Tesla CEO @elonmusk with Shanghai Mayor Ying Yong at Tesla Shanghai Gigafactory ground breaking ceremony. $TSLA #Tesla #China #TeslaChina #GF3 pic.twitter.com/sIecnGsU71
— Vincent (@vincent13031925) January 7, 2019
As Elon Musk went to Shanghai for the groundbreaking of Tesla’s first international factory on Jan 6, this video about Gigafactory by Verge is worth watching to refresh the basic understanding of its status and future.
“This is Elon Musk’s key to Tesla’s future”
Tesla had very impressive numbers in Q3, when Model 3 delivery (55,840) was almost tripled from Q2 (18,440).
While no one is expecting another jump, the Q4 numbers are kinda lackluster, especially when adding Model 3 delivery and in transit numbers.
Tesla shares fall 9% on Wednesday when those numbers were reported.
Tesla also announced a price cut of $2,000 for Model S, Model X and Model 3 in the US. The move will partially offset the phase-out of the $7,500 federal tax credit for EV.
[Phase-out will start in the second calendar quarter when the manufacturer has 200,000 plug-in registered in US. The credit is reduced to $3,750 for the next 6 months, then to $1,875 for the next 6 months before expiring completely.]
According to InsideEVs’ estimate, Tesla hit the 200,000 first in the second half of 2018, while General Motors was second with a breakout month of sales for the Bolt and Volt in November 2018.
The next four manufacturer in EV are Nissan (126,875), Ford (111,715), Toyota (93,011), BMW (79,679).
A combination of flat delivery + in transit Model 3, and a price reduction, warned people about the actual demand for Model 3.
Good news are: 1) people may just be waiting for the basic Model 3, aka $35,000 version that Elon touted but analysts said money-losing for Tesla; 2) Tesla is still way ahead in the EV market
Signature events will move regulation forward.
That is what drones will be facing after a catastrophic shut down of the second largest airport in UK due to a single drone.
While the drone came back every time the airport tried to reopen, the operator(s) hasn’t been found/caught.
An “effective” measure and procedure to prevent similar things will be formulated.
But problems won’t be solved.
I see drone issues more like gun issues – and eventually might be a “to-ban-or-not-to-ban” choice made by countries. Or a strict military control of technology.
This event will certainly make itself in the future history when regulations are put together.
Elon Musk revealed the test tunnel under SpaceX campus.
Total length ~1.14 mile, ~45 feet underground.
A modified Tesla X traveled through with speed of 50 mph – not as exciting as the 150 mph proposed, but it is a short drive.
The second largest data breaches reported in November that Marriott’s Starwood reservation system has been breached since 2014, affecting up to 500 million guests.
A few days later, another major breach was reported – Quora users’ account info and private chats were exposed, affecting around 100 million people.
While the largest hack in history involved around 3 billion accounts of Yahoo in 2013, Marriott’s will probably have the most “impact” as it not only involves usernames, emails, passwords, etc. (as in the case of Yahoo/Quora), but also includes passport info and date of birth among others. The latter two kinds are more personal and sensitive and could be combined to get access to many other things.
This is just another reason why companies should move (at least part of) their info system to cloud services providers like Amazon, Microsoft and Google.
Technically, those companies have much better security expertise and do provide an edge in protecting users from those breaches.
And for corporate executives, the data security and related issues are outsourced and liabilities are kinda transferred. Media and users might focus more on why tech companies could be breached. (so how did FB data get hacked?)
It seems that most advices on breaches include change password, double-check card transactions and credit reports, freeze your cards… All about what customers should put extra efforts on themselves.
But I thought users should be reimbursed for their trust being failed. Corporates should take more responsibilities and be forced to provide appropriate remedies; otherwise every company could just save money and let those breaches happen again, when
prob(breach) * loss on breach(including remedies, future loss business, etc.) < cost of good data protection
While financial institutions would take some financial damage in those breaches for users, the identity damage might be hard to recover.
Much more efforts should be beforehand in protecting data. Or it’s not only a full network of tracing, but also a future fake network of people.
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Companies’ plans announced
See who is joining and their IPO targets –
Other tech companies include – Pinterest ~$15-20 bn, Robinhood ~$10 bn
A CB Insights report, a good summary.
共享自行车已经进入市场很多年，模式上在近年有多方面突破；另一方面，以 Birds 为首的美国 scooter 的热潮从 2017 年开始迅速蔓延，之前的共享自行车公司也找到了美国新的突破口，毕竟相比于中国自行车的普及和流行，美国自行车一直处于出行需求的角落（有安全监管、道路等因素）。
大多数共享自行车和共享 scooter 诞生之初，就内涵了与 uber/lyft 相近的模式和基因，又同时在解决一个大问题的不同局部。它们早晚会相遇是公认的事实。
各自 2019 年 IPO 计划的临近，出于公司定位和战略说明的角度，以及财务角度，uber 和 lyft 的出手之快出乎一些意料（相比于市场的成熟度和发展时间），却也极其合理。这篇 blog 主要关于 lyft 的收购。
2018 年 4 月，uber 率先宣布了第一笔交易，$100 – 200 mn 收购 JUMP Bike。
2018 年 6 月，有报道 Lyft 在寻求 $250 mn 收购 Motivate（旗下拥有纽约的 Citi Bike 和加州的 Ford GoBike 等）；uber 也尝试参与，竞价收购，最后 7 月初由 Lyft 拿下。
– Motivate 2017 rev. $100 mn, ~ half coming from sponsorship
– Motivate has ~30k bikes, operating in 8 US cities – Citi Bike (New York), Ford GoBike (San Francisco Bay area), Divvy (Chicago), Blue Bikes (Boston metro area), Capital Bikeshare (Washington, D.C. metro area), BIKETOWN (Portland metro area), CoGo (Columbus, Ohio), and Nice Ride (Minneapolis)
– 纽约的 Citi Bike 用户数约 15 万；For GoBike 17 年6 月与 Ford 达成合作正式 launch，截至 18 年 1 月用户数近 1 万
– Motivate has an advantage of exclusive deal terms with cities including NYC, SF, among others
– Motivate’s bikes are dock-based, which was an old model but fit with cities like NYC
– Unionized workers (~600) are a major issue, which was not included in the acquisition
收购后，Lyft 将投入 $100 mn 发展 Citi Bike，五年内自行车数量增加两倍将达近 4 万。
在湾区，尽管开始时 Motivate 有 exclusive 合同，但由于纽约和 SF 有一个区别在于 SF 很多上下坡，在曼哈顿适用的自行车在 SF 的使用场景大幅缩减，电动助力自行车 (e-bike) 的需求凸显。这给了其它 bike-sharing 公司一个绝佳的机会，以 e-bike 的形式抢进 SF 市场，绕开 Motivate 的排他性条款，比如 Social Bicycles。随后 SF 与 Motivate 达成和解，基本算允许了其它电动自行车的试验，尽管有数量限制。
Ford GoBike 在今年 1 月展示了 e-bike 之后，于 4 月在 SF 正式 launch 了电动自行车。
18 年 1 月，SF 的第一个无桩 bike-sharing permit， 250 辆，给了 JUMP (formerly Social Bicycle，见上文)，JUMP 自行车是全电动 (和 scooter，也是电动)。
这也是 uber CEO 后来解释 JUMP 收购时一直强调的每个城市/地区的不同，需要 city-by-city 地考虑。uber 选择从 SF 开始发力。
Lyft 选择了更高的起点。Motivate 确实是体量更大、更成熟的 bike-sharing 公司。加之 e-bike 的额外成本，以及 permit 的数量显示，仅依靠 JUMP 或许会让 uber 在这个局部战场输给 Lyft。
加之 scooter 的起飞（全部为电动），尤其在加州主要城市的流行，不出意外，uber 在寻求另一起收购，一起这个领域决定性的收购，Uber said to be negotiating a multibillion-dollar takeover of scooter-sharing startup。
Consolidation 不仅没有缺席，而且会来得更快。
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