“What concerns me is that Tesla is not known for taking a slow and methodical approach, they move fast and break things and people are at risk because of that. There have been preventable deaths, so it’s an immediate concern for us.”
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This quote lays bare the reality here: NHTSA has already failed to constrain Tesla in any meaningful way, even though it is a wild outlier in terms of safety, and its misleadingly-marketed products have caused preventable deaths and eroded trust in the technology more broadly.
So yes, Musk's ability to gut NHTSA is bad. No question. But all of this, Musk's entire empire of fraud and his reign of terror at DOGE, has been made possible by NHTSA's inability to stand up to him. We are seeing a black swan consequence of profound regulatory failure, and we should call it that.
The idea that "stifling innovation" is the worst possible outcome for a regulator like NHTSA needs to die. Allowing Tesla to plow ahead with a fraud that has contributed to tens of deaths, with more to come as driverless deployment beckons, threatens public safety and the legitimate AV sector alike
More importantly, it has caused people like me, who believe very much in the need for automotive safety regulation, to become so cynical that Elon gutting NHTSA kinda just makes me shrug and say "welp." Failure to meet Tesla's challenge makes the whole exercise seem pointless. That's a bad outcome!
And doubly so because many of the people involved in these crashes didn't consent to be part of this testing. The NHTSA's inability to force the companies to prove the vehicles are safer than humans before open road testing is a failure.
Having regulatory obstacles can be good for reducing competition: i.e., only the best companies with sufficient resources can get over the obstacle. So I'd think that Tesla, with its enormous $$$ would want regs to stifle competition. Or maybe Tesla's product can't stand up to scrutiny
Hoping the first time the fashcab runs over a kid will be the end of Elon’s phony autonomous FSD. Insurance companies and angry parents will not be kind to Elon and the fashcab. Elon should be begging the NHSTA to protect Tesla from his lies about autonomous FSD.
Is he still planning on releasing robo taxis this year? Because the tech is still dog-shit tier.
Previously I would assume he'll just continue stringing investors along but now that he can just fire all of the regulators I think he might actually release an army of deadly shitmobiles.
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https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2023-12-11/tesla-dmv-false-advertising-charges
https://la.streetsblog.org/2019/11/27/federal-government-doing-nothing-on-avs
The public is largely unaware of the NHTSA’s organizational dysfunction, incompetence and lack of legitimacy.
Battery fires burn through standard firefighting gear in a few seconds. If you can't get out, you're gone.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/fatal-crash-four-dead-lake-shore-cherry-1.7361751
Previously I would assume he'll just continue stringing investors along but now that he can just fire all of the regulators I think he might actually release an army of deadly shitmobiles.