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Oh please get your head out of sand. Just look at a teardown of their vehicle and compare it to their competitors. They are in a class of their own and they are

Oh please get your head out of sand. Just look at a teardown of their vehicle and compare it to their competitors. They are in a class of their own and they are constantly iterating and improving without slowing down so when their competitors eventually copy their designs, they are already onto the next thing. Yeah ok you don't typically see the engineering, you just drive the car. But as an engineer myself, it really lights up an area of my mind to see how well they challenge conventional norms about how a specific part or process is typically done in a car and then go and do a much better job of it. Plus the cross pollination between SpaceX and Tesla is introducing so many cool things that we would not typically see in the car industry.

ModernMech 4y ago
Tesla's competitors aren't testing "beta" self driving technology (marketed as magic "Full Self Driving" or "Autopilot") on public roads, which has predictably resulted in deaths and property damage. They are not iterating and improving, because if they were they would have fixed the flaw which lead to a decapitation 2016. Instead, they doubled down on their negligent sensor stack, and predictably another decapitation happened in 2019. As a robotics engineer myself, it makes my brain bleed to watch Teslas operate autonomously (because watching them operate reveals how terribly they are engineered), and it makes me furious to think that these things are allowed to operate on public roads around people. > they challenge conventional norms about how a specific part or process is typically done ... introducing so many cool things that we would not typically see in the car industry. Tesla can keep whatever changes they would like to make to the car industry, imo. Challenging norms is sometimes okay but other times not. For example, when the norm is "we shouldn't beta-test autonomous machines on the general public because it is dangerous", maybe we should leave that one alone. Tesla, especially Musk, is responsible for irreparably damaging the culture of safety that was created around autonomous cars circa 2007 at the DARPA Urban Challenge. Back then safety was a top concern -- beta-quality autonomous cars were equipped with flashing lights, had safety kill switches, were operated by trained technicians, and everyone in the vicinity were aware of their existence and more importantly consented to be a part of the test. Today, thanks to Tesla, buggy driverless cars are operating covertly on public roads without the public's consent, by clueless people without any training. What an improvement, and definitely something we all asked for! This has lead to people dying, as everyone has predicted. But does that deter Tesla? Of course not. They continue undeterred and even doubled down. If your friend loses their head or gets run over by a Tesla, will you thank Tesla's engineers for their high-quality products? Will you thank Elon Musk for his "move fast and break things" attitude when it comes to 2 ton death machines rolling around in your town? > Plus the cross pollination between SpaceX and Tesla is introducing so many cool things that we would not typically see in the car industry. This reminds me a of a story I heard of SpaceX engineers having to be brought in to Tesla to teach them the proper way to use pointers. Probably not the kind of cross-pollination you were thinking of. I guess that's a testament to Tesla's engineering prowess.
- nebula8804 4y ago
  Oh for goodness sake you hang your hat on the self driving group while totally ignoring the entire other organization actually designing and producing the cars. Same dumb attitude I witnessed when I was deep within the skeptic community during 2016-2019(/r/RealTesla and the major players on Twitter). Tesla's engineering has proven themselves time and time again but the skeptic community has devolved into nothing but conspiracy theory nonsense with the explicit goal to bash everything that Tesla has done just because it is a MuskCo. They are not capable of objectively looking at the organization as a whole and all the amazing things going on over there but instead let their bias focus them on nothing but the failures. There is no reasoning with the skeptic community and as a result, major innovations will be missed and will instead creep up as surprises when they inevitably have longer term impacts on the automotive industry.
  - ModernMech 4y ago
    You chide me for not considering the totality of Tesla engineering while focusing on the self-driving group, yet it seems you're doing exactly the opposite: hanging your hat on whichever engineers you respect while ignoring the negligent practices of the self driving group. So maybe we're talking past one another a little here, but at the same time I don't think the problems I point out could persist in a corporate culture where engineers were empowered. > focus them on nothing but the failures. To be clear, the failures I'm speaking of here are deaths due to Tesla's negligent engineering. Actually I take that back. The real failure here of Tesla's engineering is not the first decapitation but the second one. That's a process problem, and is indicative of rot in the entire corporation (starting at the top; Musk's ego is the whole reason Teslas self-driving group is kneecapped). You want to look at the corporation as a whole? Start with the fact that their product killed someone, and they didn't fix the failure mode which resulted in that death, which then resulted in a second death in the same way. And they still haven't fixed it, so it's only a matter of time until the next decapitation. What kind of sick organization lets this kind of problem persist? I'll tell you: one where it's more important to be right (we don't need no stinking LIDAR!) than safe (LIDAR are safer than what Tesla is using). That's an ego problem right there. Anyway, I see you didn't address any of my points except to say that there's no reasoning behind my words and my attitude is "dumb". So unless you want to respond to an actual point instead of just asserting without fact that Tesla is so amazing, so innovative, and so proven (I mean, yeah, they are certainly proving themselves, but maybe they are building the wrong reputation...), then I think we're done here.

ModernMech 4y ago

Tesla's competitors aren't testing "beta" self driving technology (marketed as magic "Full Self Driving" or "Autopilot") on public roads, which has predictably resulted in deaths and property damage. They are not iterating and improving, because if they were they would have fixed the flaw which lead to a decapitation 2016. Instead, they doubled down on their negligent sensor stack, and predictably another decapitation happened in 2019. As a robotics engineer myself, it makes my brain bleed to watch Teslas operate autonomously (because watching them operate reveals how terribly they are engineered), and it makes me furious to think that these things are allowed to operate on public roads around people. > they challenge conventional norms about how a specific part or process is typically done ... introducing so many cool things that we would not typically see in the car industry. Tesla can keep whatever changes they would like to make to the car industry, imo. Challenging norms is sometimes okay but other times not. For example, when the norm is "we shouldn't beta-test autonomous machines on the general public because it is dangerous", maybe we should leave that one alone. Tesla, especially Musk, is responsible for irreparably damaging the culture of safety that was created around autonomous cars circa 2007 at the DARPA Urban Challenge. Back then safety was a top concern -- beta-quality autonomous cars were equipped with flashing lights, had safety kill switches, were operated by trained technicians, and everyone in the vicinity were aware of their existence and more importantly consented to be a part of the test. Today, thanks to Tesla, buggy driverless cars are operating covertly on public roads without the public's consent, by clueless people without any training. What an improvement, and definitely something we all asked for! This has lead to people dying, as everyone has predicted. But does that deter Tesla? Of course not. They continue undeterred and even doubled down. If your friend loses their head or gets run over by a Tesla, will you thank Tesla's engineers for their high-quality products? Will you thank Elon Musk for his "move fast and break things" attitude when it comes to 2 ton death machines rolling around in your town? > Plus the cross pollination between SpaceX and Tesla is introducing so many cool things that we would not typically see in the car industry. This reminds me a of a story I heard of SpaceX engineers having to be brought in to Tesla to teach them the proper way to use pointers. Probably not the kind of cross-pollination you were thinking of. I guess that's a testament to Tesla's engineering prowess.

nebula8804 4y ago
Oh for goodness sake you hang your hat on the self driving group while totally ignoring the entire other organization actually designing and producing the cars. Same dumb attitude I witnessed when I was deep within the skeptic community during 2016-2019(/r/RealTesla and the major players on Twitter). Tesla's engineering has proven themselves time and time again but the skeptic community has devolved into nothing but conspiracy theory nonsense with the explicit goal to bash everything that Tesla has done just because it is a MuskCo. They are not capable of objectively looking at the organization as a whole and all the amazing things going on over there but instead let their bias focus them on nothing but the failures. There is no reasoning with the skeptic community and as a result, major innovations will be missed and will instead creep up as surprises when they inevitably have longer term impacts on the automotive industry.
- ModernMech 4y ago
  You chide me for not considering the totality of Tesla engineering while focusing on the self-driving group, yet it seems you're doing exactly the opposite: hanging your hat on whichever engineers you respect while ignoring the negligent practices of the self driving group. So maybe we're talking past one another a little here, but at the same time I don't think the problems I point out could persist in a corporate culture where engineers were empowered. > focus them on nothing but the failures. To be clear, the failures I'm speaking of here are deaths due to Tesla's negligent engineering. Actually I take that back. The real failure here of Tesla's engineering is not the first decapitation but the second one. That's a process problem, and is indicative of rot in the entire corporation (starting at the top; Musk's ego is the whole reason Teslas self-driving group is kneecapped). You want to look at the corporation as a whole? Start with the fact that their product killed someone, and they didn't fix the failure mode which resulted in that death, which then resulted in a second death in the same way. And they still haven't fixed it, so it's only a matter of time until the next decapitation. What kind of sick organization lets this kind of problem persist? I'll tell you: one where it's more important to be right (we don't need no stinking LIDAR!) than safe (LIDAR are safer than what Tesla is using). That's an ego problem right there. Anyway, I see you didn't address any of my points except to say that there's no reasoning behind my words and my attitude is "dumb". So unless you want to respond to an actual point instead of just asserting without fact that Tesla is so amazing, so innovative, and so proven (I mean, yeah, they are certainly proving themselves, but maybe they are building the wrong reputation...), then I think we're done here.