“It’s no shocker that Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is wary of Elon Musk and Tesla — he once said there is ‘way too much hype’ around the company. At a conference in Sweden last week, Wozniak, who owns two Model S vehicles, doubled down on his Tesla criticism — while still leaving an opening for future optimism,” Seung Lee reports for The Mercury News. “‘Now, I don’t believe anything Elon Musk or Tesla says,’ Wozniak said. ‘But I still love the car.'”
Woz “bought into Musk’s promise that the car would be able to drive itself across the United States by the end of 2016,” Lee reports. “But after Tesla broke up with the Israel company that developed sensors for Tesla and Musk’s promise wasn’t realized, his trust was damaged, said Wozniak.”
“Wozniak also took shots at the state of Tesla’s current state of self-driving technology,” Lee reports. “He said longtime car manufacturers such as Audi and BMW are ahead of Tesla in the race for self-driving cars.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take:
Breach of promise is a base surrender of truth. — Mohandas Gandhi
Woz, don’t be so naive. I’ll take Musk’s flamethrower!
Just out of interest, what are people planning to use these flame throwers for?
I don’t understand what these could be sensibly used for apart from as an incredibly dangerous toy or possibly for killing weeds when your garden isn’t dangerously dry.
To light my BBQ! 🙂
If you’re having problems lighting a barbecue, you must be doing something wrong.
I use a cheap metal chimney two thirds filled with good sized lumps of decent quality natural charcoal ( no tiny bits as they stop air circulating ) and a couple of sheets of newspaper. Light it, leave it alone and you should have a lovely batch of glowing red coals to tip out within ten minutes.
I note with interest that many hours after asking what people might be using these flame throwers for, the only suggestion so far has been as a replacement for a tin can with a handle.
Are they even legal?
Melting snow & ice off you car? 😀
There are a lot of nefarious things that you can do with a mobile flamethrower like the Musk is touting. Here’s a sick thought…a bunch of terrorists in the US buys these flamethrowers. In a crowded area, say Union Square, someone manages to sprinkle gasoline on passersby. Boom, all of sudden, you got a bunch of burning people running around because of these terrorists using flamethrowers on people.
You wouldn’t need a flame thrower to do that. Just sprinkle the gasoline around and light a match. If you’ve ever seen how gasoline vapour ignites, it would ignite over a large area in just a moment.
Woz- Audi is not a manufacturer as it is a subsidiary of VW along with Porsche, Bugatti and others. The same engine that powers a Golf GTI powers any number of Audis, same for transmissions, etc. I am a shareholder (VLKY ADR) http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/vlkay
Elon Musk has a rocket ready to launch, has millions of solar panels on roofs, has a line of electric cars and soon trucks, a worldwide network of charging stations, a contract to deliver payloads to the International Space Station and soon will be flying crews.
What you got these last couple of years?
a good flamethrower is always a good marriage in TX. Having said that, Mr. Tesla is Mr. Govt Subsidy. Pull that “feature” from his cars and “how viable” is a reasonable question. I’m sure he can build rockets and all, but…
If you knew all the companies that get a subsidy you might not be so hard on Mr Musk. Virtually every large enterprise gets various forms of subsidy from the Federal to the local level.
When we wanted Railroads in the West, the US gave massive tracts of land on alternating sides of the tracks. Oil, Gas and Coal and mining companies get subsidies one form would be selling rights for far below the private market price, airlines get subsidized access to airports and air traffic control, truck lines pay nothing to use the highways, SBA grants, the Import-Export Bank, Federal Insurance of Nuclear Power Plants, public maintenance of navigable waterways, and number of Federal Loan subsidies, the sale of timber from public land at far below market value, etc.
business-wise for most of the company’s life. The ideology of some wants electric to survive so badly, the subsidizing-stilts are a way to force the principle to success. I’m not saying the biz is destined to fail, but for those that despise govt loans as corporate welfare, but give a pass to Mr. Tesla is beyond rational.
Tesla paid back all loans EARLY. It was for a measly $500million. The government (That’s, YOU) made money out of it with interest. GM and Chrysler has had MANY BIGGER loans that were written off and unpaid and you kept shut.
Now that you know this, exactly, what’s your outrage for money leant to Tesla? And where’s you outrage for money LOST in bailing out GM and Chrysler?
Re Paul:
You are right.
The GM bailout was a shell game.
1-GMAC- now Ally Bank- got a bailout.
2-Delphi- GM Parts subsidiary spun off- got a bailout and dumped underfunded pensions on the taxpayer.
3-The New GM was cobbled from the profitable parts of the old GM and “paid” back it’s loans through accounting tricks like what got them in trouble in the first place.
4-The original GM was renamed and liquidated. A lot of liabilities- including intentionally underfunded pensions- were dumped on the back of the taxpayer. The thing was a huge loss for the US Treasury.
Chrysler was bailed out and essentially handed to Fiat- a foreign corporation for free. They are headquartered in Europe- not the United States.
GM was so thankful to the American people who bailed them out that they promptly built more plants in China and Mexico. Most GMC and Chevy Trucks are not made in the US. Most Toyota and Nissan Trucks are. Who is the American producer? Ford – who did not get bailed out- still builds it’s pickups in the US.
Tesla’s most current debt load was approx. 2.9 BILLION dollars. The company has never made money.
They came close once, but interest payments put a damper on that.
Now that they have dumb assess pay upfront for cars not to be delivered for years, was just a creative way to get some more capitial as the capital starts to dry up.
Tesla is the most leveraged car company out of all car makers.
When you’re the most shorted stock on the market, it makes it hard to get loans.
Subsides are completely legitimate if they are provided as an incentive to get a (desired) new industry off the ground when they otherwise would not be able to overcome the startup/development phase in competition with existing companies and technologies.
Yes, a lot of subsidies are useless and provided strictly as political payback to connected interests, but that is not what the electric car incentives are about. The US has a vested interest in developing domestic electric vehicle technology, otherwise we will not be competitive with the next generation of vehicle manufacturing, particularly when domestic manufacturers are being shortsighted and doubling down on inefficient SUVs like Ford is choosing right now.
Your electric cars will likely come from China or with a a lot of Chinese parts regardless of brand. Ask the CEOs of GM, Ford and Fiat/Chrysler.
What do you mean Audi is not a manufacturer????
Of course Audi shares resources with its corporate cousins, but it is a very formidable engineering and manufacturing company in its own right. Don’t underestimate the differences between the VW divisions and engineering details under the skin. Audi shares as much tech with Porsche and Lamborghini as it does with VW and Skoda. If you do your homework you will see that to share an engine block is not the end of the story. Also, Audi has pioneered all kinds of manufacturing innovations including aluminium construction (see the Audi AVUS) decades before it became common.
http://www.audi.com/corporate/en/company/production-sites/audi-production-worldwide.html
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_Avus_quattro
Been to Ingolstadt and Wolfsburg and Stuttgart- I used to live in Stuttgart back in the day.
Audi was built from scratch (relaunched) in the 1960s for an upmarket car for VW. They were an out of business brand (as Audi) owned by Daimler that VW bought in the 1960s and spent a fortune developing. Yes, they have R&D and most of it is shared with the others.
The MQB platform in a VW Golf is shared with any number of other VW marques (Audi A3, for example) and that is only increasing over time.
The Audi Q 7 SUV, the Porsche Cayenne and VW Touareg are built on the same assembly line with mostly the same components.
VW is a manufacturer- Audi is a brand. Honda is a manufacturer- Acura is a brand.
GM is a manufacturer- Cadillac is a brand.
Woz needs to worry less about what Elon Musk says and more about what Apples does or does not do. And, I don’t mean the new edifice building that will be its headquarters. Who cares about that except for Apple execs and architecture students? Time to raise the Pirate Flag above Apple headquarters and start showing original thinking – you know, like we see with SpaceX and Tesla
Apple has none, or little of the “Pirate Flag” verve. Instead, it’s the “can’t we all get along limp-wristed-ness”. Oh, I forgot to add Jony’s verve for the right chair and door handle. Please forgive me.
Agreed. If Woz feels this way about Musk, what must he think of Cook?
Mrs. Woz hasn’t been monitoring the medication again. Rub his belly, give him the pills, and promise him that everyone believes he’s a genius too. It’s all ok.
Oh and… tell him sorry he got let go from his latest job.
Woz has had more than his allotted time as a guru. The expiration date was before the turn of the millennium. He’s a smart guy about technical gadgetry, but he doesn’t know anything about marketing. Steve Jobs (the organ music rises) made a promise here and there that didn’t come to fruition – at least partly due to the world changing faster than Apple could. At the end of the day, though, nobody is perfect.
I have to give it to Musk. Tesla is burning through cash, is heavily in debt and on the verge of going under.
He certainly invents new ways to raise cash. He raised a ton of cash for a car that may not see the light of day and had people pay upfront for the entire amount.
Tesla is the most shorted stock on the market for a reason.
While it was a cute start up and people made a lot of money on the stock for a company that makes ZERO dollars in profit with HUGE debt loads, it will be crushed by one of the big players when they see the viability of electric cars.
BMW, Audi, Ford can crush Tesla anytime they want.
It is a shame Tesla has not delivered all hoped on time – BUT we have got to remember that cars are lethal weapons if something goes wrong, so Tesla have got to get self drive 99.9% reliable before releasing. If an iPhone crashes, it just causes annoyance to the user – so Tesla have to have a much higher level of testing of new software.
Woz hasn’t tried the Musk 🔥flamethrower!🔥
😼