I learned today from scanning headlines that a self-driving Tesla had killed a pedestrian, e.g., “Tesla in ‘self-driving’ mode kills pedestrian”. In other words, Elon Musk has not only killed our democracy, but his machines are gradually killing us as individuals.
I had assumed from the headlines that the Tesla had been blinded by some glare and had run over an unfortunate U.S. resident in a city crosswalk. Some hours later, I clicked on one of the articles and learned that the crosswalk was on a six-lane portion of Interstate 80 Vallejo, California. The “pedestrian” was attempting to cross the Interstate at about 2:30 am. He stepped from the shoulder directly into the path of the car.
(Update: It seems as though the “pedestrian” may not have been killed by Evil Elon at all. SFGate reports “Though the dash camera footage reviewed by officers showed the Tesla braking as it steered to the left, the right side of the car struck the pedestrian, CHP said. After the Tesla crash, the pedestrian was lying in the traffic lanes and was hit by another driver, CHP said. The driver of the second car did not stop and has not been identified by authorities. The pedestrian had fatal injuries, and the Tesla driver, a 26-year-old man from San Francisco, remained at the scene, CHP said.” So the crossing-attempt victim was whacked by the side of a slowing-down Tesla and then run over by a full-speed human. Presumably it was the second encounter with a steel behemoth that resulted in death.)
None of the heroic journalists behind these articles mentioned that it is illegal for anyone to walk on or across Interstate 80 in Vallejo, California. CA Veh Code § 21960 has one exception to this rule, but it does not permit crossing:
… Notwithstanding any order, ordinance, or resolution to the contrary, the driver or passengers of a disabled vehicle stopped on a freeway or expressway may walk to the nearest exit, in either direction, on that side of the freeway or expressway upon which the vehicle is disabled, from which telephone or motor vehicle repair services are available.
Only loosely related… my dream of a “pedestrian”-killing Tesla Y L seems to be receding ever deeper into 2027. The range-squanderingAWD version is the only one available (“Launch Edition”) and it wouldn’t be delivered until, probably, March 2027:
Happy National Teen Driver Safety Week for those who celebrate.
ChatGPT says that an American family with two cars can expect to pay an additional $3,250/year for car insurance when a household 16-year-old gets his/her/zir/their license (“Often doubling the premium if the base policy was modest”).
I typically think that the insurance market makes sense, e.g., in COVID-19 is sure to kill you, but life insurance rates haven’t changed and Life insurance and Covid we looked at (a) the government telling us that COVID-19 was killing healthy young people, and (b) unchanged life insurance rates for anyone who was eligible for life insurance (i.e., not ancient with one foot in the grave).
For a Tesla that does 96% of its miles on FSD, however, I’m struggling to understand how a teen “driver” adds risk. If anything, a teen should have better reflexes for reacting to a misstep by the FSD software. If the primary driver of the Tesla is the robot, then there is no reason to price insurance for the robot engaging in riskier behavior when the teen is in the car rather than a prudent adult.
Maybe there should be a special Tesla+Teen insurance policy that charges adult rates if the car is at least 95% on FSD and never in a driving mode faster than “Standard”:
On the back of a Jeep Liberty in a strip mall near us:
Update from our AI Overlord: “Florida already has a statute specifically authorizing this kind of discount. The most useful finding is Florida Statutes § 627.0653(6). “The Office of Insurance Regulation may approve a premium discount”. This language was added in 2019. … Florida § 627.0651(6)–(8) specifically allows different rates reflecting differences in expected losses and expenses. It also permits group-based rates when supported by credible actuarial evidence. … California is more restrictive about the rating factors an insurer may use.”
Tonight the people who put down $50,000 for a Tesla Roadster, announced in 2017, will learn what it is they’re buying and, maybe, how much they’re going to pay for it.
Tesla’s big differentiator right now is self-driving. But why is that valuable in a sports car?
Tesla’s latest creation will accelerate faster than a $50,000 used C8 Corvette? So what? A $50,000 C8 Corvette in Launch Control already accelerates at a terrifying rate, 0-60 in 2.9 seconds, for street use. (See Corvette driving school report (Ron Fellows near Las Vegas) for my report on what I did besides hang out with Hunter Biden in Pahrump.)
It will be great on a race track because each wheel can be individually controlled? If that’s a dramatic improvement then we’ll see Tesla Roadster-only racing?
The car was promised at $200,000 in pre-Biden dollars, right? If we assume that every Nvidia employee wants one, does that mean the market-clearing price for a Roadster will be closer to $500,000 post-Biden dollars? The people who paid $250,000 for a “Founders Series” car apparently weren’t guaranteed a car at that price. They can get a refund if they don’t like whatever Tesla now wants to charge them and Tesla has been holding the money all this time. (Gemini says that if they’d bought $250,000 of Nvidia in November 2017 it would be worth about $11 million today. A stupid investor (like me!) who instead bought the S&P 500 would have about $650,000 today, with dividends reinvested. So if Tesla delivers the car as promised and without charging any more money, it will cost the early adopters $650,000 in 2026 dollars.) I’m going to guess that the only Roadster that can be ordered for delivery within 18 months costs $375,000 (“Douche Edition”?) and that Tesla actually does honor the first 1,000 at $250k/$650k/$11 million depending on how one looks at the opportunity cost of the money. There will be talk about a $290,000 version, but it won’t materialize in our lifetimes.
What would it take for me to get excited about this offering? Seating for 7-plus-puppy and sliding doors!
You can see the 2017 prototype in Los Angeles at a minimum cost of $23 per adult:
Gemini says “EBT cardholders receive free general admission to the Petersen Automotive Museum in Los Angeles through community promotional offers”, but Grok disagrees and says that those who wisely choose to refrain from work get only 10% off.
How does this compare to the latest gas-powered concept vehicles? Here’s one from Alfa-Romeo with a hood long enough to hold a V-12:
I’m not sure how different the 2017 Tesla looks from the Maserati MC20:
Here’s a Chevrolet C9 Corvette concept, which could almost surely never be sold due to the lack of practicality, e.g., no luggage space. GM won’t let a base Corvette be useless like the Maserati above (5 cu. ft. luggage). It has to have some functional transportation value, though I guess the ZR1 and ZR1X push the limits by eliminating the frunk and leaving owners with a small hot trunk (about 9 cu. ft. vs. 15 on the base C8).
Update: This is what the Tesla Roadster will look like when it finally comes off the assembly line in 2028 (11:59 pm on December 31?):
The American Muscle Car Museum in Melbourne, Florida is open to the public only on rare occasions. October 3, 2026 was a car show and fundraiser for the Lion’s Club and the rabble were admitted for $30 per adult (our kids got in free). It’s an amazing collection that cries out for an intervention by our political thought-leaders. Mark Pieloch, a dog pharma and supplement flavoring tycoon, decided that he needed to own about 30 Ford GTs, nearly all of them from the two modern reboot (of the GT40) generations and nearly all of them with less than 30 miles on the odometer.
(Note that I don’t think it is reasonable to call the Ford GT a “Ford”. They’ve been produced by contract manufacturers, e.g., Mayflower Vehicle Systems and Multimatic. Compare to the Corvette ZR1X, an insanely powerful machine that is built in a regular GM factory that also makes the humbler versions of the Corvette. Keep in mind that even the humblest version is “insanely powerful”, though, when you consider realistic public road situations.)
Here’s the first room. The 2020 Ford GT in the foreground has 24 miles on the clock. A 1966 GT40 rotates on the turntable in the center of the modern GTs. A museum employee said that it had cost $9 million.
Just one ring of recent GTs, then? No. There are a couple of additional rows of them, e.g.,
Viewed from the other side of the room:
We’re talking about a Gulfstream G700 hangar, essentially, entirely filled with the latest generation of Ford GTs, nearly all of which have never been driven. Is that collecting or hoarding? Either way, I feel that it is time for Bernie and AOC to step in. Just as Bernie reminds us that nobody needs more than three houses, I think that we can all agree that nobody needs more than 3 pristine never-driven modern Ford GTs. One never-driven GT is a sculpture. Two more could be backups. But the 4th one? That’s intolerable inequality and, dare I say it, billionaire greed!
If we walk deeper into the museum, we find an entire row of the 2005ish GTs:
Directly across the aisle, a 2015 Porsche 918 Spyder. The window sticker is still stuck: $915,000 (in pre-Biden dollars!). How much practical value has been delivered by this machine? 32 miles’ worth. (ChatGPT says that Car and Driver got better numbers out of the Porsche 918 than they did out of the 2017-2022 Ford GTs, which sold for substantially less.)
That’s a G-Wagen in the back. Here’s some Gemini output that makes me wonder what Google has been feeding its AI:
In Palm Beach, Mercedes-Benz G-Wagons function like a chronological alimony registry. You can pinpoint exactly when a settlement was finalized based on the specific body style and dashboard layout of the G-Class she is driving:
Speaking of German stuff, Mark Pieloch was an avid Porsche collector as well. He has about 10 Porsche-brand diesel tractors:
Imagine telling someone “I’ll pick you up in my Porsche” and then showing up with one of these tractors! They’re not unreasonably expensive:
Here’s one that Grok says might be worth $5 million, though, a 1959 718 RSK Werks Spyder that was raced:
Just how big is the second room?
There are some additional hangars full of cars, but they’re not regularly open to the rabble.
Corvettes are reasonably well-represented, though I don’t remember seeing any C7s. Almost every conceivable Ford Mustang is displayed.
Here’s a wood-paneled 1957 Ford Country Squire:
Another wagon that, if retrofitted with A/C, would be awesome to own:
The perfect pace car for Elvis:
How was the car show? Pretty good and a reasonable turnout despite the fact that it has been an unusually wet September and October in Florida despite a complete absence of hurricanes from the North Atlantic. Free and dog-friendly. Here’s another dream station wagon:
If you love cars, I recommend finding one of the special events and going. Based on the museum’s Form 990, it seems that all of the money paid goes to whatever group is supposed to benefit. Grok says that the cars and the real estate are owned by Mark Pieloch individually so it isn’t a tax-avoidance vehicle (so to speak) as you might expect. Grok even found the records for the real estate:
Brevard’s parcel record for 3500 Sarno Road lists the owner as PIELOCH, MARK J, mailing address a Melbourne post office box. The use code is a privately owned tourist attraction, the buildings date to 2016, and the 2026 value is about $18.1 million. A 2025 tax bill on that parcel is on the order of $320,000, which is what you pay when the property is not under a charitable exemption.
Unlike, for example, the Gates Foundation and Bill Gates, Mark Pieloch is apparently paying more than his fair share of tax rather than burdening those who’ve been less successful with the chore of funding government.
A week ago, we visited the Tesla showroom in West Palm Beach (not in the part of town that is being gold-plated by Stephen Ross, but in a shabby “functional” area that includes Ferrari and Mercedes dealers as well as endless strip malls) to look at the Tesla Y L. Our 11-year-old was immediately sold on both the front and rear screens. He particularly enjoyed being able to adjust the front right seat while sitting in the 2nd row. The power folding 2nd- and 3rd-row seats are kind of cool.
For transporting four people, the luggage capacity is nowhere near what a minivan offers, but is still substantial. With four people plus a dog, though, the 2nd row becomes tight. A 50 lb. Canine-American could perhaps sit between the two 2nd-row seats, but it is nothing like the comfort of being up on the minivan’s 2nd-row bench (ChatGPT says that the Odyssey is about 14″ wider on the 2nd-row bench, at hip level, vs. the Tesla Y (non-L) 2nd-row bench). I’ve always disliked the Tesla interiors, including the seats and especially the “vegan leather”, but the grandma that we brought along pronounced that the 2nd-row Tesla seat was more comfortable than her perch in the Honda Odyssey.
The car is substantially back-ordered. The folks who work in the West Palm Beach showroom, plainly not on commission since they weren’t interested in talking to us, said that they already had 700 customers who had ordered and were waiting. Delivery is now promised (sort of) for January. The Launch edition remains a bad choice for Floridians due to the 10% range penalty from dragging around a useless second motor. Our last snow was in 1977 so the AWD isn’t needed. Acceleration any faster than a 1981 Corvette (0-60 in 9.2 seconds) isn’t required when the roads are jammed (pretty much always, as soon as one gets south of the DJT airport). The staff at the showroom said that the Launch edition was “almost sold out” so perhaps there is hope for a “premium RWD Y L” (there already is a “premium RWD Y” at $4,000 less than the AWD Y and with 357 miles of range vs. 327; the Launch Y L AWD is at 332 miles so a Y L RWD with the same battery should perhaps hit 360 miles of range when brand new?).
We’re in a strange situation, I think, with the self-driving hardware. Tesla says that AI5 won’t be in cars for a while because they need the chips, which Samsung says they’re already fabbing, for “Optimus and our supercomputer clusters.” AI5 seems to have disappeared from the news even faster than Graham Platner, but I am pretty sure that if I (a) wait for the Y L RWD to become available, and (b) order a Y L RWD on the first day of availability that it will be delivered with HW4 exactly one day before Tesla switches all of the cars over to AI5.
Suppose that a Democrat wants to take a ride in a new Tesla Cybercab, coming soon to a city near you? He/she/ze/they wouldn’t want to be seen in the vehicle without a disclaimer on the back. How about selling temporary magnets and vinyl cling signs? Here are some ideas for the wording, but maybe readers will have better ones…
Democrat on board
I support autonomous driving, not autonomous trillionaires
I hate Elon Musk
I needed a ride. I didn’t join a cult.
Robotaxi passenger — not a Tesla customer
I did not choose the CEO
Vehicle’s politics do not reflect those of its passenger
(for the older rider) I booked this before I remembered who owns Tesla
Temporarily occupied by a registered Democrat
I am using this vehicle under protest
I have serious concerns about the owner of this company
This is transportation, not complicity (#FreePalestine)
I am participating in this ride ironically
NPR tote bag in the trunk
Figure $15 per magnet/sticker. A majority of Americans are Democrats. Tesla hopes to address the entire market. Each Democrat might need three stickers/magnets per year (some will fall off; the messages will lose their novelty). We can’t get money from babies, but the U.S. population is at least 343 million (nobody knows the true number because nobody knows how many migrants live among us). The total addressable market, therefore, should be approximately 150 million times $45 per year = $6.75 billion per year for Signs of Righteousness LLC. Does anyone see a flaw in this business plan?
Here’s a report on driving a 2022 Tesla Y around Northern California. The car, built in Dec 2022, was delivered to me at SFO by Avis with over 71,000 miles on the odometer. My range anxiety began at the airport. The fully charged machine was predicted to go only 186 miles before bricking itself. No problem, I thought. My friends in Napa are Righteous and will have a charger for anything that can reverse Climate Change (TM). The car sported error messages regarding climate control (because of #ClimateChange since 2022?) and rear tire wear:
The rear tires had at least some tread left and I wasn’t planning to use Dog Mode so these messages didn’t worry me too much. The car was pre-tuned to the Bollywood FM radio station. Just remember that it’s not a “replacement”:
I made it to Piedmont, California without incident:
A house next door to my cousin’s reminds Native Americans that America was “Built by Immigrants.” (Or maybe not, actually, since it is extremely rare to see anyone non-white in Piedmont.)
One great thing about the Tesla software/camera systems is that the machine is smart about when to cancel a turn signal, e.g., after a lane-change is complete. Sadly, though, the vehicle still lacks CarPlay and its Google Maps-based navigation display is nowhere near as driver-friendly as Google Maps. It doesn’t show stop signs or traffic lights along one’s route, for example, and, therefore, it is impossible to see that one should turn right at the second light. All navigation cues are essentially distance-based, despite the fact that “second light” is a lot easier for a human to gauge than “0.2 miles”.
Maybe it was the glass roof or maybe it was the climate system fault that I had been warned about, but the climate control system in the 2022 Tesla Y was dramatically inferior to what we’re accustomed to in our luxurious Honda Odyssey, a 2017 design. Even when the outside temp is in the 70s, the interior surfaces, such as the seats, will be broiling hot. The AC takes around 20 minutes to cool it down and the climate system seems to lack an awareness of whether it is sunny or dark outside. If sunny, a temp setting of 65-67 degrees is necessary for comfort. At night, though, the same setting will result in the interior becoming too cold. (By contrast, our Odyssey cools down from a 90-degree Florida parking experience in about 5 minutes and we just leave it on “72 Auto” independent of the insolation. ChatGPT says that the latest Teslas have improved rejection of solar heat through the glass and also “15 percent” better cooling.)
On arrival in Napa at a worrisome 25% charge level, I discovered that Avis had either not provided me with the J1772 adapter to a “standard” charger or it was in the glove box, out of which I was locked without a required PIN code. It’s apparently too complex to have rental customers be authorized in the Tesla app and, therefore, everyone who rents from Avis is a valet and uses the valet key (which, at least in the plastic case supplied by Avis, scratches up the side of the driver’s door pillar). Did my friends in Napa have the correct hardware for charging an Elon Musk-designed Tesla? Here’s their entryway and living room:
(Yes they are white Boomers and no they aren’t paying any property tax (owned the same place for about 45 years so they pay tax on the 1980 value).)
They had an electric car charger, of course, but only for their Nazi-free Chevrolet Bolt, which uses the J1772 “national standard” that, in fact, is no longer a standard because everyone is adopting Tesla’s connector. I hit a Supercharger on the way out of Napa, though, and it worked seamlessly (just plug it in and they bill Avis and, presumably, Avis will eventually hit me with 55 cents/kWh plus an absurd markup). That said, how much time do you want to spend at a Circle K?
My second Supercharging was at the Stanford Shopping Center in Palo Alto. Tesla tells you how to get there, but not that the Supercharger is on the second floor of the parking structure. There’s a slow “destination charger” bank on the ground floor. Once upstairs, I discovered that a white Model Y is the new black Model T:
Locking and unlocking was always a painful process, especially if one needed more than the driver-side door open. This wouldn’t have been as serious an issue, I’m sure, if Tesla were to engineer a Honda-style key fob intended for renters who are fully, but temporarily, authorized to use the car.
Despite the epic hassles of charging, I’m not sure that a gas-powered car would have been dramatically less expensive for fuel. Unleaded regular was over $6 per gallon ($3.90 in Florida during the same week, says AAA):
Would I want to own this vehicle for manual driving? No. Our Honda Odyssey is two years older and has almost as many miles on it and is a superior machine overall. Were the deficits relative to the Honda tolerable if the Tesla would drive itself competently? Yes.
Wishlist (of stuff that hasn’t already been fixed in 2025 update of the Y):
real switches for basic adjustments, such as mirrors
gauges behind the steering wheel, as seen in every other modern car
adopt CarPlay or at least show traffic lights and stop signs on the navigation map
make the glass roof optional; I never got any value out of it while sitting in the driver’s seat and it is an absurdly bad idea for the Sun Belt
a new name for the car with the next rev of the design (it’s confusing if an obsolete jalopy can be rented out by Avis and called by the same name as a nice new redesigned car); how about “Tesla Le Tigre”? (optional Derek Zoolander decals and/or tiger stripes)
An engineer friend with a 2003(!) BMW M5 as his daily driver sat in the Tesla and played with the switches on the steering wheel and pronounced them to be “garbage”. It makes sense that Tesla would cheap out on everything for its current models/pricing, but why not have a “super premium” version where they put in BMW-/Mercedes-grade switches, a screen behind the steering wheel, etc.?
Separately, shout-out to California for allowing people to set up Short-Term License Plate Accounts when driving rental cars through various toll gates. Toll-by-plate charges then go, for a specified time period, directly to one’s credit card rather than taking months to get through Hertz or Avis with various markups applied.
(Traffic was mostly terrible, incidentally, though not if one stayed within Menlo Park/Palo Alto and avoided commuting hours (8-10 am and 4-7 pm on weekdays?).)
There were no improvements in minivans from Honda, Toyota, Chrysler, or Kia for 2026 (see Minivan news for the 2026 model year). What did the legacy automakers do with the additional year of engineering time? There are no improvements in minivans for the 2027 model year either! Honda’s driver assistance tech on the Odyssey, for example, is the same as it was in 2017 (for the 2018 model year). The only change for Honda is a $400 price increase. Car and Driver says that “the [Toyota] Sienna carries over into 2027 unchanged” (this is the only manufacturer from whom we might have to wait until October to get official news; maybe there will be some tech improvement over what was introduced in 2020).
Chrysler killed the plug-in hybrid version of the Pacific and tweaked the styling (for people like us who buy minivans for maximum style/prestige!).
A dynamic difference we can comment on is the Y L’s new suspension. The Y L uses the Y Premium’s single-valve adaptive damping with a specific tune for the L’s larger chassis that prioritizes comfort without permitting unnecessary body roll in corners. There’s even a passenger-comfort setting that attempts to absorb more impacts for those in the rear seats. Anyone who has ever bounced around in the back of a Tesla Uber will appreciate the idea of a softer rear-seat ride. The Model Y’s excessively firm ride has long been a sticking point at C/D, and the Y L addresses it in a way that doesn’t compromise the car’s handling strengths.
I guess we won’t be able to get one until March? It would be absurd to have an AWD version in Florida (the last snowstorm in Palm Beach County was on January 19, 1977 and deposited 1/4 inch). Dragging around a second motor that compromises the range makes no sense. (The extra acceleration from from the dual motor version isn’t interesting either given that the RWD Model Y can do 0-60 in roughly the same amount of time as our Odyssey, which is overpowered for America’s traffic-choked roads.) A friend in Maskachusetts ordered the Launch edition as a replacement for his Lucid Air due to that machine’s lack of FSD and, of course, he will be able to take advantage of AWD if Climate Change doesn’t progress faster than expected by the expert consensus. When he ordered the machine, a couple of weeks after the launch of the Launch, he was told that it would be delivered in September or October. This was later updated to perhaps as late as December.
I don’t think the Y L will win any beauty contests, but maybe it isn’t dramatically uglier than the Y? It’s 7-9 inches shorter than today’s minivans.
A friend lent his almost-new Tesla S out (not to me!) and the result was a Cybertruck rental while the bumper got some rehab.
The Cybertruck’s FSD struggled at low speeds due to constant phantom human sightings. We’re pretty sure that this was due to a camera’s interaction with the Maskachusetts front license plate (Florida does not require this disfigurement).
I sat in the driver seat for a 45-minute FSD from Dedham to Hanscom Field in Bedford, MA. The system performed commendably except that chill mode hogged third lane (out of four) on I-95/128 and obstructed traffic flow by driving 55 mph during the intervals without significant traffic. It should be smart enough to know that a strict speed limit driver should stick to the two right lanes if four are available.
My primary take-away is that Tesla hasn’t thought through the ergonomics of 98% self-driving. For close to 100 years, cars have been engineered so that the driver can extend both of his/her/zir/their feet (need to be gender-inclusive since we’re talking about a trip around Boston). The left foot sits on a footwell rest or, sometimes, a “dead pedal” that is at roughly the same distance from the driver as the clutch (old-school manual transmission requiring quick changes of position for the left foot). The right foot rests comfortable on the gas pedal.
With the 2026 Model S, however, there is nowhere to rest one’s right foot when self-driving. Either the footwell needs to be a little wider or the accelerator and brake pedals need to be moved closer to the center of the existing footwell so as to make room for a dead pedal on the right. More complex idea since Tesla buyers love technology for its own sake: a rest for the right foot that automatically extends slightly when FSD is engaged and that retracts back into the floor when driving manually (“like an animal”).
A few photos of the Tesla Collision Center and the 10:00 am traffic that we suffered through to get there. (I can’t figure out how people in Boston are so passionate about open borders and the attendant population growth. They are gradually being imprisoned in their own neighborhoods by ever-worsening traffic.)
The pedals are extremely well placed. The accelerator is close to the tunnel, letting the foot rest against its side, and there is plenty of room left of the clutch pedal for the driver to brace himself.
“I have fully concluded that Tesla seriously needs to offer a right hand dead pedal. … if FSD is expected to be coming, everyone will need to put their right foot somewhere.” (2018!)
Happy National Financial Awareness Day to those who celebrate…
We had a family discussion about the possibility that even successful people might be forced to work, e.g., to pay for a child’s college expenses. “It doesn’t matter how much you earn,” I told the kids. “It is always possible to spend every last penny.” They dispute this. I cited examples of second and third homes, of first class airline tickets to Europe, of expensive cars and watches.
The very next day, I ran into a neighbor who had purchased a Porsche 911 GT3 Touring the day before (i.e., while our family discussion was occurring). “The dealer called me and said he had a white and gold one in stock,” said the new owner. “My initial thought was to reject the color, but I went over to see it and came home with it.” In other words, an impulse decision to spend $300,000(?).
(As far as I know, this purchase won’t put any financial strain on the owner, but I thought it was a funny coincidence!)
Meanwhile, any news on the 2020 Tesla Roadster? If it had been delivered as promised would the early ones already be ready for the lithium-ion scrap heap?
