Welcome to the Hyperdrive daily briefing, decoding the revolution reshaping the auto world, from EVs to self-driving cars and beyond.
News Briefs
Showtime for Musk
In April 2019, Tesla held its first-ever Autonomy Day at its headquarters in Palo Alto, California. CEO Elon Musk laid out a vision of a robotaxi service that would be lucrative for both Tesla and its customers. Tesla raised more than $2 billion from Wall Street soon after.
In September 2020, there was Battery Day, at Tesla’s Fremont factory, which focused on the company’s plans to build its own cells in-house even as it continues to procure them from the world’s leading suppliers. Those battery cells — known as 4680s, after their bigger dimensions — are still in the works and not in high-volume production, which has contributed to delays for Tesla’s Cybertruck and Semi.
Now, on Thursday, Tesla will have AI Day, for artificial intelligence.
These events serve dual purposes: to help Tesla recruit the best and the brightest and keep investors bullish on the company’s future. The invitations say the event “will feature a keynote by Elon, hardware and software demos from Tesla engineers, test rides in Model S Plaid and more.” The action begins at 5 p.m. California time. Musk just confirmed there will be a livestream.
“Tesla AI Day will reveal some of our work spanning autonomous driving, supercomputing, chip design and beyond,” one Tesla employee wrote on LinkedIn. “We’re now building the strongest teams in the world for every one of these fields, so come watch to learn where we plan to go next, and consider joining!” Another employee said in a post that Tesla is now recruiting the best of the best silicon design verification engineers.
There’s a lot of speculation about what exactly will be revealed. Dennis Hong, the director of UCLA’s robotics and mechanisms lab, tweeted out a photo of what looks like a new Tesla chip. We should hear about Dojo, the powerful training computer Tesla is using to process and label vast amounts of video data that is key to autonomous driving development. And we may hear about Autobidder, Tesla’s software for independent power producers and utilities.
“We expect Tesla to discuss AI applications beyond autonomous driving, including for solar/storage software and advanced manufacturing in its factories,” analyst Mark Delaney of Goldman Sachs wrote in a research note Tuesday. “Tesla’s energy software leverages machine learning, forecasting, optimization and real-time control algorithms to reduce utility bills, increase renewable energy consumption, improve efficiency/uptime and enable microgrid.”
Musk isn’t always the most polished of presenters, though for many fans this is part of his charm. The U.S. investigation of a possible defect related to Tesla’s driver-assistance system Autopilot — made public just before the event — has hit its shares hard, costing the company more than $43 billion in market value in two days.
These showcases tend to work best for Musk when he delivers clear takeaways and doesn’t overwhelm with too many technical details. By now, Tesla watchers ought to know to temper expectations the CEO sets. He has a history of giving overly optimistic timelines (see: robotaxis) and even touting products Tesla ultimately abandons (remember battery swap stations?)
If you’ve got an AI Day invitation, I’d love to connect, as in-person impressions are always far better than what one can glean from a livestream. Give me a shout at 415-617-7231 or DM me on Twitter @danahull.
Before You Go
Nissan’s seventh-generation Z series sports car just made its debut. “This is part of our culture,” Chief Operating Officer Ashwani Gupta told Bloomberg’s Brett Haensel. “And I’m pretty sure that it will bring further momentum in our growth.” Sales start in the spring, with the Japanese carmaker pricing the two-door coupe in the $40,000 range. Auto writers audibly cheered when a manual transmission was mentioned and wasted little time debating whether there ought to be a plug-in version.
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August 18, 2021 at 05:40PM
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Tesla AI Day Doubles as Showcase to Recruit and Flaunt Future - Bloomberg
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