Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

Comment by rmason | Hacker News Reader

People who short Tesla stock have become an industry. Tesla is a volatile stock and they've made seriously good money on the dips.

So they have a vested interest in amplifying all bad news about Tesla. At times as some have commented Elon has been his own worst enemy.

It's messy but he's inventing the future with Tesla and SpaceX. I've got a friend with a brand new Tesla. He took bets a while back on when the first fully self driving car would be available. This week he drove on our town's main artery, Grand River avenue, from Dusty's Cellar in Okemos to Biggby's Coffee in East Lansing. There are many signal lights, varying speeds with MSU students dashing out in front of you. He drove the entire 3.9 mile stretch with one finger on the steering wheel to prove a point.

I guarantee you without Elon Musk's efforts to save Tesla this future would have arrived many years later. If that doesn't get you excited likely nothing will.

Just sorry my Dad who first had his drivers license in 1930 didn't live to see it.

> People who short Tesla stock have become an industry. Tesla is a volatile stock and they've made seriously good money on the dips. So they have a vested interest in amplifying all bad news about Tesla.

Sounds like Ken Lay at Enron. He continued to blame shorts and the media even after bankruptcy and criminal conviction.

Enron wanted to convince people they were a low-risk cleaner-energy (natural gas) company. In reality, they were a high-risk trading venture, whose losses in non-trading business were covered up by trading gains. When they stopped making money on trading, everything fell apart in a matter of weeks.

> He drove the entire 3.9 mile stretch with one finger on the steering wheel to prove a point.

That's a very short distance. It is odd that Tesla doesn't report testing miles to California's DMV like every other self-driving venture. Waymo is at about 1 driver takeover per 10,000 miles. Tesla is nowhere near that, probably more like 1 takeover every 5 miles.

Odder still is Elon declining to release data backing up his statement that driving with AP on is twice as safe as driving with it off [1]. In his words,

> "I think reporting the details just gives those who are opposed to Tesla that might data mine the situation and try to turn a positive into a negative, ... so we're going to keep reporting the numbers at a broad brushstroke level"

In other words, he won't release data backing up his statement about AP being twice as safe because he thinks some people will use that data to show his statement is wrong.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s

> Waymo is at about 1 driver takeover per 10,000 miles. Tesla is nowhere near that

2 Questions:

1) Anyone know what Tesla is at for km/takeover?

2) Is Waymo still testing inside tightly limited zones? If so I kinda feel this is unfair to compare controlled zone vs nationwide wherever customers choose.

1) Tesla does not report their numbers, though one person who went for a ridealong in the autonomy day demo reported one takeover in 20-minutes [1], so at least once every 10 miles.

2) Waymo does testing on a lot of types of roads. They reported 1.26 million miles in CA last year [2]. It's not possible to apples-to-apples compare this to Tesla's numbers because Tesla does not share their data. Musk even turned down an analyst's request the other day for details backing up his claim of autopilot safety [3].

Tesla/Musk are being unreasonable when they claim stats show their system is 40% safer or 2x safer than normal driving because they are comparing to NHTSA stats which include all classes of cars (including motorcycles), all road types (whereas AP is mainly used on divided highways), and all weather conditions (nobody activates AP in the snow, I hope, and I doubt many do in rain).

[1] https://youtu.be/2BZHXh1nbWc?t=450

[2] https://medium.com/waymo/an-update-on-waymo-disengagements-i...

[3] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s

Elon Musk is certainly a conversation piece... but same as Travis Kalanick with uber, Tesla could kick him out...

What about the Tesla though? What about electric cars or Solar?

A lot of great people work at Tesla and Solar City. Unfortunately they are kept from their best by a CEO who hides data [1] to protect his own image.

I could not say why Musk has not been replaced, other than, he's been good for the stock and that is Wall Street and the board's focus. Travis kind of agreed to remove himself, didn't he? In this bull market, I expect Musk would need to do the same, and so far he still feels he's the best driver.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqvatzjHGyk&t=47m17s

Did he have to stop at all ? Make any turns ? If he didn't, I'm not sure what point he was trying to prove as every car on the market can be driven with "one finger on the steering wheel".

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