Here’s a bit of sad news from everyone’s favorite semiconductor physicist:
If Britney Spears had enough money to buy the depicted non-self-driving BMW why didn’t she instead choose a self-driving Tesla? In that case, there wouldn’t have been any possibility of the police noticing erratic driving. She might have been breaking the law and failing to be prudent, but she wouldn’t have been pulled over so long as the Tesla software wasn’t also impaired by alcohol.
Loosely related, Britney Spears’s tutorial on semiconductors:
Phil, do you have any limits on, well, anything? Brit-H8? Brit-Brexit? Brit-Brit keeps ignoring my crazy love letters, where I promise I’ll be her designated driver anytime. She won’t listen to my “Designated Driver” demo tape, keeps coming back “Delivery Refused”.
There’s a slight error in her math, also “bandedges” should be “band edges”. Not too bad though — do they pay her in makeup, lip filler, and botox?
Just kidding, Britney, <333 (Designated Driver?)
> If Britney Spears had enough money to buy the depicted non-self-driving BMW why didn’t she instead choose a self-driving Tesla?
Electric cars drive like those cars I used to drive as a kid in amusement parks. I never understood the charm of driving electric cars, except for it being environment friendly, which again I never totally understood. Like if the total carbon footprint of manufacturing a new Tesla + driving it of X years < Driving the old IC engine car for X years, what's the value of X?
I wanted to buy a Toyota Supra final edition before they stop making IC engine ones, but looks like I might have to forget about it.
Be a man and buy a Corvette instead.
REB: ZR1X preferred for those trips to Publix, but ZR1 would also be acceptable…
“The ZR1 crosses the finish line with a 2:34.2, which is 0.7 second faster than the McLaren Senna and a new Lightning Lap record. … We knew the ZR1 had a good chance at toppling the McLaren Senna’s 2:34.9 lap from seven years ago, but we weren’t sure exactly how it would do it. The Senna is 869 pounds lighter and has active aero. Despite this, and the cars’ similar pounds-per-horsepower quotients (3.7 for the ZR1, 3.8 for the Senna), the ZR1 was 6.1 mph faster on the Front Straight. The new LL record isn’t due solely to straight-line speed, though; the ZR1’s high-speed handling earned it top honors in the Climbing Esses too.”
https://www.caranddriver.com/features/a70258056/2026-chevrolet-corvette-zr1-lightning-lap-2026/
> Be a man and buy a Corvette instead.
My penis is bigger than a internal combustion engine Corvette owner’s.
I did consider it but they don’t make manuals any more since ’20. Being a man also entails driving a manual, right? LOL!
Reminds me of a funny essay I read many times:
“Real Programmers Don’t Use PASCAL”
https://sites.cs.ucsb.edu/~ravenben/humor/pascal
And ZR1 is 200k +, that’s too much money.
As far as I can tell, it is discouraging difficult to determine the total environmental impact of many things.
Last October, my home heating oil tank failed, and a friend of mine who is in general quite sophisticated regarding technical matters suggested that I should switch to electric heat, or get a heat pump.
Where I live, electricity is generated by burning natural gas that arrives as liquefied natural gas (NLG) right near the local electricity provider. My friend lives sufficiently south of me that he does not live in the same USDA plant hardiness zone.
The website of Fine Paints of Europe pointed out that the process of making low VOC paints is a high VOC process, and if the low VOC paints are not as durable as oil paint (high VOC at place of application, and now banned or threatened with a ban in some places), the overall switch to low VOC paint at point of application paint is an illusion.
Charles: I didn’t mean to imply that the electric aspect of Tesla would be useful to those who drink and drive, but only the self-driving capability. I myself would prefer to have a self-driving Honda Odyssey (gas-powered), but that isn’t an option.
PG: Maybe you already thought about it, but I think unless it’s technically very difficult, self-driving would be decoupled from engine type, as soon as the technology matures enough. At least some companies must have thought in this direction for sure, like a “self-driving kit” as an add-on.
PF: In a hypothetical world, Honda would ship the Odyssey with an NVIDIA clone of Tesla’s FSD. Toyota is supposedly working along these lines and is talking about shipping a self-driving EV in China (see https://carbuzz.com/ces-toyota-using-nvidia-next-gen-supercomputer/ ). But for now, claims of the ability to compete with Tesla aren’t relevant to an American consumer because nobody is even beginning to try to compete with Tesla. The Mercedes system (“Only works in slow traffic on certain highways”), GM’s Super Cruise, and Ford’s BlueCruise aren’t competitors for the parking-space-to-parking-space Tesla FSD (which sometimes needs human intervention).
Phil should think about donating his minivan when trading up the the Cybertruck. Maybe PBS or even better MIT. Maybe they could retrofit it for self-driving and/or electric to haul 9-track tapes around.