I donno. I think the truth lies somewhere in the middle. Yes in your examples they were not completely honest. That’s true. But they have been innovating and shipping real products too which really work in the real world. If I have to choose between a company that does not innovate and never lies, and one that innovates but sometimes lies, then I think I rather have the lying innovator. At least as long as the lies come from a certain optimism and ambition. If the lies come from fear mongering then I’m not so interested.
Having said that, I agree fully that taking the full self driving money in the order of thousands of dollars and not delivering is highly problematic.
> Yes in your examples they were not completely honest.
They weren't honest. End of. No qualification or equivocation.
> At least as long as the lies come from a certain optimism and ambition
It amazes me the amount of mental gymnastics people will perform to defend fraud.
In 2016 Tesla said that "as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." That was a lie: https://electrek.co/2024/08/24/tesla-deletes-its-blog-post-s...
Tesla even lies about things as dumb as Cybertruck quarter mile times:
https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/tesla-cybertruck-beast-vs...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J3H8--CQRE
https://insideevs.com/news/699260/tesla-cybertruck-porsche-r...
Tesla never ran that quarter mile. And the worst thing about it was the Cybertruck's lead engineer trying to rationalize the lie:
https://x.com/wmorrill3/status/1746266437088645551
When your engineers lack commitment to basic honesty then you've got a sick company culture.
Lying is just too much a part of the culture at Tesla. Musk clearly doesn't value honesty or credibility.