611–620 of 705 posts
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I don't understand, why would you need self driving cars if you don't want to drive? Public transport is here, is cheaper and safer. Also it allows to multitask.
autonomous or not, taking the bus is still going to be a craptacular experience.
As of 2016, the number of American car companies that haven't gone bankrupt is a grand total of two: Ford and Tesla. Also, four entities have launched rockets into space: the US, China, the Soviet Union (Russia) and Elon Musk. This guy is thinking and planning on a scale I find it hard to even imagine, to fit in my brain.
France [1], Japan [2], India [3], Israel [4], Iran [5], and even North Korea [6] have developed and launched rockets that successfully put satellites in orbit.
I like Elon as much as the next guy, but this mythologizing is just too much.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamant
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lambda_(rocket_family)
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satellite_Launch_Vehicle
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shavit
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Isn't Tesla also subsidized by the government?
That's not the subsidy I'm referring to. How much would it cost you to create a barrel of crude oil? Not "extract from the ground", the usual meaning of "producing oil", which borrows rather more from "produce the evidence" than "manufacture the good". But actually start with high-entropy substrates and some energy source and synthesize oil. Why do markets not account for this cost? (Hotelling's Rule is ignored, and…
There are certainly implicit subsidies for oil, in the form of the externalities like health and environmental damage from the pollution emitted when using it. But it makes no sense to me to account for the work that went into creating the oil. Hordes of microbes already did that work millions or billions of years ago. It's done, it's there, and the cost of taking advantage of that work is just the cost of extraction and use.
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Say what you will about their "antiquated" business practices, but Ford consistently does one thing that Tesla never does: it turns a profit
Don't they lose money on every single model except the F-150?
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autonomous or not, taking the bus is still going to be a craptacular experience.
Hey, I love my bus. It's a really pleasant part of my morning.
"A first principles physics analysis of automotive production suggests that somewhere between a 5 to 10 fold improvement is achievable by version 3 on a roughly 2 year iteration cycle. The first Model 3 factory machine should be thought of as version 0.5, with version 1.0 probably in 2018." What that really means: Tesla is going to lose a ton of money per car on the Model 3, or raise the price, until at least 2022. T…
I've only mildly followed him, but I remember hearing he is extremely aggressive with his timelines. Is he normally so far off on his estimates?
Doesn't Tesla charge a large fee to have autopilot enabled on your car? Isn't that equally morally reprehensible?
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Where do you live that this is not the case? I know some states have (or had) a "no-fault" approach to automobile liability claims but I thought it was a minority and perhaps had been mostly abandonded? Who else would be responsible, if not the owner?
The driver?
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But Tesla won't sell them to him, man. Why would they, when Elon's just said he's going to create their own autonomous fleet? Why would they hand it over to Uber? Of course they're competing! Elon's just said they're going to make a fleet of autonomous electric taxis! Travis wasn't being literal; he knows there aren't going to be 500,000 available for a single company to buy for many years. And even if it weren't red…
Why wouldn't they sell them? They are in the business of making money, and if Uber offers to pay a premium or sign a contract, it would allow Tesla to grow much quicker, expand capacity, and make even MORE money. A self driving car bought by Uber would pay for itself in under 2 years easy. I am sure Uber would pay quite a lot for THAT opportunity.
Time will tell.