Electrec Headline: Tesla falls behind GM, Ford, autonomous driving...

[D.E.]

Electrec ran the above headline, “Tesla falls behind GM and Ford in new autonomous driving leaderboard”

That seemed inconsistent from what I’d read elsewhere. I took a closer look. The story came from information provided by Navigant Technologies.

They based the rankings on 10 criteria:

• vision;
• go-to market strategy;
• partners;
• production strategy;
• technology;
• sales, marketing, and distribution;
• product capability;
• product quality and reliability;
• product portfolio;
• staying power.

So this “leaderboard” doesn’t even include an evaluation of the actual state of autonomous driving itself. The article written by Fred Lambert is based on a “leaderboard” prepared by Navigant Research. So who are these experts at Navigant Research? The following is taken from the Navigant Technologies website.

Their head of research is an attorney, he has an MA in International Affairs from American University
Next is their principle research analyst is trained in business and marketing, she’s written 3 novels
Next is another principle research analyst with a claimed extensive background in market intelligence
Finally, there is the research director who focuses on demand-side management programs and their implications for the global power industry.

So I see no experts here on autonomous driving, no software experts. I guess anyone can create any sort of “leaderboard” they want and they can use any criteria they like for their leaderboard.

About Navigant Technologies:
“Navigant Research is a market research and advisory team that provides in-depth analysis of clean, intelligent, mobile, and distributed energy. The team's research methodology combines supply-side industry analysis, end-user primary research and demand assessment, and deep examination of technology trends to provide a comprehensive view of these industry sectors.”

So despite their name, they appear not to be a technology company, but a marketing company.
I think Navigant Technologies is ill suited to determining who actually leads in the development of autonomous driving and I feel Electrec’s headline is, at the least, misleading. I’ll no longer take Electrec’s or Mr. Lambert’s articles as authoritative.

 

[ewoodrick]

I'd suggest that it was sponsored by Tesla.

What's the best way to raise stock prices besides going from the bottom to the top in the announcement tomorrow.

BTW, didn't Ford say that FSD just wasn't going to happen anytime soon? Maybe they thought that self-realization of your flaws meant that you were ahead of everyone else.

 

[D.E.]

I don’t think I’d come to those conclusions based on the information given.

 

[D.E.]

Now the story has been picked up by International Business Times (IBT). In this rendition the headline reads: “Elon Musk’s Tesla Surprisingly Fails to Lead Autonomous Driving Technology”

The sole basis for this is Mr. Lambert’s Electrec article. So now, the “Leaderboard” part of the story is dropped and the jump is made to the say that Tesla fails to lead in technology, which is a huge and unsupported jump. We’ve gone from a marketing focus to a focus on the technology. So who is IBT and why would they knowingly misstate and alter the previous story?

It seems IBT is a clickbait company. They are a big one, though, for a while they owned Newsweek. Wikipedia has some interesting things to say about IBT that might shed light on their role in this seeming deception. The link: International Business Times - Wikipedia

Quotes from the Wikipedia page:
Reporting in 2014, Mother Jones claimed that IBT journalists are subject to constant demand to produce clickbait; one former employee reportedly complained that management issued "impossible" demands, including a minimum of 10,000 hits per article, and fired those who couldn't deliver. Of 432 articles published by IBT Japan in a certain time interval, 302 were reportedly created by copying sentences from Japanese media and combining them, "collage-style", to create stories that seemed new; IBT Japan apologized for the behavior and blamed it on a contract employee.[3] Similarly, employees told The Guardian in 2014 that at times they seemed to operate more as "content farms" demanding high-volume output than a source of quality journalism. At least two journalists were allegedly threatened with firing unless traffic to their articles increased sharply.[19]

There is a lot more on that Wikipedia page, it’s worth reading.

So it appears IBT purposefully changes stories in order to increase clicks on their site. That seems to explain the motivation for posting a factually altered story.

Thus far we have a publication produced by Navigant Technologies. They are in the business of selling their publications, if you want to read their publication, it’ll cost $3950 for an individual license. I assume they’ll sell a lot more of their publications if they run a story about their publication that runs counter to what people otherwise assume. In this example they’ve been highly selective in their company comparison criteria, no doubt to control the end conclusions.

Then we have Mr. Lambert at Electrec who’ve publicized this creative Navigant Technologies marketing publication, but making no mention of the cost to read, nor the commercial nature of this creative publication. Electrec is part of 9-5Mac.com. Here’s a story about 9-5Mac and toward the end they bring Elelctrec into it.
How An IT Guy Stranded In Paris Turned Himself Into The Most Powerful Source Of Apple News
So web traffic is a huge incentive. There’s an interesting part in the article about how people are paid. Basically it’s all web traffic and ads.

And now IBT has altered the story shifting completely away from the marketing focus of the original source, saying that Tesla trails in the autonomous driving technology itself.

It’s interesting, and somewhat disappointing to me to see exactly how a story goes from something completely contrived to a story that reports Tesla’s autonomous driving technology is falling behind competitors. At each stage the motivation seems to be an increase in website traffic and there seems total disregard for the facts. Yet the story is presented to us as factual.

As for me, I think I’m starting to get an idea how and why these bogus headlines come about.

And for those reading this and not following the links, there’s absolutely no basis here for any indication of where Tesla’s autonomous driving technology is compared to competitors.

 

[CarlK]

Technology is only one of ten criteria? Agreed that there is absolutely no basis of the ranking but it was quoted in every media outlet. I'm sure there are someone else behing it because not a lot people have heard of that organization.

Here is one from someone who really knows the technology and the industry. Tesla and Waymo aprears to be leader in each of the two approaches he discribed in the lecture. Of course no one cares what real experts say.