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by sandofsky 807 days ago
Off the top of my head, I’d say the staged demo video: https://www.reuters.com/technology/tesla-video-promoting-sel...

I’m sure I could come up with many other examples. The meta issue is that if you blow past estimates multiple times, you should at minimum stop providing estimates because you’re very bad at it. If you keep providing estimates that happen to prop up your stock price, I don’t think you deserve the benefit of the doubt.

2 comments

> If you keep providing estimates that happen to prop up your stock price, I don’t think you deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Especially if you are giving estimates that say "FSD, this year" while your Director of Engineering is sending memos to the California DMV saying that your statements are "not an engineering reality".

Yup then that’s a totally fair point.
There were two elements of that demo video that were staged according to the article, the stopping at red lights and accelerating at green lights.

But isn't it true that the car did drive itself? And #2, that I can't find any claims that what you see in the video was available in Teslas at the time it was released, only that it's a future thing that's coming?

Again, I don't have FSD, and still wouldn't trust it. I'd say that EAP (Enhanced Autopilot) is basically the same it's always been, haven't noticed any meaningful improvements in 5 years. But have driven for hours on it, and I'd describe it at best as a more enhanced cruise control on highways.

Which is why I have little faith in FSD at the moment. But do want to push back a bit about what claims were made because at best, your video doesn't show that the whole thing was made up, nor that they claimed that this was ready for the masses.

Maybe there was a more damning accompanying tweet (or others) that make it more obvious.

The bottom of the video said, “The person in the driver’s seat is only there for legal reasons. He is not doing anything. The car is driving itself.”

In fact, the person was there to prevent the car from accidentally killing someone.

> But isn't it true that the car did drive itself?

Are you really asking whether the car drove itself in spite of the car's inability to break and accelerate, including stopping on red lights?

By that definition I can retrofit a car to make it FSD with a cinder block.
Yes, you could. That's the point.
I was agreeing with you.