Quick Overview
- AI: Tesla goes incredibly deep into detail on their new, formidable FSD Computer
- TRANSPORT: Tesla unveils details about Tesla Network and their robotaxis
- TRANSPORT: EV/fossil fuel car price cross over point decreases again to 2022
We believe that everyone’s future can be richer, happier and more efficient, but you can’t embrace that future unless you take the first most crucial step, being informed of it.
Welcome to The Tipping Point, news from the most critical future industries curated for you every week so you can stay informed and prepared. No need to waste hours everyday researching, stay on top of it all with one post and then get back to doing what you do best.
The Tipping point is named after the point at which a new technology goes from being disappointing, expensive and buggy to exciting, exponential, cheap and mainstream. This point of change often sneaks up on and surprises everyone including industry experts!
No matter if you’re personally employed in the industry or just a lurker, The Tipping Point is vital to staying up to date and being ready to transition smoothly rather than getting caught off guard.
This Weeks News!
AI: Tesla goes incredibly deep into detail on their new, formidable FSD Computer
TRANSPORT: Tesla unveils details about Tesla Network and their robotaxis
Tesla held their Autonomy Day this week releasing a huge amount of detail on their FSD Computer or “v3” that’s being installed in all Tesla’s right now. Using just 75 watts it is capable of 144 TOPS and can process around 2300 frames per second. That’s the equivalent of processing all 8 cameras on their cars at over 287 Hz, that is of course if the cameras recorded footage that quickly.
Costing 20% less than their existing, slower nVidia solution the FSD Computer is 21x more powerful and took just 3 years to develop from hiring their first chip designer to having it in production cars. They’re also about 2 years away from releasing the next version which is apparently capable of processing around 7,000 frames per second! Needless to say having an absolutely custom built piece of hardware not just for Neural Nets but Tesla’s own software makes it basically impossible to beat. They also released an updated, brief self driving demonstration video too.
There were also a number of other interesting details revealed during the event such as:
- Current car drive trains last 1.4 million km’s with the battery lasting 500,000-800,000 km’s
- By next year they plan to have both drive train and batteries lasting 1.4 million km’s.
- They should have a million+ cars on the road by mid 2020, all of which can be robotaxis
- They will be able to autonomously park and Supercharge themselves
- They will take a 25-30% cut if you add your car to their Tesla Network
- They estimate each car will be able to generate a gross profit of around $30,000 USD/year
- They expect to be “feature complete” by the end of this year and L5 by the end of 2020
- They see Tesla being responsible for accidents if you add your car to the Tesla Network
Most notably though is an interesting shift in their apparent strategy. When Tesla first started they seemed to be aiming to “accelerate the transition to all electric driving” by making and selling the best cars in the world (that just happened to be electric). Now however it seems they are wanting to achieve that same goal – getting everyone using EV’s – by having everyone drive in an electric robotaxi. As a result all their money and effort seems to be heavily shifting towards this overall strategy of maximising the number of Tesla’s on the road with their preference being for them to own the car and thus, retain 100% of the profits.
Last year they committed almost all batteries towards vehicle production (starving their home battery storage division in the process) in part to ensure there are as many Tesla cars on the road thus enabling more potential robotaxis. Elon flat out said their “entire expense structure is being spent on Autopilot”. It seems that selling cars to individual owners is now a mere byproduct of producing as many Tesla robotaxis as they can. This makes a lot of sense too as they can maximise profits to Tesla – due to each robotaxi being highly profitable – whilst at the same time rapidly scale up the amount of miles driven in an EV rather than fossil cars.
People need to adjust their view of Tesla as they’re not really a “car company” anymore. They’re a company that is trying to produce as many robotaxis as they can… and that you can also buy a car off too. You can see the full Autonomy Day stream here – warning, it’s 3.5 hours long!
TRANSPORT: EV/fossil fuel car price cross over point decreases again to 2022
It seems that every year forecasters “update” their predictions on where EV’s and battery costs are going and every year they continue to underestimate them. Bloomberg is no exception with their analysis of the EV/fossil fuel car price crossover point.
Every year, that crossover point gets closer. In 2017, a BloombergNEF analysis forecast that the crossover point was in 2026, nine years out. In 2018, the crossover point was in 2024.The crossover point, per the latest analysis, is now 2022.
BNEF
If this trend of underestimating and then adjusting continues, the price crossover point should hit next year! You’d think after a while analysts would factor in exponential technology development but who knows, perhaps it’s a bit harder than it seems.
And that’s it for this week! Let us know in the comments what you think!
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