Marco – Page 2 – Marco Gonçalves

Tesla Model 3 2024 review

In a world full of lengthy video reviews here goes my information packed, honest review of the refreshed Tesla Model 3 “Highland” after 5000 kilometers. It does have some flaws like the rest of us, but overall it’s an awesome product.

Dynamic performance

The car acceleration is fucking great for a cheap base non sport model, it pulls really good from stopped all the way to the maximum top speed with no hesitations what so ever. Is quite stable at high speed and turns really good in the twisties (the low center of gravity makes wonders), the ABS and TC are effective and actually let some wheel spin for fun factor. It can sustain top speed for extended periods of time, I never saw the dreaded “battery hot, reduced power available” warning that I always get when pushing in the “autobahn” previous electric models.

It’s a bummer that the car electronically cuts power at 200 kph when you feel enough to reach 220/230 kph no problem. The brakes are effective for every day usage, but rubbish for intense driving as they get too hot very easy (removing the aero wheel covers helps). So, don’t even think about track fun without changing brakes. Also, you can’t turn off ABS and TC… another fail in my book. The engine braking is omnipresent (kind of remembers a motorcycle) and non configurable, but when you change to a combustion car you really miss the control and security it grants to driving, and when you change back to EV you really don’t miss coasting. Suspension is awesome, it hides the car weight really well, but the weight is there and it’s felt in wet conditions and corner transitions, so be careful and take your time to know the handling in these conditions and avoid any scary situation.

Pro tip: when high speed driving turn off the lane assist feature, because the little wheel vibration it sends when crossing lines on the road can sometimes unsettle the precision of the car.

Just a note for European tight city centers road users, the car is a bit too big. When Tesla launches the compact/city car it will be just perfect for tight city driving.

Range, efficiency, charging and battery

The declared WLPT range is 513 kilometes, but whoever conjured this laboratory test should be sodomized by a gang of Senegal males in their prime because it’s utter unrealistic. So, full blast emergency mode with a knife on the teeth doing the best to trash the battery, hard accelerations and braking, long top speed segments expect a range around 150km, a more relaxed but yet sporty (going faster than most of traffic) expect about 250km range, city stop and go driving or/and single carriage in the 90/100kmh speed expect around 400km range. It can probably reach 500km autonomy hypermiling driving, personally I didn’t test it because I’m so not it the mood to waste life time driving for 6.5 hours at 70kmh.

Yes, this car wants and makes you feel good about going fast, because at home charging overnight you get 0.07 cents a Kwh, so lets say you charge from 0-100% it costs you 3.85 euros. In daily driving , no worries about the right pedal, expect a range of 250km or the mind blowing cost of 1.5 euros per 100km. So, if you are used to a diesel for daily driving like I was, each month lets say you spend 100 euros in fuel with this you spend 12.5 euros. So, really in my mind it makes no sense to go slow for saving energy/money.

If you are road traveling, and fast charging then expect the rip-off, around 60 cents Kwh in public networks that puts it a little above the average cost of a 2.0 diesel car, or around 30 cents Kwh in the fantastic Super Charger Tesla network which puts it a bit below the average cost of a diesel car.

Many friends ask me how much time it takes to charge, so in everyday use it takes zero time, you don’t have to go to the pump, you don’t have to wait in line for the person in front to get his coffee and snacks, when it’s under 70% of state of charge I simply plug a cord at night and go to sleep. in road tripping expect a stop of 15 to 20 minutes fast charging for every 2.5h driving (the car computer calculates and navigates the needed charging pit stops auto magically)

Other point, this version has a LFP battery, so no cobalt in it, but more important for me you can charge it everyday to 100% no problem with battery degradation. Also the expected degradation over the years of usage is expected to be minimal (maybe a report on this in some years).

The main point is, if you can daily charge it at home or work with normal energy rates is a great option. If you do lots of road trips then please do your research and the math because probably it’s not the best choice. It’s ridiculous all this government taxes and fees, probably Portugal is the worst example in the whole world, that in the end makes the user pay almost 10x more for the same energy in fast charging than home charging… what a rip-off.

First things first, the highly controversial stalk less wheel design that was bashed all over main stream media. So, if you read news articles about this “issue” you have been click baited, as this is really a non-issue because after some weeks driving stalk less not only you get used to it, but when you go back to an old car with stalks it seems clumsy and stupid to take the hand out of the wheel to push a stick up or down.

Now the stalks remind me of a big old classic Pong style controller, and the wheel buttons feel like a modern Playstation controller. Ask yourself which one would you rather use?

I have two complaints about the Tesla big touch screen that controls basically all the car functions, and no I don’t miss the knobs and buttons cluttering the console at all.

First a minor complaint, it bugs me that there is no way to shut down the screen and keep the music and climate. I’m not the kind of person to be parked sitting in the car, but this car is so fucking comfortable with great seats, awesome sound system and climate control (and no worries about battery depletion) that I find myself resting a bit in beautiful places, and Youtube is fine, Netflix is fine, Disney+ is fine, the games are fine, but sometimes I just want the darkness to stargaze at night, and the only way is to throw a black shirt over the screen (so boomer…).

Second is a major complaint, probably the thing that bugs more in the whole car. You are connected, you have GPS, you have a big processor to serve you, you have a beautiful big screen in front of you, yet you have to use the phone to run Waze to protect yourself against the speed traps, accidents, traffic jams, construction, and other obstacles. It feels so stupid to ditch Tesla navigation and look down at tiny phone screen…. and for sure a company that is working in AI, Full Self Driving, humanoid robots could for sure develop in a couple of days a social navigation tool.

Speaking of AI, in Europe we still don’t have access to Full Self Driving but the Auto Pilot on highways work just fine, a little bit too cautious sometimes it tends to get a scared and brake a little too much, also the nag its quite boring and should be deleted in my opinion (will order a Alliexpress weighted hand to defeat this regulatory shit), also the inside camera watching you can be easily defeated with a bit of black tape. Damn how I hate these paternalists bureaucrats running the European Union.

Final toughts

The Tesla phone app is awesome, sentry mode is awesome (I always park my motorcycle in front of car for security), love the phone key, love the ability to use the phone to open/close the car and grant via a shareable link access to it makes keys feel so outdated (I hope one day all vehicles will work like this), it’s so easy and simple to go fast and efficient from point A to point B, the solid overall build and feel, the spacious interior and luggage storage, the lack of oil changes and maintenance, the great price point make this a five star product.

It’s no wonder the Model Y was the best selling car of the world (of any type). Congrats and thank you Tesla.

Glaucoma

Disclaimer, i’m not a doctor nor an health professional so the content posted can be inaccurate, incomplete or misleading and comes with no warranty whatsoever.

I’m a 40 plus years patient of glaucoma, and specially for you that were diagnosed with the disease and reached this little corner of the inter webs, this is a message of hope. The most likely outcome is that you CAN preserve your eyesight and avoid blindness IF you are diligent and follow this simple set of rules :

1 – Find a good ophthalmologist specialized in glaucoma. This is vital.
2 – Fully, strictly and methodically commit to the treatment and follow-up plan. Like the Nike slogan, just DO it.
3 – Don’t be afraid to step it up. If medication is not doing it anymore there are lasers, if lasers are not enough there are surgeries. Don’t procrastinate.
4 – Never, ever think glaucoma is “controlled”. It’s a dynamic disease, it evolves. So, never, ever back down.
5 – Take good care of your general health and keep a positive mindset.

Return back to rule #1, rinse and repeat.

1 – What is glaucoma?

Unfortunately glaucoma is the second cause of irreversible vision impairment and blindness in the modern health care available world (first is AMD if you are wandering). If all glaucoma patients followed the above rules is my strong conviction that we would drop several positions in the dreadful ranking. So if you are a glaucoma patient please enforce yourself to comply with these rules, if you are a friend or familiar of someone with glaucoma please make sure (and help) him or her to comply.

It’s very important to explain WHY this happens? Why does a manageable (in most cases) disease causes so much havoc? Because in it’s most common form it’s a sneaky bitch.

The hallmark of glaucoma is damage to the optic nerve, the death of the very delicate RGC neurons in the back of the eye . Yet, (in the most common form of glaucoma) it happens slowly, painless, and the eye/brain has compensating mechanisms that can hide it to late stages before having visual clues. So, it’s very easy to relax about it, even after being diagnosed with, you feel good, have no pain, as long as you can tell you see the same as the day before. But nerve cells are dying and this loss of nerve tissue is irreversible. Then the day you feel something is not quite right with your vision, or feel discomfort or slight pain in the eye(s), or halos around lights at night and seek for help, you already put yourself in a bad situation and squandered a lot of nerve cell capital.

Please take this advice from a 4 decade plus glaucoma patient, don’t wait for symptoms, don’t be passive, don’t “listen” to your body on this one. There are only 2 known risks factors for glaucoma progression, age and ocular pressure. Nowadays is impossible to de-age you, but with medical help you can, should, and must, maintain the ocular pressure at your own safe target.

Now trust me, don’t expect to control your IOP by feeling, looking outside the window, flipping a coin, or any other method except for tonometer reading. Again, if you eventually feel something is wrong most probably things are quite wrong and irreversible damage has been made. So between your doctor appointments, take regular readings at an optician. But beware, if your IOP readings are stable don’t even think about skipping doctor follow-ups as glaucoma is dynamic and to halt the disease progression your personal target ocular pressure can change over time.

My advice is to act methodically and as effortlessly as possible, because this is not an 100 meter sprint, it’s an ultra marathon.

2 – What lifestyle changes should we do?

Glaucoma is not a lifestyle disease, but changes in your routines can help. First and most important, whatever you do, DON’T stop or change your treatment and follow-up plan. Write this in stone in your head.

Always have a critical mind. Don’t trust a random person just because is on a Youtube video or on a random blog post. Try to have some grasp, of the beneficial (or detrimental) mechanism of the proposed action. Dig for references about the person, dig for published studies and consensus, do your due diligence.

Don’t be fooled or paranoid, we live in a age that information flows freely and fast, if someone had a simple secret silver bullet to control ocular pressure and treat glaucoma, that information would spread like wild fire on dry straw… so, if someone starts with the likes of “do this simple thing every morning to get rid of glaucoma” raise a big big big red flag.

Keep always in your mind rule #5, what is good for your health is also good for glaucoma. Good nutrition, good repair sleep and regular exercise is always a safe bet. Don’t limit yourself or you life to unfounded beliefs (like I heard someone say to somebody that you shouldn’t eat this, or drink that, or do this or do that…), in doubt about something consult with your biggest ally (the person in rule #1). Live a full positive life.

Some practical personal insights about every day life.

Computer screens – do make the hourly pause and look outside the window, as far as you can. For extra comfort use inverted color schemes, black backgrounds on white letters.

Yoga – the routine should be altered and exclude all downward facing positions. A great rule of thumb is that your head should be always above your heart.

Weight lifting – Again, head always above the heart. Switch flat benches for the inclined variations. Don’t hold your breath, inhale and exhale normally. When the goal is muscle failure, rather than very heavy loads and low reps achieve it with a bit more reps (personally because of glaucoma I never go under than 8 reps, but probably an higher number is even better).

These and many other glaucoma lifestyle choices insights, please take time and watch this webinar (it’s the best that I’ve found online):

3 – The mental part of it.

What the MD doctors don’t speak is the mental part of it. And let me tell you this friends, it’s a struggle. You must find motivation within each and every day to correctly apply the medication, do the doctor appointments, take pressure readings between appointments, submit yourself to surgeries if needed.

And I warn you, it gets much tougher and depressing when your vision gets impaired (so please do the best you can to preserve it). It’s really tough to properly navigate with bad eyesight in this world made for people with good vision.

It’s mentally tough when other people (with lack of knowledge) judge you like the lazy or cheap person that just doesn’t want to go get a new pair of glasses. It’s mentally tough when most of the non spoken information is lost when you loose the ability to clearly see the back of the eyes of your interlocutor. It’s mentally tough when you don’t recognize or mistake people on street or at coffee shops. It’s mentally tough when you can’t read stuff on menus. It’s mentally tough when you can’t see your team score in the TV. It’s mentally tough when you can’t drive. Etc, etc, etc….

You should/must train and work your mind to find strategies to carry you on and over the daily challenges and difficulties. Be resilient.

Some personal tips that can help the mental part: explain clearly your status to you family and close friends, specially what you feel uncomfortable to do because of your vision status, they will help you. Don’t be shy to ask for help to strangers when needed (don’t say sorry, say please). When somebody makes the dumb “why don’t you get a new pair of glasses” comment, relax, deep breath, look back and choose one of these options a) take a bit of time and explain that glasses simply bend and correct the light to the correct refraction point in the retina but don’t fix the sensitivity nor magnify (that’s a telescope…) or else my personal favorite b) unfortunately there are many eye conditions that can’t be corrected with eye glasses, don’t act like an ignorant jerk… and move along.

Very very important insight, be generous and grateful, and do feel good about yourself.

4 – A look into the future.

I think it’s safe to assume a progression rate in advance of medicine, science and engineering over the years, then the only logic conclusion is that one day in the future there will be a cure. So, the question to ask is how long are we from the cure? And can we help accelerate the progression rate to a cure?

I’m not a futurologist nor a researcher nor a doctor, but I’m an optimist back from a time that the arsenal to fight glaucoma was much smaller than it is today. Sure there are very hard problems to solve this puzzle, particularly to discover a way to regenerate or replace the dead RGC neurons and their proper long axons connections, hopefully restoring visual function.

RGC neurons are part of the central nervous system (like neurons on the brain, or motor neurons on the spinal cord) these cells do not regenerate after injury in adult mammals.

Still, research and science is being made on this and related topics, knowledge capital is compounding, novel tools being developed, genetics is starting to pick up, all this factors are converging and when time arrives for clinical tests what better nerve fiber to test than the optic nerve? It’s the only one (to my knowledge at least) that you can simply take a look at it trough a natural window (the cornea).

Ok, all that is fine but when a solution? 100 years? 50 years? 20 years? 10 years? Nobody knows.

First step is to believe it’s possible. The more brains believe in an outcome, higher the possibility of the outcome, because we tend to shape reality to suit our expectations. This mindset will transform you from a passive observer to a person that wants to shape the future reality.

Second step is to take action, how can I help? How can you help? If you are a medical researcher, engineer, or other directly involved in the daily grind of building the knowledge of the science building, thank you, congratulations on your career choice, and the best of luck on your endeavors. Now, for the rest of us there are only two choices. Donate to non profit entities that are promoting glaucoma research, or invest in medical research companies working in glaucoma or related problems. Money is a database for resource allocation across time and space, either way (donating or investing) you are simply allocating resources to solving this problem.

In the non profit sector, there are three foundations committed to glaucoma research, San Francisco based Glaucoma Research Foundation, New York based Glaucoma Foundation, and the smaller Dallas based Cure Glaucoma Foundation. In the latest IRS fillings (here, here, and here) we can find out that Glaucoma Research Foundation total revenue was 5,777,174 USD and spent in grants 1,863,969 representing 32% of money channeled to research. The Glaucoma Foundation revenue was 4,297,114 USD and channeled 784,037 USD in research grants representing 18% of allocation to research. The Cure Glaucoma numbers are, 219,177 USD / 57,042 USD at 26%.

Also a negative note for the compensation amounts payed to direction / amount to research. The president for Glaucoma Research Foundation, Mr Thomas M Brunner received 251,243 USD, representing 13% of the research money and 4% of total revenue, meaning for each 1 dollar donated 0.04 cents go pay Mr Brunner and for each dollar spent in research there is a correspondent expenditure of 0.13 cents in Mr Brunner compensation. Ms Elena Sturman the president of TGF received a total compensation of 375,279 USD representing 48% of the research money and 9% of total revenue. Mr Mike Kettles from the CGF earned 66,523 USD representing 115% of research and 30% of total revenue.

These numbers are pretty much self explanatory, and also the flagship program Catalyst for a Cure, and overall online presence and frequent updates and intiatives in my mind the only rational recipient for a donation is the Glaucoma Research Foundation.

In the business front, we have the usual big pharma suspects, like Alcon, Santen, Roche, etc… doing their suspect everyday work, developing and testing new drugs, filtration devices, implants (all of this very important and life quality enhancing). But in my mind breakthrough innovation will come from smaller company centered in the booming genomic space. The problem for investing (basically seeding money at this point in time) is that there is literally hundreds of small listed research / bio sciences / therapeutics, so it becomes very difficult to know in who to place your chips. Also, there is strong possibility of connectivity, who knows if a breakthrough in spinal cord injury, Alzheimer, or other novel treatment can’t be applicable in Glaucoma or vice-versa.

Thus the choice is rather obvious a genomics & biotechnology ETF, allocating your investment to a basket of several companies picked by professionals. There are (at least) 3 funds meeting the criteria ARKG, GNOM, HELX, I believe that all of them will be a long term great investment (nfa), and better yet is the feeling of actively contributing to solving many nasty diseases.

I’m long on ARKG, but nowadays from the three ETFs I would rather choose GNOM over, lower expense fees, but more important the stocks portfolio is rather more centered on pure genetic research and engineering while ARKG has some dubious choices for a genetics research and medical care advance fund theme, Teladoc (telemedicine), Uipath (software automation), Nvidia (chips manufacturer) relevant mentions according to the latest fund holdings fillings.

Besides the ETFs I would like to make an honorable mention to Lineage Cell Therapeutics Inc (AMEX: LCTX) formerly known as Biotime Inc, a small (but curiously old for the regenerative medicine space with 1990 as the incorporation year), that is pioneering the transplantation of specific cell types produced in the lab. Their OpRegen program that is attacking dry AMD by replacing the RPE cells. And also the OPC1 oligodendrocyte progenitor cell therapy program for severe spinal cord injuries. Both are at clinical research state, updates here and here, and both actually already have promising results, OpRegen has actually demonstrated retinal tissue restoration and vision improvement that was considered impossible in the medical literature. Even if none of both programs specifically target glaucoma lost RGC neurons they are a step forward in the right direction. I think this is worth to be funded, so I’m long in this company.

5 – Fund raising

If you have read this long post and reached this point, you are indeed an hero. I ask for your help. I’m raising 200 USD to be donated to the Glaucoma Research Foundation. I have setup a crypto address for this, and put in the first 100 USD. When eventually reaches 200 USD will withdraw the money, wire it to the Glaucoma Research Foundation and post a proof of it.

Please contribute to help fighting this disease. Send USDC via Polygon network to the 0x464F6556C2BCA84b78c6374988f25ee1793250De address.

I choose crypto, because it’s border less and the cheapest way to move money in the world (a typical Polygon transaction cost is just a couple of cents), it’s fast, accessible to everyone with an internet connection, and it’s fully verifiable.

You can check at this link all the transaction history for this address:

https://polygonscan.com/address/0x464F6556C2BCA84b78c6374988f25ee1793250De

Big thank you from the bottom of my heart to each and every person who helped me in this fight, specially Dr. Fernando Vaz at Hospital Fernando Fonseca, Dr Nuno Alves at Hospital Descobertas, and the late Dr. Pedro Abrantes at Hospital Egas Moniz. Big thank you from the bottom of my heart.

UPDATE

As the funding plea had no effect, and the money was just parked and losing value via inflation I decided to unpark it and make myself a donation to the GRF, here are the reciepts:

and from the credit card statement

Hope to raise more to support this cause in the near future.

Warning – Don’t touch Wagerr.com

In my mind there is no doubt the future of betting is on the blockchain. Anonymous, transparent, fully verifiable, trustless, without banks or governments interference.

As an investor I’m doing my homework, testing and benchmarking several crypto betting projects, and sure enough one of them is wagerr.com the “private, no limits sports book”. Brainchild of David Mah, it has some intriguing tokenomics and value coupling, but yet some red flags (very few updates in GitHub probably the biggest red flag of them all).

In the benchmarking process I’ve come across with the capital sin for a betting project, wagerr.com doesn’t conform to the events outcome. So, you can bet in a sport event and even if you predicted correctly there is the possibility it doesn’t pay the winnings.

I staked 10000 wgr at 1.25 odds on Islam Makhachev win vs Alexander Volkanovski. It was a successful prediction, as indeed Makhachev won the fight, yet the wagerr network deemed this as an Event Refund ?? You can actually check this in the wagerr blockchain explorer:

https://explorer.wagerr.com/#/bet/event/121018

Other big no no of wagerr.com is the long time it takes to settle a bet, it can be days, weeks or some times simply indefinitely, your bet funds get locked and you neither can’t cash in or use them for other bet.

Here it is an event, UFC 283 where I placed a bet on Gilbert Burns vs Neil Magny and as by this writing (one and half month later the event took place it’s still not settled), still waiting for oracle, so the funds of that bet are locked and can’t access or use them. Again we can confirm this in the blockchain explorer:

https://explorer.wagerr.com/#/bet/event/120014

UPDATE:
this has now actually been payed, curiously 3 days after publishing this post, so an event on the 21 January, was payed after 46 days, with the funds retained on chain all this time.

There are other problems identified with wagerr, but these are horrible and total showstoppers. I have used the traditional support channels, discord server and twitter, to get help about these with no success.

Expect in the following weeks a post with the crypto bet projects wild wild west benchmark and concluding recommendations. But, my simple advise for both bettors and investors is: DON’T TOUCH WAGERR.COM, not even with a 10 meter pole, you will only loose.

UPDATE 2:
This project as gone belly up. Coin has lost 99% of value

wagerr.com domain is listed for sale

Hope this warning was useful to someone dodge this bullet.

Letter to Lawrence III

Hi kid,

you are now at that stage in life that you are not a small baby anymore, but a beautiful happy young kid!

Learning (more absorbing like a sponge) the environment. You are quite an observer, sometimes you just stop and keep watching, figuring stuff out, and when that eureka moment arrives it’s just magic and pure joy.

Like most kids in the world of ours today, you have quite an exposure to technology with always connected phones and tablets. With this comes the dopamine rush hits associated with the instant gratification of searching, installing and playing a new game in less than one minute, playing Youtube videos on demand and so on…

So… and I have to tell you this, sometimes it’s a battle to keep you offline and away the omnipresent screens… the good news is that you enjoy a lot the outside. You love to ride your bicycle, and you ride it pretty good for your age. We explore the lovely neighborhood (and some times beyond), go to the playground, the gardens, the riverside, the supermarkets, well practically everywhere with our pedal space ships.

You like stargazing and can easily identify Mars and Jupiter (yes they are planets 🙂 ), and to learn about the solar system and the magnitude of our magical universe. You find meditation quite intriguing, you also are developing taste for non commercial music, like classic Indian music, and more ecstatic rhythms to jump and dance to.

Not everything has been perfect an joyful, but guess what? That is the way of life, there is no light without the dark, no day without night, no yin without yang.

Unfortunately you experienced episode of violence at school, it shouldn’t have happened much less at this young age, much less at school, but unfortunately it did. Beyond the normal parents / school meetings you receive a pair of boxing gloves and bag, and once in while we do some basic drills. You like it, but in reality I’m tricking you, it’s really not about training to throw punches, it’s about training self confidence and paradoxically the right mindset to avoid violence. But beware, I don’t want you to be the weak victim, but oh boy, I sure also don’t want you to be the aggressor bully.

Also the last year and half was clouded by the Covid-19 pandemic. So sorry, for the endless time at home, the playgrounds, and parks closed. The good news is that it seems the vaccines are working, life nowadays (besides the omnipresent mask) is 90% normal. The best news is nobody that we love was lost to Covid-19.

As Covid-19 is clearing up, another health storm arrived this summer to make life difficult for us. My long term “relationship” with glaucoma took a significant dip. I’m sorry for so little quality time this summer compared to the previous ones, but this problem hit really hard kid and it took quite a lot of medical care, effort and interventions (we must give a special big thank you in this process to Dr. Feranado Vaz @HFF) to be now in a situation of hope. The most important thing is that everything possible to manage and tackle this problem is being done.

With a bit of luck will not be an impediment to this beautiful walk of life.

Love you infinty^2,
Marco Gonçalves

Transportation 2.0

This post is on drafts now for about 2 years, it’s a concise summary of my Tesla investment thesis. My mental carburetor chocked at AI and autonomous driving… and guess what? I still have a shallow understanding of machine learning, neural nets, PyTorch, TPUs and all the technical stuff to deep dive into the AI stuff. And bear with me this stuff is crucial in my mind rational as Tesla’s business model is like a Trojan horse to deploy autonomous driving.

BUT no way that I could overcome my technical limitations… SO this post could stay in Drafts indefinitely, OR just like a IRL conversation with friends (congrats for the ones that actually invested) just wrap it up, and put out the general ideas to all my friends that unfortunately don’t have the opportunity to meet IRL so often.

Disclaimer: this is just my stream of consciousness, do not to take it as financial advise. DO YOUR OWN research and thinking. This can be the ramblings of a insane mind.

Humans, are quite an unsuccessful species about self conservation. We have a (declared) stockpile of nukes to destroy the total earth landmass SEVERAL times. The most important leader today doesn’t “believe” in climate change, and most of the others humans happily let the poison of the atmosphere, the water and the land to continue despite all the warnings.

Imagine a visitor from another world looking at this madness, probably we would be cataloged as “Technological savvy but totally schizophrenic species”. One must ask what legacy are we leaving to the next generations?

Anyway let’s be optimistic, continue the exercise and indulge into random thoughts and speculations about the future. Look and behold when one day the measure of computer RAM will be not in gigabytes, but in terabytes.

Transportation 2.0

There is a revolution about the way people and cargo move around, probably the Jetsons flying car is not coming around soon (or probably it is in the form of electric VTOLs), but billions and billions are being spent into electrification of vehicles.

And this an extremely good thing, because a big chunk of total world CO2 and pollution is generated by burning stuff inside ICE (internal combustion engines), and the BEV (battery electric vehicle) is so much more efficient that it’s operation is much cleaner. And as the power grid gets greener with more renewables in the mix, the overall gap just gets bigger and bigger.

There are two metrics about batteries that don’t lie, the energy density Wh/L and the cost USD/kWh, and the trend is simple for both, higher energy density and less cost every year. It’s nothing at all like Moore’s law, much slower, but even predicting a very conservative 5% increase in density and 5% decrease in price every year, around 2050 (perhaps much sooner considering the massive resources allocations) BEVs will have the equal energy density at a fraction of cost of ICE. Factoring in the difference in engine efficiency, supply chain, and environmental impact, probably much sooner than 2050 will be the end of the ICE age.

Perhaps in a far future there will be internal combustion engines in museums showing the exquisite materials and craftsmanship of a time that the world was powered by an ordered symphony of tiny explosions. I imagine like something like a starting up and revving up event with all the attendees in highly protective gear…

Sometimes i see this video (that as quietly been deleted from everywhere, but the Internet never forgets) of Jim Cramer on CNBC about Tesla IPO just for the comic entertainment value:

It’s so funny, this was June 2010, each TSLA share was selling at 17USD (1.13 USD August 2022 split adjusted…). Guess the market had different view… why was Jim Cramer so wrong?

Because he couldn’t understand inside his primate brain that the real transportation revolution is not the transition from liquid fuel to electric. No, that is just tip of the iceberg, the real revolution that’s going to turn everything upside down, it’s autonomous driving.

Think of all business around moving people and cargo, think of all the payrolls for professional drivers, think of all social security for professional drivers, think of all the road fatalities, think ride sharing and no ownership, think of long distance truck hauling, think of your car leave you on the spot and then proceed to park itself, think about drinking a coffee and finishing that report on your boring morning stop and go commute, think about going home drunk with no problem at all, think about catching some sleep on that long journey, think about elderly or disabled people who want to continue to go places by themselves…. etc, etc, etc…. it’s going to be a beautiful new world.

How much does it worth to have a total autonomous car system that can drive better than the top human drivers? That can operate 24/7 and doesn’t get tired, sleepy, drunk, nervous, over optimistic or distracted? A lot, really a LOT.

The race for the jackpot is on, with billions and billions being invested now. And where there is strong competition there will be results, and here Moore’s law is king, so expect this future to be nearer than generally expected. The company in the pole position is Tesla, and if they can deliver first probably they will become one of the most valuable companies in the world, probably the most valuable company in the world as autonomous driving implies solving computer vision, and computer vision achieved unlocks much more than autonomous driving.

Pushing forward deep into the future. We can ask this question, when an autonomous vehicle will be say 10x, 20x, or 100x safer than an average human driving, will human driving in public roads should be even allowed? Guess not, so I bet a lunch in the best restaurant in town with everyone that accepts the bet, that in 100 years from now human driving in Sweden (or Norway) will only be allowed in closed circuits (lets us hope the Nurburgring is still up and running).

1951 First AI program
1956 Los Alamos chess is the first program to play chess
1997 Deep Blue defeats Garry Kasparok
2007 Checkers is solved paper published
2015 Baidu Deep Image outperforms average human in image sorting and recognition
2017 AlphaZero learns chess self playing itself 24h and crushes the strongest chess AI
2017 AlphaGo beats Lee Seedol in the game of Go (10^170 valid board configurations)

as we can see with these few examples the machines are learning, and are learning more complex tasks and are learning faster. As of now machines are already at super human level at many tasks.

Sure driving is a task that one must parse several complex inputs (vision, sound, proper acceleration) and compute with context real time outputs (turning, accelerating, braking), but there is nothing magical or physical impossible for a machine to perform, and perform well better than an human.

Assuming hardware will keep improving offering better performance at lower price each year, and computer science AI and machine learning will also keep improving over time, there will be a point in time that these factors will compound and intersect to unlock autonomous driving, and Tesla with silicon valley tech know-how, best engineers in the world, huge fleet collecting real world data for training the neural networks, own chip designed specifically for artificial intelligence, etc, etc… will be (in my mind) the one company to unlock it first.

According to Tesla 2021 2q safety report, they recorded one crash for every 4.41 million miles driven in which drivers were using Autopilot technology (Autosteer and active safety features). For drivers who were not using Autopilot technology (no Autosteer and active safety features), they recorded one crash for every 1.2 million miles driven. By comparison, NHTSA’s most recent data shows that in the United States there is an automobile crash every 484,000 miles.

Some of the typical questions i have been asked IRL about the thesis:

Won’t legacy auto crush Tesla by sheer volume?
Well if that was to happen, it should have happened many moons ago. Tesla is a big boy now, growing fast with probably the strongest balance sheet in the industry. Besides legacy auto strength is in metal casting and folding, it can’t even put up a decent infotainment system… much more develop an autonomous driving system.

Besides legacy auto is in a world of pain, declining sales, convert factories and human resources to electric powertrains, battery supply, huge debts…. they are giants on clay feet.

OK, but the actual stock value has already risen tremendously, didn’t I missed the boat?
It’s a fact, the stock price already skyrocketed. If you invested 1000 USD back in the IPO and hold it (Jim told you to sell… big shout out to Jim) you would have today around 200.000 USD…

You can make a solid case to justify the current valuation on current business alone, you can go trough profit margins, growth rates, CAGR, ROI and other financial indicators, you can value Elon Musk as the modern Edison, but for me the equation is really simple, if you can envision a near future with autonomous driving with Tesla leading, the valuation is cheap. If you can’t envision this, probably the valuation is more on the pricey side.

I’m not a big fan of reasoning by analogy, but I must also point that for disruptive companies, companies that change the world, with strong leadership and mission, companies that enter a positive loop feedback system it doesn’t make much sense to cap an upper limit.

“In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.” – Benjamin Graham