Leaked Letter Shows Tesla Is Facing Pressure From Group of Investors

April 24, 2023

By Kevin Armstrong

Tesla is facing pressure from a group of investors

TED

Tesla is under pressure from a group of long-term investors holding over $1.5 billion in shares. These investors have voiced concerns over the company's governance and leadership and human rights issues within its operations and supply chain. They have called for changes in the composition of the Board of Directors, greater focus from CEO Elon Musk, and increased transparency in the company's practices.

Long-term Investors Voice Concerns

In a letter obtained by Teslarati and addressed to Tesla's Board of Directors, the investors expressed their worries about the Board's meager oversight of CEO Elon Musk and other critical aspects of corporate strategy. They believe this lack of oversight exposes the company to substantial legal, operational, and reputational risks, jeopardizing its long-term value. The investors are particularly concerned that Musk's multiple outside commitments, including his roles in SpaceX, The Boring Company, Neuralink, and as owner and CEO of Twitter, Inc., may distract him from addressing the strategic and competitive challenges facing Tesla.

Moreover, investors have pointed out that Tesla's stock has suffered since Musk's involvement in Twitter, with the company losing $582.4 billion in market capitalization within a year. As competition in the EV market intensifies with legacy automakers launching comparable models, they argue that Tesla's shareholders need their CEO to be exclusively focused on resolving the company's issues.

Calls for Changes in Board Composition, CEO Focus, and Increased Transparency

The long-term investors have urged Tesla's Board to announce a plan to ensure that the company has a CEO who dedicates enough time and attention to the company. They propose limiting the CEO's outside commitments or implementing a succession plan. Furthermore, they request an overhaul of the Board's composition, including removing directors with close ties to Musk. The investors believe that the current governance structure, board composition, and director compensation practices contribute to poor oversight and prioritize personal relationships over the needs of Tesla and its shareholders.

Workplace Issues and Human Rights Risks Draw Attention

The investors also highlighted a series of lawsuits, complaints, and allegations involving workplace equity, safety, and human rights violations within Tesla and its supply chain. These issues include racial discrimination, sexual harassment, unsafe working conditions, wage theft, and retaliatory termination. They noted that Tesla workers are bound by mandatory arbitration and non-disclosure agreements, which could potentially obscure the full scope of harassment and discrimination claims raised by employees.

Additionally, the letter pointed out Tesla's sourcing practices that expose the company to significant human rights risks, such as using cobalt from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where child labor is pervasive, and potential connections to forced labor in China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region (XUAR). The investors emphasized the growing momentum in the US to enforce import bans on goods produced with forced labor and the increasing public attention on child labor and forced labor in supply chains.

Lastly, the investors call for increased transparency in the company's human capital management practices, workplace conditions, and human rights policies better to assess the company's risks and overall performance.

In light of these concerns, the investors have requested a meeting with the Board by May 25, 2023, to discuss their concerns and proposed remedies. As Tesla faces increased competition and scrutiny, addressing these issues will be crucial to maintaining its position as a leader in the EV market and ensuring the company's long-term success. The outcome of this meeting, and the letter itself, and the Board's response to the investors' demands may significantly impact Tesla's future and its relationship with shareholders.

Tesla’s Optimus Robot Learns to Walk Without Vision [VIDEO]

December 13, 2024

By Karan Singh

Optimus Falls - but catches itself!

Not a Tesla App

Tesla recently showed off a demo of Optimus, its humanoid robot, walking around in moderately challenging terrain—not on a flat surface but on dirt and slopes. These things can be difficult for a humanoid robot, especially during the training cycle.

Daily walks help clear your mind pic.twitter.com/dUsW58trS6
— Tesla Optimus (@Tesla_Optimus) December 9, 2024

A Look Behind the Curtain

Most interestingly, Milan Kovac, VP of Engineering for Optimus, clarified what it takes to get Optimus to this stage. Let’s break down what he said.

Optimus is Blind

Optimus is getting seriously good at walking now - it can keep its balance over uneven ground - even while walking blind. Tesla is currently using just the sensors, all powered by a neural net running on the embedded computer.

Essentially, Tesla is building Optimus from the ground up, relying on as much additional data as possible while it trains vision. This is similar to how they train FSD on vehicles, using LiDAR rigs to validate the vision system’s accuracy. While Optimus doesn’t have LiDAR, it relies on all those other sensors on board, many of which will likely become simplified as vision takes over as the primary sensor.

Today, Optimus is walking blind, but it’s able to react almost instantly to changes in the terrain underneath it, even if it falls or slips.

What’s Next?

Next up, Tesla AI will be adding vision to Optimus - helping complete the neural net. Remember, Optimus runs on the same overall AI stack as FSD - in fact, Optimus uses an FSD computer and an offshoot of the FSD stack for vision-based tasks.

Milan mentions they’re planning on adding vision to help the robot plan ahead and improve its walking gait. While the zombie shuffle is iconic and a little bit amusing, getting humanoid robots to walk like humans is actually difficult.

There’s plenty more, too - including better responsiveness to velocity and direction commands and learning to fall and stand back up. Falling while protecting yourself to minimize damage is something natural to humans - but not exactly natural to something like a robot. Training it to do so is essential in keeping the robot, the environment around it, and the people it is interacting with safe.

We’re excited to see what’s coming with Optimus next because it is already getting started in some fashion in Tesla’s factories.

Is Tesla Close to Licensing FSD? GM Quits Cruise, BMW Praises Tesla

December 13, 2024

By Karan Singh

Not a Tesla App

In a relatively surprising move, GM announced that it is realigning its autonomy strategy and prioritizing advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) over fully autonomous vehicles.

GM is effectively closing Cruise (autonomous) and focusing on its Super Cruise (ADAS) feature. The engineering teams at Cruise will join the GM teams working on Super Cruise, effectively shuttering the fully autonomous vehicle business.

End of Cruise

GM cites that “an increasingly competitive robotaxi market” and “considerable time and resources” are required for scaling the business to a profitable level. Essentially - they’re unable to keep up with competitors at current funding and research levels, putting them further and further behind.

Cruise has been offering driverless rides in several cities, using HD mapping of cities alongside vehicles equipped with a dazzling array of over 40 sensors. That means that each cruise vehicle is essentially a massive investment and does not turn a profit while collecting data to work towards Autonomy.

Cruise has definitely been on the back burner for a while, and a quick glance at their website - since it's still up for now - shows the last time they officially released any sort of major news packet was back in 2019.

Competition is Killer

Their current direct competitor - Waymo, is funded by Google, which maintains a direct interest in ensuring they have a play in the AI and autonomy space.

Interestingly, this news comes just a month after Tesla’s We, Robot event, where they showed off the Cybercab and the Robotaxi network, as well as plans to begin deployment of the network and Unsupervised FSD sometime in 2025. Tesla is already in talks with some cities in California and Texas to launch Robotaxi in 2025.

GM Admits Tesla Has the Right Strategy

As part of the business call following the announcement, GM admitted that Tesla’s end-to-end and Vision-based approach towards autonomy is the right strategy. While they say Cruise started down that path, they’re putting aside their goals towards fully autonomous vehicles for now and focusing on introducing that tech in Super Cruise instead.

NEWS: GM just admitted that @Tesla’s end-to-end approach to autonomy is the right strategy.

“That’s where the industry is pivoting. Cruise had already started making headway down that path. We are moving to a foundation model and end-to-end approach going forward.” pic.twitter.com/ACs5SFKUc3
— Sawyer Merritt (@SawyerMerritt) December 10, 2024

With GM now focusing on Super Cruise, they’ll put aside autonomy and instead focus solely on ADAS features to relieve driver stress and improve safety. While those are positive goals that will benefit all road users, full autonomy is really the key to removing the massive impact that vehicle accidents have on society today.

In addition, Super Cruise is extremely limited, cannot brake for traffic controls, and doesn’t work in adverse conditions - even rain. It can only function when lane markings are clear, there are no construction zones, and there is a functional web connection.

The final key to the picture is that the vehicle has to be on an HD-mapped and compatible highway - essentially locking Super Cruise to wherever GM has time to spend mapping, rather than being functional anywhere in a general sense, like FSD or Autopilot.

Others Impressed - Licensing FSD

Interestingly, some other manufacturers have also weighed into the demise of Cruise. BMW, in a now-deleted post, said that a demo of Tesla’s FSD is “very impressive.” There’s a distinct chance that BMW and other manufacturers are looking to see what Tesla does next.

BMW chimes in on a now-deleted post. The Internet is forever, BMW!

Not a Tesla App

It seems that FSD has caught their eyes after We, Robot - and that the demonstrations of FSD V13.2 online seem to be the pivot point. At the 2024 Shareholder Meeting earlier in the year, Elon shared the fact that several manufacturers had reached out, looking to understand what was required to license FSD from Tesla.

There is a good chance 2025 will be the year we’ll see announcements of the adoption of FSD by legacy manufacturers - similar to how we saw the surprise announcements of the adoption of the NACS charging standard.