Elon Musk's Master Plan Includes Turning Tesla Into An Autonomous Uber

from the one-more-thing dept

Thu, Jul 21st 2016 9:25am — Mike Masnick

Tesla's Elon Musk is not afraid to think big and then go for it. He famously published the Secret Tesla Motors Master Plan ten years ago, and has pretty much stuck to that plan. The short version was this:

Build sports car
Use that money to build an affordable car
Use that money to build an even more affordable car
While doing above, also provide zero emission electric power generation options
Don't tell anyone.

Now it's 10 years later, and Tesla is in the process of trying to buy another of Musk's companies, Solar City, which he argues helps target the final point in the list above, while the runaway demand for the Tesla Model 3 suggests that the "even more affordable car" is soon to be reality as well.

And thus, Musk has now released the next part of his master plan, which spends a fair bit of time trying to justify the merger with Solar City, and then focuses on a bunch of the self-driving efforts that Tesla is working on. Obviously, the company has been in the spotlight recently over some autopilot accidents that have killed drivers. The company's PR reaction to that hasn't been great, though there is a really good point that tons of people die in regular car accidents all the time. If Autopilot can be just marginally safer, even if there are still some accidents, that's still a big improvement. But, even so, Musk argues that their goal is to get Autopilot to be 10x safer before Tesla would remove the "beta" description on the feature.

But, of course, the most interesting bit comes at the end, where he basically announces that once Tesla really gets Autopilot working, they'll more or less turn the company into an Uber competitor, where any Tesla owner can just put their car to work earning money for the owners while they wouldn't normally be using the car:

When true self-driving is approved by regulators, it will mean that you will be able to summon your Tesla from pretty much anywhere. Once it picks you up, you will be able to sleep, read or do anything else enroute to your destination.

You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you're at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.

In cities where demand exceeds the supply of customer-owned cars, Tesla will operate its own fleet, ensuring you can always hail a ride from us no matter where you are.

Now that's interesting. Of course, lots of people have predicted how the idea of car sharing may change in the age of autonomous vehicles. That part isn't entirely new. But a lot of the predictions I've seen about it focused on the idea of a big company (generally Uber) owning the fleet itself. The idea was that if you could summon a car at super low cost whenever you needed it, why would you ever need to actually own a car. And that makes some amount of sense. But Musk's vision appears to be slightly different, in that people could "own" their own cars, but put them to work, drastically lowering the net cost of the vehicle itself for those who choose to own, rather than just make use of ride sharing. Now, that does raise other questions. It would certainly increase the wear and tear on the car, and lower its value at a more rapid rate, but perhaps that doesn't matter so much if the options are cheap enough that you could replace the cars more frequently.

Who knows how any of this will play out in reality -- we're still a pretty long distance from it becoming reality. But the very nature of transportation and car ownership may be about to undergo a fairly fundamental shift. And that's a pretty big deal.

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Filed Under: autonomous cars, autopilot, car sharing, elon musk, self driving cars, solar power
Companies: tesla

57 Comments

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Mason Wheeler (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 7:58am

Obviously, the company has been in the spotlight recently over some autopilot accidents that have killed drivers. The company's PR reaction to that hasn't been great, though there is a really good point that tons of people die in regular car accidents all the time. If autopilot can be just marginally safer, even if there are still some accidents, that's still a big improvement. But, even so, Musk argues that their goal is to get autopilot to be 10x safer before Tesla would remove the "beta" description on the feature.

There's another important thing to keep in mind here. When a person dies, (for good, unable to be resuscitated, etc,) all their knowledge goes with them. They're unable to learn from their mistakes or pass on what they know to anyone else.

But when something goes terribly wrong with a computer, unless it's quite thoroughly destroyed, people can still take it apart, analyze it, figure out what went wrong, and fix it. (Heck, that's a large amount of what I do for a living: figuring out why software broke and how to fix it!) This is why commercial aircraft have indestructable "black boxes" to hold the flight data recorders: when something goes terribly wrong, they use the information about what happened to make all future versions safer.

It's a tragedy that that guy died, even if he did sort of bring it on himself by not paying attention. But given what we've seen of the competence of the folks at Tesla, it's a tragedy that's likely to only happen once.
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- Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:37am
  
  Re:
  The Tesla Autopilot is at the worse point of automation, good enough to keep the car on the road, but not good enough to relieve the human od the resposibilty of looking out for the rare hazards it cannot detect.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - DannyB (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:43am
    
    Re: Re:
    . . . rare hazards it cannot detect YET.
    
    But you are correct.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Mason Wheeler (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 10:26am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      . . . rare hazards it cannot detect YET.
      
      Yeah, that was exactly my point. The set of problems it can't deal with keeps getting smaller and smaller with each new iteration.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - I'm in the driver's seat, 22 Jul 2016 @ 11:49am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      How about a flat tire in the left front that will dig in and send the vehicle careening into oncoming traffic? What animals does an autonomous vehicle hit or chose to miss? What does it do when there is a screaming baby in the back seat? Does it even slow down or look for a safe way to exit the road? How about when there is a maniac behind it right on its tail? Does speed up to gain a safer distance does flip the maniac off and slam on the brakes? What does it do when it gets hit by lightning? Or when there is a presidential procession, does it wave a flag?
      
      The next thing google will want is all vehicles communicating between themselves so googler will cache all the conversations. We won't even have a choice. Outdated vehicles will be banned from roadways. We won't even be able to work on our own vehicles. Fuck You.
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- I'm in the driver's seat, 22 Jul 2016 @ 10:41am
  
  Re:
  That's brilliant shift the blame on the guy who died because he wasn't paying attention, when the push for autonomous vehicle technology by these corporations enjoy exactly that mentality as a selling point. Let the car do the driving. I take these autonomous vehicles as a direct threat to my safety and cost of liability which is not shared by these companies. I cannot help the way I am wired. Tell that to your autonomous vehicles.
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  - Cynyr (profile), 24 Jul 2016 @ 10:35am
    
    Re: Re:
    my understanding is that autopilot makes you keep your hands on the wheel, or it will simply pull over to the side of the road and stop. And yes, tesla very very clearly states that you are responsible for maintaining supervision over the car while in autopilot mode. No blame is being shifted. It was always the responsibility of the driver using a BETA feature that requires they pay attention to what it is doing. Surely a passenger in a similar situation would have been screaming at the driver to stop/watchout/etc.
    
    i don't think anyone is seriously arguing that autonomous cars will get to 0 accidents, just that as soon as they are better than humans that will start saving lives and reducing costs for insurance companies. I really think it'll be the insurance companies that end up driving the adoption of autos.
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Zarvus (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:27am

Personally, I think Musk is a pompous git. However...

I like his legalese at the bottom. I think I'll start including a version of it in my emails:

"Certain statements in this blog post, such as those about future products, services and features, are “forward-looking statements” that are subject to risks and uncertainties. These forward-looking statements are based on current expectations. Various important factors could cause actual results to differ materially. Tesla disclaims any obligation to update this information."
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- indolent (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:51am
  
  Re:
  @Zarvus
  
  That legalese isn't really his. It is pretty standard on any company's earnings release and other press releases.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - orbitalinsertion (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 11:23am
    
    Re: Re:
    The pompous gittery, on the other hand...
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
John Fenderson (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:29am

I can't wait
The day when it is no longer necessary to own a car can't come soon enough!
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- Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:41am
  
  Re: I can't wait
  Just so long as the companies that own the cars do not try to beet Comcast in thw worse customer service stakes. Having Comcast level service to a breakdown when it is 40 below outside might not be survivable.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - DannyB (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:45am
    
    Re: Re: I can't wait
    There is a reason why Comcast is terrible.
    
    It is the same reason (or flip side of it) why self driving car services won't be terrible.
    
    Here's the secret: competition
    
    Imagine if self driving car services were like normal businesses that competed with each other. McDonalds vs Burger King. And quite unlike Comcast.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Michael, 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:55am
      
      Re: Re: Re: I can't wait
      Yup. If self-driving cars had no competition, they would be dirty, smell bad, constantly be late, over-crowded, and charge too much money. I'm pretty sure we would call them "The City Bus".
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      - I.T. Guy, 21 Jul 2016 @ 10:42am
        
        Re: Re: Re: Re: I can't wait
        I was thinking NY Taxi cab.
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    - Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 10:27am
      
      Re: Re: Re: I can't wait
      You are assuming that local government would allow a competitive market, especially when they can invoke safety to regulate the market, and gain new political contributors.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- Michael, 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:52am
  
  Re: I can't wait
  There were lots of those days 200 years ago.
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  - Zarvus (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:59am
    
    Re: Re: I can't wait
    Bring back the aristocracy! Oh, wait.
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- Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 11:52am
  
  Re: I can't wait
  oh, i think the day when you wont own a car is fast approaching...
  unfortunately, it will be a result of Empires failure, and we will drop back to horse drawn carts...
  assuming we dont eat all the horses when Empire falls...
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- I'm in the driver's seat, 22 Jul 2016 @ 12:07pm
  
  Re: I can't wait
  You're exactly the kind of commentor these companies look for for free PR. They'll probably give you a car that you won't own even if you want to. They'll know when you are home, when you go to the bathroom, when you eat and when you sleep. They'll want you to interface with that car so they can analyze that too. That is something we are all looking forward to reading about.. Insider.
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DannyB (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:38am

Owning a car
I think the transition to a massive self-driving Uber like system might incorporate the idea of individual owners offering up their cars to such a system.

But I think that is just a transition and things change.

Owning a car is to own a capital intensive machine that sits idle most of the time. Naturally it's appealing to rent it out when you're not using it.

But it's also appealing to not own one in the first place. Once self-driving Uber like services become as reliable as the electric utility power, it will suddenly become attractive to more and more people to NOT own a vehicle.

That cycle just feeds back on itself. The fewer people own a vehicle, the more demand is for the self-driving car service. But fewer owners to provide the vehicles. Thus those services will become just another common type of business, like McDonalds. Johnny Cab.

Thus, I think individual owners renting out their self driving cars may happen. But it will be a transitional step toward how things will end up.

But (most) people don't think about how the world will change until the signs are beyond obvious. Like how the original automobiles would change everything so that there is unbroken concrete from your door step to my door step.

Of course, the world is changing in other ways that may make these dreams impossible. And not for reasons that have anything to do with science.
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- Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 12:42pm
  
  Re: Owning a car
  not that your point doesn't have some validity, but that reasoning can be applied to just about anything: i only use my lawnmower/any particular article of clothing/calculator/dishes/etc for a little bit of time each month, why arent irenting EVERYTHING only when i need it...
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - James Burkhardt (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 1:09pm
    
    Re: Re: Owning a car
    Why aren't you renting everything? because the cost of renting is more then the cost of ownership (Uber vs my prius, static cost of ownership goods like dishes, low cost goods like some lawnmowers), or the renting economy doesn't provide convience for your situation (going out to the store to rent dishes for every meal seems like a time waster, my driving habits versus general economics for ride sharing) The fact that my arguments can be used for any sort of sharing economy doesn't discount them, I'd say it enhances them.
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    - James Burkhardt (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 1:17pm
      
      Re: Re: Re: Owning a car
      Ack I screwed up where I was commmenting
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    - Sortinghat, 6 Jul 2017 @ 12:57am
      
      Re: Re: Re: Owning a car
      But that's socialism to rent everything. One of the FIRST few things to go besides the right to own self defense weapons is the right to private property. It is absolutely abolished and this is a good way to introduce people to that concept.
      
      Baby steps. Baby steps. Just turn the kettle a little higher and a little bit longer to see how well the citizens endure.
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Chris Brand, 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:40am

Franchise
It's basically a franchise model - people pay the up-front costs and make (most of) the profit while the parent company provides branding, uniformity, etc.

I took a Tesla for a test-drive recently - they're very careful to describe autopilot as being "souped-up cruise control" and pointing out that you need to monitor it all the time.
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- I.T. Guy, 21 Jul 2016 @ 10:40am
  
  Re: Franchise
  Autopilot - An autopilot is a system used to control the trajectory of a vehicle without constant 'hands-on' control by a human operator being required.
  
  Seems to me they are selling a lie. False advertising at the least.
  Model S comes with Autopilot capabilities designed to make your highway driving not only safer, but stress free.
  Not really, I'd sit there "monitoring" it, fearful it will plow me into a truck it couldn't "see."
  
  Advertise it as an autopilot... when you get to the dealer all of a sudden it's a "souped-up cruise control."
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  - OldMugwump (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 12:03pm
    
    Re: Re: Franchise
    That's what an autopilot is.
    
    Aircraft autopilots will happily fly into a mountain if there happens to be one in the way.
    
    Autopilot is not the same as "autonomous".
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Zarvus (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:57am

This reminds me a bit of "IT", though. At least the "fundamental shift" part.
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Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 10:25am

I would say the recent accident where the vehicle went under the trailer of a tractor trailer rig turning in front of the Tesla vehicle is an out-and-out PR disaster, a company killing disaster. We are told the autonomous car is safer because it has the ability of a machine to constantly scan and not be distracted - accept when the machine cannot see that which the car hits. Does not matter how well it scans if it cannot see the danger. This the first fundamental rule of autonomous vehicles?

My second comment is again "...tons of people die in regular car accidents all the time." Actually the number is: " A statistical projection of traffic fatalities for the first nine months of 2015 shows that an estimated 26,000 people died in motor vehicle traffic crashes." - NHTSA web site. For the whole year about 34700. the number of drivers in the United States is: "The USA has between 202 million to 240 million licensed drivers (2006 estimation).-EK " - www.answers.com Does not really matter - lets be conservative - lots of baby boomers have died - 200 million will suffice. Well statistically it is easy to prove, autonomous cars are going to have a hard time being "marginally safer" especially when one considers the failure rate for electronic components - circuits boards, diodes, capacitors, sensors, wireless, power supplies runs at 3% - 5%. That in itself should scare anyone out of believing in autonomous cars.
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- Mason Wheeler (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 10:30am
  
  Re:
  I would say the recent accident where the vehicle went under the trailer of a tractor trailer rig turning in front of the Tesla vehicle is an out-and-out PR disaster, a company killing disaster. We are told the autonomous car is safer because it has the ability of a machine to constantly scan and not be distracted - accept when the machine cannot see that which the car hits. Does not matter how well it scans if it cannot see the danger. This the first fundamental rule of autonomous vehicles?
  
  I'd say it's exactly the opposite, for reasons I explained in my comment above.
  
  If I screw up at the wheel and get myself killed, there's absolutely nothing about that event that prevents you from doing the exact same thing and getting yourself killed too. But when Autopilot makes a mistake, Tesla can analyze the data, figure out what went wrong, patch the software, and push the update to the entire fleet, so that nobody in a Tesla ever gets killed that way again.
  [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 10:37am
    
    Re: Re:
    Fixing that problem may require more than a software update, it also requires sensor looking at where the hazard was, which is probably best deal with a sensor at roof height, like in the top edge of the windscreen, rather than down near the font bumper.
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  - The Party of Hell No!, 21 Jul 2016 @ 2:53pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Yeah, and as I said in my comment this should be the first thing an autonomous car should be able to see - a tractor trailer blocking it's path. Not something to be analyzed later by engineers. In the world I like to live in this kind of mistake is career ending.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - John Fenderson (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 3:09pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      "Not something to be analyzed later by engineers."
      
      Every time an airplane disaster has happened, people didn't say "ban all the airplanes". Instead, we put a lot of effort into post-disaster engineering analysis to ensure that the same disaster won't happen again.
      
      That's the biggest reason why flying is the safest method of travel you can engage in.
      
      "In the world I like to live in this kind of mistake is career ending."
      
      In the world I like to live in, people would look at the larger picture rather than a single incident.
      
      If autonomous cars cut the car-related death rate even by 10%, then it wouldn't matter when the cars made the occasional mistake -- on the whole, we would still be better off.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - JMT (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 5:38pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      "In the world I like to live in this kind of mistake is career ending."
      
      There are many, many areas of technology development that would be stopped dead in their tracks if that kind of attitude was prevalent. Cars and planes are obvious examples. Luckily for us the world you like to live in is not the world we all actually live in.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - I'm in the driver's seat, 22 Jul 2016 @ 11:59am
    
    Re: Re:
    But when Autopilot makes a mistake, Tesla can analyze the data, figure out what went wrong, patch the software, and push the update to the entire fleet, so that nobody in a Tesla ever gets killed that way again.
    
    I suppose Tesla is telling all their customers they are being used as human guinea pigs.
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    - Mason Wheeler (profile), 25 Jul 2016 @ 8:01am
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      Is it any different from flying?
      
      Do you know what airline pilots call the safety procedures they have to follow with every flight? "Rules written in blood." Because most of them are just that: lessons learned from cases where people died, turned into procedures to make sure it doesn't happen again.
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- Eldakka (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 9:13pm
  
  Re:
  We are told the autonomous car is safer because it has the ability of a machine to constantly scan and not be distracted - accept when the machine cannot see that which the car hits. Does not matter how well it scans if it cannot see the danger. This the first fundamental rule of autonomous vehicles?
  This is true.
  
  However, what relevance it has to a discussion about a collision by a non-autonomous vehicle I have no idea.
  
  Tesla is not an autonomous vehicle. Tesla's Autopilot system is not an autonomous system. It is a suped-up cruise control.
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  - I am in the driver's seat, 22 Jul 2016 @ 10:52am
    
    Re: Re:
    Autonomous vehicles should not be allowed to share the same roadways as us (far superior drivers.)
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James Burkhardt (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 10:34am

If you think people wont want a car when the self driving uber future comes, you clearly have no concept of anything besides in-city urban, or lightly suburban, driving. i drive long distances, I drive in rural areas, I don't have the cash to afford an uber every commute. I spend about $20/biweekly on gas. That's one uber one way to work. Of 20 I do biweekly, not to mention going to the store, the movies, ect. uber costs me a minimum of $300 just for work. plus all the other stuff i do, plus the time cost of waiting for my ride, I easily pass $400. Whereas I budget $300 total for car, gas, insurance, and maintenance. even if driver-less uber possibly undercuts me, there is quite the necessary convenience factor to owning a car, esp. in rural areas, or people who travel distances too short to efficiently fly, you know, 3-5 hour drives. Or road show people. Or one of several other situations where car travel is the best travel and yet rented cars are no where near as efficient as just owning a car.
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- Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 11:54am
  
  Re:
  You fail to consider that everyone saying that you won't need to own a car is working under the assumption that because there won't be a driver that it will be cheaper to regularly use some kind of car sharing service instead of owning a car. Because if the costs of owning a car are $300 a month, and you can split the ownership of a vehicle or set of vehicles among more people, you can end up spending much less than $300 a month.
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  - Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 12:58pm
    
    Re: Re:
    The car manufacturers will support individual ownership, and try and stop car sharing, becuse that is how they sell the most cars.
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  - James Burkhardt (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 1:13pm
    
    Re: Re:
    I think you are failing my point. Ive done the uber thing when my car was out of commission. It costs way more then the cost of car ownership. And general economics of scale mean a lot of general driving conditions can't support an Uber economy. Even when Driverless Uber brings that cost down, you still have rural areas that couldn't support a big enough fleet of ubers, and the large number of people who travel for a living and cant just rent a car each leg of the trip, because they are going 500 miles tonight, and thats gonna screw up general distribution of the uber cars and rise the cost greatly.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - Anonymous Coward, 21 Jul 2016 @ 1:19pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      An Uber has a driver. You're not just paying for the car you're paying for the driver to make money for their time. With autonomous car sharing, you're only paying for the car.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
    - JMT (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 5:46pm
      
      Re: Re: Re:
      "It costs way more then the cost of car ownership."
      
      What your Uber costs now has absolutely nothing to do with the cost of an antonymous Uber of the future.
      [ link to this | view in chronology ]
  - James Burkhardt (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 1:16pm
    
    Re: Re:
    Oh, and of course the big one, that even though i only drive my car 10% of the time, its the same 10% of the time everyone else commutes. I dont think in general the number of the cars needed will go down, and that bites into one of the big problems the ride sharing economy is supposed to solve.
    [ link to this | view in chronology ]
- John Fenderson (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 1:30pm
  
  Re:
  Going carless will never be something that makes sense for everybody, so I expect that lots of people will always own their own form of high speed transportation.
  
  But it makes a lot of sense for a substantial number of people. Personally, I find owning a car is not only expensive, but enough of a pain in the ass that I will gladly ditch it as soon as an alternative that meets my needs comes around.
  
  It doesn't even have to be that much cheaper -- but it's hard to see how it wouldn't be, given that the more costly expenses (insurance, maintenance, etc.) would be shared across many people.
  
  I don't live in an area that has anything like Uber, so I have zero experience with such things. My comments are half speculation, and half just the fact that I don't like owning a car.
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- I'm in the driver's seat, 22 Jul 2016 @ 11:03am
  
  Re:
  People doing the most to push and (force) this autonomous vehicle crap on us are the people who have the most to gain financially without respect for the people who have nothing to gain by it, only the prospect of very real insurance rates doubling or tripling or worse and being distracted by these drverless cars that have no business being on the same road as us humans and (far superior drivers.) Elon, you have taken a far more nefarious turn here. I supported your right to sell your cars, but I won't support this lame idea about putting millions of autonomous vehicles on America's roads. Fuck, I couldn't afford the cars you make that require human control that I thoroughly loved the looks of and energy saving carbon footprint and all..
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TRX (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 12:00pm

Airbus Industrie has self-flying airplanes. De facto, due to political reasons, any crash is pilot error. Because the flight control software is *always* right, you stupid pilot, you're just there to keep the union from striking.

An automobile on US roads is involved in a collision. Who is at fault? The driver? The manufacturer? Nobody? "It was on autopilot, but you're supposed to hover over the controls to correct for anything the software couldn't handle?"

Until that's settled, I foresee grave problems getting these things insured. And without insurance, you're not rolling far in the USA. Or getting financing, for that matter.

We could have a new reality TV show called "Who Wants To Be A Test Case?!"
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- I'm in the driver's seat, 22 Jul 2016 @ 11:11am
  
  Re:
  I am so against these autonomous cars you couldn't give me one. I wouldn't even want to sell it to someone else if you did give me one. I would use it to house the neighborhood raccoons, skunks and oppossums.I would put a huge dent in the roof and keep it filled will water for a birdbath. Give me a white one if you must.
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Machin Shin (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 12:03pm

Just me?
Is it just me that really questions the idea of pimping your car out to random people?

Sure you car can go drive people around while your at work and then come to pick you up at the end of the day. So long as you don't mind the lovely mix of vomit and other bodily fluids all over your car. That is if your car even makes it back.

That would sure make things easier for the chop shops wouldn't it. Just hail a car, disable it, load it up and go. Really cuts down on the risk when someones car will come to you in a nice empty parking lot for you to steal it.
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WhatsInANameAnyway, 21 Jul 2016 @ 12:27pm

The President and Musk must have mind melded
Link what Musk is doing to what President Obama announced earlier this week (July 19) and we have decentralized grid which can withstand storms, terror attacks and reduce the need to invest in the "grid" per-say while giving back to consumers who invest.

FACT SHEET: Obama Administration Announces Clean Energy Savings for All Americans Initiative

https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/07/19/fact-sheet-obama-administration-ann ounces-clean-energy-savings-all
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- Sortinghat, 6 Jul 2017 @ 12:54am
  
  Re: The President and Musk must have mind melded
  The best clean energy savings is to reduced CO2 to absolute zero meaning we should all stop breathing or pay a tax to be allowed to breathe.
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JoeCool (profile), 21 Jul 2016 @ 1:53pm

What?
Now it's 10 years later, and Tesla is in the process of trying to buy another of Musk's companies, Solar City, which he argues helps target the final point in the list above,

The final point was "Don't tell anyone."
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Prestige Park Square (profile), 17 Sep 2016 @ 9:21am

Tesla is the Future
From the conservation of energy and climate point of view Tesla is the best..
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Túi Lọc Bụi (profile), 22 Jun 2017 @ 12:28am

I dont think...
I dont think he is human rite now, he must be real life Iron Man
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Sortinghat, 6 Jul 2017 @ 12:53am

Non computer drivers
It's going to be weird having computer control cars along side with cars being manually driven.
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