Fuck Tesla

[nate]

That truck is such a hideous debacle

[FC]

Originally Posted by dan

lol

https://www.wired.com/story/a-leaked...-design-flaws/

[robg]

On the one hand, I always enjoy a bit of Telsa/Musk Schadenfreude. But I suspect that if internal development docs were leaked about any model under development from any OEM, you could find stuff in there that seemed "shocking" to a layperson. Also, all of Teslas cars seemed to start out in a somewhat chaotic and disastrous way but then still managed to be successful. Remember Model 3 bumper falling off in the rain, collapsing shock towers, bending control arms, gouges in the sheetmetal on new cars, unpainted sections, etc? So...as ridiculous as it seems I'm not sure I"d count the cybertruck out yet.

[equ]

17 fatalities, 736 crashes... The toll of autopilot. Don't give me the it's better than the humans it replaced nonsense.

https://apple.news/AsoIfjsp6SwyCmWM8JPo9Bg

[ZBB]

Originally Posted by equ

17 fatalities, 736 crashes... The toll of autopilot. Don't give me the it's better than the humans it replaced nonsense.

https://apple.news/AsoIfjsp6SwyCmWM8JPo9Bg

I haven’t read the article yet, but I hope that has comparisons to regular driving. As an autopilot user, the technology is amazing. I still pay attention and take over whenever it does something stupid. It is not anywhere near fully autonomous, but it is very good.

Between my 3 and my wife’s Y, I regularly drive cars with Autopilot. My 3 has hardware 2.5 with “Enhanced Autopilot”, which includes “Navigate on Autoplilot”, which is semi-autonomous driving on controlled highways (it does lane keeping, lane changes to get around traffic, and will take exits and change freeways without intervention) and regular lane keeping on other roads. The Y has hardware 3 and with Full Self Driving. We joined the FSD pilot last fall (took several months for us to be included). Before being in the pilot, the Y was on the same software stack as my 3, but had a few more features (notably it would stop for stop lights/signs and read speed limit signs, while my car just had access to a semi-accurate database). Now that we are on FSD, the Y is in a different software stack — more advanced autopilot, but slightly behind on UX updates. FSD adds semi-autonomous driving on city streets. Overall it’s amazing and I use it about 95% of the time when I drive the Y. But I have to take over multiple times each drive — usually because it’s slow to respond at a stop sign, or decides to change lanes that is just not logical (like moving into the right lane < half mile before you need to go into a left turn lane). But for most city driving, it is pretty good. Highway driving is excellent.

I’ll go back and read the article, but I would not be surprised that a) most of the deaths involved the driver not paying attention, and b) that the overall accident rate on Autopilot is lower than the accident rate on other cars. I’m always still driving when I use Autopilot — and ready to take over.

[JST]

The problem that the article notes is that it is quite difficult to compare autopilot to “other driving” because autopilot is still mostly used in the very limited circumstances—so comparing it to all driving (which Musk routinely does) is improper. But without access to Tesla’s data, it’s hard to unpack what the proper comparator is.

And of course the accidents involve the driver not paying attention. Obviously that is the case. But the problem is that Tesla’s dumb fucking marketing and insane branding encourage *precisely that.*

I’m enraged at the way that Tesla has handled this. Enraged. It blows my mind that they haven’t been fucking sued out of existence over this utterly reckless tech. There are a whole lot of reasons why I don’t want to ever buy another Tesla, and why it makes me deeply uncomfortable to even continue owning the one I have, but Musk’s drive to push this half-assed, fraudulent technology into the world and kill people with it is one really really big one.

[Nick M3]

https://www.cnbc.com/2023/06/15/tesl...t-by-2026.html

[JST]

Seems plausible.

Teslas remain class-leading in almost every metric; there isn’t anything that offers the specs of the Model 3 or Y at a similar price point. Not yet anyway.

I expect that will change, and probably fairly quickly. And it will be interesting to see whether Tesla can keep up on model evolution; the Model S is embarrassingly overdue for a renewal at this point and even the Model 3 is pretty long in tooth (though the rumored “Highland” is just around the corner, it looks to be the equivalent of an LCI, five years after the car debuted).

It’s partly because Teslas compete so well as EVs that the self driving bullshit pisses me off so much. It’s just so…unnecessary.

[FC]

As a car manufacturer, I think the mega growth days are over. Way too much competition coming up combined with horribly stale product offerings. The trendiness and first-to-market boost (massive) will give way to the realities of objective comparison to other established brands. I think the shine is gone as a maker of high-end EV's except for those looking for value in the ultra-fast segment. The base 3 is a great value for what it is, but give it time until everyone else closes the gap there too.

The Elon factor is big too.

[robg]

More great business practices from Elon:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates...tteries-range/


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