This came across my Twitter feed the other day, but I found it to be too tinfoil-hattery to share here.
- But during the show, Musk almost downplayed features of the Model X that, within the right circumstances, are in my view nothing short of revolutionary.
What an exciting sentence to read - were it not followed by five of the lamest examples.
Doors that open themselves? It's very similar to the door handles that pop out, but now they can safely do the entire door because they have sensors on the side of the car installed anyway. It doesn't open far and it only opens the driver's seat, the one seat that loses meaning in a fully driverless car.
Easy to get in? Great for everyone. Especially great for the target audience, large rich families. Yeah, it does help for selfdriving cars. But arguing that this foreshadows self-driving cars is a stretch too far.
The snake? Tesla's been researching anything that might make the charging more efficient. They are developing a battery swap drivethrough where the car drives over a hole at Tesla stations and robot arms swap the entire battery pack with a fully charged one, automagically. If they can develop a simple technology to make charging at parking spots and at home easier, you can be sure they'll chase it.
Spacious? This might be the only decent example in here. I do think that interior design of cars will change dramatically to accomodate the changing use - more long-distance drives, more comfort and more media consumption just to name a few. 'Just more space' is nice, but is it really pointing to a Model X-based self driving future?
I don't believe it. Even less if you consider the cost, size, overpowered engine and the other arguments kb mentioned.
- The snake? Tesla's been researching anything that might make the charging more efficient. They are developing a battery swap drivethrough where the car drives over a hole at Tesla stations and robot arms swap the entire battery pack with a fully charged one, automagically. If they can develop a simple technology to make charging at parking spots and at home easier, you can be sure they'll chase it.
Wait, I got lost in your post a bit -- I've been reading about this idea of trading off batteries with the last person who used that charging station and it seems like a brilliant temporary solution to the long charging waits we've got now. What's the skepticism?
- And one has to imagine that the Model X has much if not all of the hardware necessary that — should a certain over-the-air update arrive at some point
in the future — then the thing will just drive itself around.
Google's self driving cars have a slew of sensors to facilitate driving without a human. Surely the Model X either does or doesn't (hint: it doesn't) and that's an easy thing to figure out for yourself, given access to the vehicle. Software isn't some magic spirit that can turn a normal car into a self driving car.
Other than that, I think the author is probably right. Although he portrays Musk as being more conniving than he perhaps truly is. A lot of companies are moving towards self driving cars and it would be foolish for Tesla to not do the same, especially given their place in many minds as a futuristic car company.
Right, the Model X isn't going to be transformed into a self-driving car. But technologies need proving. When everyone does start building self-driving cars, Tesla will have already proven ancillary technologies that other car makers didn't even realise they needed.
Mmmmm... I don't buy it. Sure. These are things that help "self-driving fleets." But you're going to want to have humans back at base just to pick the candy wrappers and airline ticket stubs out of the back seat so the magic snake is supernumerary to that vision. Seats that move automagically? That's an upsell, not a revolution, as are most aspects of Tesla vehicles. The primary distinction Tesla has is the drive to do things that convention doesn't do for very good reasons, and then take a loss on them until they become the norm. It's not that Detroit can't build a $130k electric car, it's just that Detroit couldn't sell a $130k electric car. 'round here, Teslas are for people who want to show up their friends' Priuses. For people who want to show up their friends' Teslas, there's the BMW i8.
Let's be realistic: if you're dropping $130k on a Model X, you are NOT treating the thing like an AirBnB. You are purchasing it exclusively to lord over your neighbors. That's the main thing that drives Tesla sales. I've been tempted to start a "snarky Tesla vanity plates" tumblr just because of how many I see...
I would love to see the smile on her face when it's pointed out to her that NC and the rest of the south use more coal per unit electricity than any other region, and her giant smughug of her Tesla is hilarious to anyone who reads a lot about the issue.
Anyway, this medium article is silly. Why would Tesla or anyone else make a performance car for autonomous driving (beside the fact that Teslas aren't equipped for autonomous driving)? When was the last time a taxi driver bought an X6 (that's what the Model X basically appears to be)? You know from previous posts that I don't love Tesla, but I'd also like to get behind the wheel of one just for the fun of it. There's nothing fun about a self-driving car. Cars are status symbols and performance cars especially are toys. Literally zero people would ever buy a Tesla (any of the current ones; we'll see about the cheap one that's coming out next) for taxi purposes. I base that on the fact that literally zero people have ever bought a performance car for the traditional taxi market. You want a taxi SUV? Yeah, it's a Ford Escape approximately 100% of the time.
All Medium articles are silly. They have the professional credibility of open.Salon with the monetization of Huffington Post.
I'm a fan - in theory - of Tesla because any car company that will sell you an all-electric sedan at below cost can't be all bad. I just wish they weren't purchased by douchebags... and wish they weren't so fuggly.
FWIW, while taxis are 100% Ford Escapes, livery is 50% Lincoln Navigators, 50% Cadillac Escalades.
See what you just did? You called them "articles."
- Medium is a blog-publishing platform. It was founded by Twitter co-founder Evan Williams in August 2012. The platform has evolved into a hybrid of non-professional contributions and professional, paid contributions, an example of social journalism. Some of its publications include the online music magazine Cuepoint, edited by Jonathan Shecter, and Backchannel, a technology publication edited by Steven Levy.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_(publishing_platform)
Yeah - the design kicks the shit out of Blogger or Livejournal. But the content has nothing on Blogger or Livejournal. By "hybridizing" the content between professional journalists and non-professional moon-howlers, they've led you (and much of the world) into thinking that the moon-howlers are journalists.
Ain't nothing wrong with blogging or blog platforms. So long as everybody acknowledges that there's no editorial process, blogs have their place. My argument against Medium is it's a blogging platform held in the same regard as journalism, and it has done nothing to deserve it other than look fancy.
My next car is going to get 40-50MPG and cost less than two years of my salary. And I won't look like a douche bag (borrowing your word) driving it. The more I think of it, as you and other people are saying, the cars are the loss-leader for the solar and battery plants. The Powerwall is the one thing he is behind that has me VERY excited. The power out here sucks, it is so terribly bad. I get brownouts daily, and the incoming power is anywhere from 110V to 125V as I monitor the incoming to the PC's. The Powerwall would be a great way to run my house for a day or two after the next power outage and act as a whole-house UPS.
Honestly? I think I probably would go with a lease on an electric car because the charging technology and the batteries themselves are tied to Moore's Law. You really will take a bath on the resale value of a used electric car and you're far better off just getting a newer one under contract for now. And for Californicators, it was even sweeter for a while.
There used to be a company or two offering whole-house UPS. Looking it up now, it appears they still are... but their websites haven't been updated in five or six years. I'd totally go that way - I've bought a few gadgets with switching supplies that got cooked by shitty power.
LOL, no. I sat in one of those and took it on a 10 minute test drive. I'm a bigger guy; I have wide shoulders and a size 14 wide foot. (The mini was so small that my feet smothered the gas and brake pedals at the same time no matter how I sat in the car.) I looked like there should be 10-12 more clowns coming out behind me. The two friends who tagged along with me did not stop laughing for about two hours after the test drive.
I'm looking at a Prius V (the wagon) and a Mazda 3 5-door. Reading up on the Ford C-Max, I may have to go try one on and see how I fit inside the thing as the new iteration is a lot more reliable and getting better reviews. I need a hatchback to fit in the garage, I need something big enough to transport the telescope and I need something that gets at least 35MPG to do better than what I have now. My credit union has approved me for a .80% new car loan if I get a car before the end of the year, so I may have to jump on that before the rate hike. The current 12 year old car is still running fine and I hate car payments, so I am trying to keep the existing running.
One of the things that really brings these types of discussions home is to talk about a few of my coworkers. They commute 70-100 miles per day to work, five days a week. One drives a Tahoe, one drives an Excursion(!), and another drives an F150. Each of these gets 12-15MPG for what amounts to a basic commuter car. Buying a new Prius in each of these three cases would save them enough gas every month to make the car payment, probably lower their insurance (multi car discounts) and make us that much less dependent on fossil fuels. How many other people are doing this? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? The idea of Tesla and pure electric cars is amazing and I support it 100%. The reality is, however, that replacing thousands of sub-twenty MPG commuter cards with 30-40MPG cars would do so much more right now toward global warming, dependency on the middle east and pollution. For the same 130K for a Tesla, all three of these people could move to a commuter car saving 110+ gallons of gas a month each.
Now, if I win the lottery, I'm getting a model X because TECHNOLOGY FUCK YEA. And 100% agree with you on the leasing of any pure electric car. If something weird comes up in those two years or the weather screws up the LiOn cells and you turn the car in to be someone else's headache.
One of my heartbreaking moments of auto enthusiasm was discovering that not only can I not work the clutch in a Lotus Esprit because my legs are too long, but that the act of getting into and out of an Elise gives me a charley horse. I've loved that damn Esprit since frickin' For Your Eyes Only. So I feel ya. Now that you mention it, my attempts to get into a Fiat 500 were similarly comical.
Friend has a Prius V. She loves it. They seem to be great beasties. Priuses, of course, are like belly buttons around here; everybody has one. I wouldn't worry too much about a rate hike. The Fed are a bunch of pussies and in the past week they slinked back from "mmmaybe 12 basis points" to "mmmmaybe early 2016."
- The Department of Transportation also reported that the average fuel efficiency of trade-ins was 15.8 mpg (miles per gallon), compared to 24.9 mpg for the new cars purchased to replace them, translating to a 58% fuel efficiency improvement.
mk - where on the map is "a slightly less esoteric dialect of markup?"
I already know when they are going to raise rates. The week before my adjustable mortgage is recalculated in 2016. Because that is how luck works out.
Funny story saying that. I got an adjustable rate 15 year loan when I refinanced for 3.75%. Going with an adjustable, the Credit Union ate the filing fees and saved me about $2000 in costs. If the rates jump the max they are allowed to, over the life of the loan, I break even off a fixed rate loan.
The Prius V is looking like the winner. The only bad thing I hear about them is that if you load them full of gear and/or people they are hogs without a lot of power to spare. Then again I heard the same thing about the original Prius as well. I'm at that age where all I want a car to do is to go from A to B and save me money on insurance and gas. If I get the urge to drive something more exciting, I can rend something and go get it out of my system. I've never been in an Elise, but I have driven a Mazda RX8. I squeezed into the thing and about 20 minutes later realized I was doing 100MPH on a windy back-road, and if I got used to this I'd have to pay a few dozen speeding tickets a year.
Pretty much anything without a V8 is going to suffer under overloading and pretty much anything with a V8 is gonna get shitty gas mileage.
I hope to never be "at that age." My daily driver is a dodge stealth in ticket-me red, and has been for... shit. 12 years now.
- I hope to never be "at that age." My daily driver is a dodge stealth in ticket-me red, and has been for... shit. 12 years now.
Oh neat. I have a PC that is worth more than most people's car. I also have optical gear worth more than most people's car come to think of it. I was never a car guy; I can appreciate the tech involved but never got into them for some reason.
As long as they're uber compatible, I think companies will buy them for $130K and treat them like an AirBnB. In some towns taxi drivers are already spending upwards of $360,000 for a taxi medallion, what's a third of that for a car, driver, and dispatcher?
Or they become an investment vehicle, like a house, where you own one and send one around as an uber to help pay the bills.
I think private individuals will still own their own X's and drive them by hand, but that certainly doesn't negate the market for autonomous taxis.
NY Taxi medallions used to be over a million not 18 months ago. That 75% hit is entirely due to Uber and the rest.
...who will give Uber Black badges to Toyota Priuses with real human drivers in them.
As "investment vehicles" go, a $130k self-driving car is a pretty wasteful idea, especially as Tesla hasn't really demonstrated much in the self-driving department.
Unlike the author of this Medium post, I do know a little about Elon Musk - as in, I read his biography. He makes no bones about the fact that he doesn't think cars have a long-term future. He's all about solar and batteries, and Tesla is a lateral move to make markets for those. You also have to keep in mind that Tesla loses money on its cars, which is the wrong way to go if you want to create vast rental fleets.
These things are neat and all but every time I hear about self driving car fleets I think about that jeep grand cherokee that was hacked with less technology