RealTesla

Skipping to the moneyshot.

The intent of this round-up wasn’t really to pick a winner, but still it’s pretty easy to choose a loser. Three years after its initial beta release, Tesla’s supposed Full Self-Driving still doesn’t live up to its name. As the most expensive option here, it’s easy to single out.

Of the competing ADAS systems, Tesla is the most costly and least reliable.

A new crash recently in Alabama, but a reminder to something that we all know. Burning Teslas are far more difficult to extinguish than any other car.

A number of lower-quality websites are posting this story from Reuters.

His exuberance came to a “grinding halt” one day later, with 115 miles on the odometer, Jain told Reuters. As he drove with his wife and three-year-old daughter, he suddenly lost steering control as he made a slow turn into their neighborhood. The vehicle’s front-right suspension had collapsed, and parts of the car loudly scraped the road as it came to a stop.

[snip]

The complex repair required nearly 40 hours of labor to rebuild the suspension and replace the steering column, among other fixes, according to a detailed repair estimate. The cost: more than $14,000. Tesla refused to cover the repairs, blaming the accident on “prior” suspension damage.

This story you've probably seen. Read the original from Reuters rather than the copy/paste crap from around the internet.

The nine people, who spoke to Reuters on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter, said Tesla had yet to crack dry-coating at the industrial scale needed to make 4680 batteries fast enough to hit its production targets.

4680 cells having some production issues it seems.

I posted the Forbes article that's nothing but a link to this article instead.

Meta: Based on how Lemmy works (IE: articles that get cross-posted link to each other sub-communities), I'm thinking that we might want to err on posting more articles on this software? Anyone have an opinion on this?

I'll watch this later when I have enough time. But its important to note that Elon Musk's aura of invincibility / charity has been pierced, and now big-name talk shows like John Oliver feel safe to actually talk about Musk's issues now.

I certainly don't always agree with John Oliver, but this is a huge step forward for the mainstream media to finally start recognizing the Musk problem.

SpaceX finally gets slapped down (slightly) as its promise for 100/20 internet over rural America by 2025 seems unlikely, because Starship keeps exploding and hasn't had a successful launch yet.

The FCC cited among its reasons SpaceX's failure to successfully launch its Starship rocket, saying "the uncertain nature of Starship's future launches could impact Starlink's ability to meet" its obligations.

Yet another example of overpromising / underdelivering. The failure for Starship to launch (without exploding) is having direct consequences on the promises it made to the Government. If these things keep exploding, there's no reason to believe that the Starlink system will have enough satellites for the promised network speeds, disqualifying SpaceX from the subsidy.

A video on www.threads.net showing off the Cybertruck getting hauled out of a hill / incline by an F150 (or... at least the F150's wench). The Cybertruck is assisting, but its slipping / can't get traction even with all of the extra weight on the tow-line helping it out.

EDIT: https://www.instagram.com/p/C0uxBW5v_Bl/

Instagram seems to have an additional bit of footage, with Cybertruck slipping even nearly at the top of the hill (right next to the road), so the F150 has to pull it up even over that last hump.

I know offroading is heavily dependent on the tires, but... this isn't a good look for the Cybertruck.

Instagram from the owners of the F150:

No lockers due to software issues, not aired down, no pickup points, no recovery points!🤦🏻‍♂️

Hopefully this is a prototype Cybertruck or something, because that's pretty bad for a truck...

Clickbait title, I apologize but its Rule5 to keep the original titles.

This article performs a business analysis on Elon Musk, and where the money seems to have been going with regards to Tesla, SpaceX, and of course Twitter this year. With $1.3+ Billion interest payments coming up, Twitter is likely low on cash soon.

It seems premature to call Elon out (ie: the clickbait title is too clickbait), but this article makes a good case why Elon's financial situation across these companies is in trouble.

With regards to Tesla itself: Cybertruck is a dud that is only there to hype the stock price at this juncture. With only 10 deliveries from the delivery event, "2024" for the start of the limited production $80,000 model and an unknown "2025" date for the cheaper mass production model, there's no hope for Cybertruck to be financially relevant any time soon.

With Rockets exploding at SpaceX, with Tesla ramping up production (ie: $$$$$$ spent), and Twitter losing $Billions/year on interest alone (let alone all the other costs going on), the article suggests that a Twitter bankruptcy is in Elon's best interest to keep things moving.

An interesting argument, we will see how it plays out over the next year.

Apologies for the clickbait video title. Patrick Boyle (Youtuber) seems to have wanted to name this video clickbait. And rule5 is to keep the original title, so... I'll keep the original title.

Still, after watching all 30 minutes (!!!) of it, I think I like this guy's dry sense of humor and his knowledge of this subject. To be fair, I didn't learn anything in particular here (everything is just a summary of the past ~1 year of Twitter). But maybe some of yall have missed the twists-and-turns of this first year of Elon Musk's ownership of Twitter.

So this 30 minute video remains a good summary of everything post-acquisition. And yeah, its a lot, but... a lot has happened this year. So its a good length for the exhaustive summary presented.

Got the usual "base model that may not exist", as well as the typical "gas savings" default. You have to click around to find the true prices. The usual crap if you've been following Tesla for any amount of time.

I've been holding off on the Twitter vs Media Matters story for a while.

This particular article obviously is biased towards Media Matters. But... that's not a bad thing IMO. In any case, this article is very comprehensive in regards to the politics behind this filing, where it was filed (ie: Why North District of Texas / Fifth Court of Appeals), and so forth.

This link is perhaps the best summary I've found so far.

Tesla goes on the offensive, trying to sue people to stop the strikes. Specifically, the license-plate strike (wow, them Swedes go hard on this union stuff, don't they??). Since we're now seeing like 4 or 5 different strikes happen simultaneously now. (Or more? I lost track honestly...)

I'm not very familiar with European politics or Sweden in general. But given the last few lawsuits Elon has done, I think this is just an intimidation tactic. In my ignorance, I'll just assume this lawsuit (like many of Elon's last legal outbursts) will fail.

I've posted this story before, but this one from Arstechnica.com has far more details into what the Judge has said and done in this case.

These stories here are pretty horrific. Awful customer service for insurance claims.

The Swedish Tesla strikes continue to expand.

Given current events, its unfortunate to see Elon Musk taking the side of antisemitism and pushing white-replacement theory through his retweets. The timing can't be worse.

So I haven't made this month's "Gigathread" or "Megathread", and I realized that perhaps some rebranding is in order. The Gigathread and Megathread topics were for grossly off-topic discussion and community building. I'm not sure if people "get" it here in Lemmy. But there's a wide variety of off-topic conversations that can be helpful to this community.

Maybe it'd be helpful if I posted some examples. The general rule is that "a little bit off-topic" can certainly make a new post. But extremely off-topic posts should be isolated here to just chat with everyone else.

A minor rule change: I'll be recycling the "Chatting" topic more slowly here on out. Its going to be a soft-rule: when discussion seems dead (ie: when there hasn't been a post in several days) AND at least a month has past, I'll update the "Chatting" topic to help keep things fresh. Its important to have an outlet like this topic to have this community feel more like a community. Off topic, tangential, and other such topics are very welcome here. Having a dedicated spot for more casual interactions is important for any community.