Tesla 2Q production update & autopilot death

Tesla has been in the news for the wrong reasons over the last few days. Firstly the mangle of the driverless vehicle not distinguishing the background of a trailer against the sky, and causing a vehicle to smash through it, killing the driver, is bad news in itself. It means that the self driving mode is not 100 percent yet. And regardless of how many minor or major accidents humans may have in their life, the fact that the self driving mode is not 100 percent safe is cause for concern. This is regardless of the fact that the driver may not have been paying attention, and may have been watching Harry Potter on his device.

Check the NYT article - Joshua Brown, Who Died in Self-Driving Accident, Tested Limits of His Tesla. The irony is that, as a lover of the product, he may well in his untimely demise have advanced driverless car technology to push to heights not seen. With every accident in aviation, there are normally improvements that we don't see as ordinary people. Science advances in the face of disasters. Amazingly, as you see in the article, a video that prevented an accident that Mr. Brown posted, to which Tesla co-founder Elon Musk tweeted the link, led Mr. Brown to say to a neighbour: "For something to catch Elon Musk's eye, I can die and go to heaven now." Wow.

And his death would probably not be in vain, it will not stop the evolution of travel. If the trailer and the truck had seen the Tesla, and not turned, we would not be having this conversation about the safety of self driving cars. If the truck and trailer had been a self driving vehicle, it possibly would never have made the turn, seeing that the car was coming down the road (too fast or not). See the same publication - Inside the Self-Driving Tesla Fatal Accident.

And then the second bit of bad news is that the last quarterly production numbers were not good. A decent enough website on all things Tesla (and electrical), Electrek, has the story - Tesla Model S deliveries hit an almost two-year low globally, but Tesla is keeping its cards close to the chest. It is not as if the demand is not there, the price and economics are possibly a deterrent at current levels, those dynamics are set to change in the coming years. Again, as we have often pointed out, don't bet against human innovation and in particular innovators like Elon Musk. He may be an egotistical obsessive stickler for detail, that may be terrible for his social life, it is excellent that humanity has people like this. He is trying to change the future. One Model S or X or 3 at a time.