Elon Musk: Officially a fraud and piece of shit. Official or unofficial war criminal?

[SydneyCarton 48,147]

Many people also invested in Tesla because they didn't view it as an automaker stock, they viewed it as a tech stock. A company where potential other technologies/patents/companies might be spun off and create large values or windfalls. And for those that casually pay attention to the internet, or politics, that might still be the case in their minds. I think this gives twitter kind of a baseline stickiness and floor on that stock. Until it starts losing money. 

[Parliament 14,282]

2 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

I thought I read you did it for tax purposes though, right? 

Yes.  But still.

[texasdago 7,576]

 

 

[hornian 5,222]

11 minutes ago, texasdago said:

 

 

I have this too. 

What a joke of a website. 

[Sawbonz 27,582]

2 hours ago, Captainant said:

Funny you mention that - an awesome builder youtuber that I follow, Simone Giertz, made her own "Truckla" back in 2018 and finally came back around to build an autonomous charger like elmo promised and failed to deliver on too
 

 

[SydneyCarton 48,147]

So he's using twitter to try to sell/pump up the value of Dogecoin? Maybe he needs to pump and dump some dogecoin to make an interest payment on his twitter financing. 

[JMFP 1,120]

From the Ukraine thread, it wasn't Elon:

 

  

5 minutes ago, The Dog said:

 

 

[Hefeweizen 5,328]

It’s funny because Elron is supposed to be a tech savant and the fucking dog guys from Ukraine hacked him.

 

 But not funny because he’ll probably cancel star link to teach them a lesson.

[Chopper 17,243]

Tesla removed the ultrasonic sensors from some of the 2023 models to save about $125 per vehicle, choosing to utilize the cameras already in place on the vehicle (which doesn't include a camera on the front bumper) and it doesn't appear to be going so well. The curb marks on the brand new 2023 are amusing, as is how the tesla warns of a semi truck and trailer inside of a small garage.

 

[JMFP 1,120]

Ok, so... I mean yeah you would and should expect the '23 model to have at least or better equipment than the '22 model but it's not the car's fault you can't park without hitting something. 

[SydneyCarton 48,147]

17 minutes ago, JMFP said:

From the Ukraine thread, it wasn't Elon:

 

  

 

 

15 minutes ago, Hefeweizen said:

It’s funny because Elron is supposed to be a tech savant and the fucking dog guys from Ukraine hacked him.

 

 But not funny because he’ll probably cancel star link to teach them a lesson.

Pretty sure that's just NAFO being funny, and Elon absolutely made that change himself. 

[Chopper 17,243]

25 minutes ago, JMFP said:

Ok, so... I mean yeah you would and should expect the '23 model to have at least or better equipment than the '22 model but it's not the car's fault you can't park without hitting something. 

My sarcasm meter may be missing something, but there are good reasons why vehicles have "park assist." The technology has been around since the early 2000s and because it's installed in the bumpers, it's superior to cameras.

I was just going to type up something about how elmo is going to find out the NYT has the very best lawyers. And then I saw this. Uh oh.

 

[atomheartbevo 89,775]

4 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

That said, you can mock elmo and hate him and still acknowledge that his bread-and-butter business is more or less booming (financially/on paper) right now and that's supplementing and adding to any losses seen with his mishandling of Twitter.

He's doing a brilliant job

https://www.pcmag.com/news/elon-musk-tweet-broke-federal-labor-laws-us-court-rules

Quote

A federal appeals court has ruled(Opens in a new window) Elon Musk broke US labor laws by tweeting that Tesla workers would lose stock trading options if they joined a union.

The ruling, by the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals, centered around a 2018 tweet(Opens in a new window) Musk wrote after a Twitter user pressed him on what he thought of unions amid an organizing campaign by the United Auto Workers at Tesla’s Fremont, California plant. In 2021, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) found Musk had violated federal labor laws because of the tweet, which the appeals court upheld on Friday.

Quote

The offending tweet, which is still online despite the court ordering its removal, reads: “Nothing stopping Tesla team at our car plant from voting union. Could do so tmrw if they wanted. But why pay union dues & give up stock options for nothing? Our safety is 2X better than when plant was UAW & everybody already gets healthcare.”

 

1 hour ago, hornian said:

I have this too. 

What a joke of a website. 

Inspires confidence in advertisers being asked to spend millions on there.

[The Dog 44,086]

59 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

 

Pretty sure that's just NAFO being funny, and Elon absolutely made that change himself. 

 

[Neonmoon 38,130]

Watching Twitter completely melt down under Elon reinforces every story that SpaceX has dedicated employees to distract Elon when he comes to their offices. 

[Hefeweizen 5,328]

Ok I will slink away in shame…

 

Wait, I post on surly, I have no shame.

[The Dog 44,086]

NAFO leaning into it and trying to convince people it was them:

 

[Tailgate 3,022]

https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/stock-market-news-today-04-03-2023/card/dogecoin-jumps-22-after-twitter-logo-switches-to-shiba-inu-QH1VYAdoscZaplvWNKjr


Dogecoin Price Jumps After Twitter Switches Logo to Shiba Inu

[atomheartbevo 89,775]

2 hours ago, Neonmoon said:

Watching Twitter completely melt down under Elon reinforces every story that SpaceX has dedicated employees to distract Elon when he comes to their offices. 

Yep, this dogecoin thing is yet another example of Elon being surrounded by people afraid of pushing back and challenging him.  It's making this all look like he's a teenage sysop of a BBS back in the early 90s who has to control everything and thinks he can make people like the stuff that he likes through sheer force of will.

[F250 28,809]

I don't use Twitter much anymore but I still have the app on my phone and recently have been getting these notifications.

 

Spoiler

 

 

[South Austin 52,552]

19 minutes ago, F250 said:

I don't use Twitter much anymore but I still have the app on my phone and recently have been getting these notifications.

 

  Hide contents

 

 

I mean, is that at all surprising for you?

[Brisketexan 105,200]

44 minutes ago, F250 said:

I don't use Twitter much anymore but I still have the app on my phone and recently have been getting these notifications.

 

  Hide contents

 

 

Wait.  Where's the spider?  Is it hiding behind Bert?  Shit...WHERE'S BERT?  Dammit, I'm no good at these puzzles....

[YChang 3,460]

Is that even a real human being?

[South Austin 52,552]

Hey, if the boner is real . . .

[Fastbreak 3,990]

Yep, this dogecoin thing is yet another example of Elon being surrounded by people afraid of pushing back and challenging him.  It's making this all look like he's a teenage sysop of a BBS back in the early 90s who has to control everything and thinks he can make people like the stuff that he likes through sheer force of will.

As a former teenage bbs sysop, I am offended to be compared to this piece of shit…

[atomheartbevo 89,775]

6 minutes ago, Fastbreak said:

As a former teenage bbs sysop, I am offended to be compared to this piece of shit…

I was a 20-something BBS sysop, so I feel like it accurately only portrays teenage sysops and not 20-somethings.

I'm also waiting for him to start looking at what twitter users are saying on other platforms and get mad if they criticize him, like angsty sysops who got jealous when their users posted a lot on other BBSes...

I started to wonder if he would have been on BBSes, and given his age and how he acts, yeah, he totally would have been.  Somebody needs to convince him that twitter can be the ultimate BBS, and just needs a warez file attachment feature and a way for people to implement door games.

[The Dog 44,086]

LOL

 

[Bateshorn 9,928]

14 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Yep, this dogecoin thing is yet another example of Elon being surrounded by people afraid of pushing back and challenging him.  It's making this all look like he's a teenage sysop of a BBS back in the early 90s who has to control everything and thinks he can make people like the stuff that he likes through sheer force of will.

Jesus, I had to live under one of those fools. Shit is triggering.

Edited April 4, 2023 by Bateshorn

[Francisco 2.0 32,406]

https://www.theverge.com/2023/4/4/23668722/elon-musk-twitter-blue-checkmark-verified

 

Quote

“Elon [Musk]’s Twitter deal certainly must also rank as the most time-adjusted value-destructive leveraged buyout of all time,” says William Cohan, writing for Puck. While Musk has estimated Twitter’s value as $20 billion in a March 31st email to employees — meaning its value dropped by more than half after the $44 billion acquisition — Twitter’s actual value is even lower than that. The banks still own $13 billion of Twitter’s debt and can’t sell it for more than 50 cents on the dollar, Cohan says. “The destruction of $37.5 billion in value in less than six months must have set some sort of Wall Street record.”

 

 

Quote

Musk already biffed it with advertisers: revenue has fallen by half since October, Bloomberg reports. Historically, ads were the main source of revenue — 89 percent of it in Twitter’s last full year as a public company. So Twitter desperately needs to make money. That puts a lot of pressure on the company’s paid subscription service, Twitter Blue, to bring in the bucks. What does $8 a month get you? Oh, a blue checkmark.

 

Quote

A number of prominent verified users, including LeBron James, the White House, and The New York Times, have said they won’t pay for Twitter Blue. That reduces the checkmark to “marketer tag.” On some level, Musk knows that, too, since it looks like Twitter might be working on ways to hide the checkmark. He also seems to have given up on removing it from most verified accounts since it was supposed to happen on April 1st and most of us still have them. (There may be technical reasons for this; The Washington Post reports there’s no way to remove verification in bulk.)

 

Spoiler

For those who may be unfamiliar, that checkmark was originally used as a way of verifying users. The proliferation of hoaxes during Hurricane Sandy was part of the impetus for creating it; misinformation and impersonation were so normal in the early days of the social media platform that the remnants can be seen in the former president’s handle: @realDonaldTrump.

Eventually, this silly checkmark came to be seen as a status symbol because humans can make status symbols out of fucking anything. But its original intent was a service; it was meant to tell an audience that the speaker had received at least a cursory identity verification. The goal was to make things less confusing.

The heart of Musk’s resentment, as near as I can tell, is that nobodies like me (that is, journalists) also got checkmarks. For Twitter, there was a business reason! Having a checkmark isn’t a guarantee that all the information coming from the account is true — verified accounts can be hacked or hoaxed like everyone else — but it does give users a measure of comfort in the quick-fire information coming out. There’s also accountability: spread too much misinformation, and Twitter stripped your badge.

This matters because reporters live-tweet breaking news. If you wanted to know what my notes looked like for, variously, Musk’s defamation trial, Epic Games v. Apple, or Elizabeth Holmes’ fraud trial, you just had to follow my Twitter account; I was posting my impressions in real time before writing up the day in review for this site. The blue checkmark next to my name gave readers some measure of confidence I wasn’t the kind of person that might blithely make stuff up. 

Musk, who has a somewhat contentious relationship with the media, seized on the idea of the checkmark as a status symbol. He offered it for sale. By charging for it, he devalued it. The first time this happened, it didn’t go that well: impersonation, the exact thing the checkmark was meant to prevent, ran rampant. But there was another problem. Identifying who paid to get the checkmark immediately marked them as lower in status than the legacy checks. 

The basic truth of cool, as anyone can tell you, is that trying to be coolis not cool, and paying to be cool is for suckers. Come April 15th, Musk has said that the For You page will be paid Twitter Blue users only — which means it’ll be full of marketers, newsletter writers, and other desperate content shills essentially ruining the feed. That is, assuming it happens. This is an Elon Musk company; he might change his mind

There is a world in which Twitter Blue is a product that makes sense, but Musk would have to return it to its origins as a service. If paying for Twitter meant a better user experience — the ability to use TweetDeck or Tweetbot, encrypted DMs, or priority service on spam, hacking, and harassment — it might make sense for LeBron James and grubby bloggers like me to purchase it. But as a status symbol? Girl, please.

What I’m enjoying the most right now is the splash damage. Remember when Jessica Lessin, the founder of The Information, told us that “watching @elonmusk + Co take over Twitter is like watching a business school case study on how to make money on the internet”? Or when Jack Dorsey said Musk was the “singular solution I trust” with Twitter? Maybe Jason Calacanis saying on his podcast that “there’s no doubt that, I think, Elon can turn this around pretty quickly and make it massively profitable”? All those quotes were predicated on what was popular wisdom at the time: that Musk was some kind of genius. 

Musk’s reputation — his cool factor, if you will — was part of what sold Teslas. Except now we’re all watching him publicly flail with an also-ran social network. It’s increasingly obvious that Musk’s less a real-life Tony Stark and more of a cranky Boomer who spends too much time looking at memes while his businesses are on fire. That has implications not just for Twitter but for his other companies, too. Tesla shares are down almost 50 percent over the last 12 months.

But maybe Musk’s mistake is understandable — after all, part of his reputation as a genius came from his successful businesses. For him, money did buy cool. That’s part of what makes the Twitter mess so funny. Being exposed as bad at business? Not so much a genius? That’s the kind of reputational damage Musk can’t buy his way out of.

 

[NoName 16,369]

14 hours ago, atomheartbevo said:

Yep, this dogecoin thing is yet another example of Elon being surrounded by people afraid of pushing back and challenging him.  It's making this all look like he's a teenage sysop of a BBS back in the early 90s who has to control everything and thinks he can make people like the stuff that he likes through sheer force of will.

i saw someone say that they thought it was an april fools joke they were unable to pull off by april 1st so they just rolled it out a few days later.

these dumbasses can only do it on the web though, not the apps evidently.

[NoName 16,369]

this is what i was talking about with playing games with numbers in Europe for Q1
 

Quote

 

Examples, after weakish jan and feb numbers (2! cars delivered for january, Norway, or 200 and 500 for jan/feb Sweden), just in march:

4600+ Teslas were dumped in Denmark, a 513% increase over last year.

4000 in Sweden (160% QoQ, over 50% YoY)

3100+ in Netherlands, a 749% increase YoY(!) and 57% QoQ.

7889 in Norway, +86% YoY

2820 in Italy, + 214% yoY

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89,775]

1 hour ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

Musk’s reputation — his cool factor, if you will — was part of what sold Teslas. Except now we’re all watching him publicly flail with an also-ran social network. It’s increasingly obvious that Musk’s less a real-life Tony Stark and more of a cranky Boomer who spends too much time looking at memes while his businesses are on fire. That has implications not just for Twitter but for his other companies, too. Tesla shares are down almost 50 percent over the last 12 months.

But maybe Musk’s mistake is understandable — after all, part of his reputation as a genius came from his successful businesses. For him, money did buy cool. That’s part of what makes the Twitter mess so funny. Being exposed as bad at business? Not so much a genius? That’s the kind of reputational damage Musk can’t buy his way out of.

Musk is a cranky boomer.  I like that image.  It's perfect.

[tbone_ 14,142]

Isn’t he technically a gen xer?

I know only gen exers actually recognize that distinction.

[Chopper 17,243]

56 minutes ago, Francisco 2.0 said:

“Elon [Musk]’s Twitter deal certainly must also rank as the most time-adjusted value-destructive leveraged buyout of all time,” says William Cohan, writing for Puck.

I would have guessed the AOL-Time Warner merger was worse, although it wasn't a leveraged buyout because AOL paid for it with their own stock. However, over the 20+ years of its existence the parent company earned back most of the $165 billion cost of the deal by selling off various parts of the company plus they pocketed some profits along the way.

 

 

[atomheartbevo 89,775]

11 minutes ago, tbone_ said:

Isn’t he technically a gen xer?

I know only gen exers actually recognize that distinction.

Well, you see, it's like this....

And Gen Xers hate to be called boomers, so it's perfect for him, because

I prefer the term latchkey kid, but whatever.

Edited April 4, 2023 by atomheartbevo

[Brisketexan 105,200]

13 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

Well, you see, it's like this....

And Gen Xers hate to be called boomers, so it's perfect for him, because

I prefer the term latchkey kid, but whatever, NEVERMIND.

Fixed last line for generational accuracy.

Of course, Elon's obsession with what other people -- mostly fucking burnout losers -- think of him is rather contra the dominant Gen-X ethos.

[Captain Ron 12,891]

23 hours ago, HamsterHookah said:

No dude. Again, I agree with you. I'm a Tesla bear. 

I specifically said that Tesla was more or less booming this year "financially / on paper". The stock and market cap leading to a bulwarking of elmo's paper wealth, which supplements the paper losses, by much, of his malpractice of twitter. My personal belief is that Tesla is still acting like a speculative stock to some degree.

I don't think it's sustainable, but I do think it's worth noting and potentially discussing on an Elon-focused thread (not just Twitter focused) as part of the broader conversation about the guy (visionary or fraud).

I think this demonstrate a major failing with the idea of blitzscaling and ultimately applying it to just about everything. By effectively separating a company's stock from the performance you can make statements like "Company X is doing great! See their stock price!" when in fact the company might be doing really shitty or is pretty flat.

I mean Netflix as a company does great, they have around $32B in annual revenue and make $4.5 billion a year. But they announce a loss in subscribers - their stock tanks! Coke should be a major bull, revenue $38.7B/profit $25B, but their stock is relatively flat.

So when you say this about Tesla - it's kind of meaningless. Tesla's STOCK is booming, their business is a different story.

[HamsterHookah 112]

14 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

I think this demonstrate a major failing with the idea of blitzscaling and ultimately applying it to just about everything. By effectively separating a company's stock from the performance you can make statements like "Company X is doing great! See their stock price!" when in fact the company might be doing really shitty or is pretty flat.

I mean Netflix as a company does great, they have around $32B in annual revenue and make $4.5 billion a year. But they announce a loss in subscribers - their stock tanks! Coke should be a major bull, revenue $38.7B/profit $25B, but their stock is relatively flat.

So when you say this about Tesla - it's kind of meaningless. Tesla's STOCK is booming, their business is a different story.

Good point, but in the shareholder capitalism world we live in, most people understand the conflation of the two (health of stock price / health of business) to be generally the same in shorthand conversations pertaining to business.

Edit to add: There are of course irregularities and weird outliers like AMC and BBBY and, I argue, TSLA

Edited April 4, 2023 by HamsterHookah

[F250 28,809]

1 hour ago, tbone_ said:

Isn’t he technically a gen xer?

I know only gen exers actually recognize that distinction.

Yeah he is. Atomheartbevo pretty much nails it when he describes Musk as a teenage BBS SysOp which is definitely a GenX subculture. Musk doesn't seem like he ever matured out of that culture.

 

[Captain Ron 12,891]

1 hour ago, HamsterHookah said:

Good point, but in the shareholder capitalism world we live in, most people understand the conflation of the two (health of stock price / health of business) to be generally the same in shorthand conversations pertaining to business.

Edit to add: There are of course irregularities and weird outliers like AMC and BBBY and, I argue, TSLA

I don't think most people understand this at all. See Netflix, who's stock cratered on a loss of subscribers when as a whole its core business is pretty solid (again see my comment on revenues and profit).

BTW - what is the outlier of BBBY? If anything they are one of the few stocks who's performance is matching the company (which has been doing shitty for years now).

[Chopper 17,243]

My understanding of Netflix stock -- which, from reading this thread I've realized may not match everyone's -- is that they were previously viewed as a tech stock, thus the hyper-focus by tech investors on growth. Right up until the moment growth slowed and tech investors decided Netflix was merely another entertainment streaming company undeserving of the typical tech stock treatment of ignoring earnings because the main focus should be on continued rapid growth and world domination.

But unlike tesla their Board isn't composed of lapdogs to the CEO, which obviously insulates elmo and makes him far wealthier than he otherwise would be. OTOH netflix stumbled at a time when they faced both fewer people staying at home due to covid, as well as rising competition. Unlike Netflix, for tesla the covid dynamics, or more people being out and about, seem to tilt in tesla's favor. Yet as was the case with netflix they are facing more competition now, and much greater competition is headed their way within the next 24 months.

[atomheartbevo 89,775]

3 hours ago, F250 said:

Yeah he is. Atomheartbevo pretty much nails it when he describes Musk as a teenage BBS SysOp which is definitely a GenX subculture. Musk doesn't seem like he ever matured out of that culture.

And there were some great teenage BBS SysOps that came out of that.  But there were some that were using it or seeing it as some kind of popularity thing.  Replacing the logos with the dog thing, right out of that culture - some SysOp getting a piece of ANSI art added to his board and wants everybody to like it, and breaks into chat when somebody logs on and wants to know what they think.

[Captain Ron 12,891]

 

[Pig Bellmont 8,719]

39 minutes ago, Captain Ron said:

 

Au contraire - this looks to be a market manipulation rather than teenage dork stuff. (I guess it can be both). Unlike with Tesla stock, crypto is still largely unregulated so why not execute a huge pump and dump on dogecoin to make back some cash? 

Edited April 5, 2023 by Pig Bellmont

[atomheartbevo 89,775]

He really is leaning into the "child inherits vast fortune, fucks around with it" thing.

[NoName 16,369]

11 hours ago, Pig Bellmont said:

Au contraire - this looks to be a market manipulation rather than teenage dork stuff. (I guess it can be both). Unlike with Tesla stock, crypto is still largely unregulated so why not execute a huge pump and dump on dogecoin to make back some cash? 

he was sued in June, along with TSLA and Space X for a $285b racketeering lawsuit around Dodgecoin

https://www.reuters.com/legal/elon-musk-seeks-end-258-billion-dogecoin-lawsuit-2023-04-01/

he is asking for it to be thrown out.

Spoiler

Elon Musk asked a U.S. judge on Friday to throw out a $258 billion racketeering lawsuit accusing him of running a pyramid scheme to support the cryptocurrency Dogecoin.

In an evening filing in Manhattan federal court, lawyers for Musk and his electric car company Tesla Inc (TSLA.O) called the lawsuit by Dogecoin investors a "fanciful work of fiction" over Musk's "innocuous and often silly tweets" about Dogecoin.

The lawyers said the investors never explained how Musk intended to defraud anyone or what risks he concealed, and that his statements such as "Dogecoin Rulz" and "no highs, no lows, only Doge" were too vague to support a fraud claim.

"There is nothing unlawful about tweeting words of support for, or funny pictures about, a legitimate cryptocurrency that continues to hold a market cap of nearly $10 billion," Musk's lawyers said. "This court should put a stop to plaintiffs' fantasy and dismiss the complaint."

In a footnote, the lawyers also rejected the investors' claim that Dogecoin qualified as a security.

The investors' lawyer, Evan Spencer, said in an email: "We are more confident than ever that our case will be successful."

Investors accused Musk, the world's second-richest person according to Forbes, of deliberately driving up Dogecoin's price more than 36,000% over two years and then letting it crash.

They said this generated billions of dollars of profit at other Dogecoin investors' expense, even as Musk knew the currency lacked intrinsic value.

Investors also pointed to Musk's appearance on a "Weekend Update" segment of NBC's "Saturday Night Live" where, portraying a fictitious financial expert, he called Dogecoin "a hustle."

The $258 billion damages figure is triple the estimated decline in Dogecoin's market value in the 13 months before the lawsuit was filed.

Dogecoin Foundation, a nonprofit, is also a defendant and seeking the lawsuit's dismissal.

Musk's posts on Twitter, which he owns, have prompted multiple lawsuits.

He won a court victory on Feb. 3 when a San Francisco jury found him not liable for tweeting in August 2018 that he had arranged financing to take Tesla private.

The case is Johnson et al v. Musk et al, U.S. District Court, Southern District of New York, No. 22-05037

doubt they win the lawsuit, but if i was being sued for $258 billion i would certainly not be jacking around with dodgecoin at all.

...the huge jump happened after he changed the logo.

edit: woah.

 

Edited April 5, 2023 by NoName

[NoName 16,369]

some info on "Legacy" conversion to Twitter blue

 

Travis Brown is the guy who has the dataset and is pretty well known. his guess is that about 408k that have legacy verification.

the real #s from Brown are pretty funny:

 

Quote

 

Follower counts

Note that the Blue accounts that our methods miss will generally be newer and less prominent accounts, which means that these numbers are likely to be low—for example the number of Twitter Blue subscribers with fewer than 1,000 followers is probably much higher than 50%.

• Blue subscribers with 0 followers: 2,585
• Blue subscribers with fewer than 100 followers: 88,085 (17.7%)
• Blue subscribers with fewer than 1,000 followers: 244,562 (49.1%)

 

what a massive, massive, massive underestimation of the market by Elon.

idk if it was posted here or not, but this keeps finding it's way into different places and makes me laugh every time:

 

[atomheartbevo 89,775]

Wonder if Elon will have anything to say about this

https://www.kxan.com/news/local/austin/new-autonomous-vehicle-company-en-route-for-testing-in-austin/

Quote

As autonomous vehicle technology advances, a new company will soon begin piloting its latest prototype here in Austin.

Autonomous vehicle company Waymo will begin testing its fifth generation driver, called the Jaguar I-Pace, throughout central and east Austin.

Quote

Pilot testing locations include downtown, along Rainey Street, within the Market District, near the State Capitol and in the Clarksville, Bouldin Creek and Holly neighborhoods, per a company news release.

Quote

Waymo is the latest AV company to take to the Lone Star State’s capital. During the 2023 South by Southwest Conference & Festivals last month, General Motors’ Cruise announced it would unveil its “robotaxi” technology in Austin in the coming months.

[956 Worldwide 34,746]

We really ought to nationalize SpaceX.  Elron slapped a “US-state affiliated media” on NPR. They forgot to update their policy on that label though. 
 

[NoName 16,369]

Axios: Tesla's dominance fades as EV adoption grows

https://www.axios.com/2023/04/05/tesla-ev-electric-vehicle-adoption

• Since January 2022, for example, Tesla's share of the EV market fell from 72% to 54% — and it will likely slide below 50% in the next month or two, says Tom Libby, associate director of industry analysis at S&P Global Mobility.
• Tesla's Model S sedan, in particular, has been struggling. Registrations for the S plummeted 75% in January 2023, while those of Mercedes-Benz's new EQS sedan quadrupled.