The End of Tesla?
youtube.com
youtube.com
Hes so dumb (and high on ket) that he did not understand 95% of his customer base are not maga nutjobs, but progressive democrats. This is even more evident in Europe.
That, or he's a Strangelove incarnate that managed to hide his proclivities for Nazism up until now.
If he ever gets investigated for the massive promotion(?) misinformation(?) propaganda(?) campaign he did for Trump to win, I'm gonna love it.
And I used to like Elon. Such a shame.
Imagine air travel invented but with current societies standards, cultures and laws.
Would it have been difficult to introduce it and convince that it is safe?
Air travel also was initially slightly unsafe but over time became safer with lots of deliberate effort put.
The similarities are striking: you could have one or two crashes like the person who unfortunately encountered the accident with Tesla. Just like you could have a few crashes.
Self driving is really not that ground braking, from a transportation point of view. There are already trains and buses where you can get in, sit, and play with your phone so you don't have to drive.
I think it is very fair for people not willing to bear the risk. For planes though? Even now, if you sold people the idea of easy overseas vacations, they would be willing to risk it I'd say, or at least allow others to take the risk.
It’s more than 70% discount. This has so many implications everywhere - cost of living comes down. Things that were previously too costly to achieve will be profitable now.
The cost of building 100 Teslas for transporting the people we'd be able to stick into one bus is significantly higher than what we ever could save by not having a driver - and that's _before_ looking at the extra infrastructure cost we'll have: The 100 Teslas use way more space than a bus or a streetcar (capacity: 200-400), so needs more and wider roads, and will contribute to congestion, instead of easing it.
Self driving trams are already being tested - and are way easier to deal with than self driving cars, especially when you isolate them from the road to some extend. It won't change much in terms of personnel cost - countries which had been reducing conductors in trains ended up replacing them with security, so I'd expect we'll still have paid people in buses and trams, they'll just have a different job description now.
Cars exist at the moment and they serve a purpose. Public transport exists and serves a purpose too.
Self driving taxis and self driving cars will reduce the cost that people paid when they previously used cars. It might also make it more sensible to choose the convenience of a car instead of a tram or bus which may not take you to your exact location.
I agree that air travel is on a different scale but the similarities are there. The promise of a faster and cheaper means of transport but with possible safety concerns - both for self driving cars as well as air travel.
For taxi service it indeed could make limited sense - but that alone is not a big enough market to justify the development cost. From over here in Europe it looks like US tech companies are trying to compensate for that by making the market bigger through pushing taxi rides as replacement for bus or other mass transport rides - which is a horrible idea. I'm aware that the US has a bit more messed up public transport in general as we do over here (and taxi is considered part of public transport) - but even there, the right thing would be fixing mass transport, not introducing mass single person transport in cars.
In many countries over here taxi rates set by the state for individual regions to make it a reliable part of public transport. They're taking into account the cost of running the car, and other factors - the goal is to keep it affordable during peak times, while still being profitable for companies outside of those. Quite a few people rely on taxi service for things like going to the doctor or even just to the shop. In those cases a driver is not just a cost factor, but also a vital component of the provided service by providing assistance.
If we ever get fully automated taxis over here I'd expect them to be charged at the same taxi rates - otherwise it'd incentivize taxi companies to only run the cheapest option, which might cut off some person groups from the service, which - again - is public transport, and should not be discriminatory.
Your last point is genuinely naive - do you expect people to pay high costs for taxis by forcing them to pay as much as cars with drivers just to not discriminate against a few disabled people?
This is peak European policy decision I’ll give you that.
For one single issue, look at the society we live in; who is going to clean the car when the inevitable happens? How will that even work? Or do you think people will happily jump in a dirty car?
So, while you do not pay the driver (who makes little anyway), there will be new costs.
I am discounting your equation of self driving cars to the aviation industry.
Other people detest public transit.
You think Robotaxis are a solution to either of these?
Beyond that, Elon has a history of making claims and promises which don't pan out, without ever taking accountability. In 2016 Elon claimed that you'd be able to summon a Tesla from New York to Los Angeles autonomously by 2018. Let's give him the benefit of the doubt and say that he really believed that claim in 2016; at what point between 2016 and 2018 do you think he realized it wasn't going to happen and why didn't he speak up at that point? It would've been as simple as tweeting: "wow, we really underestimated the challenges, my previous claim was wrong and this problem will take longer to resolve".
It's fine to have ambitious deadlines and talk about what timelines you're hoping to hit. But this should be tempered by taking accountability and providing updates when new information becomes available. Nobody expects perfection, just the bare minimum of transparency and honesty.
The accountability and lack-of-transparency problems persists to this day. Elon has made tons of claims over the years and he rarely provides any updates or follows up. A recent example: he talked up how Twitter would open source the recommendation algorithm, but instead we got a one-time source snapshot which never got updated.
Unbelievably generous take, to the point of naivity.
When describing his cars abilities, he said they can go from car park in New York to car park in California. He said "We can do this today".
No, he's just a liar.
That would be regulation and institutional oversight by the government.
Inconvenient to say out loud on the altar of big tech capitalism.
End result is unregulated market of unsafe products with toxic myths around them
Lying can help you for years and years.
Actual safety is visible only in long term and again, abset neutral parties and data able to verify it does not matter. You get further by lying about safety. And those neutral parties can exist only if there is regulation.
You need to build brand trust when there is a lot of competition especially in the case of self driving where safety is of maximum concern. People are already skeptical and would look out for signals on such things.
You can’t keep things hidden for too long - word would spread that some cars are actually unsafe.
In general it is simply more simple and sustainable to not lie. Some times things fall through the cracks and you get problems like you see on Tesla.
> Who said lying is not risky for companies?
Practical results. Lying works, unless there is regulation, lawsuit or something like that.