Checking In With Tesla

The Guardian printed an excerpt from a couple of Swedish (I think) journalists who were able to get their hands on a bunch of leaked documents. It may not surprise regular readers to know that Elon has done some stupid things with Tesla, including:

• Flush door handles that are supposed to automatically release when an accident happens, but don’t, trapping occupants in a burning car.

• Autopilot that disengages a second before a crash so Tesla can claim that autopilot was disengaged before an accident.

• Claiming transparency about accidents but not releasing critical information about them.

• Claiming that Teslas send telemetry constantly back to Tesla HQ, but omitting the fact that there are many circumstances when they don’t.

The piece also links to a YouTube video by an engineer who has almost 70 million subscribers. The video contains a number of experiments showing that a self-driving car with LIDAR, which his similar to radar but using lasers, out-performs a Tesla, which only uses cameras. This was Elon’s decision because the world’s smartest man figured that if humans could drive a car only using their eyesight, so could cars, so why have LIDAR?

Still, we have this:

I’ve written before that when Tesla gets to $200/share, Elon might be sweating a bit. The fanboys are keeping it well above that mark, no matter how many fact-based pieces show that these cars aren’t the amazing tech that Elon says they are.