Tesla’s user-unfriendly anti-customer douchebaggeries

[Axtremus]

A good write-up of the various ways Tesla fall short and spring costly surprises on their customers:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2021/05/14/tesla-apple-tech/

Specific to this issue:

The electric vehicle giant revoked access [to its “Full Self-Driving” package] for some drivers, it said. Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Twitter in March that some users who had received access to the company’s most advanced driver-assistance features “did not pay sufficient attention to the road.”

My take is that if you still require the human driver to pay attention, you don’t have a “full self-driving” package. I will believe that you are “full self-driving” when you take full legal responsibility for whatever happens without requiring a human to be behind the wheel.

Other douchebag moves include reducing the customer’s driving range and/or slowing down the car batteries’ charging rate via software updates, and their lawyers arguing with regulators that the touchscreen (the interface for lots of information about and controls for the car) does not need to last as long as the car.

[Jolly]

If I was you, I wouldn't buy one...

[Axtremus]

If I were me, I also wouldn't buy one, at least not as a primary means of transportation. Buying one as a status symbol or a toy or for engineering curiosity is a different matter altogether.

[Mik]

Call me a Luddite. I just don't think we are there yet. We'll get there, but it will take a few more years.

[Horace]

Word on the street is that we'll never get to FSD.

[Mik]

So many variables and the ability to absorb and act on them all appropriately may be beyond AI. At least for now.

[taiwan_girl]

I think self driving cars are pretty cool, but like Mik said it is still a few years off.

I would have no problem using one.

It is interesting that when one of these crashes, it is almost national news. But, how many hundreds or thousands of crashes occur every day when people have the wheel. I am not 100% sure that human drivers are any better than a self driving car.

[xenon]

There's also a chicken and egg problem here with infrastructure. If autonomous driving were actually catching on, small little beacons in the road lines could perhaps make it extra reliable (in case of bad weather)... I'm sure there are other things you could add.

It can work theoretically... and there are huge benefits... but executing with existing infrastructure is hard.

[Doctor Phibes]

Basically, it's a glorified bus service for rich, anti-social people.

[Horace]

@doctor-phibes said in Tesla’s user-unfriendly anti-customer douchebaggeries:

Basically, it's a glorified bus service for rich, anti-social people.

While real busses are filled with middle class, gregarious social butterflies.

[xenon]

In an end-state (theoretical) - where all cars could communicate with each other - you wouldn't need intersections. You could get a lot more usage out of the same amount of infrastructure space.

It wouldn't make much sense for any individual to own a car. I know that sounds weird to us. I love driving.

It's kind of like how having a horse is a rich person's thing now. No one would think of riding their own horse down the street, or think that's a socially desirable thing.