Summary
Sheryl Crow announced on Instagram that she is selling her Tesla and donating the proceeds to NPR, citing concerns over Elon Musk’s leadership.
NPR is under political scrutiny, with Republican lawmakers and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr launching investigations.
Crow’s move is a protest against Musk’s influence in government and Trump’s efforts to defund public media.
Partly true. Demand will persist but had already changed drastically. EV/fast car enthusiast niche now has much more exciting alternatives, like used porsche macans or BMW i4s. The people who don’t care what they drive as long as its cheap is the future market of Tesla, and they’ll easily survive the drop in their profit margins. After all, the Model 3/Y were designed to be <$30K cars (AFAIR they cost like $23K to make?!).
The first signs of Musk being a bit fraudulent is how he marketed “full self-driving” in the meantime, the transition to “vision-only” (i.e., removal of ultrasonic sensors) really sealed the fate of FSD but is also totally on brand for musk: the willingness to compromise safety further by removing sensor redundancy to maximize profits.
I know people like to harp on the self-driving promises, but the technology not fraud at all, except for the promises of how soon it will be self-driving. The early adopters especially must feel taken advantage of, paying for lifetime self driving that was only for as long as they owned the car and never appeared.
Anyhow, I still think it’s a valid approach to attempt. We don’t know what approach will succeed until one does, and Teslas approach does have advantages. Cameras are cheap sensors now, that can easily blend as part of a car, and humans do succeed in driving based only on sight. Now it’s a software problem - will we be able to create an ai that can drive? I don’t know, but I don’t see other approaches doing any better, and that’s with much more expensive and ugly hardware.
Until someone succeeds in creating a self-driving vehicle, I’m encouraged that we’re not all jumping into the same hole that may or may not succeed. Let them try something different, and we have a better chance of something working
We couldn’t disagree more.:D
“FSD” almost got me into a major accident. It had a tendency to ride in cars’ blind spots and when someone cut me off I didn’t only make an evasive maneuver but also fight “FSD” which locked the steering and did not brake.
So the “idea of the technology” is not fraud, only the presentation, the selling, and the delivery of it. So like everything that is currently available:D
You know what else are cheap sensors. Actual sensors. FFS they had a >$20K profit margin on each car but they saved $100 on sensors
This is so disturbingly incorrect. We rely a LOT on our hearing, our vibration sense, our proprioception too. Have you tried driving with earplugs? It’s pretty dangerous
It’s a safety issue. For any safety-critical system you apply redundancy.
Mercedes and GM have much better autonomous driving systems than Tesla, they just don’t market it as “”“FULL self-driving”“”. The fact that you’re unaware shows how incredibly effective tesla’s misleading marketing had been.
It will succeed, but eliminating safety measures in half-baked technology will claim lives. And nowhere did I say self-driving can’t work, I’m saying that it won’t work within the product’s lifetime and eliminating redundant sensor data will make the process a lot more unsafe.
Again other companies are already ahead of tesla without the bullshitting involved.