It's such a shame. My wife has an early Model 3 from 2019 that's now over 100,000 miles. It's been a great car, no major issues and no maintenance for 6 years. 100,000 miles with nothing but new tires and windshield washer fluid is amazing to me. We're not in a position to unload our Tesla for something else right now, but without major changes at the head of the company it will likely be the last Tesla we own.
I've toured a couple of ATC towers recently and my impression was they were surprisingly low tech. A tech upgrade seems like the most viable solution at this point. There are processes for writing and testing software and hardware for environments such as this, but the government needs to be willing to make the investment.
I've been using a Garmin Forerunner GPS watch for years, and what I've found I like the most about it is actually the Garmin Connect app on my phone. I don't think Garmin gets enough credit as a software shop. Connect is a great application for tracking your workouts over time. A fair number of runners even use Garmin's workout plans from the app. Even compared to running apps exclusively for iOS and Android I think the Garmin app is one of the better ones around, and is free to use with no monthly fees. Combine that with the fact that I don't even have to take my phone with me, I just wear my watch and it syncs with my phone when I get home. Running with a phone sucks, I have yet to find a way to carry one that isn't annoying.
This pretty much reflects what we get in the US as well. Obviously with the size of the US we have a ways to go before we get to ICE level of coverage but it has gotten much better the last 2-3 years. The only thing Google maps lacks over say the Tesla app is being able to see how many chargers are available at a station. I’ve changed my trip a little bit a few times when it’s clear one station is a lot busier than another one that might be 20 miles down the road.
Tesla actually had $1.74 billion in revenue from its charging network in 2023, Bloomberg estimates that they probably made about 10% profits from that or $174 million. They are predicting that to grow to $7.4 billion in revenue by 2030. In my neck of the woods many of the Tesla superchargers I see are empty most of the time, presumably adding 3rd party vehicles is a way for Tesla to increase it's profits on their already built out network. Of course Tesla is still adding to their network but presumably as that investment decreases and the fact that they are charging more for non-Tesla vehicles, their profits will increase. It seems like it's turned into a nice little side business.
One of these years the Colorado mountains are going to get a fraction of the snow they normally get and it's going to be a disaster for the entire southwest US. It almost happened in the winter of 2020-21, the snowpack statewide was just 30-40% of average at the end of winter. A heavy, wet, late spring storm dropped a ton of snow in the Colorado mountains in April of 2021 and saved the day, but man if that storm hadn't happened...imagine the 60 odd million people from Colorado to Mexico fighting over just a third of the normal amount of water they have to work with?
This is hardly beyond standard practice in the industry.
The SLS is going to orbital flight with no flight testing. Heck the Falcon Heavy launched a car past Mars' orbit on it's first flight. I think SpaceX's main goal was to refine their manufacturing process and make sure they can achieve a certain level of consistency in building these things. The fact that they installed all these Raptors before even doing a pressure test tells you they are far more confident in their processes than they were even 6 months ago.
https://coloradosun.com/2025/04/26/apartment-rents-denver-fa...