Electric vehicles – Page 9204 – I wish I had more to offer

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Captain Sully Tweet Presents Opportunity For Tesla

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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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JB Straubel wasn’t just Tesla’s CTO — he invented the carmaker’s core technologies

JB Straubel, Tesla Motors chief technical officer.Getty ImagesWhen Tesla CEO Elon Musk announced on Wednesday that technology chief JB Straubel is leaving, any close follower of the electric carmaker knew it represented more than the departure of a typical CTO.
In the first decade of Tesla's existence, Straubel, who's among the group of co-founders, invented or co-created many of the company's signature technologies. His name is on a majority of patents that Tesla filed, especially relating to electric vehicle batteries — safety, architecture, monitoring and power management.
“JB is absolutely brilliant,” said Gene Berdichevsky, employee No. 7 at Tesla, in an email. “When I started, we did some of the technical development in his garage! I think there would be no Tesla as it is today without JB.”
Straubel, who's now 43, lobbied early on for Tesla to pursue a supercharger strategy, instead of going down the road of battery-swapping. Today, that network of charging stations, available for Tesla drivers only, is a boon for the company because it can offer greater service to customers, while drivers of most other electric cars are relegated tocompete for time at generic chargers.
Musk delivered the news of Straubel's exit this week while issuing some disappointing financial results to Wall Street. It was tough timing for a company that's struggling to find a profitable model for building and selling cars as it'sinvesting in self-driving technology. Tesla recorded a quarterly loss of $408 million, and its automotive margins eroded as customers showed a clear preference for the lower-priced Model 3 sedans.
Drew Baglino, who Straubel recruited to Tesla in 2006 and was most recently vice president of technology, is now stepping into the role of CTO. The Straubel announcement coupled with the weaker-than-expected results pushed the stock down 14% on Thursday, marking the steepest drop of the year.
A Tesla spokesperson didn't respond to a request for comment.
Jeffrey Straubel, chief technical officer and co-founder of Tesla Motors Inc., center, speaks as billionaire Elon Musk, chief executive officer of Tesla Motors Inc., left, and Yoshihiko Yamada, consultant at Panasonic Corp., look on during a press event at Tesla's new Gigafactory in Sparks, Nevada, U.S., on Tuesday, July 26, 2016.Troy Harvey | Bloomberg | Getty ImagesMusk and Straubel met in 2003, when Straubel intended to pitch him on the idea of building an electric airplane. But their shared passion for electric vehicles led Musk to introduce Straubel to Tesla's founders, Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning. Musk backed Tesla and joined the board in 2004, a month after Straubel joined, and became CEO in 2008.
In discussing Straubel on the earnings call, Musk said, “if we hadn't had lunch in 2003, Tesla wouldn't exist basically.”
Even before his Tesla days, Straubel was working on electric cars. Berdichevsky, who is now CEO of Sila Nanotechnologies, said he knew Straubel back when he was converting a classic Porsche into an electric vehicle. He also built and raced solar cars on a team at Stanford.
He “was always a true missionary and visionary for EVs well before the world truly cared,” Berdichevsky said.
More recent Tesla employees describe Straubel as well-respected and a gentler voice in the room next to the bombastic and outspoken Musk. He's an engineer at heart, a licensed pilot and father who wears khakis most of the time. His obsession was always to reduce costs per kilowatt hour — to make energy-dense vehicle batteries at a lower cost.
Straubel's focus at Tesla was on building technology, teams and partnerships, and he was more than willing to cede the limelight to Musk, one reason the two got along so well, former employees said.
He split his time between Tesla's car assembly plant and offices in California and the Gigafactory, which he helped plan and build in Sparks, Nevada. He practically lived in trailers amid the rocks, dirt and construction materials until the massive battery plant was up and running in 2016, according to people familiar with the matter.
At Straubel's urging, Tesla built charging capabilities into the Model S, before the Supercharger network was developed. He also led propulsion and software teams through the development of the Model S and Model X.
He also led the development of stationary energy products even before Tesla acquired SolarCity. Today, Tesla's Powerwall and Powerpack function as home batteries and utility-scale battery installations that make it possible to store and use solar and wind power.
Tesla cars at charging stations in Beijing, China.Meghan Reeder | CNBCOutside of Tesla, Straubel has a stealthy recycling start-up called Redwood Materials, which registered last year to do business in the state of Nevada.
“I can't wait to see what JB does next,” Berdichevsky said. “There are still so many adjacent problems to solve in energy and I'm sure that's what he's thinking about.”
In terms of his successor as CTO, Berdichevsky said, “if there's anybody from the early days who can step into the big shoes JB leaves behind, and carry on the technical vision, it's Drew.”
Gene Munster, a longtime Tesla bull, said the company is well-prepared to deal with Straubel's departure:
“The bad news is that JB Straubel was foundational to the company, and is leaving,” Munster said in an interview. “The good news is there's now a framework in place for other people to step in. He did the heavy lifting of getting them to where they are, and now it's done. They are in a position to capitalize on an undeniable truth around the growth of electrification and autonomy.”
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