![\"Elon](\"https:\/\/wordpress-1016567-4521551.cloudwaysapps.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2023\/08\/elon-musk-is-self-aware-semiwiki.jpg\" "\\"Elon")
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\u201cI think we\u2019ll be better than human by the end of the year.\u201d \u2013 Elon Musk, CEO, Tesla<\/strong><\/p>\n Parsing the impact of the latest Tesla earnings call featuring CEO Elon Musk has become an eerie out-of-body experience. The comments of the CEO are simultaneously assessed in real time and in retrospect as they are being spoken. It is automotive history in the making \u2013 a latter day Henry Ford undoing much of what that scion created. Think: re-vision (not division) of labor.<\/p>\n There is, of course, the prosaic assessment of projected earnings hits or misses \u2013 and the \u201cmarkets\u201d chose a negative response to Musk\u2019s otherwise euphoric take on the company\u2019s prospects. What was hard to ignore was the company\u2019s ongoing success in the face of multiple macroeconomic obstacles and Musk\u2019s own musings on his own path.<\/p>\n At one point he described himself as \u201cthe boy who cried FSD\u201d \u2013 referring to the controversial full-self-driving capability available to new Tesla buyers for $15,000. This is the same FSD that is still not quite living up to its name.<\/p>\n Musk\u2019s level of self-awareness is hard to ignore or avoid. One can only imagine what it\u2019s like to read about yourself on a daily, hourly basis. In real-time Musk must come to grips with who he is, who he thinks he is, and who everyone else thinks he is or what they think of him.<\/p>\n Maintaining one\u2019s grip on reality in these circumstances is itself no small feat. For Musk it is made even more complex by the fact that there is the Tesla Musk, the SpaceX Musk, the Twitter Musk, the x.AI Musk etc. etc. Everyone has their own Musk.<\/p>\n The Tesla Musk is probably the most interesting and palatable. But the Tesla Musk is not without his skeptics and critics taking into account unfulfilled full-self-driving forecasts, ongoing investigations of fatal crashes, and price cut and vehicle delivery flip-flops.<\/p>\n The most disturbing aspect of the latest Tesla earnings call with Musk is his comprehensive grasp of the technical issues (software, AI, battery tech) facing his company and the industry and his willingness to discuss those challenges and the company\u2019s plans to overcome them. Perhaps even more important is Musk\u2019s discussion of how the company has already overcome them.<\/p>\n Musk wastes no time getting to two of what may be the biggest questions facing the automotive industry:<\/p>\n Musk says nothing of \u201cvision zero\u201d platitudes and plans. After all, talking about vision zero, these days, is like talking about climate change. We feeble little humans have set off global climate shifts that will require decades if not centuries to reverse. In the same way, a million human beings are dying annually on a global scale on roadways \u2013 a reality that will be equally difficult to correct.<\/p>\n As the pied piper of electric vehicles, Musk is taking on both these global challenges at once \u2013 and can already point to some success.<\/p>\n For Musk the answer lies in a unified theory of \u201cautonomy.\u201d It will take mountains of data to improve and achieve full-self-driving, which will require a limitless supply of processing power (much of it from Nvidia), to achieve the objective of superhuman driving capability \u2013 a 10x-100x improvement on human driving \u2013 which still won\u2019t get \u201cus\u201d to zero fatalities.<\/p>\n Just as Musk acknowledged, on the earnings call, the expanding adoption of Tesla\u2019s fast charging connector and network technology by car makers such as General Motors and Ford Motor Company, he hinted at the prospect of the first car maker licensee of Tesla FSD technology. No names yet.<\/p>\n No other car company is even close to the required level of data collection and processing that Musk has already put in place and is expanding daily. In the context of achieving this ultimate goal of safe self-driving, the $15,000 price tag for FSD will seem trivial, he says, but even so a subscription-based alternative could be made available.<\/p>\n In a world where we have routinely been \u201csold\u201d by \u201clegacy\u201d auto makers on the wonders and attractions and liberation of human driving, Musk has made machine-assisted driving aspirational. It is for this and other reasons that analysts and shareholders hang on his every word.<\/p>\n Notably, Tesla is fundamentally rewiring the consumer mindset regarding cars and driving in such a way that it is now short-circuiting the value of mass market automobile advertising. Increasingly, television, radio, or Internet advertising targeted at traditional internal combustion vehicle value propositions is missing its mark. Tesla does little advertising of its own.<\/p>\n I may only be speaking for myself, but as an EV owner my experience of TV advertising for ICE vehicles has been permanently altered. These ads are only interesting to me, now, as historical artifacts.<\/p>\n As for hiring and retaining the personnel necessary to achieve Musk\u2019s dreams and Tesla\u2019s objectives, Musk talks about interviewing and recruiting candidates who essentially don\u2019t want to work for Tesla. By expanding his endeavors with SpaceX and, most recently, x.AI Musk has been able to hire and retain top performers whose contributions to other efforts convey a collateral benefit to Tesla.<\/p>\n Musk is following in the footsteps of auto industry founders who also diverted the efforts of their engineers into non-automotive endeavors. Car companies today have strangely lost the luster of past non-automotive forays.<\/p>\n At the very beginning of the earnings call Musk noted record vehicle production (nearing 2M annualized) and revenue ($25B) and talked about anticipating \u201cquasi-infinite\u201d demand for a future dedicated \u201crobotaxi.\u201d If any organization could make robotaxis popular, it would be Tesla.<\/p>\n Musk has thrust Tesla to the forefront of autonomous vehicle and artificial intelligence development. While we worry about the machines becoming self aware, a self aware Elon Musk is oddly reassuring. He knows how he sounds. He knows what we\u2019re thinking \u2013 even as he is altering the way we think. Don\u2019t be frightened, but do be aware, like Elon.<\/p>\n Xcelium Safety Certification Rounds Out Cadence Safety Solution<\/a><\/p>\n Sondrel Extends ASIC Turnkey Design to Supply Services From Europe to US<\/a><\/p>\n Automotive IP Certification<\/a><\/p>\n Share this post via: <\/span><\/p>\n\n
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