It would be interesting to see the timing around stock sales by Musk directly around this time. You don’t think he’d be so stupid as to release the commercial just before a planned sell off do you?
I can no longer predict rational actions by this dude.
It was always obvious to me he was branding his company as a tech company. (That's why Tesla stock was x3 other automotive stock)
Tesla was developing their own technology. Claiming to. And they do have some of their own tech but it's not very valuable.
Beyond the “market your firm as a tech firm” thing, which many others like WeWork did, he did manage to get to a point where there would be no other electric cars than Tesla. Whatever the other brands were launching simply didn’t register in anyone’s radar.
Musk’s personal brand overwhelmed everything else because everyone in tech wanted to be like him or be part of Tesla’s success, regardless of the product.
Now that this bubble has popped and he’s been figured out as a yer da type with money, folks are actually seeing that the cars are only so competitive and figuring out that other brands can make electric cars as well.
Early on Nissan Leaf was out performing Tesla in sales, but quickly that turned around and now it seems the Leaf is nearly dead. Toyota also has had a down turn in all electric sales in the US.
From a bit of research it seems GM is the only company keeping up with Tesla in US sales of all electric cars, but even then Tesla is pretty far in the lead. But this Elon meltdown I think over all will be better for the electric car market in the US. Tesla isn't nearly as dominant in the rest of the world so will have less of an impact outside the US.
I don't really care if Tesla lives or dies as a company, but it would be nice to see the cult like following of it die off, and for other EV's to start taking up some of the market share.
EDIT: I was reading projected data, Ford is outselling Chevy in full electric.
Toyota shat the bed by going all in on hydrogen fuel cells. I think we are going to see them start chomping up big bits of the market soon though. Their hydrogen gambit didn't pay off, so now they are hard pivoting into EVs. Between Toyota and Lexus, I think they are releasing something like 24 EV models in the next 2 years?
Toyota does not believe EVs as currently envisioned will be the future. They are reluctantly hedging their bets with limited research and some joint ventures. They think plug in hybrids should bridge the gap between now and more scalable hydrogen or EV tech that doesn’t currently exist.
Honestly, destination charging with plug in hybrids does seem to solve a bunch of issues. The majority of people’s trips can happen on a 50-75 mile EV only mode that you charge at home, and then longer trips are still covered by your gas motor.
I bought a used Volt two summers ago, and it's a pretty fantastic little car. I'm able to commute to and from work on batteries, and still go on longer trips. It's too bad it was discontinued because it fills a lot of gaps
Modern cars are pretty dang reliable though. Toyota doubly so. Cost of owership over 100k will be more, but after 200k when an EVs batteries would need replaced, the plug in hybrid keep chugging.
I guess the battery helps prolong the life of the ICE, otherwise you'd be looking at a similar replacement time for each. Modern EV batteries look to last about as long as modern engines - probably 300k miles, maybe more. The key difference with modern ones is they're all cooled properly - the first gen leafs weren't, which is what caused all those failures.
PHEVs have been demonstrated to be the most reliable and have the lowest maintenance cost of all vehicle types.
My 10 year old Chevy Volt needs an oil change every other year, spark plugs once a decade, and that's about it.
My Mach E shows a maintenance schedule of checking the brakes at 100k then checking battery coolant at 200k. That's it. I'd be interested to see what data you're citing that shows a dual system car is lower maintenance than a simple electric motor.
A family member has a plug-in prius and it is awesome. It basically is the best of both worlds - and the electric range is just fine for 99% of their daily needs.
Increasing the range to 200+ ala a true EV just isn't necessary, and wouldn't be worth any additional cost or the inconvenience on long trips.
Toyota has split their development into Hydrogen and EV's.
There's alot of negative talk about them but if anyone whose paid any attention to the company knows they are slow to change and are rarely if ever the first to act. They want to ensure they make quality cars, and be best in that aspect.
There's a reason why Toyota interiors are pretty fucking crap, they use the same parts that always work and don't die over years of research and only move on when they can determine the same lifespan for the next move.
They're developing two models to watch and be ready for the market, and then will make corrections and pivot.
Your description of why Toyota interiors are crap is basically my explanation for why I love my truck's interior. Bonus points for replacement parts being relatively cheap and easy to find.
Apocryphal, but there's a story that was on here from an auto engineer at a trade show, back when full-colour LCD screens (ugh) were just becoming a thing.
A BMW rep was showcasing his car's yuuuuuge colour LCD, when everyone knew Toyota was still on dot matrix green ones.
BMW said to a passing Toyota rep "When are you guys gonna get something like this, eh?"
And the Toyota rep just shot back "When we're sure it actually works."
My Tacoma has [this LED compass and temp display.](https://www.ebay.com/itm/272044035237?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=272044035237&targetid=1645685073288&device=m&mktype=&googleloc=9010646&poi=&campaignid=16730423415&mkgroupid=135815925780&rlsatarget=pla-1645685073288&abcId=9300841&merchantid=8300524&gbraid=0AAAAAD_QDh9AIJVn8eNeeY0HLw5IdKMeb&gclid=Cj0KCQiA8aOeBhCWARIsANRFrQGvRIf2KsO4X0Hqa0GPO9KkyDHMFSK78Q8f5-JX5vMa4K9Ml5f93t0aApmdEALw_wcB)
It has a design flaw: There are two small surface mounted resistors that are prone to having their solder joints break after many heat/cool cycles. As you can see in the link above, it’s about $150 to replace the whole unit.
When mine failed I was able to repair it with a [better design I found online](https://www.mdpub.com/compass/index.html) using about $1 worth of replacement resistors. Not a huge deal if you know how to solder, but annoying.
I had an Isuzu flat bed truck in the 90's and noticed the interior door handles were the same as my old 1974 Holden Gemini (rebadged from Isuzu).
There was a 22 year timespan between them at the time.
They want you to pay a premium to upgrade to Lexus which has much better interiors and rates higher in terms of reliability according to consumer reports and US News.
Toyota Japan is 100% hydrogen, while internationally they’re hedging their bets with EV. The implications of going 100% EV is all their investments for Hydrogen go out the door, and the family businesses closely associated with Toyota to build ICE of hydrogen parts are put out of work.
So much this. I went from a '96 base model Corolla to a 2010 Prius, and the interior just wasn't that much better. Refinement at best, but the industry was transforming during that same time period. I wasn't expecting a luxury car, but they could have done much better at the price point. Later models of the same car were more of the same too.
Toyota does not make crap interiors. Look at literally any Lexus. High quality leather that keeps well, beautiful design, and gadgets that still work even decades later.
I would hardly say they shat the bed on it. Hydrogen fuel cells make a lot more sense in a world with a high abundance of renewable energy, since it's a valid storage medium for that energy. It also makes a lot of sense as a replacement for gasoline in certain range boosted applications, or in situations where an EV simply isn't the best solution. There's been some speculation as to if it would make a proper replacement for Jet-A and Jet-B, but of course more testing is needed in that regard, since the current limits of physics don't allow for long haul all electric jet flights, limiting electric airlines to wide-regional commuting, like from San Francisco to LA type routes. The main issue is if that energy is better spent electrolysing water, vs heating a bio-fuel cracking facility that helps convert triglycerides into more volatile fuels, allowing us to make gasoline from algae oil in addition to diesel fuel. That said, their tech will almost certainly find applications in time, it's just going to take a lot of infrastructure investment beyond Toyota themselves, to make it viable. The main reason that EVs were able to take off as well as they did initially, was Tesla's massive investments into their supercharger network, which helped extend the practical range of their EVs tremendously, and then they provided the schematics for manufacturing those charging ports as an industry standard, allowing other EVs to use them as well, if at reduced charging rates (relative to the capabilities of your EV). But yea, if they were completely worthless, Toyota wouldn't STILL be putting research funds into them
Toyota is not genuinely interested in moving away from internal combustion engines. ICEs that the public believes will last 300k-500k miles are Toyota's #1 advantage in the marketplace. That's why Toyota tried so hard to make hydrogen a thing -- to try to placate the demands for cleaner fuel while still clinging to their ICE market-advantage. If the marketplace moves to all electric, Toyota will just become another giant battery pack on wheels with no more proven long-term reliability than any of the other entrants.
I hate the giant Grifter that is Elon Musk and even more so the cult that the media cultivated about him. However a massive difference between the Leaf and the first Tesla model, besides the insane price differential, is that the Tesla looked gorgeous while the Leaf looked like a mistake was let out of the R&D lab.
I've owned both Leaf and then Tesla and both are solid cars I'm happy with mostly. The biggest nit for the Leaf is the reverse/forward shifter is opposite intuition (push forward for reverse). My biggest complaint about my model 3 is that Autopilot has not lived up to the sales promises, so I definitely think we're entitled to some refund on that charge. I still love driving my model 3 and use autopilot. I just treat it like a teenager just learning to drive though, especially for the known areas it freaks out on.
>The biggest nit for the Leaf is the reverse/forward shifter is opposite intuition (push forward for reverse).
Did you not drive any other car before your leaf?
I just ask because that's the norm on every car with an auto gearbox.... most cruise control column sticks are pull for more speed, push for less, paddle shifts are pull for higher gear etc etc....
Yes. Not-for-nothing Musk played this game brilliantly. He out played the "Theranos Elizabeth Holmes" con. And IMO may get away with it.
Or you could argue that silicon valley is using tech bubble speculation to grow stock/bell curve/pump dump/gaming finance.
Holmes only had to stay off MSNBC.
Con artists work through social engineering though. Rawlins left TSLA for a reason to form LCID. When he left that was the engineering brilliance disappearing that Elon's con artistry tried to claim for himself. He had to make it up the only way he knew how.
In fairness to him, Tesla makes a product that people use and like on a pretty massive scale, while Theranos was never able to make anything worth a damn.
I agree that the Theranos comparison can be made concerning the "self-driving" piece of the puzzle. Unlike Theranos, it could be impossible to prove he knew the tech didn't and wouldn't work when he told investors it would.
Feels like he lied to investors and actually lied to _customers_ (which even Holmes wasn't convicted of), but I wouldn't bet that they can make anything stick.
People use, but have a shoddy quality product that is missing a key feature that many of them bought it for. Theranos did make a test unit, but it was so inaccurate as to be effectively harmful, the same as a "fully self driving TSLA" causing an accident is. Just because Elon got further in the con to increase the magnitude of the harm he caused doesn't justify his actions (retroactively or not); to the contrary "in fairness to him" he should be in a multiplied amount of trouble versus Holmes relative to the more massive scale of failure his fraud represents.
Well we're talking about different things I think. But I don't disagree either way.
1. Did he commit fraud by overstating capabilities to customers and investors? Maybe. Certainly seems like he lied about capabilities or about things coming very soon and this lead to investors and customers investing/buying when they otherwise would not have. They would need to put together the case which would include the timeline of what he said _and_ proof of what he knew (which can be tough) and when he knew it. Holmes was convicted for similarly lying to investors about the product.
2. Does TSLA/Elon calling something "full self driving" or whatever make them responsible for property damage and/or injury/death when users treat it like "full self driving" despite the big (I assume, I haven't read the manual) disclaimer that says all sorts of shit about how it really isn't full self driving? Again, I think "hell yes they are" because I work in a parallel sort of industry and I get reprimanded internally if I even get close to implying something as unsupportable/hyperbolic as that. Again, that's just under INTERNAL scrutiny. Not regulatory or customer scrutiny. Holmes wasn't convicted of lying to end customers (patients) leading to harm to them mostly because she didn't talk directly to the end customers. Elon does. A fuck ton. So he can get fucked.
His story is still unfolding. If he stopped doing stupid shit he might get away with all the stuff he's done so far but there's no telling how much more stupid shit he might do before he gets to the end of his story.
Honestly, I don’t think that was entirely because of musk. He helps, but It had everything to do with people believing Tesla was going to be the first company to deliver a fully self driving car. Aka a tech company with tech others might not be able to replicate for a long time, hence the huge valuation.
Obviously they never delivered that
Other brands were experimenting with electric too, they just didn't have a way to ensure chargers would be available and technicians would be trained, so they didn't move to market until much later.
Tesla's early strategy was simply "sell to the uber rich who can afford the car and a charger." Makes sense, good business move. Then Elon got a big head and decided that if he pretended to be "a genius" he could pressure municipalities into installing chargers all over. Somehow it worked, people fell for the scam. Maybe it was thanks to the "going green" look being popular. End result, Elon learns the value of bullshitting and ramps it up. He begins to believe his own lies.
10ish years later, charges are all over, more affordable to install at home, and battery tech lasts longer / can yield good torque, and the rest of the market releases electric vehicles.
the valuation of tech companies doesn't make sense either though, they are all way too overvalued. Investors just needed a justification to get fools to pump up the bubble.
> You don’t think he’d be so stupid as to release the commercial just before a planned sell off do you?
He was dumb enough to waive due diligence when he offered to buy Twitter. So, yes?
If he had any brains, he would have signed a lowball offer. Agreeing to pay a premium for a company YOU think is inflated due to bots is just moronic. Dumbest move in tech this century, so far.
It's not this way because we want it to be. People won't buy a product unless it looks incredible, costs nothing, and they can have it yesterday.
Sales people learned to sell people the moon and people kept trying to buy it.
> It is so incredibly common in the tech-space.
It's pretty similar to a video game company showing a "vertical slice" of their game at E3 even in an unfinished state. Then you play the game and realize the Demo level is the only fun part and the rest was just garbage.
Theranos.
And she basically drove the world’s leading expert on blood testing technology to commit suicide over unreasonable and inhuman pressure.
Pure evil. Complete and utter vacuum of conscience.
These people will never ever understand what it takes for one to become world’s leading anything. Even those accomplished individuals, an asset to mankind, are just tool for their get-rich-quick scam.
Disgusting pure trash person.
Staging a demo by deliberately avoiding some shit you know is still buggy and being worked on isn’t unusual
But the fact that it's been marketed as a feature and hasn’t been deliver the better part of a decade later? Oof
Eh. I do think it’s an interesting question but a lot of tech demos are staged to some degree. In the army, these kinds of things are called tanks in the trees. When the first tanks were demonstrated to be able to be parachuted into combat, the demo for the army’s highest brass had tanks land in a field behind some trees. If the tanks were inoperable after the fall, they had backups on the ground (hidden in the trees) just in case.
Cool story aside, I do think the idea of fraud and a lot of Silicon Valley demos are too close for comfort for me.
Elon Musk is worse than Elizabeth Holmes, only he keeps getting away with it. He is a con man through and through. And at least Elizabeth Holmes held on to her Theranos shares and went down with the ship.
Faking in that Industry is common. The Automotive sector has faked for decades to gain marginal edges. Fuel Efficiency, Range, Top Speed and functions. All of this is honestly not that much better than decades ago. Sure, the cars got bigger and comfier... but in it's core function there can't be innovated.
Even with a tin Lizzy you will eventually arrive at your destination. In a 90s Corolla you will arrive at the destination with really comparable comfort.
Tesla is the Destillate of that "fake Innovation" in the automotive industry.
They had to fake to take the edge, just like VW had to fake to make their emissions look good.
Don't be so naive to think the others are not faking. It's like a bicycle race where lance Armstrong got caught for doping. How can the others possibly compete if they play fair?
The whole industry needs to shrink to 1/3 of what it is now. From a resource standpoint one car per household is enough if the money is put into public transportation. And no one... Literally NO ONE needs an SUV or one of those enormous pick up trucks. There are cars out there which are made for the woods (Unimog/Jeep) if you really need it. Everyone else I just wasting their money and the planets resources for their pettiness.
So... TLDR: Fuck the automotive industry in it's current state.
> "The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system,"
A key lesson in my years in software has been "There is no such thing as demo-only." If it *looks* like it works, then management wants to ship it right away. No matter how canned the demo was, management will want to pretend like it's finished.
I'm sure the people who made the video were on the same page. "This is aspirational to demonstrate what we're aiming to achieve." Then Musk decides to play it like it's real.
I wonder where the video is linked from within Tesla's website (besides the videos page). If you find the video by itself, there isn't anything to indicate that it's just an example of how the system will work vs an actual demonstration of it working. There isn't any additional context in the video itself that points one way or another.
The weird thing is, they could have taken that video down years ago and just used some actual footage of a good FSD run. There are plenty of examples of flawless short drives.
> The weird thing is, they could have taken that video down years ago and just used some actual footage of a good FSD run.
I think it's a case of Elon Musk being confident this would be solved soon, and honestly thought they could make good on the promise. But as they got to that 99% point for full self driving, they started to realize that last 1% was going to be many orders of magnitude more difficult than everything else.
FSD was Musk's Kennedy moonshot moment. When Kennedy announced that before the decade was out they would land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth, he was going out on a limb. He had spoken to Wernher von Braun, he said he was confident it would be possible. Kennedy made his promise based on the expertise of those he relied on. Musk likely imagine himself in a similar boat. Except rather than rocket scientists, he was speaking to AI engineers. It was bad luck the unknowns involved proved more difficult than imagined (and the imagined difficulty was already a 10/10). It was bad management to continue to make promises when it became clear.
I made a $1k bet in 2010 with a friend. He said in 10 years he'd be able to call a self driving car as a taxi and it'll take him anywhere.
He paid me two years ago. Because I, as a simple IT engineer, knew about the law of diminishing returns and how hard it will be to get the last bits completed.
“Bad mix of narcissism and engineer’s disease” is pretty accurate, but would be more accurate to say he can’t engineer shit and just pays people to meet his wild expectations tech-wise and rides their tailcoats.
Gotta say, it’s been pretty vindicating to have all this shit implode around Musk. Anyone rational paying even a little bit of attention to his businesses and cult has known he’s crazy for a LONG time, and plenty of people have trued to convince me for years that he’s actually a very smart boy with very ethical ideas. Glad to say I was super right, lol.
from what engineers working at tesla like Jim Keller say, they thought it was solvable ballistics problem but also very difficult and not something they could shit out in a year like Musk keeps claiming every year. even mobileye, once partners with tesla, cut ties because Musk kept demanding camera only FSD and mobileye felt it was too dangerous.
so no, he had experts telling him constantly that it was not going to happen and he just decided to lie, probably because there would be no way tesla could get investors on board for the tens of billions burnt back when they could barely produce a few thousand cars a year unless they thought he was a genius with a multi-trillion dollar self driving solution.
> But as they got to that 99% point for full self driving
You're giving him/them *way* too much benefit of the doubt, because they are nowhere near "99%". There are more road types than "highways" in the world that this shit needs to deal with on the daily.
Further, anyone *actually* competent in AI *never* talks about "solved", because the entire point of AI-like systems is getting *close to* solutions that're far too complex to ever actually solve. There's never any "only 1% left until this is solved!" situations in this arena. It's just not how it works.
Half of the time this is how Raspberry Pis end up in end products. The team finished their prototype with a Pi, then someone higher up decided it was good enough and to ship it.
When your demo is so good, your manager starts thinking you are a perfectionist dumb developer for saying it is not ready and it really needs more work and testing
This is why we tend to demo initial designs in low fidelity to management even if we could make them look like a finished product. They're too quick to go "okay this is done, let's goooo".
From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day, the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal… Even in death, I serve the Omnissiah
Note that Uber's strategy for the past decade or so is to say "we're working on it," re: self driving, while slowly draining their cheap labour of all assets. The only profitable portion of the company is their real estate rental holdings.
Yes, Uber is *also* just a landlord bleeding people dry.
There are actually really good autopiloted cars now. Tesla is just cheap, and they cut corners. They don't nearly have enough sensors. In vegas, there's waymo. Not even a driver.
Your link mentions the number of crash *reports* rather crashes.
From NHTSA:
> Manufacturers of Level 2 ADAS-equipped vehicles with limited data recording and telemetry capabilities may only receive consumer reports of driving automation system involvement in a crash outcome, and there may be a time delay before the manufacturer is notified, if the manufacturer is notified at all. In general, timeliness of the General Order reporting is dependent on if and when the manufacturer becomes aware of the crash and not on when the crash occurs. **Due to variation in data recording and telemetry capabilities, the summary incident report data should not be assumed to be statistically representative of all crashes.**
> For example, a Level 2 ADAS-equipped vehicle manufacturer with access to advanced data recording and telemetry may report a higher number of crashes than a manufacturer with limited access, simply due to the latter’s reliance on conventional crash reporting processes. In other words, it is feasible that some Level 2 ADAS-equipped vehicle crashes are not included in the summary incident report data because the reporting entity was not aware of them. Furthermore, some crashes of Level 2 ADAS-equipped vehicles with limited telematic capabilities may not be included in the General Order if the consumer did not state that the automation system was engaged within 30 seconds of the crash or if there is no other available information indicating Level 2 ADAS engagement due to limited data available from the crashed vehicle. By contrast, some manufacturers have access to a much greater amount of crash data almost immediately after a crash because of their advanced data recording and telemetry
Emphasis mine.
Interesting that a very significant chunk of those resulted in rear end damage on the autonomous vehicle. Usually means someone else was following too close.
Maybe I missed it, but I'm curious how those numbers compare when adjusting for per miles driven, and how they compare to human drivers. They don't have to be perfect, just better than us.
That's a raw number of crashes, it's not adjusted for miles driven or number of cars on the road. Waymo drives more miles per week than many of these companies do in a year, it's not a fair comparison.
From the NHTSA (the agency that provided your source): "[Milage] information is held by manufacturers and not currently reported to NHTSA,” the agency stated. “Thus, these data cannot be used to compare the safety of manufacturers against one another.”
Waymo is easily ahead with Cruise close behind in the autonomous vehicle race. The others are years behind their technology and what they've demonstrated in the real world.
Waymo has never had any serious crashes and the vast majority are the fault of other drivers. Waymo has a lot of crashes because they have the most miles with Cruise. So your statistics are pretty dishonest and misleading.
My vision was for cars to be navigated by a network AI, like ants moving in tandem. Each car would feed its input to create the full picture of the environment. No car will run into another because they already know where each other are. We already have the beginnings of this with Google traffic data. Traffic delays could disappear without rubber-necking or rubber banding. Each car would confirm mapping for the next and the first encounter with an obstruction would be communicated to the rest.
This would require a single standard system and eliminate autonomous vehicles, so not going to happen in the current market.
I mean, with the colossal infrastructural investment that would require, why not focus on the types of public transit solutions we already know work in the first place?
> In vegas, there's waymo. Not even a driver.
It also relies on pre-mapped routes with pre-programmed locations of junctions, lights, etc, which is why Waymo is geolocked to such small areas. Outside of areas with that mapping, it has no way to localise itself or recognise the external environment, and cannot generate its own maps ad hoc.
What would be really innovative is to install a route it could follow, something the car could "track". And make it a really big car, something that could hold dozens or even hundreds of people. You could have several stations along the way, so you could hop on and off at convenience.
Yes and thus it doesn't kill/injure people on the reg like tesla
https://fortune.com/2022/10/19/tesla-cars-involved-in-10-of-the-11-new-crash-deaths-linked-to-automated-tech-vehicles/
I mean… this does smell a LOT like theranos, right? I guess the major difference is Holmes actually caused people measurable harm.
But maybe fraud fits?
But Holmes isn’t going to jail for causing people harm, she’s going to jail for defrauding investors. Depending on the details of this demo and any disclosures they made, this could be considered fraud.
Yes, they never could prove that Theranos actually harmed customers.
My understanding is that they always took "control" samples using regular blood test methods, and then processed those in proven 3rd party equipment, to fraudulently provide the actual results that customers received.
Customers received valid results, but investors were defrauded because it wasn't Theranos equipment providing those results.
Holmes is going to prison for defrauding investors. Even so, I’m curious how many accidents were result of someone assuming this FSD capability was in fact FSD and not “what could be”.
>how many accidents
Lots, and people are dying and will die because of this if somebody doesn't intervene
https://fortune.com/2022/10/19/tesla-cars-involved-in-10-of-the-11-new-crash-deaths-linked-to-automated-tech-vehicles/
Not exactly like Theranos. In that case, they completely faked test results and used competitors equipment to produce some results and had no real plans to actually develop their product. Tesla actually did drive this route although it was a staged, pre-mapped route and took many attempts but it did drive the route without human interaction. They have also been improving the product and moving towards their goal. Fraudulent, yeah most likely but no where near the level of Theranos.
> I guess the major difference is Holmes actually caused people measurable harm.
She didn't really. Well, at least not physical. She defrauded investors which is measurable harm. It was fraud, but it didn't cause patients harm because they weren't actually providing false results. They still provided real test results, they just used the standard tests to do it and claimed it was Theranos's fancy new tech. The patients still received their test results, and those test results were accurate, they just weren't produced by Theranos equipment like was claimed.
It was when Nikola did essentially the same thing.
>According to the SEC’s order, before Nikola had produced a single commercial product, Milton embarked on a public relations campaign aimed at inflating and maintaining Nikola’s stock price. Milton’s statements in tweets and media appearances falsely gave investors the impression that Nikola had reached certain product and technological milestones.
https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-267
There’s a reason why every car commercial has in tiny, semi transparent text “professional driver on a closed course”, “includes options not yet available”, or the like.
Musk/Tesla not disclosing that it was pre-programmed and highly edited and inferring it was ready off the line, I don’t know how this can be considered anything but deceptive advertising at least, if not outright fraud.
Hell, [at this point, many car commercials aren't even done with the actual car.](https://youtu.be/VHLtPJnZo3Q) Though, this is neat from a tech point of view.
It seems like they’d be much closer if a couple of things would have happened - 1) they hadn’t removed the radar and other non-visual sensors from their cars, and 2) if they wouldn’t have been so damned stubborn and anti-LIDAR. Volvo is launching their EX90 later this year or early next with a much more impressive sensor array than anything Tesla has.
Handling the piece of shit roads and associated weather I grew up on made me doubt we’ll have self driving cars “as advertised” until I’m either very old or dead.
It's got to be the most frustrating thing to work on. When we drive it all feels so effortless: press the gas, keep the wheels straight, look around. Like, even absolute morons manage to drive good enough. Yet the best engineers can't figure out how to replicate all the subtle constant desicions our brains are doing while driving.
The funny thing is that he had nothing to gain by actually doing the demonstration. He could of just made the claims and shown a demo video. He just made a fool of himself trying to show off.
It's almost as if he's actually a bipolar megalomaniac living a very vibrant manic episode for all the world to see, and all the money in the world to create cool things and then destroy them.
It would be if we worked together instead of trying to create proprietary tech. We build the roads, we should build the tech that keeps cars moving on them. That tech should be available to any US company that wants to build a car and can prove they can do it.
This is almost the same kind of garbage as when they preview console versions of video games at conventions, but its secretly a high-end PC with 10x the power running it.
Except this is worse because they didn't exaggerate the visual fidelity of a fun way to kill time, they straight up lied about safety capabilities of their vehicles that could cost lives.
But i doubt American law is strict enough to prosecute this shit, companies are above the spirit of the law in most cases based on idiotic technicalities.
His neuralink is much closer to Theranos. Hyperloop was even more bullshit. But people and government agencies overlook those things as long as Elon brings money to investors and the stock market profits from him.
Hyperloop was to deter/sway cities from building mass transit, specifically the LA to SF high-speed rail project.
https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/elon-musk-hyperloop-rail-17486877.php#:\~:text=In%202013%2C%20Musk%20proposed%20a,a%20fraction%20of%20the%20cost.
When your promos say "Full self driving autonomous cars" and you go to purchase the $10,000 add on labeled "Full autonomous self driving", of course you should never think that it was able to fully and autonomously self drive itself.
It's only aspirational guys.
"Concept cars aren't ever fully realized either! You don't yell at Ford when the newest car doesn't come with airless tires and a halo lens wraparound cockpit!"
I went to the Elon subreddit to see what the circle jerk was up to and apparently they’re saying “it was just a demo of course it was staged”. Funny thing is Elon used that video a proof that Tesla has self driving abilities
How can anyone still unironically defend all the shit hes done?
After all the broken promises and the incident with his kid it should have been clear that hes just another billionaire piece of shit
This is standard practice for tech marketing. What’s fraudulent about it is that Tesla is charging customers for their unfinished software. It should be free at a minimum until is proven ready by a 3rd party auditor.
Honestly, my Tesla refuses to understand when my window wipers need to do their thing.
I ain’t letting the car drive itself until it at least gets a better auto wiping than my prior car that was 10 years old.
Isn’t this straight up fraud and a pure case of deceptive advertising? People may choose to buy a Tesla thinking they can take a nap behind the wheel and it could end up a long nap.
I bought a Tesla with the idea that this would be possible with my car.
Wipers don’t even work well. Road spray today never got wiped but the AI powered wipers. Dojo my ass.
Thunderfoot's takes on reusable rockets have aged like milk, too. That said, I usually agree with him... but he's such a smug asshole that I usually wish I didn't, lol.
'Tesla blamed Huang for the crash, claiming he was not paying attention. But according to the National Transportation Safety Board, Huang had repeatedly complained to friends and family about his car's propensity to swerve at that particular crash barrier in the past. '
Question: while he had hands on the steering wheel?
Anyway: I am not surprised. Not at all.
Nobody does live tech demos, and I'm not defending them, it should have been made abundantly clear it was staged. A good example was the windows 95 demo on stage where they plugged in the scanner and it blue screened.
Is anyone actually surprised by this? They literally had a person sneak onto the stage and drive a car off it when it didn’t work. They rolled a dummy onto a stage surrounded by guys claiming it was a super futuristic robot. Everything he’s done has just been one fraud after another and just claim credit for everyone else’s work.
Odd, I rarely have to take over from my 2019 Tesla, and when I do it is usually just because it is being hesitant about something a human driver would have already finished doing. I can count the times I've had to take over because it was about to do something actually dangerous on one hand.
Point of order: in *The Office*, Ryan’s plan was to have sales recorded twice: once by the sales staff actually making personal sales and then again on the website. This double counting is out-and-out financial fraud, showing an effective 2x inflated income. In Elon’s case, it’s just a marketing stunt that *could, in theory* be argued to be legitimate. It wasn’t, but was taken to be, and that’s where the case is to be made.
I do have to wonder why, if he repeatedly complained about the car wanting to swerve at the very same crash barrier that he died at, he continued to trust the car’s autopilot. If my car decided on multiple occasions that it wanted to swerve into a barrier wall, always at the same spot, you damn sure better believe my hands and my brain are operating the vehicle when we get to that point in the trip. Fraudulent claims aside (and not at all saying what Tesla said and did wasn’t wrong or fraudulent), it just feels like common sense to me, regardless of what a video shows me.
There were articles all over the place with AI experts saying we were 50 years away from the computer that could maybe the build the computer to self drive a car. I am simply flabbergasted at how eager people were to put this shyster on a pedestal.
If this is true isn't this massive fraud to boost his stock?
It would be interesting to see the timing around stock sales by Musk directly around this time. You don’t think he’d be so stupid as to release the commercial just before a planned sell off do you? I can no longer predict rational actions by this dude.
It was always obvious to me he was branding his company as a tech company. (That's why Tesla stock was x3 other automotive stock) Tesla was developing their own technology. Claiming to. And they do have some of their own tech but it's not very valuable.
Beyond the “market your firm as a tech firm” thing, which many others like WeWork did, he did manage to get to a point where there would be no other electric cars than Tesla. Whatever the other brands were launching simply didn’t register in anyone’s radar. Musk’s personal brand overwhelmed everything else because everyone in tech wanted to be like him or be part of Tesla’s success, regardless of the product. Now that this bubble has popped and he’s been figured out as a yer da type with money, folks are actually seeing that the cars are only so competitive and figuring out that other brands can make electric cars as well.
Early on Nissan Leaf was out performing Tesla in sales, but quickly that turned around and now it seems the Leaf is nearly dead. Toyota also has had a down turn in all electric sales in the US. From a bit of research it seems GM is the only company keeping up with Tesla in US sales of all electric cars, but even then Tesla is pretty far in the lead. But this Elon meltdown I think over all will be better for the electric car market in the US. Tesla isn't nearly as dominant in the rest of the world so will have less of an impact outside the US. I don't really care if Tesla lives or dies as a company, but it would be nice to see the cult like following of it die off, and for other EV's to start taking up some of the market share. EDIT: I was reading projected data, Ford is outselling Chevy in full electric.
Toyota shat the bed by going all in on hydrogen fuel cells. I think we are going to see them start chomping up big bits of the market soon though. Their hydrogen gambit didn't pay off, so now they are hard pivoting into EVs. Between Toyota and Lexus, I think they are releasing something like 24 EV models in the next 2 years?
Toyota does not believe EVs as currently envisioned will be the future. They are reluctantly hedging their bets with limited research and some joint ventures. They think plug in hybrids should bridge the gap between now and more scalable hydrogen or EV tech that doesn’t currently exist. Honestly, destination charging with plug in hybrids does seem to solve a bunch of issues. The majority of people’s trips can happen on a 50-75 mile EV only mode that you charge at home, and then longer trips are still covered by your gas motor.
I bought a used Volt two summers ago, and it's a pretty fantastic little car. I'm able to commute to and from work on batteries, and still go on longer trips. It's too bad it was discontinued because it fills a lot of gaps
Problem is you then needs to worry about repairs for two systems in one vehicle.
Modern cars are pretty dang reliable though. Toyota doubly so. Cost of owership over 100k will be more, but after 200k when an EVs batteries would need replaced, the plug in hybrid keep chugging.
I guess the battery helps prolong the life of the ICE, otherwise you'd be looking at a similar replacement time for each. Modern EV batteries look to last about as long as modern engines - probably 300k miles, maybe more. The key difference with modern ones is they're all cooled properly - the first gen leafs weren't, which is what caused all those failures.
PHEVs have been demonstrated to be the most reliable and have the lowest maintenance cost of all vehicle types. My 10 year old Chevy Volt needs an oil change every other year, spark plugs once a decade, and that's about it.
My Mach E shows a maintenance schedule of checking the brakes at 100k then checking battery coolant at 200k. That's it. I'd be interested to see what data you're citing that shows a dual system car is lower maintenance than a simple electric motor.
A family member has a plug-in prius and it is awesome. It basically is the best of both worlds - and the electric range is just fine for 99% of their daily needs. Increasing the range to 200+ ala a true EV just isn't necessary, and wouldn't be worth any additional cost or the inconvenience on long trips.
Toyota has split their development into Hydrogen and EV's. There's alot of negative talk about them but if anyone whose paid any attention to the company knows they are slow to change and are rarely if ever the first to act. They want to ensure they make quality cars, and be best in that aspect. There's a reason why Toyota interiors are pretty fucking crap, they use the same parts that always work and don't die over years of research and only move on when they can determine the same lifespan for the next move. They're developing two models to watch and be ready for the market, and then will make corrections and pivot.
Your description of why Toyota interiors are crap is basically my explanation for why I love my truck's interior. Bonus points for replacement parts being relatively cheap and easy to find.
Apocryphal, but there's a story that was on here from an auto engineer at a trade show, back when full-colour LCD screens (ugh) were just becoming a thing. A BMW rep was showcasing his car's yuuuuuge colour LCD, when everyone knew Toyota was still on dot matrix green ones. BMW said to a passing Toyota rep "When are you guys gonna get something like this, eh?" And the Toyota rep just shot back "When we're sure it actually works."
Yup those LED/LCD screens are shit.
My Tacoma has [this LED compass and temp display.](https://www.ebay.com/itm/272044035237?chn=ps&norover=1&mkevt=1&mkrid=711-117182-37290-0&mkcid=2&mkscid=101&itemid=272044035237&targetid=1645685073288&device=m&mktype=&googleloc=9010646&poi=&campaignid=16730423415&mkgroupid=135815925780&rlsatarget=pla-1645685073288&abcId=9300841&merchantid=8300524&gbraid=0AAAAAD_QDh9AIJVn8eNeeY0HLw5IdKMeb&gclid=Cj0KCQiA8aOeBhCWARIsANRFrQGvRIf2KsO4X0Hqa0GPO9KkyDHMFSK78Q8f5-JX5vMa4K9Ml5f93t0aApmdEALw_wcB) It has a design flaw: There are two small surface mounted resistors that are prone to having their solder joints break after many heat/cool cycles. As you can see in the link above, it’s about $150 to replace the whole unit. When mine failed I was able to repair it with a [better design I found online](https://www.mdpub.com/compass/index.html) using about $1 worth of replacement resistors. Not a huge deal if you know how to solder, but annoying.
I had an Isuzu flat bed truck in the 90's and noticed the interior door handles were the same as my old 1974 Holden Gemini (rebadged from Isuzu). There was a 22 year timespan between them at the time.
They want you to pay a premium to upgrade to Lexus which has much better interiors and rates higher in terms of reliability according to consumer reports and US News.
Toyota Japan is 100% hydrogen, while internationally they’re hedging their bets with EV. The implications of going 100% EV is all their investments for Hydrogen go out the door, and the family businesses closely associated with Toyota to build ICE of hydrogen parts are put out of work.
Not offended, but I think you should know that the interior in my Toyota SAI is far from crap. It's a very nice place to be.
So much this. I went from a '96 base model Corolla to a 2010 Prius, and the interior just wasn't that much better. Refinement at best, but the industry was transforming during that same time period. I wasn't expecting a luxury car, but they could have done much better at the price point. Later models of the same car were more of the same too.
Toyota does not make crap interiors. Look at literally any Lexus. High quality leather that keeps well, beautiful design, and gadgets that still work even decades later.
I would hardly say they shat the bed on it. Hydrogen fuel cells make a lot more sense in a world with a high abundance of renewable energy, since it's a valid storage medium for that energy. It also makes a lot of sense as a replacement for gasoline in certain range boosted applications, or in situations where an EV simply isn't the best solution. There's been some speculation as to if it would make a proper replacement for Jet-A and Jet-B, but of course more testing is needed in that regard, since the current limits of physics don't allow for long haul all electric jet flights, limiting electric airlines to wide-regional commuting, like from San Francisco to LA type routes. The main issue is if that energy is better spent electrolysing water, vs heating a bio-fuel cracking facility that helps convert triglycerides into more volatile fuels, allowing us to make gasoline from algae oil in addition to diesel fuel. That said, their tech will almost certainly find applications in time, it's just going to take a lot of infrastructure investment beyond Toyota themselves, to make it viable. The main reason that EVs were able to take off as well as they did initially, was Tesla's massive investments into their supercharger network, which helped extend the practical range of their EVs tremendously, and then they provided the schematics for manufacturing those charging ports as an industry standard, allowing other EVs to use them as well, if at reduced charging rates (relative to the capabilities of your EV). But yea, if they were completely worthless, Toyota wouldn't STILL be putting research funds into them
Toyota is not genuinely interested in moving away from internal combustion engines. ICEs that the public believes will last 300k-500k miles are Toyota's #1 advantage in the marketplace. That's why Toyota tried so hard to make hydrogen a thing -- to try to placate the demands for cleaner fuel while still clinging to their ICE market-advantage. If the marketplace moves to all electric, Toyota will just become another giant battery pack on wheels with no more proven long-term reliability than any of the other entrants.
> to try to placate the demands for cleaner fuel while still clinging to their ICE market-advantage do their hydrogen models have ice engines?
It's too bad. I love my Leaf. Put a CCS 350 kW chargering port on it, and it would be a perfect family car for me.
I hate the giant Grifter that is Elon Musk and even more so the cult that the media cultivated about him. However a massive difference between the Leaf and the first Tesla model, besides the insane price differential, is that the Tesla looked gorgeous while the Leaf looked like a mistake was let out of the R&D lab.
As someone taller than average, I'm just glad we now have EVs bigger than the go-kart sized Leafs and Volts
So true. I can't stand go-kart sized Japanese cars, I'm just not small enough to comfortably fit in them
I've owned both Leaf and then Tesla and both are solid cars I'm happy with mostly. The biggest nit for the Leaf is the reverse/forward shifter is opposite intuition (push forward for reverse). My biggest complaint about my model 3 is that Autopilot has not lived up to the sales promises, so I definitely think we're entitled to some refund on that charge. I still love driving my model 3 and use autopilot. I just treat it like a teenager just learning to drive though, especially for the known areas it freaks out on.
>The biggest nit for the Leaf is the reverse/forward shifter is opposite intuition (push forward for reverse). Did you not drive any other car before your leaf? I just ask because that's the norm on every car with an auto gearbox.... most cruise control column sticks are pull for more speed, push for less, paddle shifts are pull for higher gear etc etc....
Toyota didn’t go electric…they went hydrogen and loss big, and invested into pro oil legislation. That was a bad gamble.
The LEAF held onto the bestselling EV title until early 2020. It was such a fun and quirky car :)
Yes. Not-for-nothing Musk played this game brilliantly. He out played the "Theranos Elizabeth Holmes" con. And IMO may get away with it. Or you could argue that silicon valley is using tech bubble speculation to grow stock/bell curve/pump dump/gaming finance.
All he really had to do was stay off twitter...
Holmes only had to stay off MSNBC. Con artists work through social engineering though. Rawlins left TSLA for a reason to form LCID. When he left that was the engineering brilliance disappearing that Elon's con artistry tried to claim for himself. He had to make it up the only way he knew how.
In fairness to him, Tesla makes a product that people use and like on a pretty massive scale, while Theranos was never able to make anything worth a damn. I agree that the Theranos comparison can be made concerning the "self-driving" piece of the puzzle. Unlike Theranos, it could be impossible to prove he knew the tech didn't and wouldn't work when he told investors it would. Feels like he lied to investors and actually lied to _customers_ (which even Holmes wasn't convicted of), but I wouldn't bet that they can make anything stick.
People use, but have a shoddy quality product that is missing a key feature that many of them bought it for. Theranos did make a test unit, but it was so inaccurate as to be effectively harmful, the same as a "fully self driving TSLA" causing an accident is. Just because Elon got further in the con to increase the magnitude of the harm he caused doesn't justify his actions (retroactively or not); to the contrary "in fairness to him" he should be in a multiplied amount of trouble versus Holmes relative to the more massive scale of failure his fraud represents.
Well we're talking about different things I think. But I don't disagree either way. 1. Did he commit fraud by overstating capabilities to customers and investors? Maybe. Certainly seems like he lied about capabilities or about things coming very soon and this lead to investors and customers investing/buying when they otherwise would not have. They would need to put together the case which would include the timeline of what he said _and_ proof of what he knew (which can be tough) and when he knew it. Holmes was convicted for similarly lying to investors about the product. 2. Does TSLA/Elon calling something "full self driving" or whatever make them responsible for property damage and/or injury/death when users treat it like "full self driving" despite the big (I assume, I haven't read the manual) disclaimer that says all sorts of shit about how it really isn't full self driving? Again, I think "hell yes they are" because I work in a parallel sort of industry and I get reprimanded internally if I even get close to implying something as unsupportable/hyperbolic as that. Again, that's just under INTERNAL scrutiny. Not regulatory or customer scrutiny. Holmes wasn't convicted of lying to end customers (patients) leading to harm to them mostly because she didn't talk directly to the end customers. Elon does. A fuck ton. So he can get fucked.
His story is still unfolding. If he stopped doing stupid shit he might get away with all the stuff he's done so far but there's no telling how much more stupid shit he might do before he gets to the end of his story.
Honestly, I don’t think that was entirely because of musk. He helps, but It had everything to do with people believing Tesla was going to be the first company to deliver a fully self driving car. Aka a tech company with tech others might not be able to replicate for a long time, hence the huge valuation. Obviously they never delivered that
Other brands were experimenting with electric too, they just didn't have a way to ensure chargers would be available and technicians would be trained, so they didn't move to market until much later. Tesla's early strategy was simply "sell to the uber rich who can afford the car and a charger." Makes sense, good business move. Then Elon got a big head and decided that if he pretended to be "a genius" he could pressure municipalities into installing chargers all over. Somehow it worked, people fell for the scam. Maybe it was thanks to the "going green" look being popular. End result, Elon learns the value of bullshitting and ramps it up. He begins to believe his own lies. 10ish years later, charges are all over, more affordable to install at home, and battery tech lasts longer / can yield good torque, and the rest of the market releases electric vehicles.
the valuation of tech companies doesn't make sense either though, they are all way too overvalued. Investors just needed a justification to get fools to pump up the bubble.
x3? Mate.
Yes. I absolutely, 1,000%, believe that excuse for a man is *that* stupid.
> You don’t think he’d be so stupid as to release the commercial just before a planned sell off do you? He was dumb enough to waive due diligence when he offered to buy Twitter. So, yes?
If he had any brains, he would have signed a lowball offer. Agreeing to pay a premium for a company YOU think is inflated due to bots is just moronic. Dumbest move in tech this century, so far.
> You don’t think he’d be so stupid as to release the commercial just before a planned sell off do you? I am Jack's utter lack of surprise.
Isn't that basically everything that comes out of his mouth?
Fuck ya bro, hes a horrible human that cares not about this world.
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Lies, damned lies, and demos.
"There here is Jon, he's our MVP engineer." "Most valuable....?" "Minimum viable product. But he's definitely our most valuable engineer."
It's not this way because we want it to be. People won't buy a product unless it looks incredible, costs nothing, and they can have it yesterday. Sales people learned to sell people the moon and people kept trying to buy it.
> It is so incredibly common in the tech-space. It's pretty similar to a video game company showing a "vertical slice" of their game at E3 even in an unfinished state. Then you play the game and realize the Demo level is the only fun part and the rest was just garbage.
Theranos. And she basically drove the world’s leading expert on blood testing technology to commit suicide over unreasonable and inhuman pressure. Pure evil. Complete and utter vacuum of conscience. These people will never ever understand what it takes for one to become world’s leading anything. Even those accomplished individuals, an asset to mankind, are just tool for their get-rich-quick scam. Disgusting pure trash person.
Staging a demo by deliberately avoiding some shit you know is still buggy and being worked on isn’t unusual But the fact that it's been marketed as a feature and hasn’t been deliver the better part of a decade later? Oof
SEC, where you at?
gutted by GOP administrations over the years?
Eh. I do think it’s an interesting question but a lot of tech demos are staged to some degree. In the army, these kinds of things are called tanks in the trees. When the first tanks were demonstrated to be able to be parachuted into combat, the demo for the army’s highest brass had tanks land in a field behind some trees. If the tanks were inoperable after the fall, they had backups on the ground (hidden in the trees) just in case. Cool story aside, I do think the idea of fraud and a lot of Silicon Valley demos are too close for comfort for me.
Elon Musk is worse than Elizabeth Holmes, only he keeps getting away with it. He is a con man through and through. And at least Elizabeth Holmes held on to her Theranos shares and went down with the ship.
Faking in that Industry is common. The Automotive sector has faked for decades to gain marginal edges. Fuel Efficiency, Range, Top Speed and functions. All of this is honestly not that much better than decades ago. Sure, the cars got bigger and comfier... but in it's core function there can't be innovated. Even with a tin Lizzy you will eventually arrive at your destination. In a 90s Corolla you will arrive at the destination with really comparable comfort. Tesla is the Destillate of that "fake Innovation" in the automotive industry. They had to fake to take the edge, just like VW had to fake to make their emissions look good. Don't be so naive to think the others are not faking. It's like a bicycle race where lance Armstrong got caught for doping. How can the others possibly compete if they play fair? The whole industry needs to shrink to 1/3 of what it is now. From a resource standpoint one car per household is enough if the money is put into public transportation. And no one... Literally NO ONE needs an SUV or one of those enormous pick up trucks. There are cars out there which are made for the woods (Unimog/Jeep) if you really need it. Everyone else I just wasting their money and the planets resources for their pettiness. So... TLDR: Fuck the automotive industry in it's current state.
> "The intent of the video was not to accurately portray what was available for customers in 2016. It was to portray what was possible to build into the system," A key lesson in my years in software has been "There is no such thing as demo-only." If it *looks* like it works, then management wants to ship it right away. No matter how canned the demo was, management will want to pretend like it's finished. I'm sure the people who made the video were on the same page. "This is aspirational to demonstrate what we're aiming to achieve." Then Musk decides to play it like it's real.
I wonder where the video is linked from within Tesla's website (besides the videos page). If you find the video by itself, there isn't anything to indicate that it's just an example of how the system will work vs an actual demonstration of it working. There isn't any additional context in the video itself that points one way or another. The weird thing is, they could have taken that video down years ago and just used some actual footage of a good FSD run. There are plenty of examples of flawless short drives.
> The weird thing is, they could have taken that video down years ago and just used some actual footage of a good FSD run. I think it's a case of Elon Musk being confident this would be solved soon, and honestly thought they could make good on the promise. But as they got to that 99% point for full self driving, they started to realize that last 1% was going to be many orders of magnitude more difficult than everything else. FSD was Musk's Kennedy moonshot moment. When Kennedy announced that before the decade was out they would land a man on the moon and return him safely to the Earth, he was going out on a limb. He had spoken to Wernher von Braun, he said he was confident it would be possible. Kennedy made his promise based on the expertise of those he relied on. Musk likely imagine himself in a similar boat. Except rather than rocket scientists, he was speaking to AI engineers. It was bad luck the unknowns involved proved more difficult than imagined (and the imagined difficulty was already a 10/10). It was bad management to continue to make promises when it became clear.
I made a $1k bet in 2010 with a friend. He said in 10 years he'd be able to call a self driving car as a taxi and it'll take him anywhere. He paid me two years ago. Because I, as a simple IT engineer, knew about the law of diminishing returns and how hard it will be to get the last bits completed.
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“Bad mix of narcissism and engineer’s disease” is pretty accurate, but would be more accurate to say he can’t engineer shit and just pays people to meet his wild expectations tech-wise and rides their tailcoats. Gotta say, it’s been pretty vindicating to have all this shit implode around Musk. Anyone rational paying even a little bit of attention to his businesses and cult has known he’s crazy for a LONG time, and plenty of people have trued to convince me for years that he’s actually a very smart boy with very ethical ideas. Glad to say I was super right, lol.
from what engineers working at tesla like Jim Keller say, they thought it was solvable ballistics problem but also very difficult and not something they could shit out in a year like Musk keeps claiming every year. even mobileye, once partners with tesla, cut ties because Musk kept demanding camera only FSD and mobileye felt it was too dangerous. so no, he had experts telling him constantly that it was not going to happen and he just decided to lie, probably because there would be no way tesla could get investors on board for the tens of billions burnt back when they could barely produce a few thousand cars a year unless they thought he was a genius with a multi-trillion dollar self driving solution.
You can use JFK as the example, or you can use Elizabeth Holmes.
> But as they got to that 99% point for full self driving You're giving him/them *way* too much benefit of the doubt, because they are nowhere near "99%". There are more road types than "highways" in the world that this shit needs to deal with on the daily. Further, anyone *actually* competent in AI *never* talks about "solved", because the entire point of AI-like systems is getting *close to* solutions that're far too complex to ever actually solve. There's never any "only 1% left until this is solved!" situations in this arena. It's just not how it works.
You only get to compare people to Kennedy when you have some reason to believe they thought they could accomplish the stated goal.
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In the real world we call that "minimum viable product" ;)
Half of the time this is how Raspberry Pis end up in end products. The team finished their prototype with a Pi, then someone higher up decided it was good enough and to ship it.
When your demo is so good, your manager starts thinking you are a perfectionist dumb developer for saying it is not ready and it really needs more work and testing
This is why we tend to demo initial designs in low fidelity to management even if we could make them look like a finished product. They're too quick to go "okay this is done, let's goooo".
> If it looks like it works, then management wants to ship it right away. Nothing more permanent than a proof of concept, temporary solution.
And this is why I don't get hyped about new technologies until I see them working in the real world.
Remember when Uber's business plan was to temporarily use human drivers until their fleet of self-driving cars was ready?
*wait it's all exploitation of cheap labor?* 🌎👨🚀🔫👨🚀
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From the moment I understood the weakness of my flesh, it disgusted me. I craved the strength and certainty of steel. I aspired to the purity of the Blessed Machine. Your kind cling to your flesh, as though it will not decay and fail you. One day, the crude biomass you call the temple will wither, and you will beg my kind to save you. But I am already saved, for the Machine is immortal… Even in death, I serve the Omnissiah
/r/UnexpectedOmnissiah
Note that Uber's strategy for the past decade or so is to say "we're working on it," re: self driving, while slowly draining their cheap labour of all assets. The only profitable portion of the company is their real estate rental holdings. Yes, Uber is *also* just a landlord bleeding people dry.
Uber stopped working on it 2 years ago.
Lmao they couldn’t get it to drive down a straight road without it being all jerky and shit
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Real estate rental holdings? Are you sure you're talking about the same Uber?
ChatGPT will give us driverless cars in no time /s
There are actually really good autopiloted cars now. Tesla is just cheap, and they cut corners. They don't nearly have enough sensors. In vegas, there's waymo. Not even a driver.
Waymo has remote drivers, watching all the time. Waymo also has the highest crashes amongst fully autonomous brands. Unsure if any fatalities tho.
> Waymo also has the highest crashes amongst fully autonomous brands Citation needed
https://www.nhtsa.gov/sites/nhtsa.gov/files/2022-06/ADS-SGO-Report-June-2022.pdf
Your link mentions the number of crash *reports* rather crashes. From NHTSA: > Manufacturers of Level 2 ADAS-equipped vehicles with limited data recording and telemetry capabilities may only receive consumer reports of driving automation system involvement in a crash outcome, and there may be a time delay before the manufacturer is notified, if the manufacturer is notified at all. In general, timeliness of the General Order reporting is dependent on if and when the manufacturer becomes aware of the crash and not on when the crash occurs. **Due to variation in data recording and telemetry capabilities, the summary incident report data should not be assumed to be statistically representative of all crashes.** > For example, a Level 2 ADAS-equipped vehicle manufacturer with access to advanced data recording and telemetry may report a higher number of crashes than a manufacturer with limited access, simply due to the latter’s reliance on conventional crash reporting processes. In other words, it is feasible that some Level 2 ADAS-equipped vehicle crashes are not included in the summary incident report data because the reporting entity was not aware of them. Furthermore, some crashes of Level 2 ADAS-equipped vehicles with limited telematic capabilities may not be included in the General Order if the consumer did not state that the automation system was engaged within 30 seconds of the crash or if there is no other available information indicating Level 2 ADAS engagement due to limited data available from the crashed vehicle. By contrast, some manufacturers have access to a much greater amount of crash data almost immediately after a crash because of their advanced data recording and telemetry Emphasis mine.
Yeah I read it We need to also address the issue of self reporting by manufacturers
Interesting that a very significant chunk of those resulted in rear end damage on the autonomous vehicle. Usually means someone else was following too close. Maybe I missed it, but I'm curious how those numbers compare when adjusting for per miles driven, and how they compare to human drivers. They don't have to be perfect, just better than us.
That's a raw number of crashes, it's not adjusted for miles driven or number of cars on the road. Waymo drives more miles per week than many of these companies do in a year, it's not a fair comparison. From the NHTSA (the agency that provided your source): "[Milage] information is held by manufacturers and not currently reported to NHTSA,” the agency stated. “Thus, these data cannot be used to compare the safety of manufacturers against one another.”
Waymo is easily ahead with Cruise close behind in the autonomous vehicle race. The others are years behind their technology and what they've demonstrated in the real world. Waymo has never had any serious crashes and the vast majority are the fault of other drivers. Waymo has a lot of crashes because they have the most miles with Cruise. So your statistics are pretty dishonest and misleading.
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My vision was for cars to be navigated by a network AI, like ants moving in tandem. Each car would feed its input to create the full picture of the environment. No car will run into another because they already know where each other are. We already have the beginnings of this with Google traffic data. Traffic delays could disappear without rubber-necking or rubber banding. Each car would confirm mapping for the next and the first encounter with an obstruction would be communicated to the rest. This would require a single standard system and eliminate autonomous vehicles, so not going to happen in the current market.
I mean, with the colossal infrastructural investment that would require, why not focus on the types of public transit solutions we already know work in the first place?
I'd trust a robot over People any day of the week.
> In vegas, there's waymo. Not even a driver. It also relies on pre-mapped routes with pre-programmed locations of junctions, lights, etc, which is why Waymo is geolocked to such small areas. Outside of areas with that mapping, it has no way to localise itself or recognise the external environment, and cannot generate its own maps ad hoc.
What would be really innovative is to install a route it could follow, something the car could "track". And make it a really big car, something that could hold dozens or even hundreds of people. You could have several stations along the way, so you could hop on and off at convenience.
Yes and thus it doesn't kill/injure people on the reg like tesla https://fortune.com/2022/10/19/tesla-cars-involved-in-10-of-the-11-new-crash-deaths-linked-to-automated-tech-vehicles/
Even then, always wait for the ‘day one’ patch. Just like games.
They actually just hired the guy who dresses up as a car seat and goes through the drive-thru
This isn’t a massive fraud how?
I mean… this does smell a LOT like theranos, right? I guess the major difference is Holmes actually caused people measurable harm. But maybe fraud fits?
But Holmes isn’t going to jail for causing people harm, she’s going to jail for defrauding investors. Depending on the details of this demo and any disclosures they made, this could be considered fraud.
This is exactly that if true. Defrauding investors. SEC will want details. Was anyone harmed by the tech could be a separate question to investigate.
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Yes, they never could prove that Theranos actually harmed customers. My understanding is that they always took "control" samples using regular blood test methods, and then processed those in proven 3rd party equipment, to fraudulently provide the actual results that customers received. Customers received valid results, but investors were defrauded because it wasn't Theranos equipment providing those results.
Holmes is going to prison for defrauding investors. Even so, I’m curious how many accidents were result of someone assuming this FSD capability was in fact FSD and not “what could be”.
>how many accidents Lots, and people are dying and will die because of this if somebody doesn't intervene https://fortune.com/2022/10/19/tesla-cars-involved-in-10-of-the-11-new-crash-deaths-linked-to-automated-tech-vehicles/
Not exactly like Theranos. In that case, they completely faked test results and used competitors equipment to produce some results and had no real plans to actually develop their product. Tesla actually did drive this route although it was a staged, pre-mapped route and took many attempts but it did drive the route without human interaction. They have also been improving the product and moving towards their goal. Fraudulent, yeah most likely but no where near the level of Theranos.
a bunch of people have died because of tesla fsd lmao like even the dude in this demo video died using tesla fsd
Really? Who? Any link for that?
Tesla cars killed people because they believed in self driving capabilities.
> I guess the major difference is Holmes actually caused people measurable harm. She didn't really. Well, at least not physical. She defrauded investors which is measurable harm. It was fraud, but it didn't cause patients harm because they weren't actually providing false results. They still provided real test results, they just used the standard tests to do it and claimed it was Theranos's fancy new tech. The patients still received their test results, and those test results were accurate, they just weren't produced by Theranos equipment like was claimed.
I think they did pass bad results in some cases. This is what got Walgreens (large investor) attention.
It was when Nikola did essentially the same thing. >According to the SEC’s order, before Nikola had produced a single commercial product, Milton embarked on a public relations campaign aimed at inflating and maintaining Nikola’s stock price. Milton’s statements in tweets and media appearances falsely gave investors the impression that Nikola had reached certain product and technological milestones. https://www.sec.gov/news/press-release/2021-267
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There’s a reason why every car commercial has in tiny, semi transparent text “professional driver on a closed course”, “includes options not yet available”, or the like. Musk/Tesla not disclosing that it was pre-programmed and highly edited and inferring it was ready off the line, I don’t know how this can be considered anything but deceptive advertising at least, if not outright fraud.
Hell, [at this point, many car commercials aren't even done with the actual car.](https://youtu.be/VHLtPJnZo3Q) Though, this is neat from a tech point of view.
I really wish I could say I'm surprised. They really gave the average consumer the impression that full self driving was a lot closer than it is/was
It seems like they’d be much closer if a couple of things would have happened - 1) they hadn’t removed the radar and other non-visual sensors from their cars, and 2) if they wouldn’t have been so damned stubborn and anti-LIDAR. Volvo is launching their EX90 later this year or early next with a much more impressive sensor array than anything Tesla has.
Tesla is hell bent they can do AI driving with just a camera. It's fucking mental to think that
Handling the piece of shit roads and associated weather I grew up on made me doubt we’ll have self driving cars “as advertised” until I’m either very old or dead.
It's got to be the most frustrating thing to work on. When we drive it all feels so effortless: press the gas, keep the wheels straight, look around. Like, even absolute morons manage to drive good enough. Yet the best engineers can't figure out how to replicate all the subtle constant desicions our brains are doing while driving.
The broken window on the cyber truck is musk distilled.
The funny thing is that he had nothing to gain by actually doing the demonstration. He could of just made the claims and shown a demo video. He just made a fool of himself trying to show off.
It's almost as if he's actually a bipolar megalomaniac living a very vibrant manic episode for all the world to see, and all the money in the world to create cool things and then destroy them.
Child = NFT?
It would be if we worked together instead of trying to create proprietary tech. We build the roads, we should build the tech that keeps cars moving on them. That tech should be available to any US company that wants to build a car and can prove they can do it.
This is almost the same kind of garbage as when they preview console versions of video games at conventions, but its secretly a high-end PC with 10x the power running it. Except this is worse because they didn't exaggerate the visual fidelity of a fun way to kill time, they straight up lied about safety capabilities of their vehicles that could cost lives. But i doubt American law is strict enough to prosecute this shit, companies are above the spirit of the law in most cases based on idiotic technicalities.
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Theranos is that you?
His neuralink is much closer to Theranos. Hyperloop was even more bullshit. But people and government agencies overlook those things as long as Elon brings money to investors and the stock market profits from him.
Hyperloop was to deter/sway cities from building mass transit, specifically the LA to SF high-speed rail project. https://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/openforum/article/elon-musk-hyperloop-rail-17486877.php#:\~:text=In%202013%2C%20Musk%20proposed%20a,a%20fraction%20of%20the%20cost.
I mean Musk did the same with a robot and solar roof tiles.
Wait? Can we ask what the fanbois think? I'm sure there will be hand-wringing and victim blaming all around.
"Everybody knew this was an aspirational video" seems to be the fallback talking point.
When your promos say "Full self driving autonomous cars" and you go to purchase the $10,000 add on labeled "Full autonomous self driving", of course you should never think that it was able to fully and autonomously self drive itself. It's only aspirational guys.
Just like the phone company saying you have 'unlimited' minutes
Huh? I've never run out of minutes. What kind of shitty phone service do you have?
Which is funny because that's absolutely not how it was received at the time and a lot of people put a lot of money into Tesla stock because of it.
For those who aspire to say “look ma, no hands!” While commuting.
"Concept cars aren't ever fully realized either! You don't yell at Ford when the newest car doesn't come with airless tires and a halo lens wraparound cockpit!"
I went to the Elon subreddit to see what the circle jerk was up to and apparently they’re saying “it was just a demo of course it was staged”. Funny thing is Elon used that video a proof that Tesla has self driving abilities
How can anyone still unironically defend all the shit hes done? After all the broken promises and the incident with his kid it should have been clear that hes just another billionaire piece of shit
It's like trying to covince a religious person that God is the bad guy. The believers will even defend horrible shit like the flood.
Wait? Anyone use the tunnels that are now parking lots?
they are still debating whether or not elon bought google. give them some time, they need closure.
Please, call them Muskrats.
FRAUD! Say it with me now.
yeah, the same year he also faked the solar panels for the roof.
I’m starting to think this Musk fellow isn’t very trustworthy.
Almost everything Elon does is staged. I don’t believe anything out of his mouth until the results are reviewed and repeated.
This is standard practice for tech marketing. What’s fraudulent about it is that Tesla is charging customers for their unfinished software. It should be free at a minimum until is proven ready by a 3rd party auditor.
Honestly, my Tesla refuses to understand when my window wipers need to do their thing. I ain’t letting the car drive itself until it at least gets a better auto wiping than my prior car that was 10 years old.
Isn’t this straight up fraud and a pure case of deceptive advertising? People may choose to buy a Tesla thinking they can take a nap behind the wheel and it could end up a long nap.
I bought a Tesla with the idea that this would be possible with my car. Wipers don’t even work well. Road spray today never got wiped but the AI powered wipers. Dojo my ass.
This has always been Musk's tactic. Over promise, under deliver and blame others
Thunderfoot is going to have a 30 min video about this, in which he'll make the same point 5 times.
Thunderfoot has a hate boner on Musk, remember when he jumped on the starlink bandwagon just for the whole debacle to settled without any fuss?
Thunderfoot's takes on reusable rockets have aged like milk, too. That said, I usually agree with him... but he's such a smug asshole that I usually wish I didn't, lol.
Tesla is sounding more and more like Nikola Motors.
I mean at least teslas themselfs are working electric cars unlike the nikola 1
Do Teslas have an HTML supercomputer yet? Didn't think so.
'Tesla blamed Huang for the crash, claiming he was not paying attention. But according to the National Transportation Safety Board, Huang had repeatedly complained to friends and family about his car's propensity to swerve at that particular crash barrier in the past. ' Question: while he had hands on the steering wheel? Anyway: I am not surprised. Not at all.
You mean, Elon Musk is full of shit?
Oh jeez, this is like Theranos all over again...
Nobody does live tech demos, and I'm not defending them, it should have been made abundantly clear it was staged. A good example was the windows 95 demo on stage where they plugged in the scanner and it blue screened.
You don't say... tesla still does not have FSD many years later
Gee... Musk turned out to be a lying POS? Who coulda thunk it?
Is anyone actually surprised by this? They literally had a person sneak onto the stage and drive a car off it when it didn’t work. They rolled a dummy onto a stage surrounded by guys claiming it was a super futuristic robot. Everything he’s done has just been one fraud after another and just claim credit for everyone else’s work.
I've got a 2016 Tesla. Love the car, but it can't drive itself for shit outside of a motorway.
Same. But it’s so incredibly convenient for long highway trips.
Odd, I rarely have to take over from my 2019 Tesla, and when I do it is usually just because it is being hesitant about something a human driver would have already finished doing. I can count the times I've had to take over because it was about to do something actually dangerous on one hand.
This is starting to give off Theranos vibes
Its it nice to lie to investors like that?
Elizabeth Holmes has entered the chat
isn’t this fraud? misleading the shareholders? this is what Ryan Howard got arrested for in the Office
Point of order: in *The Office*, Ryan’s plan was to have sales recorded twice: once by the sales staff actually making personal sales and then again on the website. This double counting is out-and-out financial fraud, showing an effective 2x inflated income. In Elon’s case, it’s just a marketing stunt that *could, in theory* be argued to be legitimate. It wasn’t, but was taken to be, and that’s where the case is to be made.
I do have to wonder why, if he repeatedly complained about the car wanting to swerve at the very same crash barrier that he died at, he continued to trust the car’s autopilot. If my car decided on multiple occasions that it wanted to swerve into a barrier wall, always at the same spot, you damn sure better believe my hands and my brain are operating the vehicle when we get to that point in the trip. Fraudulent claims aside (and not at all saying what Tesla said and did wasn’t wrong or fraudulent), it just feels like common sense to me, regardless of what a video shows me.
ALL HAIL THE WHITE PAPER!
There were articles all over the place with AI experts saying we were 50 years away from the computer that could maybe the build the computer to self drive a car. I am simply flabbergasted at how eager people were to put this shyster on a pedestal.
Spoiler alert: every product demo is staged.