Steve Wozniak slams "dishonest" Elon Musk and Tesla, says they robbed him and his family

[midian182]

What just happened? People's opinion of Elon Musk tends to be split between those who love him and those who hate the billionaire. It appears that Steve Wozniak is closer to the latter camp. The Apple co-founder said Musk and Tesla "robbed" his family of money over false claims about the EV company's self-driving technology. "A lot of honesty disappears when you look at Elon Musk and Tesla," said Wozniak.

In an interview on CNBC's Squawk Box on Thursday, Wozniak told Andrew Ross Sorkin that Musk shares many similarities with his late friend and fellow Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, though he doesn't believe the Tesla boss is the same caliber as Jobs when it comes to entrepreneurship. "I put them in the category of having the ability to communicate and want to be seen as the important person and being like the cult leader," Wozniak said.

"Elon Musk and Steve Jobs are very similar, and I don't like to say that," says Apple Co-Founder @stevewoz. "They both want to be seen as the important person and be like a cult leader. But a lot of honesty disappears when you look at @elonmusk and $TSLA." pic.twitter.com/A5YUt5ZNIs

— Squawk Box (@SquawkCNBC) February 9, 2023

"A lot of people will follow them no matter what they say and they get beyond the point of being judged. A lot of cults are like that," Wozniak added, stressing that he considers this a bad thing.

Wozniak said his life has been based on total honesty, a description he believes can't be applied to Musk. "A lot of honesty disappears when you look at Elon Musk and Tesla," Wozniak said. "They have robbed my family, myself and my wife, of so much money [...] with things they said that we really believed would be real."

Wozniak was referring to the Tesla vehicle he upgraded in 2016—when Tesla first offered Full Self-Driving (FSD) in beta—after Musk said the car would be able to drive itself across the country by end of that year.

Wozniak and his wife then spent $50,000 on another vehicle upgrade with eight cameras and more sensors, which the CEO said would allow it to drive coast to coast without driver intervention by the end of 2017. But Woz says the car's self-driving abilities are still far from what Musk promised. "It makes mistakes all the time," he said. "It's a horrible, frightening experience."

Wozniak, who once said he might have been patient zero for US Covid-19 infections, did say he admires some things about Musk, including the way he has helped speed up the transition from fossil fuel-powered vehicles to EVs across the automotive industry, but he doesn't admire his misleading and dishonest marketing spiel. Did Jobs, who didn't have the best reputation, fall into the same category?

"Steve Jobs really wasn't so dishonest. But he would say things in ways [...] he just had a way of grabbing you," Wozniak said. "But it wasn't really that untruthful. You didn't buy something thinking you were going to get 'A' but didn't get it."

It sounds as if Wozniak was one of many customers taken in by Tesla's 2016 commercial that showed off its Autopilot driver-assist system, including the ability to stop at a red traffic light and move away once it turned green. Ashok Elluswamy, Tesla's director of Autopilot software, last month admitted that the video was staged.

In 2018, Tesla settled a class action lawsuit brought by customers who claimed its semi-autonomous driver-assist system was "essentially unusable and demonstrably dangerous."

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https://www.techspot.com/news/97563-steve-wozniak-slams-dishonest-elon-musk-tesla-robbing.html

 

[sorten]

Fortunately for Woz, he's a billionaire and can afford to be robbed of $50K, but he has a valid point. Tesla and Musk created the modern EV market but haven't done very well at delivering on promises over the past few years. Musk seems to have lost interest in Tesla.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Did Woz actually believe a Tesla could go coast to coast - with no human input in 2017?- I suppose if it just stayed on I10 for the whole way.
Woz must of been partially aware of the current state at the time

Don't the driverless taxis only exist in highly mapped cities ?

I think that USA DOD autonomous vehicle competition - get a vehicle from A to B over rough terrain and roads is interesting - but all the edge cases in towns - roadworks , policemen signaling , pedestrians , kids, dogs - the need to reverse for poor drivers, sun strike , weird shapes/shadows - probably still 5 years off at least

 

[3volv3d]

He is right the companies and heads of are similar.
Two awful companies, pretending to bring a future, but in all honesty just helping speed up the end.

Good job guys. Half assing it.

 

[yRaz]

I think I'm starting to like Musk a little more now. Woz can go f**** himself. Here is the thing about investing, don't invest what you can't afford to lose. Also, the whole market is down, shut up. If you can't live off your many billions then you can come live off my wage

 

[VitalyT]

Wozniak, who once said he might have been patient zero for US Covid-19 infections

This is a strong indication that the man is delusional. I wouldn't take seriously any of his rants.

 

[NikoBB]

Steve, the head is given to think and invest your savings correctly. If you already have no head, and your consultants are *****s or immoral, then whose problem is it?

I am not an AI specialist, but being a professional software developer, I have known for a long time that AI is simply impossible in the next 50 years, which means that autopilot, as its derivative, is also impossible.

I understand that ordinary *****s believe in all this, often paying with their lives on the road. But you, Steve, should understand this an order of magnitude more and even better at times than I do. Then why are you whining in the press that you were deceived by the fraudster Musk? You are dishonoring yourself and your reputation with such statements. Leave quietly, fixing losses in a deliberately losing enterprise.

 

[Dimitriid]

Predictably there's a lot of ad hominem directed at Wozniak. I honestly do not care: you can even show me evidence of him being a murderer right now and it would still change nothing: Elon is a liar, he did intentionally mislead the entire general public about the capabilities of Tesla and people only started to caught on when they saw the ridiculous claims of the hyperloop and it still took some years for people to see Musk full naked royal body once he got embroiled with twitter.

So go ahead, tell me more about the evils of Wozniak, I probably will agree with most of them he's a billionaire and like all of them deserves nothing but contempt. He's probably also misrepresenting Jobs more than a little bit if not entirely as well. Still doesn't change the fact that Musk is a liar, no matter how much of the Apu meme guys here try to change the topic.

 

[return]

Both use/used slave labour. Very honest of them.

 

[Uncle Al]

Just an FYI ..... the WOZ's net worth, as listed by Forbes is far less than a billion dollars, in fact it's just over 100 million. No drop in the bucket but being able to "afford" to loose money on a product certainly isn't an excuse for companies that sell by deception .....

 

[hahahanoobs]

I'll say it again about Musk...
I like the vision, but hate the man.

 

[netman]

"Wozniak and his wife then spent $50,000 on another vehicle upgrade with eight cameras and more sensors, which the CEO said would allow it to drive coast to coast without driver intervention by the end of 2017."

I don't understand the benefits of self driving cars, not to mention the danger that it implies...! If you don't like or enjoy driving a car, hire a chauffeur or take a train for trips come close to what you want...!

 

[maxxcool7421]

Elon scum
WOZ ultra rich white dude
twitter slap fight

yawn ..

all people with more than 10-billion in worth should be f*orced* to donate 1 million/year to scholarships forever or het out of the country.

 

[Kashim]

I think I'm starting to like Musk a little more now. Woz can go f**** himself. Here is the thing about investing, don't invest what you can't afford to lose. Also, the whole market is down, shut up. If you can't live off your many billions then you can come live off my wage

Your reasoning makes no sense. You basically sound butthurt because the Woz has more money than you and he dared to complain about the world's biggest liar (Musk) who also happens to be a billionaire.

 

[yRaz]

Your reasoning makes no sense. You basically sound butthurt because the Woz has more money than you and he dared to complain about the world's biggest liar (Musk) who also happens to be a billionaire.

I'm not a billionaire but I live very comfortably. He's complaining about losing billions on Tesla and trying to blame Musk. The whole market is down, I've lost a bunch of money on my investments, too. The difference is that I'm not crying about it.

What were seeing is a market correction. We were in a bull market and he's complaining about losing what are called "unrealized gains".

 

[RudyBob]

Let's do it in China. That will create real and meaningful American jobs

 

[NikoBB]

Elon is a liar, he did intentionally mislead the entire general public about the capabilities of Tesla and people only started to caught

In fact, this most stupid public simply does not want to admit the fact who they are. And also to make claims to the authorities who allow these semi-finished products on the roads, I.e. to those criminal "experts" who allowed the death of people, but were obliged to prevent this until the technology was really reliable. They are intentionally - the authorities and the developers of such systems, are used by people with a crude system to debug it at the expense of the stupidity of the ordinary population and their blood. Who are they after that?

But why do ordinary people choose incompetent populist politicians, populist judges, populist prosecutors, and then be surprised by the results leading to disastrous consequences?

Politicians lie all the time, but they get away with it. Large corporations lie all the time, but most often they get away with it under the guise of political lobbying - in fact, this is institutionalized corruption.

Didn't specialists like me write years ago that crypto exchanges are a scam? But what did the corrupt authorities do? They allowed this scam on the NYSE! And now they are surprised at the collapse of crypto-exchanges, on which behind-the-scenes immoral beneficiaries made billions from the air and money of fools.

The entire society as a whole is always to blame for everything. People like Musk (this guy, despite his obvious immorality, at least did a lot of work, unlike the bigwigs of the crypto world) were, are and will always be. There will always be those who will try to build a Ponzi pyramid on fools. If there are fools and there is no one to stop them, it will be built. Which is proven all the time.

Until the majority of the population grows wiser and becomes at least 80% consistent with the current development of science in terms of its development and outlook, the presence of common sense and critical thinking, all sorts of scoundrels will always easily use them for dirty purposes.

Well, at least Musk, on the blood of these naive ones, can improve the autopilot. At least something, as in the case of wasting electricity and hardware on madness with crypto. Instead of this idiocy, it would be better if all this greedy crowd was engaged in distributed computing for science. But no - there is no personal short-term benefit. And the long-term for all mankind is of no interest to anyone...

 

[moral hazard]

Fully autonomous driving is like fusion: always 20 years away. Maybe then I can get a car that needs no driver or fuel.....

 

[Beerfloat]

People ask Steve for his opinions and he calls 'em like he sees 'em.

It's not like he just randomly tweets out lies and petty takes, unlike certain other individuals.

 

[waclark]

SNIP

I don't understand the benefits of self driving cars, not to mention the danger that it implies...! If you don't like or enjoy driving a car, hire a chauffeur or take a train for trips come close to what you want...!

Well, that's the point. A self driving car isn't supposed to make the mistakes a human driver would make, and therefore would be safer. The problem is not a single dimension issue. First, you still have human driven vehicles and getting a "robot" to predict and avoid humans is a non-trivial task. Second, while the technology today is better than it was in 2016 you still have the gargantuan challenge of taking in multiple real-time inputs and trying to compute a solution in a moving vehicle. Last but not least, we don't have any sort of standardization and therefore vehicles from different manufacturers cannot interact with each other which would make them safer.

 

[Eflow]

I'm not a billionaire but I live very comfortably. He's complaining about losing billions on Tesla and trying to blame Musk. The whole market is down, I've lost a bunch of money on my investments, too. The difference is that I'm not crying about it.

What were seeing is a market correction. We were in a bull market and he's complaining about losing what are called "unrealized gains".

This entire article is about Musk lying about the capabilities of Full Self Driving (FSD) vehicles. Woz said that he wasted money on a product which hasn't come to fruition after several years.

Tesla stock wasn't mentioned once, but you keep mentioning "the market" and "investments".

Maybe read the article next time before you weigh in with your opinions.

 

[yRaz]

This entire article is about Musk lying about the capabilities of Full Self Driving (FSD) vehicles. Woz said that he wasted money on a product which hasn't come to fruition after several years.

Tesla stock wasn't mentioned once, but you keep mentioning "the market" and "investments".

Maybe read the article next time before you weigh in with your opinions.

Woz is a known BSer. The accident rate for self driving Tesla vehicles is significantly lower than the national average for real drivers. Fact of the matter is that no self driving technologies have been approved by the US Department of Transportation. Woz is putting his blame on Tesla for things the DoT hasn't approved yet.

A Tesla very well could drive coast to coast, as could many other self driving AI systems. The DoT wants a zero accident rate before approving any of them. This isn't just a Tesla problem, this is a self-driving car problem and the issue is with legislative approval, not the technology

 

[Loadedaxe]

Oh my, hate the rich spit on the poor.

 

[hwertz]

On the one hand, Woz should have known better.

On the other hand, you can go coast-to-coast using nothing but Interstate highways, which have standardized lane markings, standardized signage, limited vehicle access (no side streets, driveways, or parking lots, only onramps, offramps, and vehicles on the shoulder), no pedestrian access, and even limits on grade and curve tightness. Given the limited scope (compared to being able to drive on any arbitrary road with sometimes non-standard signage), I could see thinking they could have had something ready.

I have to agree with Woz -- Jobs was a showman, but everything he'd demo and talk up was actually a working product that was ready to ship; Tesla is a showman, but likes to talk about what he assumes is possible.

I have learned to ONLY buy a product based on what it can do now, not on any promises of what it will do in the future; sometimes those future promises actually come through; sometimes those future promises are strictly vaporware based on the marketing dept. just claiming stuff without asking the engineers; sometimes, the company are jerks and just decide they're going to drop support rather than add promised features; sometimes, the programmers/engineers find the features are difficult to impossible to add.

I recall a storage array a few years back where they promised it would support deduplication with a future update. The thing had very low RAM, like 128MB or something, and they could not get everything to fit but figured they'd find some "fat to trim" and get it all to fit. After about 6 months they admitted the system simply didn't have enough RAM to support the additional features and it was not going to get them.

 

[kiwigraeme]

Let's put this in perspective - all the supposedly smart companies/people believing Theranos - Elizabeth somebodies lies - what was it? a 101 blood tests done dirt cheap
Any experts in the field could have probably poured cold water on this - TBF they were 100% fraudulent with results - and not just fantastical claims .- A device testing a dozen things I could believe .

Then there is all the smart investors in dot.com IPOs - TBF the smart ones were pump and dump - huge capitalization higher than 95% of companies with actual products, assets and profits - how can a no-name company with no product , just an idea be worth $50 Billion ? - unless it's giving eureka vibes etc ignore it