Elon Musk's robotaxi fantasy is starting to unravel | Hacker News Reader

Elon Musk's robotaxi fantasy is starting to unravel

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He's been talking about FSD since 2013, robotaxis since 2019

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_predictions_for_autono...

The idea never made sense to me, the car couldn't earn enough money to overcome the hassle and risk. I would never let random strangers ride in a car I owned without supervision. There would be a daily mess to clean up, often damage. What happens when a passenger does something that gets the car and owner caught up in civil forfeiture laws?

Turo is proof of concept for letting strangers rent your car. The economics of all p2p short term rental is dubious and it turns into a whale hunt for "super hosts" but people do it.

You're right, the idea is so absurd. Must be some glitch in the matrix that a business like Uber has been operating successfully for more than a decade and is currently profitable. Now imagine if the chief operating expenditure (drivers) were eliminated too. Certainly such a business would fail, of course.

The comment here is glib and against community guidelines, but it should be somewhat obvious the ability for someone to be in the car and regulate poor behavior helps.

Strangers in your (personally owned and financed) vehicle who could trash it and leave you with... no vehicle or one that is slightly damaged, would cause at the very least a headache to you, the owner, and insurance on your vehicle to rise.

It's that time of the year again:

> Last night, Elon Musk did what he does best: promise “millions” of autonomous Tesla vehicles would be on the road by the end of next year.

And this tiny little disclaimer:

> Last year, Musk said that Tesla would rollout “unsupervised” robotaxis in Austin, Texas starting in June 2025. And in the call last night, Musk stuck to that deadline, but added a little more color about what to expect. He said the paid ridehailing service would consist of 10-20 Model Y vehicles with remote operators in case any of the cars get stuck.

Ahh, unsupervised, if you ignore the supervisors! And wow, a whole 10-20 for the city!

> Musk has long promised Level 5 autonomy, which describes driverless vehicles that can travel anywhere, under any conditions, without limitations. But last night, he corrected himself: there will be some limitations.

Ahh, geofencing sucks unless Tesla does it, got it.

> One analyst asked about the reliability of Tesla’s cameras when confronting sun glare, fog, or dust. Musk claimed that the company’s vision system bypasses image processing and instead uses direct photon counting to account for “noise” like glare or dust.

I smell bullshit. Photon counting requires specialized cameras that are not present on Teslas. Not to mention lab conditions (so you can direct photons at your sensor, versus you know, scattering into the atmosphere...) And that don't do anywhere near as well at regular image processing, for that reason.

Musk has used up whatever credibility he once had. Anything he says now is irrelevant.

It's fair to question some of Elon's statements but the article is outright misinformed. The parameters are for tweaking models to handle things like snow or ice better, also, real geofencing helps in rolling out features.

Find the article rather weak and just blatant criticism, expected better.

It's a bit hard to innovate when people driving (and selling) your cars are attacked almost daily.

What garbage is this? How has any vandalism of Tesla vehicles affected the absolute horseshit that comes out of Elon's mouth and that has been for years?

This is a sad and paper-thin "defense" that doesn't pass the first smell test. Is this the best you have? "Anti-Elon protestors are the reason we don't have Robotaxis"?

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