
Tesla: Insane or Clever - Tepix
https://mondaynote.com/tesla-insane-or-clever-b7a8e1479f6b
======
pwinnski
Software is eating the world, automobiles included.

I'm a huge skeptic when it comes to Tesla, but JLG raises a good point here.
Apple had _all sorts_ of problems in 2007, so many that established phone
manufacturers largely brushed them off. A focus on software rewrote the mobile
phone industry, and every day I get into my car and watch the onboard computer
struggle to handle bluetooth properly.

I need to look beyond the obvious inanity of Musk and remember this shift:
software will eat this part of the world too.

~~~
asdkhadsj
> and every day I get into my car and watch the onboard computer struggle to
> handle bluetooth properly.

I hate "me too" posts, but this gives me so much rage that I can't help it. My
car has a touch screen interface and I am puzzled why car manufacturers even
bother. Who thinks the interface they made is even remotely good. It actively
degrades the otherwise fine experience of my car. It is ugly, poorly made, and
fails at even basic functionality.

I am truly puzzled why these car manufacturers released such terrible user
facing features. Maybe it's better these days _(my car is ~5 years old)_ , but
it's just impressively bad in my car at least.

~~~
paranoidrobot
>Maybe it's better these days (my car is ~5 years old), but it's just
impressively bad in my car at least.

I honestly don't think it's getting any better. At best, it's just getting
different - but maybe worse as manufacturers try to add more "smart" features.

Was a passenger in a <1 year old BMW 5 series for about a week this year for a
roadtrip. There were so many stupid behaviours with the software that we
effectively gave up using it for anything except bluetooth music. Trying to
use the built in GPS navigation was awful.

Also a passenger in a new SUV style vehicle for two weeks last year, I forget
what brand. It too had utterly bizarre behaviours that it wouldn't explain
anywhere, and it took a variety of experimentation to figure out. For
instance, Bluetooth pairing is disabled once the car is in put into gear, and
is not re-enabled until you turn the car off and turn it back on again.
However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in
the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item (as a
passenger, mind) over a few days until I finally figured it out.

In every case, the number of either unlabelled or poorly labelled buttons is
overwhelming.

~~~
mschuster91
> For instance, Bluetooth pairing is disabled once the car is in put into
> gear, and is not re-enabled until you turn the car off and turn it back on
> again.

That's not a bug, that's intentional, and saves lives.

~~~
SideburnsOfDoom
I think that this is the UX Bug:

> However it doesn't tell you this, it just doesn't show bluetooth options in
> the menu anywhere. So I spent hours going through every menu item

Greyed out menu item = This is where it is on the UI, but it's not allowed at
present.

No menu item = maybe it's somewhere else?

------
czr
It's worth emphasizing that Tesla is strong at software _relative to other
automakers_ ; in absolute terms, the (non-AP) parts of Tesla's software
frequently have user-facing problems [0] and appear to have been built on a
Babelian tower of hacks [1]... but it's still better than the rest of the
market, and it keeps improving month over month.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/search/?q=reboot&restri...](https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/search/?q=reboot&restrict_sr=1)

[1]
[https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939617404645376](https://twitter.com/atomicthumbs/status/1032939617404645376)

~~~
Shivetya
Love my TM3 but as I have posted before, Tesla needs to focus, Musk needs to
focus. Tesla cars have some great user facing features but also are woefully
behind in other areas.

The most flagrant is the awful support for playing music from blue tooth or
attached devices. It has been common for years to be able to use the touch
screen or menu to select playlists, artists, or more, from the car's UI. Not
so with Telsa, want to do that drag your phone out and change what is play.
You can only navigate within a playing playlist. Seeing how its illegal to use
your phone in your hand in many states Tesla needs to remedy it.

We have none of our promised voice commands, no improvement since when I
bought mine in August. Our energy meter is near useless, does not track when
car is not moving, and only tracks overall use and does not break out HVAC,
regen,or drive train use.

But we got fart humor, animated rain drops, and MAME. Their priorities suck,
its no wonder why they aren't profitable, they cannot get done what they
started before going off doing something else or wasting resources on stuff
that does not matter

~~~
jm4
Ever get a flat tire in your Tesla? I did. No shop would touch it and I had to
have it towed to Tesla where it took 2 days and $400 for a simple tire change.

My blood boils when I see Musk tweet about putting more games in the car. They
need to be reaching out to mechanics with training information so that they're
not so spooked that they won't even change a tire.

~~~
akgoel
I've gotten several flats over the past 6 years on my Model S. I take it to
Discount Tire almost every time. Only time I really to take it to Tesla is
when I hit a pothole so hard I had to replace a rim. Even then, I could take
it to any Tesla-approved body shop if I wanted to.

~~~
jm4
Well that gives me hope that my experience was an anomaly. I was 200 miles
from home with a disabled car so after calling several places I felt like I
was out of options.

------
skywhopper
I would just laugh at Elon's crazy proclamations, but there are plenty of
people buying Teslas who believe them. At this point, Musk's claims verge on
the fraudulent. Fully autonomous driving is never coming to current Teslas,
sorry folks.

As for the frequent OTA software updates, I wouldn't consider that a feature.
While it's true that at this point software is a critical piece of the puzzle
and automakers who haven't woken up to the idea that owning your software is
as important as any other aspect of the design may eventually be left behind.
But I don't think Tesla offers a good model to emulate.

As for JLG's specific points, providing a single, centralized method of
updating automobile software over the Internet--or even a specialized wireless
connection--should be seen as a security risk, not a powerful feature. Most
critical systems in cars should be isolated from each other and from the
Internet entirely. Updates should not be haphazardly distributed, but should
be carefully tested and rolled out as rarely as possible and in a controlled
manner.

I have no hope that car companies will actually heed advice like this. But
it's disappointing to see tech veterans buy into the delusion that the
equivalent of Windows Update, but for your car, would be a good idea.

~~~
fumar
I don't own a Tesla. Can you provide evidence on why Elon's claims are
fraudulent? I was thinking about a Tesla as my next car and would like to
learn more.

Do you know if the Tesla over the air updates are altering critical systems
without diligent testing? I assume only Tesla engineers would have insight
into this.

~~~
pwinnski
OTA updates have had literally deadly consequences. There was an issue in
which "autopilot" poorly recognized left-exits, including a particular one in
California. It got some publicity and was fixed by an OTA update. Good! Except
that a couple of months later another OTA update reverted whatever part of the
"autopilot" model had learned not to drive straight into a concrete wall
separating a left exit, and it killed someone. So yes, ML combined with OTA
can certainly be dangerous, but Tesla fans will soon show up in droves to
explain why that man's death is his fault, or the fault of anyone but Tesla.

As far as fraudulent claims, Musk has repeatedly made statements related to
self-driving that some people consider to be well beyond the pale of optimism,
including promising that every Tesla sold after a certain would include all
hardware needed for full self-driving, and then doing the same thing a few
years later, apparently rendering the first statement factually false in
retrospect.

Musk has made many, many, many statements about timelines that have not worked
out, and some that probably still won't work out, and some people label that
fraudulent. I think it's just naïve, but as the CEO of a public-traded
company, his naïveté is pretty stunning and has resulted in fines.

------
faitswulff
Mentioning SpaceX and autonomous Teslas in the same breath makes me wonder if
the Starlink satellite internet program is related to his plans for self-
driving cars.

~~~
loceng
There's synergy between everything he works on, it seems to be a natural
extension to his flow of thinking - expanding further into the next biggest
market. It's the ESSO (gas company) model: they needed a truck to transport
fuel, so they designed a truck to manufacture, and sell it to others too, and
so on.

~~~
Already__Taken
Can I coin the phrase full-stack entrepreneur?

~~~
danmaz74
There is already "vertical integration".

~~~
athenot
SpaceX is vertical integration taken literally.

~~~
branchan
Technically, they integrate horizontally, then the rocket is tilted vertical.

------
ckastner
Why "or"?

Tesla and Musk do a lot of things. Some are clever, eg: Tesla gets marketing
that other car companies can only dream of, _for free_. Other things are
insane, eg Musk's "secured" bid of $420 for a company that today traded unter
200, less than a year later.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
>Musk's "secured" bid of $420 for a company that today traded unter 200, less
than a year later.

This keeps being repeated ad nauseam but what's the relationship between the
'going private' tweet and today's stock price?

It's been proven that the Saudi asked Musk multiple times to take Tesla
private between early 2017 and summer 2018 but other shareholders resisted the
attempt (with far less capital at hand than the Musk and the Saudi).

Remember that non-accredited shareholders (like me) would also have been
forced to sell at that time, if the company was to be delisted (which wasn't
Musk's intention but still does not undermine the "funding secured" tweet one
bit).

In fact, today's stock price makes a strong case for the company to be taken
private and even a stronger one for the attempt to do it when it was above
$350.

~~~
jcranmer
> It's been proven that the Saudi asked Musk multiple times to take Tesla
> private between early 2017 and summer 2018 but other shareholders resisted
> the attempt (with far less capital at hand than the Musk and the Saudi).

Actually, the record seems to be that Musk was interested in taking Tesla
private, and met with the Saudis once or twice, where they allegedly indicated
some verbal support for the idea while not agreeing (or even discussing) on
things such as at what price. Musk then took the verbal support as a full
commitment to buy Tesla at a premium over current prices and gave his infamous
"funding secured" tweets.

------
Roark66
Personally I think Tesla business would get crushed if someone made really
well designed plug-in hybrids. Most trips people take are under 30 miles. No
need for a 70kWh, 350kg huge battery. Plug-in hybrids could be operated as
full electric during short trips and the internal combustion engine could
charge the battery when necessary.

No doubt someone will immediately reply with a question: why would you want to
change mechanical power, into electric, store it in battery, then change it
into mechanic power again, when you can use ICE directly, or go full electric.
I'll tell you why. Hybrids allow you all the same advantages as full electric
car for short trips, and they are significantly more fuel efficient than
normal ICE cars for long trips. All this in a package that can achieve 400+
miles of range and 5 minute recharge in a package that weights less than half
of a comparable battery,it doesn't need to waste energy to be kept warm in
winter and cold in summer nor it slowly deteriorates whether you use it or
not.

We have to have an honest conversation about disadvantages of battery powered
electric cars. Everything that makes those cars cool - great torque of
electric motors, mechanical simplicity, user interface can be replicated in a
plug-in hybrid(sacrificing some of the simplicity as a hybrid needs either a
fuel cell or an ICE to recharge). Then imagine buying a 10 year old Tesla
model 3 economy, in a climate with -20deg C winters? Lets say you're left with
60% battery capacity, then you don't want to kill it completely so you don't
let it go to complete 0 and you don't charge it to full capacity leaving you
with perhaps 40%? Is this enough? To go to work and back, maybe, but what if
you want to, or have to travel further once in a while? You can't using that
car.

~~~
pbreit
"Just throw in an ICE" is your grand idea? That sounds like the argument folks
were making to add a keyboard to iPhones.

Perhaps you weren't aware that Teslas are holding 80%+ of their charges over
300k miles and are expected to double that performance with Maxwell
technology?

~~~
Roark66
"Just throw in an ICE" is your grand idea? That sounds like the argument folks
were making to add a keyboard to iPhones.

It is not "my grand idea". It is a good idea for the reasons I mentioned in my
previous post period. Few actual cars that were and are good plug-in hybrids
such as Chevy Volt and Prius Prime are(and in case of Volt were) getting way
less publicity than they deserve.

I recently heard Chevy Volt was the first hybrid that didn't just start an
internal combustion engine when you pressed on the gas pedal too hard, but it
let you drive in 100% electric mode until the internal battery discharged.

Personally I think those cars fail to catch on due to the failure to market
them properly.

------
Tiktaalik
The major flaw (among many) with Musk's self driving taxi Tesla vision is that
it treats cities, the entities that control the roads the taxis would drive
on, as passive entities that wouldn't make any peep of objection.

In reality cities have plans on the books to shift away from car oriented
design whether it be electric or ICE. Additionally, cities now understand that
ride hailing competes with and erodes the quality of public transit, with some
accordingly capping ride hailing licenses.

Cities are not going to want the surge of congestion that self driving Tesla
taxis would bring.

~~~
AtlasBarfed
Autonomous cars are part of the shift from cars, because they don't need
street parking and can "loiter" offsite.

Urban plans for alternate modes of transit (scooters, bikes, etc) will
massively benefit from street parking elimination. It's where the lanes can be
safely placed.

Autonomous driving will revolutionize public transit. Uber isn't wrong about
that, it's just that they are too evil to be trusted with it from a monopoly
standpoint. Autonomous can solve last mile problems and centralize transit
stations so that you don't really need bussing, and can concentrate on fast
high capacity trains with "coarse grained" stations.

~~~
asdff
It is still a model of having one 15'x6' vehicle carrying 1 person to 1
destination, which leads to congestion no matter how well the cars are timing
off of each other. Either these things get really really tiny (self driving
moped?) or we cram more people in one of them (self driving bus?) because at
the end of the day its a physics problem of there being not enough space on
the road for everyone in a city to be transported one at a time, 20' by 8'
apart.

------
mcguire
I just had to callout this:

" _AI expert Kai-Fu Lee of Apple, Silicon Graphics, Microsoft, and Google fame
used the best antidote for such folly, Twitter humor:_

" _“If there are a million Tesla robo-taxis functioning on the road in 2020, I
will eat them.”_ "

------
dfilppi
Clever and insane are not mutually exclusive. At least he didn't say there
would be millions of robo taxis on Mars next year.

------
geggam
It will be interesting to see if Elon can push electricity and batteries in
time to get over the momentum petroleum has.

I actually see hemp and bio diesel being easier to push because it could
leverage the huge existing infrastructure.

~~~
gpapilion
The bio diesel relies on a net investment in calories to achieve its green
fuel. Most of the investment comes from petroleum products used as fertilizer.
(All be it some time ago, I remember it being 4:1 calories invested:harvested
for corn).

~~~
geggam
hemp... aka weed grows like a weed.

[https://phys.org/news/2010-10-hemp-viable-
biodiesel.html](https://phys.org/news/2010-10-hemp-viable-biodiesel.html)

------
oceanghost
> labels that adorn Camembert boxes (a tyriosémiophile).

This word tyriosémiophile, appears nowhere on google but within reference to
this article. Does anyone know what it is? OR what it is meant to mean?

~~~
kvb
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrosemiophilia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyrosemiophilia)

~~~
oceanghost
Well that was easy, thank you.

------
b_tterc_p
I think there’s a world that a lot of tech people don’t consider. Let’s say
Tesla rolls out their self driving taxi service. And let’s say it’s decent.
Not great. It kills people infrequently and Tesla manages to argue its way out
of liability...

Wouldn’t that be a pretty good business? It has some severe ethical costs,
but... a lot of people are ok with that. What should be doesn’t really effect
the market’s reaction to things or even consumer preferences.

~~~
fullshark
It would be an amazing business, if in fact it was tesla owners pressing a
button on cars they own and letting it make some money for them as a robotaxi.
The fact that even that declaration that Musk sees that happening in 2020
didn't move the needle for Tesla stock shows how little the market believes
it's actually coming imo.

~~~
hef19898
But it made for a better fund raising story than "we need to cover our
operational losses for the next 10 months".

~~~
b_tterc_p
I agree that was the motivation for the timing of the event. I do think he is
being serious though. His track record is reasonably good in that he does
intend to accomplish what he says he wants to do with zero to moderate delays.
By my mental model, I would expect him to deliver this by 2021.

------
sunstone
Hey I don't remember all of this being in Telsa's original secret master plan.

~~~
goshx
[https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-
deux](https://www.tesla.com/blog/master-plan-part-deux)

Search for "Sharing".

------
mtgx
The way Tesla tends to defend Autopilot-caused crashes makes me think that if
someone did take over their servers and then sent an update to a specific car
to kill someone, Tesla would hide this from the public.

The U.S. needs better data breach disclosure laws before self-driving cars
become mainstream.

------
JohnJamesRambo
Automakers will say and probably rightfully so, it was never about the
software it was about the nuts and bolts of making large amounts of vehicles
and the act of actually selling them to dealerships. It probably turns out
automakers do it the way they do it because it is the best way to make money
and not because they are stupid.

~~~
flyinglizard
Nuts and bolts are becoming commodotized by the day, as they do in any other
industry frankly. EVs are a huge accelerator of this process because they are
a fraction of the complexity of an IC drivetrain.

The supply chains in automotive are also becoming more dominant and most of
the stuff in your car is sourced from Aptive or Bosch or Continental or
whoever.

So it's not just a commodity yet, but it will be - especially towards the
lower third echelon of the market - in a decade or two (a decade is not long
in auto industry terms; it's merely two product cycles).

~~~
Gravityloss
What was not commoditized in automobiles in the seventies that is now?

~~~
flyinglizard
The global supply chain was in its infancy. You had national suppliers, but
nothing like the multinationals you see today.

The number of automakers in the 1970s was much higher and the number of unique
models (vs dress ups like GM does across brands) was higher still.

Virtually no mass market car brand was formed in the last four decades, other
than Tesla.

~~~
Gravityloss
Bosch was founded in 1897. Here Japanese cars made it big in the eighties.
Korean cars in the last ten years. A local factory has produced Saab (now
defunct), Porsche and now Mercedes cars, spanning about five decades? Maybe
some consolidation but also I think there's a high amount of constant flux.

------
3327
Interesting... The guy is landing rockets on Earth. He said, it planned it did
it.

So on one hand - do you listen to a bunch of wallstreet know it all short
sellers pumping out negative news and counting parking lots and shipping
containers.

Or do you listen to the Elon case - that it actually may be crazy to buy a car
that that is not a Tesla...

One thing is certain, A car like a boat has been a money loosing investment
until today, and consumers have been marketed to oblivion and convinced that,
that is O.K.

IF THAT CHANGES, even slightly, well, then... Its GG (good game). because that
changes everything, and even the die hard truck lovers will be tempted to make
a few bucks on the side.

~~~
navigatesol
Have you ever considered that no one bothered landing rockets because it was
pointless and uneconomic, not impossible?

And I love the disdain for wall street, completely ignoring that Elon is in
bed with the bankers.

~~~
cowmix
Well, now SpaceX has a way to launch 12K sats for global Internet. No one else
is even remotely ready to do that.

Talk about your moats.

~~~
navigatesol
And no money to do it. Did you see the results of their last attempted funding
raise?

Once again acting like something likely far fetched is right around the
corner, because Elon said so. When the money for nothing dries up, we will see
what these businesses look like.

