Tesla Robotaxi | Hacker News Reader

Tesla Robotaxi

tesla.com

265 pointsiamwil740 comments

It's amusing that this was at the Warner back lot, which is out in Burbank. Not Paramount or Universal, which are both in Hollywood. It would have been embarrassing to do this at Paramount or Universal, because those are in Waymo's service area. People would have arrived at the event in real self driving taxis.

Waymos however need thousands of dollars of hardware to achieve this and only work in limited areas. Tesla's bet is a lot more risky but also with a lot more potential.

The idea that Tesla would win the robotaxi race by not needing LiDAR died sometime between when LiDAR cost $100k and when it cost $1k. Now it’s just Elon being intransigent.

I strongly believe that once you have everything working it's much easier to start working on the costs.

I wouldn’t step into a Tesla robotaxi in bad weather, period. They’d absolutely need a human remotely operating it. Without a steering wheel, passengers can’t take control even if they wanted to. Even in good weather, I’d be genuinely surprised if Teslas, in their current form, could drive around autonomously. I was really hoping Musk would mention new sensors being added for extra safety, maybe spinning it as: “Your Model 3 doesn’t need additional sensors, but just to be safe, we’re adding new ones.”

My Tesla still beeps at me because it thinks I'm about to drive into pedestrians or parked cars because there's a bend in the road.

I honestly think at this point Tesla's FSD AI is way, way overfitting on a few US cities.

But Teslas vehicles can’t operate ANYWHERE autonomously — not even with supervision inside the closed loop tunnels in Las Vegas [0] — 6+ years after Musk said autopilot/FSD was capable of driving itself coast to coast.

Whenever Teslas manage to offer autonomous driving, what makes you think LIDAR etc will still cost what it does now?

[0] https://www.reviewjournal.com/news/news-columns/road-warrior...

Waymos exist. This intro of nothing doesn't.

It's much much easier to make an existing thing cheaper and better over time.

How does it have more potential? I don't know how much taxi drivers earn in the US but let's pick a random number like 50k USD per year. If Waymo hardware costs $10k but Tesla costs $2k, then the savings are $40k for Waymo in the first year and $48k for Tesla. That is a 20% increase in the worst case for Waymo and the longer the vehicle lasts or the higher the taxi driver salary, the worse it gets for Tesla. Their potential is heavily bounded and gets worse over time.

This is definitely the big bet Tesla is making. However, the hardware Waymo uses will also become cheaper over time and with scale, so either bet has advantages and disadvantages.

I think “thousands of dollars” in hardware is fine

Tesla's autobots are free?

Waymo & Hyundai announced a partnership. IIRC Waymo has always intended to work with OEMs, vs make their own vehicles.

https://seekingalpha.com/news/4156375-hyundai-motor-joins-fo...

Having no opinions about the IONIQ 5, I've gleaned that it's well regarded. Maybe not a Model Y, but close enough.

Of all the legacy OEMs, Hyundai has a fair chance of surviving the Tesla (& BYD) juggernaut. So I think Waymo chose wisely.

Isn't any Tesla costing thousands of dollars anyway?

Potential lawsuits

All of Warner is "out in Burbank" as is most of what is normally considered Hollywood.

Yes, Disney is also in Burbank.

They claim that unsupervised autonomy in existing cars will arrive in California and Texas next year (with an easy bogieman that it will depend on regulatory approval), but no details as to what exactly this would mean.

It’s possible that they might be able to get an Level 3 product out similar to offerings by the likes of Daimler, Cadillac, and Ford - where on certain highways under certain conditions you don’t have to pay much attention but still must be available to take over relatively quickly if the conditions change. That seems the most likely route, although all other systems I believe rely on vision+radar or vision+lidar fusion. Those approaches have a lot more broad industry experience and quantifiable benefits in safety, but it’s possible Tesla has compelling data on the performance of its vision system, especially during daylight hours.

I’m honestly not sure how they could ship what they are implying - basically FSD as it is today but without anyone in the driver’s seat. That would imply they are (nearly) comfortable with it driving 10’s to 100’s of millions of miles between fatal accidents without any intervention. Either that or they are willing to ship and know it’s less safe than an average driver. That’s ignoring non-fatal accident rates.

There are some middle ground options where UFSD would have a larger set of conditions it can operate “unsupervised”, say in good weather and possibly daytime, and maybe only on some types of roads. But the edge cases where it transitions out of those conditions can be brutal and not easy to address. It’s relatively easy to say “just pull over and make the driver take over”, but especially on highways or heavy traffic that can take a while.

> (with an easy boogieman that it will depend on regulatory approval)

Right. Tesla has avoided getting the California DMV's autonomous driving licenses. They have a "learner's permit" for testing with a safety driver. California DMV's regulations for self-driving vehicles mirror those for drivers. There's the "learner's permit", (with safety driver), which has much the same restrictions as a human learner's permit. There's the autonomous testing permit, which is comparable to a regular (class C) driver's license - you can drive yourself and your employees, but not for hire and not large trucks. Then there's the deployment license, which allows charging money and is hard to get. Mercedes, Nuro, and Waymo have one. Cruise used to have one, but DMV revoked it after a fatal crash.

Tesla reported zero autonomous miles driven on California roads in 2023.[1] They're not even trying. Tesla has long been scared of the reporting requirements. All disconnects have to be logged, miles driven have to be logged, and all accidents, however minor, have to be reported. Everybody else in the real self driving industry, from Apple to Zoox, does this. The ones with bad numbers grumble about it sometimes. Waymo doesn't.

[1] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...

Ford and Cadillac have Level 2 systems, not Level 3. Tesla also has Level 2, but it is significantly more capable. (I don't think any of the others work on city streets at all, or even change lanes automatically based on navigation.)

Mercedes is so limited to just technically qualify for Level 3 that it could be likely be trivially outmatched by some limited FSD conditions if that's the route Tesla wanted to go.

But yeah I assume you start with some limited Level 3 subset, probably highway, then extend it to city streets. Then just start working your way through validating new conditions.

Fair call out that bluecruise and supercruise are not actually L3

https://www.arenaev.com/mercedesbenz_drive_pilot_now_works_a...

> basically FSD as it is today but without anyone in the driver’s seat.

I thought Elon said it would be L4 FSD with only vision, but it'll be available later. If he can deliver it, then a $25K L4 robotaxi certainly will have an advantage over Waymo's $200K mod. Well, I guess the stock market believes it's more of a vaporware than reality.

I would bet that it would not arrive in SF (at least the parts governed by Karl the Fog). Vision based sensors cannot slice through fog and rain and they would need constant take over by a driver.

The most interesting thing to me by far was the lack of a steering wheel on the Robocab.

Without manual controls, vague promises ("puffery"?) about autonomy won't drive vehicle sales as they do today across all Tesla's models. The Robocab as shown literally cannot function (or make a dime of revenue) until they've fully solved autonomy and have convinced regulators of the same.

That's not entirely true. Waymo have remote control operators, these would have the same - you don't need 100% foolproof autonomy to operate a fleet of cars like this.

I am also highly sceptical of everything about Tesla's program though

Waymo support staff is more akin to conductors, they can choose actions for the vehicle to take, but can not control steering/acceleration/brake. In car controls are still used by field support staff if the car is really stuck or for emergency services.

You're going to buy a personal car that can be remoted into at any time?

It's not going to be in mass production until 2027 at the earliest, realistically. Will they have unsupervised FSD "next year" as claimed? I doubt it. But by 2027? I think there's a strong possibility. I've been testing FSD since it was released and lately the pace of improvement has gotten a lot faster. And the Cybercab is going to have a much faster onboard computer, and probably more/better cameras.

It is interesting that you are confident in that matter. But you have been playing with it for a long time. Someone like myself with zero experience with it am very skeptical about how much I can trust it. We have seen several accidents over the years in the news. How do we convince the masses that this car is safe and this car will not suddenly drive off the road? I do think self driving cars are as a whole a lot safer but I also consider myself a good driver so it would be hard to give up that control. When I would be sold on the tech is when it is so good I am legally allowed to sit back and sleep between destinations. Wake up in a new city each day.

I got to try fsd (supervised) recently, and although it wasn't perfect, it was pretty good.

I also had to learn to to enable adaptive driving (or whatever it is called) to let the car go slightly over the speed limit and go with the flow of traffic, otherwise it would only go the speed limit and people would rage-pass.

If they were that close, why did Karpathy leave 2 years ago?

Autonomy is solved. It will have hiccups/mistakes, but fewer than a human driver makes. The lack of steering wheel is solved by having support drivers who can work it remotely when the passenger presses a 'help' button or similar.

Solved, just not by Tesla who have been promising it every year since.. 2016?

I'm guessing it will show up first on a lot of private roads. This thing would be perfect on airports, big events, etc. It will be interesting to see what kind of companies will buy this thing. I don't think they'll be selling these to consumers any time soon.

The regulator thing is going to be a game of who will give in first and where. Once a few do, it might flip around quickly to regulators being more eager to not miss out. You see a little of that with Waymo where some cities would maybe like to get Waymo in their city sooner rather than later now that they are up and running in more glamorous places like LA and San Francisco. Unfortunately, waymo isn't able to rapidly roll out everywhere rapidly because they have to do a lot of work with mapping and testing in every place they roll out. Tesla might be able to move faster here once they get going and actually give some of these cities an alternative to waiting for Waymo to eventually show up.

Of course the whole thing is getting a bit political as well with Elon Musk's backing of Trump. My guess would be that Texas is going to be first. Probably Austin, where Tesla and SpaceX are of course very present. I'm guessing Tesla has pretty warm relationships with the local politicians there.

On the other hand, LA needs to look good during the next Olympics and Tesla did just host their Robotaxi event there. Some of those Robovans would probably be helpful in addressing some of the traffic headaches and sustainability goals with the Olympics. Paris just put a huge stake in the ground on that front so there is a fair bit of pressure. There's an opportunity there for Tesla.

Here's an idea - take the Robocab car design, strip out all the FSD/autopilot stuff, put in a steering wheel and dash and sell it starting at the end of the year for ~$25k.

It would sell +++

It has no rear window and wacky doors and only two seats. It would not sell. It's purpose built as an autonomous taxi, where those choices make perfect sense.

They are also doing a $25k car, they just aren't revealing it today.

This is why I want a pragmatic operational industry expert CEO[0] for Tesla, in the same way Shotwell is for SpaceX.

Announce and do the far stuff, but at the same time ship the near things that people want.

A pragmatic auto CEO would have had that $25k car moving already. A pragmatic industry CEO also wouldn't have such a large event without a call-to-action.

If they had a "reserve now for Feb 2025 delivery" button under todays announcement it would have gone offff

[0] edit: ok Gwynne is COO - let Elon keep the title, but we know what matters.

The rear window thing is also done by Polestar in one of their latest cars.

I believe the reason was it adds strength that let's you have higher wider glass roof above passengers heads.

And the rear view mirror replacement uses cameras.

I thought they said they were scrapping the $25k car?

Who wants a 2-seater taxi? That seems ridiculous for a sizable segment of riders.

This. If you have a robotaxi for under 30k, why not just sell the car for that much?

Tesla market cap is based on AI/robotaxi/FSD. Without that, they’re just playing catchup to BYD (who quietly, yet aggressively, executes at scale; they offer EVs today between $10k-$20k and already employ more workers than Toyota [for scale]).

https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/03/cars/china-tesla-byd-competit...

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/07/03/chinas-byd-is-set-to-beat-te...

https://www.counterpointresearch.com/insights/bev-sales-10-m...

Has he like ever met his promised price? If we go by almost every single other car he has released, The 30k robotaxi will be available for like 1 week on a stripped down tier (maybe like 25kwH battery?) or available off menu for like 6 months until it disappears and no one dares speak of it again.

One reason is, and bear with me, that this robotaxi does not exist !

There is a good reason why it was all presented in a Hollywood studio, without any specifics. The car we've seen yesterday is a prototype at best, a prototype that's crucially missing a small but important part for a robotaxi - the ability to drive autonomously...

Cybetruck was supposed to cost 40k (1/3 of the initial price) and have twice the range or something like that.

I’m sure the 30k is below cost assuming Tesla makes some revenue on the taxi service over the lifetime of the vehicle.

Because people lie.

a ROUND steering wheel and add turn signal stalks!!

The squircle actually works pretty well in the CT! Agree about the turn signal stalks though.

It would need a NACS port. Otherwise it would be a rather expensive brick.

Toss in a spare tire, too. I care to do without! It's several thousand dollars. Signed, annoyed owner of a car with a fix-it-kit and a pat on the ass

I think it has one but techcrunch/verge bloggers heard inductive charging and leapt into assuming thats the only way to charge

It must already have one.

and a steering wheel i guess

Make it a convertible.

Anybody know why the autonomous taxi isn't just a model 3?

I don't see the point in a purpose built two seater with no steering wheel or pedals and I don't know why regulators would approve an autonomous car with no way to manually override it.

Especially because every autonomous taxi fleet to date seems to have runs where they end up blocking roads and emergency vehicles.

Imagine if you could have one human operator able to go anywhere in the city for every 50 active cars ! Of course you can scale the number up and down based on actual needs. Kinda like Tesla AAA. Overhead will be less than having a driver per car and could be reasonable.

Barring all the issues, if you did build a huge fleet of autonomous taxis - smaller, lighter cars with less moving pieces would save you a lot of money.

2 seater - smaller car

No wheels or stuff - saves money on the build and parts.

They are probably planning to reuse lots of parts from model 3 to save money

And people are creatures of habit and highly social so version 1 of robotaxis will 100% look like normal cars. Regardless of whatever benefits you can come up with on paper. Once it's normalized then you experiment.

Mark my words: the "final form" of robotaxis will seat 4 (up to 6 in a pinch) people on facing seats, will be able to drive in both directions and have all 4 wheels fully steerable for more flexibility.

Or god forbid you'd build a proper electric public transport network that can transport dozens, sometimes hundreds of people way more efficiently.

BTW, Google tried this too (building a small 2-seater w/o controls). What happened to that project?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCezICQNgJU

Retired. Explained here: https://medium.com/waymo/from-post-it-note-to-prototype-the-...

They said in the event that they will first deliver 3s and Ys. They just add a 2 seater and 20 seater van later to fill other use cases.

I assume robo taxi will be significantly cheaper to manufacture. You can get away with much less range and creature comforts being quite a bit less. People care much less about comfortable for something they sit in for twenty minutes versus buy for $50k

Creature comforts, fine, they can go, but a shorter range? I thought the idea was for me to be able to have my car galavanting around the city all day being a taxi for people to help me make money. Forgive my ignorance, but how is a shorter range going to help with that?

I would imagine the interior would be more "passenger proof".

Maybe easier to clean, or wash out vomit, or even warn of forgotten items.

Huh? You will spend exactly as much time in the Robotaxi as you do in a vehicle you buy for yourself.

If people are willing to pay extra for comfort and style already, why would they stop?

I feel like so much of this discourse is dominated by people who hate cars. Most people like their cars! That's why they bought them.

Yeah I would be interested in seeing how the costs shake out.

There is logic in this design being cheaper to manufacture but I would think that it would be a long while before you "broke even", so to speak, compared to using a design that you already know exactly how to make.

I have no first hand knowledge here, but thinking from first principles. From Robotaxi fleet perspective you want autonomous maintenance, cleaning, charging, and lowest cost. From Robotaxi user perspective you want climate / music / entertaiment / safety. So the idea for robot taxi is that it should be better than model 3 in some or all of those dimensions.

Now speculating for the moment, from Elon perspective you probably want things to be more cyberpunky as that is how future looked in his childhood and he is trying to build it. Also, engineers / designers were likely mandated to handle all of the maintenance and possibly production by Tesla Bots.

Yes, I think you're spot on. They showed a video of a robot arm cleaning the car's inside, and it appears the vertical opening doors make that kind of access easier. The car will also have wireless charging, which makes that easier to automate as well.

From what “first principles” are you thinking?

Autonomous cleaning? Good luck vacuuming all the nooks and crannies in a car.

Because all the work of allegedly building a new vehicle platform is a better excuse for making no profit on the robotaxi initiative for the next ten years.

What's the deal with cynical, low effort comments like this that add nothing to the discussion? There's obviously more to the story than what you're saying. HackerNews is supposed to be for discussion, not Reddit-tier snark. Comments like yours are just visual pollution.

I'm guessing mostly for show. I they had a driving system that actually worked they could fit it on a car and try it in real life like Waymo.

They're going for lowest cost per mile. Most rides have 2 or less people, this will address that huge market in a very efficient way.

Why is that market not served by a 4 person self driving car?

First reason - doors won’t close themselves.

Good thought.

The upward opening doors will also be able to open anywhere, and for anyone, even with canes or bags/luggage.

That is true, although they could add that to a model 3. I wonder how Waymo deals with it.

Why is this a requirement?

> Anybody know why the autonomous taxi isn't just a model 3?

It's so Enron Musk can say it's still 2 years away.

Because most Uber rides are 1-2 person and a car designed to be smaller is cheaper.

Because that isn’t different or new enough to get investors excited.

The point of this presentation was not to spell out technically how they are going to accomplish this. Agreed, a fleet of model 3s would work great.

The point of this presentation was to look like a cool visionary tech company that is going to change the world, to justify that your Market cap is now larger than EVERY OTHER MAJOR AUTOMAKER COMBINED!

Same reason the prototypes need to look like they were lifted from Blade Runner.

So a pump and dump?

Many reasons. Model 3 is to big. The Model 3 is missing many features needed, like inductive charging, automatic doors. And has lots of things not needed, like a steering wheel column. Model 3 is build on a much older architecture, even the upgraded versions. Model 3 still uses traditional car wiring.

With all the changes you would have to do to M3, its basically a new car.

This Robotaxi will have all the drive-by-wire architecture of the Cybertruck. The new electronics architecture and Ethernet bus. And things like wireless charging.

Given current Tesla FSD drives like a drunk teenager even in good conditions, I don't see how this is anything but a scam. It's the perpetual "Teslas will be able to fully self-drive in 2 years".

Not my experience driving FSD in silicon valley. I was floored

I obviously don't know your personal experience, but with the amount of videos from Tesla owners showcasing FSD turning into oncoming traffic, trying to clip parked cars, blazing through stop signs without even slowing down and taking roundabouts the wrong way around in 30 minutes and then finishing the video by concluding that FSD did well is insane.

Just the amount of scary FSD footage from Cybertrucks alone that only got FSD a few weeks ago is massive.

I must say the show seemed a bit lame and the market seems to agree - TSLA down 8% at present.

The robotaxis did 5 mph on cleared streets and so seemed much less impressive than Waymos which can deal with real pedestrians and do 30 mph+

They only had two seats which is not how you'd make a commercial robotaxi and so probably just made for show to try to impress investors.

The robots serving drinks etc seem to have been remotely controlled by humans.

It's not that impressive when Waymo are driving people around in real life and also various robotaxis in China eg. https://youtu.be/izLfWY4c0Ko

I've always defended Musk saying robotaxis will be here in a year or two over the last decade because new tech is hard but they now look a bit in danger of being left behind by the competition.

The RoboTaxi looks neat, but I don't get why it only seats 2 rather than just updating the Model 3? What's the utility of an entirely new production line for a car that is less flexible than the existing model that's built at scale?

It's much easier to explain to shareholders why these things have endless delays even though "the tech is already there!" if they are a new chassis rather than an existing one. That way, when they haven't released anything in the next 5-10 years, they can still keep the music going.

The entire plan hinges on low cost high volume. That means reducing parts and complexity. Stainless steel body so no paint shop or variations to worry about, or paint maintenance, etc. removing steering wheel, removing glass roof, removing doors, and more.

For high density you have the robovan.

Why wasn’t the Model X not just a Model S chassis with higher ground clearance and an SUV body?

They are doing both; one doesn't exclude the other. Unsupervised FSD is also coming to the model y and model 3. They actually had a few model y's cruising around unsupervised at the event even. And they also have the 20 people robovan thing.

If you look at regular taxis, the only part that is used by passengers is typically the back seat. Which fits two, maybe three people at best. So, it's not such a crazy form factor for a taxi because most taxis are also two passenger vehicles right now.

The point of this car is that it's smaller and cheaper (less parts, battery, etc.) and optimized for being an autonomous taxi. And the reason for that is productizing unsupervised FSD. The car is just a means to that end. If you are going to build a self driving taxi, a two seater is the logical choice. IMHO it's actually too big. They could make it a lot shorter.

Don't worry. This thing will never come out.

Graphic on Twitter says that ~90% of car trips consist of 1-2 people.

Classic bait and switch setup. Selling people the future in 2 years time with little to nothing to show for today. Timelines will slip, plans will change, software won‘t be ready, prices will change. And that doesn’t even account for where Waymo is in two years from now, or what the Chinese EV industry is able to pull off until then.

Even this underwhelming event was originally announced on short notice to prop up perception when sales looked bad in April [1], delayed by two‘ish months, and then didn‘t even start on time. Oh, and implementing the robo taxi was a two-months project back then [1]. It‘s a ruse, folks.

[1] https://fortune.com/2024/07/16/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-dela...

Elon has almost no credibility left for what he says.

It's basically just a website at the moment with bunch of 3D renders which you too could get done from a web shop.

Tesla has nothing new to offer and competition is catching up, EV adoption slowing down and such.

If I had, I would gradually drop Tesla stock because it's going to go downhill if not rock bottom from here.

Tesla at a forward P/E of 80 is massively overvalued as a car company. You can get Mercedes or BMW at a P/E of 6, with a 9% yield. Sure, the EV market is still growing, but Tesla is not the only player. All brands now have EVs, there are both cheaper and more luxurious Chinese EVs, that's some massive competition.

The only reasons Tesla could be valued differently are FSD and Robotics, which Musk and Tesla-friendly analysts are heavily pushing. Since Musk has made massive loans against his Tesla stake you can expect that he will keep highlighting those narratives as well. A revaluation of the stock to sane levels would certainly cause him some financial difficulties.

> It's basically just a website at the moment with bunch of 3D renders which you too could get done from a web shop.

They had 2 dozen vehicles with no steering wheels taking attendees around the venue. The bar was staffed by Optimus robots. “Basically a website”?

Tesla has the world's best autonomous vehicle offering by some way of measuring things. There are many ways to measure things, but at least in some "category" they are indeed leading: Level 2 systems for the US which you can privately buy.

US competition with Tesla isn’t even close and the only way anyone has able to get a functional charging network up and running was to piggyback off of Tesla. I know the Trump stuff is annoying, but there’s way too much criticism of Tesla out there that is our political emotion.

- I believe he can launch rockets into space and land them on their own footprint.

- I believe he can revolutionize auto manufacturing and disrupt a 100 year old industry replacing fossil-fuel burning dinosaurs with clean electric vehicles that outperform them and that appeal to the general public

- I believe he can allow quadrapelegics to interact with the world in ways never thought possible

- I believe he can, to a great degree, restore free speech on social media even if it is messy and imperfect at times

- I believe that innovation is hard and just because he boldly claims he is going to Mars or make cars drive themselves - and hasn’t done it yet, is no reason to discount the possibility that he might actually pull it off one day

The Tesla Robotaxi seems similar to the prototype car without steering wheel or brake pedals that Google announced (or demoed?) in 2014: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/technology/googles-next-p.... It seems likely that Waymo is 10 years ahead of Tesla in autonomous driving, and not 2 years.

Like someone said before, he's lost all credibility. As someone who picked up FSD some years back, I'll prob never get a Tesla again based on some future promise.

Also:

> “The autonomous vehicles, we’re going to stop from operating on American roads, remember this,” Trump said.

Well, apart from tax cuts for the rich he never followed through with anything he said and his voters will never hold him accountable for anything, ever, so you can safely ignore every thing he says.

He is going to say exact opposite in a month and flip again and again until he does whatever random thing will ensure him random thing he wants in the moment.

Good. They don't work, and they wont work. We are a decade into the hype cycle on 'cars that have self' and the proponents are stuck pretending that their best case demo, which is always going to crash into stupid stuff that a human would easily understand (in it's highly tested and constrained route) has 'self' to preserve.

Just days after Musk appeared and spoke strongly in favour of him at a Trump rally in Butler, Pennsylvania [1]. These are interesting times and people make very strange bed follows.

[1]: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/style/elon-musk-donald-tr...

Then again, can we trust a word the man is saying? It all feels like shallow pandering. Plus, it may be worth going through the entire event at the Detroit Economic Club [2] to check the quote more clearly as at least one source quotes him as referencing PRC car automation with that statement, while expressing some general personal scepticism of autonomous driving [3].

[2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Km-gQhP5fnw

[3]: https://qz.com/donald-trump-self-driving-cars-avs-musk-tesla...

A propos Chinese EV.

US is raising import tax on Chinese EV (from 10% up to 38.1%) in EU to help us combat the climat change better. /s

Tesla Cybertruck was announced as vapourware in 2019 and got limited production only in 2023. It was also delayed. Wonder whether it would have been also considered "bait and switch setup" according to your stance.

In the case of the Cybertruck, it was never a question whether it is even possible to do such a thing, because they had all the technology, the only question was if they were stupid enough to build it.

Just as in the case of the "Hyperloop": in theory, it is perfectly possible, but anyone who got as far to build a few meters of it (or something resembling it) quickly realized the practicality problems, and what would happen if you scaled those problems to a few hundred kilometers...

On the other hand, autonomous driving is not a solved problem, not even in theory. One could argue that it would require some sort of a generic AI, which we don't have, and nobody knows if we will in the future. So selling anything based on that is simply fraud, in my opinion.

Look at the announced price and all the claimed features then. We were promised a bulletproof amphibious truck for (IIRC) $40k, and we got a truck whose warranty is void if you drive in the rain, costing $80k for the base model. Also it won't even stop .22LR bullets.

We were also promised micron panel gaps. the panel gaps on the cybertruck are both visible and visibly uneven.

It's really weird to see anyone even imply that the Cybertruck has vindicated Tesla.

Wasn't it also released at a significantly higher price than announced?

"""In 2019, Musk claimed that the Cybertruck would be available in late 2021, starting at $39,900. The date was later pushed to 2022, and eventually it was pushed to late 2023, with a starting price of $60,990.""" - according to the Wikipedia page.

I'd definitely count that as bait and switch from the price change alone.

Tesla previously announced that all of their cars had the hardware for Level 5 Self-Driving in 2016 and would be capable of driving fully autonomously within 2-3 years.

This isn't just a bait and switch, it's a new bait and switch to redirect from the existing one.

If Tesla wants to make a new announcement about autonomous vehicles now, 8 years after originally announcing that they were already shipping them, it should be that they are actually operating autonomous vehicles in the wild somewhere.

Not showing off a new car design that isn't needed for such a demonstration and that is coming 2-3 years from now.

Yes, indeed that’s a bait and switch. There were changes in price, features, availability dates and so on.

> with little to nothing to show for today

Although they didn't "show" it on the event, Tesla self-driving is steadily improving each month. It is now also available on the Cybertruck, and the miles per intervention metric is steadily improving. You can find many videos on YouTube. Note that this are real cars on the real road.

The problem is Tesla and Musk have been lying about full self-driving for years: https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/

In 2016 Tesla said that "as of today, all Tesla vehicles produced in our factory – including Model 3 – will have the hardware needed for full self-driving capability at a safety level substantially greater than that of a human driver." That was a lie: https://electrek.co/2024/08/24/tesla-deletes-its-blog-post-s...

Tesla even lies about things as dumb as Cybertruck quarter mile times:

https://www.motortrend.com/reviews/tesla-cybertruck-beast-vs...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5J3H8--CQRE

https://insideevs.com/news/699260/tesla-cybertruck-porsche-r...

Tesla never ran that quarter mile. And the worst thing about it was the Cybertruck's lead engineer trying to rationalize the lie:

https://x.com/wmorrill3/status/1746266437088645551

When your engineers lack commitment to basic honesty then you've got a sick company culture.

Lying is just too much a part of the culture at Tesla. Musk clearly doesn't value honesty or credibility.

Maybe in the US. It still does nothing in Europe, which is disappointing because the company happily took my money in February 2019 on the promise that this feature is imminent.

I paid 7,500 euros for something that still doesn’t exist in any usable form. (I thought it would be good for my elderly parents who were the primary users of this car for a time.) It’s actively dangerous because it doesn’t even see speed limits correctly. The car will probably be at the end of its life before this feature ever ships.

Sure, it’s a lesson for me. But don’t underestimate how much goodwill Musk has burned with his customers. I’m never buying another vehicle from this company, no matter the price or features. His political activism is just the cherry on the top of his poop-cake of lies.

Where are the numbers?

Are they faking this? The robots seem way too human like, maybe they are remotely controlled?

The ones that are walking around live move much worse than the ones seen in the videos of robots in a home. I suspect the latter were teleoperated.

Seems like the bar tender one was teleoperated

Having built teleoperated robots, I can guarantee that the non-dancing ones are teleoperated.

Yep, they were just teleoperated - movements, voice everything. I guess they forgot to mention that.

Watch the latest FSD videos. It drives exactly like that.

Without a doubt speculators will flood this comment either way.

Robotaxi & Optumus robot still looks to be years and years away. However, I'm pretty fond of the idea of having distributed compute nodes that performs computations when idle, the idea of reclaiming parking lots, the induction charging and vacuum bots looks pretty sleek as well.

> distributed compute nodes that performs computations when idle

I can't imagine that working well for latency-sensitive applications... like self-driving cars.

Running compute nodes in cars is honestly an even dumber idea than renting out your own car as a taxi.

> dumber idea than renting out your own car as a taxi.

your car is doing nothing for most of it’s lifetime. renting it out via turo or as a taxi makes sense.

He just bought a massive data center with thousands of Nvidia boards. Why would the car be an efficient place to do the same work?

Because getting GWs of power into one building and the cooling it is expensive. Why not let other people buy the computer, provide the power, and it won't need expensive cooling.

Question is: are there enough high latency distributed workloads to sell?

I don't believe it would be efficient, or do I know what compute load he intends these to be. But it's some use for idling hardware.

It's important to remember when this event was announced. It was announced in April, when stock was plunging following a Reuters report that a cheap Model 2 was cancelled.

Musk called them liars and announced on the spot the event that we witnessed today (which was postponed from the initial 8/8 date...).

That's what fraud looks like folks.

Was there an event, too? Any videos?

There are plenty yes. Here is a Reuters article:

https://www.reuters.com/technology/teslas-musk-unveil-robota...

Really wish they had shared more details. It was so high-level that we didn't really learn anything substantive.

Hmm it's almost like there might not be anything of substance to share...

They had a working car. Unlike most other reveals

But we already know they can make a car.

One thing confuses me... Why invest so much into automony on streets/roads when most (all?) US trains/trams/busses still have operators?

Elon said himself that busses have 5x the operating cost of robo-taxis (1$ vs 20¢ per hour), but failed to mention that a typical bus carries 25x people. Presumably the cost delta is due to payroll for a human operators & janitors, so if busses already have 5x max throughout per $ in a worst-case comparison, why not put more energy into driving down costs on the more efficient modality?

I imagine it would be an easier problem to solve too, as you could could define constraints on your operating environment. Dedicated travel lanes, rail, and preprogrammed routes seem like they'd massively reduce the complexity of the problem.

I could also envision a decent financial argument for moving from a customer base of general-consumers to one of cities & local govt. If a 5x operating cost reduction is feasible, I could see "public transit automation" making for a pretty compelling capital project.

Who is the customer for this? Sub $30k appeals to regular people. But why would regular people want to own a robotaxi? I want robotaxis to exist so I don't have to own a car. I want someone else to own it, and I pay to use it once in a while.

If this works, wouldn't just Tesla operate as a taxi company?

Wait, why wouldn't I want my own robotaxi if it's cheap enough? Unless taking taxiw is much cheaper it seems much better to own one, especially for electric cars which have less maintenance requirements.

A lot of people I know like their cars and don't want to take taxis everywhere. Maybe I'm missing how it wouldn't be appealing to regular people.

I'm not say no one would want this. I'm saying that it's odd play. Most people that own their own cars do not want the limits of 2-seaters. 29k is a price point that appeals most to private buyers. If robotaxis exist, a lot of people would opt to not own a car at all.

I mean if the cost is the same then yeah you might as well own it, but that seems unlikely, unless you're in the car for most of the day. Owning means you'll need your own insurance and do your own maintenance (yes, EVs require this). What's the actual advantage to owning the car? So you can leave your stuff in it? Not owning it will force you to take your stuff out, which you should be doing anyway!

I don‘t want a car, I want mobility

What you need is a horse. Full self-driving, all terrain, net zero, ubiquitous fuelling infrastructure, built in alarm and self-defence capabilities, and fully reusable and recyclable.

I jest but I’m actually considering a horse to take my daughter to school, as it would shorten the journey considerably, as we live in tortured terrain in the middle of nowhere, and would allow her to go alone in a few years - again, mobility and utility are the goals for us here, not a car.

For sure but the best thing about owning a vehicle is object permanence - for both the vehicle and whatever is inside it. At a certain point it’s just easier and more efficient to own something than rent/subscribe etc. Of course taxis/rentals all serve a purpose but usually not for daily use.

The big promise of the Robotaxi was that every Tesla would be one, that your Tesla would earn you money while you weren't using it. This was obviously unlikely to ever happen, but has been the promise right up to this event, and something Musk has been very vocal about.

Despite having very few details in this presentation, the one detail that is clear is that existing Teslas won't be taxiing anyone, and Tesla will be the operator reaping the benefits. That's a significant under-delivery, especially for the average Tesla retail investor who believes in the mission and is driving their stock price.

> one detail that is clear is that existing Teslas won't be taxiing anyone, and Tesla will be the operator reaping the benefits

Elon said you will be able to buy a Cybercab for under $30,000 and individual owners will be able to "tend to [your robotaxi fleet] like a flock of sheep".

I don’t know if you’ve noticed but the quality of stuff coming out of that man’s mouth has stopped being quality and is now just quantity.

So it is 100% true that the promise for your current Tesla was broken. But don't worry, an additional $30k will fix it.

Yeah, not sure how this is supposed to be a positive reply.

And Elon is a guy that knows how to tend to flocks of sheep(le)

If you are still believing a word from that man you're delusional

> Despite having very few details in this presentation, the one detail that is clear is that existing Teslas won't be taxiing anyone

That’s untrue. He said Model 3s and Ys will be starting taxiing next year in California and Texas.

[flagged]

I don't know what presentation you were watching, but in this one it was clearly stated that all Tesla models will be autonomous, not just the Cybercab, and also that you will be able to buy and own the Cybercab just like their other cars and it will earn money for you. It's fine if you don't believe it, but that's what was said.

Tesla running the service would good for the investor though

Uber drivers already drive Teslas with FSD. Today.

The promise was that you'd buy a Model 3 to use as your personal car, and then run it as a robotaxi while you're at work, and the taxi money would pay you back for the car within a year. FSD is nowhere near up to that task, neither technically nor legally. And the new info from this presentation is that it is, of course, never going to be: this was an indirect admission that the Model 3 was sold with fraudulent advertising by the then-CEO himself.

I find these half measure autopilots way more stressful than actually just driving.

Level 2-3 FSD is worse experience in my opinion.

1) driving as human — if I see brake lights, I apply brakes: see my turn, turn the wheel.

2) Tesla “driving” - if I see brake lights, I have to evaluate “did FSD See those lights, is it applying brakes” EVERY TIME. Because I need to pay attention. THEN I may apply the brakes and turn wheel (and if you use FSD a LOT, those skills will atrophy). it needs human intervention about once a day. But you never know when that will be.

We either need FSD or humans driving. Shared dynamically adhoc responsibility for the car is way way worse.

The CyberCab at least improves on that by removing the steering wheel, so when it makes mistakes you just along for the ride.

I am a curmudgeon though; I don’t even use cruise control, and the radar following cruise control gives me the same hereby jeebies “is it braking??” Problem

What if there are humans acting as these Tesla Robots in this product demo or the Tesla Robots are just remotely operated by humans to fake this demo?.

Very skeptical of this whole presentation, even if Elon and Tesla are overpromising on timelines.

Nothing that was shown is beyond the capabilities of robots from over a decade ago like Asimo (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=am1csALyEzE). It was a cool demo and beyond hobbyist capabilities, but realistically achievable by a commercial lab without having to fake it.

It's definitely teleoperated. The hardware is there, but the software isn't.

What if everything you know is a lie, what if we never went to the moon, what if all our leaders are lizard people?

The Robovan—as an actual van one could buy today—would sell. Especially in Asia, versus Toyota Alphards. Alas, seems it's more likely to get used as point-to-point transit inside closed spaces (parks and convention centers and ... perhaps the Vegas Loop).

> The Robovan — as an actual van one could buy today—would sell.

One would think so. But slow self-driving mini-buses seem to be a niche item. San Francisco's Treasure Island had one from Beep for part of 2023 and early 2024. Las Vegas had one back in 2017, from Nayva. Local Motors had some, but is defunct. There are a few from WeRide on an island in Guangzhou. EasyMile has a few installations.

This kind of self driving, at 7 to 9 MPH, has been around since 2009. It works, but it's not that useful.

Fair. I was actually imagining a Robovan crossed with a Model Y, with a legit steering wheel (and, sure, standard FSD), to compete with premium mini-vans.

But to your point, the value for the Robovan is minuscular unless it's as far-ranging as any other vehicle. And even if the FSD tech and regulations are there for it, the actual vehicle—at least the wheelbase and body covering said wheels—will need to be rethought for real-world conditions.

It's ironic that the example he gives for driving across LA already has a fast train connection:

> People that live in LA, I mean try to get from Pasadena to El Segundo during rush hour. You can fly to another city faster than you get to crosstown LA. And you have to drive the whole way.

You can take the Metro A line from Pasadena, then transfer to the C line to get to El Segundo. No driving necessary. Musk sells cars, so of course he has a massive incentive to say more cars are the solution to peoples' transit woes. But it seems like throwing more cars at the problem will simply make traffic worse, and from my experience living in Chicago, the best solution to avoid traffic (and parking!) is to take an alternative mode of transit that can bypass it (e.g. train, bike, electric scooter).

Trains are great

Unless you think LA should go London/NYC style and build a load of stations, there is still the problem of what to do if you're not near a station at the start or end. If it involves a bus connection, people will just drive

> Unless you think LA should go London/NYC style and build a load of stations

Why shouldn’t one think that? Wouldn’t this be a good solution?

Of course LA should do that.

LA is literally filled to the fucking brim with parking lots, so many fucking parking lots. You have enough space for more stations then Paris.

And yet somehow in most large cities people use trams and bus in large numbers and don't 'just drive'. Crazy to consider that some people don't even have to own a car in such a city. If you have proper transportation infrastructure, those buses/trams can be faster then private car traffic.

Its called a 'transportation system' for a reason, walking, biking, buses, trams, trains all work together to provide something that practically moves millions of people a day even in the largest cities in the world.

The meme version of this would be:

Musk: Mom, can I have national infrastructure on which I can safely and reliably operate my semi autonomous vehicles?

Mom: We have infrastructure at home.

The Infrastructure: a rail network with communal seating, infrequent service, and a minimal set of fixed route options.

If, through the accidents of human history, we spend the next century repurposing highways as railroads for rubber tired carriages then I suppose that’s a good enough outcome. In the century after that maybe we’ll start to reclaim the highway land back, a la Dr Beeching’s shuttering of post war British railway infrastructure.

Maybe reflect on how you got to congested 10-lane highways in the first place if the opportunity permits.

Love the design of the robocab. Assuming production looks something like this, can’t wait to see it IRL.

Looks very similar to the Volkswagen XL1, including the butterfly doors, the lack of a rear window, the color, the front and rear lightbars, and the overall shape and two seater layout. But I love it.

Bold to assume it will go into production.

It's a slick design, but unless it's expected to be used in very limited scenarios, the lack of a control surface (or even how Tesla expects to build an OC) for edge cases is worrying.

Love the fastback look. The curves in stainless look way nicer than the angular cybertruck. (viewing online, not in person)

Where does my luggage go?

You can if you attend one of the next 10 annual Tesla robotaxi announcements.

With regards to "can this ever actually be done?" I think it can*, but also it's got all the problems of both a software project and fundamental research: the difficulty is unknown, the timeline is a wild guess.

That said, no steering wheel? Finally, he's met my long-standing requirement for what counts as "genuinely self driving".

* humans don't need lidar — we clearly benefit from all the extra sensors or we wouldn't even have rear view mirrors let alone parking sensors, but technically it's believable.

After predicting that, in the long term, humanoid robots will cost less than a car, Mr. Musk added: "It'll take up a minute to get to the long term".

Please stop trolling, Elon.

Because of the word taxi in the name it gives off the initial impression that this is a product for fleet use and not something you own personally. But I don’t think that impression is going to explain the larger reality. if it’s inexpensive and possible to exist in this form, this is what you’d expect people to buy as a personally owned vehicle specifically for commuting.

They haven’t even gotten self driving working with driver still at the wheel, how are they supposed to convince us that they can do fully autonomous?

I use it every day, but HN says it doesn’t work

I also have a 2024 Tesla with FSD, but stopped trusting it. Here’s the thing, it works great for 30-40 minutes, until it doesn’t and makes a completely wrong move almost causing an accident without user intervention. And yes, I’m talking about v12.5.1

In the last month, it’s driven onto grass where there used to be an off ramp that was redone last year, cut across 3 lanes of highway traffic within 200 feet of an off ramp, and almost ran a semi truck off the road (yes, we had the right of way, but he weighs 20,000 lbs and was in no way going to be able to stop in time).

It a cool toy to show off when you’re being hyper vigilant about keeping an eye on it, but there is no way it should be allowed on the public roads yet.

I 1000% would advise against purchasing it unless you have the extra cash and want to try it out. It’s not even close to production ready.

Edit: spelling

It's an SAE Level 2 system, they haven't indicated that's ever changing on current cars. They're even calling it "Full Self-Driving (Supervised) (also referred to as Autosteer on City Streets)" now [1]

A lot of companies have Level 2 systems. That's still a far cry from full automation.

[1] https://www.tesla.com/ownersmanual/modely/en_us/GUID-2CB6080...

A single person's evidence isn't helpful. People doing testing at scale of Tesla's solution (even the latest version), have found a few interventions happen an hour (or at least per day), especially on busy streets or in situations where weather isn't complimentary.

It cannot be truly an autonomous robotaxi without VERY HIGH reliability. One intervention per hour is one too many.

Mine still makes a lot of grave mistakes on local roads, stops for overly long at stop signs (long enough to confuse other drivers), and has very poor merging behavior, especially when there are trucks around. It works fine 99% of the time.

How many disengagements per thousand miles? By all accounts, it's still far behind where Waymo was 10 years ago.

If it worked, why postpone all of this? Again? It works 'well enough' when there is a human on board, without one, it's just not safe enough yet.

Would you trust it without a break pedal and steering wheel you can take control over? How confident you are Tesla can deliver this within one or two years? If your answer is not a resounding yes for both this product its as good as nothing at this stage. Considering Tesla track record of delivering on timelines and expectations for this kind of tech.

Exactly. I wish people actually used it instead of reading biased news about it. Driving is so much stress free with it now.

Then you must be one of the lucky ones!

I mean, people have been gullible for this long already...

I'm confused, cause all these comments seem to just be plain lies? Have anyone actually driven in a tesla using FSD? It's freaking awesome. I literally drive to and from work everyday and pretty much never have to put my hands on the wheel unless i want to go faster.

They showcase this robot that is manipulated by someone behind the scenes. Is this really possible? It seems like a scam.

They are going face major regulatory hurdles. Safety concerns are huge—both real and perceived—and governments, especially in places like the US and Europe, are still far from trusting fully autonomous vehicles. Add in fragmented regulations across different states and countries, plus potential public skepticism, and it's clear this won't be in place any time soon.

Labor opposition is also going to be a nightmare. Just as Uber faced resistance from taxi unions and legislators sympathetic to workers who saw their jobs threatened, Tesla will likely face significant opposition from drivers in the gig economy, who rely on ride-hailing platforms like Uber and Lyft. Governments may be pressured to protect those jobs, especially in regions where automation is seen as a threat to employment.

I already get a driverless taxi a few times a week

The Verge has good coverage.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/10/24267132/tesla-robotaxi-...

not good at all. doesn’t mention the mini-bus which is large enough to stand in. said fsd was “recalled” but what really happened was the driver monitoring software was updated.

As I understand it, a car "recall" is a regulated action in the US, and that manufacturers must issue recalls in certain circumstances and that they bring with them various requirements. How that recall actually takes place, and whether it's just an OTA update, is an implementation detail that doesn't matter as much. I realise that does go against the customer perception of what a product recall entails in general. The Verge therefore is technically correct in stating that it was a recall.

They did post about the Robovan. While I agree regarding the tendency of media to use the word "recall" in a misleading fashion, I ctrl-f'ed and couldn't find it in the Verge live blog page that was linked to.

This kind of pouting does no favors. I had a recall on my Lincoln which was "place this sticker with a sentence of text on it at the bottom of page 254 of your owner's manual", about the ability of objects to move through space from the 'trunk' to the passenger area if the passthrough area is open in the event of a collision.

Nothing touched the vehicle at all, even electronically, so you could argue it was even less of a recall than some of the Tesla recalls, but there you have it.

You'll survive. Tesla will survive. It's a recall.

The race to full self driving is not going to be close. Tesla has no competition.

The anti-Tesla sentiment here is hilarious to watch though. All because this place is largely leftist, and their CEO is on the right.

This story seems to have been buried.

as far as I've seen a high number of comments in a HN post will impact it's ranking.

to my understanding that is a feature designed to limit flamewars, of course I might be mistaken.

2 years away from being 2 years away

concept of a plan

Nobody talking about those gimmicky butterfly doors? I would bet some money that they will not make it into mass production. Not for a car priced unter $100.000

Why? Tesla likes cool doors, and the model X starts at $80k already.

This tech will obviously happen eventually, my buddy with the new Y has driven less than 1% on over 1500 miles. Will be great when it happens.

This is not a serious proposal. It's a cool little sports car looking design. It looks very future-y. It's the kind of thing someone would step out of in a sci-fi movie. That's how you know it's not an actual well-thought-out design. This isn't a taxi, it's the torment nexus in car form.

Taxis are not sexy, taxis are utility vehicles. Taxis carry people and goods. Taxis carry more than one person. Taxis carry disabled people. Taxis carry the elderly. If you want to know what a purpose-built taxi looks like, look at the London cabs, the JPN Taxi, or the NV200s. If you're going to build a fully custom platform for a taxi, make a goddamn taxi. Actually put in the effort to design something built for the purpose, not just something that you think looks cool.

(And if the design didn't give it away - inductive charging? Really?)

It’s a late april fools joke. Tesla Bot? They’ve gone full ASIMO in a Cartman suit.

They should have put a massive trunk in the back to carry goods, and more than 1 seat, and not banned old people from taking trips, those bastards

And if you wanted to use inductive charging why didn't you acquire a company that does that a few years ago, you can't just announce things with no experience in the area, that would be madness

1) did u miss the robovan

2) these are supposed to be purchasable and they're very fucking cool

3) the model x with its gull wing doors is as cool as first shown.

This is all well and good, but it's not possible to deploy these kinds of technologies at scale in American cities (well, most American cities). They'll get torn to bits. The ability to actually move to an autonomous transportation future is downstream from citizens actually behaving in a way that allows this. Harsh, but true. Maybe in Singapore.

Waymo is doing 100k paid trips a week in 4 cities.

They also use remote drivers though.

Oh hey I get to copy paste a list of times elon said FSD would come out next year![1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16]

[1]https://fortune.com/2015/12/21/elon-musk-interview/

[2]https://x.com/elonmusk/status/686279251293777920

[3]https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jun/02/self-driv...

[4]https://www.nbcnews.com/business/autos/driverless-tesla-will...

[5]https://x.com/elonmusk/status/823727035088416768

[6]https://www.ted.com/talks/elon_musk_the_future_we_re_buildin...

[7]https://x.com/elonmusk/status/866482406160609280

[8]https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1063123659290595328

[9]https://web.archive.org/web/20190220051410/https://www.ark-i...

[10]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEv99vxKjVI

[11]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ucp0TTmvqOE

[12]https://web.archive.org/web/20200709130939/https://www.youtu...

[13]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AF2HXId2Xhg

[14]https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-interview-axel-spr...

[15]https://www.cnet.com/roadshow/news/elon-musk-full-self-drivi...

[16]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vwq_PhtvLwo

(Or simply, https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/)

So this should be available next year … like the full self driving cars since 2012.

This is just another to have something in the pipeline to keep shareholders at least interested. It seems Musk tries really hard to keep the stock price from collapsing.

If FSD and robo-autonomy isn't fully cracked (level 5) in 1000 days, all of this is vaporware.

They demonstrate this robot that is manipulated by someone behind the scenes. Is this really possible?

And the collective "Scam Artist par Excellence and Conman of the Century" award goes to...

So are we taking bets on what the real price and launch date will be?

That’s it? Yawn…

what the world really needs is a robobicycle and according to this video we are nearly there :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0F1H1V5MxtY

The event was objectively smoke in the eyes:

- days ago I was reading an article stating that Tesla didn't apply yet for the license to operate autonomous vehicles in the streets. Competitor had their licenses in 8 months or more. I think this is a critical factor to respect the deadline of December 2025;

- Just another risible demo in a controlled environment, a movie set: no real life scenario able to demonstrate the effectiveness of the robotaxi technology. This for something should be in exercise before 2025 ends is and indicator that the tech is not ready. "Only cameras" approach IMHO just won't work.

- the presentation images suggested that robotaxis should substitute public transport. This not only is bullshit for a number of reasons, it also can influence public transport politics like with the other bullshit technology called Hyperloop that was accepted as the future of transportation by short sighted administrators;

- Wireless recharge : oh please ! Apart technical consideration could raise doubt on the smartness of that approach, they really are saying they can create a network of wireless recharge points before the robotaxi go in exercise next year ?

- Robobus : wow ! What about electric tram ? I see a pattern here , step by step, they are demonstrating that the real electric revolution is electric public transport, not that electric robot limousine that are a viable and cost effective public transport alternative only in the mind of a megalomaniac billionaire !

- Men, you don't believe this is bullshit ? let's take appointment here December 31st , 2025, to discuss the status of the robotaxi.

Why is this a two-seater? A sedan with no driver can easier fit 5 people. Building one for only two is.. why? There are also no steering controls, this this vehicle can't ever be dual-purpose. Even something where steering/gas could be removable attachments, would be better. Allowing a possibility of being driven by a driver should the need arise.

But really? A two-seater?

I'm not a Musk hater but this vision of the future just doesn't seem that interesting. I'm from Switzerland, I much rather have trains and well timed buses.

Buses already exists and paying drivers isn't actually that big a problem. Society can easily pay for that, if you take into account the reduction in investment and cost you have from other road use.

Musk promise of 'less parking lots' can already be easily achieved with technology from 1960. Its not an engineering problem, its social problem.

Trains, trams, buses, bikes and walking is far cheaper and more efficient in every measurable way then fancy robotaxis even if they worked, witch they don't really.

Can you imagine the horror of a large city where most people each use an individual vehicle? That just dystopia.

An small autonomous bus has some uses but at best its a small part of a much larger transport system.

The US being so obsessed with robotaxis is just a consequence of 70 years of horrible road design and land usage and city planning.

> Can you imagine the horror of a large city where most people each use an individual vehicle? That just dystopia.

Yes

- every American

> Mr Musk's prediction that production would begin some time "before 2027"

So, no big reveal after all? Just another press conference where he once again says "it's coming soon"?

I didn't think he was going to unveil anything actually new, but I did honestly think he'd sing a new song about it all. I guess I overestimated him.

I feel like I’ve been looking at the same marketing slide deck for 10 years from these people. Wake me when they ship something.

Do you not see those driverless Cybercabs driving around without a steering wheel? At least that's a development that we haven't seen in the past 10 years.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRitZlhL3OQ - 6 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2aNJCsfrP0 - 10 years ago

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mITK3qaaHQ8 - 4 years ago

Cars that drive in a circle around a fixed course? Yeah, I've seen that before.

About the Robotaxi: I really, really wanted to impressed by what they will demo. However, I thought it was more marketing, with the product being "just two years away" as always. The demo was in a controlled environment so I doubt its real-life capability. I guess I will believe it when I see it on roads. Disappointed.

You now what makes transportation more affordable, sustainable and energy efficient? Building trains, trams and subways.

I see Lucy has brought a new football to the yard.

Year 2026 in Elon time = year 2030 in real time

I think the products all look great. The timeline, who knows. They probably will manage to get at least the Robotaxi out as a buzzer beater December 2026 release of a handful, at a minimum.

Unsupervised FSD timeline? Elon says 2025. I suspect they can do that, if you define it as Level 3, where you just need to take over within, say, 10-30 seconds. Probably starting on highway. Beyond that, hard to say. Recent FSD versions are impressive, but there is still a lot to do to reduce disengagement rates. But their strategy seems like it can be made to work.

How soon will it take to get it good enough for Robotaxi/Robovan? Well, they can basically have said no sooner than two years (for the late 2026 Robotaxi release). I doubt unsupervised FSD will work in a fully autonomous taxi mode on existing vehicles until the very end of that window.

Will the Tesla AI3 computers support Unsupervised FSD, sounds like possibly not, based on Elon's suspiciously noncommittal response to a guy yelling in the crowd. They can probably squeeze out of past promises on this in a couple ways if it won't work on AI3 cars. Presumably they'll want to minimize cost impact of making good. I think they'll first try to get as many FSD users to upgrade to a new AI4 (or later) vehicle by incentivizing them with free FSD transfer. For the rest, they could offer even bigger discounts on upgrading to a new car, and then finally bite the bullet and do some kind of FSD retrofit or simply refund. Or just piss everyone off and wait for the class action. But I suspect they'll resolve it sort of amicably while wanting to sweep it under the rug.

They could also never be able to make autonomy work, but I think that's doubtful at this point. Waymo demonstrates you can do it with geographical, time, and other constraints, limited release, and a different hardware stack. I think Tesla's vision-only approach has been fairly well validated on the existing hardware. The remaining issues do not seem like they require significantly improved sensors to operate in at least 90% or so of conditions, which is more than sufficient to run a taxi service.

Existing discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41805515

This is coming in 2 years at the earliest?

Tesla Full self driving has been coming by the end of the year since at least 2018. Expect this to follow a similar timeline.

I actually think we’ll get break even fusion energy before mass adoption of robotaxis in a variety of locales.

Great, just what we need. More TSLA “full self driving” cars on the road. Hope this is delayed by a decade. Tired of car centric transportation.

Pity they didn't also announce a self driving bus

For me the surprising thing is that the stock fell "just" 8% after this event. No sane investor should believe anything CEO says, given he is running multiple companies, is busy with upcoming election, as well as propagating conspiracy theories and hate speech on his platform.

After a decade of lies, this is another nail in the coffin and I honestly can't believe the marketcap of this company hasn't been significantly affected by something that was supposed to be a big reveal of those promises.

I'm disappointed that it wasn't a single occupant, three-wheeled, ultra-basic microcar limited to 50 km/h to gather and scatter people from public transport stops, solving the last-mile problem.

Overpromised and underdelivered, but Elon did make a strong case for a very positive autonomous-driving future. Unfortunately for Tesla, Waymo is at least 5 years closer to delivering that future.

This is honestly quite painful to see. Makes me all the happier to live in Switzerland and be able to use great trains and public transport everyday. (It's definitely not cheap though but the comfort is amazing)

You know what screams "democratizate transportation"?

99% single occupancy vehicles (well, that's democratic, I'll grant them that) controlled by a corporation known for a million abuses and basically no oversight, everything managed by faceless software.

Let me tell you an Uber story.

I've been an Uber customer across multiple countries for many years, and one day, I had a layover in London. So I tried to book an Uber in London, but it failed a few times for technical reasons (so their problem).

After a bunch of attempts, I received a notification my account was banned.

I contacted support, they gave me the runaround for 30 minutes or more, in the end their response was the standard BigCorp canned answer for fraud: "we can't tell you why your actions are suspicious" (with the subtext: if you're an innocent victim of our scans, tough luck, but we can't tell you because statistically if we tell you what you did wrong, real fraudsters will learn and defraud us even more).

So now I can't use Uber in the UK (I imagine if I try to circumvent the ban with another account, I risk that getting banned, too, and who knows what else, as I have to put my credit card in their app).

Now imagine if you want to plan your life around stuff like Tesla Robotaxi and they ban you. What's your recourse?

With your own motorbike/car, you need to commit serious crimes to lose your license forever. With public transportation, as long as you pay the ticket, nobody can ban you for life. And I don't think anyone can take away your bike/ebike/scooter/escooter :-)

From https://www.asomo.co/p/the-luddites-guide-to-defending-physi...:

> As a thought experiment, imagine if all forms of transport except Uber were removed from our society, resulting in total ‘Uberfication’. What would happen in this ‘convenient’ society?

> For a start, you’d notice that your entire ability to move depended on an institution. While the first few weeks of trips might not bug you, over time it would begin to feel deeply stifling, even oppressive. The mass dependence on a intermediary would not only transfer mass power to Uber, but would in turn unlock a host of other problems:

He goes on to explain these very well.

Are normal taxis any different? Most of them only have one or two passengers. Typically in the backseat which gets kind of crowded with more people. You can get bigger taxis of course. But I'm talking about the common sedan model with the driver in the front. An unused front seat on the right. And the one or two passengers in the back. Exactly the same thing. Except there's no need for the driver.

I don't get the moral outrage here. It's taxi with one person less (the driver). Also available as a model 3 and y. And the robovan thing. So they do actually cover a range of vehicles with different amounts of passengers.

I find the timing of this release interesting to say the least.

How so?

I think their "robotaxi" is kinda pathetic. But goddamn... That bus is one of the single most beautiful vehicles they have ever designed. I absolutely love it. (Fan of Art Deco and streamliner locomotive design)

I for one cannot wait to run my cloud infrastructure on Tesla Web Services

Running Dojo D1 chips?

Elon Musk Has Been Promising Self-Driving Cars For 10 Years [Update - We Are Now On Year 11] [1]

https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars-anniv... [1]

Lmao … I don’t have anything else to say, but feel it had to be said

HN is packed now with Elon Musk haters after the mass firings at Twitter. Anything related to him or his companies has long lists of negative comments. Bitter grapes?

Even if Elon cured cancer, there would be haters for his politics and business approach.

I don’t understand why people hate him. But this just shows the wokeness and naiveness of this industry — socially inept people who can only strike keyboards and habe 0 critical thinking on their own

O wait I just described the entire SF and tech industry

Hey Tesla, where's the Roadster 2 you announced in 2017 and took $50,000 deposits for?

Oh, that's right, it was a stunt to boost the stock price, not a real product you intended to sell. Just like this.

You mean the interest free loan they asked for? They are just waiting for it to double, so give it another 5 years. /s

Seriously, though, this is the standard Elon Musk tactic...

Is there a way I can filter out all the ad hominem comments?

@dang

It’s unfortunate comment sections for stuff like this can’t be genuine curious conversation

There's only so many times you can have genuine curious conversation for the same promise. Musk has been holding this presentation, with very small variations, for 6-10 years now. The first 5 times, sure, plenty of curious conversation. But after some time you have to start calling a fraud a fraud.

Maybe because the event was all smoke and mirrors, and no actual numbers and plans were revealed ?

Why are the comments on this topic so consistently low quality? It's not even cynicism. It's just snark. It seems like most commenters aren't addressing the topic but rather are venting about their feelings.

This dude has lied about robotaxis for a full 11 years. Think about where you were in life 11 years ago. Each time he's done this, it's been brought up in here with steadily decreasing enthusiasm. What reason would anybody have to engage seriously with this until an actual product has shipped?

Man I really have to stop reading hackernews comments, its a total bummer.

His companies are making rockets, autonomous humanoid robots and autonomous cars, I will cut my left pinky finger to work on any of those, and this is my capslock finger, so I will have to switch away from emacs..

With the worldlabs[1] work maybe they unlock models that do have even better spatial world model and can be used label data even better and faster, or create even better synthetic data so it can unlock FSD even sooner.

The fact that LLMs work means there is structure in language that is beyond our understanding, and yet the transformer can discover it and program itself to solve for it. I think that the stupendous amount of compute that is going to be released in 2025 will make it possible to train labelers that can do temporal labeling much better than humans and than the current models, and synthesize and perturb data to train really really good transformers that will outperform 90th percentile humans.

Why do you guys think that it can not happen? Maybe its not Tesla that does it, but I certainly think amazing tech is coming.

Hopefully it will not be just autonomous humanoid robots with guns paid by the military and patrolling the borders :astonished face:

[1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIXfYFB7aBI (Fei-Fei Li and Justin Johnson)

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