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
Related Stories
If Elon Musk can increase Tesla's market value 12-fold in the next 10 years, he may be entitled to a maximum of $56 billion in stock awards (likely lower if more shares are sold to the public). This, along with the ballooning of Musk's existing $12 billion share in his company, and his stake in SpaceX and other companies, could help Musk become a Kardashev I trillionaire alongside Jeff Bezos:
A new payment plan for the CEO was approved by Tesla (TSLA) shareholders Wednesday, a spokesperson confirmed. The incentive-based package essentially states that if Musk hits a series of performance milestones between now and January 2028, and he drives his electric car company's market value 12 times higher — taking it from $54 billion to $650 billion — he'll become astronomically rich.
Now, if Musk does drive a 12-fold increase in Tesla's market value, that doesn't necessarily mean the price of a single share in the company will be 12 times larger. The company can do things like issue new stock that could dilute the value of existing shares. But let's assume Musk's Tesla stock would grow at least 10 times more valuable. That would mean just the shares Musk owns today would be worth $120 billion.
Plus, reaching the agreed upon milestones means Musk would get additional stock awards. According to the new compensation plan, Tesla estimates the value of the stock awards to be $2.6 billion, using accounting methods for estimating the cash value of stock options. But if Tesla's market value balloons just as the payment plan hopes, those stock awards could be worth nearly $56 billion, according to a public filing.
Also at Reuters, Fortune, and CNBC.
Related: Tesla Fires Hundreds of Employees
Tesla Burns More Cash, Fails to Meet Production Targets
Tesla Sued Over Alleged Racism; Deliveries Pushed Back; Semi Truck to be Unveiled
Tesla Semi Truck Will Have a 500+ Mile Range
Tesla Delivers on 100 MW Australian Battery Promise
Elon Musk Vows to Build Tesla Pickup Truck 'Right After' Model Y
Woz Likes his Tesla, Doesn't Trust Elon
Tesla Creating Huge Virtual Power Plant
Elon Musk Expects to Do Coast-to-Coast Autonomous Tesla Drive in 3 to 6 Months
(Score: 2, Informative) by Rosco P. Coltrane on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:14PM (28 children)
- All of them because they're not yet 100% reliable - and the problem with self-driving cars is, if you're an early adopter, you stand to die.
- Some, if not all of them also, because they spy on me.
I'll keep my non-electronic vehicles for as long as I can: until proven otherwise, I'm still more competent driver than an algorithm, and no corporate or state sumbitch knows where I go or what I do with them.
(Score: 5, Touché) by Snow on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:27PM (13 children)
-- Nothing is 100% reliable, especially you.
-- They can just spy on you using your cell phone that you willingly take everywhere you go.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:42PM (4 children)
No cell phone, so no spying on me that way, but now there is the national license plate database built from many, many cameras on the roads. Pretty hard to take a private trip these days by car. Bicycle might be a better option.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:56PM (1 child)
Gonna need to invest in a hat, big sunglasses and a fake beard. Facial recognition is better and better and you bet they'll be extra curious who the bikers are.
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday February 01 2018, @11:57AM
Bike-curious?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:25PM (1 child)
Neither foot nor bicycle will work by itself. You additionally would need to vary your clothing/bike coloration between areas, and ideally obscure your face, whether via hat, sunglasses, mask, or facial prosthetics (the latter may be illegal depending on region and legal guidelines).
Besides that, the only way to ensure future privacy is either to move to a country that does have nor plan to have these systems in place, or find a sufficient number of people to found your own state living up to the privacy ideals America was meant to have, but the populace has been entirely willing to give up thanks to being 'true patriots', 'apathetic assholes', or 'traitors to the founding principles of this once glorious Union.', depending on the person and your views of them.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Webweasel on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:42AM
None of that will help. Back in 2012 there were articles about how you can be identified by how you walk:
https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg21528835-600-cameras-know-you-by-your-walk/ [newscientist.com]
Priyom.org Number stations, Russian Military radio. "You are a bad, bad man. Do you have any other virtues?"-Runaway1956
(Score: 3, Troll) by bob_super on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:54PM (1 child)
> -- Nothing is 100% reliable, especially you.
I'll trust an autonomous car after they demonstrate it going safely unescorted from Panama City to Rio via La Paz without using major highways. Or maybe Beijing to Tashkent via Bangkok.
Keep testing in CA and AZ as much as you want. It's one step up from a private track, but a long long way from the roads most potential buyers travel.
(Score: 2) by frojack on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:17PM
I'd be impressed to see an AV given a destination 400 miles and one state away, without any forewarning to its developers, and have it arrive, roughly on time, through normal traffic, without becoming a huge impediment to traffic along the route. Extra points if the destination or the route could be changed on a whim to take US Routes rather than Freeways, and visit some historical site along the way.
Supposedly Google just orderd a thousand more cars from Chrysler.
These rumors of cars with no brakes, or steering wheel might work on private campuses. But not going to work in rural areas, dirt roads, snowy roads, or when you have to park on the lawn at the highschool foot ball game.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:21PM (3 children)
This. Autonomous vehicles don't need to be 100% reliable, though that is definitely something to strive toward; they only need to be consistently more reliable than the largely-idiot meatbags that currently pilot cars around the streets and highways.
Ha! Got you there. I only have a land line.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:29PM
Autonomous cars are only trustworthy to the establishment. Not to the owner or operator of the vehicle.
And that is where the concern comes from that would keep me from riding in an autonomous vehicle, over a pre-throttle-by-wire manual transmission vehicle. The newer vehicles take away every function you could use to keep yourself save in the event the vehicle is compromised. And they make it exceedingly easy to make an assassination look like an accident if they so deem it necessary.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @03:18AM (1 child)
Ha brilliant! So when they call you, the voice recognition might tell them who you are, but they'll have no idea where you are!
(Score: 2) by chromas on Thursday February 01 2018, @12:09PM
I got an extra long curly cord just so I can roam around while using the land line.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Thursday February 01 2018, @02:49AM (1 child)
At least I'll be dead mainly because of my fault rather than the fault of a tired programmer, a je-m'en-fiche QA and a clueless mid-level manager with a agile-dev, deliver early, deliver-often, God will sort them out mindset.
I haven't heard yet of any mobile able to communicate from inside a proper Faraday cage.
An tin/Al foil is good for blocking the microwave signal, works both for tin-foil hats and for mobile phone enclosures.
Now, go wrap your car in Al foil and then we'll discuss some more.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Thursday February 01 2018, @10:35AM
Make sure you wrap the car windows in foil too, or the Faraday cage won't work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:44PM (6 children)
and people are shit at driving.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:57PM (2 children)
Disagree. People are remarkably good at driving. Even drunk drivers manage to "get away" with it most of the time (this is not meant as an endorsement).
It's a huge system, thus the raw numbers of accidents and injury/deaths appear large. Google turns up 222 million licensed drivers in USA, in 2016.
I'll wait until the self driving car is better than I am (statistically). I don't commute (miss peak traffic times), don't drive impaired, don't have a cell phone to distract me and keep up my car. I figure I'm roughly 5-10x safer than an average driver--a much higher standard for the self driving car to meet.
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:15PM (1 child)
Is a commuting VIA car really a bigger risk than a non-commuter? Genuinely curious.
Commuters are generally taking a route that they have taken 100s of times along with other people who have also taken the same route 100s of times. These are also people that drive at least twice per day, and are not teenagers, nor elderly.
If you compare that to late morining/early afternoon drivers, they tend to be elderly or moms with screaming kids distracting them in the back of the mini-van.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @12:33AM
Commuting sucks and is boring, lots of people eating / drinking while driving, using cell phones, or just bored and not paying as much attention.
Would have to look into the stats to get a real answer though, what % of accidents happen during rush hour times? Then control for higher number of vehicles on the road, and whatever other factors....
(Score: 2, Troll) by acid andy on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:58PM (2 children)
You're just echoing what the shills tell everyone.
So you're happy to trust your life, day after day, with a machine that is just slightly better-than-shit at driving. Except we don't even know if they're better than people yet. We won't until mass roll-out has happened.
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 0, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:26PM (1 child)
Everyone is already happy to trust idiot meatbags at the wheel. If machines can match or be even slightly less-shit than the meatbags... oh, wait, this discussion involves idiot meatbags trying to justify not relinquishing control of their machines, doesn't it? Never mind. Carry on. You will be replaced someday, human.
(Score: 5, Touché) by acid andy on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:37PM
Right. I see. Do you like Tide Pods?
If a cat has kittens, does a rat have rittens, a bat bittens and a mat mittens?
(Score: 5, Funny) by MostCynical on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:54PM (4 children)
Re:I don't trust any car
All of them because they're not yet 100% reliable - and the problem with cars is, you stand to die.
FTFY
Over 30,000 deaths per year.
https://crimeresearch.org/2015/01/are-guns-more-likely-to-kill-you-than-a-car-is-no/ [crimeresearch.org]
"I guess once you start doubting, there's no end to it." -Batou, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex
(Score: 1) by tftp on Thursday February 01 2018, @02:51AM (3 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @03:21AM (1 child)
Some want to live, others merely exist. Trying to stop others from living is an impediment to your existence.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:50PM
Nice threat, almost didn't notice!
(Score: 2) by tangomargarine on Thursday February 01 2018, @03:45PM
Yes, exactly: if all vehicles are automated, which is not going to happen for a long time, if ever. Mixing human drivers and AI drivers is going to be..."interesting."
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @03:41AM (1 child)
Mercedes says that if confronted with a situation where a decision has to be made about harming the driver or harming bystanders, the self-driving Mercedes will plow through the 6 year olds crossing the street rather than drive off into a ditch-- Mercedes knows their market.
https://www.google.com/search?q=mercendes+self+driving+car+to+favor+driver+not+bystanders+in+crash&client=firefox-b-ab&gbv=1&sei=WYlyWpi7LYn2jwP5tYnoAQ [google.com]
If you have a license plate on your car you are being tracked. If you have a cell phone that is powered on, you are being tracked. If you own a car that was made in the last 5 years, you are possibly being tracked in real time-- a lot of these cars have, and use a data connection to track you even if you do not pay extra to use it for something you find useful. For these years of cars and a bit older, you are almost definitely being tracked off-liine to a "black box" that can be accessed and the data used against you e.g., after a traffic accident.
https://yro.slashdot.org/story/11/09/21/003259/onstar-terms-and-conditions-update-raises-privacy-concerns [slashdot.org]
I'm not sure what the solution is, but technical mitigation will only go so far (search page for "salt")
http://wipkip.nikhef.nl/events/defcon/DEF%20CON%2021/DEF%20CON%2021%20video%20and%20slides/DEF%20CON%2021%20Hacking%20Conference%20Presentation%20By%20Pukingmonkey%20-%20The%20Road%20Less%20Surreptitiously%20Traveled%20-%20Video%20and%20Slides.srt [nikhef.nl]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:29AM
My technical solution was to remove the black box. Failing that, I would have been happy disconnecting it from its antennas only.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 31 2018, @10:47PM (4 children)
Must be a new record for me, I submitted this story about three hours ago and here it is on the main page, wow!
The secret sauce for a quick response is a combination of:
* a small queue
* anything to do with Woz
Thanks editors.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:07PM (2 children)
* anything to do with Elong Musky
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Snow on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:17PM (1 child)
I love the Musk.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:49PM
Well I hope you get a good whiff come February 6th.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2018/01/after-zuma-spacex-goes-for-its-second-flight-of-2018/ [arstechnica.com]
http://www.orlandosentinel.com/business/brinkmann-on-business/os-bz-spacex-falcon-heavy-february-20180129-story.html [orlandosentinel.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:14PM
Seriously, they could post something along the lines of "This is what Steve Wozniak had for breakfast" and I would still be interested. Now, if there were a lot of fluff pieces about him it would eventually get filtered out as noise. Steve Wozniak is living pretty much every geek's dream. He got to do what he liked, ended up with a decent chunk of cash, but didn't end up with the crazed fan girl kind of Fame. That's like a Grand Slam in Baseball (Getting as many scores as possible with one home run).
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 4, Interesting) by frojack on Wednesday January 31 2018, @11:03PM (2 children)
I would say Musk delivers far bigger tech than Jobs did.
Tesla never set out to own the market in Electric cars. They set out to MOVE the market to electric cars. https://www.tesla.com/blog/mission-tesla [tesla.com]
If you are not buying the NEXT model, you're pretty happy with the Tesla you actually got.
If you buy something not yet released, you are bound to get expectation inflation while waiting for it.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 2) by unauthorized on Thursday February 01 2018, @04:55AM
Oh please, do you actually expect us to believe that a for-profit company whose main business is trying to create a new market is actually not trying to gain the early bird advantages? Every company has some "inspirational" word salad mission statement about how they are making the world a better place. Especially the ones who employ child laborers and offer abysmal working conditions to people who don't have any choice.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by hemocyanin on Thursday February 01 2018, @05:26AM
I actually thought that was the most interesting part of the story, this sort of muffled slight against Jobs and those like them. It's a fair assessment in my book.
(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.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @01:11AM (1 child)
That guy who's known for building a boutique knockoff PC 40 years ago and convincing hipsters into buying it is right! We should all listen to his sage and relevant advice.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 01 2018, @02:51AM
Elon Musk : Talulah Riley :: Steve Wozniak : Kathy Griffin
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Thursday February 01 2018, @06:07PM
Why is anyone listening to Woz? He designed some 8-bit computers in the 70s and 80s. I mean, it's not even in the same league as self-driving cars or rockets that can reach orbit. I don't see how his experience has any practical relevance on Tesla technology other than as a direct customer. Why is his opinion interesting or valid on Tesla technology, enough to warrant an article or post? He certainly isn't shy about making unfounded claims. I'm all for questioning Musk and his marketing hype but let's do it systematically and with something to back it up other than tech-celeb hype/fan worship.
And the dig at Jobs. Come on. Jobs left Apple and moved over the NeXT. Guess what. They build some pretty innovative computers while Apple churned out duds. Woz just sounds like he is just nursing multi-decade bitterness and jealously with comments like that.