I didn't see much ranting and raving? He said the new roadster will be sentient when it turns up which may be quite a long time so who knows? I mean they had a sentient Pontiac Trans Am in Knight Rider so there's a role model.
Just because he's getting coverage doesn't mean he is getting good coverage. Like you already mention: standing on stage next to the US president would normally be amazing - except when it is a president reviled by your primary customer base and you do a nazi salute.
The same applies with the "sex sells" epidemic of the early 2000s: sure, the numbers showed that it was a great way to make people remember your ad, but they forgot to take into account that people remember the boobs and completely miss the brand.
I remember seeing snippets of the "flying car" going around on social media, so it clearly made an impression on me. I think it was supposed to be a Roadster relaunch? Release date? No idea. Price? No idea. Range? No idea. Number of seats? No idea. Cargo capacity? No idea. I bet it won't actually ship with those "rockets", though. Sooo, "clown makes car mockup fly"?
If you're going to do a stunt, at least do it properly. Like Volvo suspending an entire dump truck from a crane[0].
Musk has given something like $300M in political donations to support Republicans in the upcoming midterms -- and I've seen quite a lot of media coverage of this.
Much of this money is going to Texas, and James Talarico (the Democratic candidate there) has not been shy about accusing Musk of trying to buy the election.
Sure, flying cars are cool. But I don't get the impression that Musk's politics have been forgotten at all.
None of these would be consideration if the car itself was competitive. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which side you're on), tesla is now no longer competitive with the advent of the chinese EV manufacturers.
The last holdout being the USA, where the gov't is preferentially giving tesla their marketshare instead of letting open competition work in favour of consumers.
But like japanese cars, this will eventually also take root.
> None of these would be consideration if the car itself was competitive.
Why not? It looks like many people heard "vote with your wallet," and took it seriously. For better or worse, purchasing a Tesla, or not, has become a referendum on Musk himself.
Have you read a single thing about Starlink usage in the Ukraine conflict?
Because if you had, you'd know that Spacex has actively geofenced usage to allow it within Ukrainian territory but disallow it in Russian and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, instituted a whitelist policy coordinated with Ukrainian forces to whitelist Ukrainian terminals but disallow Russian terminals acquired through the black market
They literally provide connectivity to Ukrainian forces and actively try to prevent usage by Russian forces but the moment they put any caveats on how the tech is used, like disallowing its usage by fast-moving objects or for offensive weapon guidance, they are "helping kill Ukrainian civilians".
Perhaps they should have just said Starlink would not work with defense/war usage at all and sat the conflict out and geofenced all of eastern Europe, like many protesters at Google ask their leadership to not do any defense industry deals. Would that have been better from your perspective?
The way you're framing it it's like SpaceX is doing a favor, by:
- not whitelisting the capacity for terrorism and war crimes;
- and not collecting 36 million USD per year from Poland. You know, the guys that asked Elon if he's playing politics with starlink? [0]
> but the moment they put any caveats on how the tech is used, like disallowing its usage by fast-moving objects or for offensive weapon guidance, they are "helping kill Ukrainian civilians".
You mean the moment Trump caved in to Putin (again), when Trump and Musk said Zelensky should be removed from the presidency (again), and then proceeded to cap Starlink speeds, taking away from Ukraine the capacity to intercept jet powered Shahed drones[1]?
Is that the moment you're referring to?
Or you're going to be cynical to the point of saying this was just a SLA update that happened coincidentally with the moment Russia, Trump and Musk are pressuring for the capitulation of democratically elected president?
It looks like it's you who's attempting to spread misinformation.
And maybe they shouldn't have allowed starlink usage, just like maybe Starlink should not be allowed to provide services in Europe, and Twitter should be blocked for foreign interference.
The problem is that people keep lying to themselves about the definition of the word sentient.
1) Cars use all kind of sensors to collect info about the real world.
They measure how much air is entering the motor in real time. They know if the rear left tire is deflated. They detect when they need to be feed with gas, they know the oil pressure and the ECU, the car's brain, is collecting all this info in real time via its "neurons", the BUS cable.
2) Cars react to this information constantly taking the measures appropriated to assure that the preservation of the car functions.
The ECU sends orders in real time to inject X gas into the motor to match Y liters of air in a perfect mix. The motor enters in panic mode and stops the power temporarily.
3) Cars communicate with their drivers
They send a warning to put more gas, or beep because they detected an obstacle behind them or that the seat belt is not being used.
Cars have lots of sophisticated electric sensors to sense the world so, like amoebas or plum trees, they fit perfectly into the definition of the word sentient
Using sentient as a cheaper synonym of self-conscious is moving the goalposts and a self-scam.
In discussing the boundaries of animal sentience, the most important question is whether they can feel pain or distress.
So whilst a car's ability to sense and react to its environment may be at least as sophisticated as that of a plum tree, it's hard to see how it would meet the legal threshold for sentience in the same way that, say, a lobster does.
More to the point - if Musk genuinely believes that his cars are capable of suffering, why isn't he doing anything to prevent them from being harmed?
> the most important question is whether they can feel pain or distress.
Most important question for a small group of people in a philosophical and quasi-religious movement that unilaterally redefined the term to fit their agenda.
Millions of scientists don't feel that pain is so special as to receive special treatment. Is just one of our type of sensors. Not more important than to be able to see, to taste or to hear. Definitely not more important than be able to reproduce. And there is a lot of pain involved in how mammals enter in the world.
The idea that to chop a tree is more moral than to kill a mosquito is totally random and alienated from biological reality.
the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between [pulling a leaf off a tree and cutting the paw off a kitten]. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
I know that book. My favorite part from the wise man was "When run out of arguments, cite something out of context, use the fallacy of authority, and insult the other for something that didn't wrote (as if they would even care)".
Isn’t that an American thing? Like the Volks Wagons and Skoda seems like really good cars than many people in Europe drive, not to mention the storm of Chinese brands.
I think it is also a bit of an outdated take even in the US market. There are a lot of options these days. The subsidies may be gone, but not all of the ev models have been canceled and the used market is still quite reasonable.
As much as I don't like Elon Musk, he did actually ship (and continues to ship) a working product at a real accounting profit, so I don't think this is a fair comparison.
I am curious to know how are performing the Tesla's sales of CO2 emission quotas to the manufacturers who have started producing electric vehicles (and therefore have started to cover their own emission quotas).
PS: I am not parent commenter, and this separately to the famous gesture with the arm that E.M. did, what can be guessed that harmed the sales.
> Elon Musk scam makes Theranos, ENRON looks like a kinder garden children.
What is the scam? I do not like EVs and do not own a Tesla car, but Tesla does make them, they do work, and people do like them. Theranos, by comparison, never delivered (nor could deliver) what they promised. So I am not sure I get your comparison.
There’s also DOGE and all the related stock manipulation that happened, the tweet promising funding to take TSLA private which obviously made people buy the stock, the ru[n|i]ning of Twitter for political gain, the creation of teams in Tesla to convince owners not to come investigate battery/range issues under warranty, etc.
Probably not quite to Theranos levels, but I can see the pattern.
The unrealistic timelines for future improvements matter but they're a lot less than Theranos and Enron. And the current product is baaaasically what they promise even if they get wink wink nudge nudge about whether the self driving is level 2 or 4.
Gentle reminder that Tesla itself opted to call Tesla's sham of a FSD as "Tesla assisted driving" after regulators from multiple European countries made it very clear that at best ist assists drivers and still require drivers to never take their attention off the road.
I can go book an FSD robotaxi right now in downtown Austin TX, I know because I’ve done it many times. It’s real and works great. Not sure what you mean about FSD.
They sold FSD for private cars in cars like 7 years ago, that you can take a small area in Austian doesn't matter.
And people on Hardware 3 should collectively sue, because they will never, ever, ever, ever get FSD fully working on that. But instead of admiting that and paying people back (if they want) they continue to release small updates to pretendent its still possible. Musk is known for not giving a shit of supporting old shit, he looks at only the future always.
It’s like the entire city of Austin. It’s also the entire Bay Area.
I’m only making the point that it’s a real product and you can buy it. Sort of implied by the parent comment of it being a “scam” meaning that it was never delivered.
HW3 gets a supervised version which is the best they can do with the hardware that they shipped, it’s unfortunate I agree but it’s not totally out of line with what happens with other devices like the iPhone. Apple has a version of Apple Intelligence which is neutered on older devices, presumably because of hardware limitations.
I rode in a 2024 FSD Model 3 in greater Los Angeles area (maybe call it SoCal), for a couple hundred miles mixed highway, suburbs, heavy highway traffic, night driving etc, and every mile besides parking it did almost flawlessly. The only "mistake" i saw it made was one of overcaution. on a very wide road turning right at a red light, it started to go and then hammered the brakes when it saw a pedestrian begin to cross _on the far side_ the person didnt cross our path for like 30-60 seconds we could have been long gone and every human driver I can think of would have gone.
When the CEO of the company starts ranting and raving about "sentient cars", it's time to look somewhere else for your purchase.
I didn't see much ranting and raving? He said the new roadster will be sentient when it turns up which may be quite a long time so who knows? I mean they had a sentient Pontiac Trans Am in Knight Rider so there's a role model.
> When the CEO of the company starts ranting and raving about "sentient cars", it's time to look somewhere else for your purchase.
Rigging a car to do a flip is a clear way to tell the world they officially ran out of ideas and are desperate to get a sale.
It's only desperation if it doesn't work, and from the amount of media coverage I've seen over the past week I'd say it's working pretty well.
It's like everyone has completely forgotten Musk was up on stage with the US president doing nazi salutes just a couple of years as ago.
Just because he's getting coverage doesn't mean he is getting good coverage. Like you already mention: standing on stage next to the US president would normally be amazing - except when it is a president reviled by your primary customer base and you do a nazi salute.
The same applies with the "sex sells" epidemic of the early 2000s: sure, the numbers showed that it was a great way to make people remember your ad, but they forgot to take into account that people remember the boobs and completely miss the brand.
I remember seeing snippets of the "flying car" going around on social media, so it clearly made an impression on me. I think it was supposed to be a Roadster relaunch? Release date? No idea. Price? No idea. Range? No idea. Number of seats? No idea. Cargo capacity? No idea. I bet it won't actually ship with those "rockets", though. Sooo, "clown makes car mockup fly"?
If you're going to do a stunt, at least do it properly. Like Volvo suspending an entire dump truck from a crane[0].
[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jf_wKkV5dwQ
> If you're going to do a stunt, at least do it properly. Like Volvo....
Lie Volvo and the reversing trucks, with Jean Claude Van Dam....
Yeah but at least he distanced himself from him by tweeting out that he knew he was a pedo all along.
A real burn-your-boats moment so there's no chance of them working together again after that.
They will work together again. Too many $$$ on the table.
Musk has given something like $300M in political donations to support Republicans in the upcoming midterms -- and I've seen quite a lot of media coverage of this.
Much of this money is going to Texas, and James Talarico (the Democratic candidate there) has not been shy about accusing Musk of trying to buy the election.
Sure, flying cars are cool. But I don't get the impression that Musk's politics have been forgotten at all.
The only way to be more explicit and literal about it would have been to make the car jump a shark instead of trucks
When the CEO is actively engaged in:
- far right politics;
- helping Russia killing Ukrainian civilians;
- and threatening the livelihood of Europeans;
These might also help people decide to look somewhere else.
None of these would be consideration if the car itself was competitive. Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on which side you're on), tesla is now no longer competitive with the advent of the chinese EV manufacturers.
The last holdout being the USA, where the gov't is preferentially giving tesla their marketshare instead of letting open competition work in favour of consumers.
But like japanese cars, this will eventually also take root.
> None of these would be consideration if the car itself was competitive.
Why not? It looks like many people heard "vote with your wallet," and took it seriously. For better or worse, purchasing a Tesla, or not, has become a referendum on Musk himself.
I don't think you're giving enough value to the bad reputation Elon has among people with purchase power in Europe.
With that said I don't disagree that the market evolved and Tesla isn't what it was.
Serious question,
> - helping Russia killing Ukrainian civilians;
Have you read a single thing about Starlink usage in the Ukraine conflict?
Because if you had, you'd know that Spacex has actively geofenced usage to allow it within Ukrainian territory but disallow it in Russian and Russian-occupied Ukrainian territory, instituted a whitelist policy coordinated with Ukrainian forces to whitelist Ukrainian terminals but disallow Russian terminals acquired through the black market
https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starlink-ukraine-russ...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Starlink_in_the_Russo-Ukrainia...
They literally provide connectivity to Ukrainian forces and actively try to prevent usage by Russian forces but the moment they put any caveats on how the tech is used, like disallowing its usage by fast-moving objects or for offensive weapon guidance, they are "helping kill Ukrainian civilians".
Perhaps they should have just said Starlink would not work with defense/war usage at all and sat the conflict out and geofenced all of eastern Europe, like many protesters at Google ask their leadership to not do any defense industry deals. Would that have been better from your perspective?
You are actively spreading misinformation.
I think they are referring to the recent decision to limit the service to working at less than 100mph https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50172214
which makes it harder to use it for intercepting incoming drones and missiles
see also https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2026/10/22/ukraines-access-to...
The way you're framing it it's like SpaceX is doing a favor, by:
- not whitelisting the capacity for terrorism and war crimes;
- and not collecting 36 million USD per year from Poland. You know, the guys that asked Elon if he's playing politics with starlink? [0]
> but the moment they put any caveats on how the tech is used, like disallowing its usage by fast-moving objects or for offensive weapon guidance, they are "helping kill Ukrainian civilians".
You mean the moment Trump caved in to Putin (again), when Trump and Musk said Zelensky should be removed from the presidency (again), and then proceeded to cap Starlink speeds, taking away from Ukraine the capacity to intercept jet powered Shahed drones[1]?
Is that the moment you're referring to?
Or you're going to be cynical to the point of saying this was just a SLA update that happened coincidentally with the moment Russia, Trump and Musk are pressuring for the capitulation of democratically elected president?
It looks like it's you who's attempting to spread misinformation.
And maybe they shouldn't have allowed starlink usage, just like maybe Starlink should not be allowed to provide services in Europe, and Twitter should be blocked for foreign interference.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/business/media-telecom/polands-sikor...
[1]https://www.pravda.com.ua/eng/news/2026/10/14/8057960/index....
Cars are sentient since long time ago.
The problem is that people keep lying to themselves about the definition of the word sentient.
1) Cars use all kind of sensors to collect info about the real world.
They measure how much air is entering the motor in real time. They know if the rear left tire is deflated. They detect when they need to be feed with gas, they know the oil pressure and the ECU, the car's brain, is collecting all this info in real time via its "neurons", the BUS cable.
2) Cars react to this information constantly taking the measures appropriated to assure that the preservation of the car functions.
The ECU sends orders in real time to inject X gas into the motor to match Y liters of air in a perfect mix. The motor enters in panic mode and stops the power temporarily.
3) Cars communicate with their drivers
They send a warning to put more gas, or beep because they detected an obstacle behind them or that the seat belt is not being used.
Cars have lots of sophisticated electric sensors to sense the world so, like amoebas or plum trees, they fit perfectly into the definition of the word sentient
Using sentient as a cheaper synonym of self-conscious is moving the goalposts and a self-scam.
In discussing the boundaries of animal sentience, the most important question is whether they can feel pain or distress.
So whilst a car's ability to sense and react to its environment may be at least as sophisticated as that of a plum tree, it's hard to see how it would meet the legal threshold for sentience in the same way that, say, a lobster does.
More to the point - if Musk genuinely believes that his cars are capable of suffering, why isn't he doing anything to prevent them from being harmed?
> the most important question is whether they can feel pain or distress.
Most important question for a small group of people in a philosophical and quasi-religious movement that unilaterally redefined the term to fit their agenda.
Millions of scientists don't feel that pain is so special as to receive special treatment. Is just one of our type of sensors. Not more important than to be able to see, to taste or to hear. Definitely not more important than be able to reproduce. And there is a lot of pain involved in how mammals enter in the world.
The idea that to chop a tree is more moral than to kill a mosquito is totally random and alienated from biological reality.
the wise man bowed his head solemnly and spoke: "theres actually zero difference between [pulling a leaf off a tree and cutting the paw off a kitten]. you imbecile. you fucking moron"
I know that book. My favorite part from the wise man was "When run out of arguments, cite something out of context, use the fallacy of authority, and insult the other for something that didn't wrote (as if they would even care)".
Plants do all these things too, hard to call them sentient.
A lot of people underestimate how complex and sophisticated are the plants really.
This is true. Highly recommend Zoe Schlanger's "The Light Eaters" on this topic. But not a good argument for car sentience.
If it weren't for its CEO, they'd have at least one more customer.
While SpaceX's exceed expectations. Books cooked to justify merge
Tesla could have been so much more with an adult at the helm.
Tesla cars are great. Best EV you can get when balancing cost and quality and capability. By far.
But it comes with Elon, so I drive a Rivian.
If you're American. For the rest of the world, best EV is BYD.
Byd kinda ugly though. Outside the cybertruck Tesla's look great
Isn’t that an American thing? Like the Volks Wagons and Skoda seems like really good cars than many people in Europe drive, not to mention the storm of Chinese brands.
I think it is also a bit of an outdated take even in the US market. There are a lot of options these days. The subsidies may be gone, but not all of the ev models have been canceled and the used market is still quite reasonable.
Totally, I’ve sat multiple times in Tesla and I don’t see what I am missing. Their interior and design is quite meh also.
It's only great if you want to get ripped off.
https://consumerrights.wiki/w/Tesla
The interior of Tesla's feel cheaper than a 2013 Mitsubishi space star.
By far... not now.
MANY EVs sold by renamed automakers, and even good chinese brands.
[dead]
will tesla exist in 15 years ?
will the never ending musk promises around his cars - level 4 autonomous driving etc bear fruit ?
can't even talk about the roadster
Here's video of a cab driving with no safety driver https://youtu.be/Z5UhJt85SDk?t=31
kinda level 4 ish?
I really deslike this flying circus of the Tesla presentation from NaziMusk
Elon Musk scam makes Theranos, ENRON looks like a kinder garden children.
As much as I don't like Elon Musk, he did actually ship (and continues to ship) a working product at a real accounting profit, so I don't think this is a fair comparison.
how so?
I am curious to know how are performing the Tesla's sales of CO2 emission quotas to the manufacturers who have started producing electric vehicles (and therefore have started to cover their own emission quotas).
PS: I am not parent commenter, and this separately to the famous gesture with the arm that E.M. did, what can be guessed that harmed the sales.
Cant recall if it was this article or elsewhere, but it was called out that is a major loss of revenue for them YoY.
As well the capital spending on Optimus is hurting the bottom line.
> Elon Musk scam makes Theranos, ENRON looks like a kinder garden children.
What is the scam? I do not like EVs and do not own a Tesla car, but Tesla does make them, they do work, and people do like them. Theranos, by comparison, never delivered (nor could deliver) what they promised. So I am not sure I get your comparison.
Not OP, but could it be they refer to FSD?
There’s also DOGE and all the related stock manipulation that happened, the tweet promising funding to take TSLA private which obviously made people buy the stock, the ru[n|i]ning of Twitter for political gain, the creation of teams in Tesla to convince owners not to come investigate battery/range issues under warranty, etc.
Probably not quite to Theranos levels, but I can see the pattern.
The unrealistic timelines for future improvements matter but they're a lot less than Theranos and Enron. And the current product is baaaasically what they promise even if they get wink wink nudge nudge about whether the self driving is level 2 or 4.
> Not OP, but could it be they refer to FSD?
Gentle reminder that Tesla itself opted to call Tesla's sham of a FSD as "Tesla assisted driving" after regulators from multiple European countries made it very clear that at best ist assists drivers and still require drivers to never take their attention off the road.
I can go book an FSD robotaxi right now in downtown Austin TX, I know because I’ve done it many times. It’s real and works great. Not sure what you mean about FSD.
They sold FSD for private cars in cars like 7 years ago, that you can take a small area in Austian doesn't matter.
And people on Hardware 3 should collectively sue, because they will never, ever, ever, ever get FSD fully working on that. But instead of admiting that and paying people back (if they want) they continue to release small updates to pretendent its still possible. Musk is known for not giving a shit of supporting old shit, he looks at only the future always.
>small area in Austian
It’s like the entire city of Austin. It’s also the entire Bay Area.
I’m only making the point that it’s a real product and you can buy it. Sort of implied by the parent comment of it being a “scam” meaning that it was never delivered.
HW3 gets a supervised version which is the best they can do with the hardware that they shipped, it’s unfortunate I agree but it’s not totally out of line with what happens with other devices like the iPhone. Apple has a version of Apple Intelligence which is neutered on older devices, presumably because of hardware limitations.
I rode in a 2024 FSD Model 3 in greater Los Angeles area (maybe call it SoCal), for a couple hundred miles mixed highway, suburbs, heavy highway traffic, night driving etc, and every mile besides parking it did almost flawlessly. The only "mistake" i saw it made was one of overcaution. on a very wide road turning right at a red light, it started to go and then hammered the brakes when it saw a pedestrian begin to cross _on the far side_ the person didnt cross our path for like 30-60 seconds we could have been long gone and every human driver I can think of would have gone.