TESLA and Elon Musk - anything not elsewhere

[sugar magnolia]

Missing bolt?

No problem, Elno will just issue a software patch for that.

Or fire all the bolt installers at the factory.

[Dr. Ken]

He's certainly chosen a side

[Slim Cognito]

That immediately made me think of Blofeld responding to Bond, "No, Mr. Bond. I want you to die."

Does that make me a bad person?

[noblepa]

That immediately made me think of Blofeld responding to Bond, "No, Mr. Bond. I want you to die."

Does that make me a bad person?

I hate to be a nit-picker, but wasn't that Goldfinger?

[Slim Cognito]

That immediately made me think of Blofeld responding to Bond, "No, Mr. Bond. I want you to die."

Does that make me a bad person?

I hate to be a nit-picker, but wasn't that Goldfinger?

I believe you are correct.

[Frater I*I]

That immediately made me think of Blofeld responding to Bond, "No, Mr. Bond. I want you to die."

Does that make me a bad person?

Nope, not at all...



And to further nitpick "No Mr. Bond, I expect you to die"

[Volkonski]

Missing bolt?

No problem, Elno will just issue a software patch for that.

Or fire all the bolt installers at the factory.

Probably an automated machine.

[Shizzle Popped]

That immediately made me think of Blofeld responding to Bond, "No, Mr. Bond. I want you to die."

Does that make me a bad person?

OK, this is one of those really odd coincidences, but I actually watched that movie this afternoon.

(Yeah, I've had a lot of spare time. It seems that I had a mild case of COVID with a not so mild case of post COVID fatigue. I'm getting better but it's incredibly slow.)

[Sam the Centipede]

Missing bolt?

No problem, Elno will just issue a software patch for that.

Or fire all the bolt installers at the factory.

Probably an automated machine.

Given the number of redundancies be has ordered, I expect Elmo does have an automated fitting machine.

[raison de arizona]

How Elon Musk knocked Tesla’s ‘Full Self-Driving’ off course

Tesla’s campaign to deliver a fully autonomous vehicle has suffered amid mounting safety concerns — and the boss’s Twitter distraction

Long before he became “Chief Twit” of Twitter, Elon Musk had a different obsession: making Teslas drive themselves. The technology was expensive and, two years ago when the supply chain was falling apart, Musk became determined to bring down the cost.


He zeroed in on a target: the car radar sensors sensors, which are designed to detect hazards at long ranges and prevent the vehicles from barreling into other cars in traffic. The sleek bodies of the cars already bristled with eight cameras designed to view the road and spot hazards in each direction. That, Musk argued, should be enough.


Some Tesla engineers were aghast, said former employees with knowledge of his reaction, speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of retribution. They contacted a trusted former executive for advice on how to talk Musk out of it, in previously unreported pushback. Without radar, Teslas would be susceptible to basic perception errors if the cameras were obscured by raindrops or even bright sunlight, problems that could lead to crashes.



Musk was unconvinced and overruled his engineers. In May 2021 Tesla announced it was eliminating radar on new cars. Soon after, the company began disabling radar in cars already on the road. The result, according to interviews with nearly a dozen former employees and test drivers, safety officials and other experts, was an uptick in crashes, near misses and other embarrassing mistakes by Tesla vehicles suddenly deprived of a critical sensor.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technolo ... a-driving/

[raison de arizona]

Tesla owners & investors are finally organizing to sue Elon/Tesla for the "Full Self Driving" they paid nearly $10,000 for 7+ years ago which still hasn't been released.

Tesla having to refund all these customers for the FSD vaporware would bankrupt $TSLA

[RTH10260]

the yoke is a joke say buyers, and the steering wheels are out of stock ....

Yoke No More: Why Tesla Is Now Offering a Standard Steering Wheel on the Model S and Model X

ALEX RAMOS
PUBLISHED JAN 23, 2023

The yoke is one of the most complained-about features of the Model S and Model X.

Tesla tried to reinvent the wheel with the introduction of the steering yoke on its flagship Model S and Model X vehicles. The yoke was the only option available on Tesla's most expensive sedan and SUV, but some people were annoyed at the shape of the "wheel" while driving, as well as the implementation of the horn.

The disappearance of the traditional turn signal stalks also drew complaints. In a smart move by Tesla, the yoke is now optional, along with a circular wheel retrofit for existing customers that are fed up with the yoke.

Why Is Tesla Ditching the Steering Yoke?
Tesla will now offer a conventional (round) steering wheel on the Model S and Model X online configurator. The reason for the switch connected to numerous complaints, some of which can be seen on the NHTSA.GOV's 2021 Model S info page.

Surprisingly enough, a point of concern was the location of the horn button on the yoke. Luckily, Tesla enabled mashing the yoke to activate the horn more traditionally, giving users another option instead of the capacitive buttons on the yoke.



https://www.makeuseof.com/why-tesla-off ... d-model-x/

Tesla Sells Out of Steering Wheels as Owners Rush to Replace the Yoke
After telling us all the yoke was the future of steering, Tesla backtracked and offered to retrofit a regular wheel to its Model S and X EVs.

Owen Bellwood
March 24, 2023

Every now and then, an idea comes along that’s so revolutionary you just know it’s going to be seen in every car before long. Things like the first three-point seatbelt, the first touchscreen center console and, hopefully one day, vented seats. Then, there are the ideas that aren’t so great and are soon backtracked on, like Tesla and its yoke.


https://jalopnik.com/tesla-sells-out-of ... 1850261283

[Dave from down under]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-01/ ... /102175700

A US appeals court has ruled Tesla CEO Elon Musk violated federal labour law by tweeting that employees of the electric vehicle maker would lose stock options if they joined a union.

Key points:

Mr Musk tweeted nothing was stopping workers unionising but asked why "give up stock options"?
The appeals court upheld a ruling that Mr Musk's tweet amounted to an unlawful threat
Tesla is appealing another labour violation after prohibiting workers from wearing union campaign shirts
The New Orleans-based 5th US Circuit Court of Appeals upheld a decision by the US National Labor Relations Board that said the 2018 tweet amounted to an unlawful threat that could discourage unionising and ordered Mr Musk to delete it.

Amid an organising campaign at Tesla's Fremont, California, plant by the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, Mr Musk tweeted: "Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union … But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing?"

Tesla did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

[humblescribe]

Tesla does not have a public relations or any other sort of promotions department. Musk canned that department around 2019.

[Volkonski]

Tesla misses delivery estimates as price cuts fail to lure buyers

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... ce=twitter

Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) on Sunday missed estimates for first-quarter deliveries as a bleak economic outlook and rising competition outweighed the electric automaker's efforts to prop up demand with price cuts.

Tesla delivered 422,875 vehicles compared with analyst expectations for 430,008 vehicles, according to Refinitiv data.

Investors have been watching CEO Elon Musk's gamble that cutting prices would stimulate sales, making up for the profit hit from eroding margins. Shares have soared more than 68% this year on hopes that Tesla would win a price war it started, although the stock remains more than 50% down from its peak in November 2021.

The issues have also dampened Tesla's efforts to bolster demand with price cuts at a time when orders are under pressure from the turbulent economy and rising competition from startups such as Lucid Group (LCID.O) and legacy players including Ford Motor Co (F.N).

Fewer sales at lower margins means lower profits. No way Twitter profits will make up the difference.

[RTH10260]

Special Report: Tesla workers shared sensitive images recorded by customer cars

By Steve Stecklow, Waylon Cunningham and Hyunjoo Jin
April 6, 20235:29 PM GMT+2 Last Updated 3 hours ago

• Private camera recordings, captured by cars, were shared in chat rooms: ex-workers
  Circulated clips included one of child being hit by car: ex-employees
  Tesla says recordings made by vehicle cameras ‘remain anonymous’
  One video showed submersible vehicle from James Bond film, owned by Elon Musk

LONDON/SAN FRANCISCO, April 6 (Reuters) - Tesla Inc assures its millions of electric car owners that their privacy “is and will always be enormously important to us.” The cameras it builds into vehicles to assist driving, it notes on its website, are “designed from the ground up to protect your privacy.”

But between 2019 and 2022, groups of Tesla employees privately shared via an internal messaging system sometimes highly invasive videos and images recorded by customers’ car cameras, according to interviews by Reuters with nine former employees.

Some of the recordings caught Tesla customers in embarrassing situations. One ex-employee described a video of a man approaching a vehicle completely naked.

Also shared: crashes and road-rage incidents. One crash video in 2021 showed a Tesla driving at high speed in a residential area hitting a child riding a bike, according to another ex-employee. The child flew in one direction, the bike in another. The video spread around a Tesla office in San Mateo, California, via private one-on-one chats, “like wildfire,” the ex-employee said.

Other images were more mundane, such as pictures of dogs and funny road signs that employees made into memes by embellishing them with amusing captions or commentary, before posting them in private group chats. While some postings were only shared between two employees, others could be seen by scores of them, according to several ex-employees.

Tesla states in its online “Customer Privacy Notice” that its “camera recordings remain anonymous and are not linked to you or your vehicle.” But seven former employees told Reuters the computer program they used at work could show the location of recordings – which potentially could reveal where a Tesla owner lived.

One ex-employee also said that some recordings appeared to have been made when cars were parked and turned off. Several years ago, Tesla would receive video recordings from its vehicles even when they were off, if owners gave consent. It has since stopped doing so.




https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesl ... 023-04-06/

[Volkonski]

Musk's Twitter activities may not be enough to make Republicans love him.

US House committee chair 'concerned' by Tesla deals in China

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... ce=twitter

Tesla announced the factory in a tweet on Sunday, and Chinese state media said it would initially produce 10,000 Megapack units a year, equal to around 40 gigawatt hours of energy storage, and complement a huge existing Shanghai plant making electric vehicles.

Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the House of Representatives' select committee on China's Communist Party, said he would like to know how Tesla's CEO Elon Musk balances U.S. government support for Tesla and its operations in China.

"I'm concerned about this," Gallagher told Reuters when asked about the battery factory.

"Tesla seems entirely dependent, A, on the largesse of the federal government via tax breaks, and B, upon access to the Chinese market," Gallagher said.

"The sort of deals they've struck there seem very concerning. I'd just be curious to know how Elon Musk balances both of those," he said, adding that Musk's space flight venture SpaceX was by contrast a "massive success story."

[Foggy]

Yeah, there goes Mike Gallagher's Twitter Titter X Corp. Holdings account.

[RTH10260]

Musk's Twitter activities may not be enough to make Republicans love him.

US House committee chair 'concerned' by Tesla deals in China

https://www.reuters.com/business/autos- ... ce=twitter

Tesla announced the factory in a tweet on Sunday, and Chinese state media said it would initially produce 10,000 Megapack units a year, equal to around 40 gigawatt hours of energy storage, and complement a huge existing Shanghai plant making electric vehicles.

Mike Gallagher, the Republican chair of the House of Representatives' select committee on China's Communist Party, said he would like to know how Tesla's CEO Elon Musk balances U.S. government support for Tesla and its operations in China.

"I'm concerned about this," Gallagher told Reuters when asked about the battery factory.

"Tesla seems entirely dependent, A, on the largesse of the federal government via tax breaks, and B, upon access to the Chinese market," Gallagher said.

"The sort of deals they've struck there seem very concerning. I'd just be curious to know how Elon Musk balances both of those," he said, adding that Musk's space flight venture SpaceX was by contrast a "massive success story."

How does that match small government without intervention into US captialism? The government directing production capacities sounds very very communist

Funny - did I just see a Republican support the Biden adminstration

[p0rtia]

Elmo is like one of those insane, uber rich Doctor Who villain. One of the ones who lives for years in an airplane circling the planet. Keeps him out of range of various law courts and is supposedly good for the health.

I'm not saying he's the David Tennant era Master. But I might be.

[Gregg]

Elmo is like one of those insane, uber rich Doctor Who villain. One of the ones who lives for years in an airplane circling the planet. Keeps him out of range of various law courts and is supposedly good for the health.

I'm not saying he's the David Tennant era Master. But I might be.

Lives on a Space Station.

[Suranis]

Now that you said it, He does remind me of the guy from the Christopher Eccleston Doctor Who episode "Dalek" who "owns the internet."

[Dave from down under]

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-04-13/ ... /102216126

Billionaire Elon Musk has told the BBC that running Twitter has been "quite painful" but that the social media company is now roughly breaking even after he acquired it late last year.

Key points:
Elon Musk said Twitter's workforce has been slashed to about 1,500 employees from about 8,000 previously
Asked if he regretted buying the company, he said it "needed to be done"
He also revealed that he sometimes sleeps on a couch at Twitter's San Francisco office
In an interview also streamed live on Twitter Spaces, Mr Musk discussed his ownership of the online platform, including layoffs, misinformation and his work style.

"It's not been boring. It's quite a rollercoaster," he told the British broadcaster at Twitter's San Francisco headquarters.

It was a rare chance for a mainstream news outlet to interview Mr Musk, who also owns Tesla and SpaceX.

After buying Twitter for $US44 billion ($A65 billion) last year, Mr Musk's changes included eliminating the company's communications department.

Reporters who email the company to seek comment now receive an auto-reply with a poo emoji.

The interview was sometimes tense, with Mr Musk challenging the reporter to back up assertions about rising levels of hate speech on the platform.

At other times, Mr Musk laughed at his own jokes, mentioning more than once that he was not the CEO but his dog Floki was.

etc

[pipistrelle]

Elmo is like one of those insane, uber rich Doctor Who villain. One of the ones who lives for years in an airplane circling the planet. Keeps him out of range of various law courts and is supposedly good for the health.

I'm not saying he's the David Tennant era Master. But I might be.

I’ve thought more Max Capricorn.

https://tardis.fandom.com/wiki/Max_Capricorn

[p0rtia]