> That was always intended to be... [something else entirely]

That's not what he said, anyone can invent excuses after the fact but that doesn't change the facts.

Musk simply pulled the "Don't be evil" trick, in so many words. Oops, sorry, not being evil helps the competition - which has also been slapped with 150% tariff, just in case.

I wouldn't go so far as to say it was a "scam" but there were definitely reasons that other automakers didn't take them up on the offer. IMHO if someone like Ford or Toyota had taken them up on the offer they could be miles ahead of the competition today and not lagging behind the Chinese competitors. While there were strings attached there were also a lot of good ideas in those patents that would have boosted development and deployment timelines.

Worse than that [1].

> asserted, helped others assert or had a financial stake in any assertion of (i) any patent or other intellectual property right against Tesla

You had to agree to let Tesla use any of your patents, copyrights, trademarks, trade secrets, and all other forms of intellectual property. In return Tesla lets you use just their patents.

Yes, it is actually explicitly that blatantly unfair.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/legal/additional-resources#patent-pled...

Personally I think the strategy of starting with luxury cars and getting cheaper was a good one. The bigger profit margin of luxury cars could be fed back into R&D to make cheaper electric cars viable.

Of course, that's the ideal situation. Tesla in 2025 is very different from what they were talking about in 2014.

> [1] The thing I've alsways disliked most about Tesla actually — not a car "for the people" — way too rarefied, elite.

This seems a little crazy. They started with the fastest one, but it was still much cheaper than equivalents, and model 3s and model ys have been selling like hot cakes. These are cars for the people.

>[1] The thing I've alsways disliked most about Tesla actually — not a car "for the people" — way too rarefied, elite.

Not generally a fan of Teslas but this just rings hollow. You can get Model 3's and Model Y's for under $40k which is much less than the average cost of a new car in the US. (~$49k in 2025). I would consider a car priced below the average well within the reach of "the people". Even a top specced Model S is no where near what actually rarefied elites could drive. A Base 911 Carerra is ~$130k, a 911 Turbo S is $230k. A New Ferrari 296 is over $400k and you can't buy one even if you wanted to.

From my understanding this couldn't be further from the truth.

Elon knew that EV's weren't sexy, so he decided to risk it and build a fast and ultimately expensive EV to begin with, to show people that they were worth buying and fast.

Only now through the model Y and the model 3 are we now seeing more consumer friendly models, which is what Elon always wanted from the start.

Here in Australia you can buy a model 3 for around the same price as our most sold car.

> not a car "for the people" — way too rarefied, elite.

Based on what? They are at or below the avg car price. They are literally definitionally avg.

In fact, the Model 3 was one the cheapest electric cars at the time.

And still today Model Y isn't all the expensive. And its the most sold car in the world. How can the most sold car in the world be considered elite?

The model Y was the best selling car in the world last year: https://www.statista.com/statistics/239229/most-sold-car-mod...

That's a lot of flaunters.

They've never been that. Their goal has always been to be the highest volume car manufacturer in the world, not some weird status symbol.

The Model Y being the best selling car in the world for 2 years in a row is a part of that.

There's nothing rarefied at all about it.

They are symbols. Far more carbon would be saved if people instead bought solar panels for thier houses and drove a smaller IC car rather than an EV tank. But you cannot flaunt solar panels like you can a fancy car.

I think your impression is mostly speaking about you.

The whole problem with EV transitioning is that the charging requires you to build out infrastructure. By making their standards open they made the infrastructure investment shared. This was a high confidence basis for build-out. Now third parties like ABB produce chargers and sell them to third parties like gas stations. It's a perfectly rational business decision coming from a strategic position of "large greenfield investment and ongoing maintenance required". Obviously things evolve, but Tesla is certainly not in a worse position for the charging infrastructure (the main enabler of their products) due to the open patents decision at present.

These are the same people who are staunchly opposed to regulating emissions in any way.

So in a way it’s great that they’ve been convinced to buy zero-emissions vehicles by giving them a reactionary edgelord option that’s just like every other EV. (Except for the suicide FSD mode which is more like a Darwin awards filter.)

They are actually lacking. Their reliability is low (https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2024-us-vehi...), even comparing with ICEs, and as electric vehicles they should be naturally more reliable. They are also known to refuse to participate in quality studies (https://www.motorbiscuit.com/dumb-reason-tesla-ineligible-j-...). In 2023 they were at the bottom of the reliability list by JD Power (https://www.jdpower.com/business/press-releases/2023-us-init...).

They're not actually that great of an EV anymore. The build quality is lackluster and the ride on the Model 3 in particular is quite harsh.

Some of the comments I hear almost universally from prior Model 3 owners when they switch to an Ioniq 5 is how much nicer the ride quality is and how nice it is to have buttons on the dash again.

> Well because Tesla's are excellent cars and are still ranked at the top compared to the rest of the market.

whilst surely top ranked, they apparently share the top with others makers (https://www.euroncap.com/en/ratings-rewards/latest-safety-ra...) (Large Family Cars category, last two years, order by occupant protection).

Tesla came out last in a 2-3 and 4-5 reliability comparison by the German inspection service TÜV, for the past two years.

https://www.carscoops.com/2024/11/tesla-model-3-comes-bottom...

But they aren't. What Tesla has going for them primarily is the Supercharger network.

The Cybertruck is a complete disaster of a vehicle with so many issues (eg [1]) that the only reason people buy them is to make a political statement from a group that 3+ years ago wouldn't have been caught buying an EV.

Teslas are drivable iPads. Many people (myself included) not only hate this (because it's hard to use without looking) but it's also lazy design. By this I mean, it allows manufacturers to say "we'll fix it with a software update" (and then probably never get around to it) whereas haptic controls require more thought and effort to be put into the UI/UX during manufacturing.

For other Teslas, there have been a host of other issues, some small, some not. For example, the seats were unreliable if adjusted too often so Tesla made an OTA update to limit how much you can adjust the seats to avoid failure [2].

The only thing propping up Tesla sales now are trade restrictions on BYD.

[1]: https://apnews.com/article/cybertruck-recall-tesla-elon-musk...

[2]: https://driveteslacanada.ca/news/tesla-now-monitors-how-ofte...

Do they have CarPlay yet?

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The cybertruck is an excellent car?

Ioniq 5

Teslas don’t even have a Speedo, let alone a HUD. It’s just an iPad with proprietary software which can’t sync with your phone. Terrible

Boot-space is literally all it has going for it, you can equal or surpass the other categories for less here in Europe, and if you buy used since used EV's are dirt cheap you could get something significantly better with far better badge-appeal for about the same price.

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Not without tariffs they are not.

And the chinese models are just much better.

That may have been true 4 years ago but it’s far from true now. The only feature Tesla has that no other car seems to have is that minimalist “dentist’s waiting room decorated in the 1990s to seem futuristic” energy from the interior, which definitely sets Tesla apart although not entirely in a good way.

Ha ha, vice signaling. Good phrase for pickup trucks "rolling coal".

My favorite is that it identified my wife's Honda CRV as a trash can.

I am aware that FSD has a different software stack. But it's the same hardware. So why would they make the detection of kids different on the standard firmware artificially worse? As Marketing for people who hate school kids?

I find it laughable that there still are Musk fanboys who after a decade of lies about this still believe in "Robotaxis". 90% of them clearly have never tried to drive a Tesla in a scenario where the minimal protections for kids to use public street space is not "kids should get a SUV to not get killed".

It is also amusing to watch videos of Tesla fanboys on YouTube who proudly show that their Tesla now can use FSD for up to 500 miles without a single crash (or "critical disengagement)". A human driver statistically causes a crash every 500,000 miles.

But yes, we will have flying Robotaxis in 2 weeks from now, that will solve this problem. Musk said so.

:)

Well, we don't have FSD in Europe, and in US, I guess the children don't walk to school.

Soon promised to only have 1/10 of detection failures, better than ever before! Only 1 child per week! Rejoice!

On a more serious note: Where do we as a society put the bar? What are the numbers, at which we accept the risk? Do we put the bar higher than for humans? Or same level? Or does the added convenience for car drivers tempt us to accept a lower bar?

In Germany (and a lot of the world, really) town centers are very old and streets are narrow and are shared. Over here it is also totally legal to cross the road wherever you like.

Also, due to the narrow roads it's standard practice to be in eye contact with other users of the shared space to make sure who drives/walks next.

Car AIs can not hold eye contact, so this is where the problem starts.

And, this one of course is very very specific just to Germany: On parts of the Autobahn you have to always expect another car approaching on the left lane with 250 km/h / 155 MPH, so you really have to use the rear view mirror very early to get an idea at what speed that car may be moving. The reach of the Tesla back camera is far too low for another driver at that speed being able to break so to not crash into your back.

So, when it comes to Germany even if the system worked better, there simply is no place where you could really make use of it without either killing people or getting killed.

Crash data for all other ADAS systems is already public [1]. The only manufacturer with heavily redacted information in that data to the point of being useless is Tesla.

[1] https://www.nhtsa.gov/laws-regulations/standing-general-orde...

I agree, although that's more about the request(er) than anything else.

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Uhh, WaPo was requesting crash data from NHTSA on driver assistance systems. Tesla is the only manufacturer trying to prevent that disclosure.

There are over 40,000 _fatal_ car crashes per year in the US, and a few orders of magnitude more non-fatal crashes. Most of them do not make the news.

For stories like this, I think it's usually just a small sample that end up making the news.

Happened in north carolina, but the incident is still being investigated according to the relative who is still in the hospital (luckily only major bruising, nothing broken, subarus are really good at rolling safety it turns out).

Self driving Teslas getting into accidents is now so common that it is no longer news.

To me anything less than true level 4 should remain with the driver.

I also believe that marketing it as FSD should be liable and scrutinized as a level 4 system. Because when you hear FSD, the public naturally thinks the abilities marked in level 4 arguably even 5.

Removing the steering wheel and pedals from the robotaxi is Tesla embracing culpability, whether they like it or not. If they are negligent and cannot claim human error they will face huge damage awards.

It seems clear to me at least that Elon did a major pump of FSD, realized he was full of shit so got into politics to try to hack the system in his favor to hide the truth

This is the same attitude that people used to try and avoid any culpability for Boeing in the 737-Max crashes. Even if they was a technical way to avoid a crash, it doesn’t avoid negligent or blatantly bad engineering practices. There’s a reason why engineers are expected to have an ethical duty to the public. Automakers get an industrial exemption on the assumption that the internal processes are sufficient to address the risk…What are we supposed to do when they aren’t?

I hate Tesla as much as the next sane man, but this rumor is just a rumor. Tesla counts FSD (and Autopilot) as being "in use" during an accident if it was enabled at any time in the 10 seconds before the accident.

Isn't that the whole point of levels 2 and 3? Fine print applied to the marketed operating modes of heavy equipment. Surprise, you were supposed to be driving!

They either have to bake it into the cost of the car or offer it as an option. I appreciate they offer all three options: don't purchase $0, purchase outright for $8,000, or subscribe for $99/month.

Isn't that what Boeing did? We all know how that ended.

At this point, Tesla's FSD is almost certainly more "baked" than the vast majority of software you've ever used. The amount of engineering and compute time that have gone into it are colossal.

That said, something being excessively baked does not mean it is good.

You can buy it outright if you prefer. Or you can just not buy it at all.

> That's exactly the problem. It's great right until it isn't, at which point it's likely to make a decision that will kill you or someone else if you aren't lucky.

This should be weighed against the fallibility of human drivers, surely? Our point of comparison is not "perfect", it's "human." Inasmuch, with millions of miles driven, FSD appears to be many times safer than humans: https://www.notebookcheck.net/Tesla-Autopilot-and-FSD-are-no...

Not perfect, and there will be crashes, but much better, and I think that's the yard stick we should be using, because no system will ever be perfect.

Agreed, but you can't not pay attention with the new Vision Attention Monitoring. Not sure if it's HW4/v12 specific but it watches your eyesight specifically.

So for example, if I look at the screen, my phone, or start day-dreaming for even a few seconds, it'll beep and quickly strike me out from using FSD. "FSD (supervised)" is how it shows up in the UI too at least giving some expectation of it not being autonomous.

So in practice, I'm picturing the right driving inputs and watching what it's doing.

Tesla has roughly 0.3% VIO TOTAL in the US (taking global statistics into account it's barely measurable), and a fraction of that fraction are actually using FSD on a regular basis - so I would sure hope they kill "a lot fewer people".

https://wolfstreet.com/2021/12/13/vehicles-in-operation-and-...

Given the topic at hand, how do you know that? How is it possible to know that?

Unless the data literally sings it from the tree tops less than honest people will pretend it says whatever they want it to say for clicks and eyeballs.

With how popular Musk is these days I can 100% where Tesla is coming from here.

It is possible that Tesla wouldn't want positive data released. If their approach is trending positively, releasing the data would suggest to competitors that they should adopt the same approach.

Which is a very odd claim to try to make.

Would we accept Pfizer releasing a new pill without evidence?

“It’s better at preventing heart attacks than anything else. But we can’t show you data, that would hurt our competitive advantage.”

What is this record of which you speak and what, pray tell, are the penalties suffered by Elon for lying repeatedly on it?

he can say that all he wants, but Tesla's profits go away when the credits go away, and likely so does his stock price again.

That's what I don't get about Tesla.

VW, BYD or Toyota or judged on how many cars the sell. What is Tesla judged on?

But then I remember that investors just want to dump their shares on the next sucker they don't really care about the underlying business case.

Europe is shooting itself in the foot if they're not doing their damnedest to brain-drain as many scientists and engineers as they can while things implode here.

Funny he is suddenly 'at war' at the exact same time he was scheduled to leave government from the start (temporary employee limit) AND he had to go back to his companies and rehab his reputation. Super convenient timing and totally not theatrics/lies from the reality TV personality and the guy who said he wasn't donating to either presidential candidates this cycle right before buying Trump the election.

This is interesting because the only thing keeping senators in line with Trump's bs before was the threat of a primary funded by Musk, how does he whip their votes now without that threat?

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Quite oddly in the context of all these varied comments, this key claim is demonstrated as false.

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They're converting smart minds into technical innovation with an efficiency higher than pretty much every other company in USA.

Me giving them capital helps them keep more people from ending up writing boilerplate code for fintech startups and other fairly fruitless endeavors.

AFAICT the stock is also insanely overvalued, especially compared to ”real” car making companies eg Toyota. The Silicon Valley hype valuation based on future exponential growth seems further and further away from reality every day. P/E anyone?

ADAS is the industry standard term for things above basic cruise control isn’t it?

It’s not a term Musk dreamed up.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_driver-assistance_s...