Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “On New Cybertruck Updates from Drone Footage…”.
All right, so you know how these companies are always trying to be super secretive, like especially in this world of tech. These companies spend millions and millions of dollars on research and development to create innovative new things and improve their products. So the last thing they want is some of that research and development to get leaked out for the competitors to use for free, and then it also represents a loss of control of their own narrative. So i’ve talked about the the story of the iphone 4 prototype that was lost at a bar before the iphone 4 came out and then apple going through everything getting the police involved to get that thing back. Obviously, you don’t want people starting to take apart and expose the pieces of what you’ve built, but also seeing a product like that finished, and these new features and this new design before apple gets to officially unveil it.
The perfect way they want to themselves is like their worst nightmare, so companies like that put up all kinds of walls to safeguard against any secrets about future products getting out. They just don’t want it getting out, and that can be anything from like physical walls, like i’m pretty sure, we’ll, never see an iphone prototype in public outside of a certain room, probably underground on apple campus ever again, but also they can make employees sign ndas. So they’re literally not allowed to talk about stuff. You know i’ve interviewed business people on this channel too, and one of the most common questions i get is: do they get to see the questions beforehand and the answer is no, but there is typically sometimes like a list of topics that are off limits.
For that interview, and by far the number one off-limit topic for these is yeah, we don’t talk about future products. Now there is something called the streisand effect where the more you attempt to hide something the more attention it actually attracts, and this absolutely applies here, and i also think really it’s the basic law of supply and demand, but really there’s so few actual real significant leaks In tech, especially now that anytime, there is one, it’s a really big deal, there’s a lot of demand for it. A lot of attention on it, that’s kind of the way it works, so there’s a whole ecosystem of publishers that will take anything and everything that it considered new information and publish it just anything new. Maybe it’s not a leak.
Maybe it’s an update on something like maybe some new product that was already announced is just now being seen in stores for the first time or someone somewhere spotted the new packaging for a new product or something just something literally anything new. So anyway, all that is background to maybe the weirdest newest trend that i’ve seen it’s not brand new, but it’s been happening and it’s pretty crazy, which is flying drones. This might be the weirdest way of trying to discover company secrets that i’ve ever seen so on youtube.
There’S endless videos already of people flying drones, all over company properties around headquarters and around their factories, and everything now is this super cool, sometimes yeah. Sometimes it is, but is it also super sketchy? Sometimes? Yes, absolutely and you know number one: it’s easy to crash a drone, that’s like the obvious part, but number two. Even if you are a skilled drone pilot, there are lots of restrictions to what makes it legally.
Okay, to fly a drone somewhere like if you’ve ever fired up a dji drone for the first time you get all the warnings. You know you can’t fly them within five miles of an airport you’re supposed to keep them at or below 400 feet. Keep them in your line of sight, don’t fly them over groups of people or over stadiums or sporting events or anywhere near emergency response efforts like fires, but that’s all just legal restrictions like the faa, has made the rules about what you can and can’t do in The air technically legally, you still can fly a drone over apple’s. Amazing 5 billion circular spaceship building, but they absolutely will not let you do it. I’Ve looked this up according to some droning hobbyists on youtube, who have been doing it for a while, while it was being built, they apparently hired people to go around stopping people from flying drones anywhere near it, which is totally understandable. There was some footage of it being built.
It was super cool to see the time lapse and progress of the headquarters coming to life, but then, as soon as people started working in it, it was time to stop and then, on the other side of that spectrum, there’s tesla who doesn’t seem to care at All like at all, and so now it’s gotten to the point where it’s actually kind of its own, like small sub genre, on youtube. Already people routinely fly over the gigafactories that are being built every day to observe the progress on how fast they’re being put together. There’S a whole article on someone who specifically flies over the texas gigafactory, as often as he can so often that people who work there, sometimes wave at the drones and they’re totally cool with it and people are seemingly constantly casually flying drones over the fremont factory and Design center just just pointed cameras at stuff and honestly, it’s usually not that crazy, like they don’t really find anything too newsworthy, but when they do, then it’s yeah instant news headlines.
The ecosystem springs to life. I actually remember a little bit before when tesla model s plaid deliveries started. You know that was sort of a question of when were they going to start and in the days before that somebody flew their drone over the fremont factory and there was a delivery truck in a parking lot with a bunch of cars on it and they flew Close enough to those cars to look down inside of them and some of them had yolks instead of steering wheels, boom instant headlines tons of new articles written just about that by the way tesla model s plaid review finally, is in the works.
It’S warming up we’re gon na start, shooting car videos again so make sure you subscribe to see that when it does come out, that’s right below the like button. But now the latest one is someone flying over the fremont factory, who spotted a cyber truck out in the open, getting worked on a couple days ago. Sporting a few additions that we didn’t see on stage, including real mirrors, seems like this is getting kind of ridiculous. Here’S the thing tesla is fine with this, and you know the people are definitely pushing the limits and it’s a little creepy and a little cringe, sometimes a little bit over the top. But as of right now, tesla’s fine with this and really what that seems to come down to is tesla’s, obviously a weird company in a lot of ways. But one of the unusual things about them is they don’t have a pr department and they obviously don’t run any ads like anytime. You see tesla compared to other companies. Usually the number one thing they bring up is well. Tesla spends zero dollars on advertising, so other companies spend a lot of money on r d, but they also have to set some money aside. Millions and millions of dollars for advertising tesla doesn’t spend a dime on any ads, so hey they get to spend even more. On the product itself, now, this approach is fascinating because it has its upsides and it has its downsides, the upside being that it’s free and it turns out with tesla, specifically like relying on tesla fans to spread. The word about their products is very powerful and, like word of mouth and the company’s product, speaking for itself seems to work really well for them. So that’s the upside. The downside is that represents a major loss of control. You don’t have a direct control over how exactly people are going to be seeing your products for the first time, so that’s a calculus, pretty much any company can make.
Theoretically. Clearly, companies like apple, are going to side on control. They firmly want as much control as possible, especially over their image.
It’S precious, but tesla has uh decided to take the risk and give up a little bit of that control. So this cyber truck just sitting out in the open part of an empty parking lot getting worked on in broad daylight. I would argue that this choice is at least a little bit marketing. I mean think about it, they’re aware of the drones and they have been clearly it’s been happening for years and they also have indoor space where, if they really wanted to do anything secretive they clearly could this is the same company that kept the roadster and the Model y and the cyber truck a complete secret before the events were unveiling them on stage and tesla could control the presentation so now they’ve chosen to roll the cyber truck out around new york city streets a few times and around california streets for a few weeks.
After that and they chose to roll it up here right in the middle of this parking lot to work on it on the outside in the daylight. Here come the drones and here come the articles. My only thing is: please don’t ruin it for everyone. That’S the main thing i see when i watch these videos like clearly, there is, like apple, for example, has seen that they don’t want the free pr of like people flying drones over their headquarters, because the cons kind of outweigh the pros that free pr doesn’t really Do much for them, but the negatives are like okay.
What if something goes wrong? What if it falls, they have to hire someone to like collect all the drones off of the roof of their mega wattage solar panel array, but tesla right now is one of those unique companies. That’S in a position where they’re willing to deal with that, because the upside is pretty good for them and they lean into that hype. They lean into the people talking about their unreleased products and all the tesla blogs. Writing all those articles, keeping the hype train going now still all it takes, is one person to mess it up for everyone.
The cybertruck video is already pushing it. I think, and you can see the engineers working on the truck whatever they’re doing. They notice the drone and they don’t seem too bothered by it, but it just takes one person flying too close to have a drone hit a power line or clip something to fall out of the sky. Hit someone’s windshield, whatever just all it takes, is one thing for tesla to flip a switch and decide to stop allowing it, which would be rough for that ecosystem.
Look. If you look on a map, the tesla design center is literally six miles away from lax and flying a drone within five miles of an airport is already legal. I don’t think it would be too hard to get a little extension if they wanted to, but for now we’re in this nice little goldilocks zone, where it’s no big deal when we get this little, this little sub genre on youtube and it’s a win for everybody Involved, currently, just just don’t ruin it for everyone. Thanks for watching catch you in the next one peace, .