Elon Musk says Tesla is an AI company now. Here’s how plausible that is.
Elon Musk says Tesla is an AI company now. Here’s how plausible that is.
As Tesla's core business starts to falter, CEO Elon Musk has robot fever.
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I suppose I define AI company differently than you do. In my mind if a company is investing a large chunk of its operations budget in AI R&D, it is an AI company.
By your logic tesla is also a logistics company (shipping cars), an industrial manufacturer of plant machinery (the machines to build the cars), a battery company (buying and investing in battery technology).
what do you call tesla? “An automotive, AI, logistics, industrial plant manufacturing, battery company”?
Do you agree with amber heard “I use pledging and donating as the same thing” when they clearly are not the same thing?
Tesla sells a shitload of batteries outside of their cars, so yeah I'd say they're a battery company.
They also sell the FSD software, which is "AI" so they do have an AI offering, for some definition of AI.
Also, they sell solar panels, so they're a solar panel company.
Can I buy a battery for my EV from Tesla? Or do you mean their integrated home battery pack?
Can I buy FSD for my vehicle even though it isn’t a tesla?
Sure, they sell solar and a home battery pack.
Has tesla ever advertised themselves as an Energy Company? Have they ever advertised themselves as anything other an automotive company until musk decided to say “We AI company now”?
Yeah, their powerwall, and the Mega pack. Also yes, they brand themselves as an energy company. They make really, really big batteries. They also operate superchargers, which if you have experience with electric vehicles are streets ahead of any other charging networks.
https://www.tesla.com/support/energy/powerwall/virtual-power-plant
And no, they don't sell FSD for other cars, but it's still an AI product they are selling to people for money, right now. Maybe in the future they'll license it out to other people, but that's pure speculation on my part.
I'm not sure if you can buy their car batteries individually, haven't looked into it, although I have looked into buying a used one and using that as a power wall, as it would be cheaper for shitloads of storage.
I don't like Musk either, but you're willfully ignoring quite a lot of what Tesla does and has accomplished because of their mouthpiece. Talking about it requires nuance because they have done a tremendous amount of good, while making some suboptimal changes.
And you are missing the nuance of musk literally saying “We are an AI company now”.
Quoting musk from the article
"We are an AI, robotics company; if you value us otherwise, the right answer is impossible to the questions being asked," Musk told investors and journalists in April
Pertinent point if you value us otherwise - if you value them as a car company, battery company, solar company, energy company the right answer is impossible to the questions being asked
Literally his words. You are arguing to add nuance that musk literally stated wasnt there.
He is saying “Tesla is an AI and robotics company” and to not value them any other way. I don’t understand how to make this any clearer.
This is what I'm talking about, that was from the investor call, which you didn't read the transcript to, and have a cherry picked paraphrase.
I can't do the fancy formatting, but here's the quote:
I mean, I don't know what our competitors can do, except we've done relatively better than they have because if you look at the drop in our competitors in China sales versus our drop in sales, our drop was less than theirs. So, we're doing well. But I think Cathie Wood said it best. Like really, we should be thought of as an AI or robotics company.
If you value Tesla as just like an auto company, you just have to -- fundamentally, it's just the wrong framework and if you ask the wrong question, then the right answer is impossible. So, I mean, if somebody doesn't believe Tesla is going to solve autonomy, I think they should not be an investor in the company. Like that is, but we will and we are and then you have a car that goes from 10 hours of use a week, like an hour and a half a day to probably 50%, but it costs the same.
Here's the question he was answering:
OK. My follow-up, Elon, on future products. If you had nailed execution, assuming that you nail execution on your next-gen cheaper vehicles, more aggressive giga castings, I don't want to say one piece, but getting closer to, say, one-piece structural pack, unboxed, 300-mile range, $25,000 price point, putting aside robotaxi, those features unique to you. How long would it take your best Chinese competitors to copy a cheaper and better vehicle that you could offer a couple of years from now? How long would it take your best Chinese competitors to copy that? Thanks.
So for your nuance, I see something along the lines of "Our value isn't in simply the vehicles, it's in the FSD/robotaxi concept, so speculating on someone copying our car it won't eat into our business because autonomous driving will be the best of everything."
Now, I don't agree with all of that, but get some nuance in your life.
Again, you are putting meaning and assumptions that aren’t there.
See, you are incapable of nuance.
Also, you said he "literally" said something twice that is plain wrong. Enjoy your alternate reality.
If you want to read into things and be “well achtually”, thats your prerogative. Just like you can fall back onto personal attacks and demanding your view is the “nuanced” view.
Hope you have the day you deserve:)
I would absolutely call Tesla a battery company. Would you not? They've invested a huge amount in battery R&D and sell them direct to consumers as well as use them in their cars. The rest of that stuff isn't something they invested heavily in developing, ie. they didn't invest R&D in developing new logistics technology for shipping cars.
Any company that invests money into something is suddenly also part of that entire industry and they can label themselves whatever they please. Gotcha.
The supermarket I used to work for is now a software company, as they build software in house
The insurance company I used to work for is now an AI company, as we internally developed and used machine learning models.
The supermarket I used to work for is now a software company, as they build software in house
What % of that supermarket's operating expenses is software development? How big is their technology division compared to the full scale of the company? Do they invest R&D in developing novel technologies?
There are articles every day on Lemmy about how cars are becoming as high tech as smartphones. Is it so wrong to suggest that car companies are becoming a subset of tech companies?
Car companies becoming a subset of tech companies
A subset of
There we go! A huge comment chain later and it seems you are starting to get it. A subset of an automotive company is becoming more like a technology company.
Its still an automotive company.
Again, I personally don't view these things as mutually exclusive. It's a tech company and a car company. What's so crazy about that? Apple is a phone manufacturing company and a software company. Amazon is a cloud provider, a video streaming company, a shipping and logistics company, and an online storefront. Companies can be more than one thing.
Also "subset" means a member of. If X is a subset of Y, then X is a member of Y. It would not be incorrect to say, "the list of Y includes X"
I just give up. Believe what you want, and continue to be confused when no one else understands or agrees.