On August 8, Elon Musk will make an announcement on robotaxis. Tesla lags Waymo so badly that Musk is not even near the ballpark. 
Robotaxi Hype
Musk made the above Tweet on April 5 in response to a Reuters article that claimed Tesla would abandon an entry-level EV priced at $25,000 or less and instead focus on a robotaxi.
Musk denied the rumor, then essentially confirmed it with the above Tweet.
The big problem for Musk is Tesla’s self-driving capability is nonexistent.
Full Self Driving (FSD) Test
Yes, I would describe that as mind-blowing, but in a negative way.
It’s easy to find videos touting FSD but that refutes all the claims. You cannot find a similar video for Waymo.
The Grandma of Robotaxis Is Winning
Bloomberg reports The Grandma of Robotaxis Is Winning
The Alphabet-owned robotaxi company recently announced that it plans to unleash its cars onto the Phoenix freeway soon. The news is a game changer for Waymo employees, some of whom use the cars to get to work. Until now, riders could only take surface streets to get to their destination. Adding the freeway into the mix has the potential to cut their commutes by half.
As it stands, Waymo operates in only two cities — Phoenix and San Francisco. But it’s expanding into Los Angeles and Austin very soon.
Elon Musk first attempted to cut corners in 2014, when he rolled out “Autopilot” at Tesla, which Dave notes was neither auto nor a pilot. Last summer, an investigation into the program said it had played a role in 17 deaths and 736 crashes in the years after its rollout. By winter, Tesla had to recall more than two million of its vehicles to make sure drivers weren’t using Autopilot incorrectly.
Waymo Has 7.1 Million Driverless Miles
The Verge reports Waymo Has 7.1 Million Driverless Miles
Waymo analyzed 7.13 million fully driverless miles in three cities — Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco — and compared the data to human driving benchmarks to determine whether its cars were involved in fewer injuring-causing and police-reported crashes. And it was the first time the company studied miles from fully driverless operations only, rather than a mix of autonomous and human-monitored driving.
The conclusion? Waymo’s driverless cars were 6.7 times less likely than human drivers to be involved a crash resulting in an injury, or an 85 percent reduction over the human benchmark, and 2.3 times less likely to be in a police-reported crash, or a 57 percent reduction.
The company’s main competitor, Cruise, [Not Tesla] has paused operations nationwide after a crash in San Francisco resulted in a pedestrian being dragged 20 feet by one of the company’s driverless cars. Cruise allegedly withheld video footage of the incident from regulators and is now facing up to $1.5 million in fines from the state.
\Waymo’s millions of miles were not totally incident-free. The company said that in total, over the entire 7 million-plus miles in all three cities, its vehicles were only involved in three crashes that resulted in injuries: two in Phoenix and one in San Francisco. All three injuries were minor, according to Kristofer Kusano, safety researcher at Waymo and a co-author of the study.
The human benchmark is 2.78 incidents per million miles. Waymo’s benchmark for its driverless vehicles was only 0.41. The analysis comes on the heels of a study that Waymo published in conjunction with Swiss Re that found that the company’s driverless vehicles reduced the frequency of bodily injury claims by 100 percent, compared to Swiss Re’s human baseline of 1.11 claims per million miles.
Technical Perspective
Here’s an interesting set of facts from Reddit.
The primary technical difference is that Waymo/Cruise use multiple sensor modalities: Lidar / radar / camera, while Tesla is camera only.
In a vision-only system it is much harder to (1) infer distance / depth of perception tracks, (2) have redundancy in the system, (3) validate using sim or otherwise that your system would do the right thing across a broad range of scenarios, simulating what cameras would see is more difficult.
Technicalities aside, Waymo/Cruise are L4 robotaxis, Tesla is an L2 driver assist for personally owned vehicles.
Second Reddit Comment
Waymo and Cruise use short and longe range LiDAR and short and long range Radar for spatial (not just cameras for heuristics) plus acoustics and then sensors around the vehicle to detect even the most minute collision. You can tap on the bumper (or anywhere around the surroundings of the car) of a Waymo or Cruise vehicle and it’ll check in with RA to make sure everything’s OK or safe-stop the vehicle on it’s own. Tesla just uses cameras and mapping.
The compute units in a Waymo or Cruise vehicle cost more than an entire Model 3, and they have redundancy.
Third Reddit Comment
Tesla only uses cameras. The idea is to train the car to drive based just on what it seems with cameras, similar to how humans drive based on what we see with our eyes.
Tesla is now trying to do “end to end” which means training a single neural network to drive directly from video. Waymo uses a series of neural networks that are interconnected and trained separately.
The Tesla approach is a lot harder. For one, only using cameras and no detailed maps, means the car has no redundancy if the camera vision makes a mistake. This can be a problem since cameras can be blinded by the sun, occluded by objects or get dirty. And vision can make a mistake. It might misidentify an object or get a false positive or false negative.
That is one benefit of Waymo also using radar and lidar. Radar and lidar are active sensors, so they tend not to fail in the same way cameras do. And radar works great in rain or fog where cameras are less reliable. So having radar and lidar provides that secondary source to make your perception more reliable. And with more reliable perception, your car has better info to make decisions.
Translation
Musk wants to do this cheaply as possible and lags in technology because of it. And those Waymos are not exactly pretty.
Does Musk value prettiness and cheapness more than safety?
Levels of Driving Automation
Levels of Automation from Synopsis.
Musk and the Tesla cult claim that a camera-only system is better but the results and the lead video show the claim is a lie.
Claiming superiority of L2 over L4 is a joke.
The huge inferiority of Cruise and Tesla, with numerous accidents coupled with ridiculous claims likely held back Waymo which should be on the verge of prime time nearly everywhere.
Crash Rates of Waymo and Those of Human Drivers
Please consider Comparing Crash Rates of Waymo and those of Human Drivers
Waymo has presented further comparisons comparing the 7.14 million driverless miles (11.424 million kilometers) driven so far with human drivers, and even in these early stages of Robotaxis, it is amazing how safe Robotaxis are. By the end of October 2023, the numbers in the three locations of Phoenix, San Francisco, and Los Angeles – where Waymo Robotaxis are driverless 24 hours a day, seven days a week – were analyzed and compared to the corresponding crash numbers caused by human drivers during the same period in the same region, resulting in police reports, injuries, and/or property damage. The results speak for themselves:
- An 85% or 6.8 times lower injury accident rate, from minor to serious and fatal cases
(0.41 accidents per million miles – 0.256 accidents per million kilometers – for the Waymo driver vs. 2.78 per million miles – 1.74 per million kilometers – for human drivers).- A 57% reduction, or 2.3 times lower police-reported accident rate
(2.1 incidents per million miles – 1.3 per million kilometers – for the Waymo driver vs. 4.85 incidents per million miles – 3 per million kilometers – for human drivers)In other words, in the 7.1 million miles (11.424 million kilometers) that Waymo drove, there were an estimated 17 fewer injuries and 20 fewer police-reported accidents than if human drivers had driven the same distance at the same accident rate in the areas where Waymo operates.
One point to consider in this comparison is the fact that many accidents involving human drivers are not reported. While robotaxis in the US have to report every collision, no matter how minor, to the authorities, it is estimated that only a third of accidents are reported to the police. Two thirds are reported to insurance companies, while one third never appear in the statistics. If the figures are corrected for these factors, autonomous cars would be far more than 90 percent safer on the road compared to humans.
Tesla is Dead Last
This Business Insider article is about a year old, but it tells a story of a desperate Tesla trying to catch up.
Please consider Tesla’s Not Even in the Top 10 Self-Driving Firms.
Of the 16 companies recently ranked by research and consulting firm Guidehouse Insights (which ranks some of the biggest names working on automated-driving technology each year), Tesla came in last. Tesla ranked last in similar lists in 2021 and 2020.
This year, Guidehouse specifically focused on ranking companies developing this tech for light- to medium-duty vehicles, rather than the automakers that might eventually deploy it in their cars.
Tesla will remain dead last as long as shuns Radar and lidar and relies only on cameras.
“Full Self Driving” Beta
Musk claims to have a “Full Self Driving Beta”.
It may be a “beta” but it sure isn’t anywhere close to self-driving.
Reuters Reports Tesla to Scrap $25,000 Entry EV
On April 5, I noted Reuters Reports Tesla to Scrap $25,000 Entry EV, Musk Cries Liar
RoboTaxi Zero Chance
Tesla has the worst autonomous driving capabilities around. I will do a separate report on where the technology stands. [This is it now]
Meanwhile, I await Musk’s August 8 robotaxi announcement. Expect to be underwhelmed and overpromised. A Tesla robotaxi is not close to being ready. Waymo is here and now.
I consider Musk a genius. But at best he overpromises and underdelivers for years on end, especially with autonomous driving, but also semis, the M2, and the cybertruck .
August 8 Vaporware Announcement
News Online says Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s Robotaxi Promise Raises Doubts.
After quickly denying a report Tesla reportedly dropping plans for a $25,000 electric vehicleCEO Elon Musk made his latest promise to investors and fans: a self-driving Tesla would be unveiled on August 8.
It’s a tried-and-true playbook for Musk, who has regularly promised new technology and vehicles, only for products to actually hit the market years later.
“We see an Aug. 8 Robotaxi unveiling as more ambitious, similar to Tesla’s Semi and Roadster announcements — and likely not Tesla’s next model,” Bernstein analysts wrote Monday.
The Cybertruck The electric pickup was first unveiled in November 2019 and production was scheduled for 2021, although the first model wouldn’t be made until 2023. Roadster The sports car was unveiled in 2017 and is expected to go on sale in 2021. Now Musk wants to present a prototype of the model by the end of 2024, with production planned for 2025.
The CEO has been promising Tesla EVs will be able to function completely independently of the driver for about a decade via the company’s driver assistance software, Full Self-Driving (FSD). Tesla recently updated the software out of ‘beta’, although it still reminds drivers not to ‘get complacent’ and that their cars are not fully autonomous. A national nonprofit auto safety organization said last month that a previous version of the software failed the tests.
“The top two U.S. robotaxi companies that operate without drivers do so in limited geo-fenced areas, with relatively small fleets of particularly expensive vehicles carrying a significant amount of hardware,” Deutsche Bank analysts wrote on Monday. “The fact that Mr. Musk announced a robotaxi unveiling for August 8 does not in any way mean that the technology is ready.”
Demonstration Coming Up
Please note that Musk Plans Coast-to-Coast Self-Driving Demonstration by End of Next Year.
Also note the above story is from 2016.
Tesla plans to do a Los Angeles-to-New York drive “without the need for a single touch” by the end of 2017, Musk told reporters Wednesday on a conference call.
Tesla Recalls Nearly All vehicles
Please note that on December 13, 2023, Tesla Recalls Nearly All vehicles on US Roads Over Lack of Autopilot Safeguards
Tesla is recalling over 2 million vehicles in the U.S. to install new safeguards in its Autopilot advanced driver-assistance system, after a federal safety regulator cited safety concerns.
The largest-ever Tesla recall appears to cover nearly all vehicles on U.S. roads to better ensure drivers pay attention when using the system. Tesla’s recall filing said that Autopilot’s software system controls “may not be sufficient to prevent driver misuse” and could increase the risk of a crash.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has spent over two years investigating whether vehicles produced by the electric automaker led by billionaire Elon Musk adequately ensure drivers pay attention.
Separately, since 2016, NHTSA has opened more than three dozen Tesla special crash investigations in cases where driver systems such as Autopilot were suspected of being used, with 23 crash deaths reported to date.
The “fix” will limit the amount of time a driver can have his hands off the wheel.
Yet, Musk brags of Full Self Driving capability.
FSD costs a $12,000 or a monthly subscription fee of either $99 per month or $199 per month depending on the vehicle’s current Autopilot package.
Why anyone would pay $12,000 for dangerous features that also require you to keep your hands on the wheel is a mystery.
Tesla Robotaxi Conclusion
The Tesla robotaxi is nothing more than vaporware and it will remain so as long as Musk remains committed to unsafe, stand-alone technology.
Tesla is now many years behind Waymo.
Cybertruck Failure
Musk’s diversion into the cybertruck is doomed to fail, assuming it hasn’t failed already.
Please consider Tesla Cybertruck Owners’ Forum Is Already Full Of Tales Of Broken, Malfunctioning Cybertrucks
From gunky surfaces t0 embarrassing off-road exploits to malfunctioning after going through water, the stainless steel Tesla Cybertruck seems like an all-around mess. We cover a lot of those concerns here on Jalopnik, but if you want an even clearer picture of just how dire owners of this machine have it, look no further than the Cybertruck owners forums.
We decided to check out the forums for ourselves after we spotted a tweet by @salsadrunkard that featured a screenshot of a Cybertruck owner detailing how their truck broke down a mile from the delivery center. It didn’t take much digging to find the forum and the thread itself on Cybertrucks Owners Club.
Click through some other posts, and you’ll quickly fall down a rabbit hole of malfunctions and issues. One owner, for example, described how their Cybertruck suddenly braked after passing another truck on the side of the highway.
Another owner gave their Cybertruck such a damning review that they were allegedly banned from one owners forum and had to turn to another, Tesla Motors Club, to warn prospective buyers about the “borderline dangerous” visibility issues:
And yet another owner described how, after just two days of ownership, their Cybertruck simply stopped turning on, despite the 40-percent battery charge.It’s so, so bad. You can’t see the front corners adequately. It’s borderline dangerous! It’s a joke that there’s no rearview camera display where the rear view is, instead, it’s a tiny display on your main screen that shows you behind. So stupid. Cost cutting.
I’ve had my truck for two days, got in this morning, everything was on. Went to press the brake to put it in reverse and everything went black. Power door button wouldn’t even let me out, had to use manual release to get out. I can not get back in either. My battery is at 40%, so no it’s not dead. Has anyone had this problem?
Musk Promises 50,000 EV Semis a Year
That won’t happen because there are 4 Million Semis on the Road, Only 35 Class 8 Truck EV Charging Stations
For the 5th year, Musk is hyping 50,000 electric semis without having a factory to produce them.
Electrek says Tesla’s giga factory is only about 30% complete and Tesla hasn’t expanded the facility for years.
And now Tesla auto sales are falling.
Tesla’s Deliveries Drop for First Time Since 2020, It’s Demand Not Supply
Please note Tesla’s Deliveries Drop for First Time Since 2020, It’s Demand Not Supply
Tesla’s heydays of surging demand growth for Teslas is over. Competition is increasing and relative demand growth, if not absolute demand growth, is falling.
Tesla has a drought of new products and competition is catching up everywhere. It’s autonomous driving features are an outright joke. More importantly, they are a huge safety risk.
Correction
I said the cost of FSD was $15,000. It’s $12,000.
Predicting now that Waymo will be crushed within 12 months.
It’s confined to a few cities and massive expensive management and monitoring.
Human operators are still in play. The infrastructure is beastly.
link to technologyreview.com
The Tesla approach is hugely different.
Everything is vapourware – until it isn’t.
I have no trust that Waymo is accurately reporting results. That requires a belief that even though most companies fudge numbers to make themselves look better than they are, that Waymo is somehow not doing that. Nope, sorry. Not believable.
Totally believable
Required by law to report every incidents
I’m the result of our decline into a low trust society. I need proof before believing, not a promise from the company that benefits from reporting this result. Has this data been audited by a 3rd party?
EV’s & FSD will be the death of, legacy auto.
“The compute units in a Waymo or Cruise vehicle cost more than an entire Model 3” does not suggest mass adoption
Unless subsidized to parity or mandated by Government.
enough people will happily pay for shit until anything good comes along.
One MUST question the decision-making ability of a Co. that could produce a Truck as ugly as the Cyber unit. It is shockingly awful
UGG-LEE!
Like pineapple on a pizza.
More like sperm on pizza.
When you have your pizzas delivered what do you expect?
“One owner, for example, described how their Cybertruck suddenly braked after passing another truck on the side of the highway.”
Maybe the Cybertruck had a passing infatuation for the truck on the side of the highway. Maybe they now have a date for a drive in movie on Saturday nite.
A pausing infatuation ?!
robolust?
True. How many people have not had an incident with a tree stump, shopping cart, curb, garage doorway, etc.? There is no point in reporting, since they are usually not insured and a report would create far more damage than not.
The reduction in the rate of crashes is not surprising. On the whole people drive too quickly, follow too closely, and don’t pay attention to the task at hand. Basic driver’s licenses should be more difficult to obtain!
Don’t lock the vehicle’s wheels by braking hard if you want to keep steering it, quality tires with adequate tread are the most important safety feature of a vehicle, and driving is a cooperative sport not a competative one.
Musk is a good salesman.
Do good salesmen stick to facts and details?
No. They sell hot air.
Tesla is preying on people’s sci-Fi fantasies.
a bit like th e CDC, WHO, media and government then?
I have been following Mish now for about five years. Back then I seem to remember that he was predicting that driverless cars and trucks would be tacking over by now. Do any of you remember this period?
I remember when he was predicting reusable rockets. Total fantasy.
Yes, and the mocking of everyone who said it would take decades.
I remember when he said that the Fed couldn’t raise interest rates to over 2.5%.
I remember when Google’s official motto was “Don’ be evil.” and then in 2018 they removed it I suppose so they can be evil because otherwise why remove it?
This is for JEFF GREEN 🙂
“Chinese EV makers are using ports like car parks,” said one car supply chain manager.
Some Chinese brand EVs had been sitting in European ports for up to 18 months, while some ports had asked importers to provide proof of onward transport, according to industry executives. One car logistics expert said many of the unloaded vehicles were simply staying in the ports until they were sold to distributors or end users.
“It’s chaos,” said another person who had been briefed on the situation.
Some car industry executives said Chinese carmakers were not selling their vehicles in Europe as fast as they expected, which was a major contributor to the glut at the region’s ports.
link to archive.md
Meanwhile….
link to archive.md
Tesla should merge with Waymo – best tech married to best EV manufacturing + market share. Market killer.
I looked up The Tesla Cybertruck Owners Forum mentioned in the article above. You can find it here:
Cybertruck Reviews (Owners, Articles, Videos) | Tesla Cybertruck Forum – News, Discussions, Community – Cybertruckownersclub.com
That’s quite the insane asylum!!!!
Check out the stats yourself if you don’t believe and come back to us. Agreed?
As per the electric vehicle maker, Tesla drivers have driven over 1 billion miles on FSD. I believe Waymo is up to a whooping 7.13 million miles and in only San Franciso and Phoenix where FSD has logged in on half the planet.
Tesla FSD fleet passes 1 billion-mile milestone (teslarati.com)
That’s a good point, we should be measuring incidents per mile driven.
That’s exactly how they measure. Incidents per 1 million miles driven.
This is true for humans/Waymo/Tesla etc.
The comparison should be between Waymo and professional taxicab drivers, and not the general public.
Interesting point. I will have to ruminate on that a bit.
I’m shocked folks at my office use full self driving mode everyday. I’m starting to question their judgement on everything.
Do they brachiate?
These are the same folks who are on their 8th shot of the Safe and Effective vaccine (that is maiming and killing millions)
EV in general are not going to make it, regardless of who/what is at the steering wheel.
The US electrical grid is struggling under existing load. I can’t take Musk seriously because no real engineer believes the US can renovate its electric grid and transmission systems (not to mention charging stations) on anything even close to the official announcements.
Uncle Sam, from the EPA to the FTSB to the endless alphabet soup of utility regulators (state, regional and federal) are all peddling vaporware and have been for many years. So why can’t Musk do the same?
Competent regulators would have told the drooling fool in the White House that his energy transition idea is not possible on anything close to the time frame they are supposedly “mandating”.
Musk should stick to SpaceX and making NASA look like bureaucrats. At least there, Musk can influence the outcome.
EVs can’t work unless the utilities, regulations and bureaucrats get fixed first. Anyone who thinks that can happen in the next ten years is by definition not a genius, not smart at all.
Not just the US.
Ther bigger risk is of compelling people to work online and rarely leave home.
a small correction, today (And for some time) the FSD package is $12k, not $15k.
You can easily check by going to tesla.com, start ordering a car and see the options
Watch the video closer. The car recognizes the problems before the driver does. Watch the blue ribbon that shows the vehicle’s intended path change before the driver reacts.
It might mount the roundabout soft curb. Lots of drivers do.
Musk is a grifter. Tesla has always been a joke to me, and never deserved the highest market cap among carmakers. SpaceX lives on government contracts. And Twitter/X? Some people were previously banned on Twitter and still have not been restored (and no, not for smut, but for speech unapproved by the government), so until they come back, there will always be questions about how free speech the platform is.
A couple of things have me concerned even with Waymo and complete self-driving ability. One is that radar and Lidar won’t help if the traffic light you’re supposed to be stopping for is directly in the sun. I know just the intersection to test that, twice a year during March and September, almost got in a wreck there when somebody ran the light they couldn’t see. Second is snow – I know an intersection in the same city as the traffic light that has a stop sign right at the top of a hill. When it snows and you come to a complete stop (which self-driving cars are likely programmed to do), you can’t start up again, so the answer is to slow down when approaching it and blow through it if there is no cross traffic. Let’s see how self-driving cars handle those, then I might start believing.
Somehow this reminds me of the Trump Bible.
Don’t get me wrong – I love the Trump Bible idea. I’m having one sent to my atheist buddy who hates Trump. It comes with two Corinthians.
Tesla auto-pilot is installed in hundreds of thousands real cars. GM Cruise self-driving taxi test was halted due to crashes.
Where is the Waymo car? It takes a few seconds to google that Waymo had crashes too, with a limited rollout.
It would be correct to say that all self-driving cars have random issues.
And how likely it is that Tesla wouldn’t poach Google talent if it was so much ahead?
It’s always a strategy to poach good talent just so the competition can’t use it.
What’s notable is that none of the places Waymo is in now or is going to have any kind of adverse weather (snow, icy roads etc). At worst there is fog in San Fran.
That says things are still quite a ways away yet if they aren’t even considering any adverse weather cities (at least Austin could get icy roads a couple times in the right conditions).
AI does not exist – hence link to wired.com
I am neutral in the Lidar vs Camera debate. Both have drawbacks and advantages. Lidar is power hungry and since it is a type of radar it is easy to jam. Cameras are great in detail and low power but need good light. In the end cars will probably end up using both.
That’s why Waymo is using both.
But it also increases the cost by a lot to have Lidar in addition to camera’s. Ultimately it may only prove feasible on commercial vehicles (taxi’s, Semis and other big trucks) where the cost can be amortized and written off as a business expense.
I didn’t know they use both. Thanks. I just find it amazing that self drive has come so far no matter which system.
Can’t you just hire a Mexican to drive it?
Waymo starting in LA soon? I’ve seen a fleet of Waymo’s operating in LA for months now…
Actually, I can find videos of Waymo’s screwing up. It’s very easy.
I enjoy driving. I purchase a car that is fun to drive.
‘AI’ can’t solve Captcha…. I’ll pass on the self driving AI cars… I prefer to stay out of the hospital
What’s your plan for all the other AI cars on the road? You gonna stop driving entirely?
Automated driving isn’t going away anytime soon and is only going to continue to ramp up.
If AI cannot solve Captcha… it’s never going to be able to safely operate a car.
‘Complete meltdown’: Driverless cars in San Francisco stall causing a traffic jam link to edition.cnn.com
AMR (automatic mentally retarded)
That’s what happens when there is no intelligence…
Musk is a perfect “fake it til ya make it” vaporware business charlatan
However, those who love freedom need Musk and those like him to succeed
Those who hate freedom and love tyranny need alphabet/google/waymo to succeed
And the SEC does nothing as he lies to ramp the share price…
That’s because it’s all fake… he is a front man … a ‘tech messiah’ … to pump the hype for the fake transition off of fossil fuels…
Humans need hope in the future…
Let’s go Big Picture… I will now explain in detail… why EVs…. which are not in any way shape or form ‘Green’…. exist.
Why the Ministry of Truth runs endless hype campaigns on cnnbbc….and why governments subsidize them to the tune of hundreds of billions…
Consider this statement: We are steaming oil out of sand, drilling miles beneath oceans for oil, drilling hundreds of thousands of holes in the ground, dropping in bombs – then sucking up the dregs.
Surely — given we are completely reliant on fossil fuel energy to power our civilization — we should be concerned that these methods of oil extraction … appear to be … shall we say … desperate.
Surely any objective observer would look at this and think…. hmmm…. if there is so much of the easy stuff remaining … why are we doing these things
The thing is … we are desperate… see link to energyskeptic.com
So how do EVs fit into this equation … and renewable energy… and how about climate change????
These are what I refer to as The Three Pillars of Bullshit.
It goes like this… the Men Who Run the World need their barnyard animals to remain productive… positive… happy. If the animals were to get wind of the desperate situation with respect to energy … they would get spooked… in fact they would panic.
And panicked barnyard animals are NOT productive. If they conclude that the cheap and easy energy are on the downslope … they fall into despair. They begin to believer there is no future… why breed – why study – why invest — etc… alcoholism and drug abuse would explode higher … etc…
Barnyard animals MUST believe the future is awesome — they must believe their progeny will have the same opportunities to pillage and buy lots of stuff just like they did.
The Men Who Run the World – and their minions … are very much aware of this.
They need to cover up the desperation situation with some fancy PR.
One bright thing in the Ministry of Truth — which was tasked with the coverup … suggested inventing this thing call Global Warming (they changed it to Climate Change cuz some places were cooling .. no problem the barnyard animals will believe whatever cnnbbc tells them).
Notice how fossil fuels are The Enemy? How we Must wean off them? No mention of the fact that they are in deep depletion… that’s a no-no. Instead they are evil — we must ditch them…
Enter renewable energy — transitioning to renewables is IMPOSSIBLE link to en.wikipedia.org
Doesn’t matter. The Ministry of Truth overcomes this by pounding the barnyard animals with messaging (and catch phrases)… convincing them that we are on the path to a green wonderful future — where everyone gets to buy loads of stuff – HURRAH!!! HURRAH!!!
Let’s insert EVs here… ICE vehicles are EVIL. We must transition to EV’s … Zero Emissions. Well ya they are charged and manufactured with fossil fuels … But..BUT (hat tip to Jeff Green) … eventually we will phase out fossil fuels and go totally green.
Unfortunately… this is impossible link to en.wikipedia.org
Governments know this … the bosses of governments (The Men Who Run the World) know this … of course they do — they are not stupid.
But they also know that they MUST ensure that the barnyard animals remain hopeful … positive… productive…
They cannot be allowed to understand that we are f789ed.
THE PERFECT STORM (see p. 59)
The economy is a surplus energy equation, not a monetary one, and growth in output (and in the global population) since the Industrial Revolution has resulted from the harnessing of ever-greater quantities of energy. But the critical relationship between energy production and the energy cost of extraction is now deteriorating so rapidly that the economy as we have known it for more than two centuries is beginning to unravel link to ftalphaville-cdn.ft.com
You may be correct and wouldn’t surprise me.
If even slightly true, sounds like a perfect reason to ban the gigantic energy wasting crypto fraud, all non commercial private jets and 40% of all government employees and buildings 😎
Yep. If it truly was an emergency… all private jet travel would immediately be banned.
And does anyone think Leo – who is a big spokesman for Global Warming … would be investing in this … (inches above sea level)
link to theculturetrip.com
come on man!!! they is playing everyone…. hahaha
It has always been obvious to me that the Global Warming thingy was about peak oil and not CO2. But I’ve been tracking peak oil since the early 2000’s. After a couple of decades of discussions I understand that some folks really believe that things can simply keep growing forever. They are about to find that the only things that will continue growing are unwarranted expectations.