Test Drove a Tesla Today

It's not --for 2017+ buyers.

This doesn't sound good.

Tesla Drivers Are Paying Big Bucks to Test Flawed Self-Driving Software

What a shame. They take a really nice car and fuck it up with gimmicks.

Quote :

“You can be sailing along at 50 mph and the radar spots [an approaching] bridge and immediately slams on the brakes.”

Sometimes, the car doesn’t react when it should. “The other extreme is that you approach a stoplight with a car already stopped, and the Tesla doesn’t apply the brakes at all,” says Mundy.

Elon Musk has said that by the end of this year, an Autopilot-enabled Tesla will drive from Los Angeles to New York without a human needing to touch the wheel at all.

To Mundy, that day seems a long way off. “It’s really a pretty scary experience,” he says. “If you’d ridden in the car with my wife, you would know how many times she’s screamed to turn it off.”

Seems like good advice to me -- turn it off and leave it off. To me auto-drive would be useful for only three situations:

1. Long drives on boring freeways with very little traffic (like crossing Montana)
   
2. Being stuck in traffic
   
3. Parallel parking

The rest of the time the driver should be front and center and in charge.

The driver should be in complete control at all times. Even in Montana.

Yeah, turn it off and leave it off. Better yet, remove it. And demand a refund.

stardate 4729.4 : the M-5 super computer has been brought aboard to control the Enterprise.

stardate 4741.3 : everything has turned to shit. Stupid M-5.

stardate whatever : Elon Musk gives M-5 control of the Tesla ...

I just bought a book, I'll have to get it out and start it now, about what happens when artificial intelligence exceeds the level of human intelligence. How do we control it, and how do we remain in control of it -- even when it determines that we are a danger to ourselves, and it.

Now, I don't expect a self-driving car to approach the omega point, but some of the same concerns -- plow into pedestrians, or kill the driver? -- may arise in its programming.

That's a concern only for science fiction writers.

I have no idea what you are trying to say with that.

I'm saying we've already discussed this, and we are not science fiction writers.

We've discussed it, but I am not concerned about it.

Now with fuel standards about to be abandoned we can expect the bottom to fall out of the domestic electric car market. Tesla will probably be okay, as it's a niche market with a lot of appeal.

That's what Chelsea Sexton says, but I'm not sure I buy it. Consumers still want electric cars, as long as the price is competitive and charging stations are everywhere. Tesla is working on both of those, with its Gigafactories 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5 under construction (batteries are the biggest expense in electric cars) and their build-out of a charging network.

Granted, R&D funds will no longer be forthcoming from the federal government, but that only means the electric car manufacturers of the future will be Japanese or Korean. Big trucks and SUVs will always be popular, and electrics weren't going to make inroads in that market anyway.

Gasoline should remain available and inexpensive for anywhere between 40-100 years, after which we'll all be dead anyway.

Quote :

Today, the economic incentives that have helped electric vehicles gain a toehold in America are under attack, state by state. In some states, there is a move to repeal tax credits for battery-powered vehicles or to let them expire. And in at least nine states, including liberal-leaning ones like Illinois and conservative-leaning ones like Indiana, lawmakers have introduced bills that would levy new fees on those who own electric cars.

The state actions could put the business of electric vehicles, already rocky, on even more precarious footing. That is particularly true as gas prices stay low, and as the Trump administration appears set to give the nascent market much less of a hand.

Behind the Quiet State-by-State Fight Over Electric Vehicles

I doubt Rex Tillerson drives a hybrid.  Anyone who is surprised by recent changes to policy hasn't been paying attention to the roster.

Quote :

The measure in Colorado has been backed publicly by Americans for Prosperity, an advocacy group founded by the conservative billionaire brothers David H. and Charles G. Koch, whose wealth is founded on their petrochemicals empire.

Elon Musk was smart to position the Tesla as a luxury car; buyers won't be much affected by the loss of the $7500 federal tax credit.  Smaller electric cars (Volt, Leaf) and electric versions of standard subcompacts may disappear for a while.

But that's happened before.

Progress isn't a constant line upward. It's a jagged back-and-forth as entrenched interests win-and-lose the small battles along the way.

Coming next week: Trump announces a $4.3b federal program to develop gasoline-powered cellphones and tablets.

In the news today, Tesla has become the 2nd largest most valuable automaker in the US, surpassing GM and trailing only Ford.  Their latest valuation is $42 billion.

An article I read those morning shows Tesla's market cap ahead of Ford, but trailing GM.

Market cap can be misleading in evaluating a company. I worked for a software company that few people had ever heard of and it was the world's third largest by market cap, at over $60 billion in the late 90s.

You're undoubtedly right on both counts. I didn't pay particular attention for just those reasons.

NoCoPilot wrote:

Granted, R&D funds will no longer be forthcoming from the federal government, but that only means the electric car manufacturers of the future will be Japanese or Korean.  

Or Chinese.

Tesla has really disappointed me. They built a really nice car, and now they are fucking around with it as if it's a cell phone. In the process, they are turning a silk purse into a sow's ear.

WTF are you talking about? Waiting to roll out to everyone, via a free software update, an emergency braking feature that they have thoroughly tested first, to make sure it's safe and effective?