No, really. This is brilliant, a real out-of-the-box, Kobayashi Maru-type of solution to a real world engineering problem.
Initially the probe started last year in response to Tesla vehicles mysteriously plowing into the scene of an existing accident where first responders were already present.
On Thursday, NHTSA said it had discovered in 16 separate instances when this occurred that Autopilot “aborted vehicle control less than one second prior to the first impact,” suggesting the driver was not prepared to assume full control over the vehicle.
CEO Elon Musk has often claimed that accidents cannot be the fault of the company, as data it extracted invariably showed Autopilot was not active in the moment of the collision.
There was a time not that long ago when I thought the Tesla was a great idea, and would have loved to get one — I was held in check, though, because there was no way I could afford one. Now I’m relieved that I dodged that bullet.
You can’t even toast a marshmallow on that fire, thanks to all the toxic chemicals.
Wonder what Nader has to say about this? Unsafe at any speed? (Tangential but..)
Obviously, this is absolutely terrible needless to say except not sure I do do need to state it.
(Just the whole cars bursting into flames and design flaws thing uimmediatley made me think of ..anyhow.)
I wouldn’t blame Musk personally for this without more evidence linking him persoanlly directly to it but, yes, it’s NOT something that Tesla should have allowed to happen and clearly a major issue.
Every time I’ve crashed a bike (my main mode of transportation) I can truthfully say I was not in control of it at the moment of impact. So obviously not my fault.
Yup.
Gasoline vehicles catch fire, too. They also emit lots of toxic chemicals even when they aren’t burning. Here on Vancouver Island we recently had two instances within a couple of days of gas powered car fires, one of which would have been fatal had an off duty fire fighter not risked life and limb to rescue the trapped passenger.
Not that I would buy a Tesla even if I could afford one. I agree they are crap. But I haven’t seen any good stats on the frequency of fires in various kinds of vehicles, so I won’t jump to conclusions.
Storing energy in concentrated form is risky business.
I have a Tesla Model 3. I was paying $400/month on gas with my old car, and with my down-payment, that is what I’m paying monthly for my Tesla. Regardless, at $400/month, plus the low maintenance costs (no oil changes, tune-ups, very rare brake pad replacements, etc.), the car will pay for itself in savings in less than 7 years, or less as gas prices increase.
I’m not a car nut, but I can honestly say it is the most fun of any car I’ve owned, particularly as it keeps getting better with software updates adding new features. It is actually worth more now than when I bought it in 2020. It is also a very safe car to drive. It alerts you to dangers around you (it will warn you if you are close to obstacles on all sides, eg. less than 1 metre from a curb or parked car). It has intelligent cruise control, so will slow down to match the speed of cars ahead of you, and will even slam on the brakes if traffic suddenly stops. The steering wheel vibrates if you drift out of your lane. It has a collision warning buzzer if you are approaching the cars ahead of you too quickly, to get your attention to hit the brakes. None of this is using their self-driving feature, which I didn’t pay extra for.
As for the cars catching fire, I suggest you watch the Wham Bam Teslacam channel which collects the dashcam videos of Teslas witnessing and involved in accidents. Fires are very very rare! The cars are built like tanks, so even in very bad accidents the occupants are rarely injured. Gas cars can catch fire much more often than Teslas.
A friend told me of riding in his friend’s high performance Tesla and how electric cars accelerate faster than gas powered because lack of crankshaft, pistons etc that need time to rev up. He said the g-force was intense, like don’t have your head turned or anything.
Fires are one of the negatives of electric cars. The lithium batteries burn like crazy if they catch fire, and are hard to put out. That’s the case no matter what the brand.
You really need to be careful using the HCF op code.
So Tesla assumes a human can gain total control of the car from autopilot to prevent a crash in ONE SECOND?
A human can barely do that when they are actively driving, let alone assuming the ‘robot” is in control initially.
It takes almost a half-second to realize you even HAVE to take control.
I think it would be better to focus on vehicle avoidance systems. Especially if they could be retrofitted, All cars should have them and let the insurance companies pay for them as They would save a ton of money.
Also worth remembering that if a Tesla catches fire, because of how stupidly the things are designed, the occupant(s) can’t easily escape because the locking/latching mechanism for the doors is almost invariably compromised.
why was the driver not prepared to resume control of the car?
sounds like operator error to me, trusting the machine to do the control thing. It is kind of a nice idea but we ain’t there yet clearly.
It sounds like the savings might be in maintenance only question would be how long do the batteries last and what is the replacement cost averaged in to the life of the car for electric cars. how does that effect the return on investment?
You do have to give Musk some credit for helping to make electric cars a little bit cooler then they were when he bought the company
Like PZ, we were tempted to buy a Tesla for me when we pay off my husband’s 2020 Prius.
However, since Musk’s latest antics, I no longer want one. We’re waiting for Toyota to make an all-electric vehicle.
Our new Prius is a plug-in/gas power hybrid. After a charge at home, it can go 25-30 miles on that charge before the gas engine kicks in. It’s perfect for small runs for errands, but it would be nice to have a longer distance capacity for highway road trips.
I’m still driving our 2008 Prius. I’m disabled and I can’t drive very far. I’m hoping for a car that will assist me, but I don’t think that I would ever want to turn control over to total self-driving. Here’s hoping that Toyota comes through for me!
I received a phone call during the first Covid lockdown. A local woman was enquiring about how people were coping with the restrictions etc. It wasn’t until after 5 minutes that it became obvious that she was a JW who could no longer doorknock.
I told her that I am a palaeontologist (true) and the call came to an end.
I disagree. Teslas have world-beating engineering and very uneven fit and finish. As a simple car they are fine.
What is at issue in the OP is the autonomous driving capability. Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” has been much criticized, and deservedly so. One issue is the reliance on cameras rather than LIDAR. There may be other issues. Being unable to give the driver more than one second warning to resume control would certainly be another.
I will give Tesla, and Musk as its CEO, credit for making the electric car a reality. GM had a go at it with their EV1 in the 1990s and failed. The success of Tesla in the electric car business and SpaceX in rocketry does not negate all the stupid and evil things Musk has said and done.
@15 Reginald Selkirk: The EV1 did not fail on it’s own, GM and the oil industry worked to sabotage it. Given the technology of the time the EV1 probably could not have been a highly profitable car but GM wasn’t interested in investing for the future. GM actually ran ads against the EV1 towards the end of it’s run to insure there was no interest. The oil industry was more direct in lobbying against government support and keeping gas prices moderate while there was an active threat of competition.
My problem with the Tesla is it tries to hard to be a “normal car”. For example it has a top speed well over 100mph. In a country where the top speed on the highway is 65mph, why? Just why? I’ve lived completely car free for almost 20 years, so I alternate between dumbfoundedness and outright hatred toward car drivers. We have a problem in my neighborhood with street racers. They’re an infestation like rats. No more like roaches. They’ve almost killed me a few times.
That said I was following one to my favorite ramen shop and his car was so lowered that it kept scraping the ground. I was on my bike and I was outrunning the dumbass who ruined his car making it “cool”. Fast and the Furious isn’t real life folks.
mamba: you’re supposed to already be in control beforehand. The big problem is that Tesla doesn’t check that you are. So of course humans being humans they get complacent and aren’t. Other lane-following systems try harder to make sure the human is paying attention.
PZ: little known secret but gasoline cars catch fire pretty often. A lot more than EVs, it seems, though the data is not entirely comparable since we don’t have a lot of old EVs yet.
Reginald Selkirk: at issue in the NHTSA investigation isn’t “Full Self-Driving (TM)” but “Autopilot (TM)”.
The former is a $10k add-on that is mostly vapourware with a few small potentially useful things and a beta program that’s mind-boggling that it’s even legal. Apart from the beta program, there aren’t major safety implications of this system because it does so little — instead, it’s skirting right on the edge of fraud.
But the NHTSA here is investigating Autopilot which comes standard on all their cars now (it used to be an add-on) and is just the usual lane-following + adaptive cruise control that many manufacturers now have and put into their cars. It seems likely that whatever findings they come to will lead to a recall requiring Tesla to make sure drivers are actually paying attention, and likely will start to set standards for these systems, which are largely unregulated at the moment. It might also help inform standards for emergency braking systems, which while lightly regulated are likely to be made mandatory before too long.
magistramarla: Toyota lobbies hard to prevent fuel economy standards and puts out FUD against EVs; they want to sell gasoline cars with a splodge of hybrids to greenwash. You risk waiting a long time.
If you don’t like Tesla, there’s a bunch of other manufacturers who are selling actual electric cars that are well-liked. VW (and all its brands); Hyundai/Kia; Volvo; Ford for instance. Steer away from the Nissan Leaf which has battery longevity issues due to a lack of cooling; its new cars coming out now might maybe fix that?
They’re all pretty expensive to buy, but a lot cheaper to operate in most places — and the price doesn’t fluctuate with foreign wars.
@14 “We’re waiting for Toyota to make an all-electric vehicle.”
You might be waiting a long time. Toyota is currently lobbying against EVs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/25/climate/toyota-electric-hydrogen.html
(I own a Prius too, and it really saddens me that they’re doing this.)
I think it’s worth pointing out that fossil fuel companies have an ongoing FUD campaign against EVs. Russian trolls push it pretty hard, too, because Tesla and SpaceX are both absolutely fucking them short- and long-term.
There are some downsides to EVs, for sure, but the same tactics that tobacco companies and fossil fuel companies use are out in force.
So while, yeah, Musk is being a shitty person, but bear in mind all the other shitty people, and at least acknowledge the good that Tesla is doing toward decarbonizing fossil fuels.
@4 Ed seed house . Teslas are crap. Why?
I regularly read positive things about them. Recently an owner said his tesla cost him $20 per month for fuel whereas he was spending $200 a month with a gasoline fueled car. And maintenance for the last two years was $0.
Here is a recent comment on Quora:
Is it worth buying a 2014 Tesla with 95k miles on it?
I’m driving almost exactly the car you are thinking of buying. I have a 2014 Tesla Model S P85 with 92,000 miles. I’ve owned the car since early 2015 and 11,000 miles.
My thoughts on the pros and cons:
The car still drives exactly like it did when I got it. Having driven other cars through that mileage range, I find that remarkable. No pulling on the road, no new noises or issues.
My car had two window regulators and two door handles changed under warranty. It also had the drive unit replaced under warranty due to backlash. Since it came off warranty, my only costs have been: 12V battery, cabin air filter, wiper blades, and tires.
Watch the main touchscreen. Mine is just starting to develop an air bubble at the top. It doesn’t affect usability, but it might eventually need to be replaced. That’s an expensive repair.
The leather on the driver’s seat is starting to look worn, but still holding together fine.
The seats on the older Tesla were pretty hard. We’ve gotten used to them, but it took a couple of long trips. Newer cars have more comfortable seats.
It might come with free Supercharger access for life. If it has access and you buy it privately, it will probably be free unlimited. On the other hand, it might not have access at all. It was an extra cost option in those days. You can check the car configuration on the app or the touchscreen. It looks like Tesla might be converting the older cars they resell into pay per use Supercharger access instead of unlimited free access.
Unless it was a very late 2014, it won’t have Autopilot and it can’t be upgraded. Autopilot started shipping in October, 2014.
I still think my car is a great daily driver. I have found it to be very inexpensive to drive and very reliable. When the 12V battery needed replacement, the car warned me about it in time to schedule service. I’ve never had an issue where I couldn’t use the car when I wanted.
magistramarla @14: Would you take a Subaru (cousin of Toyota)? They’ve finally, finally gotten around to announcing their EV. (Sadly after I already put in my down payment on a VW, but oh well.)
The explanation (“explanation”) I was seeing on Twitter yesterday for the autopilot turning off one second before impact was that this was probably caused by the driver realizing that the car wasn’t going to avoid an accident and therefore stomping the brake or yanking the wheel, which would disengage the autopilot.
Which would be a less-awful explanation, but also not actually relevant to the crash investigation I wouldn’t think.
Wow! I’m surprised at Toyota, and quite disappointed. We’ve on our third Prius. Our Grandson managed to total the 2014.
We really love those cars, and fully expected Toyota to be a leader in the EV market.
I suppose I’ll need to be researching the others that are coming out in the next couple of years, before we pay off the 2020.
We bought it in December, 2019, just before the lock-down happened here in Cali. It only has 5000 miles on it today.
It will most likely be my husband’s retirement car.
I would just like to upgrade mine to something that will give me enough assistance to increase my independence.
I recently hypothesized that any airline could have a perfect no-crashes record like Quantas by having the pilot (or a bot) automatically sell any plane that’s seconds from crashing. Elon is ahead of me again!
Toyota has anounced an all electric SUV for 2023: https://www.toyota.com/upcoming-vehicles/bz4x/
Tesla’s correct from a technical perspective and the issue is actually not uncommon in aircraft, such as an error causing the autopilot to disconnect. That has caused air crashes in the past and obviously, Tesla automobile crashes currently.
The effect is known of as the startle effect. Everything is going swimmingly, then suddenly all hell breaks loose.
Except that I doubt Tesla provides similar alarms and training that is present in aircraft. And like with the notion of flying cars, if they can’t drive worth a shit on the ground, do I really want them in the air hurtling over my fucking house?!
Automatic pilot has been an item of bleeding edge technology in automobiles for a quarter century now, I don’t anticipate it being ready for prime time any time soon. It’s quite literally that complex. In this example, why did the automagics disconnect? Blinded by the lights? An emergency vehicle was detected and emergency automagically disconnects the automagics? Not a whisper from Tesla or the NTSB.
As for fires, those are, unfortunately inevitable. The energy density of the batteries are such, the only way for the damned things to not behave like a rocket engine when they catastrophically fail is to suspend the laws of physics and chemistry. Let me know when you can manage that, I’ll not hold my breath.
But, knowing that, perhaps blowout panels and insulated ducts could carry inevitable flames into safer directions.
Again, a bleeding edge in technology and as an early adopter of other bleeding edge technologies, there is plenty of blood to be lost on the bleeding edge.
If I want a production vehicle that isn’t going to cause me to hemorrhage, I’d go with a hybrid, such as a Prius. Still a chance for rocket car battery fires, but they’re a wee bit smaller and add gasoline to the mix to ensure proper incineration via multiple pathways. ;)
OK, the technology is a bit more mature and ready for prime time, without some funky adapter that nobody else uses.
Regardless of what’s happening with the Teslas, the accident rates of self-drive vehicles is going to be a major bone of contention during their adoption period (if and when it eventually happens).
Accidents — even terrible accidents that are caused through manufacturer negligence — are inevitable, but it’s the accident rate that’s important. If self-drive cars can prove they have a significantly lower accident rate per 1,000 miles than regular cars, then regardless of the cause of those accidents, it would be a big win for the technology (and consumers).
Over 90% of all road traffic accidents involve human error. That’s a pretty low bar. If you cut the human error caused accident rate by, say, 50%, then even a 25% rise in accidents caused by hardware or software failures is would still save thousands of lives a year in the US alone.
Even if self-driving tech proves to be safer, it’s going to be a thorny problem because of the very different liability issues. I don’t doubt there’s going to be enough incentive to work out the details, though obviously things could get messy once the corporate lobbyists get involved.
That’s why I suspect the accident rate is going to have to be something of the order of 33%-50% lower for self-driving technology to overcome consumer reluctance to give up control. After all, if there’s anything the nonsense over the safety of the Covid vaccine has taught us, we’re generally bad at comparative risk assessment.
OT
Crash and burn (Britain)
Boris is courting the extreme right in his party with a move that will violate international law and bring sanctions from USA and EU.
https://youtu.be/BBYWwUbkL6E
I don’t know.. This seems “backwards” to me. Its like the cases with airlines where the pilots, having failed to disengage an autopilot, fought the thing into crashing, because they didn’t trust what the plane was doing. Its hard to say when/if they where right, and disengaging the autopilot would have let them avoid the accident, but at least in some cases it bloody well wouldn’t have, because the autopilot better knew the orientation, altitude, and other relevant things, than the pilots did.
But, in this case, we have the exact flipping opposite. Supposedly part of the whole damn point of “avoiding crashes” in an autonomous vehicle is to have it be aware of, react to, and adjust behavior, to deal with things around it FASTER than the driver, and with less uncertainty as to what the best solution would be. So.. instead the car… what, panics, throws its hands up and says, “Oh hell! This is too much! You deal with it!!!”, and it does this with only a one second delay, presumably at speeds where even just, “Slow to a stop, and pull to the side to avoid.”, would take flipping 10-20 seconds? Why? How is that supposed to work? In what flipping universe is a half awake, unready, probably not as good at avoiding the problem as the car itself would be, driver supposed to do jack in such cases?
Though, this also brings up another issue, which is, “Why wouldn’t the vehicle, in at least some cases, know well before that final second that something was going wrong, and respond?” Likely.. its not designed/trained to, which would be a massive flaw. But still, shouldn’t that be something anyone making a self driving system needs to aim for – accident/damage mitigation, so that the odds are “better” that the passengers survive, even if there is no way to avoid the accident? Maybe the can’t/haven’t bothered to even try to do this? In which case, sure, making the vehicle “panic” and change over, so that it hides the state it was in when the accident took place seems unethical as hell, but a “way out” for them, until caught at it, I guess…
@4 Ed seed house . Teslas are crap. Why?
I’m sorry, but if you want the full argument you’ll have to pay first.
I own a Tesla Model 3, but I never shelled out the 10 grand for the “FSD” nonsense that still isn’t beyond level 2.
Glad to see Tesla being investigated, but none of the software in the car is beyond level 2, which means the driver MUST always be paying attention and correct mistakes the vehicle software makes.
I only use the autopilot on rare occasions, like being in stop and go traffic.
I still have no regrets buying the car, even though it’s definitely not perfect. Other companies are finally starting to put pressure on Tesla by offering reasonably viable electric alternatives.
Volkswagen plans to launch a family of affordable electric cars under $22,000
The cheapest Tesla is ~ $35,000
@4, 8, 12 yes but you can put gasoline fires out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/08/04/tesla-fire/
Right now, if a electric car battery catches fire, there is nothing you can really do to put it out. It has to burn out. Firefighters may show up and put the initial fire out but then they have to hang around and wait for the battery to reignite and put it out again. Until it’s completely burned out.
@5, 14 I bought a gasoline-electric hybrid (2017 Honda Accord hybrid, if it matters) because a plug in vehicle is simply not practical if you live in an apartment. (As if I am going to run cable out a window, down several stories and/or several blocks to wherever it is that I found a parking spot.) It literally does everything you (BACONSQUADgaming) say your Tesla does, except automatic braking (that was the upgrade). It routinely gets 50 mpg and cost $22.5K (certified preowned, 27K miles, bought in 2019).
It costs (at current gas prices) $40/month for all the driving I do (approx 100-150 miles/week). Replaced snow tires but otherwise, no maintenance except for two oil changes in the course of 4 years.)
The slow, constant recharge (from braking or driving downhill) generally means no battery fire. The issue with the plug-in EVs seems to be with the rapid recharge (same problem with the hoverboard batteries catching fire) although I do wonder about quality control, given the demand for the batteries and the fact that China is currently the source for the lithium needed for those same batteries.
@20 The real problem seems to be that the autopilot features rely on a camera rather than LIDAR. With the camera, there needs to be a substantial difference in the light/dark values between a moving vehicle or other moving object and the background.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/30/tesla-autopilot-death-self-driving-car-elon-musk
“Another claimed that during a road trip, he noticed Tesla’s autopilot camera struggling to pick out lines during bright sunlight in the morning or at dusk.”
You can see similar problems in older autofocus cameras (around 2000-2010) where if the subject has light/dark values similar to the background, the camera endlessly zooms in and out seeking a light/dark differential to grab. It’s the same technology, it’s just that Elon decided to put the camera in the Tesla and so far, has stupidly refused to update to LIDAR.
@30 I really like my LIDAR but it does have issues, such as when driving on a curve, the LIDAR picks up oncoming traffic as a crash threat. If you choose the option to narrow the LIDAR angle, you run the risk of missing any potential crashes from the side. I personally keep it on max angle and deal with the inevitable heart attack moments when my vehicle informs me that we are about to die in a crash. Probably the best way to handle the self driving car problem is going to be with a combination of satellite uplink and LIDAR but that would mean traffic patterns/lights as well as the self driving car controls being controlled by satellite uplink. The obvious problem is the time lag to and from the uplink and the fact that currently, satellite geopositioning is considered accurate if it’s within 100 feet of the actual location. Which might be okay for closed highways in the west and midwest but definitely not ready for prime time in the northeast. And you’d still need LIDAR for the non-vehicle potential collisions (deer, children, pets, etc. all darting out into the street/highway.)
Light year people.
https://lightyear.one/articles/lightyear-0-is-here-the-world-s-first-production-ready-solar-car
Now THIS is a great idea.
Minimise weight to maximise range, add a decent sized solar PV mini-array to the roof and bonnet (hood for all you hood dwellers) that can provide up to 70km of charge on a sunny day -enough for many daily commutes, then plugging in becomes an occasional thing not a regular thing.
@23 Rob Bos:
As a person who is currently living in soft dictatorship country whose leadership sold the lithium mining rights to Rio Tinto last year and is very close to full on nasty exploitation which not only has potential but is virtually guaranteed to pollute air and waterway in the whole country (thanks to non-existent environment protection standards and defanged control), I am ALL for lobbying against electric cars. And I f-ing hate Russian trolls.
F lithium exploitation. “Oh, but the electric cars are cleaner!” you say, but all I see is negative external environment cost of producing them moved to my country and the countries like mine.
Also, here’s a hypothetical scene for you:
We all go 90% to electric cars. It is winter, there is a car crash due to the snow. We got ourselves an 8 hour gridlock. Can electric cars provide enough electricity for heating during full 8 hours? What about 18 hour gridlock?
What happens when the gridlock is cleared? How are you going to move cars with now empty batteries?
Electric vehicles have their advantages, but they also have their issues. Hybrid is better.
At full blast, the climate control will last around 120 hours in a Tesla.
On full battery I guess. Climate control as in heater or as in air conditioning?
IngisKahn, a model S has a 100 kWh battery.
So, you claim it will last around 120 hours, implying that full blast is 830W with a fully-charged battery.
I find it a dubious proposition that the typical Tesla in an atypical snowstorm situation near nowhere is fully charged.
—
Thing is, I get your point. A gasoline tank ain’t gonna be full, either, and its energy is much less efficiently utilised than electricity. Running the motor to drive the generator to drive the heating, all while stationary. So wasteful! So inefficient!
(What a weird world, where kilometers-long snags can occur due to snow.
Where I live, no snow)
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Incidentally, not that many people seem to be aware that Teslas are big batteries on wheels. I mean, they’re cars, too… but so then are cell phones phones — they’re actually computers that can also be used as phones.
Just sayin’
The thing with airplane autopilots that comes closes to this is an Enhanced Ground Proximity Warning System (EGPWS) alert. When yu made a terrible error programming the autopilot, that will disengage the autopilot shortly before a CFIT accident. But with enuf time to avoid the crash, and it shouts at you what to do “PULL UP! – TERRAIN!”
So basically the exact opposite.
@42 ospalh : thanks, your explanation made me chuckle. I needed that today.
@41 John Morales: yeah, but in a real emergency, you can get the gas out of the gas tank and start and maintain a fire…
I propose a new test for usefulness of modern technology: if you can start a fire with it, it is useful. If you can’t, it is not. ;) /s
Elon Musk can be criticized for many things. However, I commend him on using his wealth on starting new companies. He could have taken his wealth and created a generational wealth tax avoidance scheme like many wealthy people do. Instead, he did what governments want you to do with your wealth. He started new companies he is innovating new technologies he is creating jobs and careers. His companies do deserve criticism, but all companies have flaws.
I’ve wanted a Tesla since model 3 came out, but haven’t been able to afford a new car. Now though I would buy a competitor’s EV only because Musk is such a big ass (with 2 nice toys). (My wife keeps buying the wrong lottery tickets)
Even Musk admits that auto-drive is not ready though.
ospalh: the equivalent to GPWS in cars is the FCW (forward collision warning) — the car blares at you when it senses doom in the next second or so. NHTSA indicates that it was activated in “the majority of incidents”. Unlike in planes, cars also have EAB to actually slam the brakes to avoid or at least mitigate an impending crash. This activated in “approximately half of the collisions”. Would be nice if those ratios were higher, something close to 100%.
NHTSA has been looking into making FCW and EAB mandatory; lots of cars have them (under various names) and they’re proven to save lives — in particular it proves helpful for vulnerable users like pedestrians and cyclists, not just to the driver & passenger.
From this I draw the following conclusions:
1. He knew that Autopilot disconnected before impact.
2. It is literally unbelievable that having examined the data he did not know that the disconnection occurred because of the imminent impact.
3. One second does not give the human driver reasonable time to adjust.
4. He dissembled, to use the most polite of language.
5. Tesla knew this was a problem and did not fix it.
6. The company is evading (Musk always evades) liability.
All of this makes me wonder what other problems are being deliberately hidden.
wzrd1@29: batteries don’t burn like rockets. That would be gasoline, if the tank is breached. Instead, they smoulder for hours, not much in the way of flames. It’s hot enough to ignite the plastics that cars are made from, or anything else that gets too close.
If it went up violently it would also burn out quickly, as gasoline and plastic does.
@46: My 2¢ on why road autopilots are basically impossible is that things happen too quickly there. There just isn’t the space and thus the time to separate the vehicles from obstacles that you have in air traffic.
One burst tire: yur car is in the ditch ~ 1 s later.
One blown up aircraft engine: calmly work thru yur checklists and land at the alternate airport 3 h away.
All engines gone is more tricky, but yu usually still hav minutes to look for a spot to land.
@36. silvrhalide :
Would usinga fire blanket that doesn’t burn and cuts off oxygen not work?
Or liquid nitrogen to snap freeze and shatter the burning battery?
Incidentally Musk’s battery seems to have helped my state with issue of electricity generation – see :
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-09-02/tesla-battery-expanded-as-sa-energy-minister-lauds-benefits/12622382
So at least some of Musk’s hare-brained ideas ahev done some good. Especially given recnt public warnings about the state of Australia’s coal adn gas reliant energy grid..
The endless bootlicking is just so pathetic. He’s just an idiot/parasite with a lot of money.
— The lithium-ion battery: not his idea
— The inverters used for “Virtual Machine mode”: not his idea
— A French company called Neoen, which actually owns and operates that facility: not his doing
— The expansion you cited by a company call Aurecon: also not his doing
— It depended heavily on government support: also not his doing, but possibly his idea. I’m sure Musk is happy to take everything he can get.
— It was not providing backup power for four months in 2019 despite Neoen receiving payment, for which they’ve been sued by your government. If we’re going to be fair, this also isn’t about Musk, since that was all just your imagination to begin with.
— But should he get credit for this? What do you say? We have to give him credit for something, since it is “his” battery after all. Praise be to Musk, allahu akbar, etc., etc.
CR, I was there too, at the time. I remember it well, when Horndale went down, and how things were at the time. It was indeed his doing.
(https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-07-07/elon-musk-is-the-100-days-or-its-free-idea-legit/8687996)
I’m pretty sure both StevoR and I have a much deeper grasp on the situation in SA and Oz at the time (living through it as we were), and that he also remembers how the idea was mocked as risible.
(In their case, before it eventuated, in your case, after)
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Yeah, more money every decade since his teenage years, until now he’s one of the very richest people in the world, if not the richest.
(Such idiocy!)
So you’re doing the very opposite, thinking it will also be the opposite of pathetic?
(Not working for me)
@ ^
He’s a fine upstanding young man who pulled himself up by his bootsraps, right Juan?
https://freethoughtblogs.com/singham/2022/04/23/the-bootstrap-myth/
<snicker>
Silentbob, why are you trying to make that dummy supposedly speak for me?
He’s someone who has become richer and richer over the years since his adulthood began. A demonstrable fact I noted when CR alleged he is an idiot.
(And he’s 50 years old)
—
BTW, what was it you intended to convey by linking to that post elseblog?
I’ll speak in SilentBob’s name.
“He’s someone who has become richer and richer over the years since his adulthood began. A demonstrable fact I noted when CR alleged he is an idiot.”
He is an idiot. A rich idiot but still an idiot, only an idiot who is falling upwards. Wealth is not the measure of idiocy or of worth.
What he intended to convey with that linked post is that fact of life: “pulling yourself up by your bootstraps” is a myth, anyone who thinks “someone has pulled himself by his bootstraps” is wrong about that person and, again, measure of someone’s worth is not measured in how rich they are.
In this specific case, Elon Musk, the dude IS an idiot, but charismatic idiot with a huge start in life. Not everyone can get a million dollars seed money for his startup and another quarter million injection to bail him out once it started to go wahooney shaped and that was just a start. It was followed by buying other startups, rolling the startup dice and seeing which come sixes. Some of them did, most of them were ones.
And then he really hit it big. Government contracts! Tesla stock options! Virtual billions he can’t really cash out.
You don’t need not to be an idiot for anything of that to happen. You only need to be slightly charismatic, to start as a millionaire and know the right people. And spread your portfolio to a lot of things, one of them will turn out a profit eventually. One die roll pays for all!
Therefore, it follows that one can be an idiot and keep falling upwards.
(Just one of those inexplicable things, right?)
It’s not a myth, it’s a sarcastic colloquialism; only an idiot would take it seriously.
(And it was SilentBob, in whose name you essay to speak, who introduced the concept)
Oh, he started as a billionaire? You sure about that?
Clearly, idiocy does not mean one loses money over time, then. By your own claim.
And not everyone goes on to become a multi-billionaire. True.
(Yet, obviously, you imagine that’s what an idiot can do)
It’s just random, right? And idiocy is not much of an impediment, in your mind.
(So, really, there’s no problem with being idiotic, is there? Why bring it up, then?)
Clearly, you imagine that’s what idiots can do; successfully in this case.
—
<snicker>
Perhaps your effort is duly appreciated, but you’re not doing SilentBob any favours.
(But hey, sure. You speak for them, I address you as I would them)
—
PS, I get your pronoun game, but still…
“He is an idiot.” & “What he intended to convey with that linked post is that fact of life”.
(Who again is the idiot? :) )
@John Morales
Except that I quoted you in the previous paragraph. So you know exactly who I am talking about. Elon Musk.
“He’s someone who has become richer and richer over the years since his adulthood began. A demonstrable fact I noted when CR alleged he is an idiot.
(And he’s 50 years old)”
One can be an idiot, one can be a rich idiot, one can even be a billionaire rich idiot. Musk is such a person. Started as a millionaire, lucked out to become a (virtual money he can’t really pull out of the stock market and actually use) billionaire.
You remind me of an old cartoon. “If you are so smart, why aren’t you rich?” a guy in it says. Only the guy who said it was a villain from an old Batman The Animated Series and he said it to Edward Nygma, thus starting The Riddler’s start of darkness.
“And idiocy is not much of an impediment, in your mind.” It is a huge impediment but wealth can cushion it quite nicely. His parents were millionaires. You don’t own a mine if you are not one of those.
jo1storm, it’s unclear whether this time you speak on behalf of yourself or on behalf of another. Nonetheless;
Ah.
So, “He is an idiot.” & “What he intended to convey with that linked post is that fact of life” both refer to Elon Musk.
(It follows that SilentBob is Elon Musk, right? That’s to whom you refer)
Your (no doubt) expert opinion regarding idiocy duly noted, surely either he’s rich or he can’t use his money. The two are mutually exclusive.
(I expectantly await your laboured counterpoint to this)
That is because you only apprehend the converse of my claim;
“If you are such an idiot, why do you keep becoming richer?” is more like it
Sure. It can cushion it so effectively that the wealth can increase to 100,000 dollars.
No, wait.
1,000,000 dollars.
No, wait.
10,000,000 dollars.
No, wait.
100,000,000 dollars.
No, wait.
1,000,000,000 dollars.
No, wait.
10,000,000,000 dollars.
No, wait.
100,000,000,000 dollars.
No, wait…
(such idiocy!)
And he’s a multi-billionaire.
(Over 10,000 times richer. Huh)
Don’t have a lot of time for nitpicking a-holes.
Tell me, what form does Elon Musk’s wealth take? Well, 99% of it?
Does he own land? Cars? Homes?
Or is it perhaps company stocks? All sorts of company stocks?
jo1storm:
I’m grateful for your tender caring of my a-hole. It becomes you.
Your time was well-invested, and now you reap the benefit.
Dunno; why don’t you tell me (since you intimate you know and will judge my answer) and I can then check your claims on open sources?
(I’m not so idiotic as to be a multi-billionaire, alas)
How would I know?
Mind you, apparently he’s a bit of a hobo; sleeps on the factory floor and suchlike. Busy busy being an idiot.
Point being, either he’s very rich, or he’s not.
If you don’t think he’s actually rich, good on ya. But then, no point on ranting about his wealth, is there? And if you rant about his wealth, well then…
Dunno. I don’t move in those echelons.
Maybe he really is a pauper. Started rich, is now poor.
So poor!
@John Morales
Well, get informed of what form his wealth takes and then, my friend, you’ll know how somebody can both be rich and unable to use their money.
“surely either he’s rich or he can’t use his money. The two are mutually exclusive.” Turns out, that’s not the case. There exist different levels of liquidity of assets.
I have a question for you. A hypothetical example. Imagine that you are multibillionaire Elon Musk. You want to spend a billion dollars on 100 million hats that say “Elon Musk rules”.
How would you do that? How exactly are you going to spend a billion dollars? Go to a bank and get a 100.000 bags of cash?
jo1storm:
I don’t need to, since your claim concedes that he is rich but insinuates he’s not able to use his money. In which case, what is the problem?
Well done!
So, you think he’s rich but he can’t use his money?
(In that case, what is the problem?)
Ah, you really are an expert on idiocy. But, sure.
The answer is: If I were he, I would not want that.
A Twitter here, a SpaceX there, before you know it, it begins to add up to real money.
I asked how not on what.
So? How? Step by step guide?
jo1storm:
I here quote you: “Imagine that you are multibillionaire Elon Musk. You want to spend a billion dollars on 100 million hats that say “Elon Musk rules”.”
Elon Musk hasn’t, being himself, so why would I were I he?
(It’s a stupid question, but then again, you are the expert in idiocy)
A very important question to you, clearly.
So.
How about you start? After all, it is you who wonders about these things.
So, you first.
Were you he, how would you do it?
(After that, if you’re still amenable, I can critique your proposed procedure and introduce my own)
Obviously, you don’t know how. You don’t know what a hypothetical is either. Well, despite that, here is another hypothetical for you.
You are Elon Musk. You want to spend 200 million of your own money to buy Space X (the company) a new rocket.
How do you do that exactly?
jo1storm:
Obviously, I’m not a billionaire. So, clearly not.
Very astute of you. A concept hitherto alien to me. Obviously.
Heh. Go for it.
But I thought you thought that Elon can’t spend his money, not being rich other than in paper and all that. So, as far as you’re concerned, it couldn’t be done.
But sure… since you’re so insistent. I would feel bad were I to disappoint you.
So.
I would say “buy Space X” to the appropriate facilitator, and lo and behold, I would have bought Space X. Presumably. I think that’s how billionaire’s spending goes. Not actually being a multibillionaire, I really don’t know.
—
Kinda amusing, really.
All this because you wanted to assert he’s an idiot, and now you insist on knowing how I (were I he) would spend money on your (not his or mine) whims in detail.
(You’ve evidently forgotten your original point, haven’t you?)
Its not a buy SpaceX it is buy a rocket for Space X.
Well, that makes all the difference.
(Same answer, but)
It does make all the difference.
Because all you need to buy a share in SpaceX is go to your stockbroker and tell him: I want to buy a share in SpaceX.
Then he asks you: How are you paying for this?
And you tell him: With cash.
Because one share of SpaceX is worth 56$.
If Musk actually wanted to spend 200 million to buy a rocket, he wouldn’t be able to pay with cash or debit card, because he doesn’t have a bank account with 200 million deposited there. He won’t be able to use a credit card either. He would have to go to his stockbroker, tell him to sell 200 million $ worth of Tesla stocks (or some other stocks he owns), pay taxes on that profit, then transfer that money to SpaceX, earmarked to say “Buy a 200 million $ worth of rockets with this, please”.
Why I asked you all this? Because Musk is an idiot who only two years ago wiped out 14bn worth of Tesla stocks and 3bn of his own money with one drunken tweet. It is so bad that actual financial authorities forbid him to tweet anything that might be considered insider trading and price fixing.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52504187
And 3bn is a whole lot more than 200 million for one hypothetical rocket.
In short, he is multibillionaire on paper. If he actually tried to sell all of his stocks and get the money to spend it, he won’t be able to sell it at those prices and would tank his own financial worth.
jo1storm, you are indeed chewy.
But it was only paper money, by your own claim. No biggie.
Again: if he’s only a multibillionaire on paper, it follows that if he lost $3B it was only a paper loss. No biggie.
Can’t have it both ways, you know. Either he lost real money (which means he had it to lose) or he didn’t.
jo1storm:
Right. He’s a pauper. Got it. Oh yeah, and an idiot. Double got it.
—
(from Wikipedia as of now)
“With an estimated net worth of around US$203 billion as of June 2022,[4] Musk is the wealthiest person in the world according to both the Bloomberg Billionaires Index and the Forbes real-time billionaires list.”
(I don’t think I’d mind were I similarly idiotic)
“Again: if he’s only a multibillionaire on paper, it follows that if he lost $3B it was only a paper loss. No biggie.” Except for the 14b paper money that other investors lost. All of which are not as rich as Musk, even on paper.
Now you are starting to get it. You are almost there. So, I am asking you again the same question: What is the form of Musk’s wealth? What does he own except stocks?
jo1storm:
Yet again: how the fuck would I know? I’m not a billionaire.
I’m not a forensic accountant. I’m not an economist.
I’m not even a Musk savant.
I’m just someone who is amused when some poor person calls him an idiot.
You’re someone who keeps equivocating between his being wealthy (oops, a tweet lost $3B!) and his being not wealthy (oops, I wanna buy but it’s just paper money!).
A bit pointless, but hey. It’s your time. Me, I do like a chewtoy.
—
PS “Don’t have a lot of time for nitpicking a-holes.”
Well, whatever your fiscal status may be, you certainly have quite a bit of time if this is what you call “not a lot”. Probably billions of some tiny time-increment.
This was 20 minutes of amusement for me. I’m efficient :)
“You’re someone who keeps equivocating between his being wealthy (oops, a tweet lost $3B!) and his being not wealthy (oops, I wanna buy but it’s just paper money!).” Equivocating? That’s what “estimated net worth” means. He is wealthy by some calculations, he is just not liquid and can’t actually spend that virtual “might get that much if I try to sell all of it” money. One good stock market crash and that billionaire becomes a millionaire, maybe. Maybe less than a millionaire, if that hypothetical stock market crash is followed by housing market crash.
“I’m just someone who is amused when some poor person calls him an idiot.” Because he is and his behavior proves it. As I wrote before, money has nothing to do whether someone is an idiot or not. Don’t judge a person by their clothes, don’t judge a person’s character by their wealth but by their behavior. Your snobbish attitude is unwarranted and unhealthy.
That is true but trivial.
In Realityland, Elon Musk is a multibillionaire in a set of computer data bases. We don’t use paper much any more. It’s all 0s and 1s on magnetic and optical storage media.
That is true of more or less all of the billiionaires.
It is also true for most of the people in the USA. My bank accounts, stock brokerage accounts, and 401(K) plan are all just entries in computer data bases. Most of the wealth in the USA is held as intangible accounting.
Elon Musk’s latest dumb move is to endorse Florida’s DeathSantis for president. DeathSantis is an out front fascist and one of the worst of a bad bunch.
Just on principle, I will never buy anything Musk is involved with.
He isn’t as smart as he pretends to be here, by alienating a significant amount of his potential customer base.
It seems this entire “conversation” is predicated on the concept that intelligence is 1-dimensional.
Which it clearly isn’t.
At least we can all agree that he’s a parasite. No objections to that.
(And as every biologist will tell you, they are invariably the most non-idiotic of species. This is just science.)
John Morales, #52:
I don’t doubt that he played some role. However, as I was saying, it’s not like he came up with the idea of such batteries or anything along those lines. It’s hard to guess which part of it you think was “Musk’s hare-brained idea,” as opposed to another person’s rather unremarkable idea with Musk’s name attached.
You’re imagining things. I have no issue with facilities like that and never said that I did.
Pretty much the prosperity gospel, but I guess this offshoot of it is perhaps more explicitly about worshiping a large parasite. I can almost see how the services would go…. Creflo Dollar on the stage sucking blood out of a neophyte, the whole congregation ecstatically stuffing the collection basket with NFTs, a tasteful MIDI rendition of Welcome to the Jungle blasting out of the speakers, pictures of tapeworms and mosquitoes adorning the walls, etc.
All that, but … you know … not stupid. You get what I’m saying.
Musk was definitely crucial in pushing and enabling his teams at Tesla and at SpaceX to take specific risks that ended up paying off. The broad ideas weren’t new but they were borderline science fiction (electric cars) or outright science fiction (reusable rockets) and now they’re just normal parts of everyday life.
Having done so, he thinks all problems the world faces can be solved in the same way, and has developed a degenerative case of SMITR syndrome that just keeps getting worse.
Also he’s an asshole, and I think that was pretty clear from very early.
This is a hit piece, develop some integrity by being honest: you didn’t doge a bullet, it’s one of the safest cars on the road by far…
They are not perfect and should continue to be improved and have their feet held to the fire.