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Let’s check out the last three Elon Musk headlines I’ve aggregated from the BroBible site:
Elon Musk Unveils Ambitious Plans To Colonize The Moon And Mars Within Next 7 Years
Elon Musk’s Newest Goal Is To Get You Anywhere On Earth In Under An Hour
Elon Musk is a Johnny Manziel of futuristic billionaires. Nobody is better at making promises and capturing headlines without delivering on them. We all want to check out Mars, and get to China in the time it takes to take a dump, but until I see Musk doing cartwheels on a different planet or snap his fingers and teleport to Bangkok, I will take everything he says with a grain of salt.
And apparently I’m not the only one.
A General Motors executive said that Elon Musk is “full of crap” when it comes to his claims about Tesla’s self-driving technology, Business Insider reports. Musk has claimed that Tesla’s new cars have the necessary features to eventually enable full autonomy.
Tesla’s new vehicles are equipped with multiple cameras, ultrasonic sensors, a long-range radar sensor, and other hardware to enable its semi-autonomous system, Autopilot. Musk has claimed that the new hardware suite, which was rolled out in new vehicles last October, will eventually enable full autonomy once the software is ready.
However, Tesla’s vehicles do not have lidar sensors, which is a remote sensing technology that uses lasers to map out the world around it.
Most companies pursuing self-driving cars see lidar as a critical part of an autonomous system. Waymo, Ford, and GM all use lidar sensors to help enable their self-driving systems.
Scott Miller, GM’s director of autonomous vehicle integration, recently unveiled its own semi-autonomous driving system called Super Cruise on new Cadillac CT6 vehicles that is thought to be a challenger to Tesla’s Autopilot. He is calling bullshit on Musk’s claims.
“To think you can see everything you need for a level five autonomous car [full self-driving] with cameras and radar, I don’t know how you do that,” he said.
I don’t know who to believe at this point, but if I’m not sitting on a beach chair on Mars sipping Mars cocktails by 2025, we should all file a class-action lawsuit against Musk.
[h/t Business Insider]