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https://www.investopedia.com/news/steve-wozniak-turns-tesla-critic-doesnt-trust-elon-musk/
Steve Wozniak spoke recently at the Nordic Business Forum in Stockholm. A clipping from the end of the short article,
After years of upgrades and new sensors, Woz sees Tesla as a company that has made major promises and delivered well under the bar. "I love that car, but the trouble is Elon Musk is portrayed in a lot of moves with a lack of faith and trust," he said. "What he says, can you really believe in him? Is he just a good salesman, like Jobs, and may not be there [in the end]?"
Wozniak went as far as to suggest that "every other car manufacturer in the world," including Audi and BMW, "are actually ahead of Tesla for self-driving cars." He then praised his Chevy Bolt EV, which he prefers to drive for everyday life.
It doesn't seem that long ago that Woz was calling out Toyota for problems with the cruise control on his Prius, but here's an update from 2010 -- https://gizmodo.com/5462205/steve-wozniak-update-on-his-prius-problems
(Score: 5, Interesting) by linkdude64 on Thursday February 01 2018, @12:39AM (6 children)
This just in: Complacent fat cats hate brilliant market disruptors. Does he really think EVs would be where they are at without Tesla?
If I can avoid it, I like to avoid supporting companies that ultimately do not have the interests of the consumer in mind. Chevy, like all other major players in the game, gladly undercut Tesla's ability to sell directly to the consumer to lower costs, among other practices. Musk has successfully kickstarted the era of the electric car where others failed before (see the film, "Who killed the electric car?") either due to incompetence or corruption. He made it happen. I don't care if Steve Wozniak of all people disapproves - in fact, fuck you Steve Wozniak, for talking shit about someone who's, yes, the underdog in the big picture, but is actually DOING SOMETHING that is useful to humanity and the planet overall.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @02:48AM
I'd be more inclined to thank Nissan and the Leaf for pushing GM to do the Bolt. Leaf & Bolt are roughly in the same price range where early Teslas are luxury price range. Leaf was a year earlier than Model S.
It's true that the Tesla Roadster was much earlier, but that was very limited production and very expensive.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tftp on Thursday February 01 2018, @03:07AM (2 children)
(Score: 4, Informative) by hemocyanin on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:28AM (1 child)
Not sure what you mean "and many people don't want to care for the car - they'd rather have it the other way around" -- I have a Leaf and the maintenance is near zero. Yes I have to plug it in at night like everything else I have, but aside from tires, brake pads, and window washer fluid, there really isn't much to do to it.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:45PM
(Score: 2) by n1 on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:41AM (1 child)
This 'underdog' has had help from all the big finance firms (GS, MS, DB for a start), Daimler, Samsung and Panasonic.
He has also had a huge amount of help from national and local governments implementing policies that make his consumer products more attractive. Governments have done more to push other automakers to EV than Tesla and Elon.
Space X might be working on great things as far as space travel, but if the reusable rockets are more sustainable and efficient... We have no idea, it wouldn't be the first time an Elon company sold things at a loss, hoping to make it up later on volume.
The underdogs of this world don't get any of those advantages.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:30AM
That's a common tactic across many industries, so it's not quite the indictment I think you intended. For example, Gillette sells its 5-razor shavers at a loss, to make it up on the cartridges for that shaver later on.
Again, that's ubiquitous. Large companies frequently have diversification strategies in their holdings, to protect investor returns from downturns in any particular area. I remember a conversation with an executive from GE who laughed at how silly it was on the face of it for them to buy and sell companies simply based on such a diversification strategy.
Government has also played a role in other developments in transportation. The railroad tycoons were made almost entirely by government handouts in the form of concessions and land giveaways. It's aggravating that those policies also created the entitled rich who plague us today, but it has been useful for the country to have an extensive rail network to move around material.
Me, I think it's also useful to us as a society to have electric cars instead of petroleum powered ones, not least because of environmental reasons. More than that, it's $365 billion dollars a year we send for the stuff to the Middle East and other players who are up to no good (TM), and which would be quite welcome to have reinvested here in myriad ways, perhaps in more wind farms and solar utilities that have been bringing new skills, families, and income to small communities in the Midwest and elsewhere that had been dying for 50 years.
Washington DC delenda est.