McLovin is not entirely correct, but neither are you. He is correct that Tesla Robotaxi does not go on highways. It is geofenced. It does require a safety driver IN THE CAR. (Compared to Waymo, which is a remote driver who has several taxis they are responsible, not 1:1). And Tesla has NOT shown to be better at robotaxi than Waymo has. Yes, the Tesla solution is cheaper and more scalable. But if even they cannot get the safety or remote driver out of the loop… and all we have at this point is hope that they can.
FSD is a very good driver’s assistant, similar to SuperCruise and Blue Cruise. Whether it is slightly better or slightly worse seems to be based on who is talking. I’ve seen unbiased reports in the automotive press, for example, that like GM’s SuperCruise the most, and seen others that like FSD better. The point I take away from that is that nobody is L4 yet and nobody is clearly better than the other.
As far as your proclamations of fantasy land go, do you still believe the 2020 election was stolen from the orange one? You don’t have a lot of credibility to be slinging insults like that at people.
I think you missed the point of McLovin’s response. It was to state that Tesla does not currently have a robotaxi. Tesla instead has a vehicle they are calling a robotaxi - much like FULL self-driving really isn’t FSD (and Tesla now uses disclaimers stating such).
30X in 6 years, a CAGR of 76%, is not a fantasy land? It’s all based on hope and mirrors, because his car business has not only stalled, it’s going backwards.
You HOPE that FSD will eventually work, be what was promised 6+ years ago.
You HOPE that personal robots will be something lots of people actually want. Oh, and that they work.
You HOPE that Robotaxi will become a reality, even though he is behind others here.
Elon’s last successful product was the Model Y. We don’t have Roadster 2.0. We don’t have a low-cost car. Semi never went into production and I highly doubt it is driving itself. CyberTruck is a dud. FSD still isn’t. Robotaxi is still all dreams and promises.
Something went wrong. Elon went from a visionary who bought Tesla from its original creators and turned it into something very good. And then, for reasons I do not understand, he went off the rails. He is not the same person he was. This is not the same company it was.
But you still believe in the guy. You still believe the 2020 election was stolen. You probably still believe China pays the tariffs. Talk about fantasy land…
Exactly. Tesla has completed exactly zero autonomous ride hailing trips for a total of zero miles. Yet the narrative is that Tesla is operating a functional service that is superior to competitors in both cost and capability.
I stipulate that Tesla’s simpler yet more ambitious approach may prove to be the correct one. But it may prove to be the wrong one too. It is clear the reason Tesla hasn’t introduced an AV ride hailing service is because Tesla doesn’t think they are ready. That’s about all we can conclude at the moment.
If that’s the plan, things aren’t going very well. In the Q2 earnings call Musk said they were preparing to hyperscale and robotaxi would be available to half the population by the end of the year.
In the Q3 call, he said they might have driverless cars in parts of Austin by the end of the year.
I think it’s clear from context that the author believes that if a car requires a driver, it isn’t autonomous. Even if the driver is “making no input” for most of the time.
You might disagree, but from a business perspective being able operate without a driver in the car is a fundamental feature that distinguishes an “autonomous” taxi from…well, an ordinary taxi that might have a really awesome ADAS.
They don’t have drivers that teleoperate the cars. They have people that can give the car instructions after it has itself stopped driving. That’s not a remote driver, and that’s very different from having a live driver in every car.
Humans are actually incredibly safe drivers. The average car in the U.S. is driven many hundreds of thousands of miles between accidents. There are a lot of accidents (and accident fatalities) to be sure, but that’s because humans do a massive amount of driving.
That’s why you can’t get into the back seat of your Tesla and let it drive you to the store without you being behind the wheel, even though Musk & co. have been trying to make a car that can do that for close to a decade (and promising it will be ready “next year” almost the whole while). Because humans are really good at driving, it’s hard to make a machine that can drive better than humans by itself. Which is why they haven’t done it yet.