I'd ask differently - is there any reason to believe Tesla will become of the top provider of self driving software after years of lies, misleading and over promising? What exactly could be automated and do we really want it?
How would you automate having a conversation with a driver when there is none? By employing some bs conversation bot? I don't feel like I'd enjoy it or want to use it at all. And, more importantly - where would the money go from using such service? To another "huge corporation" that already have shitloads of money? I'd rather use a human driven car knowing that driver gets payed instead of throwing money into black hole in foreign country.
Funny, 5 years ago, Tesla was valued as energy provider with it's solarcity. Then China crushed that. Today, BYD also crushing every Tesla market except for USA and EU where governments have to intervene to assist Tesla. Now is the AI? I doubt it. Tesla overpriced. They lack the innovation speed of Chinese, and lack the quality market based like Toyota. At this point, Tesla is fast becoming the next Solyndra.
Years of deliberate false statements by Tesla about their self-driving capacity should make any rational person very skeptical of their future claims.
Having a CEO who is obsessed with posting far-right-wing political statements on Xitter over managing his actual business is also a red flag. What rational manager goes out of their way to alienate at least half of their potential customers?
I am firmly in Tesla's target audience, but under no circumstances would I buy one, if only to avoid the social embarrassment of being associated with this pathologically mendacious malignant narcissist.
Optimal price point, market, vendor availability, the economy determine much of a company's fate. Blaming Tesla for any of these is misguided, as they change quickly and are hard to predict with any accuracy.
A small car company has a hard time reacting to any change, as they have necessarily a limited offering, one or two models with some options. Big companies can have an order of magnitude more flexibility.
Once a cheap Tesla was possible, the entire market situation changed for them. With slim margins, only clever marketing remain as a differentiator. Thus the banging on about self-driving or range increases or technology or whatever.
Trouble is, those things have to matter to the customer. Who has become more savvy as the literature on the subject has educated billions past the point of gee-whiz-it's-electric. Self-driving is moot, we've driven ourselves all our lives and are distrustful of automation. Range increases are still less than an ICE commuter box, that's becoming a hollow promise. And technology is a luxury car selling point, the buyer of economical transportation will prioritize that somewhere between bottom-of-the-list and off-the-list.
tl;dr: it's hard to be a small player; self-driving is a non-feature.
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[ 3.7 ms ] story [ 22.1 ms ] threadAny reasons to expect Tesla not becoming one of the top providers of self-driving software?
Having a CEO who is obsessed with posting far-right-wing political statements on Xitter over managing his actual business is also a red flag. What rational manager goes out of their way to alienate at least half of their potential customers?
I am firmly in Tesla's target audience, but under no circumstances would I buy one, if only to avoid the social embarrassment of being associated with this pathologically mendacious malignant narcissist.
A small car company has a hard time reacting to any change, as they have necessarily a limited offering, one or two models with some options. Big companies can have an order of magnitude more flexibility.
Once a cheap Tesla was possible, the entire market situation changed for them. With slim margins, only clever marketing remain as a differentiator. Thus the banging on about self-driving or range increases or technology or whatever.
Trouble is, those things have to matter to the customer. Who has become more savvy as the literature on the subject has educated billions past the point of gee-whiz-it's-electric. Self-driving is moot, we've driven ourselves all our lives and are distrustful of automation. Range increases are still less than an ICE commuter box, that's becoming a hollow promise. And technology is a luxury car selling point, the buyer of economical transportation will prioritize that somewhere between bottom-of-the-list and off-the-list.
tl;dr: it's hard to be a small player; self-driving is a non-feature.