26 April

I talk about Tesla a lot because what it’s doing isn’t publicised much. It’s literally reinventing not just driving, but business and culture. Everything it does uses data in ways to reinforce everything else it’s doing. The driver becomes part of a network, in a folded web of mutually-enriching feedback. Like here, self-driving is folded into car insurance, so that use of it and the driver’s safe performance on the road reduces premiums directly. In a vertically integrated way i.e. Tesla provides the insurance, not a third party. At the same time roads become much, much safer, humans really are hopeless drivers, despite their belief in the opposite. They play status games on the roads, they’re not networked to other drivers and act alone, and they’re unable to pay attention in 8-9 directions at once, across multiple dimensions. It’s why commercial flight made this shift decades ago, despite pilots being well trained. The skies have never been safer, since. Tesla is doing something much more sophisticated than that, for driving.