- cross-posted to:
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- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
After years of promising investors that millions of Tesla robotaxis would soon fill the streets, Elon Musk debuted his driverless car service in a limited public rollout in Austin, Texas. It did not go smoothly.
The 22 June launch initially appeared successful enough, with a flood of videos from pro-Tesla social media influencers praising the service and sharing footage of their rides. Musk celebrated it as a triumph, and the following day, Tesla’s stock rose nearly 10%.
What quickly became apparent, however, was that the same influencer videos Musk promoted also depicted the self-driving cars appearing to break traffic laws or struggle to properly function. By Tuesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had opened an investigation into the service and requested information from Tesla on the incidents.
Let me tell you how thrilled we all are to have a new hazard added to Austin streets.
Always interesting to see the view of the degree of Elon Musk’s involvement in his companies’ decisions swing depending on whether the outcome is good or bad.
His particular degree of involvement in this decision has been well documented for years, long before the consequences of those decisions.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2019/05/06/elon-musks-war-on-lidar-who-is-right-and-why-do-they-think-that/#19deb44f2a3b
https://insideevs.com/news/658439/elon-musk-overruled-tesla-autopilot-engineers-radar-removal/
Sure, not disputing that. I’m more annoyed by the double standard regarding his successful decisions.
Not sure what you mean. He’s always been pretty involved in Tesla designs.
What I mean is that when Musk-owned companies have successes people are very often quick to accuse him of “just hiring smart people” or “just buying a successful company.” It’s only when those companies have failures that he gets credit for being hands-on in their design decisions.
Don’t get me wrong, I think Elon Musk is a pretty terrible person both in terms of his personality and his politics. But pretty terrible people can nevertheless be smart and make good engineering decisions. Just look at von Braun as a prime example.
I think it is more nuanced than that. He has had a variable amount of involvement in multiple companies throughout the years, and noting when something is or is not his fault is not a bad thing.
Like I said before, he has been pretty heavily involved in Tesla since he bought the company. He notably makes a lot of decisions. SpaceX, on the other hand, is notably run by Gwynne Shotwell for a majority of decisions. He has made some design decisions, but he is pretty checked out on the day to day.
I don’t think he was never a good engineer, but I think he has not done it in so long, that he has lost those skills. Also, if the alleged amount of ketamine he does is even kind of accurate, that does not help make good decisions. He also has almost nobody he will listen to. We can see all that reflected in the decline of good ideas coming out of Tesla (again, the company he is most involved in).
Calling Musk an engineer is like saying the same about Steve Jobs. Both are(/were) salesmen happy to claim credit for every success while delegating blame for problems.
Not that this is unique to the pair in the current climate of people believing in messianic oligarchs, but I’m not really aware of any boots-on-the-ground innovation that sprang forth from Musk’s mind. The Cybertruck is a fucking joke, and that seems to be the thing at Tesla he was most involved in of late, then broke the windows during a demo.
Leave breaking Windows at a keynote to Steve Ballmer.
I think at one point he was a software engineer. I don’t he has been that for a long time, though. This is also probably not true any longer, but he did have a knack for spotting up and coming companies and buying them.
The Cybertruck is definitely the epitome of Musk’s current “skills”
It’s entirely possible he was responsible for some of PayPal, but since, his MO has been, as you said, buying up promising companies. And there’s nothing wrong with that. The problem comes when he rewrites history to be the founder instead of simply an investor in these firms and claims credit for shit he simply didn’t do.
I fell for it myself for a while. Early days of Tesla, early days of SpaceX … dude knows how to sell and arguably accelerated BEVs, but it appears he doesn’t know how to actually carve tunnels or rewrite mass transit with functionally unlimited money. Not to mention, Starship is having a really bad time these days, which stands in stark contrast to how banal Falcon launches have become.
Oh for sure, back when all he said was “here all of Tesla’s patents. Feel free to use them” I also fell for it. I honestly don’t think his views were any different, he just kept his mouth shut
Gut feeling, I agree. That said, I’ve heard from friends (let’s hear it for hearsay!) that their friends and relatives seem to be going away from their core beliefs and instead believing everything endlessly spat at them by a glowing rectangle.
I have to think there’s an Ouroboros aspect to all of this. Regardless of Musk’s upbringing, he did bring electric vehicles front and center and oversaw the creation of reusable rockets. These are not small things. Many would be content with that, but then he went megalomaniac … MOAR … MOAR, and now we’re seeing declining sales at Tesla; Xitter is, well, whatever it is; and SpaceX hasn’t been doing great of late.
I’m reminded of Tom from MySpace. Got a few million on the way out, and he’s under the radar, presumably enjoying cocktails with umbrellas in them. Like, if you’re set for life, maybe don’t try again.