Price of FSD will rise to $15k in North America on September 5th
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Between the low reliability, low build quality, and scammy practices, Tesla has turned their lead into a vulnerability.
Once other manufacturers catch up to the battery range, Tesla will have their lunch eaten.
And I say this as someone who has owned a Tesla for over 8 years.
It's possible after being "less than a year away" for... a decade... that it may be less than a year away now. But it looks like a bit of skepticism has been earned.
Sure, be skeptical, but then maybe say something like "I have no evidence for this, but I believe his manifest enthusiasm can only be explained by the fact that he's trying to manipulate the stock price to his own benefit."
Sure, it sounds less rhetorically convenient, but it's more honest.
I think this is the video I'm remembering, but he reused charts like this a lot https://youtu.be/p0kFZ9CVLNg?t=512
see this for some real-world testing, there's lots like it and the results usually skew a certain way for each car. for example, there's about a 20% delta in epa vs. tested range for the tesla y LR and mach-e standard range in his chart. the tesla artificially looks 20% better! and this delta was well-known at the time of his video https://insideevs.com/reviews/443791/ev-range-test-results/
to your question about conflicts of interest, owning a stock is a conflict of interest. nobody needs to show that something is happening inside his head, the circumstances exist and that's it. I think he's usually pretty good and I still watch the videos, and he trades on his reputation and I still regard him as a good source. but I'm still glad to learn that he's sold the stock
But also, the older Tesla's do not and cannot have the hardware for FSD so they really are EoL in that respect.
Plus, there's accidents, etc, that weed out a fair bit of the fleet before 8 years.
But I'm also perfectly happy driving my decades old Honda so what do I know.
It’s like comparing the productivity of a med student on Adderall in a quiet library, and the productivity of a peeled russet potato sitting in the sun.
As for build quality, we haven't had any major problems with our Model 3. It's a great car.
Tesla has a media problem, where every little problem gets reported as if it's systemic and unfixable.
It's like hiring a plumber who can only flush toilets, not install them. Self driving in pristine conditions is a party trick. Until it can do the hard part, it's nowhere near human-level.
They knew dojo wouldn't be online by then and they didn't even really train on video at that point, just trying to judge the scene image by image instead of taking into account prior frames (like knowing someone walked behind a bush 1p frames ago, so that sliver of emerging leg from behind a bush that might not be detectable confidently enough from a single image should be weighted higher).
See this example, where the map data is completely wrong: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4gTV9SlutU0
Does it actually work in the real world is the yardstick to apply.
Similar to Apple, people expect more from them than anyone else. Minor issues on Apple products are always scandals. Remember Antennagate? People were sure that it would sink Apple, because "they don't know how to make antennas". People and media handle Tesla similarly, and minor issues are blown out of proportion.
And now it looks like Cruise and Waymo have full self driving in San Francisco which looks amazing. There’s hour long videos of it navigating perfectly and smoothly in a jam packed city. Nothing like the Tesla videos which show it almost slamming into bikes/curbs or just freaking out and stopping in the middle of an intersection.
Has great acceleration though and charging at home is great or on the road with superchargers. But Teslas edge is not as wide anymore.
Who could have predicted that just relying just on cameras was not a good solution ? Definitely not the hundreds of researchers that told Musk that a LIDAR was necessary.
Beyond the problems with YouTube as evidence, its very clear that Tesla isn't operating a proper safety lifecycle as part of the beta and its not clear that their approach and their current hardware is even capable of solving the remaining problems with FSD. Having already sold the hardware as FSD capable, Tesla has created a problem where the hardware drives the validation process of the system, rather than validation process driving the hardware. This is a fundamentally unsafe approach to safety critical systems.
German automakers are a great example of this. Whether it's gas or electric they significantly understate the performance and efficiency of their cars while in the real world they always exceed what they've promised.
FWIW we have a 2018 Model 3 and a 2022 Model Y and both have had very minor or no manufacturer issues. Both have never needed anything other than minor, at home service from Tesla (mostly tire swaps).
These are improving at an astonishing rate, like a Web app rather than a car. Yes, this means the first ones were so bad they really shouldn’t have been shipped. But the newer models (of Y especially, X hasn’t been redesigned) are really a different world.
People put up with the low build quality because at the time Tesla had a unique product not because of some memes.
That is just an absurd statement. AlexNet came out in 2012 and ResNet in 2015 but somehow Tesla had something "close" to the current FSD in 2014? They're heavily using Transformers now which came out in 2017. They have demonstrated leaps in performance since the first version of FSD Beta two years ago.
No it isn't. It is also not early days either and we have given FSD enough time to meet the claims of achieving Level 5 with those strong and 'confident' deadlines even set by Musk himself, which he knew he couldn't meet, but the gullible customers and fans rushed in and fell for it anyway.
Not only they have all been missed, this year, Tesla finally admitted that it was Level 2 and it still doesn't work in the most dangerous time to drive which is at night. FSD (Fools Self Driving) is no where near close in the nearly ten years it has existed.
This is an obvious over-promising of a broken product with the pied-piper selling it to their fans scam.
Yes. Admitted. [0]
> The difference between L2 and L5 is liability.
Everyone from the regulators to Musk himself have known that for years that it is more than just liability and none of the claims of achieving 'Level 5' FSD and the hype around the robotaxis have ever materialized with many customers falling for the scam lead by the pied piper (Musk) and once again increased prices on a broken product.
[0] https://www.news18.com/news/auto/teslas-full-self-driving-cl...
Which that was promised to be completed in 2020. Where are the Level 5 robotaxis that Elon was confident enough to release by that year?
> For regulatory and liability reasons, it should be registered as an L2 until it's perfect.
And FSD was advertised as Level 5 by Tesla and was due to be complete by 2020 deadline. Even before that, many customers fell for this and were promised that future updates would eventually make it Level 5.
See how the scam works? Not only it was meant to be 'Level 5' as advertised by 2020, Tesla knew that it won't get there all along and continued the deception as their fans bought into the false promise and customers realised that they are paying for a broken contraption that didn't function as advertised and will continue paying for it as the price keeps increasing.
> No one has ever claimed that FSD is a finished product.
Yes. Elon (and Tesla) were the only ones that claimed and promised that it will be finished with robo-taxis on the road, at Level 5 FSD by 2020. This is the pied-piper scam and they have sold a false promise to their loyal fanbase and they will pay for an unfinished product until its 'perfect Level 5 FSD'; whenever that is and will continue to raise prices.
I also don't think it is ok to use unfinished safety critical software on the roads and put many driver's on the roads lives at risk.
Level 5 means that the system is designed for autonomous driving in every situation. It's not a metric whether the system actually works. There will be multiple level 5 systems on the road some day, and some of them will make mistakes more than others. Just like all technology and software, it's impossible to make these systems perfect.
Yes, Elon overpromised and they failed to deliver in time. This was compensated by cheaper prices, just like is usual in beta programs. Today, FSD is already insanely good and can drive 99% of time without human intervention.
It's still not good enough, and it's multiple years late from original forecasts. Still, I wouldn't call it a scam. It's a delayed project with a pre-order/beta program, but given it's huge complexity and importance, I'm willing to forgive them. When it's ready, no one cares that it was a few years late.
Level 5 defines that the system is so reliable that there is zero intervention of the driver and that there is no need for them to be fully attentive behind the wheel as defined by the SAE [0]; exactly the requirement of a robo-taxi. This was advertised by Tesla with claims of robo-taxis by 2020, with a fake taxi app for marketing the scam.
> Yes, Elon overpromised and they failed to deliver in time.
And yet he continues to play the pied piper with more false promises. Like these claims and promises:
"Tesla's Full Self-Driving tech will have Level 5 autonomy by the end of 2021" [0]
"FSD will be capable of driving the car anywhere under any conditions with no need for human interaction." [0]
> Today, FSD is already insanely good and can drive 99% of time without human intervention.
Even the Tesla fans and FSD beta testers dispute this vacuous claim and that figure is significantly lower, given that it completely doesn't work in the most dangerous time to drive which is at night and in other conditions as well. As long as it still requires the driver to be always attentive behind the wheel with FSD on, it is not "Level 5 Full Self Driving" which was advertised by Elon Musk and Tesla but it is absolutely Level 2.
> It's still not good enough, and it's multiple years late from original forecasts. Still, I wouldn't call it a scam.
You need to snap out of the pied piper's scam and realise that FSD is an on-going scam, compensating their false promises for more price increases and forever promises.
[0] https://www.sae.org/binaries/content/assets/cm/content/blog/...
[1] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/elon-musk-full-self-drivi...
Progress this year has been pretty amazing. If they didn't progress or didn't try to make it work, then I'd call it a scam.
You're not reading that SAR chart right. If you look at the features and examples, FSD is level 5 in there. That's what the system is designed to do. It's not a lane assistant or a traffic jam chauffer. Again, it's level 2 only because it's beta and requires supervision, and the driver is liable for any mistakes.
It should have been complete years ago in 2020, at Level 5 FSD; so what do you mean about 'progress'? After missing more deadlines and claims, the price of FSD increases again despite the multiple malfunctions from lots of testers.
One example of a devoted Tesla fan / investor (Whole Mars Catalog) doing controlled experiments and driving around the same San Francisco street(s) is hardly a generic case of the whole situation.
> You're not reading that SAR chart right
I have read it correctly and Tesla FSD is still not Level 5 as advertised and by definition of the SAE chart.
Even in the video the driver is still paying full attention and has to continuously intervene by touching and guiding the steering wheel. They still have their attention and their eyes on the road which is not required for a Level 5 robot-taxi FSD system supposedly due for 2020.
So Tesla knows they are selling a Level 2 system still requiring the full attention of the driver and still not even close to the Level 5 robo-taxi claims, but was marketed as Level 5 anyway to mislead their customers with the help of their loyal fans doing videos of controlled experiments to fool new customers into purchasing an unfinished product.
Given it frequently malfunctions, the generic excuse is: ‘With each update, it gets better’,‘There is potential, buy it now before the price increases again’ or ‘It will get better soon, its early days’.
It is clearly not early days and we have given it enough time to be Level 5 FSD and it still isn't close even if they were given up to this year to finish it. So it is definitely a piped piper scam selling false promises to their customers. If this was a different company, there would be class action lawsuits all over this.
You need to really snap out of it.
Yes, it's a much better toy, but it's still a toy.
To save you the click, here's one released today with the latest version: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jCTssX2VdKA
I was a little concerned with how fast the car was going on Lombard when the pedestrian darted across. It worked out ok, but if the person had tripped, or dropped something and stopped to pick it up, it would have been harder to stop.
I skimmed through the whole video, but I didn't see any traffic light recognition of anything more than red, amber, green. Are there videos with more complex traffic lights? It's interesting that they managed to drive in that area without going through any of the weird intersections with cable car or Muni traffic lights.
Is the autopilot preview meant to help sell FSD?
> Is the hardware different, or just the software?
It's the same hardware, just software and deep learning improvements. There are higher resolution cameras and better inference hardware coming out, but they're claiming it's not necessary for full autonomy. My guess is eventually they'll hand it out for free just to avoid supporting old hardware. The current cameras are quite low-res.
> Is the autopilot preview meant to help sell FSD?
No idea, but I hope they change it to FSD visualizations soon. For a while they've been trying to join the stacks for freeway (AP), city streets (FSD) and parking into one, the famed version 11. Since AP has been using this old stuff that's probably why they use these visualizations.
And to be clear, this is definitely not done, requires constant supervision. But it's improving pretty fast.
[0] https://www.today.com/news/news/kia-hyundai-vehicle-theft-in...
We really need competition in this space (FSD) if we want prices to go down.
Before ~6 months ago it was literally vaporware with an nontransferable license.
But in reality: 'Fools Self Driving'
It was advertised by Tesla and as a Level 5 system. However, given that never happened, it is now known as 'Fools Self Driving' since not only it doesn't work, requires constant full assistance and attention of the driver behind the wheel at all times, it is been admittedly a Level 2 system who's creator gives the endless promises of updates in order to fool the customer that it will 'eventually' be 'Full Self Driving'.
So Tesla can continue to raises prices on this false promise and customers will keep buying, subscribing on the idea that they are hoping that it will be fully self driving, which is the typical pied piper selling snake oil scam.
(I own FSD on two cars because I like toys)
Unless you have a trailer, I guess?
If it has an ongoing cost for Tesla, I’m happy to pay for a subscription and perhaps an activation fee. If it’s built-in to the vehicle and requires a configuration for how I like to drive, I’d love to pay an expensive, one-time setup fee to configure my specific vehicle and perhaps a (small) upgrade fee when major versions are released.
But this idea that Tesla wants to have the best of both worlds (massive fees that reoccur) while I get the worst of both worlds (massive fees for a value that I can’t sell/transfer) is one of the two big reasons I can’t see getting a Tesla (even though I would love to).
They do have a subscription based model https://www.tesla.com/support/full-self-driving-subscription...
It WILL NOT follow you to the next car though. It’s VIN locked (which is BS, no consumer software is hardware locked like that in a normal computing space).
Feels like a good opportunity for a class action...
If they actually make it self-driving at a human level, it's value is clearly over $100K.
If it's a sure thing, companies (including Tesla) will buy many cars and run the value as low as they can.
edit: typo
The first part is the general assumption that the endgame of self-driving cars is robotaxis. I don't personally buy this--most people who own their own cars today clearly prefer to own their own cars over relying on taxi services or public transit--but this is dominant assumption you see in newspaper articles and business planning. And I suspect it's mostly driven by greed for recurring service revenue over one-time sales revenue.
And the second part is the aspersions to Uber (as a stand-in for all the similar services): renting your own car out as a robotaxi is a lot like being an Uber, except for being the driver part. Of course, Uber itself is basically a losing model that doesn't really compensate enough to cover the wear-and-tear on your car from the extra mileage acting as a taxi, so it's not entirely the best model to be emulating. But how could a $10 billion company possibly be wrong?
You are misunderstanding the comment you are replying to.
It doesn't say "Tesla utilises the car which it sold to you as a taxi". It says that Tesla doesn't sell you a car. And they don't sell you a car because they can make better money by using their factory output as taxis, than by selling it to you.
Which means it won't be your car.
When I buy my next Tesla wouldn’t pay for it though.
The thing that would make it worth buying at this price is when I can send the car 200 miles away to like go pick up my parents or something. Anything short of not being in the car though is just a party trick.
Basically it's an open beta, if you pass their minigame test for 30 days, you can get in and have FSD.
And people still buy it because it's the best money can buy right now. It's not perfect but it's there and getting better with every release.
https://www.chicagotribune.com/business/ct-biz-tesla-self-dr...
"It's all hype," said Steven E. Shladover, a retired research engineer at the University of California, Berkeley who has been involved in efforts to create autonomous driving for 45 years. "The technology does not exist to do what he is claiming. He doesn't have it and neither does anybody else."
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It's not close to working at all. Musk must know it.
Their latest 10.69 FSD (released yesterday) is quite impressive already.
The guy just got a free $7500 courtesy of the tax payer for every car he sells.
Car companies live and die by attracting new customers but also by bringing back existing customers. Lots of car brands bend over backwards to keep you coming back. When you fail to deliver what you've promised or significantly raise prices without delivering value in return, you're not building a loyal customer base.
Between this kind of thing and the way Tesla handles service, it's very clear they don't really give a damn about you as a customer after you've handed over your money.
It is gotten so bad that even the noble and devoted Telsa fans would do anything to defend this contraption, even if it meant risking the lives of their own children, they will still do it for Twitter points, or for their lord and saviour techno-king Elon to notice them.
Who is going to finally tell the Tesla FSD fans that the piped piper (Elon) has repeatedly over promised and scammed his own fans and customers using FSD to the same tune?