Today people think about electric cars as little ugly things nobody wants to drive. At the time, California’s electric vehicle mandate had recently been rescinded so options that were available not long before were being sent to the scrapyard because automakers no longer had to make them. In May 2016, babu88 Tesla’s Autopilot also had its first major crash, where the vehicle plowed into a tractor trailer, killing driver Joshua Brown in Florida. We all kind of got out of the vehicle. Once it went viral, Jalopnik reached out to Vance, who told them my characterization was "vaguely accurate but a disingenuous take on the situation," contradicting what he had written years earlier. Companies sprouted up to take advantage of the low-interest-rate environment and claim they’d deliver on Musk’s big plan - but none of them could, and as interest rates have risen over the past year, many finally went under. Many of Musk’s Boring Company projects were proposed as alternatives to real transport solutions then never went anywhere, and right-wing groups have been using self-driving cars for the past decade in their campaigns against transit projects. First to $83,000 by November 2006, then $110,000 in July 2007, and finally $140,000 for the initial production Roadsters - a figure that wouldn’t get much below $120,000 at higher volume.