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free_bip 12 hours ago [-]
When the CEO of the company starts ranting and raving about "sentient cars", it's time to look somewhere else for your purchase.
libertine 8 hours ago [-]
When the CEO is actively engaged in:
- far right politics;
- helping Russia killing Ukrainian civilians;
- and threatening the livelihood of Europeans;
These might also help people decide to look somewhere else.
chii 7 hours ago [-]
None of these would be consideration if the car itself was competitive. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which side you're on), tesla is now no longer competitive with the advent of the chinese EV manufacturers.
The last holdout being the USA, where the gov't is preferentially giving tesla their marketshare instead of letting open competition work in favour of consumers.
But like japanese cars, this will eventually also take root.
kelseyfrog 1 hours ago [-]
> None of these would be consideration if the car itself was competitive.
Why not? It looks like many people heard "vote with your wallet," and took it seriously. For better or worse, purchasing a Tesla, or not, has become a referendum on Musk himself.
libertine 4 hours ago [-]
I don't think you're giving enough value to the bad reputation Elon has among people with purchase power in Europe.
With that said I don't disagree that the market evolved and Tesla isn't what it was.
ninininino 2 hours ago [-]
Serious question,
> - helping Russia killing Ukrainian civilians;
Have you read a single thing about Starlink usage in the Ukraine conflict?
Because if you had, you'd know that Spacex has actively geofenced usage to allow it within Ukrainian territory but disallow it in Russian and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, instituted a whitelist policy coordinated with Ukrainian forces to whitelist Ukrainian terminals but disallow Russian terminals acquired through the black market
They literally provide connectivity to Ukrainian forces and actively try to prevent usage by Russian forces but the moment they put any caveats on how the tech is used, like disallowing its usage by fast-moving objects or for offensive weapon guidance, they are "helping kill Ukrainian civilians".
Perhaps they should have just said Starlink would not work with defense/war usage at all and sat the conflict out and geofenced all of eastern Europe, like many protesters at Google ask their leadership to not do any defense industry deals. Would that have been better from your perspective?
> When the CEO of the company starts ranting and raving about "sentient cars", it's time to look somewhere else for your purchase.
Rigging a car to do a flip is a clear way to tell the world they officially ran out of ideas and are desperate to get a sale.
esperent 10 hours ago [-]
It's only desperation if it doesn't work, and from the amount of media coverage I've seen over the past week I'd say it's working pretty well.
It's like everyone has completely forgotten Musk was up on stage with the US president doing nazi salutes just a couple of years as ago.
crote 7 hours ago [-]
Just because he's getting coverage doesn't mean he is getting good coverage. Like you already mention: standing on stage next to the US president would normally be amazing - except when it is a president reviled by your primary customer base and you do a nazi salute.
The same applies with the "sex sells" epidemic of the early 2000s: sure, the numbers showed that it was a great way to make people remember your ad, but they forgot to take into account that people remember the boobs and completely miss the brand.
I remember seeing snippets of the "flying car" going around on social media, so it clearly made an impression on me. I think it was supposed to be a Roadster relaunch? Release date? No idea. Price? No idea. Range? No idea. Number of seats? No idea. Cargo capacity? No idea. I bet it won't actually ship with those "rockets", though. Sooo, "clown makes car mockup fly"?
If you're going to do a stunt, at least do it properly. Like Volvo suspending an entire dump truck from a crane[0].
> If you're going to do a stunt, at least do it properly. Like Volvo....
Lie Volvo and the reversing trucks, with Jean Claude Van Dam....
ZeroGravitas 7 hours ago [-]
Yeah but at least he distanced himself from him by tweeting out that he knew he was a pedo all along.
A real burn-your-boats moment so there's no chance of them working together again after that.
Ylpertnodi 2 hours ago [-]
They will work together again.
Too many $$$ on the table.
impendia 5 hours ago [-]
Musk has given something like $300M in political donations to support Republicans in the upcoming midterms -- and I've seen quite a lot of media coverage of this.
Much of this money is going to Texas, and James Talarico (the Democratic candidate there) has not been shy about accusing Musk of trying to buy the election.
Sure, flying cars are cool. But I don't get the impression that Musk's politics have been forgotten at all.
agos 9 hours ago [-]
The only way to be more explicit and literal about it would have been to make the car jump a shark instead of trucks
pvaldes 8 hours ago [-]
Cars are sentient since long time ago.
The problem is that people keep lying to themselves about the definition of the word sentient.
1) Cars use all kind of sensors to collect info about the real world.
They measure how much air is entering the motor in real time. They know if the rear left tire is deflated. They detect when they need to be feed with gas, they know the oil pressure and the ECU, the car's brain, is collecting all this info in real time via its "neurons", the BUS cable.
2) Cars react to this information constantly taking the measures appropriated to assure that the preservation of the car functions.
The ECU sends orders in real time to inject X gas into the motor to match Y liters of air in a perfect mix. The motor enters in panic mode and stops the power temporarily.
3) Cars communicate with their drivers
They send a warning to put more gas, or beep because they detected an obstacle behind them or that the seat belt is not being used.
Cars have lots of sophisticated electric sensors to sense the world so, like amoebas or plum trees, they fit perfectly into the definition of the word sentient
Using sentient as a cheaper synonym of self-conscious is moving the goalposts and a self-scam.
roryirvine 7 hours ago [-]
In discussing the boundaries of animal sentience, the most important question is whether they can feel pain or distress.
So whilst a car's ability to sense and react to its environment may be at least as sophisticated as that of a plum tree, it's hard to see how it would meet the legal threshold for sentience in the same way that, say, a lobster does.
More to the point - if Musk genuinely believes that his cars are capable of suffering, why isn't he doing anything to prevent them from being harmed?
pvaldes 5 hours ago [-]
> the most important question is whether they can feel pain or distress.
Most important question for a small group of people in a philosophical and quasi-religious movement that unilaterally redefined the term to fit their agenda.
Millions of scientists don't feel that pain is so special as to receive special treatment. Is just one of our type of sensors. Not more important than to be able to see, to taste or to hear. Definitely not more important than be able to reproduce. And there is a lot of pain involved in how mammals enter in the world.
The idea that to chop a tree is more moral than to kill a mosquito is totally random and alienated from biological reality.
happenstackJim 4 hours ago [-]
the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between [pulling a leaf off a tree and cutting the paw off a kitten]. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
pvaldes 3 hours ago [-]
I know that book. My favorite part from the wise man was "When run out of arguments, cite something out of context, use the fallacy of authority, and insult the other for something that didn't wrote (as if they would even care)".
Dead_Lemon 4 hours ago [-]
Plants do all these things too, hard to call them sentient.
pvaldes 3 hours ago [-]
A lot of people underestimate how complex and sophisticated are the plants really.
otterley 13 hours ago [-]
If it weren't for its CEO, they'd have at least one more customer.
alexgoodhart 13 hours ago [-]
While SpaceX's exceed expectations. Books cooked to justify merge
Mobius01 11 hours ago [-]
Tesla could have been so much more with an adult at the helm.
not_a_bot_4sho 11 hours ago [-]
Tesla cars are great. Best EV you can get when balancing cost and quality and capability. By far.
But it comes with Elon, so I drive a Rivian.
bikvfeee 9 hours ago [-]
If you're American. For the rest of the world, best EV is BYD.
AuthAuth 6 hours ago [-]
Byd kinda ugly though. Outside the cybertruck Tesla's look great
wodenokoto 10 hours ago [-]
Isn’t that an American thing? Like the Volks Wagons and Skoda seems like really good cars than many people in Europe drive, not to mention the storm of Chinese brands.
NewJazz 10 hours ago [-]
I think it is also a bit of an outdated take even in the US market. There are a lot of options these days. The subsidies may be gone, but not all of the ev models have been canceled and the used market is still quite reasonable.
maigret 10 hours ago [-]
Totally, I’ve sat multiple times in Tesla and I don’t see what I am missing. Their interior and design is quite meh also.
The interior of Tesla's feel cheaper than a 2013 Mitsubishi space star.
esFran 9 hours ago [-]
By far... not now.
MANY EVs sold by renamed automakers, and even good chinese brands.
ashkankiani 59 minutes ago [-]
[dead]
dzonga 3 hours ago [-]
will tesla exist in 15 years ?
will the never ending musk promises around his cars - level 4 autonomous driving etc bear fruit ?
can't even talk about the roadster
esFran 9 hours ago [-]
I really deslike this flying circus of the Tesla presentation from NaziMusk
gla67890543 13 hours ago [-]
Elon Musk scam makes Theranos, ENRON looks like a kinder garden children.
otterley 3 hours ago [-]
As much as I don't like Elon Musk, he did actually ship (and continues to ship) a working product at a real accounting profit, so I don't think this is a fair comparison.
maerF0x0 12 hours ago [-]
how so?
drtgh 8 hours ago [-]
I am curious to know how are performing the Tesla's sales of CO2 emission quotas to the manufacturers who have started producing electric vehicles (and therefore have started to cover their own emission quotas).
PS: I am not parent commenter, and this separately to the famous gesture with the arm that E.M. did, what can be guessed that harmed the sales.
dmitrygr 11 hours ago [-]
> Elon Musk scam makes Theranos, ENRON looks like a kinder garden children.
What is the scam? I do not like EVs and do not own a Tesla car, but Tesla does make them, they do work, and people do like them. Theranos, by comparison, never delivered (nor could deliver) what they promised. So I am not sure I get your comparison.
slau 11 hours ago [-]
Not OP, but could it be they refer to FSD?
There’s also DOGE and all the related stock manipulation that happened, the tweet promising funding to take TSLA private which obviously made people buy the stock, the ru[n|i]ning of Twitter for political gain, the creation of teams in Tesla to convince owners not to come investigate battery/range issues under warranty, etc.
Probably not quite to Theranos levels, but I can see the pattern.
Dylan16807 8 hours ago [-]
The unrealistic timelines for future improvements matter but they're a lot less than Theranos and Enron. And the current product is baaaasically what they promise even if they get wink wink nudge nudge about whether the self driving is level 2 or 4.
locknitpicker 7 hours ago [-]
> Not OP, but could it be they refer to FSD?
Gentle reminder that Tesla itself opted to call Tesla's sham of a FSD as "Tesla assisted driving" after regulators from multiple European countries made it very clear that at best ist assists drivers and still require drivers to never take their attention off the road.
Dig1t 9 hours ago [-]
I can go book an FSD robotaxi right now in downtown Austin TX, I know because I’ve done it many times. It’s real and works great. Not sure what you mean about FSD.
panick21_ 8 hours ago [-]
They sold FSD for private cars in cars like 7 years ago, that you can take a small area in Austian doesn't matter.
And people on Hardware 3 should collectively sue, because they will never, ever, ever, ever get FSD fully working on that. But instead of admiting that and paying people back (if they want) they continue to release small updates to pretendent its still possible. Musk is known for not giving a shit of supporting old shit, he looks at only the future always.
Dig1t 2 hours ago [-]
>small area in Austian
It’s like the entire city of Austin. It’s also the entire Bay Area.
I’m only making the point that it’s a real product and you can buy it. Sort of implied by the parent comment of it being a “scam” meaning that it was never delivered.
HW3 gets a supervised version which is the best they can do with the hardware that they shipped, it’s unfortunate I agree but it’s not totally out of line with what happens with other devices like the iPhone. Apple has a version of Apple Intelligence which is neutered on older devices, presumably because of hardware limitations.
- far right politics;
- helping Russia killing Ukrainian civilians;
- and threatening the livelihood of Europeans;
These might also help people decide to look somewhere else.
The last holdout being the USA, where the gov't is preferentially giving tesla their marketshare instead of letting open competition work in favour of consumers.
But like japanese cars, this will eventually also take root.
Why not? It looks like many people heard "vote with your wallet," and took it seriously. For better or worse, purchasing a Tesla, or not, has become a referendum on Musk himself.
With that said I don't disagree that the market evolved and Tesla isn't what it was.
> - helping Russia killing Ukrainian civilians;
Have you read a single thing about Starlink usage in the Ukraine conflict?
Because if you had, you'd know that Spacex has actively geofenced usage to allow it within Ukrainian territory but disallow it in Russian and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, instituted a whitelist policy coordinated with Ukrainian forces to whitelist Ukrainian terminals but disallow Russian terminals acquired through the black market
https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-ukraine-russ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainia...
They literally provide connectivity to Ukrainian forces and actively try to prevent usage by Russian forces but the moment they put any caveats on how the tech is used, like disallowing its usage by fast-moving objects or for offensive weapon guidance, they are "helping kill Ukrainian civilians".
Perhaps they should have just said Starlink would not work with defense/war usage at all and sat the conflict out and geofenced all of eastern Europe, like many protesters at Google ask their leadership to not do any defense industry deals. Would that have been better from your perspective?
You are actively spreading misinformation.
which makes it harder to use it for intercepting incoming drones and missiles
see also https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/22/ukraines-access-to...
Rigging a car to do a flip is a clear way to tell the world they officially ran out of ideas and are desperate to get a sale.
It's like everyone has completely forgotten Musk was up on stage with the US president doing nazi salutes just a couple of years as ago.
The same applies with the "sex sells" epidemic of the early 2000s: sure, the numbers showed that it was a great way to make people remember your ad, but they forgot to take into account that people remember the boobs and completely miss the brand.
I remember seeing snippets of the "flying car" going around on social media, so it clearly made an impression on me. I think it was supposed to be a Roadster relaunch? Release date? No idea. Price? No idea. Range? No idea. Number of seats? No idea. Cargo capacity? No idea. I bet it won't actually ship with those "rockets", though. Sooo, "clown makes car mockup fly"?
If you're going to do a stunt, at least do it properly. Like Volvo suspending an entire dump truck from a crane[0].
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_wKkV5dwQ
Lie Volvo and the reversing trucks, with Jean Claude Van Dam....
A real burn-your-boats moment so there's no chance of them working together again after that.
Much of this money is going to Texas, and James Talarico (the Democratic candidate there) has not been shy about accusing Musk of trying to buy the election.
Sure, flying cars are cool. But I don't get the impression that Musk's politics have been forgotten at all.
The problem is that people keep lying to themselves about the definition of the word sentient.
1) Cars use all kind of sensors to collect info about the real world.
They measure how much air is entering the motor in real time. They know if the rear left tire is deflated. They detect when they need to be feed with gas, they know the oil pressure and the ECU, the car's brain, is collecting all this info in real time via its "neurons", the BUS cable.
2) Cars react to this information constantly taking the measures appropriated to assure that the preservation of the car functions.
The ECU sends orders in real time to inject X gas into the motor to match Y liters of air in a perfect mix. The motor enters in panic mode and stops the power temporarily.
3) Cars communicate with their drivers
They send a warning to put more gas, or beep because they detected an obstacle behind them or that the seat belt is not being used.
Cars have lots of sophisticated electric sensors to sense the world so, like amoebas or plum trees, they fit perfectly into the definition of the word sentient
Using sentient as a cheaper synonym of self-conscious is moving the goalposts and a self-scam.
So whilst a car's ability to sense and react to its environment may be at least as sophisticated as that of a plum tree, it's hard to see how it would meet the legal threshold for sentience in the same way that, say, a lobster does.
More to the point - if Musk genuinely believes that his cars are capable of suffering, why isn't he doing anything to prevent them from being harmed?
Most important question for a small group of people in a philosophical and quasi-religious movement that unilaterally redefined the term to fit their agenda.
Millions of scientists don't feel that pain is so special as to receive special treatment. Is just one of our type of sensors. Not more important than to be able to see, to taste or to hear. Definitely not more important than be able to reproduce. And there is a lot of pain involved in how mammals enter in the world.
The idea that to chop a tree is more moral than to kill a mosquito is totally random and alienated from biological reality.
But it comes with Elon, so I drive a Rivian.
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Tesla
MANY EVs sold by renamed automakers, and even good chinese brands.
will the never ending musk promises around his cars - level 4 autonomous driving etc bear fruit ?
can't even talk about the roadster
PS: I am not parent commenter, and this separately to the famous gesture with the arm that E.M. did, what can be guessed that harmed the sales.
What is the scam? I do not like EVs and do not own a Tesla car, but Tesla does make them, they do work, and people do like them. Theranos, by comparison, never delivered (nor could deliver) what they promised. So I am not sure I get your comparison.
There’s also DOGE and all the related stock manipulation that happened, the tweet promising funding to take TSLA private which obviously made people buy the stock, the ru[n|i]ning of Twitter for political gain, the creation of teams in Tesla to convince owners not to come investigate battery/range issues under warranty, etc.
Probably not quite to Theranos levels, but I can see the pattern.
Gentle reminder that Tesla itself opted to call Tesla's sham of a FSD as "Tesla assisted driving" after regulators from multiple European countries made it very clear that at best ist assists drivers and still require drivers to never take their attention off the road.
And people on Hardware 3 should collectively sue, because they will never, ever, ever, ever get FSD fully working on that. But instead of admiting that and paying people back (if they want) they continue to release small updates to pretendent its still possible. Musk is known for not giving a shit of supporting old shit, he looks at only the future always.
It’s like the entire city of Austin. It’s also the entire Bay Area.
I’m only making the point that it’s a real product and you can buy it. Sort of implied by the parent comment of it being a “scam” meaning that it was never delivered.
HW3 gets a supervised version which is the best they can do with the hardware that they shipped, it’s unfortunate I agree but it’s not totally out of line with what happens with other devices like the iPhone. Apple has a version of Apple Intelligence which is neutered on older devices, presumably because of hardware limitations.