Investors should ignore Elon Musk’s latest dance and focus on Tesla’s growing problems due to its chief executive’s exaggerated claims about his company’s technology capabilities.
Tesla’s TSLA,
On Thursday afternoon at the AI, self-proclaimed Technoking Musk said the company is working on a humanoid robot as “Tesla is possibly the largest robotics company in the world because our cars are like semi-sensitive robots on wheels.”
After a white-clad human performed a brief dance for audience and live believers, Musk took to the stage and only showed computer-generated images of a 5.8 ″ humanoid robot claiming that Tesla would produce a prototype some next year. He inferred that it could be used to make or bore repetitive tasks such as grocery shopping and that it would have a complete self-driving equipment.
As always with Musk and Tesla, the timeline is highly questionable for anyone with a basic knowledge of the technology in question. Fortunately, the scams didn’t fool everyone on Wall Street, some of whom may be getting tired of their messes.
“Unfortunately, as we have seen with robotaxis and other future science fiction projects for Musk, we see this Tesla Bot as an absolute antagonist that will further shake investors at a time when the street is showing a growing concern about the increase. of EV competition and security issues for Tesla, “Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives said in a note to clients Friday.
The security issues Ives mentions are aspects investors should consider right now, because it looks like the government is finally stepping up and taking note of a problem that this column has long pointed out: Musk repeatedly overcomes the current and short-term potential of its automotive advanced technology autonomy.
Plus, it’s time for Elon Musk to start telling the truth about autonomous driving
Just a day before Thursday’s “AI Day” show, two U.S. senators called on the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Tesla and Musk’s “repeated exaggerations of the capabilities of their vehicles.” refers to the marketing of Tesla’s “Full Self Driving” product. Tesla charges thousands of dollars for the purchase (or just $ 100 a month) for software that is not close to full autonomous driving, a practice that has already led to a recent review by the California Department of Motor Vehicles and a German ruling that Tesla might not market the product as such.
“Language issues,” said Selika Talbott, a professor in the department of public administration and politics at the American University of Washington DC. “The use of this terminology is false, misleading and unsafe for the general public. The general public does not fully understand the notions of assisted driving and autonomous vehicles and their differences.”
“Tesla has highly assisted technology in its vehicle, but at no point should anyone behind the wheel think the vehicle can drive itself, because it can’t,” Talbott said.
The week began with news of a federal investigation into Tesla’s autopilot system after cars using the feature crashed into stopped emergency vehicles. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is studying a series of Tesla vehicle accidents that had the advanced driver assistance system enabled. NHTSA said it opened an investigation into 11 Tesla crashes involving emergency vehicles, while still investigating a series of collisions affecting cars enabled with advanced driver assistance systems (ADAS) and tractor trailers.
Read: Tesla’s humanoid robot receives a silent welcome from Wall Street
The latest outcry on Capitol Hill follows a stream of reports and / or posts on social media and YouTube videos of drivers engaging in extremely risky behavior while testing their Tesla’s so-called self-driving functions. In May, Steven Michael Hendrickson, a 35-year-old father of two in Fontana, California, died when his Tesla crashed into a semi-overturned truck. He had previously posted videos about driving without his hands behind the wheel of his car on the highway, but the NHTSA was still investigating the role of the autopilot in the crash.
“The vehicles Tesla produces are driver-assisted systems,” said Bryan Reimer, a researcher at MIT’s Transportation and Logistics Center. “They’re helping the driver and the driver has to keep an eye out.”
It’s important to note the difference between Tesla’s dual products with misleading names. “Autopilot” is an ADAS system, a highly advanced version of the speed control for road driving that allows “your car to steer, accelerate and brake automatically in its lane under your active supervision, helping with the heavier parts of the drive, “according to the Tesla website. Tesla also offers the “FSD” package, now available for a $ 99-99 subscription per month, which it describes as “access to a more advanced set of driver assistance features, designed to provide more active guidance and driving.” assisted under your active supervision.
If only Musk described these systems in a similar way to the official website. In analyst conference talks and in Tesla presentations to his fans for several hours, Musk has been proclaiming that with this software full autonomy is just around the corner.
“We basically have to solve the artificial vision of the real world and we are,” he said in a earnings call in April. “And the key to solving it is also to have a massive set of data. So there are only more than a million cars on the road that collect data … But I am very sure we will succeed ”.
See also: Elon Musk says he’s done with regular earnings calls. Tesla investors are better off.
But for all of Musk’s huge fan base, investors are beginning to notice that the company’s tactics involving full self-promotion technology are dangerous, as opposed to other companies testing autonomous vehicles.
For example, Alphabet Inc.’s GOOG GOOGL Waymo, the company with the most hours of autonomous driving, currently operates a small-scale robotaxi service in uninhabited, unmanned Arizona areas around Phoenix humans. It is the only one of its kind in the United States. In California, Waymo has DMV permits to perform AV testing with a human driver behind the wheel.
“Waymo can’t start selling its AVs to anyone and can’t drive them on the road, our regulatory system doesn’t allow it,” Talbott of the American University said. “You can try them, but there is no self-driving car publicly available to buy because it doesn’t exist.”
With real-world FSD testing with untrained drivers, Tesla performs the equivalent of clinical trials of a new drug without any professional or daily patient supervision.
“They call it beta, it’s a beta system, they’re exposing people to substantial risk,” Reimer said.
Musk’s latest robot is one more distraction, like the 2018 flamethrower sold by his Boring Company, his unwanted help trying to help the boys trapped in a cave in Thailand and other projects. Investors shouldn’t let these distractions get in the way of the real problems Musk seems to refuse to acknowledge as he continues to sell his company’s technology capabilities.