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Comment by rz2k | Hacker News Reader

Hand waving statements about the autopilot being safer than human drivers, and blaming passenger-drivers for not taking control earlier whenever there’s wreck is ridiculous, but it sounded more like overconfidence than bad faith.

That second paragraph is a far worse thing. Intentionally leading people into believing that government regulators are why a technology doesn’t exist makes it sound like they’re venturing into Theranos territory.

The last sentences about selling rides sound like the sort of false concern someone would try to raise in a pitch to misdirect investors away from asking about software problems that they internally worry might be insurmountable.

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With his latest "fake news" attack he's starting to sound more and more like Trump:

http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/23/technology/elon-musk-media/i...

He liked being the media's golden boy when they were fawning over him for a decade, now things get tough because him and his company exaggerate and he wants to take his ball and go home.

Eh, I think at this point Tesla exiting the auto market would have relatively little impact on the future of electric cars. They may have played an important early role in proving the technology is ready and creating demand, but the demand is there now and many manufacturers are trying to meet it.

(Whereas, SpaceX exiting the market would probably set back space travel considerably.)

If Tesla fails, then EV are essentially dead for another decade. Hybrids will fill the role for ecologically respectful transportation.

This is a ridiculous statement, Tesla accounts for less than 10% of global EV sales.

January-March 2018: 304K EV sales, 25K Tesla sales

https://insideevs.com/monthly-plug-in-sales-scorecard/

Apple accounts for a similar fraction of smartphones, but is far more influential than any other maker. Tesla occupies a similar role in terms of EV mindshare. At least in the US, carmakers are developing EVs out of fear that Tesla will succeed and suck out all the profits.

As others have pointed out, Tesla's failure in the EV market won't do much damage as it really isn't the big player and their poor execution is only handing money to competitors. Worse for Tesla they have already given time for established brands to enter and or announce their own EVs. Many people are waiting for their preferred brand of car to come with an EV option.

What the real threat is the damage to self driving that Tesla gives the public. After a series of very publicized crashes where Tesla handled their response poorly journalist are looking at every Tesla crash for involvement of their Autopilot software. Every crash is under suspicion. That alone is a hole that Tesla is going to have a hard time crawling out of and it combined with other companies missteps it will only keep setting back the field.

Not a chance. Look at what is happening in China.

Who would have guessed that two blowhards who inherited their wealth would throw temper tantrums when the media doesn't paint them in the kindest light possible.

I'm not sure why you say "more and more like Trump". He always sounded like someone with a similar approach to handling a lot of things.

OTOH, that doesn't make some of his charges less accurate. The media does engage in a lot of hyperbole about Tesla crashes and always has. We don't get hyperbolic reports every time some other car has an AEB failure. We definitely don't get them about every other car's post-crash fire. And a lot of the financial opinion pieces are only marginally better.

On the other side of the coin, you have the company's misleading marketing materials. Some will say that is just as bad as the bad journalism, I guess.

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