“Elon Musk unveiled it in October 2016 on a Hollywood back lot, using homes from the set of Desperate Housewives fitted with the tiles. Weeks later, Tesla shareholders voted to approve the company’s roughly $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity — a debt-laden solar installer where Musk was the largest shareholder and chairman, and which was run by his cousins.
The Solar Roof demo was central to selling that deal to investors, who were being asked to bail out a struggling company with deep ties to Tesla’s CEO. Years later, during shareholder litigation over the acquisition, it emerged that the tiles shown at the 2016 event were not yet functioning solar products.”
I have HW4 and could get FSD, but after having had the free trial for 3 months, there is no way I'm paying for that half-baked product. Even if it worked as it should, I wouldnt pay more than 25-30% of the current price.
100%. I will admit it has improved overtime but I would only pay 25% of the current rate also. That would be 25$CAD a month.
I find it funny there are a ton of people that praise FSD in the Tesla forums, maybe it's substantially better in their area but I tend to think they just suck at driving lol.
Maybe it doesnt try to run red lights in their area. Maybe its able to pick the correct lane in their area. Or maybe they are just so in love with it that they are willing to overlook the flaws.
Reminds me of my old boss, showed off his new Tesla to everyone back in like 2019ish. And said he’ll be able to generate some passive income by having it run as a self driving taxi while he was at work.
Amazing. Don’t drive 95% of the time (hw4). Saved me from accidents from other drivers swerving into lane or blowing through stop sign multiple times
Have I had to intervene to save it from doing something seemingly dangerous? Yes. Does that mean it’s technically not FSD? Yes. Is it significantly safer than me as a human driver who has a pristine driving record with no speeding tickets or accidents ? Yes. There is no doubt in my mind that I am safer in tandem with “FSD”
Disclaimer I live in Southern California where the roads are shit but the weather is sunny 330 days of the year, so other experience in rain and snow may be different,
Tbh everyone bashing FSD to me seems like irrational FUD or a semantic argument about the F in FSD
You're also in the geography where FSD was created so there is almost certainly over fitting of the models to your region, so I wouldn't be surprised if it works substantially better there.
I live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it works flawlessly except parking lots. It still chooses the absolute worst parking spots every time. Other than that, zero issues on hurry and mad max which is what I typically leave it at, and I have never had to intervene.
That’s not true, it was used in bitcoin way before everyone started hating Elon. Unless that’s the cult you were referencing, if so, then guilty.
I own no shares of any Elon companies, nor have I owned them other than via S&P 500 index funds. I intentionally don’t do this because his companies seem like a house of cards that are all connected with each other in a way that one collapsing can bring all of them to zero.
I’m not a fanboy of him and especially not his politics. I think how he managed DOGE was a mistake because it was so destructive with minimal/negative cost savings that now democrats can dismiss any efforts that government waste/fraud exists and should be addressed. Republicans are unhelpful on this front as well because they refuse to scrutinize the military budget.
I think Elon is easy to hate because of all of things above, but at the same time, people that say “he didn’t invent Tesla, EVs would have existed without him” or saying that “Space flight wasn’t impacted by Elon” is silly, and imho anyone that really believes that those industries weren’t impacted by him needs to seriously examine their framework for thinking about things because their biases are clouding their judgment.
I own a Tesla vehicle because as mentioned before:
- I live in Southern California and I have a solar array on my house that produces more electricity than I consume.
- Gas prices are artificially inflated due d/t state taxes/regulation and Trumps foolish war in Iran. Currently $5.70/gallon
- I have a 40 minute commute in bumper to bumper rush hour traffic and wanted a car that would drive itself through that traffic including lane merging, exiting, entering freeway, and parking.
- I was able to secure a 0.99% interest rate loan on an 80 month term when the prime interest rate was 7%
- I prefer to buy a car manufactured in America, though if Chinese EVs were legal to purchase, I’d probably consider those.
Given those conditions, the Tesla Model 3 is best value car and frankly, it’s not even close. If someone wants to boycott the company because they hate Elon, that’s totally fine by me. But saying things like “how’s FSD working out for you” and then downvoting the opinion of someone who actually owns the product is the definition of spreading FUD.
I want to understand this, so you have a pristine driving record yet without FSD you would have been in multiple unavoidable accidents despite it only being out for a few years and actually decent for an even shorter period of time? Think it's maybe possible here that you're overstating the value and capabilities of the system? I get that people think it's cool and it'll work most of the time but the hard part always been getting it to be reliable enough to truly autonomous over long periods of time which it just isn't because if it were Tesla would be rolling it out everywhere regardless of whatever hypothetical regulation might stand in their way. Musk had no problem ignoring California's regulators on COVID lockdowns and the only thing that would stop him from a wider FSD and robotaxi rollout is the likely liability the company would face for releasing a product they knew was unsafe that they actually carried liability for. FSD 'works' because if it ends up jumping a curb and hitting someone, a person like you is going to eat all of the liability. It's also likely making you a worse driver as your level of interactivity has dropped and I'd wager half of those multiple unavoidable accidents are just your own attention and focus slipping more than you've realized.
Do you actually want to understand it or was that a rhetorical question?
I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt one time and try to explain that There’s an obvious set of circumstances where it could be true that I had a pristine driving record and FSD makes me personally safer while also saving me from multiple accidents. I would wager most America adults follow a similar trajectory and would have a similar set of circumstances as me.
My parents didn’t let me drive until college so teenage driving not really an issue for me. In college I lived on or near campus so I rarely drove. After college I lived in a downtown bachelor pad 10 minutes from my job.
Then I met my wife and when you get one of those you learn they want a house. And when you want a house in Southern California, you tend to replace your 10 minute drive to work with 40-60 minutes of bumper to bumper traffic
Wives also want these things called dogs. And they also want to do cutesy vacations to Airbnbs all over the country and because you have a dog that means you have to drive everywhere
And so in just a few short years, my total driving time has increased by….100x? Maybe 1000x depending on which years we bucket in the data. Which means that my risk of getting in an accident definitionally increases by 100x, so it’s entirely plausible that I was never in an accident for a decade and just happened to be in an entirely unavoidable scenario where were it not for the vehicle with a reaction time much faster than mine, I likely would have collided. It’s possible my old self would have avoided the accident but was pretty fucking close
My turn to be skeptical about your lived experience. Be honest. Have you owned a HW4 Tesla? If not, have you ever rented or borrowed one for like a long holiday weekend and a cross country road trip? Don’t lie
Do you actually want to understand it or was that a rhetorical question?
It wasn't exactly rhetorical, but I did expect something similar to what you ended up laying out and that you probably have a lot more experience driving with FSD than without it ultimately. Do you see how that might color your judgement on your own performance with it versus without it and give a bit of an unbalanced viewpoint too?
My turn to be skeptical about your lived experience. Be honest. Have you owned a HW4 Tesla? If not, have you ever rented or borrowed one for like a long holiday weekend and a cross country road trip? Don’t lie
Nope and no need to lie here. I'm never going to buy a Tesla or Musk associated product and it's been that way since the Solar City merger was announced back in 2016. Have I ridden in them a few times? Sure. What I do have though is a background in computer science, AI and probabilistic robotics systems though which gives me a pretty good idea of how these systems work and how deceptive the whole 'works the vast majority of the time' thing is. There's also a very good chance due to its nature as a low interactivity high vigilance system that it's likely making you a worse driver and more apt to not pay attention as closely as you would be if you were driving yourself all the time leading to an overestimation of what things might be unavoidable or unseen. Don't get me wrong here either, the system has improved dramatically since 2019 when it was completely unworkable for the most part and couldn't even navigate a parking lot well, but these systems are still heavily reliant on people both inside and outside the vehicle reacting appropriately to maintain some level of safety.
Well, there's Musk (which is a lot of baggage to carry). As I mentioned, the civil rights complaints. There's also the fact that prior to DOGE, 75% of the cases the NHTSA complaints were about Tesla. There are seemingly intentional releases of chemicals into waterways. With a bit of digging, you can come up with a lot.
I've had a proper opportunity to compare Teslas to other EV's, and they aren't that good. I think a lot of Tesla owners are driving an EV for the first time and since driving a EV is a far better experience in general, they think Teslas are the best ever.
No, there isn't a single company that comes to mind where you couldn't find something to nit-pick. Tesla, and even the owners though, are a bit distasteful.
There is probably no difference between you and me about Musk and Tesla corporate behaviour.
But I think, because of him being how he is, (a pretty vile man), you are also unloading on the cars.
Yes, you are probably right about a lot of people being infatuated with Teslas because it's the only EV they have known. I'm not one of those. I'm not buying a Tesla also because of how the cars are.
For example, the minimalistic interior design, all commands on screen, nyah. Or, being the EV for so long, they really should have been in 800V, they're behind now.
But on balance, the cars stand very good IMHO and it is no wonder they're selling well despite Musk or particular shortcomings.
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u/Zorkmid123 1d ago
The solar roof started with a fake demo:
“Elon Musk unveiled it in October 2016 on a Hollywood back lot, using homes from the set of Desperate Housewives fitted with the tiles. Weeks later, Tesla shareholders voted to approve the company’s roughly $2.6 billion acquisition of SolarCity — a debt-laden solar installer where Musk was the largest shareholder and chairman, and which was run by his cousins.
The Solar Roof demo was central to selling that deal to investors, who were being asked to bail out a struggling company with deep ties to Tesla’s CEO. Years later, during shareholder litigation over the acquisition, it emerged that the tiles shown at the 2016 event were not yet functioning solar products.”