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Comment by anonzzzies | Hacker News Reader

So, Musk did repeat the FSD 'any moment' last earnings call and robotaxis using it this september (now) as well. And then they do this. That is why I found it very strange that anyone believes his recent Mars timelines; people I consider smart (PG for instance [0]) are awe struck by such an announcement while we all know that Elon is often decades off. Don't get me wrong, besides his political gibberish and twitter mess, at least he tries, but I don't know anymore if all the crazy things he says are to manipulate investors or if he really believes them.

[0] https://x.com/paulg/status/1832638755523514701

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Remember when tesla was about to release full self driving cars "next year" and uber said they'd buy every single car tesla would produce aha

That was like 10 years ago, and we still don't have anything even remotely close to self driving besides the few $$$ experimental cars driving the long straight roads of ever sunny california

Have you tried it? it's not there but it's close. Even Ford's Blue Cruise is half way there.

Try driving in a small Italian town, on a Swiss mountain roads during a snow storm, &c.

The last 20% are the hardest so if you're only 50% of the way there you haven't even started the hard part

Living in NYC I would say try driving without breaking any laws or road rules and see how far you get. You can't drive half a mile without driving in the other lane to get around something.

Here you go, FSD in Italy: https://youtu.be/tsE089adyoQ?si=Uo72mxf63DQNn7qG

It generalises quite well even though it’s only trained on US roads AFAIK.

the problem is, even if you solve 80% of cases 100% of the time, those 20% of outliers are not easy to get 100%. How should a autonomous car behave when it sees a basketball bounce across the road near a playground? Any human would assume: "there might be kids, I should slow down even if the ball isn't obstructing my path" a car isn't going to be able to make those decisions.

It depends on what you define success. Only Waymo has actual real, live robotaxis right now; Tesla's FSD very much isn't that, despite promises that it'll be here next year for the past 9 years. But in terms of "how much does it suck to drive 2 hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic on the freeway", we've made leaps and bounds of progress since the original Darpa Grand Challenge, 20 years ago in 2004. Yeah I'd love to own a Tesla and rent it out as a robotaxi and have it earn money while I'm not using it. I'd also like a flying car. And a pony. To say that we "don't have anything even remotely close" when we have actually made progress, just because some pie-in-the-sky goal hasn't been meet, is where I take issue with. I don't know how much that last 20% will take, but if we've only made it 80% of the way, that's still not "don't have anything even remotely close" territory.

It is further than my cheapo cruise control + lane assist ; on long modern straight roads and in traffic jams, it's almost fsd to me. In other situations it is not functional at all. So these modern ones are better but how much?

Like many things in life, "it's close" is not worth celebrating, especially if it's not clear how the gap will be solved.

My point is that, in this case, it is. Totally fine if you disagree, but in terms of how much it sucks to sit in bumper-to-bumper, stop-and-go-traffic, or just any 3 hour drive on the freeway, the SOTA is so much better compared to 20 years ago that it is worth celebrating. Complain about not having robotaxis all you want. What already exists is miles better than OG cruise control from the 90's, which just kept you at a constant speed, and didn't even have radar to automatically slow down if the vehicle in front of you slowed down.

> people I consider smart (PG for instance [0]) are awe struck by such an announcement while we all know that Elon is often decades off.

This is the kind of thing that makes me believe that class solidarity is real.

Yeah, paul graham is rich, not smart.

The halo effect in action.

The "or" is not correct IMO in the last part. It is very easy to believe things that just happen to increase your own wealth.

He says crazy things that he believes, it manipulates investors and as his wealth increases he just believes the crazy things more.

He never believed in colonizing Mars (unless he's a moron). His Mars ambition has always just been about snatching the most lucrative inter-governmental contract that anyone has ever conceived of. Everything Musk has been involved with since PayPal has only been possible through federal subsidies and contracts.

> at least he tries

We should hold people accountable for their behavior regardless.

Every manned Mars mission announced by Musk so far has assumed that astronauts will be staying on Mars for good and never return.

Cheeky Reddit discussions arguing how reaching Mars is easier than the moon care more about saving some delta V than saving the lives of the astronauts that would embark on a suicide mission just to appease SpaceX investors.

SpsceX has no plans to build a space station around Mars, meanwhile NASA wants to build a Mars gateway by rehearsing on the moon. SpaceX has not built any hardware or space suits that are necessary for long term survival on the martian surface. Those astronauts would arrive without any means for survival, stuck in their starship just as if they were stuck in a space station. Then there is the fact that at the current rate of progress, the mars schedule is faster than the moon/artemis schedule, implying that they don't care about the moon and are diverting resources away from it even though they have received money and a super tight deadline for it.

>but I don't know anymore if all the crazy things he says are to manipulate investors or if he really believes them.

At what point would it be considered fraud?

IDGAF whatever Musk really believes, the fact of the matter is that if he repeats the "any moment" line on an investor call, he has to be held to it. You can't trot out your own personal beliefs with investor's money, even if you sincerely believe it. He has staff and advisors that can tell him point blank if the tech is really ready, or not ready at all. If those advisors or staff tell him that it's close to being ready, that's straight up fraud unless they can put-up-or-shut-up. If they tell him it's not ready but he repeats the lie, it's also fraud.

How many more excuses will we give this guy? This is absurd.

Disclosure: I founded a startup, and have a few investors. I have to be fully transparent with them, because that's not only the ethical thing to do when you take someone's money, you also have to do so because the law compels you to do so. If I tell them that a product is close to being ready, I have to be ready to prove it. I can't make such claims otherwise. Why are we not holding the wealthiest guy on earth to the same laws EVERYONE ELSE is held to?

Having listened to many interviews by Musk I think he does believe his timelines, in the same way a football coach believes his team can win the Superbowl. They're meant as a goal to be striven towards by himself and those working under him, not as a cold, neutral assessment of the most likely outcome.

Obviously he is wildly optimist About timelines, but you can’t deny SpaceX have done incredible things that literally every expert said was impossible.

I still like his quote “SpaceX makes the impossible merely late”

Fully self driving cars and people on Mars will happen. And I feel pretty certain Tesla and SpaceX will be at least a bit responsible for pushing it to happen faster than if they didn’t exist.

Of course they are not perfect, but on the whole I think we’re better off because they exist.

> Obviously he is wildly optimist About timelines

10 years of lies is not optimism. It's just lies:

https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/

Then he can refund the cost to every Tesla owner with interest, and let his optimism carry him to great profits once the tech is actually finished. Surely he can do that, if actually believes what he is saying and wasn't just doing an impossible cash grab with tech that would never be capable of doing what he promised.

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