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Musk endeavours

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BobbyD
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Re: Musk endeavours

#208261

Postby BobbyD » March 17th, 2019, 7:14 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:This articles cover some of the issues facing German industry and there is a link that I couldn't copy that describes the troubles at VW:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... =applenews

Regards,


Trump's baffonery is costing everybody money, but VW already build in volume in the EU, the US and China, which lends them a degree of flexibility not enjoyed by many manufacturers. Local build has been on the rise for sometime, and ironically American firms are likely to be atleast as badly affected eg.

Ford scrapped plans to import a compact model from China because of import tariffs put in place by the Trump administration.
- https://www.ft.com/content/67e707be-ad3 ... a20d67390c

Tesla says it's getting slammed in China because of tariffs, cars cost 60% more than competitors
- https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/02/tesla-g ... -more.html

Harley-Davidson is a loser in Trump’s trade war
- https://www.vox.com/2018/6/25/17501436/ ... -trade-war

They are also considerably more financially healthy than many of their competitors. If The Trade Wars are going to have automotive casualties I'd look elsewhere, predominantly at smaller, less geographically diverse companies with less diverse product ranges, and lower if any profits to absorb the cost.

onthemove
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Re: Musk endeavours

#208287

Postby onthemove » March 17th, 2019, 9:16 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Also the idea that robotic cars that have faults can just stop isn't on,


There's no redundancy in existing cars. They can and do konk out while driving along the road.

The idea that self driving cars have to have some sort of extra redundancy to avoid konk outs that can and do happen with regular cars, isn't on!

The primary concern with self driving cars is that they don't drive into anything that they shouldn't.

Shortly automatic emergency braking is going to not just be standard, but mandatory on human driven cars.

That means when the electronics detects a situation, that the car is automatically going to stop, bringing it (most times) to a complete halt. Automatically. Overriding the wishes of the driver. Whether that's on a busy crowded street or anywhere else.

To address TJH's point...

"In a crowded urban street there are probably more people than in an airliner."


Absolutely, so if there is a fault with the car that calls into question its ability to exert proper control, the best thing to do is bring it to a stop.

I cannot imagine any (reasonable, realistic) situation where you'd wish a car going along a crowded street, detecting a fault in its primary control system, and somehow it being considered better for it to carry on with a faulty control system that could potentially result in the car not detecting those pedestrians, or not being able to control itself in response to detecting them, as opposed to simply bringing itself to a stop and putting on some sort of hazard indication.

How can bringing it to a stop be any more risk to the many people on the crowded urban street than any other potential action?

And bringing a car to a stop would be exactly what a human driver would do if there was a mechanical fault on a non-autonomous car in such a situation.

If you look at for example the Mersey Tunnel - they even have explicit charges specifically for vehicles that breakdown in the tunnel...
https://www.merseytravel.gov.uk/tunnels ... arges.aspx

Breakdown Charges
​Motorcycle, motorcycle with sidecar and 3-wheeled vehicle
Private/light goods vehilce up to 3.5 tonnes gross vehicle weight
Passenger carrying vehilce with seating capacity for under 9 persons
£75 per hour
Minimum charge one hour
*Penalty surcharge £60


It's generally accepted that current non-autonomous cars can and do breakdown at inopportune times.

If a vehicle stops in such a situation, why does it matter whether the car was previously being driven autonomously or by a human driver prior to coming to a stop?

Once it's stopped, it's stopped.
Self driving or not.

That's not to say that I wouldn't expect some kind of 'redundancy' in self driving cars. But I very much doubt it will be the kind of redundancy you'd find in aircraft - i.e. where there are complete redundant systems that could take over.

I'd expect self driving car redundancy to come through things like overlap of sensors, rather than specific doubling up.

And more likely used for fault detection, than allowing switch over.

I wouldn't expect any redundancy in the primary control computer. If there's any fault in the primary control computer, I would expect an automatic emergency braking to be applied, either to regulatory mandated deceleration rates, or potentially using last known forwards clear distances to reduce the risk of being rear-ended.

" if the lidar on one car breaks it can't just stop,"


Depends whether it's a core component in the self driving system (integrated with the cameras, etc), or whether it is a separate fail safe last resort.

Like I mentioned in a previous message, if the lidar is acting as a fail safe backup, and the primary control system is capable of controlling a car to an 'acceptable' level - even like Tesla cars right now - then for short distances e.g. just pulling to the side of the road in a controlled manner, or even say driving to a garage within say a limit of 10 miles, etc, then it may be considered acceptable to drive without it. It's a matter of risk management.

Think of it like seatbelts. If your (driver's) seatbelt broke, you'd probably think it acceptable to drive 3 miles to a garage to get it fixed. You wouldn't call a tow truck to tow your car to the garage.

Similarly, why do you dismiss lidar because it won't work at extremes?

As a cyclist, I'm more worried about cars having lidar (or similar) to avoid urban collisions - pedestrian, cyclists, children, etc, around town.

So even if a lidar only has an effective range up to 50mph, that would still be a hugely beneficial fail safe.

", but imagine cars and wagons traveling at 70 mph on a 3 lane motor way,"


In most situations on a motorway, how will lidar with that kind of range help? If there's any other traffic ahead, it won't likely see an obstruction at that kind of distance. Most of the time, like normal humans, it will be detecting the cars or lorries in front, and relying on being able to stop if they stop unexpectedly.

And if both the (shorter range) lidar is fully functioning, and the primary camera based AI system is fully functioning, then the car has options if the obstruction is (exceptionally - i.e. the primary control system missed it) detected late. For example a self driving car could serve to avoid the obstruction.

And just to repeat, a safety device doesn't have to be perfect to be required by regulations. Anti-lock brakes don't provide for guaranteed stopping. You can still skid on ice, etc. But they are now mandatory.

--
And one final consideration...
(That probably would have saved writing most of what I've put above if I'd thought of it earlier :) )

We're talking electric cars here.

The most obvious fault that's going to happen is it runs out of juice.

At that point, self driving or not, it's going to stop.

Whereever it is.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208297

Postby odysseus2000 » March 17th, 2019, 10:05 pm

Hello onthemove,

I believe that the standards that exist for human drivers will not be acceptable to robot drivers.

I doubt an electric car even without full robotic driving will soon allow it self to be driven when its batteries are low. I believe that mandated controlled stop before battery empty will be implemented. It would be silly not to have that. Sure cars can unexpectedly fail and stop in the middle of the motorway, but that is different to a car knowing it will run out of energy and being driven by a human till that happens.

It will be interesting to see how all of this develops but I do expect robotic cars in the near term (3-5 years) and that they will be much safer than human driven, to the point where it soon becomes the norm for no human input, no steering wheel, no pedals etc.

Many folk will not like the idea but will be forced to accept it via insurance premiums, low if robot drive, prohibitively high if human driven.

Regards,

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208303

Postby BobbyD » March 17th, 2019, 10:17 pm

onthemove wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:Also the idea that robotic cars that have faults can just stop isn't on,


There's no redundancy in existing cars. They can and do konk out while driving along the road.


We are talking about the driver not the car...

Mechanical failure is going to occur in exactly the same way that it does with human driven cars, and the AD's will have to deal with that in exactly the same way that HD's do.

Unfortunately it isn't practical to have a mandatory second driver in every HD car, if it was then less people would die in car accidents, and accidents caused by cars like the Selby Rail Crash. It's really fricking easy to build redundancy in to an AD. I wouldn't expect a system which couldn't at the least get safely to the side of the road after the loss of a sensor or computational component to ever be graded above L3.

onthemove
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Re: Musk endeavours

#208307

Postby onthemove » March 17th, 2019, 10:25 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Yes, I understand what you are saying, but I think the composite of systems will feed into a "decision engine" that will decide what to do. I imagine that this will be called an AI system and if useful will be able to drive without any human in the vehicle and do so more safely than if it was human driven


I'd agree to an extent.

But between the sensors (including AI for identifying road signs, cars, etc), and 'decision engine' I would expect a central model where all the sensor feed into a combined world view.

Like this kind of thing, with overlays on indicating what the system has sensed, etc...

http://lidtime.com/wp-content/uploads/2 ... amnewm.jpg

The decision engine would then make decisions based on this model, but I would fully expect that it will include non-AI aspects as well as AI aspects.

For example, simply physics, just making simple predictions ... i.e. if we keep going this speed will that pedestrian be out of the way, etc.

There may be an element of AI in there. For example, the AI is likely to model behaviours. Like dogs, cats, children, cars, etc, and be able to provide a 'probability' prediction of where they might go. But I'd expect the results of that to feed into more traditional statistical models.

They may then feed into more AI.

But you'd also need to be able to incorporate the rules of the road. And these might change.

Or even just change moving from one country to another!

So again for those reasons alone, i would expect a degree of more traditional engineering at the top level.

I wouldn't image that self driving car providers would want to have to retrain the CNNs from the start if for example left turn on red became legal in britain (as per right turn on red in the US)

That kind of action I would expect would be integrated with a rules engine or explicit 'action model' of some sort that is applied is recognised situations.

Or even behaviour around smart motorways and their hard shoulders. (Although this I would expect should be handled mostly be reading and interpreting signs; a self driving car will need to be able to recognise diversions, check points, lanes times of operation, etc, all dynamically)

Anyway, in general, for practical engineering reasons around adapting to and implementing rules of the road, flexibility, etc, I wouldn't necessarily rule out some AI in there at the decision level, but I probably wouldn't expect it to be a single 'AI'.

And also for accountability reasons, I'd also consider it less likely that AI (as in CNNs, etc) would be used as the final decision maker.

If the car makes an 'odd' decision and crashes, it wouldn't really be acceptable for the engineers to shrug their shoulders and say "Dunno, that's what the CNN decided to do".

You could get away with it a the lower level, e.g. if a CNN misread a sign, or misidentified something around the vehicle - particularly if anyone reviewing the footage agreed that it would have been difficult for a human to see.

But at the top decision level, it really is more important that engineers can show that the final decision is robust in terms of going in a direction where the lower levels believed were drivable, the rules engine says is legal, the capability engine tells it the car has the capability (e.g. acceleration, or power up hill, etc), the cameras say there is no pedestrians, etc.

Maybe it could be done with a dual system... an AI making it's decision in a fuzzy opaque manner, but having to go through a final validation check that ensures all the above constraints are met, etc.

So you might not be able to tell why it chose a particular legal action (out of many potential ones), but you can at least be sure it is safe and legal.

I have to admit though, details of the 'decision engines' that are being developed by the various groups are much harder to come by on the internet, and the options more open.

For example at this level, you'd also want to consider direction finding. I would expect there would be some element of feeding back external detection information to updating known location on a map for areas without GPS or poor GPS.

The navigation system would also need to be able to cope with incorrect or out of date mapping information, or road changes that are under construction.

You might also want to have it consider energy efficiency in its considerations.

You might also want it to consider comfort for the passengers. Or perhaps a mellow, slow into the corners, braking early, etc, for those nervous of the technology, and a more aggressive setting for those who trust it more and need to get to work quicker, etc

These are all things that would (likely) be better incorporated/merged by more traditional means rather than through AI.

Thinking about it, with all the various aspects that you'd expect or could develop in a self driving car at the 'decision' level, the more I think about it, the less I'd expect it to be primarily AI based, and more likely to be predominantly traditional (software) engineering based.

The AI game changer that makes self driving possible (where it wasn't before) is really in the low level detection and recognition of real world objects, in real time from camera information. To be able to identify them real time, and position them in an internal model of the real world.

Getting that internal model (from the low lever) is where AI is the game changer.

The decision engine is probably what is going to make or break the various players in the game. Get the decision engine right, and it will boost your chances, get it wrong and you'll struggle.

And I don't just mean safety.

I mean, if company A's system can work without GPS, and reliably update it's position based on using the feedback from its sensors (e.g. watching for road junctions, etc), whereas company B's really struggles or doesn't even attempt to update position other than GPS, then company A is going to have a clear advantage.

If one company provides the ability to adjust the ride for speed or comfort, etc, whereas a competitor just provides take it or leave it, the first company is going to have a competitive advantage from that.

Then there's also 'soft' feedback. For self driving cars trust is going to be key. A car that provides clear, reassuring feedback for example on screen that the passengers can see reflects reliably what they see around them, then they are going to feel far more at ease, than a competitor that doesn't have such a clear model presented to the passengers.

Similarly a car that reassures passengers why it isn't going in a particular direction, that will also help build trust and give an advantage.

But these latter two in particular would be less feasible if you're letting a single (deep learning style) AI do the final decision making.

I think once you've got the internal model from the low level sensors and AI, then apart from perhaps adding in behavioural expectations from AI, most of the decision making is more likely to be regular engineered software.

onthemove
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Re: Musk endeavours

#208313

Postby onthemove » March 17th, 2019, 10:55 pm

BobbyD wrote: I wouldn't expect a system which couldn't at the least get safely to the side of the road after the loss of a sensor or computational component to ever be graded above L3.


Genuine question - how many of todays purely electric (not hybrids) have some kind of reserve battery?
If you're driving along in the fast lane of the M1 on a busy day (so lane 1 and 2 are busy) and it runs out of juice, what happens?

BobbyD wrote: I wouldn't expect a system which couldn't at the least get safely to the side of the road after the loss of a sensor or computational component to ever be graded above L3.


What about the component that is arbitrating between the two independent controllers? What if that is the component that fails?
All of these are going to be basically computers. Why is the arbitrator any less likely to fail than the computers it is arbitrating?

BobbyD wrote: I wouldn't expect a system which couldn't at the least get safely to the side of the road after the loss of a sensor or computational component to ever be graded above L3.


How do you envisage it would make the switch over from one controller to the other?

Some CNNs have a degree of 'recurrence' in them. This means they feed their previous outputs back to their inputs, so the current application of the network is in part dependent upon the results of previous applications. They don't just react to a static world snapshot.

Even with non-recurrent networks, the main controller is likely to build up an historical model of the movement of entities. i.e. to see which way a pedestrian is walking, whether a car is moving, stationary or reversing, and at what speed, etc, and so on.

This is important, because if you want a backup controller to be able to take over on-the-fly, it's likely to also need to effectively be operating all the time ready to take over - constantly maintaining its own historical models etc.

And that's a challenge because the computation power (and therefore electrical power) required by self driving computers is huge.


And related question, what caused the first computer to fail?

I mean, if it was a sensor going faulty resulting in dangerous voltage, then isn't that sensor going to be feeding back to both computers? Likewise, if it was a spike in the power supply, aren't both computers going to be fed from the same power source?

And then again, the same question different aspect - How do you envisage it would make the switch over from one controller to the other?

Both controllers would need a route to the steering wheel, accelerator, brake, etc. How do you ensure one and only one attempts to control the car at once?

You can't trust the controllers to be good, because we're talking about a situation where one of the controllers has been identified as faulty. If it's faulty, you can't be sure it won't output garbage demands to the engine and steering.

So whatever is arbitrating will need a fail safe means of cutting out the other. But then, this again makes a single point of failure in the arbitrator.

And what should the car do if the arbitrator fails?

In effect, all you've have done is move the single point of failure from the primary processor up to a single point of failure in another computer circuit - the arbitrator.

With both entities being computerised controllers, it's debatable whether that will have actually improved the overall safety / tolerance to failure at all.

In an aircraft, although I don't have a great understanding of their precise technical details, I thought (from watching too many plane crash investigation programs) that often the switching of redundant systems is something done by the pilot, usually with reference to a manual (even in an emergency!)

At 40,000ft a captain has thinking time.

At 70mph on the motorway, a driver doesn't and can't be expected to use a manual override switch to switch in an alternative primary processor.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208319

Postby odysseus2000 » March 18th, 2019, 12:15 am

As I understand redundancy technology used on space vessels, the idea is that there are n (3 or 4) computers that each regularly run test programs.

Then there are arbiter(s) that monitor the results or the computers vote with their answers

If all n agree then everything is fine.

If not the then the arbiter(s) compare the results with the known answer stored in non-volatile memory and with themselves and the ones that are wrong are re-booted and re-checked.

This is only my layman understanding, but yes if there is only one arbiter then even with n computers the failure of the arbiter would compromise the whole thing.

As I understand it the systems would be made differently with independent power and would be tested to have a mean time between failures to be much longer than the mission.

Hopefully someone who has worked on these system can explain better or point to a good reference. As I understand things, the systems used on self driving cars have these kinds of redundancy checks.

Regards,

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208362

Postby GoSeigen » March 18th, 2019, 10:59 am

onthemove wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:Yes, I understand what you are saying, but I think the composite of systems will feed into a "decision engine" that will decide what to do. I imagine that this will be called an AI system and if useful will be able to drive without any human in the vehicle and do so more safely than if it was human driven


I'd agree to an extent.
[...]


tl;dr

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208502

Postby odysseus2000 » March 18th, 2019, 8:43 pm

Interesting to look at the van scrapage scheme for London. For a small business there is £6k of funds if an
electric van is bought:

https://tfl.gov.uk/modes/driving/ultra- ... age-scheme

The major manufacturers as far as I know don't currently have an electric van that would suit and so this scheme seems well ahead of what is available.

However, the size and magnitude indicates the sort of incentives that the politicians will dangle before ice users to get them to change.

If this kind of stuff becomes more common I can not see why anyone would want to buy a ice vehicle as likely depreciation will be huge.

Regards,

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208506

Postby odysseus2000 » March 18th, 2019, 9:00 pm

Renault do have an electric van:

https://www.renault.co.uk/vehicles/new- ... 4144354142

Presumably this shares stuff from the Leaf as Renault and Nissan are partners.

Could be a nice market for them.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208529

Postby Howard » March 18th, 2019, 11:53 pm

Howard wrote:The launch of the Model Y was a slightly surreal event. I've just watched it on YouTube.

Having read that the actual launch of the new model took place only in the last few minutes of the event (and in virtual darkness), I knew that it was mainly a review of Tesla's progress since it started.

It was almost as though Elon Musk was saying goodbye at the end. He said something like "Thank you for coming, thank you for all your support over the years, it's been a hell of a ride".

Just made me wonder if he was moving on to a new role??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poTxDqms_nQ

regards

Howard


Someone else has a feeling Elon Musk may be going.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/424957 ... ?dr=1#alt2

As I have suggested before, Tesla's fate doesn't only hinge on engineering. Marketing, Logistics and Finance may prove to be more important. And Politics and Regulation.

Sales volumes in Q1 look more and more as though they will be lower than expected. If so the cash flow and working capital problems of the company will become critical.

In about two weeks we should know.

regards

Howard

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208571

Postby odysseus2000 » March 19th, 2019, 10:20 am

Howard wrote:
Howard wrote:The launch of the Model Y was a slightly surreal event. I've just watched it on YouTube.

Having read that the actual launch of the new model took place only in the last few minutes of the event (and in virtual darkness), I knew that it was mainly a review of Tesla's progress since it started.

It was almost as though Elon Musk was saying goodbye at the end. He said something like "Thank you for coming, thank you for all your support over the years, it's been a hell of a ride".

Just made me wonder if he was moving on to a new role??

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poTxDqms_nQ

regards

Howard


Someone else has a feeling Elon Musk may be going.

https://seekingalpha.com/article/424957 ... ?dr=1#alt2

As I have suggested before, Tesla's fate doesn't only hinge on engineering. Marketing, Logistics and Finance may prove to be more important. And Politics and Regulation.

Sales volumes in Q1 look more and more as though they will be lower than expected. If so the cash flow and working capital problems of the company will become critical.

In about two weeks we should know.

regards

Howard


The Seeking Alpha writer is short Tesla which means he has already backed up his view with cash & wants as much support as possible. He is however going against many other bears including Citron who remain Tesla bulls.

The problem I have with his thesis is how strong is the SEC potential case. Sure Musk has said he doesn't respect the SEC & from what has been released Tesla have not been responding well if at all to the SEC letters. But do the SEC have a case that a judge would support? Currently I don't believe so & if the SEC was to act & have some success I think Musk would take this as a first amendment case (freedom of speech) right, if necessary, to the Supreme Court. This would take a long time & be so potentially wounding to the SEC that they would not risk it.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208579

Postby PeterGray » March 19th, 2019, 11:23 am

I wouldn't be too sure the SEC won't get anywhere with their case

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/03/18/tech ... index.html

It looks pretty clear to me he simply hasn't kept to what he agreed after his last interaction with the SEC, and has shown no interest in doing so, and continued to treat the SEC with contempt. There may be judges in the US prepared to go along with that, but I suspect not many.

I think Musk would take this as a first amendment case (freedom of speech) right, if necessary, to the Supreme Court.

Yes, he may be crazy enough to do so. But why would anyone have any expectation he'd win. If that was so they would be ruling that anyone could publish unregulated inside information on a freedom of speech basis, and I don't see that happening, even in Trump's America

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208630

Postby odysseus2000 » March 19th, 2019, 2:23 pm

PeterGray
Yes, he may be crazy enough to do so. But why would anyone have any expectation he'd win. If that was so they would be ruling that anyone could publish unregulated inside information on a freedom of speech basis, and I don't see that happening, even in Trump's America


The argument might be that the information Musk tweeted was not inside, after all something very similar was said on the last call, and had no effect on the share price as far as I can tell and as such any attempt to suppress him was a violation of the 1st amendment.

If he made this defence it isn't clear to that the SEC has a good case.

If this was to go the supreme court I doubt it would be over before Trump leaves office as it would take years, likely more than the 5 years Trump has to come as President if he wins, as I expect, a second term.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208678

Postby BobbyD » March 19th, 2019, 4:09 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:The problem I have with his thesis is how strong is the SEC potential case.


You mean apart from Tesla's council straight out admitting that they don't abide by the terms of the settlement reached with the SEC the last time they danced? They don't just have a case, they have an unqualified signed confession from a qualified legal professional acting on Tesla's behalf.

odysseus2000 wrote:Currently I don't believe so & if the SEC was to act & have some success I think Musk would take this as a first amendment case (freedom of speech) right


a) Nobody is forcing Musk to have his tweets pre-vetted, he came to an agreement to avoid the SEC pursuing him further. This was part of the deal, a deal he was completely free to refuse. He consented to the restriction. If he doesn't keep to it not only is he in contempt of court, but arguably the cessation of SEC pursuit over the 420 tweets is no longer necessary.

b) It is well established that freedom of speech is limited in the case of company officers in possession of financially sensitive information. There is no chance of this principle being overturned.

PeterGray wrote:Yes, he may be crazy enough to do so. But why would anyone have any expectation he'd win. If that was so they would be ruling that anyone could publish unregulated inside information on a freedom of speech basis, and I don't see that happening, even in Trump's America


...and how much confidence would it give Tesla stock holders that rather than working on keeping their company above water their CEO would rather waste his time and money pursuing a pointless case against a body they would very much benefit from having onside?

odysseus2000 wrote:The argument might be that the information Musk tweeted was not inside, after all something very similar was said on the last call, and had no effect on the share price as far as I can tell and as such any attempt to suppress him was a violation of the 1st amendment.


Unlikely, since it is completely irrelevant. Musk is required to have a broad category of texts pre-vetted because he does not have the competence to determine whether or not they appropriate. The charge is that he failed to have such tweets vetted in contravention of his SEC deal, not that he published anything inappropriate.

odysseus2000 wrote:If he made this defence it isn't clear to that the SEC has a good case.


again SIGNED CONFESSION FROM TESLA'S LAWYER

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208688

Postby Howard » March 19th, 2019, 4:57 pm

Fred Lambert at Electrek, usually a Tesla supporter, is concerned at Tesla's latest pricing antics. As he says, the reason given today for delaying the price increases announced last week just doesn't stack up. Any sane business which has too many orders to deliver doesn't reduce prices.

This move by Tesla looks very much like a desperate attempt to increase sales before the end of the quarter.

Whilst the Model 3 is popular in Europe compared with other EVs, its sales numbers are not that large. Its most successful market, Norway, has just registered 3,000 sales of Model 3s although sales of the S and X appear to have plummeted. Sales in Germany and the Netherlands look smaller as there are not such generous subsidies for EVs. Will the total sales in Europe this quarter end up much more than two weeks production? Hardly the "Invasion" that the Bulls promised.

https://electrek.co/2019/03/19/tesla-de ... d-quarter/

regards

Howard

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208692

Postby BobbyD » March 19th, 2019, 5:07 pm

Howard wrote:Fred Lambert at Electrek, usually a Tesla supporter, is concerned at Tesla's latest pricing antics. As he says, the reason given today for delaying the price increases announced last week just doesn't stack up. Any sane business which has too many orders to deliver doesn't reduce prices.

This move by Tesla looks very much like a desperate attempt to increase sales before the end of the quarter.

Whilst the Model 3 is popular in Europe compared with other EVs, its sales numbers are not that large. Its most successful market, Norway, has just registered 3,000 sales of Model 3s although sales of the S and X appear to have plummeted. Sales in Germany and the Netherlands look smaller as there are not such generous subsidies for EVs. Will the total sales in Europe this quarter end up much more than two weeks production? Hardly the "Invasion" that the Bulls promised.

https://electrek.co/2019/03/19/tesla-de ... d-quarter/

regards

Howard


The price cuts never made sense, neither does a company which is struggling to keep up with demand delivering cars which could have been built in the last quarter of 2017 in the first quarter of 2019.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208697

Postby BobbyD » March 19th, 2019, 5:23 pm

Volkswagen is amongst the legacy automakers now most invested in electric vehicles and they now threaten to exit an important automaker lobbying group over their policies regarding electric vehicles.
Automakers have promoted policies to slow down the adoption of electric vehicles through lobbying groups for years.

Most recently, automakers associations have pushed against efforts to increase average fuel economy, which would have forced EVs to be built in higher volume.

Interestingly, several automakers were claiming to be ‘all-in on electric cars’ while indirectly supporting those lobbying efforts.

Now, Volkswagen appears to be recognizing this issue and is pressuring the Association of the German Automotive Industry (VDA), a powerful lobbying group in Germany, to promote electric vehicles.


- https://electrek.co/2019/03/18/vw-threa ... -policies/

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208715

Postby odysseus2000 » March 19th, 2019, 6:59 pm

We are going over the same things many times.

Until we have sales figures for ice and be vehicles it is all speculation.

Similarly the case or not against Musk by the SEC is all opinion, the shorts using everything they can to get the price down while at the meantime the short interest has declined significantly, the bulls pointing to what they believe will be a bright future with no SEC trouble.

Arguing ones book is what one expects in any financial discussion, but for the moment neither the bulls or bears have much to go on.

Anyone reading this forum needs to be aware that the bulls like me believe the share price will rise a lot from here, the bears the opposite, but it is all opinion at least from me. I do not know what will happen, I am just making guesses based on my studies and the years I lived in America.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#208716

Postby Itsallaguess » March 19th, 2019, 7:32 pm

I really don't know how things will pan out for Elon Musk, but when I need reminding what a visionary this guy is, I just watch this, and marvel.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBlIvghQTlI

What a fantastic achievement....

Cheers,

Itsallaguess


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