Perhaps the BEST B1G Forum anywhere, here at College Football Fan Site, CFB51!!!

Tesla could ultimately become viable. Musk is an odd businessman, though, and in some senses I am not convinced he cares. No doubt he cares that it succeeds *enough* to accomplish his ends, but if you take him at his word - and maybe we should - his primary aim isn't the standard deal about personal wealth, it's the ambition (and associated ego, I'm sure) of making it economically viable to reduce average citizen carbon footprint by popularizing EVs. And Tesla doesn't have to last a century to accomplish that. It just has to last long enough to durably alter the market, namely of the major manufacturers.

I believe most of Tesla's batteries are now built in their Nevada gigafactory. My understanding is that the reason they haven't sold as many PowerWalls (residential batteries) as expected is because they've been prioritizing utility scale systems (eg. the biggest system ever in Australia last year).

The way Tesla can still distinguish itself from other auto companies is if they actually come through with implementing fully autonomous driving before the others do and associated ride-sharing systems and the like. Musk has overpromised and underdelivered too many times to think they'll pull that off, though....

I believe most of Tesla's batteries are now built in their Nevada gigafactory. My understanding is that the reason they haven't sold as many PowerWalls (residential batteries) as expected is because they've been prioritizing utility scale systems (eg. the biggest system ever in Australia last year).

Tesla's battery cells are built in their Nevada GF... By Panasonic. Then Tesla assembles them into packs. Tesla at this point doesn't produce the actual cells for the automotive batteries. 

The way Tesla can still distinguish itself from other auto companies is if they actually come through with implementing fully autonomous driving before the others do and associated ride-sharing systems and the like. Musk has overpromised and underdelivered too many times to think they'll pull that off, though....

I agree that it can distinguish itself via implementing fully autonomous, but their whole "1M robotaxis" thing is daft IMHO. The robotaxi business model can make sense, but I don't think it will make sense in a Model 3 type vehicle, as I don't think people will lend out a $40-50K vehicle for Joe Schmoe to ride in. If I had a Model 3, I wouldn't dare trust it as a robotaxi, given the concern about what shape it might come back in. Most of the people who can afford a brand-new Model 3 are hopefully not stretching so far that the extra income from a robotaxi is worth the hassle, or else they shouldn't have bought such an expensive vehicle.

That said, if they figure out autonomous, they could use the Model 3 single motor powertrain, in a completely dumbed down and ruggedized body and interior, and they might have something there.  Suck as much cost out of it as possible, replaced with investment in durability, and you might be ok.

I got a Survey Monkey survey the other day, and it was about the ethics of autonomous cars.  It hypothesized a situation in which an autonomous car had to choose between seriously injuring its passenger or seriously injuring two bicyclists.  How should it be programmed?  Who should make the decisions on how it should be programmed?  Should there be legal remedies for people who are injured as a result of the ethical programming of an autonomous car?  Things like that.

One theory is that as autonomous cars and ride sharing services become popular, they end up as gateways to public transit--especially rail/longer haul mass transit.

The more humans stop driving cars, the fewer ethical dilemmas car programmers will have to sort out. And minimizing serious injury seems like a pretty obvious default.

One theory is that as autonomous cars and ride sharing services become popular, they end up as gateways to public transit--especially rail/longer haul mass transit.

I disagree.

Fundamentally long haul mass transit is a tiny amount of passenger miles traveled. Right now it's a drive/bus/rail/air conundrum. Reduction of personal auto ownership will certainly increase the bus/rail/air component of long-haul travel, but it'll still be a tiny subset of total vehicle miles traveled. 

See here: https://www.bts.gov/content/us-vehicle-miles

Long haul via transit today is <1% of total vehicle miles. I can't break out what percentage long-haul car transit exists, but if it's higher than 5% I'd be shocked. So even if it results in a HUGE increase to rail/long haul transit, that's not that big of a difference to total vehicle miles.

Short-distance transit will forever have its own problem, however. When you have to take 50-60 passengers (bus) or a few hundred passengers (light rail) from point A to point B, you need routes that are common to those passengers. Every 1000 feet of deviation from the pickup or dropoff points hurts your adoption of transit because that's distance that must be walked. What good is transit if it drops you off 1.2 miles from where you're going?

What autonomous cars and ride-hailing does is move us to a more transit-blind mindset, where people perhaps take buses or rail when it happens to be going where they want or use ride-hailing services when transit doesn't go where they want. I suspect that transit should end up cheaper per-mile than ride-hailing, because of network effects, so it would be a reason to use transit if it happens to go where you're headed.

Still, for too many people, the idea will be ride-hailing from home to a transit station, riding transit, then ride-hailing to the actual destination, and I think that in a GREAT many cases that will be both more costly and more time-consuming than just ride-hailing from home to destination. 

MARTA is $2.50 per ride, until you reach 65 ($1).  For us to get to the airport on Uber is about $24 with tip and tax.  To get to a MARTA station is probably mostly tip, call it $6.  So, it's cheaper but no Uber on the airport end.  And midday traffic .... not good often as not.

We've learned to drive in certain "holes" in the day, around 9-11 AM and 1-3 PM, or after 8 PM.

Autonomous Uber would be cheaper one supposes, no tip for one thing.  And I'd use it to get to a MARTA station if it was rainy etc.  The station is about a thousand meters.  We usually walk it.