Isn't it completely overshadowed by Waymo? From what I've heard Waymo is more profitable and has substantially fewer accidents due to better technology.
Waymo is betting that cutting zero corners and being rigorous will pay off down the line. They seem best in class.
Zoox seems to be betting that reducing time to get passengers in and out while providing a novel platform will be a differentiator. More sensors than Tesla but fewer cars than both the others.
Cybercab seems to be about cutting cost (and corners) wherever they thing they can get away from it and betting cheap will win the day (sort of like a discount airline). This assumes they're not doing something O(N) expensive behind the scenes, like having every ride monitored by a human operator in another country.
I remember some company dragging a person for awhile and the car not realizing. I'm worried tesla will find itself in a situation like that (or another edge case). I feel safer being around a Waymo as a pedestrian than a cybercab. I even had a Waymo stop for me at a pedestrian crossing when I was waiting for it to go by (I wasn't trying to cross).
In the long run Waymo will have to figure out how to have a cheaper platform and Tesla will have to toe the cheap/good-enough line. Zoox is still seemingly unlaunched so IDK about them. Time will tell.
... just looked it up, Waymo's 6th gen hardware is estimated to cost $20k per vehicle. That's getting down there. And if they ever do even higher volumes, will probably go down further: https://x.com/fchollet/status/2023522267846815874
Looked online, Waymo is really starting to ramp up it's services. They're now in 13 US cities (including Atlanta and Austin): https://support.google.com/waymo/answer/9059119#zippy=
And are planning on increasing the size of their fleet by a factor of 5: https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/waymo-...
They will have a huge advantage and seems to me like Waymo is going to win out, but can never tell.
> you can already buy a car with FSD
Which did things like drive off roads into parked cars and killed people. I feel like if Tesla hadn't been selling "full self driving" for years, the trust would be higher "no guys, we promise it's actually full self driving this time for real now" just doesn't have the same ring.
On the rollout:
It's notable that Tesla is building their own rideshare while Waymo is partnering with Uber. Tesla has the vertical integrated benefit of getting all profits but Waymo doesn't have to handle new user acquisition they just peel off existing requests and can roll out faster.
Tesla might "pivot" later to selling the 2 seater cybercab as a cheap base to competitors like waymo. It seems like Tesla has an identity crisis. They don't know how to be a consumer car platform (cybertruck halting production) they torched their PR with the green base that made them successful in the first place. Now sort of feels like a startup trying to "pivot" to find product market fit instead of a mature, well run company with solid strategic vision. There are a lot of jobs on the line so I hope they figure something out.
And yeah, FSD has been misrepresented for a long time now, but yeah, what I've been hearing it is finally getting really good. It's not completely hands free, but it's supposed to be very usable, and keep reading in reviews that this is the one feature that sets Tesla's EV's apart.
... And actually, on Uber, only in Austin (where said you are) and Atlanta does Waymo use Uber. Yeah, I used to live in the SF Bay Area, and had used Waymo a couple of times directly from their own app. It was a very natural experience. And recently stumbled upon an article that even in Austin and Atlanta, Waymo is going to discontinue using Uber in 2028.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1Id2aas5wI (you can find more using Youtube search or Chat)
Is it global, or US wide? Nope, Waymo isn't neither.
https://autonomixinvestor.com/robotaxi-tracker/
Tesla:
> Roughly 20 on a given day, never more than about 50 active in a week across all markets. The genuinely unsupervised slice peaked around 25 in spring and has drifted sideways since.
Waymo:
> Roughly 500,000 paid rides per week, a figure Alphabet cited at both Q1 and Q2, so it is flat, not fresh.
> Musk’s vaporware doesn’t actually exist in the market.
Sugar water, whatever you want to call it, there's multiple providers.
Unsupervised robotaxi has lower (at fault) accidents than unsupervised waymo.
All notable cybercab accidents have been done by remote driving.
The only thing waymo have are - large fleet thus large miles/week - many cities
In last week or so, Tesla went from tiny to equal/more than waymo in Austin seemingly in just a few days.
They'll do that in other cities too in due time.
Waymos exist and have for years. Whatever fabricated data Musk came up with here has no relation to reality.
Waymo’s entire fleet is estimated at about 6000 cars. Tesla produces this many cars in a little over a day.
The cybercab is also likely to end up costing 1/10th of a Waymo car
It’s not that Tesla is winning here. But the economics of their solution can totally tilt the entire market in the future.
If.
I've been reading the same thing each year since basically the first version of Tesla's car AI. I'm sure I've even written similar things.
Tesla hasn't got the scale or operating consistency to even truly call itself a commercial service. Elon keeps claiming the Tesla will overwhelm everybody in the whole fleet will wake up one day and be a moneymaking taxi machine.
No it won't. Here's the reality:: https://autonomixinvestor.com/robotaxi-tracker/