The financial broadside launched by Mark Zuckerberg against Elon Musk has been extended with the announcement that Facebook has completed the development of a long anticipated self-driving car.

The car, badged the Facebook FB1, surprised markets when it appeared without warning amid an onslaught of advertisements on Instagram and Facebook. F$JNews was fortunate to get access to one of the very first FB1s manufactured. With all-electric drive and full-spectrum self-driving capabilities, the car is a stunning technical achievement. The fact that is is provided for free (for customers who provide access to all of their phone, computer and navigational data) is an equally impressive business achievement.

The vehicle does, however, suffer from several drawbacks – most of which concern navigation.

First, the car decides where you want to go as a result of conversations and other data is collects. It has a further tendency to navigate to locations chosen by paid advertisers. In other words, it is an entirely self-driving car. This can make navigation to desired locations challenging. 

Second, the car has a tendency to navigate to places you’d rather not share your interest in, creating privacy issues.

Third, while the car will generally try to navigate to areas it thinks you are interested in, it will only go to locations that have been approved by its impartial fact-checkers. You aren’t fully trusted when it comes to your navigation choices.

Finally, when we offered free rides in the car to prospective passengers, only old people wanted to ride along.

For those lazy enough to not want to actually choose where they are driving while keeping that information to themselves, the FB1 is an excellent new alternative to traditional single-family cars. Otherwise, we can’t recommend it. Of course, given that the car is free these limitations will dissuade almost nobody.

In response to the new FB1, Elon Musk is reportedly considering a Tesla-branded competitor to Facebook. Essentially it would be identical to Facebook, except it would require users to stop for up to 3 hours every 400 posts to ‘recharge’ their browser applications.