#EV - Tesla

[ralfmaximus]

Tesla is tanking so hard it is dragging the entire EV segment's sales down into the negative. When you omit Tesla from the equation, EV sales are up 13% across the board.

Don't let anyone tell you EV sales are in a slump.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Tesla's Dieselgate

Elon Musk lies a lot. He lies about being a “utopian socialist.” He lies about being a “free speech absolutist.” He lies about which companies he founded:

https://www.businessinsider.com/tesla-cofounder-martin-eberhard-interview-history-elon-musk-ev-market-2023-2 He lies about being the “chief engineer” of those companies:

https://www.quora.com/Was-Elon-Musk-the-actual-engineer-behind-SpaceX-and-Tesla

He lies about really stupid stuff, like claiming that comsats that share the same spectrum will deliver steady broadband speeds as they add more users who each get a narrower slice of that spectrum:

https://www.eff.org/wp/case-fiber-home-today-why-fiber-superior-medium-21st-century-broadband

The fundamental laws of physics don’t care about this bullshit, but people do. The comsat lie convinced a bunch of people that pulling fiber to all our homes is literally impossible — as though the electrical and phone lines that come to our homes now were installed by an ancient, lost civilization. Pulling new cabling isn’t a mysterious art, like embalming pharaohs. We do it all the time. One of the poorest places in America installed universal fiber with a mule named “Ole Bub”:

https://www.newyorker.com/tech/annals-of-technology/the-one-traffic-light-town-with-some-of-the-fastest-internet-in-the-us

Previous tech barons had “reality distortion fields,” but Musk just blithely contradicts himself and pretends he isn’t doing so, like a budget Steve Jobs. There’s an entire site devoted to cataloging Musk’s public lies:

https://elonmusk.today/

But while Musk lacks the charm of earlier Silicon Valley grifters, he’s much better than they ever were at running a long con. For years, he’s been promising “full self driving…next year.”

https://pluralistic.net/2022/10/09/herbies-revenge/#100-billion-here-100-billion-there-pretty-soon-youre-talking-real-money

He’s hasn’t delivered, but he keeps claiming he has, making Teslas some of the deadliest cars on the road:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/06/10/tesla-autopilot-crashes-elon-musk/

Tesla is a giant shell-game masquerading as a car company. The important thing about Tesla isn’t its cars, it’s Tesla’s business arrangement, the Tesla-Financial Complex:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/11/24/no-puedo-pagar-no-pagara/#Rat

Once you start unpacking Tesla’s balance sheets, you start to realize how much the company depends on government subsidies and tax-breaks, combined with selling carbon credits that make huge, planet-destroying SUVs possible, under the pretense that this is somehow good for the environment:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/04/14/for-sale-green-indulgences/#killer-analogy

But even with all those financial shenanigans, Tesla’s got an absurdly high valuation, soaring at times to 1600x its profitability:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/15/hoover-calling/#intangibles

That valuation represents a bet on Tesla’s ability to extract ever-higher rents from its customers. Take Tesla’s batteries: you pay for the battery when you buy your car, but you don’t own that battery. You have to rent the right to use its full capacity, with Tesla reserving the right to reduce how far you go on a charge based on your willingness to pay:

https://memex.craphound.com/2017/09/10/teslas-demon-haunted-cars-in-irmas-path-get-a-temporary-battery-life-boost/

That’s just one of the many rent-a-features that Tesla drivers have to shell out for. You don’t own your car at all: when you sell it as a used vehicle, Tesla strips out these features you paid for and makes the next driver pay again, reducing the value of your used car and transfering it to Tesla’s shareholders:

https://www.theverge.com/2020/2/6/21127243/tesla-model-s-autopilot-disabled-remotely-used-car-update

To maintain this rent-extraction racket, Tesla uses DRM that makes it a felony to alter your own car’s software without Tesla’s permission. This is the root of all autoenshittification:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/24/rent-to-pwn/#kitt-is-a-demon

This is technofeudalism. Whereas capitalists seek profits (income from selling things), feudalists seek rents (income from owning the things other people use). If Telsa were a capitalist enterprise, then entrepreneurs could enter the market and sell mods that let you unlock the functionality in your own car:

https://pluralistic.net/2020/06/11/1-in-3/#boost-50

But because Tesla is a feudal enterprise, capitalists must first secure permission from the fief, Elon Musk, who decides which companies are allowed to compete with him, and how.

Once a company owns the right to decide which software you can run, there’s no limit to the ways it can extract rent from you. Blocking you from changing your device’s software lets a company run overt scams on you. For example, they can block you from getting your car independently repaired with third-party parts.

But they can also screw you in sneaky ways. Once a device has DRM on it, Section 1201 of the DMCA makes it a felony to bypass that DRM, even for legitimate purposes. That means that your DRM-locked device can spy on you, and because no one is allowed to explore how that surveillance works, the manufacturer can be incredibly sloppy with all the personal info they gather:

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/29/tesla-model-3-keeps-data-like-crash-videos-location-phone-contacts.html

All kinds of hidden anti-features can lurk in your DRM-locked car, protected from discovery, analysis and criticism by the illegality of bypassing the DRM. For example, Teslas have a hidden feature that lets them lock out their owners and summon a repo man to drive them away if you have a dispute about a late payment:

https://tiremeetsroad.com/2021/03/18/tesla-allegedly-remotely-unlocks-model-3-owners-car-uses-smart-summon-to-help-repo-agent/

DRM is a gun on the mantlepiece in Act I, and by Act III, it goes off, revealing some kind of ugly and often dangerous scam. Remember Dieselgate? Volkswagen created a line of demon-haunted cars: if they thought they were being scrutinized (by regulators measuring their emissions), they switched into a mode that traded performance for low emissions. But when they believed themselves to be unobserved, they reversed this, emitting deadly levels of NOX but delivering superior mileage.

The conversion of the VW diesel fleet into mobile gas-chambers wouldn’t have been possible without DRM. DRM adds a layer of serious criminal jeopardy to anyone attempting to reverse-engineer and study any device, from a phone to a car. DRM let Apple claim to be a champion of its users’ privacy even as it spied on them from asshole to appetite:

https://pluralistic.net/2022/11/14/luxury-surveillance/#liar-liar

Now, Tesla is having its own Dieselgate scandal. A stunning investigation by Steve Stecklow and Norihiko Shirouzu for Reuters reveals how Tesla was able to create its own demon-haunted car, which systematically deceived drivers about its driving range, and the increasingly desperate measures the company turned to as customers discovered the ruse:

https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/tesla-batteries-range/

The root of the deception is very simple: Tesla mis-sells its cars by falsely claiming ranges that those cars can’t attain. Every person who ever bought a Tesla was defrauded.

But this fraud would be easy to detect. If you bought a Tesla rated for 353 miles on a charge, but the dashboard range predictor told you that your fully charged car could only go 150 miles, you’d immediately figure something was up. So your Telsa tells another lie: the range predictor tells you that you can go 353 miles.

But again, if the car continued to tell you it has 203 miles of range when it was about to run out of charge, you’d figure something was up pretty quick — like, the first time your car ran out of battery while the dashboard cheerily informed you that you had 203 miles of range left.

So Teslas tell a third lie: when the battery charge reached about 50%, the fake range is replaced with the real one. That way, drivers aren’t getting mass-stranded by the roadside, and the scam can continue.

But there’s a new problem: drivers whose cars are rated for 353 miles but can’t go anything like that far on a full charge naturally assume that something is wrong with their cars, so they start calling Tesla service and asking to have the car checked over.

This creates a problem for Tesla: those service calls can cost the company $1,000, and of course, there’s nothing wrong with the car. It’s performing exactly as designed. So Tesla created its boldest fraud yet: a boiler-room full of anti-salespeople charged with convincing people that their cars weren’t broken.

This new unit — the “diversion team” — was headquartered in a Nevada satellite office, which was equipped with a metal xylophone that would be rung in triumph every time a Tesla owner was successfully conned into thinking that their car wasn’t defrauding them.

When a Tesla owner called this boiler room, the diverter would run remote diagnostics on their car, then pronounce it fine, and chide the driver for having energy-hungry driving habits (shades of Steve Jobs’s “You’re holding it wrong”):

https://www.wired.com/2010/06/iphone-4-holding-it-wrong/

The drivers who called the Diversion Team weren’t just lied to, they were also punished. The Tesla app was silently altered so that anyone who filed a complaint about their car’s range was no longer able to book a service appointment for any reason. If their car malfunctioned, they’d have to request a callback, which could take several days.

Meanwhile, the diverters on the diversion team were instructed not to inform drivers if the remote diagnostics they performed detected any other defects in the cars.

The diversion team had a 750 complaint/week quota: to juke this stat, diverters would close the case for any driver who failed to answer the phone when they were eventually called back. The center received 2,000+ calls every week. Diverters were ordered to keep calls to five minutes or less.

Eventually, diverters were ordered to cease performing any remote diagnostics on drivers’ cars: a source told Reuters that “Thousands of customers were told there is nothing wrong with their car” without any diagnostics being performed.

Predicting EV range is an inexact science as many factors can affect battery life, notably whether a journey is uphill or downhill. Every EV automaker has to come up with a figure that represents some kind of best guess under a mix of conditions. But while other manufacturers err on the side of caution, Tesla has the most inaccurate mileage estimates in the industry, double the industry average.

Other countries’ regulators have taken note. In Korea, Tesla was fined millions and Elon Musk was personally required to state that he had deceived Tesla buyers. The Korean regulator found that the true range of Teslas under normal winter conditions was less than half of the claimed range.

Now, many companies have been run by malignant narcissists who lied compulsively — think of Thomas Edison, archnemesis of Nikola Tesla himself. The difference here isn’t merely that Musk is a deeply unfit monster of a human being — but rather, that DRM allows him to defraud his customers behind a state-enforced opaque veil. The digital computers at the heart of a Tesla aren’t just demons haunting the car, changing its performance based on whether it believes it is being observed — they also allow Musk to invoke the power of the US government to felonize anyone who tries to peer into the black box where he commits his frauds.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2023/07/28/edison-not-tesla/#demon-haunted-world

This Sunday (July 30) at 1530h, I’m appearing on a panel at Midsummer Scream in Long Beach, CA, to discuss the wonderful, award-winning “Ghost Post” Haunted Mansion project I worked on for Disney Imagineering.

Image ID [A scene out of an 11th century tome on demon-summoning called 'Compendium rarissimum totius Artis Magicae sistematisatae per celeberrimos Artis hujus Magistros. Anno 1057. Noli me tangere.' It depicts a demon tormenting two unlucky would-be demon-summoners who have dug up a grave in a graveyard. One summoner is held aloft by his hair, screaming; the other screams from inside the grave he is digging up. The scene has been altered to remove the demon's prominent, urinating penis, to add in a Tesla supercharger, and a red Tesla Model S nosing into the scene.]

Image: Steve Jurvetson (modified) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Tesla_Model_S_Indoors.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/deed.en

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Tesla Cybercab, 2024. A 2 seat autonomous EV that will be made available to both private buyers and fleets for $30,000. Because the car drives itself there's no need for rear vision mirrors and even a back window. The Cybercab will go on sale in 2027 subject to regulatory approval

[evviejo]

thirteen + her goggles

[godsfavoritetrespasser]

[deathmetalunicorn1]

You ever see those grandparent videos where the parent brings their newborn into the house, without the grandparent knowing they were born yet? Imagine adult! Reader inviting everyone in and to their knowledge she hasn’t gone into labor yet but to their surprise the baby is right there.

Bonus points if it’s multiple babies like twins or triplets and the family had no idea until the reveal.

-Your family was waiting for you and your husband to arrive, it was the normal routine for Saturday, when you both would come over, there would be a big barbeque or meal, and you would get to spend time with the massive family you called your own.

-It had been a little difficult for you lately as you had been pregnant up until just a few days ago, but only Brunnhilde and Eve knew this, as you had called them, letting them know but asking them to keep it a secret, as you wanted to surprise everyone with your twins.

-They agreed to keep it quiet only if they got to hold the babies first, which you and your husband agreed to while trying not to laugh, the four of you plotting the surprise.

-You arrived quietly and Brunnhilde was waiting by the side door so you both could sneak in the back door to drop off your babies in a side room to get them ready, getting them out of their carriers.

-Eve told everyone else that you both were here, but when Loki spoke up after running to the door, wanting to get a hug first, he pouted when he saw neither of you there, “Where are they?” she just smiled warmly, “Y/N had to run to the bathroom.”

-They all nodded in understanding, as you were due any day now, as Hermes questioned, “Is it a good idea for her to be traveling right now?”

-Brunnhilde was recording before she gave you both the signal. Your husband walked out, holding your daughter, before you walked out, holding your son, “I’m fine.”

-Everyone turned, their eyes growing to the size of dinner plates, except for Eve and Brunnhilde as you grinned warmly as the house was shaking with screams and cries.

-Your daughter got a bit fussy at the sound, almost crying which made everyone hold their hands to their lips, silencing their cries as your husband rocked her.

-Your babies were being handed around, everyone enjoying the new additions to the family as you were relaxing, sitting curled up next to your husband who was grinning, recording now.

-Obnoxiously crying, unable to stop their tears as they held one or the other of your babies, unable to form any coherent words as they would look down at the baby, then to you, babbling nonsense while sniffling loudly, which made you giggle warmly.

            -ARES, LOKI, Apollo, Nikola, Zerofuku, and Goll

-Only let a few happy tears slip out as they talked to your babies, talking so softly and sweetly, before turning to you and your husband, calling you both gremlins for pranking them, then turning back to your babies. They are overjoyed to see you and your babies, but how could you not tell them you had your babies already?!

            -Adam, Zeus, Hades, Kojiro, Jack, Hercules, Hermes, Aphrodite, Shiva, Raiden, Eve, Brunnhilde, and the rest of the Valkyries

-Panicking, please don’t hand him a baby, he doesn’t know how to hold one! You sit next to him, guiding him how to hold your son who smiled up at him, babbling cutely which immediately made him melt, even if he didn’t show it. You can’t help but lean into him, seeing his rare soft smile.

            -Thor, Lu Bu, Beelzebub, and Poseidon

-Expert baby holder, can easily put your children to sleep, all while trying to hide their smile that they were so good at it, despite others calling them out on it because they want to know how good there are, but they’re not revealing their secrets so easily, which causes you to laugh.

            -Leonidas, Buddha, Qin Shi Huang, and Odin

[liberalsarecool]

A money grab by Musk.

Laying off over 15 thousand employees so Elon could push through a $55 billion dollar bonus is as sociopathic as one can be.

It is both amazing and sad how the public worships insatiable greed and inhumanity.

[nando161mando]

[gentlemanmotorslifestyle]

[luxthestrange]

RoR Incorrect quotes#148 Moronsexuals

Nikola: When you love someone, you try not to notice their stupidity even though it's killing you from the inside.

Eve: I love how you say "not to notice" instead of "you don't see" sweetie~

Nikola: Because technically, my exhausted mama, we're not blind... We love them, but we're not blind

Eve:Yes~

Y/n & Adam: ...

Adam: Damn, Best wishes to the people they're talking about...

Y/n: Yeah. Same with you too

We a chip off the ol' block-

[netscapenavigator-official]

People in the notes of my post about Tesla removing the gear selectors from its new cars, asking how that's even legal, clearly have no idea just how incompetent and slow-paced the NHTSA is.

Halogen headlights weren't legal until 1979.

Composite headlights (the uniquely designed ones that aren't the old-school circle or square ones you see on older cars) weren't legal until 1984.

Adaptive High Beams (Matrix Headlights) were only recently legalized, in 2022; and the regulations and testing procedures in order to approve them are so haphazard and over-complicated compared to Europe's that not a single automaker has even made them available.

Side Curtain airbags still are not mandated in the United States.

Turn Signals can be red in the U.S., as opposed to the statistically safer amber which is mandatory in Europe.

Making that worse, those red turn signals are allowed to share lamps with the brake lights. This means if you have your turn signal on, 1/3 of your brake lights can’t do their job because they're too busy doing another job.

There is no law in the United States dictating that an electric car must put on its brake lights when Regen braking. In fact, the law specifically states that only the friction brakes are required to activate brake lights. You can bring a Hyundai Ioniq 5 & 6, Kia EV6, Genesis GV60, and many other EVs to a rapid, complete stop without ever activating the brake lights.

Early model Chevrolet Bolt EVs and some Mercedes-Benz EVs will activate the brake lights appropriately when slowing down, but will deactivate their brake lights once they've come to a complete stop, allowing the car to sit at a standstill in the road without any indicator that it isn't traveling at the same speed as you are.

It's completely up to the automaker to decide how (or even if) to implement regen brake lighting. EVs and Hybrids have been around since the late 1990s and this still hasn't changed.

The US government STILL only evaluates a vehicles crash safety by crash testing it at 35 mph into a flat wall and t-boning it with a barrier representing a 3,000 lb sedan. They don't do an offset frontal test or a truck-barrier side test like the IIHS has been doing for private insurance companies for over a decade.

The NHTSA performs ZERO pedestrian crash safety tests like EuroNCAP does.

Oh, and on the topic of gear selectors, those aren't regulated at all. Here are some examples from modern cars, both electric and not:

BMW i3 & Nissan LEAF (Electric):

Toyota Prius (Hybrid) & Honda Clarity (Plug-in Hybrid):

RAM 1500 & Cadillac Escalade (Gasoline):

The automotive rules of the American government are pure chaos, and that’s if they're even there at all. If you're seriously asking how Tesla can allow a car to select reverse on its own, and then put the manual override in the touch screen, I mean, that's just scratching the surface.

If you wanna learn more, Technology Connections on YouTube has some great videos on the Turn Signal issue, the EV Regen brake light issue, and the history of the headlight regulations. I highly recommend you check them out because it truly puts into perspective just how awful the NHTSA is at doing its one job: keeping safety standards up-to-date.

[bootleg-nessie]

Teslas are to EVs as liberals are to leftism. They’re annoying, fundamentally flawed, and have set the entire movement back by decades

[carsthatnevermadeitetc]

Tesla Robovan Prototype, 2024. An electric, autonomous vehicle the size of a small bus, designed for transporting up to 20 people and/or cargo. Revealed at Tesla's We, Robot event in Los Angeles, the are no details yet about when is will become available, how much it will cost or how far it will travel on a single charge. 

[odinsblog]

As cold weather sweeps across the U.S., some electric vehicle owners are learning a bitter truth: Low temperatures can stop the cars dead in their icy tracks.

The issue crystallized this week when some Tesla owners in Chicago discovered their EVs' batteries had died in sub-zero temperatures. Drivers also said some of Tesla charging stations weren't working, or if they did work that the stations were taking longer than usual to charge up their vehicles.

“I've been here for over five hours at this point, and I still have not gotten to charge my car,” Tesla driver Brandon Welbourne told CBS Chicago. “A charge that should take 45 minutes is taking two hours.”

What happens to electric vehicles in cold weather?

Here's what to know.

Electric vehicles are less efficient in cold weather, with Recurrent's research finding that below-freezing temperatures reduced driving range up to 30% on 18 popular EV models.

An EV with a 200 to 215 mile range may only go 150 to 175 miles in the cold, Recurrent's Case said, while noting even that reduced mileage is often sufficient for most drivers. “The average person with an EV drives 30 miles a day,” he said.

Still, a shorter range in cold weather could be an issue for some owners if their EV runs out of juice miles earlier than expected, potentially leaving to hunt for an available charger or, worse, stranded in dangerously frigid conditions.

(continue reading) ❄️ 🚗​ 🥶

[zvaigzdelasas]

It's a weird sort of defeatism I see whenever there's a story about a country in the global south discovering large reserves of some critical mineral or resource where people automatically go "oh no that's terrible for them" as if the "resource curse" is something that just passively happens instead of the results of active decisions by Imperialist Monopolistic Capital

Discovery of a resource to be exploited should - and moreover *can* - be a beacon of hope for increasing domestic manufacturing & moving local industry higher up the value chain & building qualitatively higher productive capacity without the need to service foreign speculative Capital.

[deathmetalunicorn1]

Time to kill everyone with Cuteness again!

Eve with a little child who dresses like the Einherjars or the gods.

That or Adam with a Gaint daughter who is super shy and somewhat childish.

-Eve couldn’t help but giggle softly, seeing you twirl around in your Halloween costume, as you had wanted to go as your favorite Einherjar warrior!

-When you had told your mama this she couldn’t help but smile, knowing that you were going to be so cute!

-Now here you were, all dressed up, ready to go out but first you wanted to go and see (Favorite) to show him your costume first!

-Lu Bu- Could only blink down at you, seeing a child friendly version of him as you beamed up at him. He was confused as to why you were dressed as him, kneeling down, “Why do you look like me?” your grin widened, excited that he liked it, “I wanted to be you for Halloween because you’re my favorite!” he couldn’t help but chuckle but he took you to Thor to show you off.

-Adam- While you couldn’t dress up exactly like him, Eve did help you make a fig leaf dress, and when you ran to him, “Papa!!” he all but melted, seeing that you were dressed up as him, complete with an apple and a bright grin on your face. It took a while to go trick or treating, as he kept wanting to take photos.

-Kojiro- Completely melted, seeing you dressed up like him, giving you a huge hug, “You look so strong Y/N! You’ve got to be the strongest swords user in the world!” you beamed, holding the hilts of your swords (foam swords), posing for him, “I wanted to dress up as you because you’re my favorite!!” he melted, almost to the point of tears, hugging you close.

-Jack- Hid his face behind his hands as he was blushing so hard, seeing you running up to him, “Lookie Jack, I’m you!” He couldn’t help but smile but at the same time he was worried, “Are you sure you want to be me?” you nodded, a grin on your face, “Why wouldn’t I? You’re always nice to me and you always dress fancy!” he chuckled softly, seeing the childlike innocence in you- you were too precious.

-Raiden- Beamed brightly, seeing you in a child friendly version of a sumo suit, with lines painted on your body, looking just like him when he was fighting Shiva and you beamed, “I’m the strongest!!” he boomed with laughter, picking you up, tossing you into the air, listening to your delighted squeals. Shiva held his heart after he received the photo of you and Raiden posing together.

-Buddha- The moment he saw you he couldn’t help but grin, “Ooh looks like I’ve got some competition for treats tonight!” you beamed, giving him a twirl, “Do you like it? I wanted to be you because you’re my favorite!” Buddha felt his heart squeeze as he collapsed to his knees, holding his chest, you were going to kill him with cuteness.

-Qin Shi Huang- Instantly dropped to his knees, bowing to you, “My emperor!” you giggled, running over as he opened his arms, hugging you close before you twirled, showing off your costume, “Do you like it? I wanted to be my favorite person for Halloween!” QSH was quick to get a swelled head, gushing to everyone that he was your favorite.

-Nikola- Immediately collapsed to his knees then to his side, tears welling on how adorable you looked! He couldn’t believe you dressed up as him as Thomas and Isaac were praising you for the costume, making you beam brightly as you spoke, “Nikola’s my favorite person so I wanted to be him!” Nikola was sure he was going to die from cuteness.

-Leonidas- Immediately was roaring with laughter, seeing you dressed up like him, even with a toy shield, a bright grin on your face, “Now who are you supposed to be?” you put your free hand on your hip, “I’m Leonidas- King of Sparta! And Y/N’s favorite person!” his soldiers couldn’t help but smile, thinking you were adorable while Leonidas grinned down at you- you were so cute!