Ford Level 3 Eyes-Off Driving to launch on $30K Ford EV Truck

[Letas]

I think this does justify Slate's value, quite directly.
There's a backlash to AI-centric tech products/services, and Ford is going all-in.

If someone wants to get away from Windows 11 and Copilot, they'd have to learn use Linux*, which is intimidating and brings up worries about compatibility and the like. Despite that, Valve's hardware survey charted a big jump in Linux users around the "Windows 10 End of Life".
It's not "Windows is over" or anything, but that's a sign of a lot of people moving despite those barriers to entry (or rather, barriers to exit Windows).

If someone's car reaches "End of Life", and they want an AI-free car, but their dealership is only offering them "Copilot" Fords...they already know how to drive a Slate.

If people get the same ultimatum they got for Windows 10, there are fewer barriers to exit the next generation of AI-powered Fords, and Slate will be an option people look at, especially since the 30K EV has already been compared against it.

Not saying that "Ford will be over", but it'll probably move enough people to help Slate meet annual sales targets. It was 150K, right? Ford has annual sales in the millions, surely they'll lose some thousands to AI backlash.


* Or Mac, which has most of the same issues but trades some of the "intimidating" for "expensive"...and I guess Chromebooks split the difference.
Beside the point: People left Windows despite that being challenging when given the choice between "AI Windows or leave".

All that to say…. If you break into 100 households, and open their laptop or PC. How many are running Linux?

The “big wave” was more of a speed bump

 

[Letas]

The Framework laptop and Fairphone existing prove that there's a (small but extent) market for goods designed to be repairable, upgradable, and open to other operating systems. Those devices cost more than equivalently specced devices from other manufacturers because those are features valuable to (a subset of) people. Slate is a Framework truck. Ford is Microsoft renaming Office to Copilot.

Now compare Fairphone sales to iPhone sales.

They sell ~100k annually. Less than the slate trucks target. And Slate has done nothing material to demonstrate the “right to repair” beyond saying that they will.

 

[ElectricShitbox]

Small market =\= no market
It's the idea that everything needs to grow forever that got us to our current state of enshittification

 

[AZFox]

There's a backlash to AI-centric tech products/services, and Ford is going all-in.

Ford's CEO say the new EV will be "fully connected, with a brand new digital experience no one's seen in our country".

Not interested.

 

[Johnologue]

All that to say…. If you break into 100 households, and open their laptop or PC. How many are running Linux?

The “big wave” was more of a speed bump

Slate could sell 300k cars a year and you could still "break into 100 households" and find few or no Slates. There are easily over 100 million households in the US. 1% of that, 1 for every 100 houses, would be >1 million.

...on that note, according to Valve's hardware survey, I would find around 3.5 Linux computers (assuming 1 computer per household), or nearing 10% if only checking English-speaking households.

Edit: Also, forgot to reiterate: There are significantly fewer barriers to "switching" to a Slate than there are to Linux. Ford has almost no lock-in power here compared to any computer platform (though perhaps by becoming a computer platform, they hope to change that).

I know people who say they'd really like to get away from Windows, etc., but they don't have the time, energy, or confidence with technology to try Linux. Everyone with a car knows how to drive a Slate.

 

[Letas]

Slate could sell 300k cars a year and you could still "break into 100 households" and find few or no Slates. There are easily over 100 million households in the US. 1% of that, 1 for every 100 houses, would be >1 million.

...on that note, according to Valve's hardware survey, I would find around 3.5 Linux computers (assuming 1 computer per household), or nearing 10% if only checking English-speaking households.

And now we can look at a little something called sampling bias. Valve (parent company to Steam) does the hardware survey. It reaches their client base. Who is their client base? Gamers. Gamers are objectively on the high end of technical aptitude. Many build their own PCs, do upgrades, install (or create) mods for games, etc. This customer base is much more likely to have strong preferences on their OS than an average client. I'd bet most people don't even know what OS they are on, beyond the brand.

That is far from a representative survey of the general public.

Yes, this "AI Backlash" exists, but it is not the sentiment of the general public. There are 1000 signs pointing towards the world moving in this direction, and 15 pointing away from it. "I don't need a car, my horse is good enough!". "I don't need a telephone, letters are good enough!". "I don't need a TV, my radio is good enough!". "I don't need a computer, the library is good enough!".


History does nothing but repeat itself.

 

[ElectricShitbox]

When my NFTs bounce back, I'm gonna buy so many Slates.

 

[Letas]

Back to the original point. Any fan of the Slate should be a fan of other vehicles competing at similar price points, whether it be the Ford truck, Nissan Leaf, or whatever else comes along. This competition benefits the consumer in all instances.

 

[Johnologue]

Yes, this "AI Backlash" exists, but it is not the sentiment of the general public. There are 1000 signs pointing towards the world moving in this direction, and 15 pointing away from it. "I don't need a car, my horse is good enough!". "I don't need a telephone, letters are good enough!". "I don't need a TV, my radio is good enough!". "I don't need a computer, the library is good enough!".

History does nothing but repeat itself.

Everyone makes fun of the ~WW1 era French military officer who said aircraft would never be useful in warfare, but forgets the countless people in the interwar period (1920s, 1930s) who created absurd hype and fantasy around aerial warfare, to the extent you'd think they were talking about nuclear weapons. An inevitable world of doomsday and miracles forgotten.

Indeed, history repeats itself.

 

[Johnologue]

I will also add that I don't entirely deny the usefulness of neural networks and language models and such. They're interesting technologies with real uses.

I oppose their most common privacy and user-agency disrespecting implementations by large tech corporations, and I deny magical thinking that uses technological ambiguity to justify infinite claims while putting the burden of proof on critics who simply "don't understand".

I don't want to control my computer by talking to it any more than I want to control my car by walking in place. Microsoft Agent (Bonzi Buddy) was a bad idea in 1997, it's a bad idea now.

 

[KevinRS]

This. Most of us on this forum like the simplicity of the Slate truck, but honestly, we're a tiny minority of drivers. To be sustainable, Slate needs to tap into the mass market, and a 30K Ford truck that seats four, comes with carplay built in, and has L3 autonomy might absolutely crush Slate before it can get out of the gate.

The timing is the issue with that idea. Ford announced a plan to release a full year after Slate.

The thing to understand about AI and about self driving is that progress is not linear but exponential. Programmers, mathemeticians and scientists intuitively understand exponentials. Laymen (even 90+% of college grads) generally don't process exponentials well.

A great example I once saw was a professor illustrating what happened when you drop one bacterium in a jar, and pretend it doubles every second. The gotcha is that the bactera are super happy until one second before they fill the jar and exhaust the available space. Because at one second from the end, the jar is still only half full. And that's just a doubling exponential!

That's exponentials for you. Fat dumb and happy until BLAM!, you're done for. And that's why you can maintain disbelief in AI and self driving right up until the last second. Because everything is groovy until it's not.

Lemme say it a different way. Self driving and AI coming for our jobs will be something most of us will laugh at right up until we don't. And we won't see it coming. Because we're primates with linear and not exponential brains.

Part of the problem with that theory is it is constrained by the hardware. The limits of the sensors cameras and everything, and the processing power needed if you try to upgrade those sensors much. Then there is the issue with AI models trained not to give an "I don't know" answer, which seems to apply to self driving as well; see the Waymo taxis driving between a suspect on the ground and the police holding them at gunpoint.
Not saying it won't happen eventually, but a real, fully safe fully self driving system needs some communication. Maybe police cars with lights flashing send a modulated signal with those lights signaling directions to self driving vehicles, like pull over to the right and wait, or proceed around slowly, or just stop, etc.
Self driving cars also at some point need some kind of communication between the cars. It wouldn't have to be something like wifi, but they could integrate some IR LEDs into the tail lights, and using a similar modulated signal, when a car detects an obstruction or something, it could use them to pass the message back through traffic, so all the cars safely brake in time.
These kind of things would require cooperation between manufacturers and standardization though. That puts that kind of tech some years, maybe decades into the future, not something that's going to explode into being imminently.