[HN Gopher] Tesla Falsely Advertises Autopilot, Full Self-Drivin...
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Tesla Falsely Advertises Autopilot, Full Self-Driving Tech:
California DMV
Author : matrix
Score : 27 points
Date : 2022-08-08 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thedrive.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thedrive.com)
| superchroma wrote:
| I am honestly surprised as much time passed as it did before we
| got to this point. Tesla could have sold preorders for a future
| product called autopilot and gave away the current feature-set
| renamed as "smart cruise control" for free with every purchase
| and completely dodged this bullet. The current product would be
| no less remarkable for it either.
|
| I worry that what may kill Elon's ventures in the end will be the
| collective weight of many small moments of impatience or hubris
| compounding over time, which is sad because the broad strokes
| have been fairly well played so far.
| nullhack wrote:
| Perhaps "Tesla Autopilot" can be the first Marketing Lie to
| vanish from the list: "Almond Milk", "Veggie Patties", "RNA
| Vaccine"...
|
| And the plethora of USA Liar Laws such as the "Patriot Act",
| "Inflation Reduction" bill...
|
| Until then, we live in a country owned by Marketers and
| Lobbyists, and Elon Musk can call his AI cars Self-Driving* as
| long as he likes
| DowsingSpoon wrote:
| >Perhaps "Tesla Autopilot" can be the first Marketing Lie to
| vanish from the list: "Almond Milk", "Veggie Patties", "RNA
| Vaccine"...
|
| I don't care about Autopilot and instead want to comment on
| some of the rest of your list. What are you going on about??
| Veggie Patty is not a marketing lie in the slightest. It's a
| patty. It's made of plants. That's about as straight-forward
| as possible. The mRNA vaccines do in fact make use of mRNA;
| no lie there. Almond milk is a fine name. It's milk from an
| almond in the dictionary definition of the word. Really
| struggling to understand what you're getting at here...
| wmeredith wrote:
| If you think the language around "Almond Milk" needs to
| vanish, you may be the victim of recent big dairy marketing
| efforts, yourself. Plant based milks have been a thing in
| cultures around the globe for thousands of years:
| https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/nut-milks-are-milk-
| sa...
| mlsu wrote:
| This is the power of marketing. It can cut through _the
| government_ on something like this for years.
|
| Tesla should be #1 in the definition of a marketing-first
| company. Why are they not? Their marketing!
| leobg wrote:
| This is such a popular talking point here on HN, and I don't
| get it:
|
| Tesla does zero ads. They don't even have a PR team (go ask
| journalists, they literally find nobody to talk to at Tesla).
|
| They scaled from 3,000 cars to 3 million cars in just ten
| years. Back in 2011, I saw exactly ONE Tesla roadster in
| Santa Monica. Now, walk around for two minutes and you'll see
| several S, 3, X and Y. Same in Switzerland. In 2016, I'd see
| one or two a day. Now you see several per hour. These cars
| are real, and they are changing the world around us.
|
| How can you call that a "marketing-first company"?
|
| Yes, they are getting attention. But they're getting it for
| the things they are actually building.
|
| They are also the place that attracts the most engineering
| talent. I have yet to find a Tesla job post for social media
| marketing.
|
| Tesla's main achievement is not marketing. It's volume
| production (i.e. manufacturing). And building cars that
| convert people when they drive them. You can call that
| marketing. But I would call that engineering and product
| design.
| desindol wrote:
| Everything communicated by a brand or their ceo is
| marketing.
| gamblor956 wrote:
| Tesla does marketing all the time in SoCal, so that's
| clearly false. Also, I'm pretty sure they launched a car
| into space once? That counts as a marketing activity.
| Referral bonuses, free Supercharging, etc., are similarly
| marketing activities, and other automakers refer to such
| activities as marketing in their financials. (In fact,
| Tesla just announced a major marketing effort in China
| today... https://www.theverge.com/2022/8/8/23297417/tesla-
| ownership-l...). That Tesla does not characterize marketing
| activities as marketing simply indicates that their
| financials are not prepared under GAAP and instead
| represent fantasy unicorn accounting.
|
| _They scaled from 3,000 cars to 3 million cars in just ten
| years._
|
| Most modern Chinese automakers scaled even faster than
| that. And if you think that's impressive, Ford went from 0
| to 3 million cars in less than 10 years. Without
| electricity, robots, or fancy technology.
|
| _These cars are real, and they are changing the world
| around us._
|
| Agreed, the streets are now significantly more dangerous
| due to all the Tesla vehicles driving around like drunk
| drivers while in AP or FSD modes. Tesla may set back the
| adoption of self-driving technologies by a decade.
|
| _They are also the place that attracts the most
| engineering talent. I have yet to find a Tesla job post for
| social media marketing._
|
| Tesla only conducts so much R&D because they insist on
| recreating a worse version of the wheel rather than using
| outside suppliers. Except for their supposed
| differentiating factor, the batteries, which are actually
| made for them by outside suppliers (i.e., Panasonic).
|
| But on that note, every single one of the other major
| automakers conducts more R&D into actual new areas of
| technology than Tesla. They just don't constantly brag
| about it on Twitter.
|
| _Tesla's main achievement is not marketing. It's volume
| production (i.e. manufacturing)._
|
| I laughed so hard I almost sharted. Tesla has the worst
| volume production of any major automaker, and for several
| years straight has the ignomious distinction of being at or
| near the bottom in terms of initial car quality (as
| measured by the number of manufacturing defects in new
| vehicles), so to the extent they make "more" cars it is
| because they cars they do make are lower quality.
|
| _And building cars that convert people when they drive
| them._
|
| I now know more former Tesla owners than current Tesla
| owners. Tesla's 0-60 speed convinced a lot of people to buy
| EVs. But their abysmal build quality guaranteed that most
| Tesla buyers' first Tesla would also be their last. Only
| the die-hards buy more than one Tesla in SoCal anymore.
| seydor wrote:
| But we knew that already
| Rackedup wrote:
| But Tesla didn't see the consequences, yet.
| lern_too_spel wrote:
| We also knew that Elizabeth Holmes was bullshitting, but that
| didn't prevent other people from being taken.
| seydor wrote:
| Nobody knew, there were very few voices asking questions
| about theranos (like dr. Ioannidis) but their shenanigans
| were unknown until Carreyou publicized them
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