FSD currently works in closed course situations. I’ve got it on my 2018 Model 3 and it drives into my office park’s private parking lot, and perhaps coincidentally right up to where my normal parking spot is, so I can just click my parking spot on a parking map that pops up.

there are many listed for under $20,000 with less than 100,000 miles on the odometer

Most of it isn’t. Tesla is a publicly traded company and ~80% of the company is owned by shareholders, possibly even including you, if you or your retirement account owns share of the S&P 500. Tesla is far from the only mainstream company you probably are purposely or unaware you are a customer of that donates to…

RE: Musk. Is that actually legal?

Agreed. I noticed last weekend that 6 of the 10 articles on jalopnik’s /latest feed were all Tesla. Currently it’s 4 of the 10 on latest. If I recall even the daily news roundup post, the first 3 gears were also all Tesla. If they don’t want Tesla to be such a big deal, they sure spent a lot of effort giving them hype.

It’s definitely possible to track tire wear, though lots of math involved. As a tire wears, its diameter decreases ever so slightly meaning it has to spin more to cover the same distance. Taking into account gear ratio, engine RPM, and wheel rotations, I’m sure it could be calculated, though the decreasing grip maybe…

Indeed the lead image showing a “quadrotor” is a very misleading image to show. It’s probably more similar to a drone like the AeroVironment T-20 though even larger. The T-20 pictured below  is 9 feet long with an 86 mph top speed. To be 20 feet long, that’s the size of a pickup truck.

Just picked one close to my house, first one I picked, you can see the fire suppression nozzles all over the ceiling

Gas cars are notorious for catching ablaze, about 17 per hour in the US. But the only way you’re going to get everyone to get a fire extinguisher is if it’s mandated safety equipment. But then you have a potentially false sense of security if you don’t know how to use it properly or hurt yourself more trying to put it…

The motors in the electric pickup kick out around 600 hp, which is enough to get the massive truck from zero to 60 mph in a claimed 3.9 seconds. So this race should be pretty close, right?

And of course they used that as an opportunity to put in some misinformation about charging times (has anyone EV owner this decade spent a whole hour charging at a level 3 DSFC?).

My post was in response to @RandomUsername3246 who said:

They had 20 Cybercabs, and any pair of guests could get a ride to various locales on the large cityscape property. Real vehicles with no drivers you could touch and ride, not just renderings of them.

Regardless of whether the robot was remote controlled by a human or not...

Depends on the age of the vehicle. I have a 2018 Tesla Model 3 and bought FSD in 2020. And after a parts waiting list, in 2021 they swapped out some sort of motherboard from inside my dashboard and that enabled it. The newer cars come with it just built in from the start.

Definitely an interesting car. It sort of reminds me of a Buick Grand National, fox body Shelby Mustang, and an 80s Chevy pickup combined

I’ve got a Fiat 500 Abarth and it is indeed a monster in a tiny package. The exhaust sounds that way in part because it literally has no muffler, it’s just a big empty void stock (in the US market anyway). My state inspection place questioned me on it and had to look up the specs to see.

Considering that you need to make over $300,000/yr as a married couple, $225,000/yr for head-of-household, or $150,000/yr if single, I’m not convinced that the buyer of a $39,000-$42,000ish car would typically exceed those numbers.

1st Gear: Tesla Kills Its Cheapest Car