https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/18/business/tesla-fatal-crash-texas.htmlTwo men were killed in Texas after a Tesla they were in crashed on Saturday and caught fire with neither of the men behind the wheel, the authorities said.
Mark Herman, the Harris County Precinct 4 constable, said that physical evidence from the scene and interviews with witnesses led officials “to believe no one was driving the vehicle at the time of the crash.”
The vehicle, a 2019 Model S, was going at a “high rate of speed” around a curve at 11:25 p.m. local time when it went off the road about 100 feet and hit a tree, Constable Herman said. The crash occurred in a residential area in the Woodlands, an area about 30 miles north of Houston.
The men were 59 and 69 years old. One was in the front passenger seat and one in the rear seat, Constable Herman said.
He said that minutes before the crash, the men’s wives watched them leave in the Tesla after they said they wanted to go for a drive and were talking about the vehicle’s Autopilot feature.
Normally, I would say they were dickheads because they were not behind the wheel but in Teslas case, it is an advertised feature so this should have been 'OK'
I still dont understand the allure of Teslas or driverless cars in general. Take a damn bus if you dont want to do the driving. Why pay all that extra money but remove the whole experience and control of the vehicle and delegate it to a stupid computer chip?
Changing the gears, hearing the roar or purr of a motor. The WHOOSH of a BOV..... Man, why pay 10x the cost for a car that has zero noise and drives its self removing your control
My friend lives 1200km away. If I want to drive to see him, I could leave before breakfast and be there at dinner. I could do it all on a single tank of fuel as well (65L of diesel). Now if he wanted to see me, not only would he have to take a very scenic route to cater for special recharging stations so a much longer journey, if he left before breakfast he may arrive to me by lunch time the next day having to sleep a night somewhere. (unless he sleeps in the car that's accommodation cost added lol!) He better hope he's the only one using the charging stations otherwise it will be very slow to recharge. Where I can fill up in 5 minutes, he might be stuck for hours. And only to chug him maybe another 400km.
What a fucking waste of $250K. I paid $13K for mine. He brags 'haha, I dont have to pay for fuel'. LOL With the initial expense of $250K That's more than a 150 years worth of fuel cost compared to mine in 1 hit. Worst case I pay $1500 a year in fuel. And my car isn't so precious I need to bother with full insurance on it either. Another cost I'm sure he would have to do and would be quite costly lol
In short, Teslas are not only shitty death traps, but they are much slower to go long distance, are boring as hell and ridiculously expensive. Their environmental credentials are also questionable given the rare precious mineral of lithium required for mass production but I'm sure Elon doesn't mind 3rd world countries children helping to mine it for him