Best or worst idea? Getting a Velotaxi/Rikshaw for private use

[Monkey]

Solar depends on petroleum for all the plastics in the cells. Wind depends on petroleum for the epoxies used in the composite bodies (they're fiberglass and/or carbon fiber).

Personally speaking, I'm not against plastics and petroleum based products per se, I believe they have their place. I have UPVC windows and carbon fibre fishing rods, etc. The issue is, I believe, that we are far too reliant on oil/petroleum products, including food packaging and burning them, which IMO, is too much.

As for nuclear waste, that's a problem that is blown way out of proportion. Most nuclear "recycling" is actually just putting the waste back into the reactor. And honestly, what we're doing in the US right now is stupid, but safe. (We just put it in casks and leave it on site)

I have to disagree that any of this is OK or safe. Maybe things are safer and more reliable than they used to be in this area but still we are dealing with very dangerous chemicals with a very long half-life. We shouldn't even need nuclear power at all, IMO.

Anything that ultimately goes into a lithium battery is relying on blood elements from Africa or China

Oh absolutely. If we all put more resources/effort into battery development, we might eventually come up with one that is both safer and a lot less dependent on finite resources.

Also, if we quit building roads and parking lots all over the place, those things really take in a lot of heat and keep it inside the atmosphere. They also contribute to flooding problems in cities. We need more grassland/forest/swamp/whatever.

We bought our house from our landlord a couple of years ago. The single driveway was made of concrete and slabs and was falling apart. So, I decided we would convert it and the rest of the front garden into a permeable, double driveway. It's a huge project for us, especially seeing as I am doing most of the work myself and only using hand tools to do it (I may have to hire a wacker plate but that's about it ). The idea is that all layers allow rain to soak through them and then get slowly released into the soil, instead of running into the drainage/sewer system. I am still researching exactly what to do though, it's not an easy task and deciding on what top layer and geo-textile membranes to use is mind-numbing. The biggest issue I have is that our soil is quite clayey and clay is not very permeable at all. I may have to put special, perforated pipes in the sub base so that if we get a lot of rain, some goes into the drainage/sewer system. If anyone has any ideas on, or experiences of, any of this, I'd be happy to hear them.

[Word]

Maybe use the water for flushing and the like to save some money?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Raw_water

[kyle]

I just realized I missed all the Tesla fun in this thread

I for one have been driving a Tesla since the end of 2018, and won't go back to gas and likely won't switch to another brand. Sure there are sometime some fit and finish issues, My 2018 Model 3 had paint that bubbled, and the hood was slightly off. They fixed both, hood did not bother me that much and they did that without me requesting. But overall it was a great car that kept getting better month after month.

In early 2022 I upgraded to a Model Y, main reason was so my grandparents would be able to get in easier. This car has been flawless since day 1. My only complaint at the time was, I did not have Full self Driving beta, which I had already had on my Model 3 and was making youtube videos about it.

Charging, I have 220v 48 amp at home charger, most of my charging is done there, the only time I use the supercharger network is on long distance trips, and never had an issue with that, usually charge about eating, and it's full before you are done eating. I disagree a bit with Lucifer on needing a higher High voltage, Yes charging speeds may increase some, but cramming in more voltage means more cooling, this is where Tesla's Tabless Cell design come in to help allow for faster charging. From my conversations with Tesla service techs about this, it's designed to charge much faster, but Tesla is limiting speeds in the software. Tesla is also Moving to a 48v low voltage system, the Cybertruck already has this, everything else is 12v low voltage.

The center screen I can see some not liking it that much, it does take some time to get used to, but 99% of the drive you simply don't touch it at all. They also have been redesigning it to make it a bit easier to use too, placing action buttons more on the bottom.

I'm sure you want my view on Tesla's Full Self Driving, which is 100% camera based. It's not perfect, My car is HW3, so it does not the higher resolution cameras that are in all the new cars now. I use it for 99% of my miles, and have since I was able to get it on my model 3. Here are my current annoyances with it, v12.3.6, The 12.5.* builds are supposedly a lot better.

• It will not always slow down when crossing a railroad track that is in poor condition
• It sometimes wants to get into the wrong lanes, It gets into lanes that are splitting off to go into a direction we don't want to travel
• It sometimes will go under the speed limit, when it does not need to, At least I can press the accelerator, and then it will hold that speed.
• It comes to a full stop at a stop sign when no one is around (there was a recall that forced this, people get annoyed with me when I let it do that)
• Very complex intersections, it struggles at, but also others struggles at them too, 60 -70 MPH cross traffic, unprotected turns. This is the one case that I typically drive manually, just for the left turn,

Cybertruck, you either love it or hate it, I've seen it, I like it. But it also hold up really well. Two of them just made it from Florida all the way up to the Artic Circle. Apparently this is a very abusive drive for a vehicle, so if control arms and stuff were an issue you would think they would have seen that type of an issue. It's so remote they had to install 2 at home chargers to get there, everything else was done with DC fast chargers,

Overall Tesla's are made for autonomous travel IMO and they will get there soon,

I'd love an electric car one day (not a Tesla though, I'm no fan of Elon Musk).

I just gotta say, I would not cloud your judgement based on the companies CEO. The media literally makes anything he does sound like he's a villain, if you go to the sources of what he says, you can tell most of the stuff is just lies. He is literally attacking both Left and Right with Ev's, Left because he tries to avoid unions, by in return letting his workers all be owners of the company, in return making millionaires out of the workers. But the right because of them moving away from gasoline. BTW once you are in an EV you have a more heightened scene of smell of that gasoline. I don't know who in the fight mind would think burning that stuff is good for anyone.

[Monkey]

Maybe use the water for flushing and the like to save some money?

A great idea, one in which I have actually looked into. Unfortunately, it's above my current ability and pay grade; too much would need to be done and I don't have the expertise or capital to implement this. There are other, less difficult options I have looked into too, such as having a rain garden or soakaway but I don't have room for either, if I'm to install a double driveway (which we need as we have two cars in total).

...Tesla's Full Self Driving, which is 100% camera based. It's not perfect...

As most people around here should have already gathered, I hate most forms of AI. Full Self Driving is no exception. Just wait for it to kill some people when a bug/flaw in the software rears its ugly head.

I would not cloud your judgement based on the companies CEO. The media literally makes anything he does sound like he's a villain...

I know how biased most forms of media are, however, I've read from a lot of different sources and spoken to people that have driven Teslas too. Also, I've never met or heard of a self-made rich person that isn't a villain...they don't make their money by being nice and kind to others that is for sure (e.g. Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Robert Maxwell, Richard Branson, the list goes on).

I do still hope to have an electric car but I will hold off for now, firstly because of cost and secondly because of infrastructure.
Thanks for you view on things though kyle, it's always good to get a different perspective on things.

[Z-Man]

[*] It comes to a full stop at a stop sign when no one is around (there was a recall that forced this, people get annoyed with me when I let it do that)

Umm, only, like, that is the law? You have to stop so you can make SURE no one is around The two corners on my commute where I have to be extra careful not to get run over are those where the other guys have a stop sign and there is a good chance they don't do that. Granted, that rule is for human drivers, with limited reaction time and like a 90 degree field of view, sitting a meter or two behind the front bit of the vehicle, while a good autonomous vehicle can have cameras pointing both sides right at the front, so a rule change for them might be in order. (Also, I admit this is the rule I myself adhere to the least when cycling. I'll slow down, usually to walking speed or below, but I won't stop. At least on the crossings I know, where I know what visibility to expect.)

The media literally makes anything he does sound like he's a villain,

Weeeeellllll.... He is the one dressing up as Wario and making the Starship nose pointy because The Dictator in that move says that makes rockets scary, and refers to firing people as "accepting their resignation", which is what every cartoon villain says after offing a lieutenant that disappointed them, so maybe that's understandable?

by in return letting his workers all be owners of the company, in return making millionaires out of the workers.

It's a publicly traded company, so it's not like he could do anything against that (Yeah, they get a discount.) Whether you make millions or lose your investment on the stock market is, at best, a matter of timing, and also a matter of how much you can invest to begin with. So the top profiteers are bound to be executives. Nothing leftish about that.
Also, he defied covid lockdowns at Tesla, getting his workers infected way back when there was no vaccine in sight, and did not pay for janitor services at twitter HQ so that employees had to bring their own toilet paper. He is a billionaire. You don't get to be that by giving your employees their fair share, that is just not how this works. He respects his workers as far as he can exploit them. (At the danger of sounding very communistic )

But the right because of them moving away from gasoline.

Clinging to ICEs is just a thing the Right stupidly made part of their identity, like the Left around these parts made opposition to nuclear power part of theirs.

Glad you are enjoying your car, though! What works for you, works for you, and it is good to hear that flaws are getting fixed.

[kyle]

Just wait for it to kill some people when a bug/flaw in the software rears its ugly head.

That is doomed to happen, just like it does with people manually driving, however with Full Self Driving enabled, it is statistically safer than just a human driver, amongst Tesla's without FSD on and other vehicles

Umm, only, like, that is the law?

Yes it is the law, but intersections you can clearly see all ways, most people don't come to a full stop, it would go to around 5 mph, most people think 2-5 mph is stopped, I think Elon said something like only 1% of the stop sign data they have people get to a full 0 mph stop.

I've never met or heard of a self-made rich person that isn't a villain...they don't make their money by being nice and kind to others that is for sure (e.g. Rupert Murdoch, Bill Gates, Robert Maxwell, Richard Branson, the list goes on)

Weeeeellllll.... He is the one dressing up as Wario and making the Starship nose pointy because The Dictator in that move says that makes rockets scary, and refers to firing people as "accepting their resignation", which is what every cartoon villain says after offing a lieutenant that disappointed them, so maybe that's understandable?

I've followed closely what Elon has done, very closely, I've watched all the interviews with him, and saw all the fake headlines that come from it. The media is driven by the way things are, big oil, big unions, and he's attacking those through his companies, and that is driving all the fake news they put out. Sure he has an interesting sense of humour. Sure he pushes the workers to work hard, but the pay they get is in line or above what other places pay. But following the statements directly from him, he cares about humanity very much and will try to do what he can to push for what he believes, at the same time he will listen to what people are saying and address things as needed. If he is truly evil he's a really good actor, I don't think anyone could play the good guy part being an evil villain for so long.

It's a publicly traded company, so it's not like he could do anything against that (Yeah, they get a discount.) Whether you make millions or lose your investment on the stock market is, at best, a matter of timing, and also a matter of how much you can invest to begin with. So the top profiteers are bound to be executives.

Employee comp plan is a 20% discount on the lowest price in the stock(within the 6 months) 2 times a year, there is a cap on how much they can allocate there, but when you can believe in the mission, you are going to work harder and be more motivated in that mission if you have a small part in the company. It's not work for everyone, but there are plenty of people that want to work there, if it was such a horrible company and treated employees poorly, then why would so many want to work there?

Thanks for you view on things though kyle, it's always good to get a different perspective on things.

I enjoy hearing your perspective as well

[Lucifer]

Heh. Teslas self-driving have already killed people. The question isn't "are computers going to be able to drive without killing people?", because people can't drive without killing people. The question is if they can drive while killing and injuring fewer people than humans do. I don't know that we're there yet, but we will get there. And with computers, at least, we can theoretically hit 0 injuries/deaths on the roads, something that's impossible with human drivers.

I come to a full stop at every stop sign. If people honk at me, I don't start. I also brake check people who follow too closely, and I don't care if they're a semi or not.

Um, if you're going to list self-made men, find actual self-made men. Every person on that list, including Elon, started with a big chunk of mommy and daddy's money and relied on favorable friends to give them loans as needed. Not a single person there did it on their own. Don't buy into the lying, they all had help. They are all also guilty of exploiting every single person they came across during their rise to (additional, non-generational) wealth.

Also, Elon is an asshole. You don't need media to tell you that. You can just follow his twitter feed. You can see the rise in right-wing hate on X masking itself as free speech. You can also look at the sexual harassment lawsuits in the pipeline for both SpaceX and Tesla. That kind of work culture comes from the top, and Elon is fighting it rather than fixing it. You can argue all day long that Elon isn't doing any of that, but you can't argue that it's not his job to fix it. It is his job to fix it, and he's making excuses and burying his head in the sand. A good person would step up and fix these problems.

Kyle: Your argument about your car needing basic crap fixed doesn't support your argument that Teslas are great cars. You can enjoy your car, and you sure in the hell don't need my permission. But if a "new" car needs a basic repair like its hood re-installed, it's a shoddily manufactured car. What else that you couldn't see also needed to be tweaked that should have been right from the factory? As for reliability, I own a Chrysler with 260k miles on it. Even a bad car company can make a good car. It's not that hard. So why is Tesla having such a hard time with it? (If it's not obvious, Chrysler is a shitty car company with a solid reputation for building lemons)

As for voltage, the fast charging nature of higher voltage battery packs does matter. You're saying that you can recharge while eating. Sure, but what about those of us who only eat one meal a day? On a road trip, I'm going to have to stop every 300 miles or so to recharge, and I'm not going to be able to eat a meal every time. Now, I don't have a problem waiting 30 minutes for a charge. On a road trip, I tend to take 30 minutes for gas stops anyway because I'm not an idiot and I walk around and do things to actually prepare me for the next leg of the trip. But I'm not whining about range and charge times, either. I'm just pointing out that if you have to eat a meal everytime you recharge, then two people come in back to back with higher voltage battery packs are able to recharge in the same time it takes your one car to recharge, the higher voltage battery pack is going to look better to an EV buyer.

But let's not lose sight of the fact that every time EVs gain range, ICE lovers move the goalposts. Right now, the goalposts are out farther than ICE cars can even go on one tank. It's ridiculous. EVs can be charged at home for relatively cheap. You don't even have to modify your home's electrical system, because they sell chargers that can plug right in to either 120 or 240 systems. I know this because the parts store where I work sells them, but they're special order. You can't fill an ICE car from your garage. You just can't. If you commute with an EV and charge it at home, you can go weeks or even months without setting foot in a gas station. And ICE lovers are whining about how long it takes to recharge on a road trip. Really? All the while, the hidden secret that ICE lovers aren't willing to face is that if you want a vehicle that requires less maintenance, you have to pay more up front. That's why cars are so much more expensive now than they used to be, even after adjusting for inflation. All the way back in the beginning, oil changes were every 200 miles. Now we're at 5k miles, and cars are more expensive. You see how that works? Of course an EV that needs far less servicing is going to cost more.

The biggest problem with Tesla, however, after all of this, is how they're trying to kill the aftermarket. It's already been decided in court and in law that people have the right to choose who fixes their cars. Tesla has decided that people don't have that right. 'nuff said on that. I'm done with billionaires telling me that they can decide what rights I have and don't have. That's not how rights work.

[Lucifer]

Employee comp plan is a 20% discount on the lowest price in the stock(within the 6 months) 2 times a year, there is a cap on how much they can allocate there, but when you can believe in the mission, you are going to work harder and be more motivated in that mission if you have a small part in the company. It's not work for everyone, but there are plenty of people that want to work there, if it was such a horrible company and treated employees poorly, then why would so many want to work there?

The company I work for how something similar. But then they make sure they don't pay us enough to where we could actually afford the stock. It trades over $1k/share, too, like Tesla.

Don't let a "discount" fool you. If the employees can't afford the stock in the first place because they have to live paycheck to paycheck (possibly in a van), then their stock plan is just a performance, it has no substance.

Elon opened a factory out here in Austin and is paying wages that are standard here in Austin. Would you like to hear about how the working homeless population in this area is growing, and some of them work for Elon?

[Z-Man]

That is doomed to happen, just like it does with people manually driving, however with Full Self Driving enabled, it is statistically safer than just a human driver, amongst Tesla's without FSD on and other vehicles

Yeah, according to data published by Tesla themselves, like page 60 here:
https://www.tesla.com/ns_videos/2023-te ... report.pdf
Million miles driven before accident (They don't say what qualifies as an accident...)
Tesla with Assist: 5.64
Tesla without Assist: 1.24
US average: 0.67
That looks really good! However, the numbers are not necessarily comparable. For example, highway miles are much safer than city miles, by an order of magnitude. So if people are more likely to activate assists on the highway, as they are bound to do because that's where they work best, that would skew the numbers even if the assists did nothing.

Still: In the long run, I think self driving or vehicles with heavy assist are bound to become safer than human drivers. The computers don't get distracted, bored, sleepy, angry or impatient. Every crash, as tragic as that is, is a data point that contributes to them getting safer in the future, while we humans are terrible at learning from other peoples' mistakes.

But it has to be stated, too: Self driving cars solve a problem that already has a solution. If you want to get from A to B without driving a car manually, take public transit. And before that, improve public transit

Sure he pushes the workers to work hard, but the pay they get is in line or above what other places pay.

Maybe in the US, but not here. Factory workers at the Gigafactory in Gruenheide get paid 15% less than the next worst paying competitor I bothered to check (The Ford factory here in Cologne), according to local job comparison site kununu:
https://www.kununu.com/de/tesla-deutsch ... tion-35657
https://www.kununu.com/de/ford-werke/ge ... tion-35657
There are still higher average pays, with Volkswagen in the lead:
https://www.kununu.com/de/volkswagen/ge ... tion-35657
Tesla pays 24% less than that.
I picked factory workers because they are the most comparable; after all, Tesla does not design cars around here, so a lot of engineering jobs don't compare well.
Also, look at the "Weiterempfehlung"-Number on top, or "Recommendations": Tesla 59%, Volkswagen 78%, Ford 68%. It's more instructive to turn those around: "Would not recommend to work here" is 41% for Tesla, 22% for Volkswagen and 32% for Ford. That does not look to me like people enjoy working at Tesla!

Now, those numbers also need to be checked for biases. The most obvious one is that Tesla produces in the east, all the others (primarily) in the west. That accounts for a pay drop of about a 9%. Also, the numbers are from some internet portal collecting voluntary contributions, which means there is a reporting bias. As you know and is evident here, people like to slag Tesla off

But fact is: Here, Tesla does not pay union mediated standard wages, the others (presumably) do. They justify that with the usual drivel, being more flexible and offering better fitting individual solutions... but that is well known BS. If they cared that much, they could pay standard wages and offer whatever individual benefits they have in mind on top, now couldn't they?

Employee comp plan is a 20% discount on the lowest price in the stock(within the 6 months) 2 times a year

Oh, I did not get the 'lowest price' bit earlier, that is actually quite good. The discount combined with the cap alone would only combine to a quite meager bonus (some other source gave a 15% discount and a 15% cap relative to your pay, giving a total bonus of 0nly 2.25%) However, looks like the plan had been cancelled late last year and while something like it will come back, only for "exceptional performance". No concrete plans, only Musk's words. We'll see. Not all of his promises materialize (cough-twitter-layoffs-severance-cough).

But following the statements directly from him, he cares about humanity very much

Well, he is an outspoken proponent of Longtermism. Which, for those unfamiliar, is a variant of Utilitarianism where you assert that there will be many more humans living in the total future than are alive today, so they should be given priority. Which has the obvious flaw that our actions today determine whether that basic assertion is going to come true. I agree that space exploration and colonization is a necessity, and I cheer for every new SpaceX achievement. But it will be quite a while before a potential Martian or Lunar colony can be fully self sufficient, and a healthy earth society, economy and environment are required to keep supplying them. The cybertruck isn't helping. X isn't helping (to be fair, it wasn't helping before...). Musk's constant defiance of democratically legitimized institutions isn't helping. Just recently, Starlink threatened to disregard a ban of X in Brazil (they backed down). Right now, Brazil would have had the option to withdraw them their license and confiscate all ground equipment... but Starlink is also rolling out direct-to-cell communication. What then? What if one man is in control of tens of thousands of satellites that can communicate with all of the billions of devices all around the world? How is a democratic state going to stop him from doing whatever he wants with it? Societies have the right to disagree with Musk's idea of free speech, which I remind you includes "Not enough people are reading my xeets, so I'll let my engineers shove them into everyone's timelines".

No, I don't think that, all in all, Musk is going to turn this planet into a hellhole. But he has far too much power for a guy you can't kick out in the next election cycle. It doesn't matter whether he looks like a good guy or not.

Lucifer: Yeah, EVs are arguably most convenient if you can charge them at home. A problem that has been mostly overlooked is that those people who could benefit from EVs the most, people in densely populated cities living in apartment buildings, quite often can't. This guy breaks down this and other problems in an information dense video:
https://youtu.be/Zjuj1xB_Ze8?si=jLvjMD__x7B2GHKF
If you have to use the public charging infrastructure, that is a downside of EVs. Currently.
The charging problem is why we're mostly looking for smaller mobility solutions, where you can take out the battery and charge it at home (for us, on the balcony, to mitigate the tiny risk of fires).

[Monkey]

For those that still believe having Full Self Driving for cars is OK, just wait for those cars to get hacked. It's harder to hack the human brain than it is to hack a car. I remember this video about a Jeep which illustrates my point (note that I don't care that this video is nine years old):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0SrxBC1xs

@kyle
You have to stop at a STOP sign kyle, that's why it is called that! No wonder you think Full Self Drive is better at driving than humans. From what I've seen, many accidents caused by humans are preventable anyway. If the same money was spent on preventing accidents as is being invested into self-drive crap, we'd be a lot better off IMO.

If he is truly evil he's a really good actor, I don't think anyone could play the good guy part being an evil villain for so long.

Most if not all self-made rich people are evil but put on a front of not being as evil as they really are. They do this for their entire lives.

Um, if you're going to list self-made men, find actual self-made men. Every person on that list, including Elon, started with a big chunk of mommy and daddy's money and relied on favorable friends to give them loans as needed. Not a single person there did it on their own

All self-made people have had some financial help from somewhere. I'm perfectly happy to call all of the people in my list self-made, as they have all changed their life financially and significantly for the better, mostly by their own doing.

Sure, but what about those of us who only eat one meal a day?

You only eat one meal a day? Out of interest, is there a specific reason for this?

I own a Chrysler with 260k miles on it. Even a bad car company can make a good car. It's not that hard

A few years ago Chrysler brought some cars out in this country. I haven't seen any for a long time though. We have a lot of good European and Asian cars already here and I don't think most American manufacturers can compete here. Ford are the exception although Ford cars here are quite different from the one in the US, from what I can tell.

It's already been decided in court and in law that people have the right to choose who fixes their cars. Tesla has decided that people don't have that right. 'nuff said on that. I'm done with billionaires telling me that they can decide what rights I have and don't have.

It's not only Tesla doing this shit. Here in the UK, other car companies seem to do this too, as much as they can get away with it seems. Luckily for me my car is old so I suffer from this less.

[kyle]

Kyle: Your argument about your car needing basic crap fixed doesn't support your argument that Teslas are great cars. You can enjoy your car, and you sure in the hell don't need my permission. But if a "new" car needs a basic repair like its hood re-installed, it's a shoddily manufactured car. What else that you couldn't see also needed to be tweaked that should have been right from the factory?... ...So why is Tesla having such a hard time with it?

I was not trying to help that argument there that much, as I said this was on the 2018 Model 3, 2022 Model y is perfect. Tesla tried to over automated the factory in ways that did not work well that caused production ramp to do slow and likely forced some cars with flaws out the door to fast and they found an addressed new issues with the factory. In 2018 they had the old paint factory from the previous auto makers that were in there, I don't think they performed any upgrades until 2019 or 2020 to it. Both my cars were built in California, so not sure how GigaTexas build quality is, but likely even better as they've improved the lines.

Now, I don't have a problem waiting 30 minutes for a charge. On a road trip, I tend to take 30 minutes for gas stops anyway because I'm not an idiot and I walk around and do things to actually prepare me for the next leg of the trip.

That's perfect for an EV, even a Tesla, It's more like stop every 200-250 miles or so for a 30 minute charge, which for me was planned around meals, but also shopping centers just to walk around a stretch. Now that is using the 250kW charging stations.

The biggest problem with Tesla, however, after all of this, is how they're trying to kill the aftermarket. It's already been decided in court and in law that people have the right to choose who fixes their cars. Tesla has decided that people don't have that right. 'nuff said on that. I'm done with billionaires telling me that they can decide what rights I have and don't have. That's not how rights work.

I agree to an extend with you here, I want who I want to fix my car fix my car, but I also don't just want some random person who claims they can fix it, fix it, there are several certifications that most shop workers have, but how many of those certifications talk about how to handle high voltage EV cars? I think Tesla is doing this mainly to protect their customers from some place doing stuff very wrong that the media could spin into very bad PR. They apparently have a certification process, but with low volumes of cars, most shops just never applied for it. Also all the manuals for working on all parts of the Tesla systems are Free to anyone.

I have some experience and frustration with this

But fact is: Here, Tesla does not pay union mediated standard wages, the others (presumably) do. They justify that with the usual drivel, being more flexible and offering better fitting individual solutions... but that is well known BS. If they cared that much, they could pay standard wages and offer whatever individual benefits they have in mind on top, now couldn't they?

myself, The beginning of the year, while merging a lane the highway autonomously, triggered by me pressing the turn signal, my car hit a muffler that was in the middle of a lane, flipped it up and the back tire pulled it into my fender. Getting that fixed was fun, closest certified shops were 2 hours away, closest Tesla collision shop at the time was 3 hours away. After talking with the insurance adjuster, he said the closer non tesla shops did a lot of shady things to them, I was already leaning towards going 3 hours for a Tesla shop anyway. That's where I went they had it done in under 2 weeks, but they would not give me an ETA until the last few days. My closest physical shop is 2 hours away, but I also have mobile service, which does really well, replaced my old lead acid 12v battery in my Model 3 the next day. If you want to argue that that was a flaw, they've already changed new builds to use lithium ion batteries for the low voltage system, including in my 2022 Model Y.

On maintenance note, I just did my 2 year and 3 year maintenance all at once on my car (2.5 years), changed the cabin air filters, and the HEPA filters, $124 + tax from Tesla, too me 30-45 minutes to do it, that, washer fluid, wipers, and 2 tires (both were replaced for punctures) is all I've done, in the 24k miles.

I don't know what a gas station is and hardly know what a charging station is. But if I go to a gas station with someone else or for the truck I have, The worst part is the smell of the gasoline, I think using it, pumping it weekly, you kind of get immune to the smell, but it smells nasty. I think it's comparable to a cigarette smoker vs a nonsmoker, where the cigarette smoker does not notice the odor.

The company I work for how something similar. But then they make sure they don't pay us enough to where we could actually afford the stock. It trades over $1k/share, too, like Tesla.

Tesla is only $250 a share, which makes it so just about anyone could do it, Tesla shareholders vote to have it split with it gets around 800-900 a share, because we know this helps that comp plan.

However, looks like the plan had been cancelled late last year and while something like it will come back, only for "exceptional performance". No concrete plans, only Musk's words. We'll see. Not all of his promises materialize (cough-twitter-layoffs-severance-cough).

I believe this was additional bonuses that workers were receiving for hitting certain milestones.
Did the those who lost jobs at Twitter not get the full 2 months pay Musk stated they got?

The cybertruck isn't helping. X isn't helping (to be fair, it wasn't helping before...). Musk's constant defiance of democratically legitimized institutions isn't helping. Just recently, Starlink threatened to disregard a ban of X in Brazil (they backed down). Right now, Brazil would have had the option to withdraw them their license and confiscate all ground equipment.

Cybertruck is awesome, I think X is helping, yes there is a lot of information on it, some good some bad, but it puts the power back to the people to decide what the real truths are and not on the Government. Community Notes(I'm part of it, but don't do a lot) Most notes gets placed in a deadlock, obviously false notes added always get booted, but most notes that attempt to clarify stuff get stuck. They need to reinvent Notes a bit, If it's there for false content, it should demonetize the post, but if it's there just for added clarity, it should not. I think there are a lot of good notes, but they jsut don't get passed because there are enough people that don't want to demonetize someone else's post.

The X ban in Brazil, IMO shows that he will fight for people to have the freedom to speak publicly if it's part of the rights the government grants to citizens.

Overall it's the movement to Ev's that is needed, and It bothers me that a lot of people have this very crazy picture painted of Elon Musk and will refuse to buy a Tesla just because of that picture the media has painted. Lots of crazy bad things can be fabricated, as success will bring any lawsuit against you possible, likely all fake, IMO it's hard to really trust either direction on the sexual harassment cases. Maybe he did, maybe he did not, but there's enough other things that make me believe even if he did, that likely was not his overall intentions. And I still side more with the not just because the press tries to dig up and extort anything that will make a billionaire look bad. If I've found the media to actually have credibility the story might change, but they simply do not, they are IMO the worst human being on the planet, they write fake stuff just to get people to argue about it or sway people into believing something that it actually factually incorrect. Yes I know it sounds like I'm a sounding board for what Elon is saying, but I found this out many years ago, well before I followed what Musk was doing. But i was reassured this in 2018-2019 with the stuff that came out against tesla and spacex was constantly false and wrong, they would manipulate what Elon said, to say something entirely differnt.

[Z-Man]

Cybertruck is awesome

Yeah, so is an actual Tank, does not mean it's good to have them on regular roads used for daily commutes of 1.2 people per car average. Same for all oversized trucks. At least this one is electric, which makes it only 90% terrible

The X ban in Brazil, IMO shows that he will fight for people to have the freedom to speak publicly if it's part of the rights the government grants to citizens.

The correct place to fight for government granted rights are the courts.

Did the those who lost jobs at Twitter not get the full 2 months pay Musk stated they got?

He promised three: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1588671155766194176
Now, he talks about that being 50% more than legally required, which suggests he includes the 60 days of continued regular pay that are required in some places, because surprisingly you can't just fire people on the spot and stop paying them. I don't think that can be considered severance...
Either way, apparently whatever was offered was insufficient, people sued and won:
https://fortune.com/2024/09/23/elon-mus ... twitter-x/
Details were not disclosed. Earlier reports from ex-employes (as usual, reporting selection bias) showed dissatisfaction with the offer: https://www.cnn.com/2023/01/09/tech/twi ... index.html One month, with unusual strings attached. (That's also where I got the 60 days from, I'm not that well versed in regulations, or that smart to calculate that if three months is 50% more than required, that requirement would be two months ).
Anyway, if you promise more severance than required, then get sued over what you actually offer and lose, I can't see how the offer would have been keeping the promise.

I'm not actually checking twitter any more, I did not delete my account, but I removed my login from the password manager and since a change a while back I can't even read it any more. I left because it was always the same useless garbage. The controversy of the day, with the same stupid parroted phrases, not to mention all that hate. Waste of time for me. (In fairness: It was not much different before Musk took over) But, of course that means I can't actually give any first hand comments on its current state.
But I would be absolutely, massively surpised if it was a reliable source of news. Lies spread faster than they can be fact checked. Fact, it never was any source of news for me. I would always have to turn to google or whatever to find out what people were even talking about most of the time.

I don't know what sexual harassment lawsuits you are talking about, but my first approximation there is: Believe the victim. Do you have any idea what hell you are sent through when you make such accusations? Nobody in their right mind makes this up, and many more victims stay silent. Yes, false accusations happen, innocent until proven guilty applies, but that is the third approximation.

[Lucifer]

For those that still believe having Full Self Driving for cars is OK, just wait for those cars to get hacked. It's harder to hack the human brain than it is to hack a car. I remember this video about a Jeep which illustrates my point (note that I don't care that this video is nine years old):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MK0SrxBC1xs

Yeah, you can just download an app for Android and steal a car. It's kinda scary that it's possible, but even scarier that the researchers who discovered it had to strong-arm manufacturers into caring about it by posting their research (after like two years of trying to get the manufacturers to pay attention) for anybody to download.

Um, if you're going to list self-made men, find actual self-made men. Every person on that list, including Elon, started with a big chunk of mommy and daddy's money and relied on favorable friends to give them loans as needed. Not a single person there did it on their own

All self-made people have had some financial help from somewhere. I'm perfectly happy to call all of the people in my list self-made, as they have all changed their life financially and significantly for the better, mostly by their own doing.

If your parents were able to put you through a nice school and you didn't have to pay for it, or they were able to "loan" you a crapload of money to start your business, you are not self-made. I realize you're a Brit, so you get your school paid for, but in the USA, people take on tens/hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt just to go to school. That debt strangles them for decades afterwards, preventing literally anybody who didn't come from wealth from being able to start their own businesses or what-have-you. Not to mention how difficult it really is to start a business without schooling, because you can't get funding, unless you come from wealth, which all of the people on your list did. Every single one of them started the race three steps away from the finish line while the rest of us had to start at the starting line, several miles away.

Sure, but what about those of us who only eat one meal a day?

You only eat one meal a day? Out of interest, is there a specific reason for this?

I'm a smoker. One of the things nicotine does in your body is it assumes a role in blood sugar regulation, resulting in many/most smokers only eating one meal a day. I've shifted it to the midday meal so I can better regulate when and where I have to deal with, uh, waste activities, because when I park my van at night, there's nowhere nearby when I can conveniently take a shit.

It's already been decided in court and in law that people have the right to choose who fixes their cars. Tesla has decided that people don't have that right. 'nuff said on that. I'm done with billionaires telling me that they can decide what rights I have and don't have.

It's not only Tesla doing this shit. Here in the UK, other car companies seem to do this too, as much as they can get away with it seems. Luckily for me my car is old so I suffer from this less.

I agree to an extend with you here, I want who I want to fix my car fix my car, but I also don't just want some random person who claims they can fix it, fix it, there are several certifications that most shop workers have, but how many of those certifications talk about how to handle high voltage EV cars? I think Tesla is doing this mainly to protect their customers from some place doing stuff very wrong that the media could spin into very bad PR. They apparently have a certification process, but with low volumes of cars, most shops just never applied for it. Also all the manuals for working on all parts of the Tesla systems are Free to anyone.

I was in the aftermarket for the last battle, which was in the 90s, in case anybody thought this was ancient history. We won that one, but man oh man, I couldn't tell you how many times I had to tell customers that the dealership lied when they said that aftermarket oil filters void your warranty. This is also literally the same battle we've been fighting against Microsoft and Apple and Oracle and the rest, and are winning now in software. It's really no surprise I went from being an aftermarket auto mechanic to an open source nerd. The two things are the same, just working with different technologies.

Tesla is fighting giving out certifications to non-Tesla employees, and that's after a lawsuit they lost that required them to offer their certs to aftermarket repair shops. And as for that 12v lead acid battery in the older Teslas? Yeah, you guess it. Tesla put some BS in it so they could patent it and you can only buy it from Tesla, and they go after people making "adapters". I've seen it at work, and the Tesla driver (and don't get me started on these snobs) actually blamed me for the fact that I couldn't sell him a battery that would work in his car. I didn't build your car, dude. And yes, I have over a hundred 12v lead acid batteries that could do the job just fine, if it weren't for Tesla's anticompetitive practices. You can't even buy wipers at my store.

You're buying into the "fake news" narrative in a scary way, dude. Elon Musk is a shithead. He's started some companies that are genuinely doing good things, and he has a vision that's overall not terrible, and I agree with the big points (build a permanent settlement on Mars, electrify the grid and the transportation infrastructure), but I disagree with a lot of the details.

Lest we forget, Andrew Carnegie built a lot of schools and libraries and is indirectly responsible for the quality of US education improving throughout the 20s and 30s and making us competitive enough to be on the winning side of WWII. But he was also the most ruthless robberbaron and ruined thousands of people's lives with his greed and ambition. Don't let the good blind you to the bad.

Case in point:

IMO it's hard to really trust either direction on the sexual harassment cases.

There's a saying that's pretty common among working class people in the south. "If you meet an asshole in the morning, you met an asshole. If you meet assholes all day, you're the asshole." Elon Musk is a serial sexual harasser, and he has injected his hatred and exploitation of women into his companies. This is an established fact. The only question is how accountable he's going to be held for it.

[kyle]

Z-Man You should give X a try again, if you follow / interact with people that spread good clean information, the posts you get on there are good. I was watching national News on First Trump assassination attempt while browsing X, The information I had on X was much better than what was on the national news. there were some things that were wrong, but corrected fast, To me seeing 20 different people saying things, I've got to see 3-4 before I will say it's likely true.

You're buying into the "fake news" narrative in a scary way, dude. Elon Musk is a shithead.

I've literally seen stuff the media has put out that is 100% fake, or extremely deceptive, They cite unnamed sources, and within days the news is proven to be fake. Or better yet they sway some news to make something nominal sound bad, There was news that broke at 1PM ET a few months ago. about an investigation into a Tesla recall, Tesla's stock went down 5% or more, just from that news, but when you dug into the report from the agency, all it was was just to continue to collect data to ensure that the recall did fix the problem, a standard processes that they take.

Having more money yields more people trying to find ways to take it from you.

Your claims about Musk abusing Women is easily broken,
X CEO, a women
SpaceX president a women
The boring companies, I know at leas one founder is s a women
It's a narrative the media pushes that you've fallen for.

I am curious your top 5 or so reasons why you think "Elon Musk is a shithead"

[Lucifer]

I've literally seen stuff the media has put out that is 100% fake, or extremely deceptive,

I'm not saying the news is perfect or anything. Just that you're saying "Fake news", and we know where that exact specific phrase originated.

They cite unnamed sources, and within days the news is proven to be fake.

This is a common and well respected journalistic practice. I've seen plenty of news talking about Boeing where they cite unnamed sources to protect the source from getting fired/sued/whatever. Without being able to cite unnamed sources, there would be no such thing as journalistic integrity.

As a matter of fact, if a journalist can't confirm something from an anonymous source with at least two other known sources, they don't publish, if they're reputable. I'll remind you that technically, we still don't know who Deep Throat was, and whoever that was took down a president.

I do vet my own news sources, and I'm aware that the New York Times, Washington Post, and, oddly, the Rolling Stone have all been caught publishing stories that weren't true. I also know enough about the process to know how that happened. We're not talking about one or two stories here, we're talking about a pretty wide swath, that includes Grimes herself. I'm not going to dig up sources, honestly, because I don't think you're going to believe them anyway, and I've got better things to do with my time. This is definitely a case of "I'd like to agree with you, but then we'd both be wrong."

Having more money yields more people trying to find ways to take it from you.

This is a longstanding disproven defense of rich people. It goes into the same classification of false rape claims. Yes, somewhere between 1-5% of the women who accused Bill Cosby were proven to be lying. You can extrapolate that to as high as 20% if you'd like of other liars that were believed. That still means that 75% of the women who came out, and 100% of the women who kept quiet, were all raped by Bill Cosby. So yes, some of these women are lying, and some of these journalists are dishonest. But for your defense to work, you have to prove they're all lying. And considering how much of this is sworn affidavits submitted to courts, that's going to be difficult to do.

Your claims about Musk abusing Women is easily broken,
X CEO, a women
SpaceX president a women
The boring companies, I know at leas one founder is s a women
It's a narrative the media pushes that you've fallen for.

None of this is relevant either. The creator of the biggest feminist icon in the 90s has been proven to be an abusive misogynistic asshat. That's Joss Whedon. Of course, some of us could see this years before it came out, and we didn't need the news to tell us. It's right there in the structure of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. It was sitting in front of us the whole time. Point is, you can promote a woman who does an excellent job while still hating her for being a woman. You don't get to be a billionaire without recognizing talent, even if you don't like the person. Even Trump used to be able to do that, before he jumped the shark.

It's also not a coincidence that every single one of these companies has a culture of sexual harassment. Also, Tesla does, too. What's the common factor for all of them? Same CEO? Same biggest shareholder? Hmm. Company culture starts at the top. That's one of the responsibilities you have when you're CEO.

I am curious your top 5 or so reasons why you think "Elon Musk is a shithead"

I don't know that I have five reasons.

1. His attitudes about women, previously discussed.
2. His attitudes about free speech. You know, the part where he says he's making social media safe for free speech, then forces people who block him to read his bullshit anyway. Also, the part where he's quite ok with bomb threats because those are free speech and he's been part and parcel of perpetuating lies about people eating dogs and cats. He doesn't understand free speech. He's just another whiny billionaire.
3. His long series of broken promises. We usually treat it nicely by saying he overpromises and underdelivers, but the fact is, he's a liar. It's proven. How many years did it take for the first Tesla to actually hit the road driven by a real customer after he said it would happen? I understand that development is hard. Oh boy do I understand it. I've also been guilty of overpromising and underdelivering. And you know what? After a few times of that, I quit promising in the first place. Everybody makes mistakes. People with integrity own them and change their behavior. People without it? That's your guy, Elon.

I could probably come up with more reasons, but considering this is all off the top of my head and pretty compelling by itself, I'll just stop here.