Is Elon Musk Nuts?
POSTED BY: SIGNYM
UPDATED: Thursday, September 3, 2026 02:05
VIEWED: 37827
PAGE 50 of 58
Tesla faces lawsuits and investigations over full self-driving mode
Sun 29 Jun 2025 06.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jun/29/elon-musk-tesla-rob
otaxi
Musk’s insistence on camera-only technology has landed Tesla in hot water over fatal crashes involving drivers using the full self-driving feature. The company is now the focus of government investigations and civil lawsuits, which allege that full self-driving is impeded by weather conditions such as sun glare, fog, dust and darkness. There have been at least 736 crashes and 17 deaths involving the technology, according to an analysis by the Washington Post.
“Tesla continues to have this fetishistic view that it’s going to operate its system solely on cameras, despite every intelligent human being in this entire space saying that can’t be done,” said Brett Schreiber, an attorney who represents several alleged victims of Tesla’s autopilot failures.
“Everyone who has been following collision-avoidant technology since the 90s knows that the holy trinity is radar, lidar and cameras.”
Schreiber said he was not surprised to see the wobbling rollout of Tesla’s robotaxis in Austin.
“What you’re also going to see, which is the true tragedy of this thing, is people continuing to be injured and killed by this technology,” he said. “And that’s where it becomes less of a ‘Oh, isn’t that cute? The vehicle can’t make a left’ to now we’re actually at someone’s funeral because of the choices Tesla makes.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I doubt that zombies give much thought to other zombies.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
I've thought about Trump in the last 6 months about as much as you think about him in 6 hours.
I think about Elon Musk about 1/100th the amount of time than that.
Why don't you worry about your party and try to fix it before the midterms before it completely implodes and stop doing free campaign work for Trump everyday?
No. You're the fucking zombie, dude.
You watched the lunatics take over your party and you did nothing about it despite being warned every day because Trump ate your brain.
And now your party is destroying itself completely and you're doing nothing about it despite being warned every day because Trump ate your brain.
You are responsible for the death of the Democratic party. You and the rest of the mindless Legacy Media huffing zombies.
You get what you deserve. Now deal with the consequences.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Tesla's Robotaxi Program Is Failing Because Elon Musk Made a Foolish Decision Years Ago
Jun 30, 2025 6:51 PM EDT by Noor Al-Sibai
https://futurism.com/robotaxi-fails-elon-musk-decision
Waymo, Google's driverless cab service, uses a mixed array of lidar, radar, cameras, and other sensors to autonomously navigate the world around them.
More than decade ago, Musk made a big bet against that strategy. And he's kept raging against it since, too.
During an October 2015 press conference about Tesla's Autopilot assisted driving feature, the CEO called lidar "unnecessary" and said the tech"doesn’t make sense" for an autonomous car. (Notably, he also claimed in that same presser that full autonomy would "obviously need 360 cameras," though he's seemingly changed his tune since.)
"Lidar is lame," the CEO insisted at a Tesla autonomy day event back in 2019. "In cars, it's friggin' stupid. It's expensive and unnecessary."
He's right about the price tag. As the Guardian notes, a suite of lidar sensors runs about $12,000 per vehicle, compared to the $400 it costs to install cabin cameras.
Still, safety should matter more than cost. Given that Tesla's Robotaxis have already been seen braking repeatedly around cop cars, jerking a steering wheel back-and-froth, and breaking so many traffic laws on camera that the government has taken interest in the single week since the service's launch, Musk's line in the sand seems more foolhardy than ever.
In certain cases, it's even been directly implicated in deadly accidents. In a deadly 2019 crash, a Tesla on Autopilot failed to differentiate the side of a large truck from the scenery behind it. And in a fatal 2023 crash, a Tesla Model Y seemingly got blinded by the Sun and ran down a grandmother standing in the roadway.
The issue is that lidar essentially "scans" the environment around a car, giving its self-driving system access to an extremely accurate map of its surroundings. Visual cameras show what a human driver would see, but the flat visual data is much more complex to interpret and far more susceptible to hard-to-predict edge cases involving lighting conditions and other confusing factors.
"Tesla continues to have this fetishistic view that it’s going to operate its system solely on cameras, despite every intelligent human being in this entire space saying that can’t be done," Brett Schreiber, a lawyer who represents people suing Tesla for its alleged Autopilot issues, told the Guardian.
As Robotaxis continue to cruise the streets of Austin — blessedly, with human safety monitors in the passenger seat — Schreiber predicts that we'll see even more accidents related to Tesla's bad bet against lidars.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Nobody cares.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Some people bet millions that Musk wasn't a lying sack of shit. They lost the money:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody cares.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Tesla Bros Who Bet on Polymarket That Tesla Would Successfully Launch Full Self-Driving by July Are Now Screwed
Musk said it'd be a "money-making opportunity."
By Frank Landymore | Jul 1, 4:19 PM EDT
https://futurism.com/tesla-bros-bet-on-tesla-screwed
Betting on Elon Musk fulfilling one of his promises is one hell of a risky venture. But that's what users did on the crypto-based prediction hub Polymarket anyway — and now they're on the verge of losing millions of dollars after Tesla's Robotaxi service failed to live up to its CEO's sky-high assurances.
With over $8,800,000 worth of total bets placed, the prediction, titled "Will Tesla launch a driverless Robotaxi service before July?" is now at a less than one percent chance of success, seeing that it is now no longer the month of June and that the service has turned out to be a glorified beta test.
In an especially ironic twist, Electrek points out, Musk himself highlighted the bet several weeks ago, when Tesla had a still unlikely 14 percent chance of success, encouraging his fans to cash in.
"Money-making opportunity," Musk said in tweet, reminiscent of how he used to casually pump his favorite crypto.
The prediction is still awaiting a final decision: the proposed outcome of "NO" has been disputed twice, with Musk fanboys raging at the site admins in the comments, adamant that "YES" will prevail.
"Should resolve to yes," wrote one user who bought over 21,000 shares in favor of Tesla. "If not, cabal trying to scam."
Technically, Tesla has been operating robotaxis in Austin, Texas, since June 22. But with only ten to 20 cars in operation, it's at best an extremely limited test, and does not meet the Polymarket bet's definition of a full-blown, driverless service.
In the rules section, it stipulates that a "program that is restricted to Tesla employees, invite-only testers, closed-beta participants," will not qualify. Nor will a program in which there is a human in the vehicle positioned to take control, it states. Tesla's service is currently invite-only — the recipients overwhelmingly being pro-Tesla "influencers" — and the vehicles are all supervised by a human "safety monitor" who rides in the front passenger seat, and who've already had to make several interventions.
Notably, the service doesn't live up to its creator's own promises. In an earnings call in January, Musk was unequivocal that Tesla robotaxis would launch fully "unsupervised" with "no one in the car" in June — hence the nature of the Polymarket bet. The conspicuous inclusion of the "safety monitors" wasn't revealed until just days before the launch date.
That should've been a sign for the Tesla bulls to pull out, but many were clearly inspired by Musk's tweet. On the day that Musk declared the robotaxi bet a "money-making opportunity," the market odds spiked to a 40 percent chance of success as the billionaire's fans piled in, bringing what was then less than the $500,000 total money on the line to the nearly $9 million that it is today. One user, Electrek found, is set to lose $50,000 for believing in Musk's robotaxi vision.
Don't worry, though. There's plenty of dubious Musk promises to bet on in the future. Such as: having over 1,000 robotaxis roaming the streets of Austin "within a few months" of launching, or having a staggering one million robotaxis on American roads by the end of 2026.
With the cars still requiring safety monitors
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Some people bet millions that Musk wasn't a lying sack of shit. They lost the money:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody cares.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Oh. Bummer for them. The poor millionaires.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Too bad about what's happening to Musk, almost half of a Trillionaire.
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:Some people bet millions that Musk wasn't a lying sack of shit. They lost the money:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
Nobody cares.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Oh. Bummer for them. The poor millionaires.
--------------------------------------------------
"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Muskenfreude
By Paul Krugman | Jul 2, 2025 at 5:45 AM
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/muskenfreude
The humiliation of Elon Musk.
Does taking some satisfaction in Musk’s demise make me a bad person? Maybe, but I’m only human. Should I go easy on Musk because he came out against the terrible bill that just passed? No.
For one thing, Musk’s opposition predictably made no difference. Musk and other oligarchs will soon learn just how little political power their wealth gives them in the political environment they helped create. More on that in a minute.
Beyond that, Musk was against the bill for all the wrong reasons.
The whole DOGE story remains remarkable on a couple of levels. It’s not just that Donald Trump temporarily gave immense power over federal spending to someone who had no legitimate basis for that power — he was neither elected by voters nor, as is normally required for senior officials, approved by the Senate. Beyond that, Trump gave that power to a man who clearly understood nothing about what the government does and what it spends money on — but who, in his arrogance, assumed that he could eliminate trillions of dollars in waste, fraud, and abuse.
He couldn’t, of course, and he should have been fired on the spot after making the absurd claim that millions of dead people were receiving Social Security checks. But he wasn’t. For months after that episode Musk remained in a position to create chaos and degrade the functioning of the government — oh, and condemn large numbers of children to death. https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/usaid-cuts-lead-14-million-
deaths-five-years-researchers-say-rcna216095
Now he’s on the outs — but he still lacks the honesty and courage to admit what he got wrong. Here’s Musk condemning the Beautiful Bill:
Elon Musk @elonmusk • Follow
It is obvious with the insane spending of this bill, which increases the debt ceiling by a record FIVE TRILLION DOLLARS that we live in a one-party country - the PORKY PIG PARTY!!
Time for a new political party that actually cares about the people.
3:08 PM • Jun 30, 2025
What is the “insane spending” and “pork” of which he speaks? If there’s huge wasteful spending going on, well, Musk had months of unprecedented power and access to find it — and came up empty. The truth is that this bill will explode the deficit because of the huge tax breaks it’s offering to the wealthy and corporations. But Musk can’t handle the truth.
What about Musk’s threat to form a new political party? It will go nowhere if he tries. But I don’t think he’ll get anywhere near making good on that threat. As Trump might say, Musk just doesn’t have the cards. My prediction is that very soon one of two things will happen. Either Musk will slink off, tail between his legs. Or he will see his wealth destroyed, faster than he imagines possible.
Most immediately, Musk’s business interests are unusually dependent on federal support, and hence on the good will of whoever is running the government. I’m not sure whether Musk is really the most subsidized businessman in history, but Trump basically got it right here:
Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump
Elon Musk knew, long before he so strongly Endorsed me for President, that I was strongly against the EV Mandate. It is ridiculous, and was always a major part of my campaign. Electric cars are fine, but not everyone should be forced to ow
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Many stories about Musk’s design decisions killing people in Teslas:
‘The vehicle suddenly accelerated with our baby in it’: the terrifying truth about why Tesla’s cars keep crashing
Elon Musk is obsessive about the design of his supercars, right down to the disappearing door handles. But a series of shocking incidents – from drivers trapped in burning vehicles to dramatic stops on the highway – have led to questions about the safety of the brand. Why won’t Tesla give any answers?
By Sönke Iwersen and Michael Verfürden | Sat 5 Jul 2025 01.00 EDT
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/05/the-vehicle-suddenl
y-accelerated-with-our-baby-in-it-the-terrifying-truth-about-why-teslas-cars-keep-crashing
Autonomous driving is the core promise around which Elon Musk has built his company. Tesla has never delivered a truly self-driving vehicle, yet the richest person in the world keeps repeating the claim that his cars will soon drive entirely without human help. Is Tesla’s autopilot really as advanced as he says?
Musk has given the world many reasons to criticise him since he teamed up with Donald Trump. Many people do – mostly by boycotting his products. But while it is one thing to disagree with the political views of a business leader, it is another to be mortally afraid of his products. In the Tesla Files, we found thousands of examples of why such fear may be justified.
We set out to match some of these incidents of autopilot errors with customers’ names.
Meier was well aware that Musk has previously claimed Tesla “releases critical crash data affecting public safety immediately and always will”; that he has bragged many times about how its superior handling of data sets the company apart from its competitors. In the case of her husband, why was she expected to believe there was no data?
Meier’s account was structured and precise. Only once did the toll become visible – when she described how her husband’s body burned in full view of the firefighters. Her eyes filled with tears and her voice cracked. She apologised, turning away. After she collected herself, she told us she has nothing left to gain – but also nothing to lose. That was why she had reached out to us. We promised to look into the case.
Rita Meier wasn’t the only widow to approach us. Disappointed customers, current and former employees, analysts and lawyers were sharing links to our reporting. Many of them contacted us. More than once, someone wrote that it was about time someone stood up to Tesla – and to Elon Musk.
Meier, too, shared our articles and the callout form with others in her network – including people who, like her, lost loved ones in Tesla crashes. One of them was Anke Schuster. Like Meier, she had lost her husband in a Tesla crash that defies explanation and had spent years chasing answers. And, like Meier, she had found her husband’s Model X listed in the Tesla Files. Once again, the incident was marked as resolved – with no indication of what that actually meant.
“My husband died in an unexplained and inexplicable accident,” Schuster wrote in her first email. Her dealings with police, prosecutors and insurance companies, she said, had been “hell”. No one seemed to understand how a Tesla works. “I lost my husband. His four daughters lost their father. And no one ever cared.”
Oliver Schuster was returning from a business meeting on 13 April 2021 when his black Model X veered off highway B194 between Loitz and Schönbeck in north-east Germany. It was 12.50pm when the car left the road and crashed into a tree. Schuster started to worry when her husband missed a scheduled bank appointment. She tried to track the vehicle but found no way to locate it. Even calling Tesla led nowhere. That evening, the police broke the news: after the crash her husband’s car had burst into flames. He had burned to death – with the fire brigade watching helplessly.
The crashes that killed Meier’s and Schuster’s husbands were almost three years apart but the parallels were chilling. We examined accident repor
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Who would suspect Musk is a lawless crook? Anybody paying attention would.
How is Musk a crook? Because he is stealing $tens of billions from the other shareholders of Tesla.
Why is Tesla’s board of directors allowing Musk to steal from the corporation? Because they, too, are stealing from the other stockholders by taking $hundreds of millions in salary for a job that requires only 8 hours of work per year.
Tesla’s rule-breaking board expressing ‘almost a contempt for lawful and accepted procedure’, says governance expert
By Christiaan Hetzner | July 11, 2025 at 7:08 AM EDT
https://fortune.com/2025/07/11/tesla-elon-musk-board-of-directors-annu
al-shareholder-meeting-november-corporate-governance/
Under pressure from a group of shareholders, Tesla’s board of directors said it will convene the annual general meeting on Nov. 6, nearly four months later than required under Texas state laws. The company had warned at the end of April it would fail to meet the usual deadline, but did not cite a reason for the delay. Charles Elson, founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance, says this attitude represents a lack of accountability toward shareholders.
An admission by Tesla’s directors that investors will be forced to wait until November before voting on key issues has come under sharp criticism fire from a leading U.S. expert on corporate governance.
This week, the company finally lifted the secret surrounding the date of its much-delayed annual shareholder meeting. According to state laws in Texas, Tesla was obligated to hold the meeting by July 13—one year and one month after its previous meeting.
“They can’t even have an annual meeting annually? That’s ridiculous—it’s almost expressing a contempt for lawful and accepted procedure.” Charles Elson told Fortune. “Shareholder voting is a core principle in our system of capital formation, and if you abrogate that, then you punch a hole in the system itself.”
Elson serves as a subcommittee chair on the American Bar Association’s Business Law Section and is the founding director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware.
In 2024, he resigned from a consulting role with the law firm Holland & Knight—which counted Tesla as a client—after a nearly 30-year relationship in order to avoid interest conflicts when filing a legal opinion on the issue of CEO Elon Musk’s pay package, dubbed “the largest in human history.”
The announcement of the Nov. 6 annual general meeting came just hours after a group of institutional investors representing $1.5 trillion in assets under management expressed their “deep concern” over the delay and called on the board to “immediately” disclose the date.
The board’s ongoing silence
“Tesla’s ongoing silence on the AGM is cause for concern,” they wrote to Tesla’s directors in an open letter published Wednesday.
The company had first admitted at the end of April that it had failed to file its definitive proxy statement within the normal time frame, citing no reason. Elson said there were only very few legally defensible justifications for pushing back an annual meeting, such as the lack of audited financial statements.
Delaying its meeting in order to hold a vote over a new pay package for Musk or a potential investment in his latest startup xAI—the two most commonly cited theories in the Tesla community—did not meet that threshold in his view.
“The law has to be equally and neutrally applied. There aren’t special exceptions for special people,” Elson said, referring to Musk.
Tesla did not respond to a request from Fortune for comment.
Unless shareholders mount a legal challenge to the later date, however, there are no repercussions for the company.
“Why are these individuals being paid hundreds of millions of dollars?”
Nevertheless, Elson fears this attitude waters down the spirit of capitalism. If a company’s owners don’t feel like they have a say, it lessens the likelihood of investing in equit
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Elon Musk demolishes Trump's latest claim that Democrats created the Epstein files 'hoax'
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-14913351/Elon-Musk-Trump-Epst
ein-files-Democrat-hoax.html
NOTIFY: N | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME