The turn indicators are definitely more chaotic in this version. For example, signaling right when approaching a traffic circle even though it needs to take the second ”exit”[….]
+1 needing some higher level turn planning support for roundabouts. Mapping software understands they’re a special case, but it seems the real time route planner is trying to treat them as just an undifferentiated set of curves and intersections.
STRANGE how inconsistency and lack of communication are usually the most consistent and telling things about Tesla.
Yes, Tesla has foregone the traditional corporate forms of communication like advertisements and press offices. How’s that working for them? Just try ordering a new Tesla and see how many months you’ll have to wait. And ask yourself — how much do you really know about what the senior executives at Ford, Volkswagen, Toyota, and the other car companies are trying to accomplish over the next few years? Elon’s tweets represent his aspirations and strategic vision. If he could get his company to deliver (e.g.) FSD on the timelines he’s tweeted, he would.
Note that there are at least three audiences for his tweets: Tesla workers, current/potential Tesla investors, and current/potential Tesla customers.
To motivate workers and get them to work with a sense of urgency, there’s nothing like articulating aggressive timelines. Recent news articles quote Elon as saying that when he tells his subordinates to do something, he expect them to (1) tell him why he’s wrong, (2) execute his instructions, or (3) leave the company. There’s probably a lot of (1) going on with respect to timelines, and will be moving forward.
To current/potential Tesla investors, Elon’s tweets are a non-traditional form of communication. He’s fighting with the Securities and Exchange Commission to preserve his ability to communicate his current aspirations and vision, without having to temper his public pronouncements with middle-of-the-road estimates on what’s actually feasible. But sophisticated investors can balance his visionary tweets with publicly available interviews with automotive subject matter experts like Sandy Munro to get a pretty good picture of how Elon’s vision is actually being executed by everyone else at Tesla. People like Sandy tear down Tesla products and really understand what they’re seeing, and can ask excellent probing questions in their interviews with Elon. I’d rather watch an Elon interview with Sandy than with someone who’s only earned a journalism degree and who doesn’t deeply understand the engineering and technology.
For current/potential customers, Tesla has an amazingly rich API that third party sites like TeslaFi can use to get a pretty good picture of what’s actually happening across the fleet. Tesla software release notes have actual technical information (e.g. use of transformer networks). There is no shortage of (e.g.) YouTube videos of Tesla products in action, so a potential customer can get a good idea of what to expect and what to look out for.
Bottom line - relative to traditional car companies you’re going to have to work harder to get an understanding of what Tesla is doing and will do in the future because they don’t do the normal corporate communication things, but balancing that is the existence of plenty of primary source material available to support third party analysis.
