Steve Jobs was said to operate his own “reality distortion field”, persuading others to believe in the seemingly impossible.
Tesla’s CEO, Elon Musk, has tapped into similar powers. But on Monday, when he hosted his company’s autonomy demonstration, reality remained stubbornly intact.
Mr Musk, along with several senior managers, spent hours showcasing an area of technology, autonomous driving, where Tesla doesn’t enjoy quite the same pioneering reputation it has in vehicle electrification. Certainly, the first presentation – Peter Bannon, vice president of silicon engineering, on the company’s “full self-driving,” or FSD, computer – seemed squarely aimed at establishing Tesla’s technical bona fides, even if it sometimes ran the risk of leaving non-geeks somewhat bewildered (sample line: “In this network, of the 35 billion operations, almost all of them are Convolution, which is based on dot product; the rest are Deconvolution, also based on dot product; and then ReLu and Pooling, which are relatively simple operations.")
But the longer things wore on, the less credible it seemed. Bold claim followed bold claim. Lidar, the sensor technology favoured by most other developers of autonomous vehicles, was declared “lame”, with Mr Musk predicting his rivals would eventually wake up and ditch it or be “doomed”. Could he be right? Perhaps. But it’s a big ask to have us accept that everyone else working on this is just being stupid when Tesla has spent the past year or so struggling with the process of manufacturing and delivering cars.
The most interesting claims concerned robotaxis. The idea of Tesla owners being able to send their prized vehicles hither and yon autonomously to earn money offering rides has been around for a few years. Now Mr Musk says there will be a million potential Tesla robotaxis on the road sometime in 2020, just waiting for a software update that will unleash their earning power, perhaps $30,000 apiece in annual gross profits.
I may well be lame, but I wonder if there really will be a million autonomous Teslas each earning an average gross margin of $30,000 as they ply the streets for business next year or maybe even the year after that. This is partly because, as Mr Musk acknowledged himself on Monday, his guidance can be a little off when it comes to timing. Back in October 2016, Tesla boasted in a blog post that “All Tesla Cars Being Produced Now Have Full Self-Driving Hardware”, which was essentially also the message from Monday’s show-and-tell.
I don’t appear to be alone either. Because if the market really bought the idea that Tesla had essentially mastered full self-driving almost to the point where a vehicle costing less than $40,000 had a net present value of, as Mr Musk said, $200,000 due to its earnings power, there is no way Tesla’s stock would have gone down and stayed down on Monday.
Possibly, like me, investors were puzzled at the very idea of discounting a theoretical gross margin to come up with a net present value (a bit like looking at your pre-tax wages and shouting “woo-hoo!” Homer Simpson-style). They may also have wondered why a company would even sell a vehicle supposedly worth north of $200,000 for less than $40,000 in the first place, rather than just keeping it and running it themselves.
There was more. Asked how much money Tesla was spending on autonomous technology, Mr Musk said it was essentially “the entire cost structure”. That’s just odd when you consider Tesla definitely spends money on production lines for existing vehicles, along with retail operations and its solar and battery businesses – and has been trying to slash those costs to the bone.
Asked about financing, Mr Musk indicated Tesla would be roughly cash-flow neutral while it was building out its autonomous fleet “around the world”, before becoming strongly cash-flow positive. What exactly “cash-flow neutral/positive” means at this point is up for debate. But only last October, Mr Musk suggested Tesla could be “positive cash flow” in all quarters apart from those, like the last one, where it was repaying debt. Has that now been deferred until after the robofleet has been deployed in numbers in, ahem, 2020?
As of Tuesday morning’s pre-game, Tesla’s stock had slipped below $260, a level that has formed something of a floor for much of the past two years. Like the shrug that greeted the Model Y’s unveiling last month, this ambivalence in the face of apparently game-changing technology should trouble Tesla bulls.
To be clear, at 125 times estimated adjusted earnings for 2019, the stock is still priced for a jet-pack future. The halo effect of past achievements, such as the Model S, remains and there can be little doubt that Tesla’s products have loyal fans. But maybe too much has happened in the past year, from fanciful takeover deals to u-turn strategic shifts to a sudden drop in demand, for yet another declaration of intent to engender an instant rally. Real numbers, in the form of what are almost certainly bad first-quarter results, are imminent.
Try to distort reality too much, and eventually you merely reinforce it.
Bloomberg
Brief scores:
Day 1
Toss: South Africa, field first
Pakistan (1st innings) 177: Sarfraz 56, Masood 44; Olivier 4-48
South Africa (1st innings) 123-2: Markram 78; Masood 1-4
The BIO:
He became the first Emirati to climb Mount Everest in 2011, from the south section in Nepal
He ascended Mount Everest the next year from the more treacherous north Tibetan side
By 2015, he had completed the Explorers Grand Slam
Last year, he conquered K2, the world’s second-highest mountain located on the Pakistan-Chinese border
He carries dried camel meat, dried dates and a wheat mixture for the final summit push
His new goal is to climb 14 peaks that are more than 8,000 metres above sea level
MATCH INFO
Inter Milan 2 (Vecino 65', Barella 83')
Verona 1 (Verre 19' pen)
Specs
Engine: Dual-motor all-wheel-drive electric
Range: Up to 610km
Power: 905hp
Torque: 985Nm
Price: From Dh439,000
Available: Now
Ultra processed foods
- Carbonated drinks, sweet or savoury packaged snacks, confectionery, mass-produced packaged breads and buns
- margarines and spreads; cookies, biscuits, pastries, cakes, and cake mixes, breakfast cereals, cereal and energy bars;
- energy drinks, milk drinks, fruit yoghurts and fruit drinks, cocoa drinks, meat and chicken extracts and instant sauces
- infant formulas and follow-on milks, health and slimming products such as powdered or fortified meal and dish substitutes,
- many ready-to-heat products including pre-prepared pies and pasta and pizza dishes, poultry and fish nuggets and sticks, sausages, burgers, hot dogs, and other reconstituted meat products, powdered and packaged instant soups, noodles and desserts.
Get inspired
Here are a couple of Valentine’s Day food products that may or may not go the distance (but have got the internet talking anyway).
Sourdough sentiments: Marks & Spencer in the United Kingdom has introduced a slow-baked sourdough loaf dusted with flour to spell out I (heart) you, at £2 (Dh9.5). While it’s not available in the UAE, there’s nothing to stop you taking the idea and creating your own message of love, stencilled on breakfast-inbed toast.
Crisps playing cupid: Crisp company Tyrells has added a spicy addition to its range for Valentine’s Day. The brand describes the new honey and chilli flavour on Twitter as: “A tenderly bracing duo of the tantalising tingle of chilli with sweet and sticky honey. A helping hand to get your heart racing.” Again, not on sale here, but if you’re tempted you could certainly fashion your own flavour mix (spicy Cheetos and caramel popcorn, anyone?).
The White Lotus: Season three
Creator: Mike White
Starring: Walton Goggins, Jason Isaacs, Natasha Rothwell
Rating: 4.5/5
Scotland v Ireland:
Scotland (15-1): Stuart Hogg; Tommy Seymour, Huw Jones, Sam Johnson, Sean Maitland; Finn Russell, Greig Laidlaw (capt); Josh Strauss, James Ritchie, Ryan Wilson; Jonny Gray, Grant Gilchrist; Simon Berghan, Stuart McInally, Allan Dell
Replacements: Fraser Brown, Jamie Bhatti, D'arcy Rae, Ben Toolis, Rob Harley, Ali Price, Pete Horne, Blair Kinghorn
Coach: Gregor Townsend (SCO)
Ireland (15-1): Rob Kearney; Keith Earls, Chris Farrell, Bundee Aki, Jacob Stockdale; Jonathan Sexton, Conor Murray; Jack Conan, Sean O'Brien, Peter O'Mahony; James Ryan, Quinn Roux; Tadhg Furlong, Rory Best (capt), Cian Healy
Replacements: Sean Cronin, Dave Kilcoyne, Andrew Porter, Ultan Dillane, Josh van der Flier, John Cooney, Joey Carbery, Jordan Larmour
Coach: Joe Schmidt (NZL)
Tightening the screw on rogue recruiters
The UAE overhauled the procedure to recruit housemaids and domestic workers with a law in 2017 to protect low-income labour from being exploited.
Only recruitment companies authorised by the government are permitted as part of Tadbeer, a network of labour ministry-regulated centres.
A contract must be drawn up for domestic workers, the wages and job offer clearly stating the nature of work.
The contract stating the wages, work entailed and accommodation must be sent to the employee in their home country before they depart for the UAE.
The contract will be signed by the employer and employee when the domestic worker arrives in the UAE.
Only recruitment agencies registered with the ministry can undertake recruitment and employment applications for domestic workers.
Penalties for illegal recruitment in the UAE include fines of up to Dh100,000 and imprisonment
But agents not authorised by the government sidestep the law by illegally getting women into the country on visit visas.
Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
- Premier League-standard football pitch
- 400m Olympic running track
- NBA-spec basketball court with auditorium
- 600-seat auditorium
- Spaces for historical and cultural exploration
- An elevated football field that doubles as a helipad
- Specialist robotics and science laboratories
- AR and VR-enabled learning centres
- Disruption Lab and Research Centre for developing entrepreneurial skills
Killing of Qassem Suleimani
MATCH INFO
Day 1 at Mount Maunganui
England 241-4
Denly 74, Stokes 67 not out, De Grandhomme 2-28
New Zealand
Yet to bat
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
MATCH INFO
Uefa Champions League final:
Who: Real Madrid v Liverpool
Where: NSC Olimpiyskiy Stadium, Kiev, Ukraine
When: Saturday, May 26, 10.45pm (UAE)
TV: Match on BeIN Sports
F1 The Movie
Starring: Brad Pitt, Damson Idris, Kerry Condon, Javier Bardem
Director: Joseph Kosinski
Rating: 4/5
Things Heard & Seen
Directed by: Shari Springer Berman, Robert Pulcini
Starring: Amanda Seyfried, James Norton
2/5
ELIO
Starring: Yonas Kibreab, Zoe Saldana, Brad Garrett
Directors: Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, Adrian Molina
Rating: 4/5
COMPANY PROFILE
Name: Mamo Year it started: 2019 Founders: Imad Gharazeddine, Asim Janjua Based: Dubai, UAE Number of employees: 28 Sector: Financial services Investment: $9.5m Funding stage: Pre-Series A Investors: Global Ventures, GFC, 4DX Ventures, AlRajhi Partners, Olive Tree Capital, and prominent Silicon Valley investors. RESULTS FOR STAGE 4
Stage 4 Dubai to Hatta, 197 km, Road race.
Overall leader Primoz Roglic SLO (Team Jumbo - Visma)
Stage winners: 1. Caleb Ewan AUS (Lotto - Soudal) 2. Matteo Moschetti ITA (Trek - Segafredo) 3. Primoz Roglic SLO (Team Jumbo - Visma)
CONFIRMED%20LINE-UP
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