The automaker started the decade growing at a roughly 50% annual rate and aimed to produce 20 million cars annually by 2030.
Now, Tesla has a production capacity of less than 3 million vehicles, and it is using roughly only 60% of this capacity due to low demand.
This situation has led Tesla to reconsider its plans for new factories, including its previously announced gigafactory in Mexico.
earlier this month, Tesla relaunched its solar leasing product.
I’m gonna predict higher production starting in a month or two. That’s not hard, given that they’re operating at 60% of capacity now.
I’m also gonna predict lower prices later next year, when lots of unsold Tesla’s are sitting around because unsupervised full-self-driving doesn’t come true, as it hasn’t every single year since he started proclaiming it was right around the corner.
Right now they’re running in Austin, geofenced, with a human monitor, which they hope to get rid of by the end of the year. Even if they do that hardly means U-FSD will be ready to roll out nationally two weeks later.
FSD will be awesomely cool, will be economically limited to those who want to pay a few thousand a year for the privilege, and who can get insurance for such a beast. Tesla might provide that, but their track record in that field is not encouraging either.
I can imagine buying a car with automatic driving. I don’t know how long it would take before I “stop” paying attention.
Having driven a few of these cars with automatic cruise and route control. There are too many situations in that little anecdotal situation where I felt alarmed enough to take over.
The nagging to keep my hands on the wheel diminish utility but are strictly necessary - today.
I look forward to the day these requirements - and attention - are no longer necessary.
I straight up don’t believe this one. If they thought they were close to true L4 autonomy, they’d be working with regulators right now. They aren’t.
Yes, we are all conditioned by a lifetime of experience. At the beginning elevators all had a human at the controls. Following the Civil War elevators became standard in tall buildings, and automation didn’t come about until the 1920’s or so. For years after some people refused to go into them because “who was in control?”
I find on long drives it’s easy to set the “lane follow” and “smart cruise control” and almost forget that I have to pay attention just as though I was driving. I don’t text or be otherwise distracted, but it’s easy to lull myself off to a momentary thought and remember “Oops, I need to be in control here.”
[edit to note: Not a Tesla, I have a Hyundai Ioniq6]
I agree that Tesla is still over promising when they’ll get to L4. But the requirement to have hands on the wheel went away over a year ago when they enabled the in cabin camera to monitor that the driver was paying attention. This feature works pretty well, no hands required to tug at the wheel every minute or two.
Mike
As a teen or pre-teen I had a lot of fun operating my dad’s hotel’s elevators. I must be getting quite old. 
You had to time it well to get the elevator to stop even with the floor’s pavement.
When automatic elevators were introduced in Caracas they passed a law requiring all of them to use human operators. Like safety drivers for FSD? Featherbedding?
The Captain
Even as late as the 90s (or perhaps even later), some posh NYC buildings had elevator attendants to push the buttons.
Possibly to keep children of tenants from playing with the elevators?
New Jersey still requires an attendant to pump your gas. Oregon required it up until 2023.
DB2
The Smith Tower in Seattle used elevator attendants until 2017. The attendants were so old at that point you almost wanted to push the buttons for them.
Thanks for the first laugh of the day!
The Captain