A fair number of my friends are Tesla owners. Most of them live in the Northeast or California so cue the apologetic stickers, e.g.,
Existing owners are a car company’s best customers, typically accounting for more than 50 percent of purchases. Tesla has killed upgrade demand among my friends by announcing HW5/AI5 in June 2024. At the time, Tesla promised delivery in late 2025, but now they’re saying that AI5 has slipped at least one year to “late 2026”. This is the classic company-killing Osborne effect.
I wonder if Tesla could undo some of this self-inflicted damage by offering an “Osborne effect lease”. A consumer would sign up today for a 3-year lease but if AI5 makes it out the door within those three years the consumer is guaranteed either (a) a retrofit of AI5 to his/her/zir/their car, or (b) a swap-out of the HW4 car for an AI5 car within 3 months of AI5 mass production and at a price that is set today, e.g., $200/month extra (some of the extra money going toward the wonderfulness of AI5 and some because the swapped-in car is newer than the originally leased car).
Separately, my friend with a 2025 Tesla Y made it from southern New Jersey to Cambridge, Maskachusetts the other day via FSD and touched the steering wheel only twice. Once was to park at a charger and once was to park in Harvard Square. Given the chaotic nature of road markings in Cambridge and in NYC this seems like more of an achievement than my neighbor’s regular Gainesville-Jupiter drives on FSD.
I wish Greta would return to her homeland, study engineering, work for Saab and help make EV cars and planes.
Lotus makes some kind of EV now. I wish they would revive the Elise concept (the quintessential lightweight sports car that revived Lotus’s core philosophy, my own words not AI) in EV form.
I really hate tech-laden phones on wheels.
I know, I know–talk to the Chinese.
— D | J
DJ: If Saab AB (not to be confused with the deceased car company) were to set up an assembly line for fighter jets to be delivered to the noble Gazans I am sure that Greta T. would be happy to work there!
From the Greenspun technical department, is it possible to offer a commentary on whether it is too late for any other vendor to offer Self-Driving at the same level as Tesla?
I continue to watch https://www.comma.ai/, but it is not anywhere close to Tesla.
I need the self-driving for the journey down 270 here in Maryland in the morning, but political views aside, I need a nice gas-guzzling SUV for many other use cases.
@JJ, Hi!
> political views aside
On PG’s site? Never!
> I need a nice gas-guzzling SUV for many other use cases
Make that 6000 lbs bad-boy self-driving with AI (optional “Truck Nutz” performance mode, regionally available), put the overclocked AI datacenter in Sweden for the cooling advantage, all eat Kobe steaks from our methane producing Sacred Cows, then we will have solved the Great Climate Crisis and achieve world unity. No, *I* am Greta!
The days when Elon was guaranteeing for another $15k, current cars would support every future autopilot version are so long gone, it would now be considered a new concept to reintroduce the guarantee. The hatred stickers definitely come & go based on the weekly news cycle.
> hatred stickers definitely come & go based on the weekly news cycle
[lion power at work]
Hmm…my first thought was, “to achieve world unity we really need three temporary stickers”. ChatPC said:
> It’s a cool idea, kind of like a visual way to stay in tune with the times without committing to a permanent message! Maybe “Flexible Opinion Decal”? What kind of messages would you want to have on it?
What a hip AI, “cool”, heh. Or maybe a bumper mounted OLED which uses the self-driving AI subsystem, checks the traffic, news, Phil’s blog, etc. to generate a real-time custom message to make an excuse for your politically incorrect ride.
Even better, a whole vehicle camo system like in the other NSFW Philip’s book “A Scanner Darkly”–in Maskachussets, e.g., you can make your nice SUV look like a Lucid EV with a cute protective bra on the front styled like an N95 mask for extra street cred. In my passive-agressive Southern neighborhood, those of us relocated Yankees could have a waving hand could appear in the window when it detects a pedestrian–our Prius Lite turned into an F-950HD. I smell business opportunity, for world unity!
…no, I am *Greta-cuss” or Ayn Rand–I forget.
Do you friends still pay attention to the road when autopilot is driving up from NJ to MA, or have they gotten to the point where they scroll their phones and listen to podcasts?
As a gas-guzzler owner myself, my biggest fear of autopilot is that driving skills will atrophy to the point that I can no longer safely and attentively drive anything else.