9 ms·

On a Tesla: Don't

67 points by laktak 3y ago

BlindEyeHalo 3y ago
"I never drive without seatbelts, but it takes at least 5 seconds to get the seatbelts on. Why not just wait till you see I’m shifting into gear before you start yelling at me?" Very confused by this, I never had the seatbelt chime appear before the car starts moving and I have the same model as the author. It also doesn't chime when you drive very slowly in a parking situation.
dhg72 3y ago
A few legitimate but common complaints marred by a bunch of issues that aren’t common (my phone key works fine, Bluetooth is fine, etc) and completely unsubstantiated prediction that the runaway top seller of EVs, indeed the best selling cars several years running, will somehow “fail to compete” in the EV space
- MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
  There are some apparently legitimate issues, followed by political grievances against Musk personally, written by a guy who describes himself as "law professor, activist". This kind of partisanship taints the whole article, and lessens its credibility.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    Lawrence Lessig is a pretty famous guy: Creative Commons, "code is law", net neutrality, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig I'm not sure any of this makes him terribly qualified to comment on Tesla's economic prospects though.
  - orwin 3y ago
    If you think the kind of partisanship Lessig have taint anything negatively, you either do not know about him or hang in the wrong place imho. I happen to think he's mostly wrong and disagree with a lot of what he write (sorry, it's true), but I have to respect the thinker and his ideology.
- epups 3y ago
  They are already losing the lead on the EV market to BYD: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tesla-delivered-1-81-million-cars-globally-in-2023-hitting-full-year-target-2bcc396b https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tesla-delivered-1-81-mill... I personally think this prediction is grounded. It has been over-promising and under-delivering for a while, and Musk has gone from a money printing machine to someone perceived as toxic/erratic. They will face difficulties in a scenario where competitors can make better, cheaper cars, and their stock market value is not inflated to compensate for that.
  - resolutebat 3y ago
    I'm really having trouble understanding how a company with the best selling car on the entire planet (more Model Ys sold than Toyota Corollas or RAV4s in 2023) can be accused of "under-delivering".
    - simiones 3y ago
      Under-delivering is always compared to your promises. And they significantly over-promise, and, thus, consistently under-deliver. Especially at the company level - look at the Cybertruck and electric trucks - way over schedule, under powered, and under-delivering on every single metric they claimed originally. FSD is the other major example - which has been "fully autonomous safer than a human driver by the end of this year" for 5+ years already, and is none of those things in practice. Also, while the sales are nothing to scoff at for such an expensive car, Tesla is still a small player in the world car market. Toyota sells more cars in the USA alone than Tesla sells worldwide (but much cheaper).
      - iknowstuff 3y ago
        No other manufacturer comes close to Tesla's autonomy so it's not like people are gonna go and choose a competitor over that. Cybertruck, likewise, is amazing, so it really doesn't matter what the promise was as long as the product remains the best on the market, and sells. And their cars sell. Really well.
Joker_vD 3y ago
> But here’s where the CEO becomes relevant. Tesla is, in many ways, Elon Musk. Some parts are astonishing, inspiring, and good — what I’ve called above the car on down. Other parts are little more than lies and gimmicks. From what I understand (and I may be completely wrong), those "astonishing and good" parts, about the design of the vehicle itself, were already mostly in place before Musk managed to place himself as Tesla's CEO (which is an interesting story in itself).
- epgui 3y ago
  Where did you hear that? Elon was CEO long before the Model 3 existed. Before Elon was CEO, they weren’t delivering any cars at all.
- robertlagrant 3y ago
  > From what I understand (and I may be completely wrong), those "astonishing and good" parts, about the design of the vehicle itself, were already mostly in place before Musk managed to place himself as Tesla's CEO (which is an interesting story in itself). I find it very hard to know what's true about such a polarising figure. Personally I don't think it's likely that Musk has done what he's done without talent and a lot of hard work, especially in an age of constant iconoclasm. But I could be wrong.
  - epgui 3y ago
    I think a big part of the problem is that people tend to see things in black and white (or rather, fail to account for nuance). Elon is a massively intelligent and business savvy guy with strong engineering talent. He is also unhinged and an absolute idiot. Both things are true at the same time and in different ways. People tend to let one of the two perspectives overwhelm their impression of him as a whole.
    - robertlagrant 3y ago
      I think it depends how you assess people. It's "Says the thing a large group of us have deemed impolite" vs "Working hard to build an optimistic future based on large technological improvements". I can imagine people who take the time to be good at assessing either of those find it hard to care about or understand the other one.
wolframhempel 3y ago
On the "yelling at me" part - I find this an absolutely puzzling design pattern that a number of automakers have adopted. I was driving a Volkswagen ID4 - their mid-size electric car - the other day, and my dog was on the back seat. She triggered the seat belt alarm, but not straight away, only once we were on the German Autobahn. It showed the icon on the dashboard, then it started beeping. Then it started beeping louder. Finally, it settled into a loud, high pitched beep that continued throughout my drive, designed to force me to obey. This is directly dangerous. I'm going 130km/h - what the fuck am I supposed to do about the seatbelts now? Not that I even wanted to... It is this idea of "forcing your customer to obey by inflicting discomfort" that's puzzling me. I can't think of any other industry or product that would think this would be a good idea. Just show me the damn icon and if I decide to ignore it, that's my choice...
- avhception 3y ago
  Something like this happened in my Skoda a while ago. Driving along on the Autobahn when a really minor irregularity in the road caused the bag I had placed on the passenger seat to be pushed into the seat very gently, triggering the passenger-side seat belt alarm. I had to take the next exit and park somewhere to get it to shut up. Unrelated but also relevant to the story: My father's new car (a brand-new Nissan) starts yelling at you to put the seat belt on the second you start the car. It's really annoying because the rest of the car systems take their precious time to start up, so I like to start the car first so the stupid computers start booting and THEN put my seat belt on. But that means being bullied by a loud alarm every time someone uses that car. Why oh why? My Audi only starts the alarm once you actually start driving, and even then only if you go faster than 10km/h or something.
  - londons_explore 3y ago
    > . I had to take the next exit and park somewhere to get it to shut up This is the safe thing to do. A bag heavy enough to set off the sensors (usually 10kg) is gonna kill someone if not belted in in an accident. It is not uncommon for bags to go through the front windscreen and kill someone in the car that crashes into you.
madmod 3y ago
Yeah this article is so full of weird issues I have never had. The whole bit about full self driving makes no sense to me. You are using the keycard instead of the phone key which misses the point completely. Its not as if other cars don’t have plenty of issues at any price point.
m463 3y ago
The problem with a tesla is that it is like a finicky partner. You're in love. It is romantic. smooth, sleep touchscreen for everything feels so modern. It is a better car than ICE, hands down. Everything that was before was terrible. And everything is getting better! But at some point, you realize some things are never going to change, and you are going to have to live with it. - it is dangerously hard to use any control that doesn't have a dedicated button. The touchscreen in a moving car is a moving mess of tiny targets crowded too close together - even if you have a dedicated control for say wipers, you will still curse interval wipers. - if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really) - some functions - tesla doesn't care about, and never will. - don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm. - going forward - cram all controls/settings and information displays into a small ipad. You are all peons, you get less control/safety/information because tesla wants fewer warranty claims.
- Mashimo 3y ago
  > - don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm. Is it harder to change a spare on a tesla compare to other cars?
  - bzzzt 3y ago
    Probably because you don't get a spare tire so you have to wait until road side assistance comes to you.
    - stephenr 3y ago
      ... what does roadside assistance do in that scenario? They can't be carrying spare tires of every variety, and the equipment to fit them.. this just sounds like a terrible non-solution to a solved problem.
      - bravetraveler 3y ago
        I don't think they care, my Mustang came with a fix-it kit and that's it No donut or anything. Goop and an air pump made by Honda
autonomousErwin 3y ago
Could one argue Tesla's Marketing approach to FSD is almost machiavellian and targeted not at consumers but in actual fact, engineers to come and work for them? If they do eventually be the first then all is forgiven (i.e. Fritz Haber is known for the Haber-Bosch process, and not for inventing mustard gas). If they don't, they'll slowly fade into irrelevancy and they'll end up as an MBA case study in 50 years. If they're a company that seem the closest to solving the biggest problem in using auto-motives and you're a razor-sharp freshly graduated engineer, wouldn't you want to be on that train with ideas that you will actually significantly contribute to self-driving vehicles instead of...increasing Google's/Meta's Ad Revenue? I'm not defending Tesla's approach, but interested if there's a bit more reasoning behind the inconsistency in the claims ("we're one year away, you better join us to matter!") and not just capitalism gone wild?
- lawn 3y ago
  > Could one argue Tesla's Marketing approach to FSD is almost machiavellian and targeted not at consumers but in actual fact, engineers to come and work for them? I think it's clear that it's targeting investors and is used to (successfully) pump the stock value much higher than what would be reasonable.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  > Could one argue Tesla's Marketing approach to FSD is almost machiavellian and targeted not at consumers but in actual fact, engineers to come and work for them? "We over-promote a product which is unfit for purpose, then vaguely claim it is a beta, as if that somehow makes the over-promotion okay" is generally the sort of thing that scares engineers away, rather than attracting them. Like, it's basically a poorly-run-company _trope_. > If they're a company that seem the closest to solving the biggest problem in using auto-motives I mean, maybe, if that were the case, but it clearly isn't. That would probably be Waymo.
cm2187 3y ago
If you read to the end, predictably, his biggest problem is Musk's politics... The comparison to Apple is not particularly great. I don't know how distracted is Cook and what his politics are, but I am still dealing with major iphone bugs than apple never bothered to fix in years, like all the music artwork being randomly reschuffled. And the experience only gets worse with time with more aggressive nagging for Apple services, my phone feels like the web in the 1990s, pre adblockers.
- kelnos 3y ago
  > If you read to the end, predictably, his biggest problem is Musk's politics... Not really sure how you got that; to me it seemed like more an afterthought. The author had already made his case before we got to the (fairly short) political section.
just_1_comment 3y ago
WTH is a “jammern” and why would this articles english writer use that foreign word in a sentence? I can’t be the only person who didn’t know what it meant and I was totally distracted from the article by their apparent presumption that the word was in common use.
- tired-turtle 3y ago
  The article was published in “jammern” (see byline), so it seems fair game to use. My brain reasoned it meant approx “cry/complain” as the article was registering a grievance: > This jammern is thus about the car
- resolutebat 3y ago
  It's German for "whine/whinge", and Lessig refers to his blog's posts as "jammerns".
jarym 3y ago
> “Automatic” windshield wipers: This functionality is so insanely stupid. It regularly turns on when there is no rain, and regularly runs in the slowest speed when there’s tons of rain. I’ve read that this is because Elon vetoed a simple sensor that would have made this function as well as any other modern car. He was convinced the car’s AI could figure it out. It can’t. Yep. First world problem for sure but so frustrating. And other first-world cars don't have this issue. It is the same with the ultrasound reversing sensors that've been removed.. the Tesla Vision / AI simply is not as good and probably never will be in a dark carpark. But in my own view, the reason for 'don't' is that against many expectations, the incumbents have largely caught up in the EV space and there are new entrants doing exceptionally well. Tesla's complacency might be what harms it the most.
rsynnott 3y ago
> That’s what the brain does: we learn not to see the ugly that we can’t change. Huh. This must be what it's like to be a glass-half-full person. Speaking for myself, I tend to focus in on it rather obsessively. > Elizabeth Holmes, at least, didn’t kill anyone. Statistically, she almost certainly did. > I’ve never actually thought that I needed a fart machine in my car, but pre-teens think it essential. IMO this encourages bad behaviour, and should be banned. Its only apparent application seems to be startling pedestrians, potentially dangerously (obviously a horn would do this too, but the bad behaviour is more likely if it is made funnier to the sort of gormless idiots who indulge in this).
- resolutebat 3y ago
  The fart noise is played through the regular audio speakers inside the car, not outside it.
  - rsynnott 3y ago
    While I think that was once the case, today, thanks to Tesla's innovation(TM), you can treat passers-by to 100 decibel fart sounds: https://mashable.com/article/tesla-horn-fart https://mashable.com/article/tesla-horn-fart Anyone who _actually uses this_ should be shunned from society, of course.
alister 3y ago
A Tesla used to be called the "best car ever made" — eleven years ago. In 2013 Consumer Reports called the Tesla Model S the best car it had ever tested. The Model S earned a score of 99 out of a possible 100 in the magazine's tests. "If it could recharge in any gas station in three minutes, this car would score about 110," said Jake Fisher, head of auto testing for Consumer Reports. Fisher called the car's performance in the magazine's performance tests "off the charts."[1] What happened in the last 11 years? Did Teslas get worse or did expectations change significantly? [1] https://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consume...
- akmarinov 3y ago
  Tesla focused on FSD almost exclusively and everything in the car's software suffered because of that and stupid decisions to remove hardware. Autopilot is on a separate branch from FSD, not getting significant updates with the promise that at some point, it'll be merged with the FSD branch and it'll be super awesome - this year for sure, but maybe next year or 10 years after, look we made a robot that's definitely not a guy in a suit and it'll be out in 5 years, maybe 10, it can water plants now!, look a Cybertruck! isn't steel cool, etc When they switched from Mobileye to their own stack, it noticeably regressed in performance, then they worked to get it to work decently, but dropped the radar during Covid, going all in on Vision, regressing it even further. They promised at that time to at some point match the original Autopilot by reintroducing a distance of 1 and a max speed higher than 140 km/h and it's been 2 years since then with nothing on the front. Summon/ Smart summon as the guy in the article points out - is great, but doesn't work without USS sensors, which they removed and the functionality is coming back some day, but likely not soon, because it's not a priority. They've been selling cars for more than a year now that don't have that functionality, even though it's in a package worth 4000 euros that gets you basically nothing. Autopark - same thing, just look at these videos as a comparison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA&pp=ygUTcnN5bW1vbnMgdGVzbGEgcGFyaw%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA&pp=ygUTcnN5bW1vb... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfM8pZS7PFU&t=190s&pp=ygUTcnN5bW1vbnMgdGVzbGEgcGFyaw%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfM8pZS7PFU&t=190s&pp=ygUTcn... It's easily the worst out of all manufacturers. In the meantime FSD V11 will be the big one, V12 will finally drop the beta tag, etc, etc things that never happen and the rest of the functionalities just rot away.
foul 3y ago
>This was a question I used to get all the time. In 2016, we got rid of both of our cars and left the country on a sabbatical. When we returned, we bought a Tesla Model 3. It's a wild introduction, something I would expect from someone like Lessig.
sshine 3y ago
Until recently, you could not disable automatic windshield wipers when using Auto-Steer (lane control). You can now, though... If Tesla is this delusional about how bad automatic windshield wipers are, why not require FSD to be enabled at all times?
DemocracyFTW2 3y ago
> Musk’s perpetual lies [...] are well known Hear hear.

67 points by laktak 3y ago

"I never drive without seatbelts, but it takes at least 5 seconds to get the seatbelts on. Why not just wait till you see I’m shifting into gear before you start yelling at me?" Very confused by this, I never had the seatbelt chime appear before the car starts moving and I have the same model as the author. It also doesn't chime when you drive very slowly in a parking situation.

dhg72 3y ago

A few legitimate but common complaints marred by a bunch of issues that aren’t common (my phone key works fine, Bluetooth is fine, etc) and completely unsubstantiated prediction that the runaway top seller of EVs, indeed the best selling cars several years running, will somehow “fail to compete” in the EV space

MrBuddyCasino 3y ago
There are some apparently legitimate issues, followed by political grievances against Musk personally, written by a guy who describes himself as "law professor, activist". This kind of partisanship taints the whole article, and lessens its credibility.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  Lawrence Lessig is a pretty famous guy: Creative Commons, "code is law", net neutrality, etc. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lawrence_Lessig I'm not sure any of this makes him terribly qualified to comment on Tesla's economic prospects though.
- orwin 3y ago
  If you think the kind of partisanship Lessig have taint anything negatively, you either do not know about him or hang in the wrong place imho. I happen to think he's mostly wrong and disagree with a lot of what he write (sorry, it's true), but I have to respect the thinker and his ideology.
epups 3y ago
They are already losing the lead on the EV market to BYD: https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tesla-delivered-1-81-million-cars-globally-in-2023-hitting-full-year-target-2bcc396b https://www.wsj.com/business/autos/tesla-delivered-1-81-mill... I personally think this prediction is grounded. It has been over-promising and under-delivering for a while, and Musk has gone from a money printing machine to someone perceived as toxic/erratic. They will face difficulties in a scenario where competitors can make better, cheaper cars, and their stock market value is not inflated to compensate for that.
- resolutebat 3y ago
  I'm really having trouble understanding how a company with the best selling car on the entire planet (more Model Ys sold than Toyota Corollas or RAV4s in 2023) can be accused of "under-delivering".
  - simiones 3y ago
    Under-delivering is always compared to your promises. And they significantly over-promise, and, thus, consistently under-deliver. Especially at the company level - look at the Cybertruck and electric trucks - way over schedule, under powered, and under-delivering on every single metric they claimed originally. FSD is the other major example - which has been "fully autonomous safer than a human driver by the end of this year" for 5+ years already, and is none of those things in practice. Also, while the sales are nothing to scoff at for such an expensive car, Tesla is still a small player in the world car market. Toyota sells more cars in the USA alone than Tesla sells worldwide (but much cheaper).
    - iknowstuff 3y ago
      No other manufacturer comes close to Tesla's autonomy so it's not like people are gonna go and choose a competitor over that. Cybertruck, likewise, is amazing, so it really doesn't matter what the promise was as long as the product remains the best on the market, and sells. And their cars sell. Really well.

Joker_vD 3y ago

> But here’s where the CEO becomes relevant. Tesla is, in many ways, Elon Musk. Some parts are astonishing, inspiring, and good — what I’ve called above the car on down. Other parts are little more than lies and gimmicks. From what I understand (and I may be completely wrong), those "astonishing and good" parts, about the design of the vehicle itself, were already mostly in place before Musk managed to place himself as Tesla's CEO (which is an interesting story in itself).

epgui 3y ago
Where did you hear that? Elon was CEO long before the Model 3 existed. Before Elon was CEO, they weren’t delivering any cars at all.
robertlagrant 3y ago
> From what I understand (and I may be completely wrong), those "astonishing and good" parts, about the design of the vehicle itself, were already mostly in place before Musk managed to place himself as Tesla's CEO (which is an interesting story in itself). I find it very hard to know what's true about such a polarising figure. Personally I don't think it's likely that Musk has done what he's done without talent and a lot of hard work, especially in an age of constant iconoclasm. But I could be wrong.
- epgui 3y ago
  I think a big part of the problem is that people tend to see things in black and white (or rather, fail to account for nuance). Elon is a massively intelligent and business savvy guy with strong engineering talent. He is also unhinged and an absolute idiot. Both things are true at the same time and in different ways. People tend to let one of the two perspectives overwhelm their impression of him as a whole.
  - robertlagrant 3y ago
    I think it depends how you assess people. It's "Says the thing a large group of us have deemed impolite" vs "Working hard to build an optimistic future based on large technological improvements". I can imagine people who take the time to be good at assessing either of those find it hard to care about or understand the other one.

wolframhempel 3y ago

On the "yelling at me" part - I find this an absolutely puzzling design pattern that a number of automakers have adopted. I was driving a Volkswagen ID4 - their mid-size electric car - the other day, and my dog was on the back seat. She triggered the seat belt alarm, but not straight away, only once we were on the German Autobahn. It showed the icon on the dashboard, then it started beeping. Then it started beeping louder. Finally, it settled into a loud, high pitched beep that continued throughout my drive, designed to force me to obey. This is directly dangerous. I'm going 130km/h - what the fuck am I supposed to do about the seatbelts now? Not that I even wanted to... It is this idea of "forcing your customer to obey by inflicting discomfort" that's puzzling me. I can't think of any other industry or product that would think this would be a good idea. Just show me the damn icon and if I decide to ignore it, that's my choice...

avhception 3y ago
Something like this happened in my Skoda a while ago. Driving along on the Autobahn when a really minor irregularity in the road caused the bag I had placed on the passenger seat to be pushed into the seat very gently, triggering the passenger-side seat belt alarm. I had to take the next exit and park somewhere to get it to shut up. Unrelated but also relevant to the story: My father's new car (a brand-new Nissan) starts yelling at you to put the seat belt on the second you start the car. It's really annoying because the rest of the car systems take their precious time to start up, so I like to start the car first so the stupid computers start booting and THEN put my seat belt on. But that means being bullied by a loud alarm every time someone uses that car. Why oh why? My Audi only starts the alarm once you actually start driving, and even then only if you go faster than 10km/h or something.
- londons_explore 3y ago
  > . I had to take the next exit and park somewhere to get it to shut up This is the safe thing to do. A bag heavy enough to set off the sensors (usually 10kg) is gonna kill someone if not belted in in an accident. It is not uncommon for bags to go through the front windscreen and kill someone in the car that crashes into you.

madmod 3y ago

Yeah this article is so full of weird issues I have never had. The whole bit about full self driving makes no sense to me. You are using the keycard instead of the phone key which misses the point completely. Its not as if other cars don’t have plenty of issues at any price point.

m463 3y ago

The problem with a tesla is that it is like a finicky partner. You're in love. It is romantic. smooth, sleep touchscreen for everything feels so modern. It is a better car than ICE, hands down. Everything that was before was terrible. And everything is getting better! But at some point, you realize some things are never going to change, and you are going to have to live with it. - it is dangerously hard to use any control that doesn't have a dedicated button. The touchscreen in a moving car is a moving mess of tiny targets crowded too close together - even if you have a dedicated control for say wipers, you will still curse interval wipers. - if you get a newer car, you (basically) won't HAVE any dedicated controls. no turn signal stalk. No gear stalk - PRND - it will guess for you (really) - some functions - tesla doesn't care about, and never will. - don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm. - going forward - cram all controls/settings and information displays into a small ipad. You are all peons, you get less control/safety/information because tesla wants fewer warranty claims.

Mashimo 3y ago
> - don't get a flat tire if you care about your time. If you can't change a spare, nvm. Is it harder to change a spare on a tesla compare to other cars?
- bzzzt 3y ago
  Probably because you don't get a spare tire so you have to wait until road side assistance comes to you.
  - stephenr 3y ago
    ... what does roadside assistance do in that scenario? They can't be carrying spare tires of every variety, and the equipment to fit them.. this just sounds like a terrible non-solution to a solved problem.
    - bravetraveler 3y ago
      I don't think they care, my Mustang came with a fix-it kit and that's it No donut or anything. Goop and an air pump made by Honda

autonomousErwin 3y ago

Could one argue Tesla's Marketing approach to FSD is almost machiavellian and targeted not at consumers but in actual fact, engineers to come and work for them? If they do eventually be the first then all is forgiven (i.e. Fritz Haber is known for the Haber-Bosch process, and not for inventing mustard gas). If they don't, they'll slowly fade into irrelevancy and they'll end up as an MBA case study in 50 years. If they're a company that seem the closest to solving the biggest problem in using auto-motives and you're a razor-sharp freshly graduated engineer, wouldn't you want to be on that train with ideas that you will actually significantly contribute to self-driving vehicles instead of...increasing Google's/Meta's Ad Revenue? I'm not defending Tesla's approach, but interested if there's a bit more reasoning behind the inconsistency in the claims ("we're one year away, you better join us to matter!") and not just capitalism gone wild?

lawn 3y ago
> Could one argue Tesla's Marketing approach to FSD is almost machiavellian and targeted not at consumers but in actual fact, engineers to come and work for them? I think it's clear that it's targeting investors and is used to (successfully) pump the stock value much higher than what would be reasonable.
rsynnott 3y ago
> Could one argue Tesla's Marketing approach to FSD is almost machiavellian and targeted not at consumers but in actual fact, engineers to come and work for them? "We over-promote a product which is unfit for purpose, then vaguely claim it is a beta, as if that somehow makes the over-promotion okay" is generally the sort of thing that scares engineers away, rather than attracting them. Like, it's basically a poorly-run-company _trope_. > If they're a company that seem the closest to solving the biggest problem in using auto-motives I mean, maybe, if that were the case, but it clearly isn't. That would probably be Waymo.

cm2187 3y ago

If you read to the end, predictably, his biggest problem is Musk's politics... The comparison to Apple is not particularly great. I don't know how distracted is Cook and what his politics are, but I am still dealing with major iphone bugs than apple never bothered to fix in years, like all the music artwork being randomly reschuffled. And the experience only gets worse with time with more aggressive nagging for Apple services, my phone feels like the web in the 1990s, pre adblockers.

kelnos 3y ago
> If you read to the end, predictably, his biggest problem is Musk's politics... Not really sure how you got that; to me it seemed like more an afterthought. The author had already made his case before we got to the (fairly short) political section.

just_1_comment 3y ago

WTH is a “jammern” and why would this articles english writer use that foreign word in a sentence? I can’t be the only person who didn’t know what it meant and I was totally distracted from the article by their apparent presumption that the word was in common use.

tired-turtle 3y ago
The article was published in “jammern” (see byline), so it seems fair game to use. My brain reasoned it meant approx “cry/complain” as the article was registering a grievance: > This jammern is thus about the car
resolutebat 3y ago
It's German for "whine/whinge", and Lessig refers to his blog's posts as "jammerns".

jarym 3y ago

> “Automatic” windshield wipers: This functionality is so insanely stupid. It regularly turns on when there is no rain, and regularly runs in the slowest speed when there’s tons of rain. I’ve read that this is because Elon vetoed a simple sensor that would have made this function as well as any other modern car. He was convinced the car’s AI could figure it out. It can’t. Yep. First world problem for sure but so frustrating. And other first-world cars don't have this issue. It is the same with the ultrasound reversing sensors that've been removed.. the Tesla Vision / AI simply is not as good and probably never will be in a dark carpark. But in my own view, the reason for 'don't' is that against many expectations, the incumbents have largely caught up in the EV space and there are new entrants doing exceptionally well. Tesla's complacency might be what harms it the most.

rsynnott 3y ago

> That’s what the brain does: we learn not to see the ugly that we can’t change. Huh. This must be what it's like to be a glass-half-full person. Speaking for myself, I tend to focus in on it rather obsessively. > Elizabeth Holmes, at least, didn’t kill anyone. Statistically, she almost certainly did. > I’ve never actually thought that I needed a fart machine in my car, but pre-teens think it essential. IMO this encourages bad behaviour, and should be banned. Its only apparent application seems to be startling pedestrians, potentially dangerously (obviously a horn would do this too, but the bad behaviour is more likely if it is made funnier to the sort of gormless idiots who indulge in this).

resolutebat 3y ago
The fart noise is played through the regular audio speakers inside the car, not outside it.
- rsynnott 3y ago
  While I think that was once the case, today, thanks to Tesla's innovation(TM), you can treat passers-by to 100 decibel fart sounds: https://mashable.com/article/tesla-horn-fart https://mashable.com/article/tesla-horn-fart Anyone who _actually uses this_ should be shunned from society, of course.

alister 3y ago

A Tesla used to be called the "best car ever made" — eleven years ago. In 2013 Consumer Reports called the Tesla Model S the best car it had ever tested. The Model S earned a score of 99 out of a possible 100 in the magazine's tests. "If it could recharge in any gas station in three minutes, this car would score about 110," said Jake Fisher, head of auto testing for Consumer Reports. Fisher called the car's performance in the magazine's performance tests "off the charts."[1] What happened in the last 11 years? Did Teslas get worse or did expectations change significantly? [1] https://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consumer-reports/index.html https://money.cnn.com/2013/05/09/autos/tesla-model-s-consume...

akmarinov 3y ago
Tesla focused on FSD almost exclusively and everything in the car's software suffered because of that and stupid decisions to remove hardware. Autopilot is on a separate branch from FSD, not getting significant updates with the promise that at some point, it'll be merged with the FSD branch and it'll be super awesome - this year for sure, but maybe next year or 10 years after, look we made a robot that's definitely not a guy in a suit and it'll be out in 5 years, maybe 10, it can water plants now!, look a Cybertruck! isn't steel cool, etc When they switched from Mobileye to their own stack, it noticeably regressed in performance, then they worked to get it to work decently, but dropped the radar during Covid, going all in on Vision, regressing it even further. They promised at that time to at some point match the original Autopilot by reintroducing a distance of 1 and a max speed higher than 140 km/h and it's been 2 years since then with nothing on the front. Summon/ Smart summon as the guy in the article points out - is great, but doesn't work without USS sensors, which they removed and the functionality is coming back some day, but likely not soon, because it's not a priority. They've been selling cars for more than a year now that don't have that functionality, even though it's in a package worth 4000 euros that gets you basically nothing. Autopark - same thing, just look at these videos as a comparison - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA&pp=ygUTcnN5bW1vbnMgdGVzbGEgcGFyaw%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsb2XBAIWyA&pp=ygUTcnN5bW1vb... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfM8pZS7PFU&t=190s&pp=ygUTcnN5bW1vbnMgdGVzbGEgcGFyaw%3D%3D https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfM8pZS7PFU&t=190s&pp=ygUTcn... It's easily the worst out of all manufacturers. In the meantime FSD V11 will be the big one, V12 will finally drop the beta tag, etc, etc things that never happen and the rest of the functionalities just rot away.

foul 3y ago

>This was a question I used to get all the time. In 2016, we got rid of both of our cars and left the country on a sabbatical. When we returned, we bought a Tesla Model 3. It's a wild introduction, something I would expect from someone like Lessig.

sshine 3y ago

Until recently, you could not disable automatic windshield wipers when using Auto-Steer (lane control). You can now, though... If Tesla is this delusional about how bad automatic windshield wipers are, why not require FSD to be enabled at all times?

DemocracyFTW2 3y ago

> Musk’s perpetual lies [...] are well known Hear hear.