Elon Musk Recode Interview 2018

[neroden]

Depth/ distance to objects is. However, you specifically said "binocular vision" which is a specific case of an approach to depth perception.

If you've got overlapping camera views -- which Tesla *already does* -- then it's the *correct* approach to depth perception, because all the others fail in cases where it works, and it works in all the cases where the others fail.

 

[mongo]

I get the sense I'm annoying you, and, if so, I apologize, that was not my intent. No need for you to respond.

Yeah, start going through the details on your entrance/exit proposals. Hint: they've *all* been tried historically. You haven't got something new.

Neither my driveway nor work parking lot are bottlenecks. Nor are bus stops for the most part. (and someone implemented elevators?)

Current subways largely *aren't* private-sector-financially viable, due to the excessive capital costs, and the subsidization of the competition. (There are exceptions in Japan and some other parts of Asia, which have less subsidization of roads and lower capital costs.)

You're doing idiot division, the sort of calculation I've been decrying for years in the Tesla context. I am NOT in the mood to go back to elementary-school-level laying this out one step at a time. Maybe I'll do it some other time, but for now I'm tired of dealing with people who do not do their homework.

The Chicago Boring project is 100% privately funded, so we'll see how that goes.

No, they're not. Do your damn research.

Assuming the outside seals maintain integrity, the only wear points seem to be between the pod wheels and the tunnel surface. The terminals themselves, pods, and elevators will, of course, need maintenance due to moving parts and human wear.

 

[farzyness]

'You’re the first person I’ve met that actually uses the subway.' -- Musk

He's caught in a bubble. This probably explains some of his blatant idiocy when it comes to public transportation.

Longer quote (boldface is Kara Swisher, plaintext is Musk):


Millions of people use subways. Seriously, he's never talked to any of us? He needs to.

The thing is, Musk is absolutely right that massive cost-cutting is possible in tunnelling; he's been focusing on the engineering side but it isn't even that. In the US tunnelling is controlled by a construction mafia who jacks up the prices due to, basically, price-gouging; eliminating that alone will cut the cost in half.

But he's living in a bubble and hasn't talked to enough people who actually know something about subways, which accounts for his stupid operational proposals. Hopefully he'll correct this at some point soon, because cutting tunnelling costs could be extremely useful if he doen't waste the tunnels on dumb low-capacity stuff.

Honestly he probably hasn't had enough time to sit down and learn this stuff but hopefully he does now. A few days' research could save him from making an awful lot of dumb mistakes, and he really could take over the tunnelling business in the US, if not worldwide.

(But he'd better have good personal security, because when I describe the tunnelling business as being run by a "construction mafia"...)

I think he's talking strictly about the LA subway system, not all subway systems.

 

[neroden]

Still going through the interview.

Apparently Musk doesn't read military strategy magazines...

What do you think of the Space Force? The Trump Space Force?

Well, this may be a little controversial, but I actually like the idea. I think it’s cool. You know, like, when the Air Force was formed, there was a lot of like pooh-poohing, and like, “Oh, how silly to have an Air Force!” You know, because the aircraft in World War II were managed by the Army.

Right.

And so you had the Army and the Navy and the Coast Guard and the Marines, and then ... it became pretty obvious that you really needed a specialized division to manage aircraft. And so the Air Force was created.

And people today may not realize back then it was wildly panned as a ridiculous thing to create the Air Force, but now everyone’s like, “Obviously you should have an Air Force.” And I think it’s gonna become obvious that we should have a Space Force, too.

Musk doesn't know this, but in fact, the recommendation of a lot of the top military stragegists is... to get rid of the Air Force.

Specifically, having a separate Air Force is seen as a problem. The recommendation is to go back to the WWII situation with the "Army Air Force".

The problem is that the Air Force has one "hammer" (bombers and fighters) and so "everything looks like a nail" (they recommend bombing no matter what the problem is). It turns out that bombing is counterproductive most of the time, so the Air Force representative at the Joint Chiefs is mostly just creating problematic noise which has to be screened out. Meanwhile, the Air Force turns its nose up at the pedestrian, but important, role of providing support for the Army and doing what the Army tells them.

This has led to the strategic recommendation that the Air Force should resume its subordinate role as *support for the Army*. I've seen it from many separate people each of whom wrote long, detailed, well-supported articles in favor -- and I haven't seen a plausible or valid counterargument. (I've read plenty of counterarguments, but they're garbage.)

I realize that there is no reason at all for Musk to have researched any of this, but I have, and it's another area where Musk didn't do his homework and as a result is probably wrong. Musk is great when he does his homework, but when he doesn't, the result is just like when anyone doesn't do their homework.

 

[neroden]

Assuming the outside seals maintain integrity

You are annoying me. My last word on this: Google "water infiltration"

 

[mongo]

If you've got overlapping camera views -- which Tesla *already does* -- then it's the *correct* approach to depth perception, because all the others fail in cases where it works, and it works in all the cases where the others fail.

Doesn't help against a horizontal bar at camera height...

Stupidest thing Musk says in the interview:
Still delusionally optimistic. How many years has he been saying he'll have this next year? 5? 10?

I will 100% guarantee that Tesla will not get to full all-circumstances self-driving next year. They may still be better than all the competition, but they won't have solved the general problem.

He didn't say all-circumstances. He said general solution, as in not use-case specific coding.

Pedantically, current drivers cannot handle all-circumstances (and some are unsolvable).

Further pedantically, if it is ever solved, the year before that happens, saying next year will be accurate

 

[neroden]

Moving forward:

Yeah, construction in general is ... I think there’s a lot of potential for disruption and for entrepreneurs to enter construction in general.

I agree that there has not been enough effort put into optimizing *surface* construction, which has even-lower-hanging-fruit than tunnelling. Perhaps Musk is starting to notice this?

 

[neroden]

Yes, we took a Model 3 chassis and converted that into a train, a Model 3-powered train chassis, and so now we have a —

Obviously this was a pretty easy conversion. I wonder if Musk has realized that they can just outright build battery-electric train locomotives. It's a market which nobody is moving into, and there's no good reason why it's not being done. The demand is there and they'd blow out the other "competitors" very quickly...

 

[neroden]

Okay, in this reality, when you look at it, how are you feeling about the future, when what appears to be reality ...?

For some reason, I feel optimistic. And I’m not sure if that is irrational or not, but that is my —

Why are you feeling that?

My current gut feel is weirdly optimistic.

Seems like Musk suffers from a case of congenital optimism. Even Musk is recognizing that his optimism seems weird and irrational.

 

[neroden]

You’ve pulled yourself off the Trump councils, I know you and I talked about whether ... I said you shouldn’t go ’cause he was gonna screw you, remember? We had a whole —

Well, you were right.

I am right, thank you, Elon. I know that.

No comment, this just jumped out at me...

 

[neroden]

An incident I hadn't heard about:

I would definitely not do that again. Forty-five minutes of sumo wrestling has caused me five years of back pain, so ...

 

[Buckminster]

1) Elon is appearing to talk to the top technically minded 2% of the world. Kara couldn't follow him for many of his answers. He started talking about neural networks with zero introduction... JB required. Elon should talk using infographics and aim to focus on certain types of consumer group by group.
2) FSD next yr - he has confidence on this with no discussion of gimmicks this time around
3) Elon didn't know much about Mr Steven details - I appreciated this as he doesn't manage everything and doesn't pretend to either.
4) Dad jokes - laughs at own jokes - love it and understand it and have the same problemo. Boring company opening - 1 dimensional party....

 

[neroden]

Doesn't help against a horizontal bar at camera height...

Google "optics" and learn

 

[shlokavica22]

1) Elon is appearing to talk to the top technically minded 2% of the world. Kara couldn't follow him for many of his answers. ....

It was so obvious.

Also she had the agenda to push politically loaded questions with the idea to get the answer she wants and not necessary to hear what Elon thinks about it.

 

[fmonera]

As a world citizen who tries to keep an open but realistic mind, the Saudi question and how it was phrased is deeply, deeply offending. How does a South African feel about them based on one murder case? Seriously? They are using US and UK arms to commit a large scale genocide on Yemen. And it's no secret the whole Syria [...]

Elon: "Saudi Arabia’s an entire country, so I think you don’t want to, if there’s one really bad thing that occurred, nail down the whole country"
Elon (responding if he would take Saudi Arabia's money now): "I think we probably would not"
Elon: "I think we should just consider that there is a whole country, and there’s, you know ... There are a lot of good people in Saudi Arabia, and Saudis who are outside of Saudi Arabia. So I think you cannot paint an entire country with one brush."

I am not a native English speaker so I'm not sure if I correctly understood you -or Elon-, but I believe Elon's point of view is pretty reasonable and respectful in this matter.

 

[Cloxxki]

Elon: "Saudi Arabia’s an entire country, so I think you don’t want to, if there’s one really bad thing that occurred, nail down the whole country"
Elon (responding if he would take Saudi Arabia's money now): "I think we probably would not"
Elon: "I think we should just consider that there is a whole country, and there’s, you know ... There are a lot of good people in Saudi Arabia, and Saudis who are outside of Saudi Arabia. So I think you cannot paint an entire country with one brush."

I am not a native English speaker so I'm not sure if I correctly understood you -or Elon-, but I believe Elon's point of view is pretty reasonable and respectful in this matter.

The interviewer stumbles over a single government hit still being investigated, neglects actual verifiable unilateral GENOCIDE going on, strongly enabled by the politicians she gets to vote for. Yemen is not fighting back just praying for less bombing and some sort of humanitarian aid.
Elon is happy to deal with a government/royalty linked investment group as not all Saudis may be bad. I'm sure there were millions of great Germans stuck in WWII. No reason to go there to ask for a load of money to get some control back over your own company.

Great if you're pro tech and want to get the planet onto green tech, but if you will accept marrying a genocist worthwhile, there are ethical problems there and more to be feared to come to light.

 

[Cloxxki]

Also, interesting that Tesla might do an electric bicycle. Depending on how good (and stealthy) it is, I might actually buy that (automaker-branded bicycles tend to be mediocre branding exercises, or some impractical demoware of carbon fiber technology or something, rather than actually good bicycles, though...) even though it's illegal to actually use here in Ohio (although some municipalities are warming up to them - the scooter sharing backlash caused Columbus to actually legalize and regulate e-bikes and e-scooters within municipal limits).

Being a popular brand, it might get some people out of their ICE cars until they can afford a BE car.
There are many electric bicycle brands, not sure Tesla would be able to add much. The battery tech though...so cheap and reliable, it might make long range bikes more accessible. Bosch is awesome but needs a competitor in that space.
Tesla might partner with a tool company and make the bicycle battery compatible with tools of sorts.
Bicycles are a low margin market, though. It takes a lot of two-wheel heart to survive in it.

 

[AudubonB]

As far as bicycles go, I would prefer it were Tesa either to

1. Support <insert name of your favorite e-bike brand here> by partnering with them to use Tesla battery technology

or

2. Do the same as above with any e-bike manufacturer who agrees to pass whatever stringency tests Tesla insists upon.

Doing the above bolsters the overall EV cause without creating a distraction in the current Tesla universe, and keeps them out of the low margin industry Cloxxi has just mentioned. I know which brand I would desire get the Tesla imprimatur; YBMV. Hint: we have the largest fleet of rental e-bikes in Alaska and use exclusively Pedego mountain and fat tire bikes.

 

[bhtooefr]

Bicycles are an interesting one, because there's probably about three markets.

The first is bicycle-shaped-objects, the garbage you find in department stores and on many discount websites. These are razor-thin margins.

The second is the massive European and Asian market for transportation bicycles. Margins are thin, but not BSO-thin, AFAIK.

The third is a luxury market, which many e-bikes are in. As a luxury market, margins aren't AFAIK thin at all. (Annoyingly, a lot of transportation bicycles are pushed up into this market when they're brought to the US...) This is where you see $3000+ e-bikes, which are quite commonly hyped. (The sub-$1000 e-bikes vary between transportation and BSO.)

There's a lot of room for Tesla to innovate on bicycle technology - basically everyone's bicycle motors are far lower tech than automotive motors, even in nice bicycles, and if Tesla could make the Model 3's PMSRM tech fit in a bicycle, you could have an incredibly efficient bike compared to the stuff that exists today. (Note that high cogging torque in many e-bike motors today (due to lower-cost methods of construction as well as the straight permanent magnet design) means that many manufacturers and builders opt for designs that don't allow regenerative braking to improve coasting performance... reducing zero power cogging torque without a corresponding reduction in power/efficiency under load would greatly shift things towards using regenerative braking.)

 

[Boomer19]

The interviewer stumbles over a single government hit still being investigated, neglects actual verifiable unilateral GENOCIDE going on, strongly enabled by the politicians she gets to vote for. Yemen is not fighting back just praying for less bombing and some sort of humanitarian aid.
Elon is happy to deal with a government/royalty linked investment group as not all Saudis may be bad. I'm sure there were millions of great Germans stuck in WWII. No reason to go there to ask for a load of money to get some control back over your own company.

Great if you're pro tech and want to get the planet onto green tech, but if you will accept marrying a genocist worthwhile, there are ethical problems there and more to be feared to come to light.

i don’t get it...
are you mad at kara swisher or elon?

he’s not “happy to deal with a government/royalty linked investment group”. he never said that.