It did appear that the delivery had a “chase car”.
intercst
5 Likes
I should hope so but WOW!!!
Chauffeurs Beware! Soon you might be jobless!
Any idea what city this was? Austin?
The Captain
1 Like
Yes it appears that the vehicle left the Austin factory and was delivered to an apartment building about 20 minutes away.
The Fifteen15 South Lamar Apartments in Austin are about 16 miles from the Austin Gigafactory.
intercst
3 Likes
I was wondering if the delivery point was within the geofenced area.
intercst
I’m certain the route was previously mapped.
2 Likes
I’m certain the sample size is one.
It’s like a testimonial - individual results may vary, A LOT.
Every journey starts with one step.
But there are antecedents, Teslas delivering themselves from the factory floor to the parking lot.
The Philosopher
3 Likes
This was very cool, but still a “gimmick” of sorts.
- The car did actually deliver itself from the factory to the front of the new owner’s apartment.
- There were temporary video camera mounts on and in the car to provide video of the whole thing.
- There may have also been a “chase car” to provide additional video.
- The car drove on 71 which is a toll road. Since there was no electronic toll tag on the windshield, they probably did “toll by plate”, and the plate was a manufacturer temporary tag.
- They had a bunch of Tesla representatives at the destination, probably for PR purposes. And to remove the temporary camera mounts and cameras from the car.
Still mostly a gimmick. Not many people want their car to drive from the factory to their house. In my case, that would be nearly 1500 miles! Sorry, I don’t want to receive my “new” car with 1500 miles on it. I might consider having it drive from the nearest Tesla delivery center to my house, maybe 30 miles. But even in that case, I think I would still prefer to go there so I can inspect the car myself before taking delivery.
3 Likes
Agreed. But if this was the norm I think they’d have a process for handling fix-it requests etc,
Would have been great during COVID
Mike
Did you do a poll to find this out?
How many people are 1500 miles from the car dealer? In my case it was always in the same city none 1500 miles wide. Not even 150 miles wide.
Would you go to Amazon to inspect before accepting deliveries?
Progress happens!
The Captain
1 Like
You can do that with anything. “First delivery to a man named Ralph, who is bald and weighs 223#.”
That’s pretty much what this is. I guess Tesla has decided it needs some good PR rather than the nightmare of the past several months. I wonder what brought that on? (Just kidding. Sales falling through the floor has obviously caught the attention of the Board.)
Suddenly we have “first self delivery!” “Robotaxi debut!” “Musk goes quiet”. Oops, that last one didn’t last long.
1 Like
This was a customer located about 15 miles from the factory, about a half-hour trip on both highways and streets.
There’s so much on which to worry/complain about when it comes to Tesla, so it’s always telling when some people pick on the good things that are happening.
1 Like
I wasn’t “complaining”. I was noting that the company has decided to take the offensive and try to gin up some good PR instead of the disaster that unfolded over the past 6 months.
No, you were denigrating actual progress and good news. Which, again, says a lot considering all the actual bearish news.
1 Like
Why bother?
I’m seeing record numbers of Teslas in Porto.
The Captain
The criticism is of the hype, not the accomplishment. What happened was 30 minutes of autonomous driving with no interventions. That’s pretty cool on its own merits, but not news worthy. But it was hyped as a first because there were no passengers. Why is that important? What does the number of passengers have to do with anything?
Instead, it comes across as desperation for a win and an attempt at distraction. Back when Tesla had no real competition Musk could say whatever he wanted and it didn’t matter, because well, Tesla had no real competition.
Now they do have real completion and it is starting to matter. Robotaxi has been front and center as part of Tesla’s strategy for almost a decade. They still haven’t really launched, in that they still need a safety driver and the service is not available to the public.
Musk said 2025 would be the most pivotal year in Tesla’s history and has announced several upcoming milestones. But Tesla is either in danger of missing or has missed a number of them, including:
- New models (plural) in the first half of 2025
- Robotaxi service in June (Musk said a safety driver would not be required so this is a fail)
- Robotaxi service in California by the end of the year. I predict this will not happen for regulatory reasons alone.
- Sales would grow by 20-30% in 2025
- Production of thousands of Optimus robots by the end of the year.
On some level, Musk has to know that the day of accounting is drawing closer. And it feels like he is trying to create distractions.
2 Likes
Same as the autonomous journey in this thread: small (tiny) sample size.
Porto is maybe not sample size of one, but close enough relative to the global vehicle market.
(And, importantly, we have no idea if this journey was given extra, special attention, like training, mapping, testing. If yes, begs the question of how Tesla’s AI driving scales.)
Some are wondering when and how Tesla can scale autonomous driving. What evidence do we have?
No, it was saying the accomplishment was so narrow that it might as well be “anything.”
No, it was hyped as:
“first fully autonomous drive with no people in the car or remotely operating the car on a public highway.”
Taken together, it’s quite news worthy unless you have a prejudice against Tesla’s accomplishments.
Sigh, yeah, more what-abouts.
As I’ve repeatedly said, Tesla has missed many milestones and failed to achieve some goals. That doesn’t take away the achievements it has made.
I thought it was hyped cause there was NO “safety driver” person in the car to “take control when the, according to the haters, inevitable dangerously catastrophic failure” happened.
There was no failure, so the haters jumped on whatever strawmen they could pump.
ralph