11 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 34.7 ms ] thread
- He is not putting any time limit to when level 5 is achieved, but says Tesla is going to be first because they have more data.

- He does not think that Tesla is going to do it in immediate future as they claim. Willing to bet real money against that.

- Level 5 autonomous cars don't have first mover advantage.

This is interesting because it feels like really only Elon Musk expressing confidence they were on the rails. Hotz saying this is interesting.

Personally, Tesla seems a loooong way from reaching it. The current software makes a lot of bad decisions, even on the Interstate which should be a relatively "easy" environment.

But at least I can play chess and astroids while I'm charging. :-)

For Tesla to achieve that they would need to be still around in a year. Right now the numbers do not look very good but of course that can change again.
That's being said since Tesla was founded.
They were actually in a great position until they bailed out Elon’s other company Solar City. Its one of the most blatantly unethical deals I’ve ever seen and the company has been in a perilous position since then.
The final chapter has yet to be written for that deal.
Their losses of about $1bn/yr are fairly small compared to their market cap of about $43bn at the moment implying they could finance things for quite a while. Though as you say things can change.
Look at cash flow and you'll see a story different from the casual media reports.

Over $600mm in positive operating cash flow net of cap-ex in the last quarter. Over $1.3bn in positive operating cash flow net of cap-ex over the last four quarters.

Currently they have $4.9 billion in cash and another 1.1 billion in short term receivables. And accounts payable balance has actually been paid down over the last four quarters.

I don't own any but a lot of the financial journalism on tsla seems a little lazy.

seeing that his entire business is based on what is essentially a dashcam I understand why he is out saying this.