The more relevant one is what will happen first. Tesla figuring out how to make vision only work on their existing hardware. Or the price of LiDAR coming down.
Good indoor range but not really useful outdoors at any range. Scaling to higher power is indeed a challenge, but that Intel delivered so so much in 2020 for such a small price is awesome, shows potential.
Still, $300 is not $100 and presumably they were selling at big loss, otherwise they wouldn't have shuttered RealSense.
Similar style single chip lidar for automotive is in engineering sampling phase now [1]. Price remains to be seen but anything sub 1k would be a no-brainer to add to a robo-taxi.
Oh, everyone in the industry thinks Tesla is .. how to put it nicely .. is irrelevant for the future because of their CEOs stance on sensors. Camera will never be enough.
https://scantinel.com/2023/07/03/scantinel-photonics-launche...
For instance, when we see a ball rolling onto the street, we know that there is probably a young person nearby who wants that ball back. We don't have to be trained on the visual patterns of what might happen next.
Of course AI can be trained on the visuals of high probability events like this. But the number of things that can potentially happen is far greater than the number of training examples we could ever produce.
Models don't need to have been trained on every single possibility - it's possible for them to generalize and interpolate/extrapolate.
But, even knowing that it's theoretically possible to drive at human-level with only the senses humans have, it does seem like it makes it unnecessarily difficult to limit the vehicle to just that. Forces solving hard tasks at/near 100% human-level, opposed to reaching 70% then making up for the shortcoming with extra information that humans don't have.
They do have some in-distribution generalisation capabilities, but human intentions are not a generalisation of visual information.
Clearly that's possible to some extent, and in theory it should be possible for some system receiving the same inputs to reach human-level performance on the task, but it seems very challenging given the imposed constraints.
Also, for clarity, note that the limitations don't require the model be trained only on driver-view data. It may be that reasoning capability is better learned through text pretraining for instance.
Cars can't do this.
And not surprisingly the biggest problem with FSD is the accuracy of its bounding boxes.
But we do move our heads around pretty frequently. Enough to build mental records of what the bounding boxes are going to be for a range of objects.
If we're talking purely about going off memory, there's no reason why machines couldn't build up a similar catalog (which could be used by every self driving AI once learned). And human ability to judge distances varies significantly between drivers.
When it comes to AI though, humans are using biological neural net much more capable than any today's AI you can cram into a car. So, even if one accepts your premise of targeting human performance as a design guideline, more sensors is still logical at this point as way to compensate for the weaker AI.
Also, if you read how Tesla does vision it is very different from, and i think inferior to, how your eyes and brain build the 3d map of the surroundings. If one is limiting oneself to only vision, the first thing would be to try to get as good as possible that 3d mapping, and the vision seems to be among the simplest and most researched brain functions, ie. easiest to reproduce. As Tesla doesn't seem to be doing it - only may be couple years ago they only started to elicit the 3d model - i think they aren't on the shortest path to success when it comes to FSD.
Rotation is very common in nature.
Planetary rotation, inner-core rotation, spinning galaxies, dung beetle rolling, Keratinocyte migration, Rotifers, spirals, rotational symmetry, etc.
What isn’t common (but not non-existent) is using rotation for locomotion in biology.
There may even be an AI built into your photo library app.
The fact your phone can identify an object doesn't inform you on the capabilities of self-driving car's vision stack. It's complete non-sequitur.
You know how big your own team is, and that your team is itself an abstraction from the outside world. You know you get the shortcuts of being able to look at what nature does and engineer it rather than simply copy without understanding. You know your own evolutionary algorithms, assuming you're using them at all, run as fast as you can evaluate the fitness function, and that that is much faster than the same cycle with human, or even mammalian, generational gaps.
> CLIP is proof of what AI can and can't do
CLIP says nothing about what AI can't do, but it definitely says what AI can do. It's a minimum, not a maximum.
Maybe this is an old post and your understanding has dramatically improved to the point where you're able to offer useful insight on ML/AI/self-driving?
- Over the speed limit (it's called a limit for a reason)
- Too fast for the conditions (speed limit != speed target)
- Too close to the vehicle in front of them
There are very few situations that can't be prevented by driving properly in the first place.
But this has definitely been researched a lot in the field of military drone operators who can make life altering decisions from thousands of miles away.
Both figuratively and literally.
Maybe something like Mexico would be better.
I honestly think at this point Tesla's FSD AI is way, way overfitting on a few US cities.
Nobody expected 15 year old design from BMW to perform better I guess. From modern up-to-date teslas who don't even have steering wheel but lidar is a no-no because his ego? I can't imagine it getting approved in Europe, ever. Which is fine, there will be tons of competition for this in few years.
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...
It's much much easier to make an existing thing cheaper and better over time.
Geofencing sounds like a good idea to me. It's a mean to roll things out carefully, while minimizing risk of death. If actual FSD/Robotaxi is ever released, I suspect that they'll need to geofence, too, for a while.
Whilst it is unknown who will be the winner, or even valid competitors, we can predict with high confidence that Tesla has a massive challenge to reach where Waymo is today.
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.
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.
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...
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.
They're putting their money where Musk's mouth is.
And next year it will go up to 85kmph, close to highway speeds.
(leaving aside for the moment, why they wouldn’t want to)
But they would probably want to do all kinds of extra training and validation and fine tuning on it first rather than just blast out the current version.
And I actually believe Mercedes Benz, you know, the inventors of the automobile, to deliver.
If you look at their wording, they are saying they are ready to defend themselves and their software, not that they will protect anyone from a lawsuit.
The owners manual even explicitly states you are always the operator under drive pilot.
Just a straight up lie. The manual states:
> The person in the driver's seat when DRIVE PILOT is activated is designated as the fallback-ready user and should be ready to take over control of the vehicle.
> As soon as the driver steers, accelerates or brakes, the responsibility for driving and safe operation of the vehicle, including compliance with traffic regulations, will be returned to the driver.
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.
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.
I am also highly sceptical of everything about Tesla's program though
Tesla has zero intentions of operating a fleet of autonomous vehicles on their own.
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.
To me it feels like the traditional auto manufacturers are catching up to Tesla and now they need the next hype to stay ahead of the game. It keeps the stock price high. I am aware this is not a new goal though. I very much doubt it's within reach by 2027. I'm happy to be proven wrong though, driving a car is a bit tedious imo.
And "wanted a change" my *ss. If you believe the hype that autonomous driving is really just around the corner (has been since 2015) AND you are leading the R&D of the company that does this, would you want to jump ship before the product is shipped? Do you think Jobs would have left Apple in 2006, just before the Iphone announcement because "he wanted change"? If you do, I have a bridge to sell you.
But, as always, I consider how hard working at Tesla is, and what percent of the total economic value of working at Tesla Karpathy had acquired at the time he left. You don't need to imagine anything other than "cool, I'm good, see you guys around" for such a decision to make sense.
We saw a bunch of execs leave shortly after Tesla presold 500k Model 3s. Super sensible -- they were vested most likely, and other industry execs could be retained for the herculean lift that getting scaled up for the M3 was going to be. Why kill yourself? And from Tesla's point of view, why overpay in the market for those guys? You can hire someone from Audi (which they did) for much less on the back of the successful pre-order.
That said, my kid told me last night in the rain with some cars slowing, it tried to pull left into oncoming traffic, and needed a quick recovery. We seem to be at stuff like that every thousand or so miles, down from every mile five years ago. it is WAY WAY WAY ahead of any other car I've driven or ridden in that can be bought. I understand Waymo in SF is significantly better. But, compared to Rivian, Ford, Volvo, Mercedes, it's years ahead.
That's orders of magnitudes better than other FSD users.
Independent testing of over 1,000 miles through Southern California required 77 interventions, at an average of once every 13 miles.
I suspect your "one intervention every one thousand miles" might be a little optimistic.
[0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/auto...
I'm simply saying that when it improves to the point where it can be unsupervised, they will definitely have the data to prove it.
So... I think it's a bit early to start believing the hype :)
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.
I'm quite familiar with the topic if you have questions.
As much as I dislike 99%of what Elon is and represent the past few years, that's doesn't mean we should loss critical thinking.
Elon said a anti missile shield called SHIELD would be cool (nooo, Elon had another random idea from someone who doesn't know the field but has enough pr clout to make it published?), and Elon used to work or at least be in the same building as a general when he visits for a company that do space launch and is critical to US infrastructure needs (noo? you don't say ?) , and someone else said about shield against missile wouldn't be cool (noo?). That's nothing real or factual.
If yes you have a bigger scandal, active duty general report full time to private interests!
If not then it's what happens when high level public official leaves office to go in the private space, of course he works for one of the connection he made. Unless you have proof that despite his leaving office he has an active decisionnary role on public and defense spending, then you're accusing someone juste because they work after leaving their previous job.
Where's that Roadster he promised 7.5 years ago?
And that's an easier thing to do.
https://jalopnik.com/its-still-very-funny-that-1-000-people-...
It would sell +++
They are also doing a $25k car, they just aren't revealing it today.
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 same thing that Google (ironically) did with X - which led to Waymo, which now already has autonomous taxis[0]
You can't keep perpetually hyping tomorrow when the next Q is due.
I have an affinity for Tesla since it's named after someone from a village my mums family is from (and who I'm named after), and I like environmentalist, decarbonise, and electrify Elon.. but sometimes he makes it hard.
[0] on that note - not only have I seen better taxi demos than today, also seen better robot demos from Boston Dynamics.
Optimus has improved quickly. Gen 3 should be better. They showed Gen 3 hands today that looked pretty good.
You can't win on manufacturing - this is, after all, a nation that is now building Volvo's better than the Swedes did.
Tesla fell into the China partnership trap, where the gov subsidises you and you open a "partnership" there, meanwhile they take your IP and knowledge for the benefit of the state (I was in that situation in '07 with Tencent and turned it down).
Hence now $10k Chinese cars - and Biden introducing tariffs to protect local industry (including Tesla - which Elon doesn't seem to appreciate)
On AI at Elon's recent recruitment event he put X.ai in Tier 1 with OpenAI and Anthropic and didn't even mention Meta. To me, as someone who applies these models across industries every day X.ai has never even come up.
That tells me he isn't informed on what Meta are doing (and that is - undercutting the commercial AI industry).
I'm hesitant to think it but there's a ton of hand waving and investor pumping happening here. Which is a shame, because a company with that market cap can do _a lot_ better.
I wasn't impressed by a single thing I saw today. I've seen the same autonomous car demo in a closed environment at my own uni 25+ years ago. I've seen better robots from Boston. I've also seen much better presentations than someone who looked like they are reading the text for the first time.
They have the capital, the mindshare, and the means and they're wasting it.
It's hardly new news that Elon is an awkward presenter and it isn't relevant to future performance of Tesla. You have to look at the pace of improvement of what Tesla is doing. Among humanoid companies that started in 2021 or later Tesla is the furthest along and improving much faster than the likes of Boston Dynamics. While they are still far behind, they have the time and the funding to catch up.
The Cybercab demo was an amusement park ride (and Elon explicitly billed it as such), however Tesla's FSD is released to the public and can be directly evaluated. While it is not yet near Waymo it is impressively good as of this month and the rate of improvement is very fast now. It just drove me across town for 20 minutes and I didn't have to touch the steering wheel a single time. It was incapable of that on that specific drive just two months ago. And I have the less powerful older variant of the Autopilot computer.
Cheap car for when interest rates hit would’ve been perfect too.
While a $25k EV seems to be what we all want and is almost guaranteed to be a massive hit, there is no evidence such a thing can be done yet without losing money on every sale.
Why isn’t any other car company doing it?
Rivian are losing money on every car sold at 4 times the price.
No other car company offers it, or promises it's coming next year, or ...
Similarly, who actually believes a $39,000 CyberTruck will EVER appear?
Crickets?
> who actually believes a $39,000 CyberTruck will EVER appear?
That was the estimated pricing announced before COVID and the associated inflation wasn't it?
Since then the released prices are significantly different.
Musk makes the primary choices at SpaceX, he decides the company strategy, he decides where the money goes, he decides what future projects to take on.
If its so clear what a 'pragmatic auto CEO' would do, why do other car companies not have those cheap cars?
And the data shows pretty clearly that 2 person cars, even cheap ones don't sell very well.
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.
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...
Tariffs aren’t going to keep the EV printer at bay. They only delay the inevitable.
https://electrek.co/2024/10/09/byd-to-sell-100000-evs-north-...
https://electrek.co/2024/08/16/byd-plots-another-ev-plant-wh...
https://electrek.co/2024/03/12/byd-triple-ev-market-share-eu...
https://www.rystadenergy.com/news/china-ev-driving-seat-us-a...
US EV demand is simply not at the point where this is economically rational (imho), yet. And so, you’re stuck with a legacy auto EV, a Tesla, or a BYD with 100% tariff markup for now. Even with the tariff, the BYD is still cheaper than a Tesla.
Policy in support of existing capital that is a heavy hitter politically can absolutely move faster than capital of new entrants.
And with both political parties explicitly being anti-chinese capital currently, it's not clear that a chinese factory would even be allowed to open domestically.
Not if Trump wins and I mean that without cynicism.
Also their cars are build like modern consumer electronics, welded/glued together at every opportunity.
Take a look at this video where a guy tries to pry apart a BYD battery pack:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPTefsqNGI4
I guess BYD's strategy of world domination involves a high degree of automation, so they can make their cars in countries without a large pool of free workers/high wages, that's why they're made like this.
And here in Europe, they're not even that much cheaper, before tariffs. A Seal costs almost as much as a Model 3.
But the problem with comparing "features" is that tesla fanboys/haters get to assign arbitrary values to the features the cars have. It would be so much easier to just meet your promised price point. In that regard my point still stands.
what makes you think the mazda 3 is the main competition?
This is probably the most untrue statement you've made all evening and you have made plenty.
>The 2024 model 3 interior is beautiful to the point that all the pointless plastic widgets present on other OEMs are kinda hilarious to look at.
The market seems to disagree given that the gasoline competition is still the overwhelming majority of new sales. There are many reason for that but if this interior was so good they should have swept the market after 7 years of this cost cutti I mean minimalism?
>what makes you think the mazda 3 is the main competition?
The mazda 3 is a non luxury sedan that competes in that segment. You can substitute the corolla the civic or any of those cars on the non luxury side. If you instead consider the Tesla to be a competitor to luxury cars (which is difficult to argue again because you cannot compare feature to feature) then you'd obviously go with the german/japanese luxury brands(as I also mentioned but you ignored).
Again going back to my point, Tesla has a history of never meeting their promised price point when they release their car. Not one model has ever hit their primosed price point. Not even the 12 year old Model S with its sub 50k price point. After 12 years of lies and false promises, there is no credibility that they will get to this magical 30k price point so it becomes moot when the market (which cannot afford their damn cars today gien their sales slump) will not be buying this contraption when it comes out years past its announced release window.
indeed interiors of most other brands have morphed into a large screen instead of the 2010 circus of buttons. Model 3/Y is very competitive with premium german/japanese brands like bmw/audi etc.
I don’t disagree their pricing goals are usually not really met unless given the discount of inflation.
fyi EVs are 25% of the global car market and growing.
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.
Filled it back up as much as I could with the included inflator kit, took it a big box store, they patched it up and was on my way.
Took maybe an hour total out of my day? No $ cost to me (under tire warranty)
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.
2 seater - smaller car
No wheels or stuff - saves money on the build and parts.
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.
For human drivers were a little overkill with no real advange besides parking in small spaces) but they would be probably more usefull.
But the fact that they are a little too complex remains, maybe making them semi standardized and modular would help
He can't even to FSD in a 2.4 mile TUNNEL after years
It seems certain they’ll correct that with their massive expansion coming
The upward opening doors will also be able to open anywhere, and for anyone, even with canes or bags/luggage.
The Zeekr vehicle they're testing now, and presumably the Hyundai they're starting to develop, will have self-closing doors.
[1] https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partn...
Tesla sold a bunch of cars to Hertz which turned out to be terrible for Hertz, but great for Tesla.
They very much care if they are selling their cars to an entity that is striving to make them irrelevant.
Think about it: If the world moves to a car sharing system where any type of car is available on demand and no one actually owns a car, do you think anyone will actually give one hoot about the badge on the front of the car? That puts manufacturers into the worst possible business model. Competing solely on price...ie a commodity.
So the manufacturers will either not want to work with them, give them whatever junk they can't sell and then tell them to go away...or they expect to get something big in return maybe like some technology sharing or a exclusive partnership.
Why else has Waymo partnered with the bottom of the barrel OEMs up to this point? Why not a Toyota or a Mercedes or hell even get the good cars from the OEMs they have partnered with?
They’re one of the few companies mass-manufacturing affordable EVs in the US.
Toyota doesn’t make many EVs and none in the US? Mercedes doesn’t make affordable cars in general?
Waymo is clearly focused on cost reduction and EVs. Hyundai is clearly focused on selling as many Ioniq 5s in the US they possibly can (and most to consumers directly!). I don’t know, seems pretty clear cut to me.
I also don’t see any future in which Waymo builds a metaplant?
What does one have to do with the other? The I-Pace was built in Austria. They dont seem to care about where it was built.
>Toyota doesn’t make many EVs and none in the US? Mercedes doesn’t make affordable cars in general?
The Chrysler Pacifica was a gas powered vehicle, The I-Pace had a starting MSRP of ~70k. They didn't seem to care about propulsion method or cost of vehicle either.
What they do have in common is that they were both poorly selling cars made by manufacturers that were desperate to sell.
>Waymo is clearly focused on cost reduction and EVs. Hyundai is clearly focused on selling as many Ioniq 5s in the US they possibly can (and most to consumers directly!). I don’t know, seems pretty clear cut to me.
Any evidence to prove this assertion?
Going back to my previous comment I mentioned that an OEM could want to partner with them if they got something meaningful out of the deal. Seems like thats what Hyundai is getting: Waymo Tech transfer/possibly an exclusivity agreement.
>I also don’t see any future in which Waymo builds a metaplant?
I never said or implied that they would.
Waymo optimizing for cost: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo...
Circling back to my point, this does not really explain why they are partnering with Waymo. Waymo is a rounding error in sales for Hyundai.
If Waymo was solely focused on cost, then they should have stuck with the pacifica which is cheaper or gotten something even cheaper like a Toyota. It makes no sense to go with Hyundai which is not even the cheapest for the features that it offers(compared to id 4, Niro EV, Hell even Kona EV). It is a smaller car compared to the Pacifica and the i-Pace and is far less equipped in terms of comfort and space.
We dont even know if they specifically wanted to go with an EV. Thats just something you just asserted without evidence.
It sure seems like their self-imposed constraint is EVs. Their goal beyond that is cost reduction. It seems like the actual key right now might be volume:
“The team at our new manufacturing facility is ready to allocate a significant number of vehicles for the Waymo One fleet as it continues to expand. Importantly, this is the first step in the partnership between the two companies and we are actively exploring additional opportunities for collaboration.”
https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partn...
but to your point, Hyundai may see this as an opportunity for “future collaboration” to get autonomous driving tech into their vehicles. But selling a “significant number of vehicles” is also very much in Hyundai’s interest.
If Hyundai was making the Niro or Kona EV in the US, then they may have been an option, but they’re not. They are not eligible for the tax credit. Toyota won’t make EVs here until 2025 or 2026.
The ID.4 would meet that criteria, though, and I wonder if Waymo considered going with Volkswagen.
Again given their strange choices in the past and their backpedaling on previous initiatives (having Chrysler produce special Pacificas and then going back to retrofitting them by hand themselves, going from commiting to purchasing 65k pacificas to NOT purchasing 65K Pacificas, getting Magna to go a custom design of the iPace for them to not having them do a custom design) I dont see this as a deal that Hyundai got into without major concessions.
>The ID.4 would meet that criteria, though, and I wonder if Waymo considered going with Volkswagen.
If my theory is correct I suspect they are not getting a warm reception from many manufacturers and they have to pick whatever they can get. I'd imagine their ideal company is Toyota. They have experience with those cars from the early days, they make cars that can help minimize downtime due to their reliability and costs can be reduced. There is a reason so many taxis are prisues. Why not apply that common sense cost savings to Waymo's fleet?
He said in the video it's cheaper through the economics of reuse, not through it being cheap itself
Maybe easier to clean, or wash out vomit, or even warn of forgotten items.
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.
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.
It's so Enron Musk can say it's still 2 years away.
People are starting to wake up to the (shitty) new reality that Big Tech created for us. The cynical nature is just the natural reaction to a serial grifter becoming the world's richest man.
I don't think anyone but the most naive actually believes anything in this PR piece will come to market.
But sure, your Tesla has a good infotainment system so that's cool.
Surely they should be using facebook, that's already proven to be great at helping with genocides
The simple fact is that Musk is a bad actor, an asshole with a huge ego, with a history of over promising and under delivering.
Is it so surprising to you that the supremely-unlikeable boy who cried wolf is being met with cynical skepticism?
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.
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.
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.
1. What is important for a vehicle optimized for large scale robotaxi fleet from manufacturing and operational perspectives.
2. What is important for me if I get an into autonomous vehicle.
sort of Kentucky Fried Movie style :)
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.
Just the amount of scary FSD footage from Cybertrucks alone that only got FSD a few weeks ago is massive.
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...
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.
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.
Maybe a bit of that but investors are more buying into Musk's past track record with Tesla and SpaceX which has been pretty good really.
betcha in 10 years time we'll learn about all of the ITAR violations and other shady behavior
Don't have to wait 10 years if you read the WikiLeaks above.
They had 2 dozen vehicles with no steering wheels taking attendees around the venue. The bar was staffed by Optimus robots. “Basically a website”?
To quote a participant[0]:
> After over 10 years of Full Self-Driving development, @Tesla is limited to a 20-30 acre geofenced 5mph ride on a preprogrammed, premapped and heavily rehearsed route with no traffic and no pedestrians.
Real funny seeing a bunch of web devs on HN talk shit about Tesla's engineers too lmao
How long did it take to get to that 90% ? AFAIK they first mentioned FSD ~2016(Self-driving itself even earlier).
As the last 20% of work are often 80% of the effort we can estimate that those remaining 10 % take ~ 40% of the time. They've been at it for ~8 years , which gives an expected release of ~ 2029.
We'll see what Waymo and other competition has until then.
Followed by Hofstadter's law: "It always takes longer than you expect, even when you take into account Hofstadter's Law." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hofstadter%27s_law
It's not "talk shit about Tesla's engineers", it's just a very hard problem to solve. It's easy to get it "most of the time" but extremely difficult to finish it. It's obvious it will take decades, not years to get us there. Whereas Musk insists he will solve it "this year", every year from 2014.
Elon knows Trump is a transactional person and as long as he supports Trump, he can get the necessary governmental treatment his companies need to survive (tax credits, Chinese EV tariffs, some sort of asinine Mars mission).
Western governments have discovered the Chinese plan to decimate western manufacturing by subsidizing it at over 10 X the rate required and seen in the west.
Vehicles matter because they are a means for war machine production.
- 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
https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiLeaks/comments/1fy10k1/comment/...
That's the reason he was able to get this rich with SpaceX and not stall sooner — most of the other space companies were (and in the west, still are) busy scratching backs rather than developing successful products.
ARPA gave us TCP/IP, but MS, Google, telcos, etc. gave us the modern internet and the tools to use it
What he has done is throw money at people who can. But now he has started micromanaging things because he believes he knows best.
He is a total buffoon.
Management is a real skill. Salesmanship is also a real skill. I may not approve of the showboating, but drumming up enthusiasm for a future that most consider to be fantasy, was a necessary (though not sufficient) part of building an electric car company in an era when most people thought hydrogen was the future and that "electric car" meant "a milk float" and, if they had memories of any real personal electric vehicle, those memories would have been of the failure of the Sinclair C5:
It would have made more sense to sell Fischer-Tropsch synthesized carbon fuel from purpose-grown crops, at a mere 3x the current production price of fossil carbon fuels, using the existing infrastructure for distribution into existing vehicles.
Thing is, the illusion is fading, his previously "inscrutable" politics are on his sleeve, and you can't just pretend he's not a complete liability for any company because of his irrational, and frankly childish, behaviour.
> Made electric cars commonplace sooner than I thought with the Model S
You mean financing and leading the largest EV maker in the world and fundamentally changing a 100 year old industry.
Car industry has been considered for a long time a incredibly hard place to get into for a startup. Most new companies happened when industrial powers rose and supported local companies.
There are decades of failed car companies. And at the same time as Tesla, there were other companies who promised EV revolutions and failed.
People point to the Model S, but the Model 3 was actually just as or more important. When the Model 3 showed profitability ever car company in the world massively increased their investment in EV, before that many companies were pretending and doing research. For years the story was EV can't be profitable below 50k and you can't build them at volume.
> financed SpaceX's doubtlessly awesome progress
If with 'finacned' you mean founded and lead the largest SpaceX company in the world that has revolutionized the whole space industry and is the biggest rocket company and the biggest sat company that can also fly people to space and build the biggest rocket in the history of humanity.
SpaceX Starlink literally fundamentally changed the largest war in Europe since WW2.
But I guess all he did is 'financed progress'. You got to be fucking kidding me.
> and you can't just pretend he's not a complete liability
Can you spell out in actual real terms what this means? SpaceX is going from success to success and has been for 25 years now. Tesla is still a large company doing pretty well. Both companies are much bigger and much more important and powerful then they were 4 years ago.
In the real world, customers don't care about 'childish' behavior. And claiming he is irrational when his companies mostly act rationally on net (no companies is perfect and never makes errors) also don't really work very well.
At the very least, if you are going to impartially assess his business accomplishments, you should completely disregard his political views when making that assessment. Otherwise you're giving him a dishonest business leadership assessment as a ploy to punish him for his politics.
..Okay?
Calling Elon Musk an ’idiot’ in a non-ironic way tells us you’re not being objective and contributing to a rational discussion.
> What he has done is throw money at people who can.
Funny then that countless other space and car startups had far more money and were far less successful. And many of those were far less micromanaged.
BlueOrigin for example literally got 100x as much money from its owner as SpaceX did.
> But now he has started micromanaging things because he believes he knows best.
This is just factually inaccurate, he has been micromanaging since the beginning. Literally everything ever said about him was that.
Look we get it, you don't like him as a person, but these statement just make you seem dumb and uninformed.
Most of the passionate (embittered? salty? flavourless?) critiques of Elon always sound like a confession: His critics can't explain why he is successful, why his companies are successful, nor why he is wealthy. When they attempt an explanation, it's less an explanation and more a dismissal: luck, other people, teams, theft, subsidies, corruption, "the system is broken!", a technoaccelerationist cabal secretly pulling the levers of power.
But, fundamentally, the question whose answer eludes the majority of humans especially Elon's critics is: Why am I not as wealthy and relevant as Elon yet I'm obviously smarter and more ethical than he is? (Their implicit answer is that "life is unfair and doesn't reward the best people.")
Because if any of his critics actually had a meaningful critique that corresponds to reality, they would simply build better products and companies, become billionaires themselves and exemplify rather than pontificate about a better mode of billionaire behaviour and grandeur of vision.
I wonder if the critics of Musk's "fans" realize that deflecting all criticism with "they're just Musk fans, bro" says more about their own anemic ability to imagine the legitimacy of another perspective, their utter lack of humility and complete poverty of intellectual honesty, than about the so-called fans they're flaccidly trying to discredit?
> I believe he can, to a great degree, restore free speech on social media even if it is messy and imperfect at times
I strongly disagree with this.
Even if I ignore the proxy of all the investors writing off their buy-out loans by 75%, even if I ignore that when people link me to random threads I can only see the specific one linked and not any reply because of an invisible paywall^w account-wall, even if I ignore that loading a random tweet now often takes 26 seconds or more (yes, I did just record my screen to get that number), even if I ignore that undesirable stories can be buried by an avalanche of alternative narratives and not just by censoring the truth…
There's still the problem of Musk intervening politically in ways that, although totally legal, are exactly the kind of thing he was complaining about before the takeover: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter_suspensions
I'd like someone, eg Musk, to define "free speech". Start with some of those "first principles" he likes so much.
Then, per "theory vs reality" cliché, I'd like someone, eg Musk, to explain or demonstrate or larp or interpretative dance what "free speech" looks like in practice. Maybe even point to an existing example.
For bonus credit:
- explain relationship between "free speech" and news feeds (algorithmic hate machines)
- explain operation of "free speech" multinationally
- explain how to balance "free speech" and moderation
- enumerate the tradeoffs of, downsides due to, and consequences of "free speech"
For goodness sake, ElonJet was banned and you can’t even say the word “cisgender” on the platform. How delusional are you?
X is like a textbook case of why total autocracy isn’t actually good management practice. Musk has become the Henry VIII of social media.
Before, people were being banned for using "him" instead of "her" to describe biological males who self-identified as women. People were secretly de-amplified for criticizing the government policy of lockdowns. It was censorship on a whole different magnitude.
Two wrongs don’t make a right. Either you’re a “free speech absolutist” or you’re just a lying charlatan. Elon is clearly the latter, the evidence is right in front of your eyes and you choose to make excuses.
ElonJet is posting publicly available information and isn’t banned on other platforms. Something coming with a warning is the same as restricting speech.
Placing a warning is generally not considered a restriction on free speech but rather a tool to inform or protect audiences.
In contrast, restricting free speech involves preventing someone from expressing their views or censoring content outright. Warnings are typically seen as a way to balance free expression with the responsibility to inform audiences.
You mean like suing people for saying true things, and encouraging the government to criminally investigate for people for saying the same? Because that is exactly what Musk has done in the past year.
I’m simply saying that it is false to claim that attaching a warning to something is restricting free speech.
Two good examples are the government warning on tobacco product or cancer-causing warnings in public spaces.
These are warnings and do not constitute restriction of free speech.
But if you want to get really technical then this isn't even about "free speech". A platform restricting speech has nothing to do with "free speech" as it is defined in the US constitution. That's all about governments creating laws that punish people for certain speech.
But hey, we're in a world where Elon spouts nonsense about being all about "free speech" so the world has lost that meaning anyway.
So this is just yet more nonsense.
People are only being banned for impersonation and live geotracking. In the previous Twitter, you were banned, shadow-banned, de-amplified, etc, if you expressed views that the political left disagreed with.
You want to justify and downplay the latter my presenting Musk as equally villainous. It's disingenuous mental gymnastics to advance your censorious and authoritarian agenda. Getting Twitter back to being censored is what motivates the incessant attacks on Musk.
> “The autonomous vehicles, we’re going to stop from operating on American roads, remember this,” Trump said.
One of the judges died in Obama's term, and senators explicitly declared they would not consider any nomination he made:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/history-stolen-suprem...
[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...
Both rich, coddled manbabies with oversized egos and right wing views, making wild promises they can't keep. Both have a rabid cult that will rush to their defense, no matter what. It's a natural fit.
Elon is CyberTrump, to use his own parlance.
Call it what you like, this is reality that very few are happy about. Imagine if this guy would be more mentally and emotionally stable, how further he could actually get. And the respect he could actually achieve. Its a sad view, really.
The thing is, people's failures define them and their legacy 100x more than their successes. Nobody cares how loyal friend say Epstein was (ie to Trump), do we.
Not many people could have created SpaceX. Even fewer could have made Tesla work. I don't know that anyone else could have done both.
That's not a "best case demo": it's a real system, working in real world environments, and even if they're "constrained" (and go ahead and look at the Phoenix service area and tell me how constrained it really is), they are functioning, now, today. There's one driving by my house as I type this. It's not mowing down children. It's not causing fatal accidents. Its incident rate is dramatically lower than human drivers, and its severe injury rate is lower still. We're a decade into the hype cycle because of how hard a problem this is to solve, and we're finally catching up with the right confluence of technologies at the right time (mostly around machine learning, machine vision, sensor fusion, LIDAR, reinforcement training, and computer power) to make it actually work.
I can understand if you live outside a Waymo market that you might still believe this is still fairy tale "won't work" stuff, but when you live in a market where you see dozens of them every single day, doing their thing _unremarkably_, it's... well, it feels quite a bit like the future.
Note that I'm speaking explicitly of Waymo here. Tesla FSD still terrifies me, vision-only seems like a horrible oversight, pun intended, and while it's meant to be non-constrained, it still has a very, very far way to go to close the gap with Waymo.
Your Waymo will stop when you dont want to.
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
Electronic trading platform
Enron Online, launched in 1999, allowed buyers and sellers to trade energy-related commodities like natural gas, electricity, and broadband capacity.
Gas Bank
Enron's Gas Bank stabilized prices, making natural gas more attractive to investors and helping lenders finance new gas generators.
Financial markets
Enron created financial markets for assets that were never previously traded on exchanges, such as natural gas, coal, and internet connections.
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.
[1] https://electrek.co/2024/10/08/why-rivian-rivn-cutting-ev-pr... [2] https://static.nhtsa.gov/odi/rcl/2024/RCLRPT-24V718-2751.PDF [3] https://www.forbes.com/sites/brookecrothers/2024/09/22/cyber... [4] https://press.spglobal.com/2024-07-24-S-P-Global-Mobility-Ju...
Tesla sold more Cybertrucks than almost all other EV trucks combined
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/18/24247985/tesla-cybertruck...
The Cybertruck was the best-selling $100,000+ vehicle in July
https://qz.com/tesla-cybertruck-is-selling-better-than-any-o...
"The Cybertruck was the best-selling $100,000+ vehicle in July" - there you go
Even if it is profitable, it still needs to be weighed against the opportunity costs of using those resources to pursue a different strategy. Would the same resources in terms of designer, engineers, hours, and capital outlay on factory production lines have been more profitable if they were applied to a different vehicle?
It's very possible. The Cybertruck is always going to be a limited demand vehicle. It may do well versus other EV pickups in the US market, but Tesla is a global company and the Cybertruck is not a global vehicle.
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.
Seriously? Is there proof of this?
The body panels are pretty thick, and they're made of an austenitic nitrogen steel -- a modified form of 316LN -- which should perform nearly as well as any "armor grade" steel alloy. (Against steel fragments, it likely performs poorly, but against lead handgun rounds it is likely even superior to the average high-hardness armor steel.) Just on the face of it, I'd expect the Cybertruck's body to stop any threat up to .44 Magnum.
e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQ5EyKMqGGI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOteg0J5teg
Do you have links to those videos where it fails?
Besides, 9mm and .22lr are very different things. .22lr is one of the very weakest ballistic threats. 9mm has much more mass, usually more velocity, and a much higher (~3x higher) average KE load.
I do know the difference between the calibers though, having shot a few different weapons in different calibers (as a hobby & in the military)
People sit in a Cybertruck. With their head visible through the glass. Non bullet-proof glass.
"""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.
I can't imagine why would a company want to sell a product at a profit.
Today that price is $79k. ($99k if you want the first-edition Foundation series which has been the only one delivered to customers so far).
CPI inflation calculation puts $49k in 2019 as $60k today. So inflation means the price should have gone up ~$10k, but it has actually gone up ~$30k.
Also in 2019, $69k was supposed to get you 500 miles of range. The highest range configuration of the truck they shipped is 340 miles, with potentially up to 470 miles if you fill half the bed with an additional $16k battery pack that is only installable/removable by a Tesla Service Center. Nobody has seen this pack demonstrated yet or how it will handle things like Supercharging. Having half the bed taken up to achieve the max range was definitely not part of the 2019 sales pitch.
Tesla Model Y:
$39,000 in 2019, the same year the Cybertruck was announced - https://www.reuters.com/article/technology/tesla-unveils-mod...
$31,490 today - https://www.tesla.com/compare
So, a price cut then. From the same company, on the same time horizon.
--
Even on longer timelines, inflation isn't a get-out-of-jail-free card.
Tesla Model S:
$57,400 in 2009 - https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-motors-sets-new-pri...
$68,490 today - https://www.tesla.com/compare
Thats a 19.32% price increase in one of Tesla's other cars over 15 years, compared to a 52.857% price increase of the Cybetruck in the 5 years between it being announced and today.
The cybertruck was promissed as a cheaper way to make cars, its more expensive tha n the others that suffered the same inflationary forces. Save that its a new product, if they trusted that scale was going to cheap it down more than they current methods they would take a loss at the start to make a larger profit later.
[1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2019?amount=1
Should the price have remained the same? Or was 2022 not the highest year for USD inflation in 40 years (see: your own source.)
Is a company only allowed to increase their prices at a rate pegged to monetary inflation?
You say they have the right to brake promises, which is true.
So we agree they made a promise, broke it and raised the price beyond inflation, likely due to screwing up the production cost targets. All of that after they took reservations.
So we agree but you don't like that we're judging them badly for it?
If they want to avoid a reputation for dishonesty, yes.
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.
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.
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.
Having said that, I agree fully that taking the full self driving money in the order of thousands of dollars and not delivering is highly problematic.
They weren't honest. End of. No qualification or equivocation.
> At least as long as the lies come from a certain optimism and ambition
It amazes me the amount of mental gymnastics people will perform to defend fraud.
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.
And I thought people preordering games for 70€ were taking unnecessary risks. You guys took it to the whole new level.
My dad, who is in his seventies and an early-adopter type, was really into Musk and FSD. I thought it would improve their quality of life to have access to this car, and I had recently found myself with the means to give back to my parents.
For high density you have the robovan.
It's strictly more expensive if you're limited to say, the typical NHTSA autonomous vehicle production limit of 2,500 vehicles per year.
Also using old and already amortized tech is another option. Dacia mastered this art in the recent past.
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.
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
I can't imagine that working well for latency-sensitive applications... like self-driving cars.
your car is doing nothing for most of it’s lifetime. renting it out via turo or as a taxi makes sense.
A lifetime that will be massively shortened by it running as a taxi 20 hours a day.
Question is: are there enough high latency distributed workloads to sell?
This is an unreliable spot instance at best, with none of the features one can normally attach to an instance (like storage, managed databases, ...). How fast can its Internet be? Will owners need to pay for Starlink too? (What about when parked indoors?)
It would have to be cheaper than all regular hosting options by a long shot for anyone to consider this. A very niche, low-paying market, in other words.
The point is it's just a way to use free compute that's sitting around, if you want to sign up to use it you'd obviously make sure it was in wifi range
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.
https://www.reuters.com/technology/teslas-musk-unveil-robota...
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.
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".
Yeah, not sure how this is supposed to be a positive reply.
That’s untrue. He said Model 3s and Ys will be starting taxiing next year in California and Texas.
he says a lot of things. Where's my Roadster?
He was talking about compressed air thrusters to increase acceleration. It's a cool idea. Who knows, they might implement it.
Edit: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1005577738332172289 SpaceX option package for new Tesla Roadster will include ~10 small rocket thrusters arranged seamlessly around car. These rocket engines dramatically improve acceleration, top speed, braking & cornering. Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly …
"Not saying the next gen Roadster special upgrade package will definitely enable it to fly short hops, but maybe …"
I didn't want to spend the time to find the video where the flying bit was said more explicitly.
He said, from your own link, "Maybe they will even allow a Tesla to fly …".
The car doesn't exist in the first place, doesn't exist with thrusters, and doesn't exist with thrusters that make it capable of flying, and so I think it's a little early to call victory on flying Tesla roadsters.
Discussing the thrusters in 2018: "Using the config you describe, plus an electric pump to replenish air in COPV, when car power draw drops below max pack power output, makes sense. But we are going to go a lot further."
And more recently, it was very explicit: https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1801980372823187707 "The new Tesla Roadster can fly"
https://electrek.co/2024/06/15/elon-musk-tesla-always-coming...
On a tangent, I find it hilarious that all the Musk related streams are always hijacked by crypto scammers. It's some circumstantial evidence that the circles in a venn diagram of the types of people falling for crypto scams and the people falling for Musk snake oil has a lot of overlap.
If this works, wouldn't just Tesla operate as a taxi company?
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
> 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).
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
Why shouldn’t one think that? Wouldn’t this be a good solution?
When do we start? Call our local representative?
Trams are also much cheaper than metro or train lines and serve metropolitan areas pretty well but they anger house owners and nobody wants to take public transit, thats poor people stuff.
It will take a lot of disillusion from cars before any decent alternative gets traction. Took long in Europe and is still ongoing for most of it, it will take even longer in the US.
People might be stubborn enough to only turn away from cars when the big traffic jams are all made of self driving electric cars with one or two people inside going all to the same places.
In some sense US cities are actually well prepared, they have tons of space on their gigantic roads to have priority bus lanes, bike lanes and many other things like that. Road safety and transportation could be improved by a gigantic amount with simply changes in road design and investment patterns.
How to achieve that politically, well, I don't know.
https://planning.lacity.gov/odocument/d2143d14-572d-4dc2-911...
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.
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.
Please stop trolling, Elon.
Tesla will apparently be selling it for $30k before the end of 2016.
I’m super curious about the induction charging rate! The robot they showed cleaning it was also pretty interesting.
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
interesting. this wasn’t my experience. i did SF <> Lake Tahoe (which can stretch to 5hrs) a number of times when i was in SF and didn’t encounter any major issues. small issues sure, but it was definitely better than my driving.
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...
Back in 2016, Tesla CEO Elon Musk stunned the automotive world by announcing that, henceforth, all of his company’s vehicles would be shipped with the hardware necessary for “full self-driving.” You will be able to nap in your car while it drives you to work, he promised. It will even be able to drive cross-country with no one inside the vehicle.
It cannot be truly an autonomous robotaxi without VERY HIGH reliability. One intervention per hour is one too many.
I think FSD 12.5 is way beyond that --- I drove over 20 miles yesterday with zero interventions. Also, having ridden Waymo in San Francisco many times, I find that the FSD is actually slightly smoother and handles stuff like going around obstacles and blockages more naturally, although, as you are no doubt aware, there are still some rough edges in rare cases.
Once Tesla has reasonable remote human assistance infrastructure in place to help out with the extreme edge cases, and the software improves at the current rate, I don't see why they couldn't roll out a robotaxi service.
[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2023/11/03/technology/cruise-general...
Have to ever tried to get in touch with a human at Tesla short of driving to a service center. Almost impossible. It would be easier for me to get the president on the line.
Having just purchased a new Tesla, I tried for 2 weeks to communicate with Tesla prior to purchase. The closest I even got was a phone tree, which after 7 levels sent me to a voicemail box that was full. Am I’m talking every day for 14 days. Had my wife not wanted it so bad I would have cancelled my deposit on the spot.
I requested service on it last week. The earliest service date is Nov. 12. I have yet to hear from an advisor on the app.
Tesla does a lot of things right, but supporting their products with actual humans is not one of them..
As a Waymo user I can promise you that there is, and they have it.
That said, I don't think they want to talk with you pre-purchase outside of one of their showrooms, and the showroom isn't even a large part of their sales model. I imagine that if you're trying to go against the flow, it'd be hard.
And they got (rightfully) pulled off the roads.
> there are still some rough edges in rare cases
Waymo has substantially lower interventions.
And, they have a huge fleet of humans running around the city attending to the cars. A few weeks ago I saw one stuck - whoever had last used it, managed to trap a seatbelt in the door. It was sitting for about 5 minutes when a guy pulled up and fixed it and sent it on its way. I'm not saying Tesla can't build that, but they're going to have to.
What if it’s one an hour now, one a day next year and one a week in 2026?
> What if it’s one an hour now, one a day next year and one a week in 2026?
That is a MASSIVE "what if".
What's if it's 2036? What if it's 2056? Hell, if it's 2030 then Tesla is in _serious_ trouble.
It was also announced today that unsupervised FSD is coming to Texas and California in 2025.
https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil...
The disengagement events on recent videos of FSD are still the likes of "oops it almost turned into oncoming traffic" or "oops it almost ran into a pole", that's the sort of thing you have to catch before it happens, not after.
I think it’s a mistake to conflate the actual capabilities of the system with the user instructions for how the system is being used. SAE levels are primarily about the latter and about who takes liability for the operation of the vehicle. Conflating the two punishes car manufacturers who are cautious about the current state of their self-driving system.
This is fundamentally different from FSD, where the human is always responsible for driving and maintaining the safety invariants.
That's a cute euphemism for remote operators.
https://users.ece.cmu.edu/~koopman/j3016/J3016_table.jpg
To give an analogy, let's say you use a credit card. A machine processes the payment most of the time, but occasionally something looks suspicious, so it denies the payment and sends a message to a human (you) asking whether the next payment should be allowed. Do you consider yourself to be a "driver" in this system?
If so, imagine a system where all payments flash by onscreen for a human that's tasked with stopping erroneous approvals in realtime. Are humans doing the essentially the same job in this system such that both roles are "drivers"?
You do realize Waymo will only operate in geofenced areas in select cities that have been premapped down to the millimeter?
Waymo is not even remotely close, nor attempting to solve the same problem. This is coming from someone who lives in SF and takes Waymo regularly. Waymo is a cool tech demo and that's about it; FSD is a real tool that people everywhere can actually use to take them where they want to go.
I always encounter a lot of Teslas while walking my dog and it's clear they're no safer than many people who shouldn't be driving regular cars.
Driver probably felt safe and that everything was in order. The cyclists not so much.
Point is it's a matter of perspective. How many around you have to accommodate?
On the other hand, FSD won’t try to pass me on winding mountain roads with a double yellow line.
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.
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2024/10/10/24267132/tesla-robotaxi-...
A “recall” that does actually involve bringing the car in for service, a.k.a. recalling the car, is not accurately described as a “recall”. Words mean something.
The NHTSA is being idiotic (unsurprisingly) in not distinguishing between a software update and a recall, because legacy auto doesn’t have the software chops to successfully replicate Tesla’s approach.
News agencies that lean into that idiocy in a slanted attempt to denigrate Tesla are only denigrating themselves. It is not good coverage, and it is willfully misleading their own readers.
Call it a mandatory update if you want. But nothing was recalled, so insisting on calling it a recall is like insisting on calling cars “horseless carriages”.
The NHTSA define a recall as something that manufacturers are required to issue when the NHTSA determines the minimum safety requirements aren't being met, but they only define that the manufacturer must fix it (or replace or something), not that the fix must be a physical change performed at a garage.
Are the press wrong for using the term "recall" when the car wasn't taken into a garage? I don't think so because it's the industry term for this, although I accept that they could perhaps be clearer by saying that the recall was addressed with a software fix.
Funny you'd say that while arguing the opposite.
The word "recall" with respect to cars has a legal meaning with specific before and after procedures. It's not any random update.
e.g. "Toyota is recalling over 42,000 Corolla Cross Hybrid SUVs from the 2023 and 2024 model years to fix a software error that may cause drivers to lose power braking assistance if they brake while turning a corner."
I don't know that it makes sense for the distinction between "recall" and "not a recall" to be whether the software update can happen OTA or not.
If a vehicle has a safety issue that needs to be fixed, regardless of hardware or software, it doesn't matter if you call it a recall or not. At the end of the day, it's still a fuckup on the part of the manufacturer that put their customers/drivers at risk, and the manufacturer needed to fix it.
Call it a "recall", call it a "patch", call it "The Sunshine and Rainbows Happy Time Update #12" - at the end of the day, Tesla made an oopsie that they need to resolve, and depending on what it is, could risk the lives of customers. The term you choose to describe it won't change the fact that they're fixing their mistake.
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.
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?)
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
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 could be a literal textbook example of "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." I literally laugh out loud when i see a Model X open its doors.
[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/)
Very skeptical of this whole presentation, even if Elon and Tesla are overpromising on timelines.
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.
- 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.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w2aNJCsfrP0 - 10 years ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mITK3qaaHQ8 - 4 years ago
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.
But really? A two-seater?
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 :-)
> 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.
That essay is a good start. Agree with all.
However, it uses the frames (starting assumptions) of neoliberalism (markets solve everything) and public choice theory (solve politics with just so stories). Versus say humanism, dignity, sovereignty, and right to self-determination.
What about fair and impartial adjudication of disputes, determining tort, and dispensing justice? These Big Bad vs Consumer framings don't (adequately) say what to do about inherit power imbalances.
Who are the referees?
When our government's "monopoly over violence" is usurped by corporations, acting as police-judge-jury-executioner, disenfranchising actual people, we're all just wage slaves, paid with company scrip, struggling to get our basic needs met.
Road to Serfdom indeed.
Bought and paid for. Uber broke and ignored so many laws it was obvious the referees were on their side all along.
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.
We need to invest in walkable, bikeable cities and public transportation, not help these companies that lobby for making less liveable cities and towns. That was my main point for that angle. I know Americans hate each other and public transportation, but everything has a trade off and Robotaxis won't make our lives better.
> 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.
How often to riders get banned from taxi companies? The Robotaxi looks like a service, ride hailing. Are these vehicles actually sold?
Getting rid of drivers means less space for parking is needed. It also means better utilization of the vehicles. So, less cars on the road. And they'll be electric so a lot more quiet and less smelly. And they also have a bus form factor; perfect for public transport.
Elon Musk actually showed some visuals of cities being greened this way. Complete with a cheesy joke about taking the 'ing' out of parking.
So, you are outraged because Elon Musk is doing exactly as you demand but just not in a way that you like?
This new tool should be at best a niche one, but convenience, as usual, kills.
Elon’s green city is a marketing pitch, nothing more or less. A marketing pitch is far from being "exactly" a "walkable, bikeable city with public transportation".
On the public transportation side, GP skepticism come from that tech giga corps are know for their kafkaïan (at best) or hostile (at worst) customer services.
Surely nobody lobbied for that instead of a proper subway system or bus rapid transit? (I'm being sarcastic here)
IDK it just seems weird to me how completely unimaginative the Cybertaxi is. Its ostensibly a revolution in transportation but everything about the form and function is essentially identical to an unpainted 2011 Honda CR-Z. It makes zero effort to imagine how a driverless car could be different or better in fundamental ways, which makes the Cybertaxi just another small incremental step in the decade long procession of broken self driving promises from Elon.
I'm not saying people won't want to own their own robocar, I'm saying this robocar is not particularly suited to ownership or to dedicated ridehailing or to really anything other than looking like a car Mr. Bladerunner from the hit movie Bladerunner would drive.
https://jalopnik.com/elon-musk-tesla-self-driving-cars-anniv... [1]
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.
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.
Yes
- every American
Oh, that's right, it was a stunt to boost the stock price, not a real product you intended to sell. Just like this.
Even if Elon cured cancer, there would be haters for his politics and business approach.
O wait I just described the entire SF and tech industry
This isn't just a HN commenter who got carried away with starry eyed hype in a comment. This is a corporate salesman, and he's trying to sell a product that simply cannot do what he claims it can do.
It's not human error at this point, he's just knowingly selling magic beans.
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)
I’m totally against him, and I’m fully behind Boeing
Im speaking on behalf of average HN user and tech people
