Dear Mr. Musk,

Up until now you’ve been a curiosity. An interesting little distraction. You’ve made sexy cars for the small percentage of us who can afford them. We like that you chose to make them electric because of what you’ve been able to do with their performance. We like fast, powerful toys that respond instantly to our whims. Environmentally friendly, you say? Pshaw! A very clever marketing strategy indeed. We commend you for your level of deceit. For that you are almost worthy of being called one of us.

Jeremy got it on air before May. Here’s the follow up to my earlier post.

As more drivers use consumer dashboard cameras, video evidence is playing a crucial role in serious accident investigations.

Source: Dashboard cameras: What you need to know

Says GM:

our master plan hasn’t changed

Source: We are now witnessing Elon Musk’s slow-motion disruption of the global auto industry — Quartz

It reminds me a bit of this:

I agree. Would I post it on my blog if I didn’t?

If people in the far future were to unearth troves of 20th and 21st-century photographs, the first thing they might ask is “Why are they always smiling?”

Source: The Case For Real Smiles

Friggin’ awesome!

I was just interviewed on camera by Jeremy Jojola for a channel 9 news consumer story on dashcams. Jeremy says that my footage was useful in a police investigation, and it was quite possibly the first case in Denver where dashcam footage was instrumental.

The segment will air sometime in May. The whole interview took about 20 minutes. TV news crews are apparently quite efficient with their time.

The year 2004 was when we completely gave up and embraced stupidity as a value.

Source: How a TV Sitcom Triggered the Downfall of Western Civilization — Medium

Sure, it’s funny in a sardonic sort of way. But we just re-watched Friends and aside from the agonizingly horrible rampant homophobia that the show espoused, the worst part of the show was the constant belittling of intellectualism and geekery. I identify with Ross more than the other characters because he’s smart, romantic, quirky, and people don’t get him. For the writers it was a cheap source of humor. It wasn’t the high-quality, good-natured type of character-driven humor that made up so many of the show’s other punchlines; it was the cheap, make-fun-of-the-nerd humor that debases everyone in the process.

That massive number, which far exceeded optimistic forecasts, upends traditional thinking about how to sell cars and is expected to spur the auto industry to shift more dramatically to market electric technology to consumers, analysts said.

Source: The car industry has never witnessed what Tesla is about to go through - The Washington Post

Sigh. They still don’t get it and they probably never will. It’s not just that the Model 3 is electric. And it’s not just that the car is fast and sleek and high-tech. And it’s not just that the car gets better over time through over-the-air software updates. And it’s not just that they have a vast network of superchargers. And it’s not just Tesla’s direct sales, no-dealership model. It’s all of these things combined. And that is why traditional auto makers will probably never catch up. Chevy may have the 200-ish mile range Bolt but they don’t have the other stuff. Sorry, establishment. You’ve had a good run, but you’re over.