1. A Short History On How "Autopilot 2.0" Came To Be
Here is a brief refresher of how we got here and how AutoPilot2 came to be.
1. Driver using autopilot in Florida is killed in accident when his ModelS slams into the side of semi-truck crossing a highway in broad daylight.
2. This news which could have a material impact on the price of the company's stock is known at Tesla but not revealed.
3. Mere days after this crash a second stock offering is completed. Tesla did not disclose the autopilot death until after the $2 billion dollar stock sale.
4. MobilEye fires Tesla as a client. They believe Musk is using their autonomous technology in a reckless, dangerous and negligent fashion.
5. While Tesla has no real lead or advantage in autonomous driving they are in danger of loosing one of their main PR, sales and stock pumps of being an autonomous driving leader. MobilEye takes away core of autopilot 1. Tesla has nothing ready to replace it.. When they do it is a step BACKWARDS.
6. Musk must execute controversial Solar City bailout - buyout in which Tesla will backstop any losses to Musk and his cousins. A messy bankruptcy is in the cards for Solar City and that sort of collapse would not be helpful in keeping the Tesla punch bowl full.
7. Leading up to the shareholder / board vote on the SCTY bailout in Nov, out of the blue comes the lore of AutoPilot 2. From October to December Musk repeatedly says, in his own gobbly gook way of speaking, the vastly superior system will have antiestéticature parity with Auto Pilot 1 by end of 2016. He stutters and stammers through a chorus of "everything is fine, we won't miss a beat, things are better than ever, we're geniuses"
8. Tesla's bailout of Solar City is approved by a depleted board of directors and shareholders in mid Nov.
9. 2016 wraps up with no real roll out of AutoPilot2 antiestéticatures.
10. As limited antiestéticatures with limited capabilities are slowly trickled out from Jan to Mar drivers and press realize a host of dangerous or frustrating problems. Apologist start calling the system "in beta testing".
11. Folks are still waiting for a safe, reliable version of Auto Pilot 2 that has antiestéticature parity with Auto Pilot 1.
Whole thing stinks of a house of cards barely able to keep up appearance as to not disturb the financial machinery of stock sales, bailouts, compensation metric targets and other shenanigans.
Each one of those overview points have troubling backstories in and of themselves. Individually and collectively they reveal major cracks in the fairytale narrative Tesla has built around being a autonomous driving leader. Appears they had to scramble and build a barely operating system in haste when the real geniuses decided to leave Elon's circus of irresponsibility
