Sandy Munro lately gave an prolonged Q&A at TeslaCon Florida 2022. I used to be there as effectively, to offer a presentation on the state of the EV market and market tendencies. I recorded Sandy’s Q&A and was blissful I did, because it was stuffed with gems and different minerals. Under are a couple of video snippets of the Q&A and slightly textual content commentary and abstract for every.
On this first one, Sandy talks a bit about his evolution from being a serious Tesla critic to being a Tesla superbull. For individuals who adopted alongside again then, Sandy’s authentic evaluation of Tesla autos is that that they had very poor high quality. Some high Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) quick sellers and attackers highlighted this with nice enthusiasm. Nonetheless, upon digging in additional and as time went on, Sandy grew to become tremendous impressed with Tesla engineering, Tesla’s software program method, and Tesla’s speedy tempo of innovation. That mentioned, I can’t say it half in addition to Sandy did right here (and he’s fairly humorous and consists of some fascinating anecdotes right here), so I encourage you to observe the video:
Sandy additionally famous in that video that he and his group solely do work on EVs now.
Relating to Tesla’s tempo of innovation, in one other phase of the Q&A (video under), Sandy famous that Tesla was doing “engineering on the velocity of thought.” You’ll be able to hear rather more on that within the video under, however right here’s slightly bit extra from that quote: “I equate Tesla to mainly engineering on the velocity of thought. They transfer quicker — 10, 20, 100 instances quicker — than any firm I’ve ever seen. We will’t imagine what number of modifications they made in two years on the Mannequin Y.” He additionally talked about Tesla’s evolution with casting, some unique information from the businesses making the casting machines and molds for Tesla, and extra. Benefit from the video!
One final spotlight from that video earlier than leaping to the subsequent one: Sandy included an especially quick presentation earlier than the Q&A. A key a part of that was a chart on the Altman Z-Scores of Tesla, Toyota, Honda, Daimler, GM, Volkswagen, Stellantis, Hyundai, Ford, BMW, and Lucid. Tesla was by way of the roof over at about 15. Honda and Toyota had been subsequent finest, barely within the “gray zone” (not the “protected zone”), at about 2. Everybody else was within the “hazard zone” solidly under 2. That is one thing James Stephenson has highlighted over on Twitter sometimes for years. Right here’s the newest desk from a tweet of his:
In line with the hyperlink above from Investopedia, “A rating under 1.8 means it’s seemingly the corporate is headed for chapter, whereas corporations with scores above 3 are usually not more likely to go bankrupt.”
The final snippet I’ll spotlight on this article is a brief one on Tesla’s self-driving {hardware}. Chuck Cook dinner (well-known for his divided-highway, left-hand flip Tesla FSD testing) requested for Sandy’s ideas on Tesla’s removing of ultrasonic sensors and low-definition radar from its automobiles (in favor of “Tesla Imaginative and prescient”). Sandy signifies that he’s a fan of many issues Tesla is doing, however not this. His robust choice is to make use of forward-looking infrared (FLIR) cameras. Study extra right here:
That’s it for a primary spherical of highlights from this Sandy Munro Q&A. Keep tuned for extra quickly. Or go straight to CleanTechnica.TV to catch all of it from the horse’s mouth.
(Sorry for the lower than ideally suited audio high quality — this was an sudden, impromptu collection of recordings.)
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