Tesla videos - Want to know about Tesla?

Just thought of sharing some tesla videos that I am following. Can't wait for Tesla to come to Malaysia!

Could this be how Tesla is going to utilise the Maxwel super capacitor technology?

Date: 3rd August 2019

Just happened to come across this video by ElectroBOOM who teaches people interesting things in electrical engineering. Infinite range... that's something nice to think about.

Tesla’s Autonomy (aka RoboTaxi) Day | In Depth

Date: 24th April 2019

Zac and Jesse summarised the presentation much better than me so just watch the whole video~

Tesla Autonomy Day

Date: 23rd April 2019

Tesla does a presentation on autonomous driving.

Superior hardware (chip)

Presentation starts with former Apple chip designer showing how far ahead Tesla's chip is compared to NVIDIA's chips, with processing capabilities 7 times better than what is currently available in the market. These chips are installed in all Tesla cars currently being produced.

Superior real world data for AI deep learning

Then came the presentation from the software side on how Tesla uses AI deep learning to train the cars to recognise things on the road which is in constant improvement and easily deployed to vehicles on the road through an over the air update. The improvement can be made by collecting video samples and having humans label and feed it to the neural net or the neural net can train itself for example the radar sensor in the front of tesla vehicles which are very good at detecting distance can tran the neural net to judge distance based on vision.

Tesla has more real time data than all the other car companies combined thanks to the fleet of Tesla vehicles that are currently on the road, recording from all their cameras and sensors.

Lidar

Other companies working towards autonomous driving like Waymo are using lidar in their approach. CEO Elon Musk who has personally spearheaded the use of lidar in space X's rocket docking expresses that lidar is expensive and unnecessary in the case of autonomous driving. When asked about the potential of redundent information collected from lidar as a way to improve the training of neural net, Elon Musk pulls out an interesting physics point that because lidar is lasers shooting out of a ball, there is no point in having redundency in the same wavelength as vision (light). It is better to use radar because it has different wavelength and hence different penetrance, for example when there is a fog, lidar will not be able to see through it but radar will.

My personal opinion although I am not an engineer, I still have the impression that lidar may add some value in the neural net training but due to the cost factor, I agree that lidar is not the way to go. Higher cost means more expensive cars which makes it out of reach for a larger prpportion of the popullation. Hence, less cars on the road, less real time data collectable.

According to Elon Musk, once vision is solved, lidar will be useless.

High definition mapping in a geofenced area

This is the approach by Waymo and Elon Musk doesn't think that this is a good idea as according to him, once there is a change in environment, the car will just stop working. GPS should never be primary, vision should be primary.

Robotaxi - Tesla Fleet

Tesla aims to compete in the ride hailing business by having full self driving robo taxis. Tesla owners can put the cars to work and earn an income rather than letting it sit idle in the parking lot or garage. Tesla might take 20 to 30% of the revenue. In areas where supply for rides exceeds demands, tesla will have their own robo taxis deployed to the area. Elon Musk predicts that Tesla will become extremely cash flow positive once robo taxi is activated.

Full self driving safer than human intervention

This sounds abit far fetched but Elon Musk predicts that one day autonomous driving will be so much safer than human driving that it will be absurd to have humans drive and there would be no need for a steering wheel in the car.

Currently, cars with autopilot turned on is at least twice as safe as a human driver without autopilot on but human intervention is still required. In Elon time, self driving will be feature complete (meaning level 4 or 5 autonomy where the driver can sleep behind the wheel) by next year. However he expressed previously that timelines are extremely difficult to predict when things are growing at an exponential rate.

Other cars are too far behind

There has been rumours about the next Tesla killer but to date, not a single car is better than Tesla's Model S back in 2012. "It's been 7 years.. I'm still waiting". Elon Musk makes a bold statement that at this point of time, it is stupid to buy any other car, other than a Tesla, because of the self driving capability. It is like buying a horse.

Closing remarks, the neural network is like our brain and the eight cameras on the car detecting vision is like our eyes with a much better vantage point. In my opinion, full self driving is in Aswath Damodaran's words, possible, plausible, and probable, but there are lots of obstacles than need to be overcome before the human factor can be pulled out of the equation. Can AI handle the messy road conditions in developing countries like India? How would AI handle it if there was an ambulance sounding a siren from behind and needs cars to give way?

Dear Tesla Haters... | Teslanomics with Ben Sullins

Date: 20th April 2019

Argument against Tesla bears' argument that electric cars are releasing more CO2 when they charge usiing energy derived from oil.

Surprising Uber Riders with a Tesla Model 3!

Date: 2nd April 2019

Watch people's reactions when experiencing the Tesla Model 3 for their first time.

Tesla Advanced Summon | In Depth

Date: 27th March 2019

Tesla's advanced summon could become it's own way advertising. Still amazed that Tesla is growing so big but has not spent a single cent on comercial advertising. A good product sells itself by word of mouth.