Hacker News Reader

Comment by caio1982 | Hacker News Reader

caio1982

Danso, by no means I wanted to "stalk" you but I noticed you posted at least 5 negative/harsh articles about Tesla last month, which is fine to me as HN has a lot of Musk fanboys to counterbalance, anyways, I was wondering if you have any customer story to share about Tesla that affected you, i.e. did you own one and it was a bad car or did you lost money investing in them? I am genuinely interested in that background so if it may read offensive to you please let me know so maybe I can rephrase it! PS: I would like to buy a Tesla myself but I can't because of where I live, so I can only read people's account about them

View on HN

No worries, looking up someone's posting history is kosher IMO.

No, I'm not a Tesla customer. Nor do I have any position in Tesla stocks (or oil, for that matter).

To be honest, I think the Tesla cars sound quite good, and appreciate what Musk and the company has done to make EV an attractive industry. But as you've probably seen in my Tesla-related submissions, I'm currently not a huge fan in how Tesla is currently promoting AutoPilot and responding to AutoPilot incidents. I don't know much about car manufacturing but I do have an interest in AI/machine learning.

Thanks man, I appreciate the honest response, and that's exactly what I was imagining (skepticism towards self-driving tech, that I share to some extent).

Here's a recent discussion by me and another user on yesterday's Tesla thread that sums up my problems with AP:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17232991

I get that Tesla's in a somewhat tough situation, having increased pressure to prove its manufacturing and sales are long-term viable. I don't agree that Tesla gets disproportionate negative media/attention (relative to the positive media that it gets), but I can see why Tesla would feel particularly harmed at this stage in development.

But since they've sold AutoPilot as a major defining feature, I think it's fair to raise it as an issue. Particularly on HN given the general interest here in AI/machine learning.

Doing it perhaps for the click-bait karma?

Edit: I'm one of those people that believe in what Elon is doing and while I don't consider myself a fan-boy, I get plenty frustrated by all of the biased negativity I somehow feel the need to inject some balance by saying something. That may come across as only ever defending, but the amount of negative fluff articles is astonishing.

OK, you've accused me of submitting "click-bait karma" and "negative fluff articles". Care to elaborate on why you think the article under discussion is not legitimate?

It singles out Tesla and provides no broader context. Specifically there is no mention of the policies of other car companies. It is like saying that Kumo tires have been in 5 million car accidents. Sounds bad for Kumo, but there is no context to other types of tires. Will BMW or Lexus provide vehicle data after a crash? Will Google provide Android Auto data upon request?

OK, so it's incumbent on you to show where other companies have used data in the way that Tesla has done in response to accidents. Here's a Guardian article from last year that made a related allegation about Tesla and user data:

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/apr/03/the-custo...

> The Guardian could not find a single case in which Tesla had sought the permission of a customer who had been involved in an accident before sharing detailed information from the customer’s car with the press when its self-driving software was called into question. Tesla declined to provide any such examples and disputed the description of its automation software, called Autopilot, as “self-driving”.

I've Googled around but haven't been able to find instances of other companies releasing data in the wake of an incident, or being criticized by owners for not releasing data, though obviously the average car does not have the data systems that are standard on Tesla.

When Facebook gets criticized in an article for exposing/sharing user data, do you ignore the article if it doesn't have a complete rundown of how every other tech company may or may not abuse user data?

What about this article makes it "fluff" to you? Or biased, for that matter? Is the reporting inaccurate?

Accusations of bias like this always confuse me, as if reporting is obliged to present both sides: "Tesla won't give customers their own crash data. But some say that's a good thing!"

I think it's fair to have both positive and negative articles about companies shared around, I just wish to understand if there is a personal story to be shared too, specially given I am skeptical about self-driving cars as of today, and public claims about their success rates.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com