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Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

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Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#581
post #424
post #406

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>Elons point on cars being worth 5x as much .... all of a sudden can be driven 40-50 hours a week ... Look at it this way, assume humans drive, or need to be driven/travel, X miles per year. Today, assuming a car drives Y miles per year, the market needs X/Y cars. Given your argument, with self driving, a car runs nY miles per year, the demand for car will drop to X/nY , basically 1/n of before or maybe a little more…

Self driving will increase demand, not decrease, as it will displace other less popular modes of transit. Why call an Uber or taxi after a night at the bar when you can just have your EV drive you home? Why make a medium-distance flight, when you can just sleep in the back of your EV as it cruises down the highway overnight? (This will pare well with lay flat front seats what would allow turning the car into somethin…

Self driving will increase demand, not decrease, as it will displace other less popular modes of transit

Are you sure? How many people right now own a car that they use mostly a few times per week? Car ownership right now is the only way to guarantee personal long-range transport. But if self-driving cars can replace taxis and even some form of public transport, car usage might go up but it's not clear to me that car ownership will go up along with it.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#582
post #324

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How many cars does Uber own? I thought they offloaded all of that pesky "ownership" stuff to their custome.. I mean drivers / coworkers / employees / collaborating business owners / freelancers.

I don’t know about Uber but Lyft has a car rental service. Drivers can rent cars from Lyft to drive with Lyft. If the infrastructure is already there, going from “driver turns on an app to accept/reject a ride” to “we accept that automatically” is quite simple.

I don’t believe Lyft owns the cars, they just partner with the traditional car rental agencies. Uber also has a car rental service.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#583

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> > And he’s admitted self driving was way more difficult than anyone realized, Sure and the guy is getting paid right now in cold hard cash, while all the synchopants keep ranting about hopes and dreams. As Jack Nicholson said in 'the Departed' and I quote : "What we generally do - in this country... is one guy brings the items and the other guy pays him. No tickee, no laundry!" First the self-driving car for all Am…

My point was Elon has an incredible track record of success which follows a formula of overhype, delays, and eventual achievement if not overachievement. You seem to have a more personal vendetta against him, I’m just looking at his insane success and envying hype/ management style

> My point was Elon has an incredible track record of success

Um what? He has a rocket company where he basically has absolutely no involvement at all...

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#584

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My point was Elon has an incredible track record of success which follows a formula of overhype, delays, and eventual achievement if not overachievement. His biggest success is the rocket industry. Let's examine top competitors - corrupt ULA which flies rockets on 50 year old engines and does cost+ contracts, his other competitor was Russia, a corrupt kleptocracy that stopped innovating when USSR fell apart. Russia…

Your bias against elon is showing and it's not a good look. You're not being very rational.

Why do people emphasis rationality when reasonability is much more important?

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#585

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that he regularly sells.

And is bought by people that think the company is valuable enough to give the stock said value. You can argue that those people are wrong, sure, but I don't get what point you're trying to make. He isn't taking money away from someone else or being given "underserved" rewards, when the people that are keeping the value of what he receives believes it to be of such value.

> And is bought by people that think the company is valuable enough to give the stock said value.

They say a sucker is born every minute

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#586
post #446

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It's going to be significantly less tire dust, they weigh a 100th the weight. Ebikes won't be mainstream in a typical American city though, the distances between home, goods and services and work are usually too great and cars are basically baked into the culture. Better mass transit and bikes for those living in denser cities, is likely America's only good option. I don't think e-bikes are unsafe though, their lack…

If you use an ebike, wait until you go down by yourself and tell me what you think again. No cars needed. On a cyclist lane. Just you and your bike. If you use it for everyday commute, it's a matter of time. When it happens, it will be no fun.

I just fell a few weeks ago. Some ripped jeans and road rash but I'm ok. No doctor visit required. Low-speed accidents are far less injurious than the sort of high-speed ones you can get into with automobiles, and by far less fatal.

According to WSDOT, there were 2 bicycle-related fatalities in Washington state in all of 2023, vs. 218 automobile-related fatalities. So a 100x difference. The data is there if you care to look for it.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#587
Tesla seems to be making progress on full self driving, but real self driving (cars without steering wheels) still seems quite distant. How will such a car respond to road workers redirecting traffic? How many times have you had to talk to someone outside of your car to obtain instructions on how to get around some obstacle, like a moving truck. I don't do such things every day or even every month, but there are occasions where it is necessary to take unmarked detours.

How would a self driving car get through heavy fog or snow covered roads when there are only very difficult to decipher hints to the road edges?

How will self-driving cars deal with humans that can perfectly predict their actions? I believe that bad drivers will take advantage of self-driving cars by cutting them off and failing to yield when they should.

Because human drivers have a sense of self preservation we can break the rules when we are about to be car-jacked or see an impending collision coming. Imagine how easy it is to obstruct a self-driving car for nefarious reasons.

I'm confident that, eventually, self-driving cars will address all of these issues to some degree, and that will mark a turning point where it is better to leave driving to the cars than average drivers. However, this doesn't mean I'm going to put my $100K car into a taxi pool to be used by (sometimes drunk) strangers; I don't buy the argument that the cost of buying such a car will pay for itself.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#588
post #577

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The boring company was always hype… we’ve known how to use TBMs to drill tunnels for years

I mean we’ve known how to use rockets for decades, but SpaceX was a good idea. TBMs are just slightly too expensive right now. At 1/2 the price per mile a huge number of projects suddenly become very attractive. Which then opens the door for more economies of scale, further efficiencies, and in theory a very valuable company.

There are plenty of lower cost TBM options, low enough cost for my local water company to be using a mini one to dig a 12 mile sewer near where I live

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#589
post #581
post #424

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Self driving will increase demand, not decrease, as it will displace other less popular modes of transit. Why call an Uber or taxi after a night at the bar when you can just have your EV drive you home? Why make a medium-distance flight, when you can just sleep in the back of your EV as it cruises down the highway overnight? (This will pare well with lay flat front seats what would allow turning the car into somethin…

Self driving will increase demand, not decrease, as it will displace other less popular modes of transit Are you sure? How many people right now own a car that they use mostly a few times per week? Car ownership right now is the only way to guarantee personal long-range transport. But if self-driving cars can replace taxis and even some form of public transport, car usage might go up but it's not clear to me that car…

> How many people right now own a car that they use mostly a few times per week?

A lot fewer than the average SF/NYC bubbler probably thinks. It is the only viable means of transportation for probably 90% of americans.

Re: Whistleblower drops 100 GB of Tesla secrets to German news site

#590
post #520

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a fair point. Not least because this is why I wouldn't consider buying a Tesla. It feels too much like dealing with software: it isn't your car. It is Teslas car. And maybe paying a bunch of money for it means you can drive it, but sometimes, when you hit some corner case, it doesn't.

As a Tesla owner, I would love to know what corner cases you are referring to. I've been a tech at a Ford dealership, and I'd say that the incidents which render the average Ford undrivable are far greater than the incidents which render the average Tesla undrivable.

Second hand Teslas represent a challenge as someone pointed out. You also can't necessarily modify or inspect the car without Tesla getting their panties in a twist (I dare you to connect to the network inside your car and try to get access to the onboard computers and then try to have the discussion with Tesla about who's car it really is).

The there are the massive privacy issues and the fact that you can't do anything about that: your car is spying on you. (I know consumers don't care enough about this in the US to elect politicians that take privacy seriously, but in Europe we do. Which is why Tesla is under scrutiny for not only collecting massive amounts of invasive data, but also for not being able to adequately safeguard the data they collect).

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