421–430 of 705 posts
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Isn't Tesla also subsidized by the government?
Isn't gas also subsidized by the government? http://priceofoil.org/fossil-fuel-subsidies/ https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_subsidies
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Proven technology around since the beginning of time - walking. The rest of the world love it. We should give it a try.
Is that why the streets are empty and you can always find a parking space in London? How about downtown Shanghai? Or Rome? Or the suburbs of Guadalajara? This qualifies as some of the rest of the world and all of the places mentioned are traffic nightmares. It must be all of the walkers clogging up the roads. As far as the rest of the world loving it, that's ridiculous. The mom in rural Kenya walking miles each day f…
There's public transport, there's biking, even segways and hoverboards and those motorised skateboards everyone loves, and the list goes on. All of which are technologies which themselves can be improved too.
Taking bikes as an example, since I'm most familiar with those: Dutch infrastructure is practically built around it[0] and for the vast majority of trips, which are short-distance, it is a far better solution than cars. (of course the Netherlands is unfairly advantaged here, being compact and flat, but that does not make bikes useless elsewhere). For long distance trips a combination of public transport and a locally rented bike is usually all you need to get around. Amsterdam is a famously bike friendly capital, but all our cities are, really, and especially in smaller ones like Groningen it is the de-facto mode of transportation[1][2].
As for your Kenya example, in most contexts bikes are arguably a better solution in developing countries than cars: it needs no fuel, is simple enough to fix yourself, possible to make from local materials even (see Ghana's bamboo bikes[4] for example), less dependent on roads and existing infrastructure and still enough of a time and energy saver that it brings a lot of wealth to the people who own one.
[0] https://www.youtube.com/user/markenlei/videos
[1] https://vimeo.com/76207227
[2] https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/jul/29/how-groningen...
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If this was the only thing that mattered for businesses, we wouldn't have Amazon as Walmart has consistently produced more net profit over Amazon since the last 22 years. 1 1. http://revenuesandprofits.com/amazon-vs-walmart-revenues-and...
Amazon was never a profit machine. I do think that's part of the core business, re-invest everything and more... and they turned into a giant comparable to Walmart.
Those companies are means to an end, not profit-generating machines.
> The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability. I don't think this is the correct comparison. A car used correctly is safe. We have huge numbers of road accidents because most people are unable t…
It's probably why so much people keep resisting evolution like autopilot, they can't admit that even them can someday fail and crash. They believe that if they are good drivers they will avoid it.
Sadly very good drivers die every day and not only because of someone else's mistake.
Of course a computer or a machine can fail too, but in comparison it will never fail as often as human do. Because we can be careless, sleepy, drunk, unskilled,...
Now the real problem we will face (what scares me even though I'm pro-autopilot) is to accept to hand our lives to machines that will have to make choices in emergency situations (should it saves its owner or the kids in front of it ?, who is responsible in case of a crash ?,...)
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Is that why the streets are empty and you can always find a parking space in London? How about downtown Shanghai? Or Rome? Or the suburbs of Guadalajara? This qualifies as some of the rest of the world and all of the places mentioned are traffic nightmares. It must be all of the walkers clogging up the roads. As far as the rest of the world loving it, that's ridiculous. The mom in rural Kenya walking miles each day f…
The walking remark by GP was perhaps a bit snarky, but there is a deeper point to be made: if the problem is caused by cars, limiting your view to designing better cars is not a smart strategy (don't get me wrong: we should build better, safer, smarter cars, they just shouldn't be the only potential solution we look at). Something something Ford something "faster horses" . There's public transport, there's biking, ev…
So in this case yes, designing a better car may be a big part of the solution.
If I am on a self-driving car and it meets with an accident, there might be a case to be made against Tesla if I consider myself a very safe driver. Even though on an average self-driving might cause less casualties but that figure might not hold good compared to what my personal accident rate is. And this should be good enough for law enforcement to nail Tesla. I think, like everyone else, that Musk is probably the…
Will be fun to revisit your comment in 10 years
Elon is very smart, but even Jobs didnt get it right with Next.
A digression from the mainstream discussion. I woke up this morning feeling sullen (many factors involved). I didn't feel like going to work. I could hardly get out of bed. I just sat for a few minutes staring in the vacuumn. Something told me to check Hacker News (I am trying to avoid it in morning), and the top link was this. I went through it twice. It instilled hope and enthusiasm in me. I woke up in an instant a…
Yeah, news about Tesla and SpaceX often do the trick for me. Those two companies seem to be hell-bent on pushing us into a brighter, better future.
> The most important reason is that, when used correctly, it is already significantly safer than a person driving by themselves and it would therefore be morally reprehensible to delay release simply for fear of bad press or some mercantile calculation of legal liability. I don't think this is the correct comparison. A car used correctly is safe. We have huge numbers of road accidents because most people are unable t…
Humans are the very definition of imperfection and thinking that you are capable of "correctly using a car" that is, never make the mistake that will cause a terrible accident is a big problem. It's probably why so much people keep resisting evolution like autopilot, they can't admit that even them can someday fail and crash. They believe that if they are good drivers they will avoid it. Sadly very good drivers die e…
Ok I know this is my little cause of the moment, but seriously why are computers apriori better at anything? Sure they don't make poor life choices but they are absolutely at the mercy of the quality of the algorithms, sensors, operating system, training data and physical computational hardware.
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Agreed but I feel Musk is not here to do a business; he is here to fix humanity. Normal logic does not apply on him, just like when he used all his earnings from selling Paypal and decided to start a roket company (SpaceX)! Other enterpreneurs literally laughed at him and called him crazy.
Oh he is the SV Messiah? Honestly enterprise is enterprise. Look what Google have become.
> Honestly enterprise is enterprise.
What I like about Tesla and SpaceX is that they're honest, plain companies. They exist as means to an end. Vehicles to achieve material goals - in this case, sustainable transport and making humanity multiplanetary. This is how all companies should work, and yet somehow we got lost on the way and most companies exist to make money, without giving much shit about how exactly they're making this money.
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Abuses? How about "utilizes"? The subsidy is there to get more electric vehicles on the road.
I don't trust the government to manipulate the free market efficiently. It's comprised of hapless morons who don't know what they're doing and whose favor is for sale to the highest bidder. Case in point are the tremendous number of bankrupt alternative energy companies built upon favorable treatment by the government. Market intervention doesn't suddenly become justifiable simply because the outcome of advancing the…
These blanket statements are often wrong, there are really bad instances of a government trying to manipulate markets but there are also instances where it is needed to keep businesses in check.
I would rather live in the world as it is right now than in a Corporatocracy.