Tesla customers may need a hardware upgrade to allow their cars to fully drive themselves unsupervised, Elon Musk admitted.

“Translation: all the times Tesla has vowed that all of its vehicles would soon be capable of fully driving themselves may have been a convenient act of salesmanship that ultimately turned out not to be true.”

Another way to say that, is Tesla scammed all of their customers, since you know, everyone saw this coming…

    • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.todayEnglish
      314·
      22 days ago

      The problem is that ideas that are under people like musk, are doomed to always fail

      Like electric cars, like reusable rockets…

      • Anti-Face Weapon@lemmy.worldEnglish
        122·
        22 days ago

        Yep Elon famously invented the first electric car and the first reusable spacecraft. He did it in his garage with his own two hands!

        • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.todayEnglish
          113·
          22 days ago

          Read your damn history.

          SpaceX is basically 100% Elon’s creation. He was founder, Tom Mueller (who designed the Merlin rocket engine) was the first employee period

          Tesla was Elon and a few other people who had seen a good electric roadster, but it had been a one-off that that company was not going to produce. They decided they wanted to produce an electric roadster, so they did. Initially, Martin Eberhard was in charge of the company and Elon was just an investor. Search archive.org for the original Tesla blog. It’s all laid out. I know this because I was following them while it was happening.

          Eberhard was in charge, and they were going for a setup with a two-speed gearbox. There was to be no clutch, just a synchromesh to allow shifting. Problem is, shifting at 10,000+ RPM under heavy load is mechanically stressful, and they were having a lot of trouble getting the gearbox to work reliably. After a good year of screwing with this, they were burning through cash and not getting close to actually shipping a car. That’s when Elon stepped in, pushed Eberhard out, and took over Tesla. Elon quickly switched to a setup with a single speed non-shifting gearbox (much easier to build, much less expensive, and will basically last forever as long as you lubricate it) and a larger and better cooled electric motor to deliver the required torque that they wouldn’t get from a lower speed gear. That setup is still in use today in all Teslas.

            • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.todayEnglish
              13·
              21 days ago

              I’m not saying he’s not an asshole. But he is a visionary.

              And right now, if he wasn’t up Trump’s ass, you’d probably be saying he’s a visionary without sarcasm.

                • SirEDCaLot@lemmy.todayEnglish
                  11·
                  21 days ago

                  Okay Trump is recent, but his whole change of focus since buying Twitter is where public opinion on him shifted. That started a shift in public statement more toward the libertarian or perhaps conservative and that made him unpopular with a lot of the liberals who previously liked him for pushing environmental causes.

                  Now that he pushes conservative and libertarian ideals, supports a Republican candidate, he becomes persona non grata. That may well be valid, but it should not take away recognition of his other accomplishments. If he’s now an asshole, he can be a visionary asshole. Becoming an asshole doesn’t mean he isn’t or wasn’t a visionary.