No comment as to what this means. Curious if others follow suit as headhunter sharks circle the waters for Tesla’s best and brightest. One thing is for sure, whoever poached Lau is about to learn a lot of fancy new tricks.
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Don’t know much about him but he clearly did a fantastic job leading the Tesla software team. A couple of other automakers have improved significantly but Tesla still remains the leader by some margin in overall software experience and UI/UX.
they can’t learn a lot of fancy new tricks from tesla without dealing with legal issues. ask rivian how that goes.
Software is world class with Tesla. It’s just so streamlined and logical.
Oof, I usually roll my eyes when companies preach their most powerful tool are its people, but in this case this guy lead a very successful department. Best of luck wherever he goes and I’m sure Tesla will miss someone of his talent
Methinks Tesla’s more likely path forward is to merge with another automaker at some point. Probably a company that wants to absorb those factories to avoid tariffs. That would appeal to BYD and BMW. China’s BYD is the largest EV maker, and they only have one factory stateside, in Lancaster, CA.
Lol. They just should have gone with google os. Why rebuild one from scratch when you cant do it perfectly well
The Tesla stack started before Google OS...
Why would Tesla buy another car company?
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By the end of this, it could be other way around
I'm sorry, what? The Tesla tablet is downright awful. I can measure the BUGS PER MINUTE.
🤣🤣
Because then Google is in control of your software instead of you and it also didn’t exist when Tesla started their software stack. The first car to ship with it was the Polestar 2 in 2018. Besides, Tesla has made arguably the best in-industry automotive OS. Why would you think they shouldn’t have done that?
I meant Android not AAOS
go on…
Have you looked at the balance sheets of any of these companies? 🤣🤣 Reddit moment
You aren't real.
You might be right, it’s hard to tell. Would Elon sell off Tesla? Tesla stock is still WAY overpriced so probably not. Would BYD, which sells even more hybrids than EVs, want it? Their battery technology is better (5 minute 300km charge is impressive). Buyers would know, would they stop buying because it used to be Tesla? BMW? I think that’s a good match but will they?
/s?
Tesla literally builds ALL their software from scratch. . . including things like HR, Accounting, Supply/Purchasing, etc. They like to control their own software and it makes it much easier and cheaper for them in the long run.
People acting like googleOS is some polished product. Tesla’s software isn’t bad, everyone hates the constant UI changes. Blame the UI team. The underlying software isn’t horrible and I’d venture to say more polished than android.
I have never been able to find a Tesla tablet that will even turn on.
Tesla buy BMW? No chance. Tesla has valuable IP and talented employees. But around Q2, shareholders won’t be sitting around allowing those assets to continue to hemorrhage. A profitable merger will start looking more and more enticing. Big fish eat little fish during recessions/tariff wars.
No Elon won’t sell Tesla. But shareholder pressure might require some drastic measures. Who knows?
Tesla is the big fish and is still making money lol. Their energy business is only growing. How would having the bloat of BMW help Tesla?
100% agree. Their software is so bad. And I feel like the gas pedal is too stiff. But I love the cars otherwise lol.
By BMW bloat do you mean market share? And I’m curious about your big fish comment, as BYD’s BEV sales exceed Tesla.
I disagree after knowing all the bugs in the UI of my 9 and 13 year old MS’s Before you downvote see my next comment after the following reply. There are tons of little bugs.
I think the guy above you means the fact that Tesla has far more cash on hand as a company than debt compared to BMW who are the opposite and are in more debt than they’re generating money.
Precisely. And Tesla is known for agility and has lots of cash on hand. If they wanted more factories they would just build them. Nissan will probably be looking to merge their way out of bankruptcy though.
Are you sure? https://insideevs.com/news/754063/cm-2025-03-20/#:~:text=Tesla%20is%20flush%20with%20cash,billion%20in%20debt%20last%20year.
What bugs? I have experience with MCU1,2&3 and have been driving Tesla for 9 years now. On MCU1 there is a song that can’t be played because the whole car restarts. Other than that the browser can be laggy or not work from time to time, but that’s not a major thing imho. Try driving a bmw/mercedes/(whatever company you want) from 10-13 years ago, you’ll be horrified by their entertainment systems. Slow, buggy, almost featureless and yet overloaded.
I mean even if that were the case their official balance sheet documented anywhere shows they have about 26billion cash which is after factoring in their debt so even with that error they’re still rolling in cash. Not even just defending Tesla here but I’d be shocked if any of the mag7 weren’t cooking their books as well
Else they get fired for having no work
You dont know that Tesla approached Google back then for OS but negotiations didnt go on well. Now its a closed source OS. Youtube and Spotify apps are shit. The control placements in UI are bad. The OS is buggy for more than 3yrs until recent times. Being a long time tesla owners we know what we had to face which each update that caused constant OS crashes leading to blank screen during drives. Tesla support used to recommend full OS reset for every diagnose and we used to lose user settings. Rear camera views used to crash frequently. Very difficult to reverse at night times and during rain Also I meant Android not AAOS. Honda has been using Android for its OS since 2015 then why cant Tesla
Ashok has not stepped down though. His work on FSD is not over, until at least Robotaxi Unleashed Day in June. FSD13 etc is approaching a singularity point, in which ultimately prove revolutionary to humanity, in addition to millions of lives it will save on the road globally. It will either be Tesla or the Chinese cracks the autonomous driving puzzle.
M3’s OS has never done that for me in 6 years… no idea what you are on about.
Rivian needs to make an offer for him, YESTERDAY
Does nobody else feel that Tesla’s UI has plenty of bugs? Sure, there are streamlined aspects to it which is nice, but I wouldn’t say it’s the best UI. It’s honestly subpar in my mind. High end hardware, but tons of usability issues. Voice recognition for calling someone is crap (does voice to text without using contacts list and then matches what it thinks you said to your contacts and of course fails most of the time with non-American names). Can’t choose which number to call via voice even if it recognizes the contact (by some miracle). Answer and end took forever to get onto M3 steering wheel buttons but there’s no intelligence when button press coincides with incoming call in order to avoid hanging up on the new call. Music favorites disappears all the time. Apple Music bugs are numerous and they don’t bother fixing them. Crashes in music playback where music just gets stuck and you need to move to the next song. Weird loops in Apple Music Radio or Streaming (forget the new name) where it loops on the same song or same two or three songs continuously. And honestly, many more issues. And I’m not complaining about any of the FSD behavior or NAV behavior as that isn’t necessarily the UI team’s decision.
100% - c’mon RJ, do the smart thing here
Yeah. Redditors love to fantasize. Their hate is blinding them.
100%. I suspect he would not have left without another offer.
LMAO
Two things: - He’s been at the company for 12 years, maybe he’s moving on, maybe he’s retiring. I’m sure he’s rich. - He’s VP, not a SVP, not an EVP, not a C level. VPs are a big bosses, but not huge ones.
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Abso-fucking-lutely not surprised lol. The tesla team leads are the goat though. 2024 layoffs destroyed the talent pool there. The new skeleton crew madness and instability is soul sucking. It's crazy how many ex-coworkers are now spread out in various industries, just slaying the competition. I love it. Elon used to have a great amount of the smart people under one roof working harmoniously. Now it's... something! Source: own a teslar. Ex Tesla.
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Well you gotta charge the car first
Nope. I paid cash.
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Oh did you forget to pay your bill then
FUD
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Nah. Usually only companies with a ton of managerial overhead bloat have so many VP levels. Even Apple only has SVP before you get to C-suite.
Best comment of today for me. Nice
The Rivian R2 is said to be coming in 2026 with a starting price of $45k. We'll see what actually happens but I'm excitedly waiting on that. I just wish they would abandon the funky headlights. I know some people like them, but I don't.
Same, I’ve driven them all. Owned MCU1 and 2. Funny I’m downvoted so hard. 1. Map zooms to scales that are useless. The car used to remember your preferred scale for on-highway and off-highway. That was amazing. Now, mine will zoom in when I get on the freeway. Then zoom in more off the freeway. If I swipe around it’ll return to whatever ridiculous scale it was at that is useless to see traffic. Eventually I’ll see individual cars in driveways on the MCU. 2. Power meter has what I can best describe as a hitch. Present in every car I’ve driven with the AP1 UI. As you roll into regen it jumps back. ScanMyTesla CanBus scan doesn’t show the same jump so it is a UI bug. 3. Search for a song in slacker (whatever it is called in car now) let it play. It makes a station based on that song, right? If I exit the car after the searched song, and get back in later the next button will now say the name of the next player song as the station name. Next button makes it happen again. 4. Have you ever tried to start the car at night at keep the headlights off? Impossible. 5. Display brightness setting is absolutely rubbish. I pull out my garage into driveway on a dim cloudy day and the brightness is 100%. That’s fine, it’s daytime. But if it is sunny out, I get 5% brightness and can’t see the screen to close my garage door. 6. Nobody can tell me why when I select 80a charging I only get 72a. I’m aware of the criteria the car would use to restrict max charging rate, I’m not hitting that. My voltage is sufficient. I’m using appropriate conductors for the distance and amperage and the HPWC2 is set appropriately. 7. Car won’t currently connect to WiFi. I’m a WiFi engineer, I can objectively tell you it isn’t a WiFi / internet problem. Yes I’ve restarted it. 8. If you age only one car on your account, but also have an energy solution (solar/powerwall) you can’t send an address to the app/car without going to the app and moving back to the car section. That should be “if only 1 vehicle then assume that vehicle” when sending an address. I have more but I’m tired of typing on my phone. 250k miles and 12+ years of driving two different Model S daily. I’ve seen the same shit you have.
The headlights are kinda ugly. I don’t think they will age well.
I will agree, the UI/UX isn't too bad compared to competitors, but for automotive software, the bar is hilariously low for the automotive industry though so that's not saying much. Either way, it sounds like he might deserve a lot of credit for the state of the software now. The problem is, now they are going to have to replace him and will likely replace him with someone who doesn't know the system as well or possibly at all which could mean even more stagnant development cycle or knee jerk half finished untested feature deployment resulting in more bugs and general reduction of quality over the next few years
Or maybe he’s just doing it in protest until that other guy who is currently tanking the company’s value leaves
Can’t remember the last time I needed to intervene. That software sure does work pretty well for software that doesn’t work and never will.
I wish the very best for a lot of the talented people who made Tesla what it is.
Do you not use Google maps on your phone?
I didn’t downvote you. 1. I agree, the map zoom behavior is frustrating. You can set a preferred scale for the current navigation session, but it’ll reset after navigating to a new destination. If you want to see a larger area, you have to zoom out very carefully and make sure the orientation icon (top left or right) stays black. If it turns gray again, it’ll snap back to the default zoom. That’s borderline impossible unless you’re stationary or on a perfectly smooth road. Definitely poor UX, but I wouldn’t call it a bug. 2. I haven’t personally experienced that regen hitch on any of the Teslas I’ve driven. Are you referring to MCU1 without Autopilot? If not, and this is present on AP1+ cars, that sounds like a strange UI glitch. 3. Can’t comment on Slacker since it’s not available in Europe. We don’t get that here. 4. You’re right, there’s no way to start the car without headlights at night, but that seems intentional. Personally, I’ve never had a need to start without them, but I get that others might. 5. Auto-brightness has worked fine for me so far. That said, I once had a Mercedes E-Class as a Tesla loaner and that car drove me insane. The dash and infotainment had different brightness levels, and the dash was blinding at night. Compared to that, I’ll take Tesla’s screen any day. 6. Unless you’ve got a pre-facelift (pre-2016) Model S with the optional 96A charger, 72A is expected. Most of those cars had three 24A modules, giving you 72A. Base versions were 48A (3x16A). So yeah, unless yours was upgraded to the full 96A setup, 72A is probably normal. 7. Haven’t run into WiFi issues myself, but hardware differences are always possible. Since you’re a WiFi engineer, I trust your analysis. One odd tip—changing the wheel size in the service menu actually triggers one of the deepest resets the car can do. I’ve seen that fix weird bugs that even a scroll wheel reboot couldn’t. Might be worth a shot if you haven’t tried it. 8. That app behavior is annoying. I’d love the option to just select a default vehicle or have the app auto-assign when there’s only one car on the account, no matter what vehicle or energy solution I looked at last in the app. All in all, I agree there are parts of Tesla’s software that feel unfinished or clunky, but I’ve rarely encountered what I’d consider actual bugs. Compared to that Mercedes I had for a day, my Teslas have been way less frustrating long-term. That said, I may have just grown used to their quirks.
And the light bar seems to be going on every other automaker… 😩
There are many reasons why many company borrow money. look at Apple, they are practically printing money, yet has $96 billion debt with $53 billion in cash. Company borrows money if they have cash in one country but need to expand or build new factory in another one, Often it is easier and cheaper to just borrow at the local bank especially if the country gives me special rate like the Bank of China did when Tesla was building the Shanghai gigafactory.
Inverse Reddit lol. Remember the predictions on NVIDIA, Meta, Netflix, and countless others?
If rivian could get rid of those goofy looking headlights and give their vehicles a little more sporty curves. They will rock !
It was a revolutionary move making the speed go from 10 pixels to 50. When I saws that I thought “this is truly the future!”
Crazy because it used to be trash after major updates that made no sense, UI/UX related. It’s better but not great. Then I get in my wife’s jeep SUV and I’m reminded how good we have it. She has the same terrible software that haven’t been touched in 5 years and if there’s a problem, well, you live with it and that’s it.
Only if the Bezos computers are gone. I’m not driving Alexa around. No thanks.
MY and M3 household here. Put down deposit for R2. This week. I keep getting notes on my windshield even after debadging my cars. I'm done with it. I don't wanna feel morally judged for my fucking car
Use Kia's or Polestar and then see what you think of Tesla's.
The bar looks nice.
Why compare it to worse options? Use Rivians and then compare it to Tesla.
People quit their jobs all the time, it's only news because Tesla. He's been with the company 13 years.
Why compare it to worse options? People are begging this guy to go to Rivian. https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1jrn3ii/lau_stepping_down_head_of_software_engineering/mlgyeen/
To be fair, he doesn't have to work for another automaker as a software engineer, he can go anywhere he wants.
> starting price of $45k I mean i'd be surprised if they stuck to that given the climate.
Where do you live that people are actually leaving notes?
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I don’t know why I don’t like it so much but I just don’t like outside control and influence. It’s why I don’t want Meta VR goggles even though they are priced very reasonably. I don’t want Meta/Facebook involved. I don’t want Alexa/Amazon in my vehicle. I know we have very little privacy at this point but I do try and steer my privacy as much as I can. I use Firefox with a couple of privacy plugins, and a VPN. Both on my phone and computer. I have several email addresses for different purposes and Google voice so I have a disposable phone number I can use for random reasons. So, while I wouldn’t claim I’m any sort of expert… I try and I feel good about it. Rivian won’t ever be an option for me till Bezos isn’t involved. I feel more secure with Tesla since its internal/proprietary software and their privacy policy is easy to read and they claim they don’t sell any information for any reason, ever. I can only hope it’s true… Edit: thanks for the award, whoever did that. 😊
I haven't gotten any notes or spraypaint yet. I'm hoping someone torches it so insurance will pay out and I don't have to trade it in.
You can turn on push to talk so it is not always listening. As well as just turning it off completely if you want.
That sucks. Nobody should be taking the brunt of the BS Elon instigated just for buying or owning a Tesla. Been seeing more and more “I bought this before Elon went crazy” stickers on Teslas locally
The difference in software between when I bought (2023) and today is staggering. It's like it's not even the same car - huge improvements. And that's at scale; anyone working in scaled software knows how hard it is.
Once a company reaches a certain size, the value gained by implementing precisely to need outweighs the cost of a custom solution. Where I work, years ago we had a really nice custom system usable by managers, improved and maintained by a team of 15 or so, if memory serves. An exec decided to dump the system in favor of an off the shelf one. Tldr everybody hated it, it took a bigger team to barely maintain integrations, and it lasted 2 years before (to their huge credit) execs reversed course entirely, dumped the 3p system, and built custom again. The new one is dramatically more efficient for managers to use. It precisely implements everything we need. It tracks along with changes in policy. When you have 20k+ internal users and you can make them 5% more efficient, running a 20 person dev team makes total financial sense and reduces out risk. The excellent state of tooling today makes this an option for many companies.
negative. vps report to Elon. There are no svps or evps anymore.
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I’m not following your answer here, was this intended for someone else?
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> lead FYI, it is led (past tense of lead). Lead that sounds like led is the metal.
Oh huh I never knew that, thanks for the correction!
My pleasure.
> As well as just turning it off completely if you want. Sure. We've heard how that works in general.
As an European I hope he joins any of our manufacturers so that one could even remotely consider buying any of their products.
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> Why rebuild one from scratch Try any Polestar and you'll know why.
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Price will be interesting with everything that's going on. But at least it's looking like it will be on track for the production timeline. Rivian is actually ahead of schedule with their factory upgrades. https://www.rivianforums.com/forum/threads/photo-r2-body-built-w-production-dies-nacs-charge-port-location-drivers-side.41965/
I actually like Rivian's UI, it's great, but it's somewhat laggy sometimes. If they could equal the snappiness of Tesla's they'd have a winner. Rivian uses decent hardware, it must be an optimization issue.
Rivian and VW Group have a JV. https://rivian.com/newsroom/article/rivian-and-volkswagen-group-announce-the-launch-of-their-joint-venture
That was based on a Financial Times article,which has since been RETRACTED. A newspaper whose skill set is supposed to be financial matters. Not much evidence of bias then?
Why not a bmw?
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Flagged for false information. You do not even have FSD13 to comment. I can post all my FSD videos of zero interventions on a daily basis? You Tesla Qs are standing in the way of unprecedented safety.
People keep saying he may be heading towards rivian…but I’ll gone further. He’s going to Rivian at the juncture that they are ramping up support to Scout Motors/VW.
Interesting there’s no reply to this….
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I got one in Jersey city NJ I imagine it’s common in cities
> Tesla still remains the leader by some margin in overall software experience and UI/UX. LOL, no. I have large font size set (still not large enough) and the navigation search field doesn't expand. So when I enter a street name, I often can't see the city where this street is. Ditto for driving directions.
They always knew
The base 45k will probably be rwd single motor.
More than half the people who ever graduate from high level engineering schools are disgusted with Elon. Brain drain is real.
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I hope BYD snap him up. BYD would completely take over the market if they improved the software especially with God's eye Ai now in the picture.
what a weird thing to claim so definitively. [https://ir.tesla.com/corporate/tom-zhu](https://ir.tesla.com/corporate/tom-zhu) [https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000197292824000003/xslF345X05/edgardoc.xml](https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1318605/000197292824000003/xslF345X05/edgardoc.xml)
nothing to worry about. tesla wont suddenly dismantle because one person leaves. this happens in every industry/company eventually. not like a year from now tesla software will look like Kia bloatware suddenly.
Now go look at their finances, hopefully that company still exists in a decade lol
Agreed no other car is even close
Completely uninformed robots foaming at the mouth because upvoTEs
I don’t follow Tesla deeply but it would seem like they have lost all their top executives/employees
Love the candy vibe
That’s great buddy Has literally nothing to do with my statement. I said in relation to other automakers Tesla still provides the best software experience
The headlights are cheugy
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Is Lau going to BYD?
Depends on who and where from within
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