Comment by judge2020 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by judge2020 | Hacker News Reader

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> Tesla fan boys still say that NO ONE else can do self driving despite plenty of companies which do like waymo or Nvidia, Mercedes and BMW.

Absolutely no one is saying that. The bad faith is people saying that Robotaxi is doomed because it's vision-only. It may end up not being the best approach, but it's looking to be good enough to be performant and still be one of the larger players in the market.

> Then they tell you that no one will own a car anymore but we already have Taxi/Uber and the world hasn't changed much and they complelty ignore basics like traffic spikes for workers.

I'm not saying this either. This is like saying that busses and trains are vaporware because they can't serve 100% of transportation needs.

Some peoples' lifestyles will adapt to this change or already fit within it. A lot of people's won't. Over time, they will gradually close the gaps and/or people will change their own lives to fit it if they'd like to save money on transportation.

I'm reading this argument and had discussions with people plenty of times. I then remind them of all the other companies.

Does selfdriving work? yes. Is robotaxi a real business? Yes.

Thats not the point. The point here is the valuation of Tesla because of it and thats not justifiable. Despite the fact that Tesla originally sold FSD so that everyone can leverage this feature.

So either Tesla builds a cheap Robotaxi and floods the market as a car company OR Tesla becomes a competitor on a competitive market.

Why would people adjust their lifestyles based on a Robotaxi? We have already Taxis and Ubers.

The only chance for 'people changing their lifestyles' is if a Robotaxi is always available and A LOT cheaper which then again breaks the whole valuation of Tesla.

My main issue with Uber/Lyft/Taxi is the human element (humans sometimes want to chat) and the tipping element. Plus how flakey drivers are - e.g. they might not immediately go to pick you up and could taking detours or pit stops, etc.

To actually switch to it myself, I'd need robotaxi to deliver:

- p99 5 minute wait for ride hailing, including at peak times - 24/7 operation

Longer 200-500 mile trips would also be nice, although then you get into needing robotic and/or wireless charging pads at SCs for road trips to work.

Also, there are a lot of ways some sort of subscription service could be handled. Maybe included usage, maybe I pay to have it ready in my driveway between 6am and 9am (but still to where I don't own it / need to personally insure it). Either way, it won't be hard for it to undercut my current car expenses if I can cut out car insurance.

None of the above is de-facto impossible with automation in the space. In fact, more reliable ops would be easier because the company can predict and dynamically scale how many are running at any given time, purely limited by (non-human) capital, instead of needing to increase their bid for human drivers to accept rides when demand is high.

Although the question is indeed if they can do all of this economically in a crowded space; I don't disagree that $1T is an insane valuation in any respect. Elon's umbrella of companies is all funny money to me.

I checked the calculation which was a lot easier than i thought. The german automotive club actually has a table what a car costs per km and the range is between 50-100cents per km.

Tax and uber are at around 2.5 Euro per km so 250 cents per km.

Tbh I thought before already that this not an easy story to sell, but the price point is between 2.5-5 already and if you remove 16% of the driver, you only get down to 2.1-4.2

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