucks.

well, you're going to likelybe disappointed then because 12.

5, one of the big points that Elon saidis that it's finally combining a lot moreof the newer model to the highway andthat the highway driving was much olderand hasn't been updated in a long time.

And so your citydrivingexperience of the modelis now going to be applied to highway.

Awesome.

Maybeit'll do better on thehighway though.

Right?

It is a much simpler problem space.

There areway fewer edgecases.

the only complaint I haveon the highway is it still triesto change lanes unlessyou manually override it.

Hmm.

And tell it, justbe chill on the lane.

Just cruise here.

I'll let you know if Iwant you to change lanes,it still has troubles withhighly reflective, tanker trucks.

It doesn't like the lightcoming off the tankers.

but those are kind of edge cases.

Now the complaint my wife haswhen she's been in the car with meis it wants to shave like two orthree minutes off tripby taking an off ramp, going downand getting right back up on theI see that all the time, man.

it drives her nuts.

it offers that all thetime for me and I'm just like noYeah.

The funny thing is Ithink it's right though.

, like often I'm seeing that and I'mlike, what the heck is it doing?

And I'll override it.

But then, , , traffic has sloweddown and by getting off I'm passingall these cars that are all slowand then coming back in, it,it's a kind of a jerky thing to do becauseit's probablybeing a jerkIt's probably causing more, slowingdown as I'mtrying to merge backin.

would think it's more dangerousto try to merge back into trafficthat second time.

people being people.

think that's a Tesla thing though.

I think that's a Google thing.

whatever the, traffic aware mapping,which I assume is just Google.

Yeah.

Well, no, I'll tell youbecause I do that with my phonea lot Google Maps does not dothat Waze, I don't think does that Butit's possible.

That's a good question, though.

How much ofthat is Tesla versus Google?

Yeahwell, talking about FSD.

I'm still on 12.

3, which I found mostlyto be an improvement.

But, I've been away for almosta month, but then the month priorto that, I basically have hadno FSD to use for a key reason.

And I wonder how common this is,I've had an issue.

With my, , cabin camera being unreliable.

That's been driving me nuts.

, and I feel like it'ssomewhat software related.

So while back, and I'm sure Imentioned this on a previous showthat it basically was 50/ 50, everytime I got in my car, whether ornot the cabin camera was working andwhen the cabin camera doesn't work.

No FSD.

FSD doesn't work becauseit, wants to know that it can seeWe're watchingAnd if you.

taped over the camera, it won't let you.

have FSD.

Right.

nowThe camera thing is driving me nutsbecause I use fsd quite regularlyand when I don't have it I have toresort to autopilot and then end upmissing turns because I forget that thecar is not going toinitiate the turn for me.

So it gets pretty annoying.

Then I guess some software updatehappened and intermittency went awayand I was able to use it regularly.

I was like okay greateverything's working fineand then there's whatever softwareupdate I got and then it juststopped working altogether and everytime I got in it wasn't working.

It was so freaking annoyingand I'm out of warranty now.

I was like, well, I got to get thisfixed because, , I want to be ableto use FSD, Even though FSD isn'treally FSD, I like what it is, Ilike using it over not using it.

, so I call up, the service thing onmy phone and they want a hundredbucks to try to remotely diagnose it.

that was somewhat disappointing.

Like I was in communicationwith, , a service tech and theycouldn't just look at the logslike, Oh, there are so many logs.

Give me a time when it's not working.

I'm like, okay.

Well every time I get in the car,Okay, I give him a time and okay.

Thanks Then they want like800 this is starting to bereal money and I'm going away.

So I'm okay.

Well, look, let's justpostpone the service thing.

They were going to send out amobile service to deal with it.

I was like, , I'm going to be out of town.

Let's push it out.

So I'm leaving.

So packed my car up, I'm parked outside,but I put a cover on it when I'm away.

, and I turn off sentry mode becauseall the cameras are covered anywayand so then as I get ready to leave,I just want to check on cameras,just sort of see what they see.

And then all of a suddenthe cabin camera is working.

Like what the heck.

So the only difference that happenedwas I turned off sentry mode and thensentry mode had to be momentarilyturned back on so that I couldsee live camera view the phone.

And that's a feature that you get ifyou pay for, the conductivity package.

Dude, all I had to do wasturn off and on sentry mode.

bucks, manThe service guy, couldhave mentioned that, yeah.

They wanted their 800 bucks.

, so anyway, I just tried it.

At least I was able to confirm now thatI'm back in town that it is working.

So, , who knows with the next softwareupdate, hopefully it still works.

But, , I just wonder how common an issuethat is with the cabin camera I feel likein my era of car that the cabin camerais such a afterthought, a good partof the image is blocked by the mirror.

and in the newer cars, I'm sure yourcar, Mike, even though it's not a juniperthe cabin camera has done much better.

it's pretty nice.

it's nice better colorspace, obviously, but italso is more of a fisheye.

It can actually seethe steering wheel, forYes, it can.

so, , you wouldn't needthese, torque measurements.

You could just see if thehand is near the steering wheel.

And that should be good enough.

Well, unless Doug's driving with hisone finger on the bottom.

I suppose someonecould put a fake plastic handat the top.

you, soundlikeElon.

Now, Doug, all I needis cameras and I can doeverything.

Get rid of all othersensorsWell, let's justsay , when autopilot first cameout, there was no cabin camera.

That's right.

And, people like, , evenLex Friedman , would argue thatthere should have been some sortof driver monitoring back then.

Of course, Elon thought, why doyou need a monitor the driver?

Cause the driver won't bedriving because Elon wasliving in the future.

Right.

So at least they stuck it in there,but it , wasn't well executed.

Now it's, pretty good.

, it could be better obviously itshould be infrared and thereshould an IR emitter as well toilluminate you during the nighttime.

I, saw on TMC, someone wascomplaining about FSD not workingat night Because it couldn't see.

, there wasn't enough light in the cabin,so it assumed that the camera wasoccluded and FSD stopped working for him.

That's kind of similar to the, errorsI get because I'm driving in themiddle of nowhere , and , there's nolight, and so it thinks one of theoutside cameras , is occluded whenIt just is too dark.

To be fair, I would argue.

Certainly at the current eraof where the technology is.

You probably shouldn't be usingit when it's so dark out that thecamera is not detecting anything.

I'm justsaying from a safetystandpoint,Well,You have headlights I've concluded.

It must be one of the sideright.

can't seeanything and to be fair, you can havea better system that can tell thedifference between something blockingthe camera and nothing being there.

It can havea little illuminator or something, right?

Or you decide you don'tneed all cameras to do it,and often you don't, , youcould just say, okay, don't allowit to change lanes or something.

If you're that concerned,.

, you can see in front of you and autopilotAnd to your point, Doug, justchecked it to make sure with the cabincamera on the Y, or atleast my Y, you can seeall the way to the bottomof the steering wheel.

And with my error 2018, you can'tthere yougoAnyway,Improvements.

Improvements, it's just kindof sad , especially when you'reout of warranty, but even while I wasunder warranty, anything or related,just felt like they weren't that.

Eager to fix things for me.

SoAt least I'm glad tohear your FSD is working.

Hopefully we all get FSD 12.

5 soon.

but more than likely Mike willget it before any of us and thenhe'll tell us that it sucks.

and then we'll get it and we'llbe like, Hey, this isn't that bad.

Mike, what are you talking about?

Cool.

That's our show.

, thank you for hanging with us episode 66.

I know we had a longbreak before this one.

We will hopefully not have aslong of a break for the next one.

as always, thank you for yoursupport and your comments andyour likes and your dislikes andall the things you send our way.

check out teslamotorsclub.

com become a supportingmember, , post things, interactwith other users in the community.

That's it forus.

We'll see you next time.

Peace.

Pontiac Solstice

Tesla Cybercab

Tesla Cybertruck

Tesla Model Y

About this episode

Original notes