Bart van Bakel

“When the greengrocer removes his sign - the illusion begins to crack…” Vaclav Havel

@FoxNews Bye Bye Baghdad Barbie!

JUST IN: Karoline Leavitt speaks to the press for what is likely the last time before she has her second baby: “This will likely be my last gaggle for some time.” “As you can see, I’m about ready to have a baby any minute, so I’ll see you guys very soon.” “I know all of you have the president’s phone number personally, so I have no doubt that you will have a shortage of statements and news from this building while I’m gone.”

@mmpadellan Good Riddance Lyin’ Leavitt x.com/hemmatmahdi/st…

Holy shit, Karoline Leavitt just gave her LAST lie briefing before taking maternity leave! I will not miss her contemptuous gaslighting and her nasty, Botox filled sneer one bit. STAY GONE!

@superspeed0092 @TSLA_inside_ @fsd_database @wholemars @Tesla it already works this way as far as I know. as long as you have a HW4 Tesla with FSD I’m under the impression it should work when you drive in the Netherlands

@TSLA_inside_ @fsd_database @wholemars @tesla can we please - as europeans - get access to FSD once crossing into the Netherlands? Would really like to experience this on a day trip coming from Germany.

Leading in the Netherlands on self-driving kilometers. 2,061 km driven with FSD More than double the #2 position This week again ranked #1 524 km Consistent usage. Real-world data. @fsd_database @wholemars

@allenanalysis Pussy Pete is a moron! youtu.be/EVfvA7YwxmQ?is…

Read this carefully. This is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth today, speaking to reporters. "We are not counting on Europe, but they need the Strait of Hormuz much more than we do. And might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe and get in a boat. This is much more their fight than ours." Get in a boat. Let me tell you what is wrong with this. Before the war started, the Strait of Hormuz was open. Oil moved through it every day. American ships, European ships, Asian ships. One hundred tankers a day. Twenty percent of the world's oil. No blockade. No crisis. No emergency. Then on February 28, the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran. That was not Europe's decision. Europe did not ask for it. Europe did not vote for it. France, Germany, Spain, and the United Kingdom publicly opposed it. Pope Leo the Fourteenth opposed it. The United Nations Secretary-General opposed it. The United States started the war anyway.

Why can’t I just break the law? charge illegal tariffs to the world, most of which are passed on to american consumers? why can’t I just rip of the people to enrich my billionaire friends? Why doesn’t the Supreme Court I personally stacked bail me out, like my daddy used to do? What a pathetic Loser! 😭

@perlyngemark @wholemars I wouldn’t count on free retrofits if you haven’t paid for FSD. Perhaps there will be a paid option

@bartvanbakel @wholemars If it was my car I would want to try it and perhaps subscribe a few months per year or if prices comes down every month. Also selling the car with hw3 will limit the possibilities for future buyer that might refuse to buy it without ai4. So any car with hw3 is unsellable

Which is more expensive? Simply retrofitting, or dedicate compute and engineering resources to training HW3 specific models? When you look at opportunity cost, i’m sure the answer is the latter. Even if it could be done, i’m not sure it’s the economically optimal path.

Nobody has been “free riding” Paranoia-Pete! The US has CHOSEN to fight endless wars for decades, pretending to be the “leaders of the free world” and bringing “freedom & democracy”. Building military bases around the globe and using those of the rest of the world FREE OF CHARGE plus soft-power is what allowed the US to benefit from the petro-dollar and is what drove the rest of the world to finance the $40 trillion in US debt. If you no longer want that, just say so @PeteHegseth. You seem to be on a clear path to destroy the very things that made the US an economic superpower! Good luck going it alone! P.S. stop begging for help 😭

BREAKING: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth calls out America's allies: "The time for free riding is over." "America and the free world deserve allies who are capable, who are loyal, and who understand that being an ally is not a one way street." "We barely use the Strait of Hormuz as a country. Our energy doesn't flow through there, and we have plenty of energy." "We are not counting on Europe, but they need the Strait of Hormuz much more than we do, and might want to start doing less talking and having less fancy conferences in Europe and getting a boat."

@perlyngemark @wholemars why would they need to upgrade the car for someone not purchasing FSD?

@bartvanbakel @wholemars No no no! Many people bought the car without FSD as this is something that could be upgraded in the future. I certainly did! Sure I sold my car at a hefty loss and no one wants to buy HW3 so I assume I will not be compensated. They have to upgrade all cars for sure!

@perlyngemark @wholemars More like 14% of that amount Here’s a good thread: x.com/theevuniverse/…

@wholemars Retrofitting five million cars at $2000 each is ten billion… everyone who bought a HW3 was promised the car would be unsupervised

@FPCHD It depends on what one considers “scaling”. As Elon also mentioned he expects to have robotaxis deployed in 12 cities by the end of this year. I personally expect somewhere between 2k-5k robotaxis deployed in the US by EOY. Scaling then refers to expanding nationwide AND going global in 2027

This is based on my understanding from yesterdays earnings call, that Robotaxi Scaling will start in early 27 and till then only small numbers of vehicles will be added to the operating fleet. Is this correct/incorrect? Second aspect: the cybercab volume production starts now, I assume a couple 100 vehicles output till end of year. Is this correct/incorrect? So based on those two factors, I don’t understand what Tesla is going to do with the cybercabs. Maybe I misunderstood something?!

Now that @Tesla has publicly announced the final Cybercab in bright, glossy gold and that production SOP (Start or Production) has happened, here are some views of several at Giga Texas today in the outbound lot. As you can visually see, these are very noticeably different from the wrapped engineering versions. These look so good out in the sun for the first time!

@BonkDaCarnivore Grok estimates the total cost to retrofit ALL HW3 cars with FSD purchased to 1.35 bln

@BonkDaCarnivore 🤣🤣🤣🤣 the entire world has already moved to vision only autonomous systems… You can’t really still believe the LIDAR myth?!

The disaster that is $TSLA's earnings, pt. 3: The numbers from the FSD myth Of all the mistakes Elmo made during yesterday's earnings call, none was more striking than this: He admitted that full-self-driving is not possible on HW3. This is something those of us who understand the tech have been saying for years, as Tesla's reliance on vision systems instead of LIDAR comes with inherent limitations. Elmo stated that in order for cars that he has been promising would be FSD capable from 2017 forward, they would need a complete replacement of the onboard computer AND all of the cameras. He then proposed a solution of, rather than honoring the terms of the contract $TSLA established with every car buyer from the last 9 years (and every investor over that time), he was going to offer what amounts to a COUPON for a discount on a new Tesla. The obvious problem here is, you can't breach a contract with everybody and then tell people who likely don't WANT to buy a new Tesla (myself included) that that's how you're going to handle it. And, given that Tesla's inventory (even after he pulled some shenanigans with purchases with his other companies, more on that later), is all the way up to 27 days, it's obvious people have lost their desire to own these vehicles. Legally, Tesla is at a minimum required to offer a full refund of FSD purchases over this entire time period (10k/car). Anyhow, here are the numbers: 1.1 million cars have full FSD purchased (not leased). That's 11 BILLION dollars of liability for Tesla, JUST on the refunds for FSD, let alone the breach claims and investor suits. And make no mistake, the class action suits will be FLYING. The alternative? Elmo floated the idea of building "micro factories" to build all the computers and cameras necessary to replace all these systems (because he wants to be like Disney and have a policy of "once he has your money, he never gives it back"). Well, that won't work. By Elmo's own admission, one of the big bottlenecks is memory bandwidth. With RAM prices sky high because of the AI industry (which Elmo has contributed to, ironically enough), the production costs of these systems is way beyond anything Tesla could have projected. And that's without factoring in the capex necessary to spring up "micro factories" all around the country - the construction costs, permitting, equipment, etc. etc. It's not unreasonable to assume it would cost more than $10,000/unit to stand up production to retrofit these 1.1 million cars. Now Elmo was super sketchy about this when he was talking, saying that replacement of the hardware might need to be offered...but he left out the part where he's going to be obligated to do it for free. I would wager, in his mind, that he thinks this might be something he could charge for. Worth noting here, amidst all these numbers, is that Elmo stated the fix doesn't even exist right now, and Tesla has no timeline for how it thinks it's going to "solve" it. Given Tesla's history of always being years late on deadlines (we're in year 9 of "FSD level 3 this year", for example), that's not going to set well with people, especially ones with older FSD capable cars. Tesla is a disaster.

While Trump writes unhinged posts on Truth Social, Mark Carney signs trade deals and strategic partnerships across the globe, decoupling Canada from the US and rerouting trade to dependable partners… MAGA is dead, american consumers paid most of Trump illegal tariffs and now corporate america is getting the tariff rebates! The only ones profiteering is the Epstein Class and very soon it’s america alone with $40+ trillion in debt and the petrodollar replaced due to endless wars… As Carney predicted, luckily ever more “shopkeepers are removing the sign from their windows” 🇨🇦

The level of bullshit coming from this Administration about Canada is frightening. I guess he forgot about Canada giving them cheap oil and our Electric Dams powering 7 States at a reduced price. We already know he doesn’t understand how tariffs work, trust me, he has no clue how Canada works.

25th amendment or a visit to the Hague @IntlCrimCourt ?

Share this wide if you ❤️ big oil 🛢️😉🤥🤡

@MissJilianne same here (but 2023 MY HW3) Here’s what I expect to play out x.com/bartvanbakel/s…

Tesla no longer offers the Tesla Model S Plaid, and I’m not interested in downgrading to a Tesla Model 3 or Tesla Model Y. I paid for Full Self-Driving over three years ago, and I expect to receive the Unsupervised capability on the car I already own.

Thanks Jaan @TheEVuniverse so about $1.35 bln total! 💰 If I were @elonmusk I would push for max. upgrades to new cars in the next 6-12 months by significantly increasing the trade-in value and allowing full FSD transfer for all HW3 owners who purchased FSD, while also covering the full retrofit fees for the ~50% who prefer to keep their current vehicles (my estimate)

Thanks—spot on, Elon specifically called out customers who *bought* FSD (one-time purchase, not subs). Tesla doesn't break out exact bought vs. subscription splits, but historical one-time purchase take rates on older HW3 cars were lower (single-digits early on, climbing to low teens recently per earnings context/analysts). Current 1.28M active subs = ~14% fleet-wide, with bulk recent growth from subs. For ~4M HW3 fleet, bought FSD likely ~350k-450k cars (conservative refinement from prior 560k). At ~$3k/car (comp + cams + labor): **~$1.05B–$1.35B total**. All HW3 remains ~$12B hypothetical. Numbers are estimates—parts/labor could shift with microfactories.

hey @grok calculate what it would take for Tesla to cover all costs of HW3 -> HW4 retrofit itself as 'goodwill', including the cameras and all labor. Make two versions: one taking HW3 FSD take rate into account and one for all HW3 cars. Be thorough, arrive at total cost.

@AllForCountry @FT @gork what’s the point of the blockade than numbnuts?! 🙄

@FT @gork tell these douchebags, that the blockade is of Iranian ports. Ships are allowed in and out of the strait if their port of origin or their destination is not Iranian.

Good morning, Asia. While you were sleeping, one of our most-read stories reported that dozens of ships have managed to circumvent the blockade since it began — despite Donald Trump declaring it a ‘tremendous success’. ft.trib.al/uIGI0Yn