Satellites are really damn expensive to launch. Balloons just float up.

Some estimates have takeover times the 5-10 second range for a human to do a cogitative task-switch, assess the situation, and be prepared to react.

FYI, you better double check that ground clearance value if you’re buying a car based on that stat. The Kona has just 1" more ground clearance than an Elantra. Most crossovers are just restyled “cars” with taller bodies and higher seating positions. If your roads are that bad you probably need to be thinking of…

The guy doesn’t “own both companies” if the board of directors was able to fire him. In fact, TuSimple IPO’ed as a public company a couple years ago:

...proposed bill that would require a trained safety driver to be in a truck’s cab during any testing or operations of an autonomous vehicle that weighed over 10,000 pounds.

I don’t think a federal level certification exists for various SAE autonomy levels.

Level 3 is a weird place: the driver can be distracted, but also has to be ready to take over immediately when the system gives up. If the driver is *too* distracted, they may not be able to take over quickly enough. If the situation gets too difficult / dangerous, then the driver may not have enough awareness or…

AFAIK, Cruise operates in San Francisco and Austin while Waymo operates in San Francisco and Phoenix. Both have Level-4 vehicles that run without any driver. I don’t think either work in Nevada, so I’d guess that it is correct that neither are certified there.

Yes, I lived in suburbia in the South for a good chunk of my life, but I never had more than a 30 minute (1-way) commute. Nice thing of suburbia is that it’s usually pretty cheap to get a house without a crazy commute where you *have* to spend significant time in a car. I’ve definitely known people who say…

Competing with Hyundai / Kia / Genesis?

I really feel sorry for this guys kids.  How do *they* recover from this from a mental / emotional perspective?

I got a ride in a Navigator via Lyft / Uber one time and I felt it was just the same as any other random large SUV. Of course, I’m certain it was the “basic black” livery edition instead of some fancy Black Label model -- the Black Label vehicles do look like they have very nice interiors.

(edit: Let me rephrase that to “OUR demand for gas” ... I’m not an electric purist... yet😁)

Yeah Elon Musk is a douchbag, we all agree. If I had the option of putting a dollar in Elon’s pocket vs. Putin or King Salman or the late Hugo Chavez, I’ll take Elon any day.

Don’t forget 50k hours of idling: (8 years)*(365 days/year)*(18 hours/day)

No doubt that 40K would be well over 50k today based on inflation alone.

I think places like Mini and Porsche thrive on custom orders.  Try doing it at Toyota, though, and they’ll just laugh at you.

This guy is an attention-grabbing idiot.

While we can take price claims with a grain of salt, Tesla claimed the base Cybertruck would start near $40K. The Lightning and R1T are both running a bit more than double that in the current market.

My wife had a ‘05 Corolla that ended up with family member in NYC after she was done with it. It is still going strong and operating well despite a bunch of salt, street parking, and general crap that big cities throw at cars.