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> Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S Being that dismissive and willfully ignorant discredits your enti

> Tesla which is run by a delusional snake oil salesman who had a single hit with the Model S Being that dismissive and willfully ignorant discredits your entire argument. A snake oil salesman produces nothing and hoodwinks people. I drive my "snake oil" every day and not only is it the best car I've ever driven, it's the coolest thing I've ever owned. I routinely watch his "snake oil" launch huge payloads to orbit and land the booster(s) autonomously for cheap re-use. Hate the guy personally if you want, but slander like yours is simply holding back progress.

almost_usual 7y ago
It's hard to judge Tesla at this point, most automotive companies really can't be judged until their vehicles are on the road heavily for over a decade. I've said this before but I can't imagine a Tesla on the road today being on the road in thirty years. Hopefully I'm wrong. Otherwise we're going to have a lot of 'good for the environment' vehicles in landfills like cellphones. While the gas guzzling 30+ year old Toyota will be chugging along.
- drewpink 7y ago
  Tesla Roadsters have been on the road for over a decade. I have a 2012 Model S and a 2018 Model 3. Best cars I've ever owned, and my almost seven year old S keeps getting better with software updates. I totally get people hating on Elon, but it must largely be jealousy of what he has accomplished.
  - dsfyu404ed 7y ago
    > Best cars I've ever owned, Well yes. Most people's current car is the "best they've ever owned" because people generally amass more wealth and drive nicer cars as time goes on (people who begrudgingly buy minivans notwithstanding). I'm not gonna declare Tesla a "mature automaker" I see scrappers strapping stolen I-beams to the roof of 20yo Teslas. SpaceX is the more mature and financially stable company by far IMO.
- deleted 7y ago
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- tigershark 7y ago
  There are Teslas with 900,000 km. It's a bit less than 3 times the distance from the earth to the moon and a lot of 30 years old card have less km than that.
  - almost_usual 7y ago
    A lot of 30 year old cars with less km than that? I think that's a pretty big assumption unless you're only considering non daily drivers or garage cars. I also imagine most buyers who own a Model S today probably aren't going to keep that vehicle for 30 years because they're technically savvy and will want a newer vehicle. Hopefully I'm wrong but what I'm getting at is I don't want a new brand of vehicle that is treated like a cellphone. Cycling cars every few years for hardware improvements cannot be good for the environment. Tesla also has a pretty bad reputation with self repair and rehabbing damaged vehicles which I imagine will deter the used market quite a bit.
    - tigershark 7y ago
      21.5k km per year is the average driving distance in US: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm Multiply it for 30 years and you get 645k km. It seems to me that it’s well below 900k km. Do you have any official data that contradicts the US department for transportation to prove your assumption?
  - jfim 7y ago
    The first model S has been released in 2012, about 370 weeks ago. 900 Mm would be would be 2432 kilometres per week (1511 mi/wk), approximately 24 hours of highway speed driving (100km/h) per week. Do you have any additional information on this claimed 900000 km figure? Or did you mean 90000 kilometres, which is just standard for such a car type.
    - DuskStar 7y ago
      Here: [0] It seems that 900Mm is the current record for a Model S. 0: https://insideevs.com/news/359939/tesla-model-s-900000-kilometers-odometer/ https://insideevs.com/news/359939/tesla-model-s-900000-kilom...
hi5eyes 7y ago
if you dont think elon musk is a fraudster with this robotaxi bullshit sir you might have drank the kool aid repeatedly pretending that full self driving was anything more than a pipe dream is dangerous. everyone knows that except people that enable his scamming
- jm4 7y ago
  I don't think he's a fraudster. I think he's a visionary who sometimes sees things more the way he imagines them than the way they really are. Things aren't as black and white as a bunch of people on here make them out to be. It's possible to deliver great products while dreaming too big and failing on others. The quality of being able to take risks and fail repeatedly until finally succeeding is one that most entrepreneurs possess. I don't know why everyone gives this guy such a hard time. And I don't know why he has to be either a genius or a crackpot but not both at the same time. He can be enormously successful - like getting a new car company off the ground, making electric cars mainstream, putting unprecedented driving aids in the hands of consumers, rocket launches at an incredibly affordable cost - and not hit a home run with other ambitious projects like hyperloop, underground tunnels, robotaxis, etc. Personally, I think the robotaxi idea is stupid. I get that there's a market for autonomous fleet vehicles but which individual car buyers are asking for a taxi service? I didn't buy a 70k car so that it could drive a bunch of strangers around and make me a couple bucks on the side. And, assuming they pull it off (which I doubt), I'd be pretty pissed if the cost of new Teslas went up because of the availability of some service I had no interest in to begin with. It would alienate me as a customer. That said, I love my Tesla. I use Autopilot every day and it has been life changing. It's not perfect, but it works well enough for 90% of my driving. I rode in one of those self driving Lyft cars recently. It required 2 operators, the driver had to repeatedly take over and it was very similar to my Tesla in terms of ability. The difference is the Tesla is in the hands of consumers. It would be very difficult for me to go back to a regular gas car and I don't think I could go back to daily driving without advanced driver aids like Autopilot. I have my doubts about city self driving. When I'm coming up to a light and it's obstructed by a big truck that's in front of me I wonder how they will solve that problem. Or railroad tracks, pedestrians, animals running into the road, etc. Those seems like insurmountable problems to me. I'm willing to wait and see though. They've already achieved more than I thought I would see in my lifetime. I won't begrudge them the occasional failure.
gooseus 7y ago
Nobody said the snake oil salesman doesn't also offer aspirin and stuff that is actually valuable... in fact they'd be a shitty caricature of a snake-oil salesperson if they didn't. I agree it's overly strong language and I admire Teslas for what they are (fancy toys, his words) and SpaceX more than I can adequately communicate... however, his claims about Hyperloop, the Boring Company, Neuralink, and yes, even those about the future of Tesla self-driving could all be considered hyperbolic claims that fall into the "fake it till you make it" category, just adjacent to the actual frauds. People challenging these claims and holding hyped up individuals to account are not holding back progress, it's the blind faith people put into hyped individuals and their claims that is holding back progress. Elizabeth Holmes has done far more to hinder progress than the people who were naysaying her claims and calling her a snake-oil salesperson before it was commonly known to be true.
- flippinburgers 7y ago
  To compare Elizabeth Holmes with Elon Musk is just absolutely bizarre on your part. She truly was a snake-oil salesperson. I find the claim that individuals who lie like this are "holding back progress" to be totally subjective. What does that even mean?
  - gooseus 7y ago
    It means that when you defraud investors over outlandish claims, even if you believe you can do what you are claiming, then you have destroyed trust and made it harder for everyone else in the industry (who isn't making shit up) to get the funding to do the real work that creates real progress. You seem to have skipped/ignored the whole paragraph where I give Elon lots of credit and then the part where I how people were treating Holmes before it was common knowledge that she was making shit up. I don't believe she did that because she wanted to defraud investors, she just believed her own hype and was willing to lie more than most to maintain that hype... if you don't think that these exact conditions affect Elon, or the people that feed him information, then I think maybe you're suffering from some the negative effects of excessive fandom.
    - 7y ago
paulcole 7y ago
Until the relatively recent backlash, Tesla’s Autopilot page was carefully worded to trick the average reader into thinking that Tesla was far closer to autonomous driving than it really was. That’s snake oil salesman 101. > All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.

almost_usual 7y ago

It's hard to judge Tesla at this point, most automotive companies really can't be judged until their vehicles are on the road heavily for over a decade. I've said this before but I can't imagine a Tesla on the road today being on the road in thirty years. Hopefully I'm wrong. Otherwise we're going to have a lot of 'good for the environment' vehicles in landfills like cellphones. While the gas guzzling 30+ year old Toyota will be chugging along.

drewpink 7y ago
Tesla Roadsters have been on the road for over a decade. I have a 2012 Model S and a 2018 Model 3. Best cars I've ever owned, and my almost seven year old S keeps getting better with software updates. I totally get people hating on Elon, but it must largely be jealousy of what he has accomplished.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  > Best cars I've ever owned, Well yes. Most people's current car is the "best they've ever owned" because people generally amass more wealth and drive nicer cars as time goes on (people who begrudgingly buy minivans notwithstanding). I'm not gonna declare Tesla a "mature automaker" I see scrappers strapping stolen I-beams to the roof of 20yo Teslas. SpaceX is the more mature and financially stable company by far IMO.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
tigershark 7y ago
There are Teslas with 900,000 km. It's a bit less than 3 times the distance from the earth to the moon and a lot of 30 years old card have less km than that.
- almost_usual 7y ago
  A lot of 30 year old cars with less km than that? I think that's a pretty big assumption unless you're only considering non daily drivers or garage cars. I also imagine most buyers who own a Model S today probably aren't going to keep that vehicle for 30 years because they're technically savvy and will want a newer vehicle. Hopefully I'm wrong but what I'm getting at is I don't want a new brand of vehicle that is treated like a cellphone. Cycling cars every few years for hardware improvements cannot be good for the environment. Tesla also has a pretty bad reputation with self repair and rehabbing damaged vehicles which I imagine will deter the used market quite a bit.
  - tigershark 7y ago
    21.5k km per year is the average driving distance in US: https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/ohim/onh00/bar8.htm Multiply it for 30 years and you get 645k km. It seems to me that it’s well below 900k km. Do you have any official data that contradicts the US department for transportation to prove your assumption?
- jfim 7y ago
  The first model S has been released in 2012, about 370 weeks ago. 900 Mm would be would be 2432 kilometres per week (1511 mi/wk), approximately 24 hours of highway speed driving (100km/h) per week. Do you have any additional information on this claimed 900000 km figure? Or did you mean 90000 kilometres, which is just standard for such a car type.
  - DuskStar 7y ago
    Here: [0] It seems that 900Mm is the current record for a Model S. 0: https://insideevs.com/news/359939/tesla-model-s-900000-kilometers-odometer/ https://insideevs.com/news/359939/tesla-model-s-900000-kilom...

hi5eyes 7y ago

if you dont think elon musk is a fraudster with this robotaxi bullshit sir you might have drank the kool aid repeatedly pretending that full self driving was anything more than a pipe dream is dangerous. everyone knows that except people that enable his scamming

jm4 7y ago
I don't think he's a fraudster. I think he's a visionary who sometimes sees things more the way he imagines them than the way they really are. Things aren't as black and white as a bunch of people on here make them out to be. It's possible to deliver great products while dreaming too big and failing on others. The quality of being able to take risks and fail repeatedly until finally succeeding is one that most entrepreneurs possess. I don't know why everyone gives this guy such a hard time. And I don't know why he has to be either a genius or a crackpot but not both at the same time. He can be enormously successful - like getting a new car company off the ground, making electric cars mainstream, putting unprecedented driving aids in the hands of consumers, rocket launches at an incredibly affordable cost - and not hit a home run with other ambitious projects like hyperloop, underground tunnels, robotaxis, etc. Personally, I think the robotaxi idea is stupid. I get that there's a market for autonomous fleet vehicles but which individual car buyers are asking for a taxi service? I didn't buy a 70k car so that it could drive a bunch of strangers around and make me a couple bucks on the side. And, assuming they pull it off (which I doubt), I'd be pretty pissed if the cost of new Teslas went up because of the availability of some service I had no interest in to begin with. It would alienate me as a customer. That said, I love my Tesla. I use Autopilot every day and it has been life changing. It's not perfect, but it works well enough for 90% of my driving. I rode in one of those self driving Lyft cars recently. It required 2 operators, the driver had to repeatedly take over and it was very similar to my Tesla in terms of ability. The difference is the Tesla is in the hands of consumers. It would be very difficult for me to go back to a regular gas car and I don't think I could go back to daily driving without advanced driver aids like Autopilot. I have my doubts about city self driving. When I'm coming up to a light and it's obstructed by a big truck that's in front of me I wonder how they will solve that problem. Or railroad tracks, pedestrians, animals running into the road, etc. Those seems like insurmountable problems to me. I'm willing to wait and see though. They've already achieved more than I thought I would see in my lifetime. I won't begrudge them the occasional failure.

gooseus 7y ago

Nobody said the snake oil salesman doesn't also offer aspirin and stuff that is actually valuable... in fact they'd be a shitty caricature of a snake-oil salesperson if they didn't. I agree it's overly strong language and I admire Teslas for what they are (fancy toys, his words) and SpaceX more than I can adequately communicate... however, his claims about Hyperloop, the Boring Company, Neuralink, and yes, even those about the future of Tesla self-driving could all be considered hyperbolic claims that fall into the "fake it till you make it" category, just adjacent to the actual frauds. People challenging these claims and holding hyped up individuals to account are not holding back progress, it's the blind faith people put into hyped individuals and their claims that is holding back progress. Elizabeth Holmes has done far more to hinder progress than the people who were naysaying her claims and calling her a snake-oil salesperson before it was commonly known to be true.

flippinburgers 7y ago
To compare Elizabeth Holmes with Elon Musk is just absolutely bizarre on your part. She truly was a snake-oil salesperson. I find the claim that individuals who lie like this are "holding back progress" to be totally subjective. What does that even mean?
- gooseus 7y ago
  It means that when you defraud investors over outlandish claims, even if you believe you can do what you are claiming, then you have destroyed trust and made it harder for everyone else in the industry (who isn't making shit up) to get the funding to do the real work that creates real progress. You seem to have skipped/ignored the whole paragraph where I give Elon lots of credit and then the part where I how people were treating Holmes before it was common knowledge that she was making shit up. I don't believe she did that because she wanted to defraud investors, she just believed her own hype and was willing to lie more than most to maintain that hype... if you don't think that these exact conditions affect Elon, or the people that feed him information, then I think maybe you're suffering from some the negative effects of excessive fandom.
  - 7y ago

paulcole 7y ago

Until the relatively recent backlash, Tesla’s Autopilot page was carefully worded to trick the average reader into thinking that Tesla was far closer to autonomous driving than it really was. That’s snake oil salesman 101. > All Tesla vehicles produced in our factory, including Model 3, have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver.