A friend in suburban Boston apparently delights in enraging his neighbors and, thus, purchased a Cybertruck. His monstrous machine upgraded itself to FSD v14 last night. Our message exchange:
- have you tried it?
- Just did. It was needing to make a left turn onto a side street. A car was coming in the other direction making a right turn on the same road. They had their turn signal on. The truck turned in front of them and went first, violating the right of way.
- So it had one dangerous failure in its first 15 minutes of use?
- 5 minutes
A New Jersey-based Tesla Y owner in the same group:
- It is much more twitchy than v13. It will hesitate hard at blowing leaves and other situations. But it is much more responsive to legit threats, like when another car starts to enter your lane.
(My friends love paying taxes to progressive Democrats!)
Separately, how about this wrap?
Related:
The CT is just too easy of a target for ridicule. From this partial list of defects:
https://www.fastcompany.com/91109879/a-timeline-of-tesla-cybertruck-problems-from-rust-to-hail-damage-to-pedal-recalls
we have this horror:
https://www.fastcompany.com/91073608/this-cybertruck-design-flaw-could-chop-off-your-fingers
So “The Not-So-Little Truck of Horrors”?
https://www.reddit.com/r/cybertruck/comments/1olc6v4/la_flama_blanca/
Saw a Cybertruck with “FORD” spelled in masking tape over the rear panel, presumably to mask the Tesla logo, and prevent vandalism from democracy protectors?
WTF Phil?! Very disappointed. Did you not get the memo from your genius-in-chief that Tesla is to be praised now?
Maybe the Cybertruck arrived at the intersection first?
The only way fully self-driving vehicles will ever be truly safe is if every moving and stationary object is equipped with an RFID tag that broadcasts basic information about the object such as dimensions, weight, object type, whether it is stationary, and if moving, its speed range and direction, etc. With this level of standardized communication, vehicles and objects could exchange data in real time to prevent collisions.
Of course, humans would also need to be tagged. Once implemented, these tags could potentially carry additional information, such as gender preferences, vaccination status, duration on government assistance, Tinder profile, etc.
George: Lincoln welcomes the undocumented just as long as they can afford the minimum 2-acre lot!
I proposed the transponder idea in 2016! https://philip.greenspun.com/blog/2016/04/19/why-arent-people-dogs-and-cars-equipped-with-transponders/
There are groups working on a standard for this – C-V2X, Connected Vehicle to Everything:
https://arstechnica.com/cars/2024/05/the-vehicle-and-bicycle-safety-tech-that-can-see-through-walls/
I have driven a cyber throughout LA – can nuys to Santa Monica and back in September. Didn’t touch the wheel once. It drove better than 99% of drivers and def better than my sister (the owner).
It doesn’t need to be perfect, and no system will ever be. Just a lot better than humans.
The overall experience of that car is better than anything I have drive. Great performance, ride and cargo carrying balance. Ridicule steel all you want – hers is a year old and 20k miles and still looks brand new. No scratches, dents dings. Nothing. Quite impressive actually. They had some trim pieces reattached under warranty. All nothing burgers.
The bed and its closure system are great for a non work truck. Easy to lock stuff up and get to it.
Sound system and hvac both fantastic.
Steer by wire quite good once you get used to it.
I find my engineering friends are quite critical of them but I feel like if you spend enough time with it, it’s quite a marvel.
It would be even more of a marvel if they wouldn’t fuck with it and just equip it with normal bed. They instantly would sell godzillion more.
Same goes for Model X – replace stupid doors with normal slide-back door (make it fancy and call it “eagle doors”), put luxury seats in and instantly they will have most selling car in the premium segment. Morons.
(And still own and plan to own 2 Teslas, including Model X, it’s still better than anything else overall).