stories filed under: "elon musk"

Come On Elon! Tesla Stupidly Bans Owners From Using Self-Driving Teslas For Uber

from the you-don't-own-what-you-bought dept

Thu, Oct 20th 2016 10:44am — Mike Masnick

We've talked a lot about the end of ownership society, in which companies are increasingly using copyright and other laws to effectively end ownership -- where they put in place restrictions on the things you thought you bought. This is bad for a whole variety of reasons, and now it's especially disappointing to see that Tesla appears to be jumping on the bandwagon as well. The company is releasing its latest, much more high powered, version of autonomous self-driving car technology -- but has put in place a clause that bars Tesla owners from using the self-driving car for any competing car hailing service, like Uber or Lyft. This is not for safety/liability reasons, but because Tesla is also trying to build an Uber competitor.

We wrote about this a few months ago, and actually think it's a pretty cool idea. Part of the point is that it effectively will make Tesla ownership cheaper for those who want it, because they can lease it out for use at times when they're not using it. So your car can make money for you while you work or sleep or whatever. That's a cool idea.

But it's flat out dumb to block car owners from using the car however they want.

If Tesla wants to compete with Uber, that's great, but it should compete and offer a better deal for car owners, rather than artificially limiting what they can do. And the thing is, Elon Musk knows this. Remember, a few years ago when he famously freed up all Tesla patents into the public domain, recognizing that it was better to compete on execution rather than artificial legal limitations? So why not take that same approach with competing in car hailing services as well? Don't limit what owners can do with their cars. That's now ownership. ow they're just leasing.

Tesla's plan for a competing ride hailing service is a good idea, and I'm excited to see what the company does with it, but if it starts off by artificially blocking Tesla owners from using their cars on competing services, it makes me think that Tesla doesn't think it's own service will be very good, and therefor it needs to artificially lock Tesla owners into its own platform, rather than competing on the merits. That seems antithetical to the message that Tesla and Elon Musk have given off in the past. Hopefully Musk reconsiders this anti-consumer move and recognizes that Tesla can build such a service that can stand on its own merits without artificially restricting Tesla owners.

Filed Under: autonomous vehicles, car hailing, competition, drm, elon musk, limitations, ownership, restrictions, ride hailing, ride sharing, self-driving cars
Companies: lyft, tesla, uber

49 Comments

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

Innovation

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.

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

57 Comments

DailyDirt: Faster Than A Locomotive...

Green Tech

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, May 12th 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The hyperloop idea that Elon Musk announced to the public is making some baby steps towards becoming a reality. Okay, so no one is talking about how any kind of new train system still needs to get land use rights and political approval, but the technology is inching its way towards becoming more than just an idea on paper.

Hyperloop One (formerly Hyperloop Technologies) has tested an open air demo of its prototype train that could someday travel hundreds of miles per hour in an evacuated tube. It's not a very impressive demo since high speed trains already exist, but it's a first step towards much more advanced train systems. [url]
The 'hyperloop' concept was popularized by Elon Musk, but similar transport ideas have been tried (and failed) before. The Swissmetro vactrain project fell apart in 2009, and there are no plans to restart it. [url]
Hyperloop Transportation Technologies (not to be confused with Hyperloop One) is working with passive magnetic levitation technology to get its version of a hyperloop working. This levitation technology seems to be related to Inductrack tech that inspired the Hendo hoverboards. [url]
The US Air Force set a maglev speed record at 633mph using superconducting magnets and liquid helium to cool it all down. Faster test sleds propelled by rockets didn't use magnetic levitation, but this is still cool, right? [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: elon musk, high speed rail, hyperloop, inductrack, magnetic levitation, magnets, transportation, vactrain
Companies: hendo, hyperloop one, hyperloop transportation technologies

20 Comments

DailyDirt: Actually Getting People Into Space...

Too Much Free Time

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Thu, Apr 7th 2016 5:00pm — Michael Ho

There are only a handful of vehicles that have launched people into space (or even just provided shelter) for space-faring people. A few more ships and space stations would be nice to see, and there are a few in various stages development (unfunded proposals, ahem). If you're interested in people (not just robots) exploring outer space, here are just a few links on some of the ships that might transport more folks to at least the edge of space.

Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin spaceflight company just launched and landed a rocket -- again -- and this particular rocket was actually re-used. This accomplishment is still not quite on par with SpaceX's feat, but it's a solid step towards cheaper spaceflight for human passengers. [url]
Sierra Nevada's Dream Chaser spacecraft has a NASA contract to become yet another backup way to deliver cargo to the International Space Station. The lifting body design of the Dream Chaser can be traced back to Soviet-era experimental space planes -- and maybe someday we'll see this vehicle transporting astronauts. [url]
Perhaps you've seen comparisons of the sizes of various fictional spaceships (eg. NCC-1701 vs. Firefly class transport ship), but a size comparison of actual (or proposed) space vessels compared to the International Space Station is pretty cool. All the real spacecraft (and even the ones that are still very much in development, like Skylon) are much smaller than the original Starship Enterprise, but the ISS is probably a bit more sprawling than you might think. Oh, and if you haven't seen the size comparisons of fictional ships, check it out. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: dream chaser, elon musk, jeff bezos, lifting body, manned missions, re-usable rockets, rockets, space, space exploration, spacecraft, suborbital
Companies: blue origin, nasa, sierra nevada, spacex

8 Comments

How Private-Sector Innovation Can Help Those Most In Need

Innovation

from the profit-can-be-good dept

Wed, Dec 23rd 2015 1:34pm — Shawn DuBravac

Facebook Co-Founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg's decision to dedicate 99 percent of his Facebook stock towards improving the world was met with strong praise this holiday season. The resources will be used to promote programs related to "personalized learning, curing disease, connecting people and building strong communities."

Everyone's talking about "why" this donation is important: namely, helping future generations live in a better world than we live in now. But fewer people are focusing on "how." The Facebook proceeds will be channeled through the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, LLC – a for-profit company with philanthropic ambitions.

As a business rather than a non-profit, the Initiative will have more freedom to put the power of private sector innovation to work in the non-profit world, such as making private investments, and promoting public policy issues. This is not the first time social good was driven by private sector innovation. Digital platforms like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are changing how we interact, driving fundraising and donations for large charitable projects, and enabling us to coordinate efforts and produce social change. We saw these macro effects throughout the Arab Spring, in places as distant as Tunisia and Egypt.

The innovation cycle is also impacting forward progress on the micro level, whether it's a solar-powered well that's being installed in a small, rural, mountainous community in Chile, a mobile phone in Africa that helps rural farmers know what prices they should expect for their goods at market or the anytime/anywhere connectivity that can keep a fisherman safe from storms he wouldn't have been aware of otherwise. What's born in a lab in Silicon Valley can have a life-altering impact on people half the world away in the Jordan Valley.

That could help explain why multibillionaire Google co-founder Larry Page has said he wants to leave his fortune to Elon Musk, the forward-thinking innovator and CEO of Tesla Motors and SpaceX. Leaving his billions to Musk would presumably ensure that research into "moonshot" projects akin to those of Google's new parent company Alphabet – robots, nanoparticles, self-driving cars, wind-energy-capturing kites, balloon-based WiFi and more – would continue after he's gone.

Musk is redefining the parameters of innovation. With Tesla, he's changing the whole structure of the car, which allows us to do other things in the car besides focus on the road. And by redesigning the car's power supply, he's changing the physical layout of the car, too – where we sit, where we store luggage. Musk refuses to allow the status quo to dictate the trajectory of tomorrow's innovation.

Yes, Musk is making $100,000 cars that may seem worlds away from the extreme poverty that pocket the earth, but innovation doesn't exist in a silo. Innovation permeates every facet of our life. In chaos theory, Edward Lorenz's "butterfly effect" describes how a small change in one state of a deterministic nonlinear system can produce very different outcomes in later states of that system. Musk and countless other private-sector innovators, are today introducing massive change into our world which in turn are powering and empowering massive change in the world that lays before us and before the billions of underserved among us.

The tangible examples of innovation's near-universal influence are numerous. Mobile payments aren't just for paying rent in Washington, D.C., or splitting lunch in San Francisco. They grow economic development in remote parts of the world by accelerating transactions, and improve safety by reducing the need to travel with large sums of money in dangerous locals. Booz Allen Hamilton estimates digitization of emerging markets could drive respective economic growth by $4.1 trillion dollars among the most underserved 3.9 billion consumers. The UN recently endorsed goals to eradicate extreme poverty over the next 15 years. Connecting the last billion people to the Internet will help end marginalization through banking, identification and the broad dissemination of information.

Our reliance on technological innovation for social change may be more important now than ever. Philanthropic giving has yet to rebound to pre-Great Recession levels, even as community needs expand, according to a report from the National Council of Nonprofits. This makes it hard for non-profits to keep up with demand, or upgrade and invest in their own technology and capabilities.

While there's certainly a continued need and role for charity, innovations and technologies are lifting one person at a time, and in the aggregate, they're lifting entire nations to a higher plane. Innovation isn't helping just the most desolate among us; it's improving the quality of life for all of us.

What may look on the surface like another business transaction – just another company out for profit – has the potential to do tremendous good. The great promise of innovation encompasses not only the predetermined outcomes or reasons for investment, but also all of the opportunity that is unleashed as a result of those investments and decisions.

Shawn DuBravac is chief economist of the Consumer Electronics Association and the author of "Digital Destiny: How the New Age of Data Will Transform the Way We Live, Work, and Communicate." Follow him on Twitter @shawndubravac.

Filed Under: charity, doing good, elon musk, innovation, larry page, private sector

DailyDirt: Open Source Artificial Intelligence Is Smart

Computers

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Dec 14th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The importance of machine learning is becoming clearer as vast amounts of valuable data accumulates and human minds are looking ill-equipped to try to parse all of it. Sure, humans seem to be better at deciphering our own handwriting and voices, but artificial intelligence (AI) might be a tad better at predicting long-term weather patterns or imminent economic instabilities. We've already seen AI that can beat the best of us at Jeopardy! and chess. Here are just a few open source projects that could help achieve the next milestones of AI and machine learning.

Facebook is going to open source its hardware designs for 'Big Sur' -- its artificial intelligence computer with 8 GPUs. This open source design will, not surprisingly, fit in Facebook's Open Compute standard data centers, and if anyone wants to build it themselves, they can also run open source AI software, Torch, on it. [url]
Google released its open source artificial intelligence code, TensorFlow, and outsiders are using it to do some cool stuff already. But the cool stuff isn't really the point. Google is nudging developers to use its AI code so that Google can find talented programmers. Machine learning or deep learning skills are going to have an impact on a wide range of industries soon, as automated pattern recognition finds its way into fashion and finance and almost anything that ~~we puny bags of mostly water~~ humans value. Remember to 'do no evil', please. [url]
There are a few more open source AI projects to keep an eye on: DARPA's DeepDive, Apache UIMA, OpenCog and OAQA (Open Advancement of Question Answering Systems). IBM's Watson is partially built upon a couple of these projects, and there will likely be more proprietary AI systems based off of open source code. Maybe someday we'll know when an open source Skynet becomes sentient because it'll change its licensing terms. [url]
The OpenAI project is another open artificial intelligence group, promising to share its findings with the public as a non-profit organization. Its funding comes from Elon Musk, Reid Hoffman, Peter Thiel, Jessica Livingston and Amazon Web Services -- and with Musk involved, we'll hopefully avoid creating an evil Skynet from becoming a reality. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take 10% off any $50+ order from our Daily Deals using the promo code DAILYDIRT.

Filed Under: ai, artificial intelligence, big sur hardware, darpa, deep learning, deepdive, elon musk, machine learning, oaqa, open compute, open source, openai, opencog, tensorflow, uima, watson
Companies: amazon, facebook, google, ibm, microsoft

3 Comments

DailyDirt: Who Wants To Go To Space?

Bleeding Edge

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Nov 25th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Reusable rocket technology has been a 'holy grail' of sorts for space exploration. Building reusable components is supposed to make space travel more affordable, but the Space Shuttle is the prime example of how that's not necessarily true, as it cost over an order of magnitude more than originally planned. Still, it should be possible to make reusable rockets that are cheaper to operate, and some private companies are figuring out how to do it. SpaceX hasn't quite gotten reusable rockets perfected yet (though, it has done it more than a few times with its Grasshopper vehicle). And depending on how you define a "rocket" -- Virgin Galactic & Scaled Composites have also developed reusable space vehicles.

Blue Origin has successfully landed a rocket after it launched to a suborbital altitude. Elon Musk rightly points out that this isn't exactly the first time a suborbital rocket has landed in reusable condition, but it's still nice to see rocket technology improving and getting cheaper to operate. [url]
Jeff Bezos is moving his space company to Florida to build and launch its rockets near NASA's government facilities -- the Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Blue Origin will be making its rocket engines in the good ol' USA, and its BE-3 engine is the one that will be reusable. (note: The BE-3 isn't as powerful as Blue Origin's BE-4 engine which is more comparable to SpaceX's reusable rocket.) [url]
Lots of people credit Jules Verne for inspiring spaceflight, but the first proposal of rocket-based spaceflight actually comes from Canadian William Leitch in 1861. Leitch's paper was written 4 years before Verne's book "From the Earth to the Moon" -- and decades before plausible rocket-powered space plans from Russian Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and American Robert Goddard were written. But does it matter who thought of something first, or who actually executes it? [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, check out this holiday gift guide for some awesome deals at the Techdirt deals store.

Filed Under: elon musk, grasshopper, jeff bezos, jules verne, kennedy space center, konstantin tsiolkovsky, new shepard, re-usable rockets, robert goddard, rockets, space, space exploration, suborbital, william leitch
Companies: blue origin, nasa, spacex

15 Comments

DailyDirt: Making Mars More Like Earth

Too Much Free Time

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Mon, Oct 19th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

The goal of living on Mars is getting some media attention (because everyone continues to want to save Matt Damon apparently). It's seriously difficult to live on Mars unless we make some major changes to its atmosphere and climate, and somehow turn the clock back to make Mars warmer and more water-friendly. People are thinking about ways to terraform Mars, but it's an enormous project that isn't quite environmentally friendly to our alien neighbors (if they exist).

Elon Musk made an offhand remark about terraforming Mars quickly -- using nuclear weapons. Musk has elaborated a bit, saying he's talking about exploding nuclear fusion bombs above BOTH the north and south poles of Mars -- every few seconds -- to create artificial suns that would warm up the surface of the red planet. Sure, that'd be a great way to get rid of some nuclear weapons, right? (Hold on. Does Musk have nuclear weapons?!?) [url]
The microbial colonization of Mars is another way we might make Mars a bit more habitable for us. Terraforming an entire planet with microbes would take a while (an eon?), but the Earth itself is evidence that it can be done. The right microbes to do the job might even already exist here at home. [url]
Lessons from Biosphere 2 might teach us a few things about how to terraform Mars -- and instead of detonating nuclear weapons over our neighboring planet, we might just want to pollute its atmosphere with perfluorocarbons to get a runaway greenhouse gas effect going. But perhaps we shouldn't be messing with other planets when we have no idea what we're doing to our own. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: biosphere 2, colonization, elon musk, mars, microbes, nuclear weapons, space, space exploration, terraforming

13 Comments

DailyDirt: Getting From Point A To B... Really Really Quickly

Too Much Free Time

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Wed, Aug 26th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Transportation has evolved from simply walking to riding to flying to sailing and orbiting and all kinds of modes of travel. We've grown accustomed to speeds of 100-600 mph or so, but it's possible to go a lot faster. A Concorde jet could go over 1,000 mph, but those planes aren't in service anymore. Traveling to space might not appeal to that many people, but getting from NYC to LA in an hour might. Check out a few concept vehicles that could accomplish supersonic (or hypersonic) travel.

Elon Musk's Hyperloop project isn't totally crazy. It's still somewhat crazy, but there are some people building a prototype now -- so a working version might exist someday. [url]
SpaceLiner is a suborbital, hypersonic, winged passenger transport concept that could take people from Europe to the US in about an hour. Flying on what is essentially an intercontinental missile probably has some additional security issues, but there are plenty of other practical problems for this transportation idea. [url]
Other evacuated tube transport systems (aka vactrains) could travel 5,000 mph all over the globe. That is, if anyone wants to build the tubes across oceans.... And maybe China will do it. (Or maybe not.) [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: concept vehicles, concorde, elon musk, evacuated tube transport, hyperloop, hypersonic, spaceliner, supersonic, transportation, travel, vactrain

12 Comments

DailyDirt: Flying Through Space With The Greatest Of Ease

Too Much Free Time

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

Tue, Aug 25th 2015 5:00pm — Michael Ho

Space travel isn't exactly a routine thing just yet. In the 70s, some people thought we'd have shuttles going up to space on a regular schedule, but that didn't exactly happen. Rockets haven't gotten all that much cheaper or more reliable, but presumably they will someday if we continue to build them and improve upon them. Or maybe we'll figure out a completely different way to escape Earth's gravity with a space elevator or rail-gun system to launch vehicles at extremely high speeds. Check out a few of the links below if you think human space exploration isn't a complete waste of time.

Thoth Technology has been granted a patent for an inflatable "space elevator" that's (only) 12 miles tall. Disregarding the fact that this design wouldn't actually reach space, it still seems pretty impractical barring an amazing advance in materials that allows such a tall structure to withstand all the forces it would need to in order to remain standing, much less support cargo and launch vehicles. However, this isn't actually the first patent on a space elevator, and everyone should know by now that patents don't actually need to correspond to actual functioning products. [url]
If you haven't been following the progress of space travel, this WaitButWhy article might be a good starting point. It's a long, but good, read -- and outlines why/how Elon Musk's goal of creating a Mars colony is a good idea. [url]
While Elon Musk might sound credible and non-crazy for talking about a mission to Mars, the CEO of Mars One doesn't seem to be getting much benefit of the doubt when he says his company's plan to go to Mars is "feasible" still. Bas Lansdorp's company has identified lots of space fans literally willing to die to go to Mars, but the time table and plans behind that project make Mars One sound more and more like a outright suicide mission if it even gets off the ground. [url]

After you've finished checking out those links, take a look at our Daily Deals for cool gadgets and other awesome stuff.

Filed Under: bas lansdorp, elon musk, mars colony, mars one, space, space elevator, space exploration
Companies: thoth technology

19 Comments

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Come On Elon! Tesla Stupidly Bans Owners From Using Self-Driving Teslas For Uber

from the you-don't-own-what-you-bought dept

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

from the one-more-thing dept

DailyDirt: Faster Than A Locomotive...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

DailyDirt: Actually Getting People Into Space...

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

How Private-Sector Innovation Can Help Those Most In Need

from the profit-can-be-good dept

DailyDirt: Open Source Artificial Intelligence Is Smart

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

DailyDirt: Who Wants To Go To Space?

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

DailyDirt: Making Mars More Like Earth

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

DailyDirt: Getting From Point A To B... Really Really Quickly

from the urls-we-dig-up dept

DailyDirt: Flying Through Space With The Greatest Of Ease

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