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Musk endeavours

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odysseus2000
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Re: Musk endeavours

#257657

Postby odysseus2000 » October 14th, 2019, 1:25 am

This is an interesting graphic showing how Tesla sales have grown:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1183538861089185792

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Howard
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Re: Musk endeavours

#257700

Postby Howard » October 14th, 2019, 10:48 am

odysseus2000 wrote:This is an interesting graphic showing how Tesla sales have grown:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1183538861089185792

Regards,


Be fair Ody - with a simple change of label, this animation could equally be used to indicate how their losses have grown. :)

Howard

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Re: Musk endeavours

#257708

Postby odysseus2000 » October 14th, 2019, 11:06 am

Howard wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:This is an interesting graphic showing how Tesla sales have grown:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1183538861089185792

Regards,


Be fair Ody - with a simple change of label, this animation could equally be used to indicate how their losses have grown. :)

Howard


Ha Ha, yes you are right, but let us assume they do begin to sell a million cars per year at an average price of $40,000. That gives them a turn over of $40 billion.

Now as the new China plants comes on line and the skill in making improves it may come to pass that each car becomes profitable. At 1% net Margin that is $0.4 billion, at 5% net margin that is $2 billion, at 10% net margin that is $4 billion in profit.

The bears say never, the bulls say soon.

Meanwhile the media interest in Extinction Rebellion and in Greta's UN speech will be slowly finding its way into the minds of vote hungry politicians and good decent folk all about the world will begin to think electric. Imho BEV have hardly begun yet, but that is about to change very fast.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#257711

Postby BobbyD » October 14th, 2019, 11:14 am

Howard wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:This is an interesting graphic showing how Tesla sales have grown:

https://twitter.com/i/status/1183538861089185792

Regards,


Be fair Ody - with a simple change of label, this animation could equally be used to indicate how their losses have grown. :)

Howard


...or the wait time for a repair.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#257730

Postby Howard » October 14th, 2019, 11:51 am

Interesting article about Dyson and their electric car project.

They appear to have found out the hard way that it is difficult to compete with big auto manufacturers.

I'm not surprised, because maybe I'm biased. Having owned and used a Dyson vacuum cleaner, I thought it was over-hyped and no better than the competitors' products which were cheaper. It went wrong fairly quickly and wasn't replaced. And the Dyson air blade hand driers in public toilets seem to be ridiculous to me. Who specifies these daft products? And (while I'm on my rant) I recently stayed in a fancy hotel which had Dyson hairdriers in each room. When I looked up the price I was amazed. I now see that they have reduced their price to around £300. Who buys these things??

Hopefully Tesla will prove more sensible than this company :lol:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/dyson-e ... side-story

regards

Howard

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Re: Musk endeavours

#257772

Postby BobbyD » October 14th, 2019, 1:45 pm

Howard wrote:Interesting article about Dyson and their electric car project.

They appear to have found out the hard way that it is difficult to compete with big auto manufacturers.

I'm not surprised, because maybe I'm biased. Having owned and used a Dyson vacuum cleaner, I thought it was over-hyped and no better than the competitors' products which were cheaper. It went wrong fairly quickly and wasn't replaced. And the Dyson air blade hand driers in public toilets seem to be ridiculous to me. Who specifies these daft products? And (while I'm on my rant) I recently stayed in a fancy hotel which had Dyson hairdriers in each room. When I looked up the price I was amazed. I now see that they have reduced their price to around £300. Who buys these things??

Hopefully Tesla will prove more sensible than this company :lol:

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/dyson-e ... side-story

regards

Howard


I worry 2.5 million units a year isn't enough unless you find a niche, and BEV is no longer a niche...

VAX factory sales always used to provide ridiculous discounts on really nice cleaners.

As far as I can tell the design brief for those handdryers was to distribute dirt and germs as evenly across the rest room area as possible.

In all fairness the alternatives may be functional but handdrying in public toilets has never had that eureka moment after which everything was different. It's just a different, more expensive version of inadequate, and in any toilet where you have to pull the door handle to get out it's largely academic anyway.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#257790

Postby odysseus2000 » October 14th, 2019, 2:40 pm

BobbyD
I worry 2.5 million units a year isn't enough unless you find a niche, and BEV is no longer a niche...


Having listened to the callers to Farage on LBC re the Extinction Rebellion demonstration it is clear to me that most of the callers haven't a clue about renewable energy, BEV, science, environment,.... almost anything technical, with most folk reverting to either what they knew decades ago or quoting who ever they thought was right, quite unable to figure things out for themselves.

BEV may be old hat here, but most of the population haven't a clue.

BEV is still a niche product for most car driving punters.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#257794

Postby BobbyD » October 14th, 2019, 2:50 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:
BobbyD
I worry 2.5 million units a year isn't enough unless you find a niche, and BEV is no longer a niche...


Having listened to the callers to Farage on LBC re the Extinction Rebellion demonstration it is clear to me that most of the callers haven't a clue about renewable energy, BEV, science, environment,.... almost anything technical, with most folk reverting to either what they knew decades ago or quoting who ever they thought was right, quite unable to figure things out for themselves.

BEV may be old hat here, but most of the population haven't a clue.

BEV is still a niche product for most car driving punters.

Regards,


When Tesla started making BEV's it was a niche with no competition, that is no longer the case and is about to be a lot less the case. General electric newcomers with no mass production experience aren't going to be able to count on being able to bob along under such benign waves as Tesla did. If they want time to learn from their mistakes they are going to have to find a more specific sub-niche, or be far more active in absorbing what the big boys have spent a century learning about how to put cars together.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#257820

Postby odysseus2000 » October 14th, 2019, 4:53 pm

BobbyD wrote:
odysseus2000 wrote:
BobbyD
I worry 2.5 million units a year isn't enough unless you find a niche, and BEV is no longer a niche...


Having listened to the callers to Farage on LBC re the Extinction Rebellion demonstration it is clear to me that most of the callers haven't a clue about renewable energy, BEV, science, environment,.... almost anything technical, with most folk reverting to either what they knew decades ago or quoting who ever they thought was right, quite unable to figure things out for themselves.

BEV may be old hat here, but most of the population haven't a clue.

BEV is still a niche product for most car driving punters.

Regards,


When Tesla started making BEV's it was a niche with no competition, that is no longer the case and is about to be a lot less the case. General electric newcomers with no mass production experience aren't going to be able to count on being able to bob along under such benign waves as Tesla did. If they want time to learn from their mistakes they are going to have to find a more specific sub-niche, or be far more active in absorbing what the big boys have spent a century learning about how to put cars together.


We differ here. I believe Tesla are doing the stuff that legacy once did before they became complacent.

The car trade is now back to where it was in early days of Ford. Legacy looks big and strong but it has huge costs and investments that it is not writing off fast enough and it is now only a matter of time before the Chinese figure out how to flog BEV cars undercutting legacy which will have some very painful troubles imho.

Regards,

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258071

Postby redsturgeon » October 15th, 2019, 4:38 pm

I passed the Tesla store on the A4 coming into London today, stopped in traffic so had a good look at the front ends of the Tesla S, X and 3 they had in the window.

I must say that the S and the X look a lot better than the 3 from that angle. The 3 looks like it should have something in the front rather than a blank panel that looks like there should be a grill there.

John

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258157

Postby BobbyD » October 16th, 2019, 4:23 am

Cheaper Taycan 4s available for pre-order, delivery early 2020.


Porsche Steps Up Tesla Battle With $117,000 Electric Taycan

...Porsche is intensifying its battle against Tesla Inc. with the unveiling of a 105,607-euro ($116,590) version of the electric Taycan that’s pitched at a similar price point to the top-line version of the U.S. company’s Model S.

...The Porsche 4S can drive 407 kilometers (253 miles) on a single charge, rising to 463 kilometers with a bigger battery. That’s still less than the 102,700-euro Model S Performance with a range of 610 kilometers.


- https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles ... ric-taycan

From Porsche's UK site the 4S's RRP is £83,367, as always lots of extras available if you want to pay more - https://www.porsche.com/uk/models/taycan/taycan-models/

That's without £3500 government subsidy. so under £80,000.

Much of the 4S’s technical make-up is the same as pricier Taycans, with two electric motors across both axles for four-wheel drive and a two-speed transmission for acceleration. However, the rear motor is 80mm shorter than it is in the Turbo and Turbo S, while it also receives smaller brakes, down to 360mm and six pistons on the front and 358mm and four pistons at the rear.

Exterior styling changes include smaller 19in wheels, red painted calipers and a revised bodykit including a different front apron, side sills and rear diffuser. Dynamic LED lights remain standard fitment. Part-leather is standard, but Porsche also offers a leather-free cabin with recycled materials.

As with other Taycans, it comes with three years of access to Ionity’s rapid chargers and the Porsche Charging Service. Customers also receive a driving experience at the brand’s Silverstone Experience Centre.


https://www.autocar.co.uk/car-news/new- ... 3000-price

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258253

Postby odysseus2000 » October 16th, 2019, 3:48 pm

30,000 more starlink satellites:

https://twitter.com/CHenry_SN/status/11 ... 26886?s=20

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258365

Postby BobbyD » October 17th, 2019, 5:47 am

Tesla Model S P100D Vs Porsche Taycan Turbo S At The Strip - https://insideevs.com/news/376542/video ... he-taycan/


Displays on older models of Tesla electric vehicles are bricking because of shoddy flash memory, according to reports in Inside EVs and Motherboard.

The specific problem is with an onboard NAND-based flash storage chip, the eMMC, which is embedded in some models of Tesla’s Media Control Unit (primarily MCUv1, though MCUv2 may be affected to a lesser degree). Experts told both sites that Tesla’s cars are writing so many logs to the chip that the cars are wearing out the flash chips—an issue that is technically inevitable , but is happening a lot sooner than it should. The chip’s failure screws with functions on the Tesla’s touchscreen, which users on forums wrote could make driving the car inconvenient or even slightly dangerous (issues claimed include loss of the ability to defrost windows or charge the car).

057 Technology’s Jason Hughes told Inside EVs that when the 8 gigabyte flash card was not an issue, but over the years “Tesla’s firmware image size has gone from about 300MB to the full 1GB maximum size.” Hughes added that while the chip is designed to minimize long-term degradation via a technique called wear leveling, in which it spreads wear across “unused sections of the flash memory to extend the effective number of write cycles available,” the onboard computer also creates “excessive” logs. Along with other data caching, this results in “no free space left for additional wear leveling to compensate for the excessive log writing,” Hughes told the site.

The result is data corruption and major issues with the car. This takes years to happen (the issue is reportedly happening in cars at least four years old), but the loss of the digital dashboard is a bigger issue for Teslas than other cars. It’s also unusual for flash memory to burn out before other parts in most electronics, Tom’s Hardware noted.

“I see it in the wild,” YouTuber Rich Benoit, who repairs Teslas, told Motherboard. “I own a shop that repairs these cars and the older vehicles are starting to show their signs of age.”


- https://gizmodo.com/flash-memory-on-som ... 1839084282

Some older Teslas are spontaneously bricking because their embedded flash memory is wearing out, according to three independent Tesla repair professionals who have studied the issue.

The issue is with a flash storage chip called the eMMC that is embedded on a board called the MCU1. According to experts who have studied the problem, Teslas are writing vehicle logs to this flash storage chip so much that it eventually goes bad. The issue has been known in the Tesla community since at least May, when Tesla repair YouTuber Rich Benoit spoke to another Tesla repair professional named Phil Sadow about it in a video.

“Tesla’s got a problem. They create so many logs in the car, they write to [the chip] so fast that it basically burns them out. They have a finite amount of writes,” Sadow said in the video. “When this burns out, you wake up to a black screen [in the car’s center console.] There’s nothing there. No climate control. You can generally drive the car, but it won’t charge.”


- https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvgx ... tesla-cars

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258403

Postby odysseus2000 » October 17th, 2019, 9:53 am

Rather naughty of Tesla to have not prevented this issue by wear levelling or different tech.

Someone else might be getting fired for this kind of relatively elementary mistake, given the wear rates of chips are known and the expected usage.

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258408

Postby dspp » October 17th, 2019, 9:59 am

BobbyD wrote:Tesla Model S P100D Vs Porsche Taycan Turbo S At The Strip - https://insideevs.com/news/376542/video ... he-taycan/


Displays on older models of Tesla electric vehicles are bricking because of shoddy flash memory, according to reports in Inside EVs and Motherboard.

The specific problem is with an onboard NAND-based flash storage chip, the eMMC, which is embedded in some models of Tesla’s Media Control Unit (primarily MCUv1, though MCUv2 may be affected to a lesser degree). Experts told both sites that Tesla’s cars are writing so many logs to the chip that the cars are wearing out the flash chips—an issue that is technically inevitable , but is happening a lot sooner than it should. The chip’s failure screws with functions on the Tesla’s touchscreen, which users on forums wrote could make driving the car inconvenient or even slightly dangerous (issues claimed include loss of the ability to defrost windows or charge the car).

057 Technology’s Jason Hughes told Inside EVs that when the 8 gigabyte flash card was not an issue, but over the years “Tesla’s firmware image size has gone from about 300MB to the full 1GB maximum size.” Hughes added that while the chip is designed to minimize long-term degradation via a technique called wear leveling, in which it spreads wear across “unused sections of the flash memory to extend the effective number of write cycles available,” the onboard computer also creates “excessive” logs. Along with other data caching, this results in “no free space left for additional wear leveling to compensate for the excessive log writing,” Hughes told the site.

The result is data corruption and major issues with the car. This takes years to happen (the issue is reportedly happening in cars at least four years old), but the loss of the digital dashboard is a bigger issue for Teslas than other cars. It’s also unusual for flash memory to burn out before other parts in most electronics, Tom’s Hardware noted.

“I see it in the wild,” YouTuber Rich Benoit, who repairs Teslas, told Motherboard. “I own a shop that repairs these cars and the older vehicles are starting to show their signs of age.”


- https://gizmodo.com/flash-memory-on-som ... 1839084282

Some older Teslas are spontaneously bricking because their embedded flash memory is wearing out, according to three independent Tesla repair professionals who have studied the issue.

The issue is with a flash storage chip called the eMMC that is embedded on a board called the MCU1. According to experts who have studied the problem, Teslas are writing vehicle logs to this flash storage chip so much that it eventually goes bad. The issue has been known in the Tesla community since at least May, when Tesla repair YouTuber Rich Benoit spoke to another Tesla repair professional named Phil Sadow about it in a video.

“Tesla’s got a problem. They create so many logs in the car, they write to [the chip] so fast that it basically burns them out. They have a finite amount of writes,” Sadow said in the video. “When this burns out, you wake up to a black screen [in the car’s center console.] There’s nothing there. No climate control. You can generally drive the car, but it won’t charge.”


- https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/qvgx ... tesla-cars


Flash memory does wear out. We encountered this issue at work in a design we were working on and it is indeed something to take seriously if doing industrial stuff (which a car is). I have no insight into the quality of the flash supplier that Tesla are using, so I would be reluctant to throw words like 'shoddy' about loosely. There are better and worse flash makers in this respect.

This won't be a Tesla specific thing, but I suspect Tesla will be more exposed to it than others because of the design. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see replacenable flash in future designs. How replaceable is it in the current designs (HW3, 2.5, 2 ?) ?

regards, dspp

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258427

Postby dspp » October 17th, 2019, 11:06 am

SUV trends meet BEV trends
courtesy John Kemp Reuters
https://www.iea.org/newsroom/news/2019/ ... -mark.html

- dspp

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258470

Postby dspp » October 17th, 2019, 1:22 pm

US defence gets ready to lob $$$ at Space X Starlink
https://www.janes.com/article/91995/aus ... challenges
- dspp

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258479

Postby BobbyD » October 17th, 2019, 1:43 pm

odysseus2000 wrote:Rather naughty of Tesla to have not prevented this issue by wear levelling or different tech.

Someone else might be getting fired for this kind of relatively elementary mistake, given the wear rates of chips are known and the expected usage.

Regards,


dspp wrote:Flash memory does wear out. We encountered this issue at work in a design we were working on and it is indeed something to take seriously if doing industrial stuff (which a car is). I have no insight into the quality of the flash supplier that Tesla are using, so I would be reluctant to throw words like 'shoddy' about loosely. There are better and worse flash makers in this respect.

This won't be a Tesla specific thing, but I suspect Tesla will be more exposed to it than others because of the design. I wouldn't be at all surprised to see replacenable flash in future designs. How replaceable is it in the current designs (HW3, 2.5, 2 ?) ?

regards, dspp


Whilst not Tesla specific I suspect it might be Tesla disposed given their comparatively higher geek factor, and their idea that their cars are in large part mobile transmission and reception units, or OTA as they like to call it. There is no particular reason that a BEV should generate any more data than an ICE as far as I can see, and yet this isn't a problem anybody else seems to have had. AD might be a source of large amounts of logged data, but nobody else uses their customers to beta test experimental systems in the wild.

Apparently this is the relevant circuit boardand chip:

Image

Image

- Photos from https://translate.google.com/translate? ... chips.html

Google translate used.

No idea how difficult it is to extract the board in the first place.

Also found this:

Many stories out there tell that the flash storage (eMMC) on MCU1 will wear out sooner or later. This is known with flash memory and at that moment your Tesla will die. It won't charge and possibly only drive in limb-mode.

I have a 2013 S85 and a 2018 100D and the first one still has an MCU1 which has been running for 5,5 years now.

If the MCU dies Tesla will charge EUR 3000 (I'm in Europe) for a MCU replacement while only a small memory chip has failed.


- Price of course is not necessarily related to cost.

I'm not sure how his attempt to swap out the memory himself went, but the thread is 22 pages long...

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258482

Postby dspp » October 17th, 2019, 1:51 pm

BobbyD wrote:
Apparently this is the relevant circuit boardand chip:


Also found this:

Many stories out there tell that the flash storage (eMMC) on MCU1 will wear out sooner or later. This is known with flash memory and at that moment your Tesla will die. It won't charge and possibly only drive in limb-mode.

I have a 2013 S85 and a 2018 100D and the first one still has an MCU1 which has been running for 5,5 years now.

If the MCU dies Tesla will charge EUR 3000 (I'm in Europe) for a MCU replacement while only a small memory chip has failed.


- Price of course is not necessarily related to cost.

I'm not sure how his attempt to swap out the memory himself went, but the thread is 22 pages long...


Thank you very much BD.

That photo does not seem to indicate a socketed flash. Nor does the €3,000 for a replacement. I don't have the time to drill into this - have you figured out whether this is socketed or not ?

All electronics is susceptible to this, it is not just a Tesla thing.

regards, dspp

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Re: Musk endeavours

#258493

Postby BobbyD » October 17th, 2019, 2:28 pm

dspp wrote:Thank you very much BD.

That photo does not seem to indicate a socketed flash. Nor does the €3,000 for a replacement. I don't have the time to drill into this - have you figured out whether this is socketed or not ?



Forgot the link to the thread https://teslamotorsclub.com/tmc/threads ... u1.152489/

He is (as of May 13th, but I haven't read much further) planning on getting a local electronics shop to help with desoldering, so my suspicion is it isn't socketed but based on one piece of evidence of unknown quality.

dspp wrote:All electronics is susceptible to this, it is not just a Tesla thing.



I'm not suggesting that the same chip would perform worse in a Tesla, my suspicion is that a Tesla performs more writes, and so the same chip would show degradation sooner in a Tesla than in another car.


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