Surprising no one?except for the considerable number of folks who think Tesla can do no wrong?Tesla has been having trouble with its ambitious, expensive, and complex Model X crossover, especially with its signature Falcon Wing doors. A drumbeat of reports of doors improperly opening and closing, sensors failing, doors bonking into overhangs or not opening at all have prompted a surprisingly candid, if not exactly reassuring, response by Elon Musk himself. At a shareholders’ meeting conducted on June 1, Musk assumed full responsibility for the spate of problems that have plagued the doors, saying that it’s the result of the company ?getting overconfident? and that the Model X program in general “has been challenging.” ?I need to fault myself for a little bit of hubris for putting too much technology all at once into a product,” admitted Musk. “In retrospect, the right thing to do with the Model X would have been to take a lot of the really awesome cool things but kind of table them for a future version . . . The software that controls the Model X and the operation of the doors has been incredibly difficult to refine, and getting the complex set of sensors to work well has been incredibly difficult to refine. I think we?re almost there in making the doors useful.
?It?s a software problem. How do you interpret all the information from the sensors" What should you remember" What shouldn?t you remember" How should you open...