Also, BYD has made some really nice electric buses that are already in use in Los Angeles starting in 2015. His offering is not even competitive with options from 9 years ago.
We just have to apply Leon math. He says 2-3 years, so that's 7 to 10 in reality. It will also cost 5x what is expected and be missing 60% of features at launch. Plus it'll have new features, like it will have a steering wheel and peddles and require driver input every 15 miles or so.
Which is impressive since itd be the first place my mind would go to for space utilization, mind you I dont think this stupid cab will ever be a working thing outside of prototypes but still.
Anyone else expecting a $100,000 "RoboBeast" in eight years and no mention of the $30,000 version ever again?
Like all techbros, Elon wants to paint himself as some kind of visionary genius. Instead they're all just anti-regulatory right-wingers who just poorly regurgitate better people's ideas. Elon's already run this playbook before so we know he's gonna do it again.
This is what I don't get, I can also just say 'visionary' things by just opening any sci-fi book and pointing at a random page and claiming that I want to make that.
The hard part isn't envisioning cool sci-fi concepts like self driving cars, colonized planets, ai servants, and life like VR. The hard part is actually doing them.
Actually paying attention to the sci-fi you're consuming would give you an advantage over Musk. He says he loves the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, a series which spends a lot of time mocking corporate executives and corporate marketing. It's also a series where every AI is either an asshole, malfunctioning or both.
He also thinks the main character in Blade Runner is named Bladerunner despite the fact that Deckard's name is said like 10 times in the movie.
Hey, at least we have actually accomplished (edit: net-positive) fusion. 10-20 years before the first commercial plant comes online, but fusion is a technology which now exists. This is extremely awesome. Honestly, I never thought I’d see it. But, it’s here, it exists, and now the distance between today and when the first power plant comes online is just a matter of scaling the tech upwards.
Full, autonomous self-driving cabs - especially from Tesla - on a massive scale… not so much.
Question for you, when you say that we've accomplished fusion, do you mean fusion that produces more power than took to generate it? Or simply the act of fusing atoms together in a reactor (vs the uncontained fusion present in thermonuclear bombs)? If it's the former, then like, holy shit, that's actually been accomplished‽ Like, I know NIF had their whole thing with breakeven fusion a couple of years ago, but that was only counting the energy that made it to the hohlraum, not all the energy that was lost powering the lasers and shit. When you factor all of that in (like you'd need to for realistic power generation) then it's very far away from breakeven generation. It's still an incredible breakthrough and will help us figure out fusion energy, but it's not a practical means of energy generation at this time. Did something else happen that I missed‽
If it's the latter, then we've actually been fusing atoms together in reactors since the 1950s. In fact, there's a community of people who build small fusion reactors as a hobby! I learned about this a few years ago when a 16 year old made the news by being the youngest person to build their own reactor. The main site I know of is https://www.fusor.net/
Er, not really with fusion actually, unless you just mean "have made atoms fuse regardless of if it generates net energy or not" in which case we've had it for decades. We have managed net energy production if you compare the output of a very powerful laser used to compress the fuel to the energy of the resulting reaction, but crucially, the laser in question isn't perfectly efficient, and only a fraction of the electrical energy put in is turned into laser energy in the beam. This means that we still don't have net electricity production, and even once we finally get that, getting the tech efficient enough to produce enough electricity to be cost competitive will be a tough ask, especially as electricity from solar in particular has been going down in price of late.
I'd argue that it wasn't really "net-positive". Certainly it was a positive energy gain, but it took way more energy to create the fusion than just the input energy. There is a ton of efficiency losses to create the input energy, which is defined by the energy in the laser beam that triggers the fusion. A lot of energy is also used to maintain confinement during the reaction.
I would like the term net positive to be more inclusive of all of the recurring energy used to support the fusion. It's fair to not include the energy used to construct the machines, but anything that would need to be put in to a fusion plant each reaction to get out energy should be considered.
In the video, when he's talking about the robot Optimus, he claims that at scale this will cost $20-30K and goes on to say "this will be the biggest product ever of any kind" and "everyone of the 8 billion people one earth will want their Optimus buddy".
Dude. Most people on this planet can barely afford a $1,000 smart phone.
“this will be the biggest product ever of any kind” and “everyone of the 8 billion people one earth will want their Optimus buddy”.
Dude. Most people on this planet can barely afford a $1,000 smart phone.
First, there are a shockingly high number of people walking around with a $1k smart phone, but I think that speaks more to people buying on credit.
Sadly if a company can replace a worker with a $30k robot, he won't be wrong that lots would be sold. I have serious doubts these will be replacing humans in the short term.
Although skeptical, and especially disliking Elon musk, this is merely speculative. It could take five years, or it could take 25 years. We just don’t know yet. However, unlike fusion, we’ve never achieved FSD yet. But, like fusion, I’m sure we will.
Just not yet, and, I hope, not a product of an Elon Musk company.
Well according to Elon FSD is going to be ready "next year" for the last 8 years or so. I wish he would swallow his pride, admit he was wrong, and start using lidar and other types of sensors.
They'll do what every AI company does and have guys in India do the actual driving 'until the technology is ready', like how the Amazon grab and go stores were implemented.
If things are at least progressing somewhat he predicts next year. For Musk to say 2-3 years means the project has hit a brick wall and they're desperate.