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Comment by threatripper | Hacker News Reader

Musk promising FSD by the end of the year - year after year - is one major thing that tarnished the Tesla image in my mind. I now assume that he has to believe that in order to avoid lawsuits. Maybe the same is with the computing infrastructure. They need to build it to show that they honestly believed it could work - even though they failed to deliver on their promises many times.

That said, they do make progress and the real reason why it's slow is probably because the problem is actually really hard and nobody has found the fast way to the solution yet.

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Musk is absolutely the reason I would never consider buying another Tesla, having just sold mine.

Dude just straight up lies. He may not realize he's lying, but he lies constantly.

Edit, because I'm getting downvoted. Here's some examples: self driving, battery swaps, robotic snake chargers, cybertruck windows, Bitcoin won't be converted to fiat, starlink speeds will improve, he will sell his home, first mars mission 2024, Tesla solar roofs, power packs at every supercharger, brake pads on Tesla cars will never need to be replaced, the gigafactory will be 100% renewable powered by 2020, fixing the Flint water crisis, making bricks from boring company waste, founding a media credibility organization, and probably a TON more.

Oh man, I forgot he took money to fly tourists to the moon.

There are so many lies he's told. So many.

My autopilot drives me on the highway just like he said it would. That was what he predicted about 5 years ago. FSD is taking longer - so what. It's progressing for the public far more than another other attempt.

Curious... did you sell your Tesla because he lies? or for other issues? What replacement car/company did you decide to go with? Volkswagen?

That's the tough thing. Tesla still has the early mover advantage in the EV space and despite all the dumb stuff, most other EVs can't yet compete in the basic driving experience for the price (assuming no FSD).

I just want a Toyota Corolla or Camry-style car, for a decent price, that is electric. The i3 was kinda close to what I wanted in spirit, but they had to make it look all "tech" and "future-y".

Not a real answer, but I got a RAV 4 Prime- it's hybrid- but I never engage the engine. I've driven 6000 miles on two tanks of gas.

Dear Moon was supposed to be 2022. But he was supposed to land a manned dragon capsule on Mars in 2020 and before that 2018, plus passenger rocket flights from New York to Shanghai for between the price of a coach and business class ticket by 2028 (first made the claim in 2018, later doubled down on the 2028 date around 2020).

https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/17/14652026/spacex-red-drago...

Starlink satellites were supposed to have laser interlinks from the beginning and enable low latency multiplayer gaming around the world. The Starlink latency is pretty bad for gaming right now and is variable.

The battery swap stations were a bigger scam than you might remember: California gave them almost a billion for "delivering" them.

>California gave them almost a billion for "delivering" them.

Source?

The amount earned is unclear, but California was giving more credits to vehicles based upon battery swap capability: https://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2015/03/tesla-battery-swap...

Edward Niedermeyer, "Ludicrous", Chapter 9, has a somewhat lower estimate:

“In 2013, California revised its Zero Emissions Vehicle credit system so that long-range ZEVs that were able to charge 80 percent of their range in under fifteen minutes earned almost twice as many credits as those that didn’t. [...] By demonstrating battery swap on just one vehicle, Tesla nearly doubled the ZEV credits earned by its entire fleet even if none of them actually used the swap capability. [...] For the 2015 to 2017 model years, CARB created a new rule requiring Tesla to actually document a certain number of battery swaps to prove that the capability was actually being used. This development just so happened to coincide with Tesla’s half-hearted “pilot program” and its subsequent decision that its customers had no interest in fast, convenient battery swaps. [...] By exploiting CARB’s fast-refueling rules, Tesla appears to have earned as much as $100 million in additional revenue by demonstrating and hyping a system it seems to never have intended to commercially deploy.”

He is the modern day pied piper telling his devoted fans to buy his Fools Self Driving (FSD) contraption and gives lots of false promises so that he can keep the scam running and for his customers to keep believing his lies that it will be Level 5 'real soon'™ by these so-called 'updates'.

So far with this Fools Self Driving deception:

    Claim 1: 'Full Level 5 Autonomy by end of 2019' (2019) [0]
    Reality: As of this year 2022, it is still Level 2.

    Claim 2: '1 Million robo-taxis on the road by the end of 2020' (2019) [1] 
    Reality: As of this year 2022, ZERO Tesla robo-taxis on the road.

    Claim 3: 'Tesla's FSD tech will have Level 5 autonomy by the end of 2021' (2021) [2]
    Reality: As of this year 2022, it is admittedly Level 2.

    Claim 4: "I would be shocked if Tesla does not achieve FSD that is safer than human drivers this year" (2022) [3]
    Reality: Clearly it still isn't any safer 8 months ago. [4]

So even if we have given them more time since those claims in 2019, nothing has changed.

Not only it was admitted to be Level 2, [5] and still requires the full attention of the driver having their eyes on the road, they have ever continuously raised the prices on a system that clearly doesn't work as advertised in order to get customers to FOMO into purchasing it.

A complete scam of a contraption that can only be perfectly described as a 'Fools Self Driving' system.

[0] https://www.motortrend.com/news/tesla-autonomous-driving-lev...

[1] https://www.engadget.com/2019-04-22-tesla-elon-musk-self-dri...

[2] https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/elon-musk-full-self-drivi...

[3] https://electrek.co/2022/01/31/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-dri...

[4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32401444

[5] https://www.news18.com/news/auto/teslas-full-self-driving-cl...

Don't forget that Tesla released a doctored video clamining the problem was solved, past tense, all the way back in 2016.

I do not understand how they continue to get away with it.

“He may not realize he's lying, but he lies constantly.”

You have to know what your saying is untrue for something to be a lie. Otherwise it is simply called being wrong.

When you keep being wrong in the same way for 9 years straight then it graduates from "wrong" to "lie":

https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-promises-full-self-driving-ne...

Agreed. And I own a Tesla and am in the “FSD” beta. It’s nowhere near ready. There is absolutely no way in hell it was even a thing when he first started promising it given the current state.

And there’s incredibly small chances this system will actually work given the limited sensor set in the car, and especially with the removal of the radar (which is not them “cleaning up the data”, it is 100% entirely due to supply chain issues).

It’s a great car, and I applaud them for making various major advances in the automotive space including the push for EVs and OTA updates. But FSD is a pipe dream and won’t be anywhere near full self driving in the next decade. And other manufacturers are quickly catching up to the current public feature set.

Half the things you mentioned happened. And most of the rest of the things you mentioned were never planned to happen (i.e. simply thinking out loud).

I can understand some of these 'lies' but most of them are not really lies. I can understand being angry about self driving, most of the rest of it is pretty absurd.

Most of these are either things that are simple changes in strategy, mostly good choice regards to internal investment and roadmap. Others are research projects that were never promised to be products. I really don't understand how anybody can be angry about any of those.

Some of these are products, but apparently they are not as perfect as they could be according to you. This is pretty absurd definition of 'lie'.

> first mars mission 2024 > Oh man, I forgot he took money to fly tourists to the moon.

This is maybe the most ridiculous thing I have ever read. They are experiencing delay on one of the most difficult engineering projects ever.

I guess we should execute him for daring to not having flown people around the moon.

In aerospace even simple LEO orbit rockets often launch late, its normal and costumers know that its a probability. Contracts do handle these cases.

Most of this boils down to Musk saying 'this is our current plan' and then people get angry when plans change. I don't understand why. Did you personally sign a contract with Tesla for a battery swap station or something?

I for one really like getting updates on what SpaceX/Tesla is planning or working on. But I don't get upset when they change it. When I see a snake charger I don't go 'oh they promises this and it will be in my garage in 3 month'. They have absolutely no obligation to me.

> Did you personally sign a contract with Tesla for a battery swap station or something?

I've found that a surprisingly large number of people are really committed to the idea that battery swapping is the only way that EVs could work. These are personally offended that Tesla abandoned it.

But doing battery swapping well is much more capital intensive than their supercharger strategy was. They could never have afforded it on their own anyway.

And people act like some Tesla scammed California by not rolling out the technology widely. But this was never a requirement of the grand.

The whole point of such grants is to figure out if its a commercially viable solution or not, and it wasn't. Or at least not the best one.

Or, they take both positions simultaneously: The beta was rolled out recklessly but also they haven't delivered what they promised. Turns out self-driving is harder than people thought - and a few upper middle class folks like myself dropped 3k on something that isn't that useful. This occurs... millions of times a day with all sorts of products. What an absolute tragedy?

I'm actually glad they they've decided to slow down iteration on the self-driving stack - in the early days the self-driving would change behavior from patch to patch - it was extremely difficult to get an idea of what it would be thinking. It's obviously not the product that we all wished it was - but... does any product in the world hold up to consumer imagination?

Apple promises that the newest iPhone is a "new superpower". Am I supposed to believe that? Does anyone believe that? It never fails to crack me up that the folks most upset about Tesla's self-driving promise tend to not be customers and vow that they never will be. What in the world is so upsetting about a company over promising and under delivering? Are these people just constantly boiling with rage? Have they never experienced being a consumer before?

You were scammed for $3,000 and you like it? I think you need to cultivate some self respect.

These days Tesla wants to con people out of $15,000:

https://www.thedrive.com/tech/even-tesla-fans-think-fsds-pri...

Why should anyone "consume" this "product" when it simply doesn't work as claimed and doesn't meet any of Tesla's self declared deadlines?

If I had been "scammed" out of $3k for "FSD", I'd be perfectly happy right now too. The existing highway features are worth about $3k to me.

I wouldn't pay $6k for EAP or $15k for "FSD" though.

I don’t like it - I regret the purchase. Don’t you ever buy things you’re excited about only to find out it’s not what you hoped?

I’m just not furious is all - and not nearly as furious as folks who… didn’t buy the product. Me being disappointed in a cool toy is hardly a problem worth discussing.

I feel like there is some ambiguity here. Tesla only allowed a limited number to use it and there are some signs that they weren't serious about it. They may have taken advantage of a loophole to gain more than they credibly should.

The way I would put it is that he's been attempting to erect a reality distortion field to distract from that fact it will take much longer than he predicts to achieve some of his more distant goals. And that RDF basically means promising things that can't be delivered, for some time.

I almost bought a tesla a year ago based on the idea FSD was going to work at some point in the future but after Elon announced some last minute hardware changes to my model's radar (removing it), and I read about all the steps you should perform at pickup, I went and bought a toyota instead.

He lied about Hyperloop solely to convince CA to cancel HSR projects.

https://elonmusk.today/

I don't see them making progress. They have gone backwards. A few years back, when they still used radar, they had a ho-hum suite of driver assistance features. Now they have nothing I would trust.

+ the robot guy dancing in spandex

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