To hold an event with a large number of people in the time of the most severe pandemic the world has seen may not sound like a good idea, and some have been asking why do it at all. But it was a great idea.
My week involves business travel from Germany to Tesla’s headquarters in Fremont, California, during the worst pandemic the world has seen for century.
A parliament usually only asks an auto company to show up if something went very wrong. Either a financial bailout is needed or another huge scandal happened, like with the diesel cheating devices that polluted the environment and its citizens for years. Why was Tesla invited by the parliament in Brandenburg to provide a presentation at the end of August?
You can save tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars with continuous improvements to a Tesla, which is a stark contrast to other automaker that do something else continuously: ask you to pay again!
On average, more than 60% of all new passenger cars sold in Germany are company cars. That’s an astoundingly high number already, but even more impressive is that every 12th employee in Germany drives one. This incredibly high number is not a coincidence, and I believe it’s the highest company car rate in the world.
“You can have many views of what a computer is. My particular view is that a computer is a new medium. (…) A computer will be in the future more looked at in this way — as a delivery vehicle for software.” — Steve Jobs in 1995.
Unfortunately, a lot of factually wrong articles and reports appeared in recent days about a German court ruling (OLG Karlsruhe 1 Rb 36 Ss 832/19) that has to do with a Tesla driver who had an accident in heavy rain and claimed it was the fault of the vehicle’s controls.
RK Anand, the CEO and co-founder of Recogni. Image courtesy of RK Anand
Recogni is one of the best-kept secrets in the autonomous driving industry, a hidden champion that plans to deliver technology key to full self-driving capability to the automotive industry in 5–6 months.
My articles about the incumbent automotive industry are usually not at all friendly, and that is not done on purpose but is a result of a never-ending series of missed opportunities, wrong decisions, and ill-advised strategies they regularly annoy me with.
The promise of autonomous vehicles that drive humans safely and reliably in every condition and place in the world is an inspiration for humankind, and if realized will open the door to unprecedented productivity gains and not-seen-before profits.
