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Captain Sully Tweet Presents Opportunity For Tesla

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Autonomous Vehicles

Published on July 27th, 2019 |

by Jennifer Sensiba

Captain Sully Tweet Presents Opportunity For Tesla

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July 27th, 2019 by Jennifer Sensiba

Screenshot of Sully’s Tesla tweet

Captain Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger III, commonly known as “Captain Sully,” famous for safely landing a crippled airliner in the Hudson River, recently tweeted about Tesla’s Autopilot. While this looks bad, it does present a good opportunity for Tesla — if Tesla responds intelligently.

“Tesla announced the launch of so-called ‘full self-driving’ features that are largely unregulated as soon as this year,” Sullenberger wrote in his tweet. “This should concern everyone who will share the same streets as a driver or pedestrian.”

At first glance, this definitely looks bad for Tesla. It questions the whole concept of FSD and implies that it’s unsafe, or could be unsafe. And it does it in two sentences.

I want to briefly cover why Sullenberger’s tweet matters for Tesla’s image and explore a way that Tesla could turn this into an opportunity to not only look good to the public, but make real improvements to safety.

Why Sullenberg’s Tweet Matters
“Captain Sully” is a household name. People know who he is. People trust him. The public at large thinks what he has to say about safety matters, and, most importantly, they’re right!

Safely landing the Flight 1549 was just the icing on the cake of an extremely successful career. It should be noted that Captain Sullenberger wasn’t just any pilot who happened to get lucky and land the plane in the Hudson. After years of success as a decorated USAF pilot, he spent 30 years as a commercial pilot. During all of this, he became a well-known instructor and expert in the aviation safety community. He was involved in numerous accident investigations, served on advisory boards and committees, co-authored papers with NASA scientists, and did many other things to push the state of the art forward in air transportation safety.

Regarding Flight 1549, Sullenberger said, “One way of looking at this might be that for 42 years, I’ve been making small, regular deposits in this bank of experience, education and training. And on January 15, the balance was sufficient so that I could make a very large withdrawal.” While he admits to being terrified by the experience of landing that plane, and suffering emotionally afterward like any human being would after such an experience, listening to the radio traffic of that day shows just how right he was about the importance of education and training. He remained calm as long as he needed to and took care of business.

Where the rest of us would be screaming, praying, or otherwise losing our damned minds, Sullenberger was calmly saying things like, “we can’t do it” and “we’re gonna be in the Hudson” in the same way one of us would tell our spouse, “Honey, I’ll be home in 5 minutes.”

Just to drive this home a little further — when they made a movie about Flight 1549, Sullenberger was portrayed by Tom Hanks. In a 2013 poll, Reader’s Digest found Hanks to be the most trusted person in America. When Hollywood is looking for somebody to play the good guy, especially when the movie is based on a true story, they go for Tom Hanks. He’s even going to portray Mr. Rogers from “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” in an upcoming film.

You know if they make a movie about you and Tom Hanks plays you, you’ve arrived at public trust level 99. Sullenberger is just that trusted. What he says matters to people, as it should.

How Tesla Can Turn This Into An Opportunity
The next time Elon Musk (or e^eyepie, Elon Tusk, or whatever he’s jokingly calling himself today) gets on Twitter, he needs to invite Captain Sully to come visit Tesla.

Actually, it needs to be more than just a visit. They need to pay for his consulting services today and worry about the price later.

Sullenberger is a safety expert, especially when it comes to transportation. Hiring him to step in as a consultant won’t be cheap, and it will be even less easy. He’s not the kind of person who would take the money and put his stamp of approval on something without demanding it actually be safe. He’s probably going to demand that other experts take a look. Most importantly, that’s a good thing. Having somebody take a hard look at Autopilot, demand positive changes, and make the product safer is a win for Tesla, a win for the public, and a win for the future of humanity.

If Tesla can get the “Captain Sully Stamp of Approval,” whatever that looks like, it would be a big win not just for the company’s image, but for the safety of the product itself.

Elon, if you’re reading this, you know what to do.

About the Author

Jennifer Sensiba Jennifer Sensiba is a long time efficient vehicle enthusiast, writer, and photographer. She grew up around a transmission shop, and has been experimenting with vehicle efficiency since she was 16 and drove a Pontiac Fiero. She likes to explore the Southwest US with her partner, kids, and animals.

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Tesla Gigafactory 1 Production Increase Translates To 81% More Powerwall Deployments

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Published on July 26th, 2019 |

by Kyle Field

Tesla Gigafactory 1 Production Increase Translates To 81% More Powerwall Deployments

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July 26th, 2019 by Kyle Field

Image courtesy Tesla

Tesla’s energy business (Tesla Energy) often ends up playing second fiddle to the admittedly more exciting automotive business, but that doesn’t mean it’s not growing. In Q2, Tesla increased deployments of its 13.5 kWh Powerwall 81%, according to the Q2 2019 investor letter, to a record 415MWh.

Tesla said in the letter that the sharp increase in Powerwall deployments means they have now been installed at more than 50,000 sites around the world. A Tesla spokesperson confirmed that Powerpack installations also increased in Q2 in parallel to the increase in Powerwall deployments.

The update is some of the first tangible evidence we have that the company is getting better at balancing battery cell production at its Sparks, Nevada Gigafactory 1 with downstream demand in both its automotive and energy businesses. The automotive side of the business continues to grow like gangbusters, nearly doubling the existing deployed fleet every year, and now Tesla Energy is getting in on a bigger piece of the Gigafactory 1 pie.

It is this exponential growth that makes the cell production and downstream demand such a challenge. The company has increased its battery cell production capacity at Gigafactory 1 to around 28 gigawatt-hours, according to CEO Elon Musk on the Q2 2019 earnings call. That figure has the factory bumping up against its original target production capacity of 35GWh a year. (The target has risen much higher since then.)

Tesla Grohmann Automation equipment. Image courtesy Tesla

GF1 production expansion came not only from Panasonic’s side of the business in cell production, but also at the module level, where a new module line designed by Tesla Grohmann Automation “enabled a step change in energy storage production.”

The solar side of Tesla’s Energy business continues to dwindle, with solar retrofit deployments of traditional solar panel systems declining to 29MW in Q2. Tesla made some headway in streamlining the sales process for its energy products in parallel to automotive sales, but the company has yet to deliver on the promise of scaled production and adoption of solar.

The Solar Roof is perhaps the ultimate golden egg for Tesla. Some of us believe (and some don’t) that the Lego-esque snap-together roof replacement that just happens to generate solar energy is the future of rooftops everywhere. Deployments of the Solar Roof are growing, according to reports from numerous Tesla employees, but we have yet to see concrete financials from the company in support of this progress. Also, there is no apparent solution underway for dropping sales of rooftop solar panel systems. Presumably, Tesla needs to find more ways to capitalize on the synergies between its automotive business and its solar power system business.

Do you have any other thoughts on the Tesla Energy portions of this technology company out of Silicon Valley?

If you’re in the market for a Tesla, feel free to use my Tesla Referral code for your purchase: http://ts.la/kyle623 . Doing so gives the buyer (that would be you) and me 1,000 miles of free Supercharging credit and allows us to cover Tesla even better in the future.

About the Author

Kyle Field I'm a tech geek passionately in search of actionable ways to reduce the negative impact my life has on the planet, save money and reduce stress. Live intentionally, make conscious decisions, love more, act responsibly, play. The more you know, the less you need. TSLA investor.

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“We now have a new ‘Drive’”

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