Comment by simondotau
2 days ago
This Tesla event was apparently performed in front of a live audience. Yes I'm sure there's a hype strategy here but equating this with the Nikola scam is a stretch.
Also Tesla events rarely (if ever) get followed by a durable stock bump.
--
Edit: Credible independent videos have been released on YouTube by reputable people. There's no doubt that the spectacle did happen as shown by Tesla. That's not to say it's anything more than a carefully staged spectacle, but claims that it's fake or AI or CGI are absolutely debunked.
Sure. But do we have any confidence the "car" wasn't made of styrofoam?
There are lots of ways for sleight of hand. Do you remember the time that guy made the Statue of Liberty disappear?
Is it really so unbelievable that a car company with access to rocket engineers, built a car with rocket engines?
> Is it really so unbelievable
A car company that has a long history of making false claims? Are you really asking me that?
35 replies →
Yes, completely unbeleivable. I mainly think this because SpaceX has committed said engineers to delivering unfeasable amounts of payload to LEO/ISS, etc. Think on the order of "One succesful launch, delivery, and re-entry/recovery per day".
That is of course very very far away from reality (though, progressing to a feasable program faster than any space observers predicted.)
THat, combined with Elon signaling to investors/market that tesla no longer produces cars.....it's hard to imagine the company splitting their very, very , very over-commited engineers to a flying car. At least, they aren't commiting the point that this will be a consumer-market car, or even a halo car.
16 replies →
There are legitimate question about the physics of the thing that even the most talented engineers will still come up against.
1 reply →
yes. unless elon himself personally is in the drivers seat while the "car" is doing all those things, it's cardboard and styrofoam.
They’re one of the leading companies developing autonomous vehicles, but their original self-driving demo was still faked.
Unbelievable? No. A company already caught lying multiple times in big fashion to whole world, never delivering FSD yet cashing in tons of money for it, plus rather mentally unstable owner to keep it polite?
Fool me once...
13 replies →
I'm not saying it was a production-ready car, but the notion of it being styrofoam is stupid. These demos are as much for the morale of the engineers as they are for the entertainment of the public. Tesla doesn't need to demonstrate a rocket car.
> notion of it being styrofoam is stupid
Well then, I'm sure it'll be disproven very shortly, right?
They won't keep the vehicle hidden and out of sight, right?
Let's just revisit in a couple months, shall we?
They kind of do, though, their sales have been dropping year over year during an extreme fuel crisis - and Chinese EVs are coming for their lunch.
3 replies →
I read that the car used in the demo was actually a hundreds of kilograms, nothing like the real cars weight of ~ 2 ton
Agreed. Just think about it for a second. If it was 2 tons like a real EV, could a fan or 2 keep it adhered to a vertical surface?
This is a circus stunt.
4 replies →
I believe he also made his own career disappear.
Just be aware you're moving from the territory of reasonable questions to moderately desperate conspiracy theory. Whatever it is we saw, it's clearly not lightweight. That much is obvious from the kinetics.
Well it didn’t have a driver and you can’t see the size of the battery, impressive nonetheless and in the end it’s not like it matters since it has no practical application outside a circus (the flying)
If you think "company might have faked public demo in some important way" is a "conspiracy theory", your conspiracy theory sensor is badly miscalibrated and desperately needs a tune up. Your default presumption should be that a demo is faked to at least some extent because most of them are. If I don't hear an explicit declaration that this is real and live and working exactly the same on stage as it will be for the consumer I assume it isn't. And even some of those declarations have been shown to be false over the years, a particularly popular one being "this is real game footage on the real hardware" except it's actually a developer box with a lot more power than the console in question.
The cybertruck was claimed to be a steel exoskeleton. They ended up releasing a car with heavy steel plates glued on.
It's not at all conspiracy theory. It's just same old over promise and under deliver that Elon does.
5 replies →
Come on.... srlsy?
WE know that the robot demonstration were remote controled.
WE know that the cybertruck wasn't bulletproof (didn't you see their demonstration on stage?)
If someone lies once and twice and regularly enough, why do you have such a low standard in your life?
> moderately desperate conspiracy theory
A car company that as a long history of making false claims?
I agree: one of us is delusional. I think we disagree about whom.
But hey, you're right. If it's not styrofoam I'm sure we'll see proof of that very soon now. Like a person riding in it. Or it out where someone can actually touch it. Try to lift it.
(And if we don't....)
Not to disagree that this Tesla event took place, but there was also a "Nikola World" event in 2019 where Nikola presented its product to an audience of 1000+ people.
It's surely not AI, but so far it is little more than all these Jetpack demonstrations of the past decade...
> all these Jetpack demonstrations of the past decade...
They've been promising those since the 1970s...
Even longer, Thunderball (Bond film featuring the Bell Rocket Belt) was released in 1965.
True (the autocorrect stole my 's' of 'decades'...)
This is the same company that showed off "bulletproof glass" on the cybertruck.
I was never quite sure if that was a deliberate ploy. The demonstration showed that it quite possibly had enough strength to stop a bullet (it would just smash).
The failure of the demonstration got vastly more coverage than if it would have if the, um rock?, just hit the window, went donk and fell down. If your goal was to communicate to the maximum number of people that you had put bulletproof glass in your cars, it would be quite a reasonable tactic.
It was clear that they didn't expect it to happen.
It only showed the dynamic of Musk vs. his engineers and how he 'works'
All car manufacturers demo "concept" cars that are real and work(for most parts) but mass production with reasonable price is just not worth it, in this case there is legal challenges too.
They're not afraid of doing tricks in front of live audience either. Look at the battery swap event. No camera placed anywhere near where the "swap" was happening for a few minutes. Then the car drove off Wow! Amazing! And they never talked about battery swap again
They never talked about battery swap again because DC fast charging got fast enough to eliminate that hassle.
Meanwhile Chinese EV maker Nio has built over three thousand battery swap stations. We can speculate all we want about Tesla's motives, endlessly entertaining as that is, but the fundamental idea was sound.
I have nothing against the idea I just don't think they bothered even doing a real battery swap for the demo
They got about $300 million in extra regularory credits for that demo. The government shut the loophole in 2014 after it became obvious Tesla was faking it and no real Tesla drivers were benefiting.
Or the continued use of tele-operators for all of their humanoid robotics demos.
When it's not a human dancer in a robot suit.
zOMG!1!!! Proof of concept demonstration was carefully staged.