I find it interesting that he was on This Week in Startups only a few weeks ago calling every company he found unconvincing "losers" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2zy_07g2IrM
Maybe they're all losers and you're a winner, but perhaps being an elite hax0r isn't all that's needed to go to market...
If you can't reply to a regulator letter, how are you going to deal with supply chain or cash flow issues? Bad reviews in the press or on Amazon? People who want refunds? Not to mention the literal horror of a car crash. To borrow a term injected into this election season, you gotta have Stamina.
Keep in mind that given Geohot's promise of "shipping" comma one by 2016 EOY, it's impossible to keep that promise if they have to deal with regulatory agencies and certifications stuff. And there are probably other countries and markets with much lax requirements, I think this is probably the main reason he cancelled the product on U.S.
On the other hand, I am really concerned that he and his team didn't appear to think about working with the government agencies beforehand to sort out any regulatory requirements in order to prevent this kind of situation. Shocked!
>> On the other hand, I am really concerned that he and his team didn't appear to think about working with the government agencies beforehand to sort out any regulatory requirements in order to prevent this kind of situation. Shocked!
Well consider the attitude of SV hackers toward the established auto industry. They think we're a bunch of... I dunno... rust-belt, old-school, last century, bumblefucks who don't understand technology. Given that attitude it probably never occurred to him that there might be people or even regulators taking this stuff way more seriously than him.
He sounds really immature and irresponsible. If you look at his code on GitHub, it's full of sloppy stuff, commented-out code, and worrisome little loose ends with comments like "should I check this value?"[1] Even his commit messages are full of sloppy stuff.[2][3] That's fine for hacking on game systems, emulators, or various consumer electronics (and he's clearly quite good at it, given his accomplishments), but would anyone really want to trust their life to code like this? How much testing has he actually done on this thing? By his own accounts, it didn't even work until less than a year ago.[4] The NHTSA is right to question him about safety if he's planning to put this on the market for anyone & everyone to use on public roads a matter of months from now. Choosing to shut down and go work in another country after receiving just one inquiry about safety is a sign that there could be serious problems. A car is not a toy.
(Oh, and in case anyone responds with "well let's see your code!", please note that I'm not the one making asking people to trust their lives to my code, making wild claims about what I've built, nor issuing challenges to the likes of Tesla.[5])
Maybe they're all losers and you're a winner, but perhaps being an elite hax0r isn't all that's needed to go to market...
If you can't reply to a regulator letter, how are you going to deal with supply chain or cash flow issues? Bad reviews in the press or on Amazon? People who want refunds? Not to mention the literal horror of a car crash. To borrow a term injected into this election season, you gotta have Stamina.