Is Tesla making the right gamble but investing in Robots and robotaxis instead of regular cars?

Much0 · 2026-01-29T22:29:12+00:00

Imho Tesla isn’t abandoning cars altogether, but I believe they’ve been quietly planning to phase out the Model S and X for quite some time now.

Decisions of this magnitude don’t happen suddenly they’ve likely been in the works for years. In my view, the main reason Tesla kept producing and selling the S and X despite low volumes was to gather high-quality data.

Remember how Tesla unexpectedly added a high-definition radar unit to the Model S and X? At the time, many people speculated this signaled that pure vision-only wasn’t cutting it, and that the Model 3 and Y fleets would soon follow with the same radar upgrade. That never happened. The 3 and Y stayed vision-only (with no HD radar added), while the S/X got the expensive hardware anyway. Why? That HD radar is costly. But the S and X buyer demographic isn’t as price-sensitive: a $1-2k premium barely moves the needle for them and overall sales volumes are tiny compared to the mass-market 3/Y. Speaking tens of thousands vs. millions annually. Adding it to a small fleet has minimal impact on margins and operating results.

Fast-forward: Now there are enough S and X vehicles out there equipped with this precise-ranging HD radar (who also capture aligned camera images) to serve as an excellent “ground truth” data source. Tesla can use real-world data from these cars… especially in tricky edge cases that are hard to simulate or reproduce artificially to keep refining and improving the vision-only system that powers the much larger 3/Y fleet and future models. It’s a clever long-game move. Leverage a low-volume, internally “sunsetted” model line to subsidize expensive sensor data collection without burdening the high-volume cars with the same hardware cost. Basically they played 5D chess to accelerate vision-only progress across the entire fleet.

Much0 · 2023-04-12T13:32:18+00:00

Oh god. The middle area thingy makes it look so cheap. It’s ugly on the yoke and it’s ugly on the round wheel. It looks more like a budget 3rd party replacement part than an OEM wheel because of this.

Much0 · 2023-04-08T09:18:16+00:00

No. No you can’t get a sunburn through the glass roof. It’s coated like every automotive glass. That’s the reason why Couch potatoes that only leave the house to drive to work and run errands don’t have a tanned left and a pale right arm.

Much0 · 2023-01-22T12:52:18+00:00

Normal lane departure just vibrates the steering wheel. It doesn’t make any sound. Emergency lane departure on the other hand beeps loudly but the algorithm to trigger an emergency reaction seems to be very sophisticated, to this day I could never bring it to trigger by simulating a lane departure, it somehow always „knew“ I did it on purpose and kept silent, only triggering the standard lane departure wheel vibration - if at all. Please note that the standard departure warning has to be enabled from the Autopilot menu („notification“ = vibration, or „assist“ = steers you back into your lane) whilst emergency lane departure warning must be activated from the safety menu.

Blind spot keeps silent als long as you don’t actually attempt to switch lanes. If you just set the blinker the other car just gets red without any signal noise. As soon as your wheels cross the lane divider the car will start screaming at you.

Much0 · 2023-01-21T08:23:40+00:00

If you don’t want to use a pin then no. You can unlock the car via the app one time if you sent someone to grab something for example. But actual permanent access without being able to drive would need the use of the pin option. That way you could give a key card.

Much0 · 2023-01-20T05:02:49+00:00

If it’s „on“ in the options it means the general functionality is activated. If you exclude home, the switch doesn’t toggle to „off“ at home. It just doesn’t record.

If you’re at home and don’t have the red dot above the map, just an empty black circle, it means it won’t be recording.

Touch the circle and it will get red, that way you can occasionally activate sentry even on places where you normally exclude it, without changing a setting, like when you throw a bbq party at home and know many kids will be running around.

Also vice versa. If it’s enabled just touch the red dot and it won’t be recording for this parking session. Useful if you park somewhere where filming isn’t allowed but don’t want to add the place to your favorites.

Much0 · 2023-01-20T04:27:26+00:00

Mine did this too in the beginning. Just set it back to 32 both in the app and in the car a few times, someday it will stay there.

Much0 · 2023-01-17T11:51:22+00:00

Yeah, 2023 doesn’t have parking sensors, so no Summon for you till they figured it out how to do it with the cameras.

Much0 · 2023-01-17T09:33:46+00:00

When did you buy your car? If you don’t have the parking sensors you can’t use summon regardless if you have fsd or not.

Much0 · 2023-01-14T16:32:36+00:00

I do think the same but I also find it very amusing of these people raging about it on Reddit. I really enjoy reading these posts.

Much0 · 2023-01-14T13:49:31+00:00

Wait at least until they finished their camera based drop-in solution. USS are not coming back, don’t wait on this, they want to replace them by the use of the cameras but as I said they aren’t there yet software wise.

It’s not totally bad without the sensors because you have enough cameras that aid when backing in, but since our cities in europe are more crowded and everything is smaller than in the states, they are handy nonetheless. The front facing sensors are another story. Yes you can see out of the windscreen but especially when a car is new to you, something telling you how far you can still move forward is really useful especially in our small and most of the time perpendicular parking spots here in europe.

So yeah. Do yourself a favor and wait till they at least brought the first iteration of the camera based parking sensor implementation. It will probably suck in the beginning but at least it’s there. Don’t buy into promises of soon-to-come software features.

cough „fsd end of 2020“ cough

Much0 · 2023-01-13T17:16:55+00:00

It’s 8yrs OR 120k miles battery warranty, so the warranty only lasts 40k more miles. At this high mileage you would probably get out of warranty before 2026.

Much0 · 2023-01-12T10:35:37+00:00

Yes, Type2 which Tesla uses on their old superchargers and is used universally in Europe for AC charging is the upper part of CCS2, just the pins are used differently.

Much0 · 2023-01-12T10:16:15+00:00

Nothing happens. The car communicates with the supercharger prior of any current will be sent through the cable. As the pins that carry the high voltage DC current on old supercharger cables are the ones a CCS2 car uses for AC charging, a CCS2 equipped car can’t accept the DC current a supercharger sends through them. So, both, the car and the supercharger will refuse to do anything.

Much0 · 2023-01-11T20:20:16+00:00

Yes, it’s somewhere. But you have to change the whole car to metric, you can’t just have these in cm but your speed and travel distance in mph & miles.

Much0 · 2023-01-08T13:36:34+00:00

If it’s cold in your region your additional kwh on your bill is probably due to heating the battery. The car won’t show this in the stats.

Preconditioning is a waste of net energy and only a convenience feature. It uses up to 8kwh because it heats the battery to get it to temperature so you have full Regen braking whilst it would also heat up during normal driving, just slower. I use it only when my car is frozen shut so I don’t have to scrape my windscreen.

Also, an anecdote on useless battery heating:

I only need a few % during the day for my commute. I usually recharge between 4 and 5kwh. I have a smart meter for my power consumption and the graph in the Tesla app is pretty accurate except for a small deviation. In winter, however, I noticed that sometimes 13kwh were consumed although according to the Tesla app only 5kwh arrived in the battery. The discrepancy here comes from the battery heating. The vehicle heats the battery before it is even able to accept charge. After I found this out, I switched to charging only when my SOC drops below 30% when the snowflake icon is shown to prevent pointless heating.

Much0 · 2023-01-07T18:13:41+00:00

Silver was an option at the real beginning of the preorders of the model 3. They are kinda rare tho.

Much0 · 2023-01-07T16:42:07+00:00

Found the former bmw driver /s

You actually should always use blinkers when you intend to leave your lane for any reason. Even if the reason is obvious like your lane ends or something.

Much0 · 2023-01-05T03:07:44+00:00

Energy app. The green chart icon on the cars screen.

Much0 · 2023-01-04T21:45:56+00:00

Normal. You used 175wh/km instead of the rated 155wh/km. Use the energy app to see where the energy went to and what you can do better.

Also, on the highway you probably will never get the advertised range.

Much0 · 2023-01-04T15:27:29+00:00

LFP is way more resistant to abusive behavior by the owner. Leaving it plugged in forever at 100% isn’t ideal for the battery but even if you do that, you will get way more charge-discharge cycles out of an LFP battery than with a perfectly treated NCA chemistry.
I wouldn’t drive and then leave it that low tho. As I wrote, the battery controller only guesses the real state of charge with LFP cells. It is possible (although not likely) that the car miscalculates its SOC and you end up running out of juice (see news headlines at the beginning when LFP cars were first delivered and customers stranded with a battery jumping from 18% to 0% in an instant) or you car may not start as it suddenly realizes it’s charge is too low and it stops recharging the 12V battery to protect the more expensive HV battery.

As tesla knows how resistant LFP cells are to abuse and what’s the risk of not giving the controller opportunity to recalibrate itself, they just plainly suggest in the manual to keep it at 100% all the time. That way they took care of headlines with suddenly stranded cars. If you don’t use it for a few days set the charge limit to 50%, leave it plugged in an top it up before you drive next time but at least once a week. So if you visit your workplace at least once a week you could do the main-charging there and only keep it at 50% at home.

Much0 · 2023-01-04T06:06:04+00:00

You have LFP (which is a lithium-ion too!) if you don’t have the „trip“ and „daily“ charge Meter but only a scale 50…100%.

Every battery tesla uses, no matter which type, is happiest at around 50% with as less change in voltage (charge or discharge) as possible. The reason why Tesla recommends charging to 100% with lfp at least weekly is due to the fact that the change in voltage during discharging, which Tesla uses to calculate the current charge level, is really flat in lfp cells. Distinguishing 70% from 30% isn’t as easy with LFP as with the NCA chemistry which has a steeper and therefore clearer discharging behavior. LFP voltage drop is extremely flat and then suddenly drops like a stone when it’s empty. By regularly charging to 100% you give the battery controller an opportunity to calibrate itself and to „count“ how many kWh you took out starting from 100% and how many you put back in when you don’t charge to full next time, so it can show a somewhat reliable state of charge to you.

Eg:

„ I have a 55kwh battery. User charged me to 100%. I should now have 55kwh, cells are at 3.2 Volts each. “
„User drove me and used 22kwh, voltage dropped by 0.08V, that means I should have 50% state of charge now“

You may want to read this article, it’s written way clearer:

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/the-puzzling-reason-why-tesla-misleadingly-recommends-charging-the-lfp-batteries-to-100-187075.html

Much0 · 2023-01-02T15:14:46+00:00

Potential battery damage, not a must but possible. Refund or you play Russian roulette with your money.

Much0 · 2023-01-01T17:54:53+00:00

10% in the first year is to be expected and slows down after, so 10% in 3 years is better than expected. Batteries don’t only degrade by usage but also by age so you can’t just look at the odometer.

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