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In a Wide-Ranging Interview, Elon Musk Talks About Visiting Mars, Battle To Keep Tesla Afloat, and Neuralink (medium.com)
Elon Musk reckons there's a 70 percent chance he'll go to Mars, even as he knows there's a good chance he won't survive there. "I'm talking about moving there," the SpaceX and Tesla CEO said in a wide-ranging, but brief interview with Axios on HBO. "We've recently made a number of breakthroughs that I'm just really fired up about."
In the interview, he also spoke about Neuralink, the company he launched last year to build brain-enhancing implants. "The long-term aspiration of Neuralink would be to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence," he said. "If we have billions of people with a high-bandwidth link to an AI extension of themselves, it would actually make everyone hyper-smart."
Musk also revealed that Tesla had been "single-digit weeks" away from death with the company "bleeding" cash as it ramped up Model 3 production. He said he was worried about imploding and that the stress of working seven days a week and sleeping at the Tesla factory was very painful."It hurts my brain and my heart," said Musk, who recently publicly urged people to explore electric cars, even if they come from companies Tesla competes with.
In the interview, he also spoke about Neuralink, the company he launched last year to build brain-enhancing implants. "The long-term aspiration of Neuralink would be to achieve a symbiosis with artificial intelligence," he said. "If we have billions of people with a high-bandwidth link to an AI extension of themselves, it would actually make everyone hyper-smart."
Musk also revealed that Tesla had been "single-digit weeks" away from death with the company "bleeding" cash as it ramped up Model 3 production. He said he was worried about imploding and that the stress of working seven days a week and sleeping at the Tesla factory was very painful."It hurts my brain and my heart," said Musk, who recently publicly urged people to explore electric cars, even if they come from companies Tesla competes with.
At least they are producing the long and mid range Model 3 now, and they are making many of them. Which is good, there aren't that many options on the market with comparable range (around 400km), price and specs. You have the Hyundai Kona and the Kia e-Niro, and not much else. And the waiting lists for those already stretches to over a year, they just don't make enough of them. Huyndai expects to make 30.000 EVs a year... less than Tesla makes in a month.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Many people have enjoyed exploring Antarctica, even when it's mostly just sitting around in ugly research bases through the winter and occasionally looking at a bleak white landscape. It's not for me, but I'm sure there are people who will enjoy Mars.
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Tesla made quite a few advances in battery tech and the production of batteries (together with Panasonic), their batteries are by far the cheapest per kWh. They also put a lot of effort into battery charging and conditioning, something that other automakers still struggle with, especially when it comes to fast charging (BMW and the Hyundai Ioniq had issues with that). Other automakers are building on the lessons learned from the Tesla drivetrains. So while they didn't invent the electric car, it's fair to say that they re-invented it with a great many innovations. Other auto makers are catching up and in a few cases like low-range EVs they are pulling ahead, but Tesla is still beating them on volume. Hell, Tesla is beating Mercedes on overall sales, in the US.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
If you are intellectually honest and want to hold Tesla liable for "murdering" with their cars, then you better haul in every single other car manufacturer too.
Here's a hint: if you use autopilot, you are still responsible for the safe operation of the vehicle, and the vehicle tells you so before it allows you to turn on Autopilot. Also, Autopilot is clearly stated for use on divided highways only, so anyone that crashes into stopped vehicles on surface streets because of Autopilot is already at three strikes: 1. not keeping control of their vehicle; 2. not heeding the legal warnings about use; and 3. using it outside of the intended bounds as clearly stated in the instructions.
Go anonymously fuck yourself.
The point of his comment was to troll. That's what he does.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
Hyundai had no need to develop an electric Kona to comply with regulations, as they are already producing the Ioniq. But they sell almost all of these in Europe anyway; apparently Hyundai (who have to comply with CARB since 2017) will offer another compliance car in California: a hydrogen fuel cell powered car, for lease only. Besides compliance, they are probably interesting in further exploring the technology; a couple have appeared on the road here in the Netherlands as well.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
Anyone who rides around in a vehicle that only the 0.01% can afford and claims it is "green" is a complete douchebag, which fits in with Musk fanboys.
The Tesla 3 could probably be called overpriced- but it is in fact only 10k (25% more) than the median new car price in the US. You certainly have to be better of than average to afford it; but "0.01% of population can afford" is a huge exaggeration. In reality probably about half the population COULD afford it if they really wanted to and made sacrifices elsewhere- and 25% of total population in US COULD probably afford it comfortably.
Can you get a better (more luxurious anyway) car for the price? Yeah, certainly, but a significant % of people could afford it if they really wanted to.
"That's the way to do it" - Punch
Tesla, Nissan, GM are not the ones driving the EV revolution. CARB (California Air Resources Board) is. They introduced a ZEV mandate in 2012(?). Every year, each auto manufacturer must sell a certain percentage of Zero Emissions Vehicles (right now mostly EVs, though Toyota has a hydrogen fuel cell vehicle). A manufacturer who fails to meet that percentage must buy credits from a company which exceeded theirs (i.e. Tesla - this is the whole reason Musk set up the company - he realized he could sell EVs at a loss and still compete with ICE vehicles by selling the credits). A manufacturer who fails to buy enough credits is banned from selling cars in California. And since about a dozen states automatically adopt CARB's guidelines, they'd be banned from selling cars in about a third of the U.S. by population.
No manufacturer wants to be cut off from that much of the U.S. market, so they are all tripping over themselves developing EVs for sale. If they can't sell enough of them, they run sales and incentives to move enough of them off the lots so they can hit the percentage. That's why there are occasionally those crazy deals on EV leases in 2015 and 2016 (best I saw was $49/mo for 3 years for a VW eGolf). And that's why those crazy deals are only available in California (only EVs sold in California count towards the ZEV mandate).
In other words, the percentage of car sales which are EVs is not organic. It's pre-ordained by CARB. The formula is a bit complex, but for 2018 it's about 2.5% of vehicle sales which need to be ZEVs. For 2025 it's about 8%.
CARB has tried this before. They were first set to implement the ZEV mandate in 2000. That's why GM invested nearly a billion dollars developing the EV-1. By 1999, theirs was the only vehicle which could meet the ZEV mandate. GM stood to make billions of dollars licensing the technology to other automakers. The other automakers petitioned CARB saying that technology just wasn't developed enough to produce viable ZEVs, and the best they could do at the time was a hybrid drivetrain (which environmentalists initially hated because they derive all their energy from gasoline). CARB relented and rescinded the ZEV mandate, pulling the rug out from under GM and basically flushing their billion dollar investment down the toilet. In retaliation, GM recalled every EV-1 and destroyed them, and locked up their research in a basement file cabinet so that California would never benefit from their double-cross.
Not sure about that. Manufacturers are starting to build vehicles that have been designed as EVs from the ground up.
Not really. Not seriously anyway. If they were serious about it they would be investing heavily in battery companies and securing supplies. The only company I've seen working on making an EV that doesn't look idiotic recently is Porsche. The new Leaf looks better than the old one but that's not saying much - the old one was terrible looking. The Kona is just another boring and fairly ugly hatchback. I own a Bolt and while I like the styling for a hatchback, it isn't exactly sexy either.
The big automakers are just dipping their toes in the water and waiting. They don't want to take the risk and possibly be wrong.
This is not just a shakeup in car design, but in their production lines and logistics as well, and such things take some time and effort (as Tesla found out).
Of course but I work in the industry and they aren't really putting in the effort or money. They're all claiming they are going to introduce electrified cars but none of the big autos are really pushing their chips onto the table and those promises haven't materialized into real products for the most part.
My understanding is that a couple of these companies are simply having a real hard time sourcing the batteries.
They're having a hard time of it because it's a critical technology they wouldn't be outsourcing if they were serious about it. Tesla seems to be the only ones that grok the fact that they need to vertically integrate to get the economies of scale and a competitive advantage. Unless Tesla's competitors have a lead on some mysterious battery tech that will supplant Li-Ion in the near future and are willing to dump tons of money on it then they are playing a dangerous game.