[_yb2s]

That is a reasonable argument that it is likely to be theoretically possible. It’s absolute madness to jump from “theoretically possible” to production without actually inventing and testing the technology. What is going on over there at Tesla? I suspect an emperors new clothes type of situation where employees are too terrified to state basic facts, like “we tested 20 ideas out but none worked, we haven’t figured out how to get this to work yet.” Not the kind of culture I want designing a 2 ton vehicle I’m trusting my families lives to.

[selcuka]

> I suspect an emperors new clothes type of situation where employees are too terrified to state basic facts, like “we tested 20 ideas out but none worked

Or maybe the emperor is a "idea #16 is good enough for me" type of person?

[fastball]

Giving Musk the benefit of the doubt, probably his thinking is more along the lines of:

"I'd like to solve this with vision. Sure, we can ship a $5 part to do it the tried-and-true way, but if we do that then we're probably never gonna solve it with vision, because there will no longer be a pressing need to do so. So I'm gonna force us to not ship our cars with a proper rain sensor in the hope that it will continually push my teams to get this shit done and do the improbable".

[_yb2s]

There’s no doubt to give him the benefit of… even in your version they still decided to ship a basic feature that doesn’t work in a production automobile. Other car manufacturers push teams hard to develop new tech also, but they also test the heck out of them so they’re 100% functional before they would put it into production.

Piech was famous for outlandish demands on engineers at VW, but his demands took the form of the desired test results: the Phaeton had to be capable of being driven all day at 186 mph with an exterior temperature of 122 °F whilst maintaining the interior temperature at 72 °F. And they did it…

[fastball]

I'm not defending the mindset, just pointing out that this is what I would assume is going on in his head.

And like him or not, his companies have delivered a lot of innovation in the past.

[_yb2s]

Fair point- that does seem like a likely explanation, I am just horrified that it would lead to putting broken systems on a mass produced production automobile.

[lucianbr]

That sounds so cool when a billionaire vision-guy says it. Too bad reality is that "pressing need" isn't magic, and sometimes just isn't enough. Like this time.