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Abridged history of Elon's self-driving predictions: 2015: "We’re going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approxi

Abridged history of Elon's self-driving predictions: 2015: "We’re going to end up with complete autonomy, and I think we will have complete autonomy in approximately two years." 2016: "I really consider autonomous driving a solved problem, I think we are less than two years away from complete autonomy, safer than humans, but regulations should take at least another year." 2018: "I think probably by end of next year (2019) self-driving will encompass essentially all modes of driving and be at least 100% to 200% safer than a person." 2019: "We need to be at 99.9999..% We need to be extremely reliable. When do we think it is safe for FSD, probably towards the end of this year then its up to the regulators when they will decide to approve that." 2019: "I feel very confident predicting autonomous robotaxis for Tesla next year." 2020: "I am extremely confident of achieving full autonomy and releasing it to the Tesla customer base next year. But I think at least some jurisdictions are going to allow full self-driving next year." 2021: "Tesla Full Self-Driving will work at a safety level well above that of the average driver this year, of that I am confident. Can’t speak for regulators though."

avs733 5y ago
the increasing shift to blaming regulators is really notable when you put this on a timeline. Would be nice if people reacted with the historical knowledge about what Musk says rather than just the presumption that he is being true and honest when he blames them for Tesla/SpaceX's problems.
- FireBeyond 5y ago
  Exactly. Regulators are getting more involved in this space because they should be, anyway, and because Tesla has repeatedly demonstrated that if they don't, Tesla will take more and more risks. Regulators have nothing to do with FSD's failure to recognize: roundabouts, stationary vehicles, trains at level crossings, or its "selective observation" of road law.
hughrr 5y ago
Got to give the guy his due though: the average capitalist bastard couldn’t literally sell a promise like that and hold it off for half a decade yet still maintain a rabid fanbase stating it’ll be any minute now and shooting down any dissident opinion. /s for the sake of the challenged. I figured most of the cars that had FSD paid for will be scrap before it happens.
- pessimizer 5y ago
  I disagree. This stuff can go on indefinitely until the big money pulls out, and the big money doesn't pull out until something happens to make the investment embarrassing to mention to your peers. It took an expose from the WSJ (which probably wouldn't have worked from any other paper) to do it for Theranos, it simply took a memorable, repeatable joke to do the same type of thing for Bill Cosby. I honestly don't think that Tesla is hiding fraud at that level. If anything is going to kill Tesla, it'll be cheaper, higher-quality competition, probably followed with lies about sales figures. Things that are years off (as far as I know.) Lies about what your technology is on the verge of doing are standard for the tech industry.
  - hughrr 5y ago
    I think it is 100% fraudulent to charge for the FSD option that isn’t enabled at delivery of the vehicle. Edit: to qualify this my father paid over £5000 for it three years ago.
    - pessimizer 5y ago
      I made sure to qualify it with "at that level." Minor fraud is minor.
    - CultMember009 5y ago
  - thesausageking 5y ago
    I don't see a huge implosion happening. What will tank Tesla's stock is when competitors catch up and pass them. Two years ago, Tesla was the only viable option. Today, buyers have a lot of options and with Tesla's continued problems with quality and service, that will mean other makers will continue to capture more market share. On the autonomous driving side, Waymo and other teams are years ahead of Tesla. Elon's been able to convince the market otherwise and so far they've bought it. In the next 1-2 years as self-driving cars get deployed onto the roads this will be undeniable. I don't see a big, Theranos style implosion. The market will slowly grow concerned, there will be a "correction" which Tesla stans will ignore and then will be a slow decline with dips each time competitors release strong numbers. By 2023-2024, Tesla's market cap will have fallen 70-80% down to that of other car makers.
wefarrell 5y ago
The only metric that matters in the self driving race is the number of markets where regulators have granted approval for full autonomy. Supporting metrics would be markets where there’s a pilot program and the number of fully autonomous miles driven. Tesla is losing and using misdirection to convince the public they aren’t.
irthomasthomas 5y ago
FSD will never work for ordinary cars in cities. But it may be good enough for self driving tanks fighting in WW4 - AD2050 That is really the only scenario where the high collateral damage won't matter. "We didn't know we where training kill-bots"
- avs733 5y ago
  Personal opinion...FSD won't work within the existing paradigm largely because driving is a social experience not purely a technical one. It could, and should, be made to work in CONCERT with infrastructure changes to enable and support it. All new roads should be built with systems in place to help FSD cars succeed. Infrastructure spending should be used to help fix and redesign and systematize areas where FSD cars are likely to struggle...largely (to my mind) because doing so will also improve things like pedestrian safety.
  - JaimeThompson 5y ago
    I think musk would fight that as he, as of late, seems to be against such subsidies and assistance that would help firms not Tesla.
    - avs733 5y ago
      what Musk wants/will do is largely irrelevant to the eventual success of self driving vehicles. pardon the use of his pet acronym FSD but what will make the technology, not Tesla, successful is a build environment that a car can interact with more reliably as well as a car that can interrogate the built environment more effectively. Both are important. A long range RFID tag in every road sign means I don't need a camera to read it, and it can't fail in snow. Magnetic nails[1] in the highway that can aid with high speed lane positioning information absolutely beats the camera on my Volvo that struggles to see white lines when driving into the sun. [1] https://trid.trb.org/view/574206 https://trid.trb.org/view/574206
- vageli 5y ago
  > "We didn't know we where training kill-bots" We knew all along. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2004) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2004)
windowshopping 5y ago
I was kind of sad for me, to be honest. Between the ages of 18-26 or so I was a really big Elon Musk fan. It's hard to deny the exciting technological progress made by Tesla and SpaceX on many fronts and I hugely bought into the idea that this stemmed from him. On some level I still believe it does - he's been running both successfully for a long time so he clearly isn't utterly full of shit. But watching the autopilot predictions become progressively sillier, over and over - watching the Thai cave diving debacle - watching his pathetic Twitter exchanges where he needlessly belittles people in childish ways when he could have just maintained his silence and ignored them - his idiotic pronouncements on the pandemic - I found along the way I lost nearly all of my respect for him. I stopped taking him seriously and came to believe most of the things he says publicly aren't worth hearing or reading about. I still view him as a brilliant business leader, but....interestingly, he seems to also be an imbecile. And I guess that isn't really surprising, because people are rarely reducible to one thing, but it wasn't until I reached my late 20s that I started to see it more clearly.
- AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
  Yeah, Musk is a giant jackass, but unlike most other jackasses he has big dreams and a proven ability to consistently advance towards them. I can respect that about him, if nothing else.
- mikestew 5y ago
  Henry Ford was a jackass. Edison: jackass. The guys in Led Zeppelin: child-molesting jackasses (well, Paige is, at least). Musk is but the latest in a long line of people who can be admired for what they have brought to the world, and...then you're better off stopping right there while enjoying your electric lightbulb, rock music, and reusable rocket ships.
- mateo1 5y ago
  He isn't an imbecile. Every one of these statements earns him money. He might have started with certain technological aspirations, but then he made a lot of money and turned into a standard corporate psychopath. The only difference with the rest of CEOs is the kind of cult following his early days build for him. He's gonna milk them for as long as he can.
fuzzythinker 5y ago
2022: "I would be “shocked” if Tesla does not achieve “Full Self-Driving safer than human this year.”" [1] [1] https://electrek.co/2022/01/31/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-driving-safer-than-human-this-year-5-years-ahead-of-everyone/ https://electrek.co/2022/01/31/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-dri...

avs733 5y ago

the increasing shift to blaming regulators is really notable when you put this on a timeline. Would be nice if people reacted with the historical knowledge about what Musk says rather than just the presumption that he is being true and honest when he blames them for Tesla/SpaceX's problems.

FireBeyond 5y ago
Exactly. Regulators are getting more involved in this space because they should be, anyway, and because Tesla has repeatedly demonstrated that if they don't, Tesla will take more and more risks. Regulators have nothing to do with FSD's failure to recognize: roundabouts, stationary vehicles, trains at level crossings, or its "selective observation" of road law.

hughrr 5y ago

Got to give the guy his due though: the average capitalist bastard couldn’t literally sell a promise like that and hold it off for half a decade yet still maintain a rabid fanbase stating it’ll be any minute now and shooting down any dissident opinion. /s for the sake of the challenged. I figured most of the cars that had FSD paid for will be scrap before it happens.

pessimizer 5y ago
I disagree. This stuff can go on indefinitely until the big money pulls out, and the big money doesn't pull out until something happens to make the investment embarrassing to mention to your peers. It took an expose from the WSJ (which probably wouldn't have worked from any other paper) to do it for Theranos, it simply took a memorable, repeatable joke to do the same type of thing for Bill Cosby. I honestly don't think that Tesla is hiding fraud at that level. If anything is going to kill Tesla, it'll be cheaper, higher-quality competition, probably followed with lies about sales figures. Things that are years off (as far as I know.) Lies about what your technology is on the verge of doing are standard for the tech industry.
- hughrr 5y ago
  I think it is 100% fraudulent to charge for the FSD option that isn’t enabled at delivery of the vehicle. Edit: to qualify this my father paid over £5000 for it three years ago.
  - pessimizer 5y ago
    I made sure to qualify it with "at that level." Minor fraud is minor.
  - CultMember009 5y ago
- thesausageking 5y ago
  I don't see a huge implosion happening. What will tank Tesla's stock is when competitors catch up and pass them. Two years ago, Tesla was the only viable option. Today, buyers have a lot of options and with Tesla's continued problems with quality and service, that will mean other makers will continue to capture more market share. On the autonomous driving side, Waymo and other teams are years ahead of Tesla. Elon's been able to convince the market otherwise and so far they've bought it. In the next 1-2 years as self-driving cars get deployed onto the roads this will be undeniable. I don't see a big, Theranos style implosion. The market will slowly grow concerned, there will be a "correction" which Tesla stans will ignore and then will be a slow decline with dips each time competitors release strong numbers. By 2023-2024, Tesla's market cap will have fallen 70-80% down to that of other car makers.

wefarrell 5y ago

The only metric that matters in the self driving race is the number of markets where regulators have granted approval for full autonomy. Supporting metrics would be markets where there’s a pilot program and the number of fully autonomous miles driven. Tesla is losing and using misdirection to convince the public they aren’t.

irthomasthomas 5y ago

FSD will never work for ordinary cars in cities. But it may be good enough for self driving tanks fighting in WW4 - AD2050 That is really the only scenario where the high collateral damage won't matter. "We didn't know we where training kill-bots"

avs733 5y ago
Personal opinion...FSD won't work within the existing paradigm largely because driving is a social experience not purely a technical one. It could, and should, be made to work in CONCERT with infrastructure changes to enable and support it. All new roads should be built with systems in place to help FSD cars succeed. Infrastructure spending should be used to help fix and redesign and systematize areas where FSD cars are likely to struggle...largely (to my mind) because doing so will also improve things like pedestrian safety.
- JaimeThompson 5y ago
  I think musk would fight that as he, as of late, seems to be against such subsidies and assistance that would help firms not Tesla.
  - avs733 5y ago
    what Musk wants/will do is largely irrelevant to the eventual success of self driving vehicles. pardon the use of his pet acronym FSD but what will make the technology, not Tesla, successful is a build environment that a car can interact with more reliably as well as a car that can interrogate the built environment more effectively. Both are important. A long range RFID tag in every road sign means I don't need a camera to read it, and it can't fail in snow. Magnetic nails[1] in the highway that can aid with high speed lane positioning information absolutely beats the camera on my Volvo that struggles to see white lines when driving into the sun. [1] https://trid.trb.org/view/574206 https://trid.trb.org/view/574206
vageli 5y ago
> "We didn't know we where training kill-bots" We knew all along. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2004) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DARPA_Grand_Challenge_(2004)

windowshopping 5y ago

I was kind of sad for me, to be honest. Between the ages of 18-26 or so I was a really big Elon Musk fan. It's hard to deny the exciting technological progress made by Tesla and SpaceX on many fronts and I hugely bought into the idea that this stemmed from him. On some level I still believe it does - he's been running both successfully for a long time so he clearly isn't utterly full of shit. But watching the autopilot predictions become progressively sillier, over and over - watching the Thai cave diving debacle - watching his pathetic Twitter exchanges where he needlessly belittles people in childish ways when he could have just maintained his silence and ignored them - his idiotic pronouncements on the pandemic - I found along the way I lost nearly all of my respect for him. I stopped taking him seriously and came to believe most of the things he says publicly aren't worth hearing or reading about. I still view him as a brilliant business leader, but....interestingly, he seems to also be an imbecile. And I guess that isn't really surprising, because people are rarely reducible to one thing, but it wasn't until I reached my late 20s that I started to see it more clearly.

AnIdiotOnTheNet 5y ago
Yeah, Musk is a giant jackass, but unlike most other jackasses he has big dreams and a proven ability to consistently advance towards them. I can respect that about him, if nothing else.
mikestew 5y ago
Henry Ford was a jackass. Edison: jackass. The guys in Led Zeppelin: child-molesting jackasses (well, Paige is, at least). Musk is but the latest in a long line of people who can be admired for what they have brought to the world, and...then you're better off stopping right there while enjoying your electric lightbulb, rock music, and reusable rocket ships.
mateo1 5y ago
He isn't an imbecile. Every one of these statements earns him money. He might have started with certain technological aspirations, but then he made a lot of money and turned into a standard corporate psychopath. The only difference with the rest of CEOs is the kind of cult following his early days build for him. He's gonna milk them for as long as he can.

fuzzythinker 5y ago

2022: "I would be “shocked” if Tesla does not achieve “Full Self-Driving safer than human this year.”" [1] [1] https://electrek.co/2022/01/31/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-driving-safer-than-human-this-year-5-years-ahead-of-everyone/ https://electrek.co/2022/01/31/elon-musk-tesla-full-self-dri...