The old saying about absolute power corrupting absolutely clearly has parallels in all other fields: Absolute money corrupts vision and focus.
Tesla: "We did it. We have become profitable and created a real product people want. Now we can laser focus on making it better and more reliable and cheaper for everyone!" "haha nope! lets put it all into crypto and humanoid robots and impregnating as many CEOs as possible, let that bet ride bayyybeeee!!!!"
I don't think this is a corruption of focus - MiHoYo has had "Tech Otakus Save The World" as their slogan long before Genshin made its first billion dollars.
Not to mention that they can make back $65M in just a few weeks from one of their two mobile games and they are about to launch a new one. This is basically pennies to them.
Also Tesla: drive the price of EVs down to parity with ICE cars while delivering a superior product, built out the nations charging infrastructure (and got everybody to switch to NACS), and oh yeah: made self driving available to everybody for next to nothing.
> Tesla: drive the price of EVs down to parity with ICE cars while delivering a superior product
Tesla was more than willing to jack up their prices and maximize profit when they could. What drove prices down on Teslas was real competition from the incumbent manufacturers. And inflation cooling people's willingness to blow a bunch of money on expensive cars. And CATL making batteries less expensive. And even then, their cars are only at parity right about now, with a $7500 tax credit. And also only if you are fairly loose about what features you need to consider 'parity' achieved.
Let’s just ignore that oil companies owning patents killed evs for years my gripe here is Tesla’s “self driving” isn’t actually self driving? It is basically advanced cruise control and requires supervision, Tesla is not liable for it running into things, and there is no indication of that changing anytime soon?
Basic Autopilot that is free on every model is advanced cruise control + lane keeping.
FSDS (Full Self Driving, Supervised [for now]) can handle the vast majority of driving scenarios, from A -> B. I currently intervene once per 10 drives, usually due to a routing issue (never safety critical). It is rapidly improving, and will drop the human requirement once it surpasses most drivers.
FSD still requires you to pay full attention. The name is still a lie and Elon has been claiming the human requirement will be dropped “soon” for what now? Almost a decade?
Not sure where an unreliable, very expensive to fix, poorly QC'd cars are a "superior product" but it's not where I live. The charging infrastructure is a great feat though.
Tesla: "We did it. We have become profitable and created a real product people want. Now we can laser focus on making it better and more reliable and cheaper for everyone!" "haha nope! lets put it all into crypto and humanoid robots and impregnating as many CEOs as possible, let that bet ride bayyybeeee!!!!"