By what measure is Tesla "the best car company"? According to every metric I could find the company is clearly overvalued and stock price is the only measure it seems to truly excel in.
Elon Musk is listed as the CEO of Neuralink, SpaceX and Tesla. Do you genuinely think Elon Musk is so good at being a CEO that he can run three vastly different companies (4 including X Corp which he formally ceded his position as CEO) at the same time? Or do you think that his primary function was founding/buying the companies? Most of his interference in his companies (especially Tesla) seems to have been detrimental: from an atrocious workplace accident rate in Tesla factories because he "doesn't like yellow" to laying off most of Twitter before establishing any persistence/transfer of knowledge.
If you listen to him talk about any subject you're professionally familiar with, it's evident he knows how to mix in buzzwords but doesn't understand the underlying technology or how any of it actually works. His Twitter Spaces interview was a perfect example for software developers, his recent interview about Twitter/X as an "everything app" was an example for anyone working in (or remotely informed about) fintech.
His wealth is almost entirely tied to Tesla's share price and Tesla's share price is tied to his public perception as "real-life Tony Stark". SpaceX mostly runs on government contracts - incidentally most of Tesla's actual revenue also stems from public funds in the form of emissions trading.
Makes the most EVs, makes the most profit per EV, has the best charging, self driving, efficiency, software.
But if it's so easy, why hasn't anyone else bothered?
All space programs run on government contracts, what's new? He's providing the only reusable rocket, and 10 years later no one else has done that, why?
> But if it's so easy, why hasn't anyone else bothered?
Because to most other automakers, EVs are a side business that competes with their core business, not their core business, and the rest of it because its not true, e.g., Tesla doesn't offer the best self-driving, they just spend more effort trying to sell the idea of self-driving to individual buyers.
> You can't buy another car that can do even 10% of what FSD beta does
That's an odd statement, as "the first self-driving system to be approved for European public roads" and "the first automaker to receive government approval in the US for a Level 3 driving feature" is from Mercedes-Benz.
"This geofenced Level 3 system works at up to 40 miles per hour on select highways"
It's just worse cruise control, can't even go at highway speeds, there's about 1% chance you could use it.
Meanwhile FSD Beta is driving around cities the same as Waymo/Cruise are, except every city in North America.
We know a few things about AI, it needs lots of data, and lots of CPU. Tesla has 2 million cars with 8 cameras gathering data, and a top 10 in the world supercomputer.
"During the second quarter of 2022, SpaceX delivered 158.7 metric tons to low Earth orbit which is four times more than second palace China’s space corporation CASC at 38.8 tons.
Roscosmos at 17.2 tons was third, United Launch Alliance 4th at 13.0 tons, and Arianespace at 9.8 tons was fifth."
Telsa has the best selling car in the world, while Ford loses 200% on each EV they sell (according to Ford)
Are there any reports on the results of NHTSA investigations instead of just saying they've been started?
Doesn't seem that bad really, 2 FSD reports, first one FSD braked suddenly, maybe, no results from investigation it seems so far. And people driving incorrectly behind them were too close and couldn't brake on time. If only all the cars had FSD and not humans.
And the other FSD report was about driving into a junction where the car they thought was going to hit them had already stopped to let them go, and beeping to warn it was getting close to a cyclist. That's why it's still beta and warns you every time to be aware and it will do stupid things. So far in 300 million miles driven, it's apparently hit 0 people. So that's way better than humans, who kill someone every 100 million miles.
I note that you switch from "not proven yet" to "zero" which is not honest. Like a Tesla, you need to pick a lane.
Fundamentally, "just a beta" is not as far along as an approved shipping product. The shipping product is harder to fake, and we cannot rule out deception here.
> Meanwhile I've found 0 evidence of any member of the public who owns a Mercedes using Drive Pilot 2 years
I honestly don't know why that's supposed to be relevant. I see plenty of videos of it on YouTube after a 5-second search. No, it's not the HN crowd who have it and post here, but so what, that proves nothing at all. It's actually a bit of a weird outlier to have your ego tied up with promoting someone else's product for free online. "I've never seen it, therefor it doesn't happen" is not really true.
> FSD works on highways.
Legally though, "Statements about the "FSD works" should not be taken to imply that this is out of beta and therefor works unambiguously, or is technically actually "full self driving".
being "just a beta" gives them wiggle room to make claims that they don't have to back up properly. It is a key point that you do not engage with. I know that you want to believe, but I refer you to my comments above on the topic. Legal lines do make a difference, and not being able to meet them, while claiming otherwise, is a red flag.
My point about Drive Pilot is no one is using it, how can it be known to be safe if it's not actually used? There's plenty of videos of Mercedes demoing it to journalists, but who's actually bought one and used it, has it even been actually released yet?
That article says it's about Autopilot, not FSD. My claim that FSD has hit 0 people still hasn't been refuted by anyone. Meanwhile humans have killed 3000 people while driving today.
All these graphs from NHTSA data ignore the warning on NHTSA's page that the data is not useful for statistical analysis. When they actually publish the cause of the crashes, and what software was being used at the time, we will have actual knowledge. If it turns out that FSD was killing 1000s of people they'd probably have said something by now
> You can't buy another car that can do even 10% of what FSD beta does
Right, because Tesla is the only company that sees individual car owners as the target market for self-driving, everyone else in the business sees institutionally-owned robotaxi fleets as the target market. Actually, so does Tesla, fairly overtly—though they are behind at actually having auch a thing—they just see individual vehicle owners as a way to defray costs, especially development costs.
They aren't ahead at self-driving, they are just more creative at how they are financing it.
Elon Musk is listed as the CEO of Neuralink, SpaceX and Tesla. Do you genuinely think Elon Musk is so good at being a CEO that he can run three vastly different companies (4 including X Corp which he formally ceded his position as CEO) at the same time? Or do you think that his primary function was founding/buying the companies? Most of his interference in his companies (especially Tesla) seems to have been detrimental: from an atrocious workplace accident rate in Tesla factories because he "doesn't like yellow" to laying off most of Twitter before establishing any persistence/transfer of knowledge.
If you listen to him talk about any subject you're professionally familiar with, it's evident he knows how to mix in buzzwords but doesn't understand the underlying technology or how any of it actually works. His Twitter Spaces interview was a perfect example for software developers, his recent interview about Twitter/X as an "everything app" was an example for anyone working in (or remotely informed about) fintech.
His wealth is almost entirely tied to Tesla's share price and Tesla's share price is tied to his public perception as "real-life Tony Stark". SpaceX mostly runs on government contracts - incidentally most of Tesla's actual revenue also stems from public funds in the form of emissions trading.