SEC investigating Tesla

I have been thinking about the "fallible" Tesla technology for a few days now. First the fact that it is 2016 and we have driverless cars is pretty cool. The fact that a big fan of the technology met his untimely end in a car he loved, that is not too cool. Being in his favourite car, that perhaps was the only good thing about the incident. I thought one thing of the whole accident, and laid it out last week, what if the truck with the trailer had the self driving technology? Would it have turned at that moment, sensing the oncoming traffic? Possibly not. And as discussed last week, we wouldn't be having this conversation. I was struck in my reading that the very "inventor" of modern flight, one of the Wright brothers was involved in the very first flying fatality known to man. We didn't stop evolving now, did we? Otherwise I wouldn't have actually been able to write this very paragraph whilst sitting on a commercial airline in the sky.

I encourage the authorities to engage with the company and make sure that the software is up to scratch, see - Fatal Tesla Crash Draws In Transportation Safety Board. Amazing that one crash, which was in theory the OTHER drivers mistake that led to the downfall, gets so much airtime. There are roughly 92 people killed on US roads each and every day. There have been, since records have been kept on such matters, over 3.6 million fatalities on US roads. That is since 1899, a year in which there were 26 deaths. Would you believe me if I told you that gun violence accounts for about the same amount of deaths in the US every year. Barking up the wrong tree? Maybe.

Elon Musk tweeted this article, written by a Tesla driver, and I think that this article nails it, the Upside of Tesla's autopilot. A few excerpts from the blog: "Prior to this first unfortunate death (my sincerest condolences to the family), Tesla's Autopilot had successfully, safely driven owners and their families 130 million miles. Among all vehicles in the U.S., there is a fatality every 94 million miles. Worldwide, there is a fatality approximately every 60 million miles."

And then the lines that make you think powerfully about the implications of letting the software improve, quoting Elon Musk here: "the system's capabilities "will keep improving over time, both from the standpoint of all the expert drivers ... training it," he said, "but also in terms of the software functionality" -- which will add new features." The author of the piece, Dr. Peter H. Diamandis (the Americans love their second name initials thing), makes the best conclusion thus far: "This is so important I need to restate it: With every single mile driven, the cars get safer and safer."

So why in your wildest dreams would you, as he says, trust a 17 year old kid with 20 hours of driving experience in control of a 5000 pound (2267kg) vehicle speeding at 65 miles per hour (104.6 km per hour) and debate whether learning software is safer. Dumb when you think about it. I agree with Peter's last line: "I'll take an ever improving machine learning algorithm over kid with a learners' permit any day."

What also amazes me is that the SEC is having a go at Tesla for not disclosing to shareholders that there had been a crash. Excuse me for batting for the company a while, when I read this WSJ article (SEC Investigating Tesla for Possible Securities-Law Breach), this line again: "The May 7 accident killed the driver, Joshua Brown, a 40-year-old Tesla owner who collided with an 18-wheel semi-truck that pulled in front of him on a Florida highway." See that, the truck pulled in front of him. It is like McDonald's not disclosing that a chronically overweight individual had a heart attack whilst eating a supersize meal. My goodness, if ever a bunch of people could rather highlight stricter gun control or safer driving by first timers, this is it!

At the core of this argument is that Tesla is expected to be perfect. And that is a good thing. We should have very high expectations of a company that is transforming the future. The future in which transportation is different than now. As I often tell my kids, you may never need to get driving lessons from me, and they are less than a decade away from that age. The driving age. Tesla is not for everyone, the stock is volatile and the company is not quite "there" yet from being profitable at all. Tough at best really to say with major conviction that Musk is going to meet and beat his targets. A 20 fold increase in market capitalisation in a decade? In the classics they say, from your lips to the markets ears.