enslavedrobot
They also enable the insane launch traction needed for the non thrust 0-60.
It's the key to the cars performance.
The flavour you want is polymer, single ion conducting solid state with an ion transport activation energy below 10kJ/mol at room temperature and no phase transitions from -40C to 80C.
That is the holy grail of SS batteries.
The model Y introduced the "octovalve" which regulates flow in 13 different configurations to bring the highest quality heat to the cars heat pump.
In a house this might be something like extracting heat from grey water, or even cold tap water, ports for a solar heated loop, fresh air exchange etc.
System integration enabling efficient use of heat transfer is the opportunity
The Tesla heat pump also introduced high volume low cost manufacturing processes like semisolid aluminum casting and friction stir welding. That promise to lower costs.
Another thing that is potentially achievable with a low cost integrated approach is staged heat pumps for hot water tanks.
The possibilities are endless really, at the limit these ideas lead to integrated neighborhood scale heat networks tied to rooftop solar that can replicate district heating strategies.
Lots to be done.
The fact that FSD in Europe has been massively delayed is mostly the fault of regulators.
Sad but true.
It is already cheaper to build the distributed energy solution you describe but making that change would require a massive restructuring of electricity and natural gas utilities. Such a restructuring would revalue the debt that backs the existing infrastructure. This would be a great thing for the average person but not for the people currently in charge of regulating what types of systems are allowed.
Costs of distributed energy may drop so low in the next 5-10 years that it will no longer be possible to keep things from moving to a micro grid network.
Those regulations and that interference result from the fact that in a distributed world the current utility bond value drops to zero. Utilities will not build infrastructure that makes their existing infrastructure lose value.
I recently negotiated with a government owned utility on a large solar project. They were 100% against it until I demonstrated that the project would never feed back to the grid and wouldn't reduce the amount of power we currently buy from them. Zero interest in distributed solutions on their side. They are focused on giant transmission line projects and hydro.
It turns out that a big problem is that whenever we install local generation it costs utilities a ton of money. They bundle the cost of grid maintenance into their per kWh charges. These costs, which include debt service, maintenance, upgrades etc amount to 5-7 cents/kWh. Whenever you generate your own energy you cost the utility 5-7cents/kWh that they have to pay regardless of your usage.
This business model, which has bundled grid maintenance into usage costs means that utilities put up huge roadblocks for distributed generation. They say they love it, but they actually hate it. Utility executives have looked me in the eye and said as much.
It gets worse though, because energy infrastructure is backed by trillions in utility bonds. These "low risk" debt instruments are owned by national and private pension funds of mind boggling size. In order to bring about a distributed energy future the grid (and low pressure nat gas infrastructure) must be reorganized in a manner that is likely to make those bonds worthless. These background factors are definitely in play when you see these bait and switch enthusiastic green energy programs that turn out to be a regulatory quagmire when you dig into them. Public utilities and pension funds hate green energy, they are a major factor in west's pathetic performance when it comes to solar adoption vs China.
The other core value generation product will be financial transactions. It is unproven whether X money will be adopted for friction free transactions across national boundaries and whether the company can compete in the financial services sector.
The argument that Tesla sucks because they haven't delivered on their promises is kinda illogical. Tesla is closer to a viable robotaxi, and grid scale energy arbitrage business than they ever have been and the share price reflects it.
With a P/E ~250+ Tesla should be an automatic short if your analysis is correct. I have $2 million long in the company. In 2035 it will be >$8 million. In 2035 Waymo will be a footnote.
I own a hw3 Tesla with FSD. It regularly drives me for over an hour without intervention. It is good enough that a single person cannot drive long enough to know if it's improving or not. I can imagine if you're in Europe you might not understand the difference between different ADAS offerings because FSD is not allowed to operate in the EU.
Reasonable people can disagree on Tesla's ability to execute on their plans. I consider the current 10-20% chance reflected in the stock price today to be accurate. I continually re-evaluate this probability. Major events to look out for in the near future are the removal of safety drivers in Austin, the expansion of the robotaxi service to 8 cities, the commissioning of the "unboxed" cyber cab production line, the demo of Optimus V3, FSD V14.3, and the start of the Semi truck manufacturing line. All these milestones are slated to occur in the next 12 months. They will change the risk weighting on the stock one way or the other.
Waymo cars are ~$200k each the new robocab will be closer to ~$20k to produce. These business advantages are why the market has some degree of faith that Tesla will out compete companies like waymo in the quest for .30cents per mile costs. Currently Waymo is well above $2per mile and has no clear path to 30cents. Getting to 30 cents is the only way to unlock the trillion dollar opportunity, otherwise you're just recreating Uber.
These are the types of considerations that make Tesla attractive to risk tolerant investors.
Just the robotaxi business alone could be worth hundreds of billions a year in avoided insurance costs and save the average Western family about $5k in transportation costs annually. If it works. Most people don't think it will, but most people thought Amazon wouldn't work either.
Hopefully this patent SNAFU makes up for 1% of that monumental screw job.
The unsupervised "robotaxi" uses a different NN. It doesn't behave the same way as FSD.
No well trained journalist would ever write a story like this without verifying the information in redundant ways. If they didn't do that then they probably already know it's fake and could literally write anything they wanted to support the narrative.
A) Well trained journalists and editors are not stupid. B) If they write something false they already know it's false 99% of the time and are doing it for other reasons.
In light of A + B it makes no sense to rely on what is written in the article to support the idea that it is false or undersourced.
FSD is literally improving exponentially, looking at it in Europe (where it is blocked by regulators with economic incentives to delay Tesla's progress) is like looking at a fully fueled rocket ship at ignition and complaining that it is not moving.
Go take a ride in a new Model Y with hardware 4 and V13 software in North America and you'll realize how the EU regulators are screwing over European customers.