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Washington Post: NHTSA is coming for Tesla's FSD Beta program

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It’s another hit piece. WaPo writers continue to twist the truth and potentially risk life-saving innovations by swinging the pendulum too far in overcorrecting how Tesla can communicate better.

Despite what the reality of the 10.3 issue was, language/spin is misleading again. For one, there were only a few AEB reports. That’s still bad, but we used our car throughout that day without issue (just without AEB enabled). Secondly, they insert the charred Model S in Texas photo captioned as “driverless”, despite Tesla & now even NTSB saying the driver’s seat was in fact occupied and AP was not enabled. Maybe there’s more, but I stopped bothering to read the rest after that.
 
It’s another hit piece. WaPo writers continue to twist the truth and potentially risk life-saving innovations by swinging the pendulum too far in overcorrecting how Tesla can communicate better.

Despite what the reality of the 10.3 issue was, language/spin is misleading again. For one, there were only a few AEB reports. That’s still bad, but we used our car throughout that day without issue (just without AEB enabled). Secondly, they insert the charred Model S in Texas photo captioned as “driverless”, despite Tesla & now even NTSB saying the driver’s seat was in fact occupied and AP was not enabled. Maybe there’s more, but I stopped bothering to read the rest after that.
that is our government at its essence tho....no matter the party in charge the pendulum always swings all the way to the opposite side in response. Never centered. 🤷‍♂️
 
that is our government at its essence tho....no matter the party in charge the pendulum always swings all the way to the opposite side in response. Never centered. 🤷‍♂️

Yup, imagine if our politics were somewhere in the middle and guided by logic. This is what happens when congressional districts are gerrymandered to essentially create the most hyper partisan representatives possible. I feel the majority of the country are somewhere in the middle but they are held hostage by hyper partisans on both sides.

The best thing that can happen to our Democracy is if congressional maps are drawn based blindly on population density by an algorithm so that representatives have to answer to a broad spectrum of constituents.
 
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Moving here from the tweets thread.

To use more stock-market terminology here, I think any company coming up with good autonomous driving or driver assist systems would be extremely bullish for all energy demand.

Imagine how many more miles would be driven annually if cars could just drive themselves flawlessly. Road trips and long hauls would skyrocket, people who aren't able to drive for whatever reason would now be on the road, etc etc. Even if limited to EVs, which would surely only apply at the front end before trickling into all types of vehicles (especially if the goal is reduce accidents now), it would all feed into the overall demand for energy and would end up benefitting oil & gas both directly in ICE cars and indirectly through increased demand for power through the grid (still heavily reliant on fossil fuels), more wear and tear on components made out of oil & gas, and so on.
I don’t think AVs will save ICE. It’s dead, even they know it now.

It’s all about attacking Tesla by any means necessary.
 
For those of us who experienced the issues with 10.3, it was resolved very quickly. I'm happy that Tesla filed the recall paperwork to the NHTSA. Not only does that show an intent to cooperate with the agency, but it also highlights the archaic recall system in the age of Tesla's OTA updates. Seems like both organizations will change for the better in the long run.
 
Of course, had Tesla not filed with the NHTSA, I wonder if WaPo would have even noticed.

Meanwhile the FSD beta program continues on despite the bad press and speculation on increased scrutiny by the feds. Perhaps it's true that Tesla's scrutiny of FSD beta drivers combined with the more stringent driver awareness checks have resulted in few if any incidents (I have heard of none), and if that continues the feds really can't reasonably demand that Tesla shut the program down.