It’s easy enough to avoid clicking on articles containing “Greenland”, “ICE”, etc. if you don’t want to talk about those things. Is it also necessary to make sure that none of your fellow nerds talk about those things either?

I consider tech workers to be “my tribe” and am curious to know what others think about what’s happening in the world around us.

I’ve considered Elon to be a bit of a bullshitter for almost as long as I’ve followed him. Back when he was an opportunistic Democrat, and now that he’s an ideological MAGA, his public statements always seemed to set off my bullshit detector. It seemed clear to me that his intention was more to manipulate perception rather than to disseminate factual information. While most business leaders are guilty of this to some degree, with Elon it seemed more cynically and nakedly so.

I’ve also come to consider him to be a skilled business person. He negotiated a ridiculous low price for the Fremont ex-NUMMI plant. He secured funding to enable Tesla to survive the GFC. The list goes on. I’d argue that Elon’s biggest wins were business related, not technical. Not that there weren’t technical accomplishments, it’s just that the technological accomplishments were more incremental SV type stuff whereas the business accomplishments were more heroic. I also give Tesla credit for the success of model S. But I consider that to be a function of good execution, not of technology. If that would have flopped it would have been the end. But there were many possible ways for Tesla to die back then.

One of Elon’s key business skills is his ability to sell a narrative. I guess that goes hand in hand with the “bullshitter” thing. He seems to have a magical ability to hypnotize fanboys and investors into believing that Tesla is more than it actually is.

The auto industry is not very sexy from an investor point of view. It’s a mature market, very capital intensive, high risk, low margin. Yet somehow Tesla achieves an outsized market cap.

As humorously noted in the HBO Silicon Valley “no revenue” scene, investors reward you for future promises and punish you on actual delivery. But what if you could promise a future that remains perpetually in the future? And every delivery is not an end, but only a step along the way to this utopian/distopian vision? What if you “promise the moon”, er, I mean Mars? If you did this, then maybe you could have a perpetual pure play that never expires.

So back to the article. Is this the demise of Tesla? I don’t know if Tesla necessarily has “no path forward” as “just a car company”. But I think Elon’s ability to sell the “sci-fi future” is wearing out. Tesla has delivered on some difficult business cases with incremental technology, but the track record on the “impossible future“ stuff isn’t good. Also, the mainstream EV industry will become increasingly commoditized with new Chinese entrants, eroding margins. Tariffs keep you in saturated markets and don’t help you in growing markets. So maybe a bit of a demise for all?

There may be some truth to that. But if we get too cynical, the battle is lost before it’s begun!

That I can think of, there’s Jesse Welles.

Since the current traffic infrastructure was built for human drivers with vision, you’ll probably need some form of vision to navigate today’s roads. The only way I could picture lidar only working would be on a road system specially made for machine driving.

Yes lidar has limitations, but so does machine vision. That’s why you want both if you can have it. LIDAR is more reliable at judging distance than stereo vision. Stereo vision requires there to be sufficient texture (features) to work. It can be thrown off by fog or glare. A white semi trailer can be a degenerate case. It can be fooled by optical illusions.

Yes, humans don’t have built in lidar. But humans do use tools to augment their capabilities. The car itself is one example. Birds don’t have jet engines, props, or rotors… should we not use those?

Most practical navigation systems employ some form of sensor fusion. It’s more the norm than not. I’m sure even Tesla’s FSD does too for fusing vision, inertial sensors, wheel speed, multiple etc.

It’s great that starlink is there, but it can still be shut down on the whim of its owner as seen in the past. So hurray for starlink! (unless the opportunistic tides of politics change)

You know, not everyone on this site has an absolutist binary opinion on the Elon. Some people can give him credit for what he gets right, while simultaneously calling bullshit on his bullshit.

In a way, America didn’t ask for what it got. America voted for a guy who claimed to have never heard of Project 2025. It got Project 2025.

Also, Trump ran on a populist message. Yet if you look at what he has done materially since he got into office, it seems his true allegiance is with the billionaire elite.