This is the problem. It is too complex and too expensive, not scalable and not viable as a business.
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The expertise here in multiple areas: Cars, AI, sensors, legal and regulations is quite impressive. You guys have so many reasons why it won’t work.
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It is amusing that people think they know more than Elon.
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Neuralink is doing implants which has a promise that blind people can see.
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I knew more than him when he said we are going to be building underground tunnels all over the country. I knew the Hyperloop was a pipe dream, pardon the pun.
I knew more than him when he predicted there will be a million people living on Mars by 2040. And that there would be a Mars landing by 2024.
I also knew he wouldn’t be producing 20 million cars annually by 2030. I knew he wouldn’t be producing actual Full Self Driving cars by 2018. And 2019. And 2020. And 2021. And 2022. And 2023. And 2024.
I knew he wouldn’t save two trillion dollars by cutting employees from government. Or one trillion. Or even half a trillion.
It’s amusing to me that some people have so little perspective that they believe any fool thing that comes out of his mouth.
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Elon has many accomplishments. He also has many failures. That’s part of his “special sauce” - he tries lots of very difficult things, is wildly optimistic about all of them. So his successes are outsized, more than offsetting his failures. But his failures do exist. Solar roof, hyperloop, Cybertruck, 20 million annual units by 2030, self-driving by ________, and of course his most recent failures at DOGE.
One of his long-running failures is his inability to accurately assess the capabilities and time frames of his autonomy project. He has a significant track record of being wrong about what the system will be capable of doing and when it will be capable of doing it. Combine that with his recent problems at DOGE (he was either unable or unwilling to understand how government really works), which bodes ill for Tesla’s ability to navigate the regulatory frameworks of Europe and China for self-driving.
It might be helpful to examine why you are so skeptical of Waymo, even though Google also has many accomplishments (including a market cap that vastly exceeds that of Tesla right now). Clearly you understand that it’s possible for a group of insanely bright people who have been vastly successful at a variety of tech business endeavors to be wrong about their approach to a problem, because you believe that GOOG is making a serious mistake with Waymo. Well, that might end up being true of Tesla, rather than Waymo.
Tesla bet on AV “brains” getting super-good very fast, and not worrying about the regulatory environment; Waymo bet on AV “brains” taking a lot longer to get good and so went in on better sensors and maps, and a more traditional approach to working with regulators. We’ll see in a few years whose approach was correct, but right now Tesla’s Robotaxi launch is emulating Waymo’s approach.
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It’s not amusing, it’s sad. If the boy who cried wolf had a cult following defending him, they’d say “But, he’s a wolf biologist! We should listen to him!” Elon is no wolf biologist.
There’s ample evidence that he’s hurt his companies as much, if not more than he’s helped them. But, let’s forget the past and look at the prospects for the future.
Let’s give Elon the benefit of the doubt and accept that he’s an unparalleled genius (he’s not, by the way). It’s clear he’s as unstable as a two-legged stool…and he’s got a drug problem. Doesn’t seem like the kind of guy you want running your company.
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It is Elon’s world. From elections to AI. He is disrupting, transportation, energy, space, communications and innovating on AI.
It is fun to see haters getting demolished slowly as he has his boot on their necks.
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It’s always interesting to see this sort of language. It’s the kind of thing impotent teenagers say while imagining themselves as Spider-Man or Superman or some other mythical hero.
Meanwhile, I feel no boot on my neck. Perhaps I just have a really strong neck?
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Maybe go back to burning more Tesla EVs and charging stations.
Why are you more concerned about burning a few cars, and not concerned about attempts to overthrow an election in 2020, and very likely hacking the election in 2024?
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It might be helpful to the discussion if you responded substantively to the points being raised. There are very serious obstacles to Tesla being able to provide a self-driving car and/or a robotaxi service. Instead of providing any thoughts about how Tesla might surmount those obstacles, you’ve instead just pointed to Musk’s other successes in other ventures - or bad acts by other critics of Musk. Neither of which offer any support for whether Musk is likely to be successful in this specific enterprise.
Other than pointing to his successes in other (often wholly unrelated) projects, is there anything in particular that leads you to believe that Tesla is close to achieving actual self-driving in the near-future?
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It is not possible to have a honest discussion here. Most of the posts and views are tainted in anger, hatred and negativity.
I am pretty sure none of you own a Tesla or drive FSD daily. I am just providing a view of reality to this echo chamber.
No, they’re not. As you pointed out upthread, people know a lot about technical, regulatory, and economic aspects of these things - and have been engaged in substantive discussions.
It’s far more common that you’re the one that diverts the thread away from substantive observations: either to claims about Musk’s general success, or to claims that everyone who is discussing his ventures in a less-than-positive light is motivated solely by negative emotion.
This thread is an excellent example - people have been engaging almost entirely in a substantive conversation until you came in and started making it more personal about Musk and emotions about the company. Yours were the first posts that moved the discussion away from a conversation about AV systems to something more emotional.
I think you might get more out of your participation here if you tried to engage with the substance of the points raised, rather than trying to move to a “people are only saying this because of their emotions about Musk and/or Tesla” approach.
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But, we also understand the problem with multiple sensors when they don’t agree. You imagine solving the problem by assigning a confidence percentage to the observation, but I question whether this number exists in any meaningful way.
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This may be somewhat illusory, e.g., assuming that geofenced means the same thing for both.
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There are lots of examples of a machine deciding what to do when sensors don’t agree. The traffic example might be a little more complex than most, but it’s not as though the problem has never been examined before. Airline pilots wrestling with the controls of a jetliner probably face it every week, at least.
Smart bombs, for example, can rely on a variety of sensors, from laser pointing to GPS to radar reflection to pattern recognition, and yes, some of them use multiple approaches. How and why they “decide” which to follow I have no idea, but the situation exists.
Game playing AI uses multiple approaches; it’s not as simple as “when he moves Pawn you move Castle” or whatever. Some of it is brute force, but some of it is also the result of “aggression” or “defense” as the play develops.
The recommendation schemes for Facebook or Amazon are the result of complex algorithms, not really as simple as presented (“people who bought this also bought that” because that would bring up a lot of chaff. It has to “know” which of those alternative suggestions is most likely to trigger another purchase if it is to be efficient.)
Anyway, I don’t see the “multiple options” issue as being a big problem. Maybe it is and I don’t understand it, but I think it’s done all the time.
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True - and to be fair, we won’t really know until the launch what the specifics are about any of it.
They’ve said they’re going to have 10-20 vehicles that will be limited to a specific area within Austin, which certainly sounds like the geofence will be analogous to what Waymo was doing when it first rolled out. A specific geographic area within the broader metro, chosen to be the easiest for AV’s to address:
That sounds a lot like the Waymo approach to geofencing. But who knows - maybe that’s not accurate, or only the plan for the very first short time period? Maybe they go all over soon after launch?
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And yet you are so generous as to continually offer your “thoughts” despite all of the taint.
'Taint right that all those folks disagree with you!
Pete
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