Maybe you are ...
... someone who just likes to drive
A Tesla is stupid fun to drive, if you treat it as if were just a normal car. The electric motor(s) have high torque for acceleration, and the machine features precise steering, and smooth tracking. For some models, the suspension is a little stiff, but that's normal for high-performance cars. It's easy to manoeuvre the thing exactly the way you want to. The audio system is great, and you don't even have to pump up to volume to enjoy it. They look pretty sharp. Recharging and winter are fine. Fun!
... keen on the environment
A decade ago, one major selling point of electric vehicles was that they are purportedly good for the environment. Yeah, it's nowhere that simple, and should never be mandated, but whatever. They don't burn gasoline, so don't make that kind of mess. It's possible to get severe battery fires happening, but with a Tesla that seems require a catastrophic crash. So don't crash! But how?
... keen on safety
Safety is the defining feature that sets Tesla apart from practically all other vehicles. Their way to get there is full automation, to the point where the car literally drives itself. Today's top implementation is called "Full Self Driving (Supervised)", and it feels pretty close. It can already take me door-to-door from this city to another one, including on city streets, traffic, highways, with zero or almost zero input. The driver just needs to "supervise", i.e., look outside and confirm the car is reading his mind properly. (If the car's about to make a mistake, the driver can instantly take over with a touch on the pedals or the steering wheel.)
What makes this possible is a bunch of AI hardware and software in the car, fed by eight or so cameras that are looking in every direction. The hardware recognizes objects and positions; the software infers velocities, vulnerabilities, intent, and decides on driving control inputs. It needs all those cameras to build up a complete-enough view of the world to track lanes, safely do turns, lane changes, passing. The system draws a live 3D map of the surroundings of the car, including all other visible nearby vehicles, people, obstacles.
What this also makes possible is to exceed the capacity of a human being to pay attention. The car is literally looking in every direction, and constantly, so it can respond to impending trouble in places where the human would not be looking. There are lots of crash-evasion videos out there, where the robot makes a rapid turn or brake to avoid hitting something that came out of the blue. The rear view cameras watch for bikers and pause your door opening if one is nearby, to protect them from "door prizes". It does not get tired, so even on a boring highway or with a sleepy driver, the thing stays solid.
The FSD system is tied to the navigation software, so it knows where you want to go. A destination that you are unfamiliar with is not a problem. I recently had FSD drive in a foreign city, at night, where if I were driving by gps/map alone, it would have been a challenge. Constantly cross-checking street names, distances, GPS guidance with driving in an unknown city is super stressful. FSD is confident, knows where it's going, and turns the driver's job into just confirming tactical safety. So much easier!
Another way to describe the feeling of supervising FSD will resonate with aviators. Supervising FSD feels just like flying with the autopilot engaged. A pilot can dismiss second-by-second minutiae, and switch to a strategic level of executive thinking. On the plane, with the autopilot on, one doesn't need to worry "am I centered in this airway? holding altitude?". Normally, the answer will be "yes". Similarly, with FSD, the driver can stop thinking "how exactly can we pass this guy?", and instead consider "how many minutes until the next turn? how is the battery usage compared to predictions? is there a washroom at the supercharger?". It's soothing. It makes long drives feel short.
Yes, FSD is not perfect, though the monthly updates improve it constantly. Crashes can/do still occur, with or without FSD in control of the car. Tesla engineers wrapped the cabin in enough airbags and steel to protect people inside from normal crashes - and not just the cybertruck. It is unfortunately possible to manually race a Tesla like a drunken madman into concrete pillars, beyond the capacity of any car to protect the passengers, but so it goes.
It feels like full self-driving - without supervision - is pretty close. That way, even people who grew too old to drive, or those who can't or don't want to own a Tesla, will be able to ride. This may take out the worst aspects of taxicab industries, and maybe parts of public transit.
... keen on comfort
The Tesla hardware + software systems are designed to keep people comfy. During driving, the car is pretty quiet, with only tire and wind noise getting in. The electric motors are silent, and there is no engine + exhaust to rumble. You can talk quietly inside. Even the smallest model 3 is spacious, and the larger ones really feel large on the inside.
The heating/cooling system is amazing. It conspires to scavenge excess heat from wherever in the entire car it may be generated or found, and send it to wherever it is needed. It's controllable remotely and by automated schedule, so the car can heat or cool or completely defrost its windows without anyone being there. There's no engine, so no fumes: this process can safely run anywhere - a parking lot or indoors. When you arrive at the car, it's ready and cozy. No more squirming in cold/hot seats for the first 15 minutes. Excellent air filtration - driving beside a landfill site is hard to notice.
There's no fuel, so there's no need to stand outdoors to refuel. (Road-trip recharging is often outdoors, but you don't have to babysit the wire connection. You can just sit inside or visit a fast food joint and relax.) If you need to park somewhere strange, the car will auto-lock when you walk away, can keep an eye out around itself as a security camera while you're away, and (in a parking lot) can drive itself to you when you're ready to go.
... someone who likes to play with tech
The car's main user interface is a big touchscreen, running some OS, maybe Linux, exposing all the systems in the car. There is also voice control, as in: "navigate to a gas station". Just kidding! The visualizations on the screen include a birds-eye view of the car and its surroundings, as detected by the AI system from all the cameras. Rear view cameras pop up when changing lanes. Interactive mapping is the default app to take up the bulk of the screen, but there are other options too. Several phone-app type gadgets are available. Several games(!) also, for use while the car is parked. Tesla likes expressing humour, so there are toy programs that play with the lights, make fart sounds, change the surroundings-visualization to a rendering of mars, or of Santa, a sketchpad to make blobfish-shaped-dad-portraits, that kind of silly stuff.
The navigation software is pretty important, because it is tied into the battery management system. The car knows precisely how much charge it has, and when you tell it where you're going, it can integrate wind, temperature, traffic, topography, and maybe other factors, to estimate how much energy it'll take to get to your destination. If the battery is too low, it'll offer detours to en-route supercharger stations, and will tell you how long you'll need to charge for. (Often it's 5-15 minutes.) If you don't like the built-in navigation package, third-party phone apps with more routing/charging flexibility can be authorized to exchange telemetry with the car.
If you want to know how the car works and how to work on it, you can read the entire service manuals. I hope you like software updates: every couple of weeks, new versions and features flow down, sometimes big improvements, sometimes small ones, and occasionally some regressions. The car literally improves with age.
But if you're a weirdo who doesn't want to play with the tech, you can just take the car's navigation advice, use voice commands for everything, plug it in at home every night, and ignore the screen.
... someone who can put up with a little bit of big brother
Tesla cars are perpetually Internet-connected via a built-in cellular data connection. This enables various remote control functions, clever navigation, software updates, and other things. In the case of a crash, I heard the car attempts to upload to the mothership a black-box worth of info about the last few seconds. At your option, you can volunteer to supply Tesla with much more data, via the cameras outside and inside the car. Basically, when something happens that surprises the AI system, a brief recording is uploaded to the mothership. This is used to train the next version of the AI system. In turn, everyone will receive the updated AI system before long. Unfortunately, this trust was violated a couple of years ago. We are assured discipline has improved, and again it's opt-in (and opt-out anytime).
... someone who can afford them
Unfortunately, they are not yet cheap. A Tesla is priced similarly to high-end hybrids, well above entry-level sedans. On the other hand, operating costs are hilariously small. I've calculated that, compared to our Toyota RAV4 Hybrid (an amazingly fuel efficient SUV, with an 18-month wait to deliver), taking the Tesla for a similar ride costs about 10%, when recharged at home overnight! It's practically free for commuting. Also, there's basically no regular maintenance, as the most mechanical systems from a normal car just don't exist. At the end of every quarter and especially at the end of the year, some serious purchase discounts are normally available. Plus, any current Tesla owner can give you a referral link, from which you can get an additional $1-2K off the price (and they get some freebies too). Plenty of older used ones can be found, which can still run modern FSD AI.
in conclusion:
So yeah, the Tesla is not quite for everyone. But in case it might be for you, I'd love to show you ours - drop me an email. If you decide you want one, you can order it entirely online, in a few minutes, just like on Amazon. One could be in your garage literally in days. (We picked up our "custom" Model Y, just 4 days after a Sunday order.)
The boys are practicing for their next performance! January 31, 2025 in Waterford.
Hey there, "Progressive Conservative [sic]" Minister of Education of Ontario, Jill Dunlop. Thanks for posting some kind words toward our province's firefighters. Something struck me about this posting, containing these very Diverse people:
Where is this photo from? Are these average Ontario firefighters? And, say, what is that yellow thing at the 9 o'clock corner of this photo?
It did not take long to find the original stock photo and infer all the answers. What do you notice?
This was always the end game for the "every child matters" BS. Despite the 2007 "final settlement" billions that the federal government already paid to residential school families, despite tens of billions spent on one or other restitution programs since, these people will manipulate the "kamloops 215" hoax into yet another payment. "Reconciliation" means "pay more forever".
See also preparing the battlespace (2017).
The boys performed again on the trails, Saturday September 21, 10AM-1PM. The long term weather forecasts were a mystery, and their university workloads are heavy, but they were up for the triple challenge.
This blog is powered by ikiwiki.