[drzaiusapelord]

Because HN'ers are results based people in general and the results on autonomous cars are currently terrible. Still no solution to driving in the snow, heavy rain, and other poor visibility conditions. Still no solution to weirdo edge cases like a madman running up to your car with a bat (I used to live in a poor neighborood and had this happen once and accelerated away. My dumb smartcar would have stopped to avoid hitting him and let me be victimized).

Personally, I'd rather take my chances with the occasional drunk than worry about Google's bugs killing me because some H1B engineer with 4 hours of sleep was forced to write some really junky code that didn't understand some edge case. I look at what Google is able to do practically like Android and am not impressed. Even the best code quality for automation, for example NASA's work on rovers, is wrong occasionally and those things move at a snail's pace with almost nothing around them! The state of AI itself is in shambles. Its healthy to be skeptical of extraordinary claims like Musk's. We just aren't there yet and may never get there considering the fuzzy logic that driving requires.

Not to mention the anti-progressive thinking that better cars are the solution to our transportation woes and refusing to accept that we will reach a post-car age in urban centers sooner than later. This is like building a better horse drawn carriage. Sure its technically impressive, but its just not the real solution here.

[matthewmacleod]

the results on autonomous cars are currently terrible

Sure, they're not there yet. But in 20 years they'll probably be much better. Might not happen, but it does seem pretty likely that technology will continue improving.

Still no solution to weirdo edge cases

So that might be one of things that are traded off against the benefits. How often does a car get attacked by a baseball-bat-weilding maniac? Is that risk worth ignoring the improvement in safety? Are there other solutions to the problem?

Not to mention the anti-progressive thinking

I can't agree with this. It's something common to hear from green-leaning movements around the world – that the car should be retired altogether in favour of public transport.

That's true to some extent, but public transport (and it's excellent in many cities around the world) can't completely replace individual vehicles. Regardless of how much it improves, it does not offer point-to-point connections, or the ability to transport goods, for example.

In any case, what would be the difference between a city centre populated by electric vehicles (let's say owned by Uber or Tesla or some other company) and one populated by public transport - simply the efficiency? It might be better to think of a city full of electronic cars as being the first implementation of something like personal rapid transport.

[drzaiusapelord]

> But in 20 years they'll probably be much better.

Historically when people play the "wait, in 20 years it'll be here" they're universally wrong. According to futurists from the 1990s we'd have the immortality pill, jet packs, Mars colonies, cancer cure, diabetes cure, extinct animal revival, etc by now.

In 2035 Musk will be at retirement age, so why is he selling us on this concept now? Obviously, these guys want to push a product out soon and that product is flawed and not remotely ready for, say, Chicago traffic. I'm sure its wonderful on the Google campus, but that's not my world.

I think Musk, being a business man, has an agenda here. Its to keep Tesla's largely failed experiment in electric cars going via hype and promises. Everything he says exists to raise the value of his company. The same way he ironically badmouthed "strong" AI recently to discredit robotic space mission funding that would challenge the manned launches SpaceX plans to profit from.

I think its funny that Musk flip-flops on AI so easily. Good in cars, bad in space, when in reality the opposite is true. I think the more extremist Musk gets in the pressm the more we're seeing problems at Tesla and his other companies. Take at look a TSLA stock from a 1 year perspective, not to mention their $108m losses this past quarter and $300m loss in the past year. Things have been very bad there. Musk is just trying to keep it alive via hype and showmanship.

Tesla is really starting to feel like Segway. Musk, for all his merits, is probably best as a space guy and should stick to that. Space needs big thinkers and big disruptors. This is a field where we need good AI and a cost cutting approach, not cars. Focusing on making the best car, in this day and age, is like focusing on making the best horse and buggy 100 years ago. Shame he is wasting so much talent and capital on this quixotic endeavor, especially considering Detroit and Tokyo have their own affordable electrics, if anyone is interested in buying them in the age of the BRICS nations demanding less oil and the price of oil falling to historic lows.