The Tesla <--> Musk predicament

From a user's point of view

I own both a Tesla Model 3 and Tesla stock, although I sold half of my stock last week. Here’s my problem: I really like the car and I really dislike the largest individual stockholder of the company that made it.

I like the car for several reasons. It is an electric car and I am deeply concerned about climate change and the negative impacts of burning fossil fuels. None of which are burned in the operation of the car except possibly by the power plant providing the electricity. The car handles like the MGA that I drove when I was on active duty in the US Air Force in the mid-1950s. I like the design quality of the car, with one exception: it doesn’t have an active object detection and ranging system, like radar or lidar, in its navigation safety subsystem as other EV brands do. This, in my opinion, makes it a poor candidate for automated driving.

The reason for this omission is that Elon Musk. Musk, at some point in the car development process, decided to leave a lidar subsystem out of the design, claiming that its passive multi-camera object detection system was sufficient for all cases. This decision was presumably because, in Musk’s opinion, the added benefits of lidar (knowing exactly where objects were) weren’t worth the extra cost.

I thought that this was a poor engineering decision. In my first career I became an expert on all sorts of object identification technologies, ranging from microwave through gamma ray frequencies. So the lack of an active object detection system made me nervous. This is because in certain conditions, like heavy fog, mist or otherwise featureless situations, there can be insufficient signal -to-noise ratio for clear object detection by a passive system. You need active detection in those situations. There’s the old engineering axiom: There’s nothing more dangerous than a system that almost never fails.

Still, I was not nervous enough to forego the pleasure of driving the car myself. I figured that I probably wouldn’t use Tesla’s full self driving system (FSD) for an extra charge of $12,000 so I didn’t opt for it to be installed. I was sufficiently convinced of my driving capability to think that I could handle most driving situations without needing FSD. I bought the Model 3 in 2022.

I have used the car almost daily, problem free, with occasional trips of 100 miles or so each-way to other cities, well within the Tesla’s normal range, so I have yet to test it out in longer distance driving. When I’ve driven it in dense fog or rain I have had no problems since I was in command. I have had two occasions where I was able to test FSD for a week or more and decided that, while it worked well on the highway, it was a real pain in city traffic. So I continued to not order FSD. Meanwhile, Musk kept praising FSD as some sort of driving miracle. Its ultimate fruition, according to Musk, was just around the corner; as it has been for several years. Musk appears to chronically have expectations far removed from reality.

Then, on March 17th, I came across a story of a test series between a Tesla and another EV with a lidar and its version of FSD. You can view it here. Tesla flunked the test because it didn’t have lidar’s active detection aand ranging capability. An independent test of Musk’s engineering chops.

My Tesla purchase was well before Musk went off the rails after the last national election; I wasn’t aware then of the long-term consequences of Musk’s impulsiveness or egocentricity. I didn’t realize what a combination a rich quasi-engineer and another monomaniacal person of similar impulsiveness would make. Musk and his Muskrats (or Dogies, whichever you prefer) have been busily wrecking highly developed federal agencies without even a glimpse of an idea of what they’re abut except destruction. Good engineering practices have been ditched throughout their marauding. System failures in all directions

Unfortunately, we all are now experiencing the consequences. Both Musk and our feckless leader are heavy duty con men in practice. Each conning the other. Consequently, Tesla sales and stocks have slumped greatly, thanks to the Musk influence, although purchases by MAGA advocates may be picking up. Meanwhile, China’s BYD has probably caught up with, or surpassed, Tesla. Xi Jinping, watching from afar, is probably advancing his own plans to surpass the US. And then, of course, there’s Putin.

I didn’t vote for any of them.