Hollywood can’t ditch its Teslas fast enough: “They’re destroying their leases and walking away”
Hollywood can’t ditch its Teslas fast enough: “They’re destroying their leases and walking away”
As Tesla is reportedly planning a reveal of its new self-driving robotaxi at Warner Bros, amid widespread anger at CEO Elon Musk.
Tesla is reportedly planning a reveal of its self-driving robotaxi on the Warner Bros. lot amid widespread anger in the industry over the brand’s controversial CEO, Elon Musk, resulting in a rejection of its cars.
What's the plan when all the low skill low pay jobs are automated? With each new advancement, it doesn't feel cool and futuristic but sad and distopian. Like we all see it...
Eventually they end up homeless and then they can be arrested?
I mean, it's not a problem until it's my problem, and then it's an urgent one. Am I doing this right?
If only there was a way to Know the crisis is here...
And it's fully constitutional to enslave convicts. So tons of free labor for every company who wants it, and then I guess export everything they help to make since nobody here can buy anything?
I often wonder this. Who do these companies think will be paying for their goods and services when nobody can afford them? And a little further down that stretch, when they pay so little that working full time still doesn't cover rent and groceries, who will bother with showing up to work at all? If you're gonna be homeless and starving anyway, might as well just own your own time and find your own food and shelter on your own terms.
I don't think they understand that if they exploit much harder, they'll be causing a societal collapse that will render their power meaningless. They're stripmining both America's labor pools and consumer pools in one fell swoop, and they won't be invited to neighboring mines afterward. And then the most capable people will understand what is happening and leave, so only poor, uneducated, and underskilled people will remain. Basically Mississippi, but for the whole country.
They are already planning for it, like a race to extract all before that point
This would be a good opportunity to highlight free education and/or technical certification for all. Whether it be college (white collar), trade school (blue collar), or something else, an educated work force will be well-equipped to handle such dramatic shifts in advancement.
Probably what happens in Charles Dickens novel, except everyone has smartphones now.
But tech bros don't think literature or history are important disciplines, so they don't even know what happens in a Charles Dickens novel.
A techbros familiarity with Charles Dickens is about on the level of Philomena Cunk's familiarity with him.
If you're not aware, look up the automation paradox: https://ideas.ted.com/will-automation-take-away-all-our-jobs/
Every* automation advancement has lead to an increase in employment, not decrease. Most often jobs in the immediate sector are lost, but the rise in supporting sector jobs are bolstered.
Classic examples are the cotton mill and combine harvester. The number of agricultural workers declined, but the number of jobs processing agricultural product increased. Or with ATMs, the number of tellers needed per bank location decreased, but the total employment in the banking sector increased (banks opened more branches, namely in places where it was previously cost prohibitive).
As more things are automated, what's being automated becomes cheaper and more prolific, often increasing (or creating) new opportunities. There are so many historic examples of this, it's hard to justify "this time is different" predictions... Even for things like AI automating white collar jobs.
*Edit: almost every. It depends a bit on how you count the secondary jobs, and where those are located (automation combined with offshoring results in a net decline in some countries, but increase overall).
I think the underlying dynamic there is that automation in one industry led to cheaper goods, which led to consumer savings, which led to greater demand, which led to increased employment in other industries that eventually absorbed the displaced workers.
The differences with the current situation are that, firstly, decades of corporate consolidation have reduced competition and enabled automators to channel most of the savings to corporate profits instead of lower prices; and secondly, the fact that automation is affecting the whole economy at once instead of a specific industry means that an economy-wide increase in demand doesn’t cause a corresponding increase in the demand for labor.
Recent studies suggest the science on this is less clear than that TED talk suggests. So I wouldn't put too much emphasis on either the idea that automation will or won't take away net jobs.
What happens when we move all the way from manual labor automation and start doing service and information work? Not everyone’s an AI developer
I dunno, this feels like the whole 'infinite growth' problem of capitalism. Sure that's been true so far, but it can't continually result in more jobs forever. At some point they'll just automate too much and it'll be a tipping point.
Death for poor people thru war, disease, or famine.
Classic story.
Replenishment through forced birth rather than supporting families.
Am I the only one who has noticed that direct-to-consumer sales are floundering and business-to-business sales are up?
They're just planning on bailing on the consumer market entirely. Expect things like your shopping to be more ad-supported than ever, because they know regular-ass-people don't have disposable cash.
Businesses on the other hand, have loads of money to spend, so we're seeing the economy twist itself into knots to just support businesses buying and selling to other businesses, with taking care of the humans doing the work as an afterthought to be handled by someone else (see: Walmart educating their employees on how to apply for Food Stamps). Why worry about making sales to consumers when businesses have boatloads of money to spend on "services." So many businesses farm out their "labor" to third party companies these days, everything from payroll to janitorial.
They already have a plan, they are in the middle of executing it. Our futures will be ad supported, much like One Million Merits of Black Mirror fame. Expect all four walls of your 'apartment' to be covered in ads you can't avoid just so you can afford an apartment. Expect ads and bullshit everywhere to "support" your life while closing doors to consumer access to almost anything. They don't like poor people having access to information, and right now the only thing they have to fight access to information is disinformation and misinformation. They'll drop those pretenses once the consumers are locked out.
"What will happen if their employees are too poor to buy anything?" Nothing, they don't give a damn that their employees are too poor to eat. They stopped marketing to consumers, they're marketing to other businesses which have money. They're genuinely not concerned with what happens to their employees.
"You'll own nothing and be happy" is a threat, just not in the way stupid right-wing capitalists think it is.
Example: NVIDIA is making way more money selling fleets of GPU's aimed at AI processing to businesses than they are selling video cards to the consumer gaming market. Gamers are like "when will GPU prices ever come down?" They won't, gamers are not the key market anymore.
They can't get their cars to self-drive on their own closed-loop tunnel in Vegas, but they're revealing a car with no steering wheel...
Tesla is a marketing company at this point
Always has been... since Elon took over
Are they also abandoning Twitter in equal measure? If so, great. If not, amateurs.
Wood be cool if some of their pr people got together and setup their own mastodon instance, that they only allow their own people to setup accounts and then they can join the fediverse.
Honest question. At what point will Tesla execs look at Musk and decide that keeping him at the helm is not in the company's best interests?
The board recommended that shareholders vote to give him his 50 something billion compensation package and move the incorporation to Texas. Shareholders seemed divided on the package award due to his erratic behavior, that there isn’t a dedicated captain of the Tesla ship (among other things such as shareholder governance) - but he got the package.
Hopefully they’re taking a harder look after sales took a massive hit, the Cyberturd launch was a flop and vehicles are filling lots unsold. I’m not holding my breath though.
I'm looking forward to the Tesla "Loss" memes.
They just decided he should be paid $56 billion dollars for his contribution... So, not anytime soon
I mean, he's been doing stupid shit the past decade and REALLY stupid shit the last few years... and yet the shareholders STILL voted to approve his 50 billion dollar bonus from the execs.
This suggests that many stockholders are fanboys.
Wild guess, early 2025?
Trump is heading towards a loss. Trump is likely to do some really stupid (and dangerous) things between losing and inauguration. Musk is likely to help facilitate.
He's either going to do something really stupid and just get cut off or quickly backtrack and get weirdly quiet, followed by a "graceful" exit.
I'm not Hollywood, but I was saving for a Tesla. Then Elon turned into a giant douche. Now that money will eventually be spent on a different EV brand.
Turned into? 10 years ago it was obvious if you had open ears.
The "pedo guy" was the mask off moment. Unless you were in the industry and dealt with him first hand, it was hearsay and rumor and at the time, many of us wanted to see a revitalized space program and electric cars. We kinda just went along with his Hank Scorpio impression, thinking it was an act.
Now that money will eventually be spent on a different EV brand.
If you're in the USA and lease instead of buy, there's a few decent EVs you can get for <$300/month with $0 down, like the Hyundai Ioniq 5 and the Kia EV6. Check the deals on https://pnd.leasehackr.com/.
I'd recommend leasing EVs instead of buying them. Depreciation is pretty bad, mostly due to the fact that the technology is changing/improving quite quickly, and the fact that people don't really want to deal with the battery after the warranty expires.
Musk can suck a dick. What a piece of fucking trash.
I'm in the market for an electric car. I won't even consider a Tesla. Mostly because of Musk, and partly because of the shit build quality.
Same for sure. Going back and forth constantly as to what to look into next. Was really hoping alpha motors was going to turn into something but they are going nowhere fast and aren’t turning into a reality. Looking potentially at aptera if they can actually bring their cars to market. If not, will possibly have to go more mainstream with a ionic 5/6
Or go Chinese.
I remember seeing reports that Tesla models outside of the cybertruck have tanked. Goes to show which assholes are still clinging to this turd of a brand. Btw I saw that the panels above the door are glued to the body. Lol
Enjoy your shit cars folks.
It’s honestly quite sad to see what the brand has become. I have a model 3 that I got back when elon was just weirdo that smoked weed on rogan’s show and made sophomoric sex jokes. My car is a solid vehicle that feels fun to drive. There were a lot of really talented engineers that built a great product. I’d never buy another though.
I have a lot of safety questions about a driverless taxi. Unless the car gets inspected between every ride (doubtful), what’s to stop someone from staying in the car past their stop? Will I get jumped by the previous passenger? What if someone left something dangerous in it? People innocently forget things all the time, which sucks on its own, but malicious actors could easily exploit an unmanned public(ish) vehicle.
Hell, who cleans it? If someone vomited on their trip home from a bar, will I be greeted by their mess when the taxi comes to me? From what I know of people, rules for passengers can and will be swiftly ignored without a driver in charge to make sure the rules are followed. Cameras wouldn’t stop everything, and honestly, who would want to be monitored by a camera throughout a taxi ride?
It’s obvious that Elon’s never ridden in a taxi in his life.
Sure but those are solvable. Personally I’m nowhere near as optimistic about the self-driving. I hope we eventually get it and current tech is truly amazing but it’s just not acceptable.
So far self-driving has mainly proven
- driving is all edge cases. Handling normal conditions is only the starting point
- it’s all about liability. Even if it’s provably safer than human driving, what human will accept their loved ones being killed by a self-driving car and what manufacturer will shoulder that liability?
They already exist in San Francisco: https://waymo.com/waymo-one-san-francisco/
Not sure they’ve been around long enough for the problems you suggested to come up.
Those things have cameras inside, they just won't move if another passenger is still inside. There's definitely questions about how reliable driverless cars are from a safety POV, and a future where you don't own any transport and are at the mercy of some private corporation, but the stuff you mention is easy to figure out.
So basically they’re telling Elon to go fuck himself?
Human beings are strange animals. Tesla build quality has been suspect from the beginning. Why was that not the priority before now?
I'd assume it's because Tesla were one of the first to mass market EVs, and Musk's pandering made them seem like a good, progressive bet. Once people were locked into their purchase they don't like to admit that they might have made a poor choice. Or they were aware of the build quality, but figured that the brand was a safe bet, that they'd improve over time.
It's amazing what humans will get tribal over.
I've been really surprised by how many cybertrucks I've been seeing here in Seattle. For a notoriously progressive city, we apparently have an awful lot of Musk fanboys.
Nice. There are other options, but pulling a drive train out of one and putting it in a better car will become cheaper.
OP link got hugged to death
Link works fine? THR is a pretty large industry publication, doubt their servers would go down from lemmy traffic.
Sounds like a good time to be a secondhand buyer.
eww … used Teslas …
Wouldn't be caught dead in a Tesla tbh
Ya I'd grab one if it was like fifty percent off in a heart beat assuming it was one of the awd versions, heck I'd even but a cybertruck if it was like 30 grand at that price I'm using the parts after it self-destructs to convert a different vehicle
The entire problem with Musk is people giving him an audience, every twit turning into a headline. Y’all are still doing it. Make any car purchasing decisions on what is right for you, rather than the ramblings of some celebrity. He has a right to an opinion but we don’t have to listen to it. Stop listening.
And here’s where everyone jumps all over me ….. evaluate the car on its own merits. Personally I found a Tesla still the best EV available where I live, for the best price, and with similar quality to any other vehicle.
The internet also has way too short of attention span. Try to remember a few years back where Tesla was first struggling to scale up production of Model 3. There were many mistakes, many issues, poor build quality. But it’s like every other Tesla/SpaceX product: build something ambitious, test in public or even on customers, crash and burn until you get it right, continually increment. They have worked out their production issues, have continually incremented, and current products are much better than the ones from those headlines. Be open minded enough to make your decision on what you see now
And here’s where everyone jumps all over me …… evaluate the car on its own merits.
One of the car's merits (or not) is resale value. Musk's bullshit is highly related to that merit. Another merit (or not) is reliability, and again Musk's bullshit is highly related to that merit.
Like it or not, people will make purchasing decisions based upon these (and other) things.
Cars are as much a trendy fashion piece for many as they are an item you use to get to places. I mean the grade-school thinking of this dude had him spell out "S3XY" with his car models...so, Tesla and its board are aware of this and have benefited from it. But it's a double-edged sword, if you're buying a car as a fashion symbol, you stand a high risk of it becoming pretty worthless if it goes out of style.
Leon had the chance to be the Steve Jobs of EVs, and was for a while. But a cult of personality is also a double-edged sword, and he made the mistake of letting his innermost dumpster fire edgelord personality roam into the public sphere.