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German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

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Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#261

Post by ojnabieoot »

dreamer7 wrote: post #157
ojnabieoot wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tesla goofed from the beginning by calling tech like "Autosteer" and "Traffic Assisted Cruise Control" under the moniker "Autopilot" I am not accusing you specifically of using weak language, but let's call a spade a spade: it's not a "goof," it's a dangerous and deceptive business practice. It's one that Elon Musk is directly responsible for and directly encouraged with misleading statements where he deliberately…

> It is true that highly knowledgeable people know that Musk is an idiot conman Sorry to nitpick but highly knowledgeable people will surely never claim Musk is an idiot anything. He is definitely a genius in several ways. For something so technologically advanced as self-driving cars, his stuttering style seems to convey more sincerity to the general public than Steve Job's glib speech ever would

To be clear: being an idiot and being a genius aren't mutually exclusive. Elon Musk is in many ways a genius business executive, and in many more ways a huge friggin' idiot.

The idea that he's a "polymath"[1] completely whitewashes the actual scientists and engineers who did the actual work behind SpaceX and Tesla and SolarCity. I have seen literally zero evidence that Musk understands the physics and mathematics required to actually engineer a rocket or electronic car. For that matter, while SpaceX has made admirable technical contributions to economic spaceflight, they are not innovating new technologies in the way that government space agencies are (especially NASA).

He seems like a decent programmer and, when he's not high on Twitter, a very good tech CEO. It seems like he has a rare "spark of vision." But translating these admirable qualities into universal genius is just worshipping the Cult of the CEO. Musk is, first and foremost, a celebrity venture capitalist.

[1] Edit - I know you didn't say "polymath," I was responding to another rant from a few days ago. I do hear the term tossed around a lot and it drives me up a wall.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#262

Post by ianmobbs »

singlow wrote: post #170
ianmobbs wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the achievements people ascribe to him aren't even his. Musk bought the company then gave himself the title of 'founder'. He's a businessman, not a scientist

What did the company have when he bought it apart from a name?

They already had the Roadster, Musk just funded it.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#263

Post by ianmobbs »

dahfizz wrote: post #217
ianmobbs wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the achievements people ascribe to him aren't even his. Musk bought the company then gave himself the title of 'founder'. He's a businessman, not a scientist

That's a bit misleading. Musk was a part of Tesla from day 1 and provided most of the funding. He served as Chairman since 2004. When he took over in 2008, Tesla had just started producing the first roadster, which was really just a conversion kit for a lotus. After musk became CEO, Tesla became the world's most valuable car company...

There is a difference between "funding a Roadster" and "designing and fully understanding the physics and mechanics of the Roadster".

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#264

Post by jedberg »

jowday wrote: post #137
gibolt wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it gets there, regulatory approval will absolutely be a bottleneck to deployment. They don't say it is a current blocker. And it won't come close to Theranos. Tesla makes real products that are class-leading. Even if Tesla can't reach level 5, it will be damn close and make driving 10-100x safer than just a human.

>When it gets there, regulatory approval will absolutely be a bottleneck to deployment. They don't say it is a current blocker. Elon regularly states that the chief blocker for Tesla is regulatory approval. Meanwhile Teslas still drive straight into overturned trucks.

> Meanwhile Teslas still drive straight into overturned trucks.

To be fair, so do people.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#265

Post by viklove »

Barrin92 wrote: post #148
billfor wrote: post #95

I wonder how many people complaining about Tesla's marketing actually have a Tesla. The car clearly makes you acknowledge that the driver is responsible before using any Autopilot/FSD capability, and if you bought the car with the expectation that it didn't , you have a return period to get your money back in full. It doesn't matter if they said it would take you to the moon and back. If you test drive or buy it and…

It does in Germany (as the ruling in question indicates). False advertising here is very much considered 'harm done' and no way to do business. Lying to the customer until she takes the product out of the box is in no way, shape or form how you operate in this country. (well I guess it was for wirecard which is embarassing enough) I do not want to live somewhere where I have to order ten things, three are fake, three…

Even in the US false advertising like OP suggests is considered fraudulent and against the law. There are just too many Musk fanboys around here that don't seem to know how the law works.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#266

Post by mdszy »

billfor wrote: post #246
empath75 wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sounds like you don't believe in the concept of false advertising at all. Telling the truth after you buy the thing doesn't absolve you of the initial fraud. To my mind it exacerbates it, because it demonstrates that you know that your advertising is fraudulent.

I think some of the comments here are specific to the German market, and others are more general. My original comment was "in general" and not specific to the German market. False advertising may be wrong, but it might not always be criminal. Is "Fat Free" really fat free....? If we held politicians to the same standard there would be a lot more of them in jail. Ceveat Emptor, but at least Tesla does let you return i…

Or maybe you can stop bootlicking corporations for half a second and think that they should be held responsible for literally lying lmao.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#267

Post by seanmcdirmid »

dave5104 wrote: post #163
dreamer7 wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It is true that highly knowledgeable people know that Musk is an idiot conman Sorry to nitpick but highly knowledgeable people will surely never claim Musk is an idiot anything. He is definitely a genius in several ways. For something so technologically advanced as self-driving cars, his stuttering style seems to convey more sincerity to the general public than Steve Job's glib speech ever would

Musk isn't an idiot, he's overseen some great things at the companies he runs, and I hope the companies he's running continue pushing technology forward. But Musk as a human isn't so great. He'd do better to keep his mouth shut sometimes, and lay off Twitter every now and again. Between falsely accusing people of being pedophiles, claiming to take Tesla private in a tweet, and various other "incidents", he's kind of…

Musk is technically great, he has OK business sense, he has really bad social interaction skills and really needs to work on developing a better filter.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#268

Post by richardrk »

martythemaniak wrote: post #219

Well, I'm gonna disagree. Let's quote wikipedia: > An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of an aircraft, marine craft or spacecraft without requiring constant manual control by a human operator. Autopilot does not replace human operators. Instead, autopilot assists the operator's control of the vehicle, allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations (for example, monitoring the traj…

Not sure if that quote supports your argument. Tesla states:

"Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability are intended for use with a fully attentive driver, who has their hands on the wheel and is prepared to take over at any moment." [0]

This sounds very different from "allowing the operator to focus on broader aspects of operations". I have never heard of pilots having their hand and feet on the stick and paddles in case the airplane make an incorrect maneuver.

[0] https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/support/autopilot-and-full-self-...

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#269

Post by hef19898 »

Robotbeat wrote: post #220
nemothekid wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. I'm saying Tesla is successful because of Elon's hype. They are not "forgiving" his misgivings, they fully believe Elon will solve world hunger and invent FTL space travel. If you ask anyone who's bought into Tesla, they will tell you the "Auto Pilot on airplanes" lie, but they also believe Elon will deliver on Level 5 Autonomous driving. No cares about electric cars, they care about the guy's company who is usin…

I want to address this because in spite of Elon (whether punching down with Twitter or COVIDiocy, etc) burning up a lot of the goodwill he had accumulated in the past, these things remain: The reason people think Elon may do level 5 autonomy is because his companies have accomplished several things that industry experts said were either infeasible or impossible. Fast charging, large-battery electric cars that are fas…

What exactly did his companies deliver, that experts said was impossible, in the technological sense I mean? Reusable rockets, deemed possible but not economic due to the low number of launches. SpaceX delivered amazing stuff, so, but nothing impossible. EVs were a thing already 100 years ago, so technically totally feasible, as is mass production. And the battery tech is to large part Panasonic. Still impressive what Tesla did, but again nothing technologically impossible.

Not feasible is a different thing. A lot of people said that about EVs and reusable rockets. With EVs he pushed the industry in zzhe right direction, at enormous costs. Funding seems to be directly linked to Elon, so. And whether or not reusable rockets are feasible is hard to tell, since SpaceX isn't publishing any results.

I think that the moment Elon runs out of stuff to hype and sell to investors, or just fails to sell, is the moment his companies go down. Which would be a pity.

Re: German court bans Tesla ad statements related to autonomous driving

#270

Post by Aunche »

lazyjones wrote: post #243
Aunche wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you driven a modern ICE? I rented a new Honda Accord this weekend. Besides the Model 3's crazy acceleration, and automatic lane changing, I think the Accord matches or exceeds a Model 3 in every single way, and it's roughly half the price. This isn't to say Teslas aren't impressive, but I do think they're overhyped.

> Besides the Model 3's crazy acceleration, and automatic lane changing, I think the Accord matches or exceeds a Model 3 in every single way Except noise, pollution, complexity/maintenance cost, OTA updates, large touchscreen navigation that gets updated continuously, having to visit gas stations etc. etc. ICE is just obsolete technology. Half the performance at 10 times the noise and infinitely more pollution.

I agree that EVs are the future, but plenty of companies have been working on them, but nobody gave a shit until Elon made them sexy. Also, most people will drive ICEs until EVs get cheaper and enough infrastructure is in place to support them.
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