Funniest thing is he said at one point that it is 12 months away, including automatic charging? Does such a thing work anywhere or is even attempted? I haven't seen a car that does not need a physical plug and someone getting out to do it.
They had a marketing demo of a robotic charger a few years ago, but nothing came of it. They also had the demo of full battery swaps before that, but they'd have to change their entire architecture for that to work.
The battery swap demo was essentially a subsidy scam:
> In 2013, California revised its Zero Emissions Vehicle credit system so that long-range ZEVs that were able to charge 80% in under 15 minutes earned almost twice as many credits as those that didn’t. Overnight, Tesla’s 85 kWh Model S went from earning four credits per vehicle to seven. Moreover, to earn this dramatic increase in credits, Tesla needed to prove to CARB that such rapid refueling events were possible. By demonstrating battery swap on just one vehicle, Tesla nearly doubled the ZEV credits earned by its entire fleet even if none of them actually used the swap capability.
IIRC, they did deploy that battery swap thing to some charger locations (hearsay, didn't confirm) and charged as much per swap as gassing up an SUV, plus you had to return later to get your battery back. They gave up because nobody wanted to do that.
A bunch of these claims are understandable with the tech and hype available at the time they were said, but there wasn't enough committent to follow-through. Not that it would have helped much.
I know this is a joke, but I'd not be surprised if they settled for pinging another person at the charging station and asking them to plug/unplug the car. Either because hype makes them want to be nice, or if they get some $FINANCIAL_VALUE for doing it.
* he's lying, i.e. he's knowingly deceiving his audience to create hype and raise the stock price which he financially benefits from
* he's bullshitting, i.e. he's embellishing what he knows is in development with the hopes that engineering will overdeliver and meet his promises or something similarly impressive to distract from the failed expectations
* he's truthful, i.e. he's genuinely and continuously overestimating what engineering can realistically deliver and keeps being wrong over the span of a decade
I'm not sure which scenario is most flattering. Keep in mind that a lot of his claims seem to be unplanned and he doesn't believe in PR departments so most of his statements seem to be his personal judgement based on what has been reported to him. I'm inclined to believe he doesn't care much about the truth value of his claims as long as they feel like the right thing to say to him ("hashtag no filter" as the kids used to say).
The first two are just lying. The third is only not lying if you assume that he's extremely stupid; otherwise he would have learned by now that he's bad at estimating these sorts of things, and adjusted.
I think the "he's truthful" case is the most damning because it calls his expertise in any of these fields into question. Looks an awful lot like Dunning Kruger.
He has demonstrably lied about his education, lies about his family background and keeps getting caught making statements that sound plausible if you know a little about the field but nonsensical if you are an actual domain expert (e.g. nearly everything he said about software development re Twitter).
I think he's a good generalist because he (like many autistics) finds it easy to drill into domains he finds interesting and keep up with discussions at a fairly advanced level but when you do that it's important to be aware that having binged expert sources on a subject for a month straight doesn't make you an expert in the field the same way a conversational crash course over a weekend doesn't make you a fluent speaker in a new language even if you know how to order a pizza and get a general idea of what people say to you.
I've actually experienced this misattribution of expertise myself: just because I've read several Wikipedia articles and binged some video essays on a given subject I've had people assume I'm an expert when I tell them about it - except I know that my "expertise" would collapse as soon as I were to talk to an actual expert. I think this is why a lot of people suffer from imposter syndrome: because they're literally faking it by having a good generalist knowledge without realising most people in the field also lack sophisticated underpinnings.
> I haven't seen a car that does not need a physical plug and someone getting out to do it.
AFAIK, the Formula E safety car charges without a physical plug or someone getting out to do it (which is important for safety because it has to be able to leave its charging station quickly, without the extra delay of someone getting out to unplug it); it uses a wireless charging pad on the ground.
Back in 2014, it was “90% of your miles on auto” by the next year. In 2015 it was “a month away” from highways and simple roads, and 3 years away from full autonomy. In 2016 it was fully autonomous end-to-end cross-country (LA to Times Square) trip “by the end of the year”
