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Comment by Bubble_Pop_22 | Hacker News Reader

> His modus operandi is taking quick decisions and backtracking if he is wrong.

That is the modus operandi with products/services, it's not anything new anyways. It has been named in a bunch of different ways ranging from "agile" , "move fast break things" etc. also less charmingly "Microsoft vaporware products" or "Google graveyard", "Steve Jobs' bluffs"

They all indicate the same strategy: ship something and get feedback, if feedback is ultra-negative then you can always kill it.

However when legal stuff is signed, and especially legal stuff of this magnitude then the only way in which you leave yourself room to backtrack is if there is a clause which lets you do so in the legal document. When legal stuff is signed is not in your hands anymore, you have to treat it as being in the courts hands. Because that is what happens if you backtrack.

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For car industry and space industry it is a complete revolution.

From what I understand he can legally backtrack from the deal, but he would have to pay some billion dollars penalty. Not cheap by any means, but he can afford that. And having billion dollars at stake you can try to look for a lot of legal reasons to not pay that billion.

But my guess is that he genuinely thinks that 5% number is not accurate based on his twitter feed comments. His feed comments is mostly crypto scammers. Some independent people also claim that 50% of his followers are fake.

Twitter claim of 5% is very specific and probably accurate in a legal sense. But if you have tens of billions at stake and a deal that looks like a mistake it's entirely reasonable to dig deeper.

> For car industry and space industry it is a complete revolution.

Isn't a bit premature to declare it a successful revolution? Cases against Tesla autopilot are mounting, there is a reason why "move fast and break things" isn't used in fields where the people's lives are at stake. It's the reason why Theranos imploded. Who could have possibly predicted what could have happened if US Govt let Theranos run, maybe they'd have really developed the product in the following iteration of the company?

> From what I understand he can legally backtrack from the deal, but he would have to pay some billion dollars penalty

That is only the case if the FTC or the US. Govt. blocks the deal because of any reason.

I did not know that about the deal. Thanks for the info.

With SpaceX it is certainly a successful revolution. There is whole bunch of new startups that would not exists without SpaceX. Most of them will die, but some will not.

It is also quite clear that Tesla already achieved it's goal of accelerating transition to sustainable energy. Volkswagen shift is certainly linked to Tesla. And Volkswagen actually committed fraud on emissions that probably led to death of many people.

Situation with Theranos and Tesla is completely not comparable. Autopilot works fine. You are safer with autopilot activated on a highway than you are driving in a city per kilometer driven. Whether you are safer on a highway with or without autopilot is debatable and we don't have good enough data to settle it. So, Autopilot is not prefect by any means, arguably not market leading solution in the category of drive assist, but it works fine.

The bigger issue is with Full Self Driving. Tesla can drive you around in a city - so the way they spin what FSD means is almost satisfied. The issue is that it is extremely stressful experience and I'm 100% convinced that you are more likely to get in an accident when babysitting it vs. if you would drive by yourself and pay the same amount of attention.

But I think in 5 - 10 years they may be able to actually deliver proper working solution. They are making progress.

> Volkswagen shift is certainly linked to Tesla. And Volkswagen actually committed fraud on emissions that probably led to death of many people.

Apples and oranges. Volkswagen committed fraud on behalf of the consumer. In the endless war for quality of life as a consumer who has to spend 45k for a car I know that Volkswagen is conspiring on my behalf to sidestep environmental regulations and thus providing a vehicle which is more affordable, more durable with the tradeoff of being less green.

Same goes for oil companies, they are just in the business of extracting oil, they are the ones who take the blame for global warming whereas it's me burning it for quality of life purposes when refilling my Escalade or flying to Cabo for the weekend. I owe them one otherwise the nuts over at Extinction Rebellion or GreenPeace would attack my Escalade and cause trouble to airlines.

Tesla is the opposite of that, it's conspiring against the consumer by making a poorly refined car with a terrible design and lots of problems ranging from faulty Autopilot to sudden braking and unintended acceleration. They want to wash away all such disadvantages with a supposedly green car. But in the end if you understand anything about the industrial economy and power generation you get how Teslas are hardly green cars.

Well, then just don't buy Tesla. Problem solved. I don't own one and I don't want to.

But toxic exhausts within a city can not be tolerated.

I don't want externalties being offloaded on me and the democratic rule of law is there to make sure that we balance it.

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