Basically they took the steering wheel off the Model 2, came up with a demo, and had a bunch of dudes wearing Oculus headsets remote controlling a bunch of robots.
Scoble can be heard in the video asking one of the robots, “Hey Optimus, how much of you is AI?”
The robot, or whoever was controlling it, seemed to scramble for an answer, saying “I can’t disclose just how much. That’s something you’ll have to find out later.”
“But some or none?” Scoble asked with a laugh.
“I would say, it might be some. I’m not going to confirm, but it might be some,” the robot responded.
The problem is that the fundamentals aren’t amazing. Tesla is getting its butt kicked in China (world’s biggest auto market) and tariffs are the only thing stopping BYD and Nio from taking a huge bite out of Tesla. Tesla has essentially saturated the “has a place to charge and $35k+ for a new car” market in the US. The sub $20k market is up for grabs. And US protectionism won’t save Tesla in other countries’ markets.
Clean, effective, prompt, affordable, quickly constructed mass transit however, does seem to work.
I'm not anti-robo-taxi or pro-mass-transit. Instead, if the value is fewer cars and less carparks, mass transit with the aforementioned properties has been shown to work.
Sadly the United States has been unable to hit those notes with their projects (LA's metro, for example, is still constructing approximately the Prop A system approved by voters, in 1980, 44 years ago: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6f/Lo...) so in that specific case, it's murkier.
Small vehicles will never solve traffic, and will never be cheap, no matter the level of automation they implement. Labour cost is just one part of the equation.
Where do those cars go to charge outside peak demand?
Then there is the whole: any tesla can be a part of the fleet, then only extra paid FSD teslas can be part of the fleet, and now no-wheel nobody-wants-this-mobiles bait and switch. Investors ought to be upset. This was a shot from the hip instead of proper innovation.
Maybe they should put together a “demo” of faster-than-light travel next. This was closer to ideation.
I'm a huge fan of SpaceX but Tesla is another matter.
> I'm a huge fan of SpaceX but Tesla is another matter.
The competency and skill of Gwynne Shotwell cannot be overstated.
I don't want to be that cynical. I want to drive a car that is all torque and no fumes.
I mean, the "Cybercabs", THEY DON'T HAVE CONTROLS. Where is that going to be legal in 2-3 years?
Elon will be appointed to a new cabinet position - the Fabricator General and will be given license to lobotomize people into servitors - AKA Optimus. This will also allow for true FS(ervitor)D.
I’m joking of course. I think.
Waymo can give direct control of their vehicles to police or others when appropriate. This mitigates the cost of potential edge cases.
Their list of cities include Zürich Switzerland. If you launch a rocket of that size on Zürich lake you will blow out every window in the city...
starting at 16:37:
CA: So you really believe this is going to be deployed at some point in our amazing future. When?
GS: Within a decade, for sure.
CA: And this is Gwynne time or Elon time?
GS: That's Gwynne time. I'm sure Elon will want us to go faster.
edit: sorry I just checked, it does appear to have see through windows at this timestamp https://youtu.be/-JOas3fcXU0?t=896
It's absolutely not a tram; it's a large passenger van (not big enough to be called a bus). Trams run on rails.
And it is.
Except that the result is that instead of switching to bikes or PT, people still use their cars but drive around in circles much longer which cannot be in anybody's interest. Or, if folks are sick of being nannied, they just drive to another big city that's not too far away, and do their shopping there.
We have purposefully made cars a central part of cities and the populations of those cities have suffered a decrease in their quality of life as a direct effect. Between pollution, constant noise, collisions and deaths and congestion, and the taking up of vast amounts of space for something that sits around most of the time doing nothing, cities have become far less livable as cars have been prioritized over people.
To call it 'nannying' to backpedal a bit from this design decision is missing the fact that cities are not a natural environment -- they are purposefully designed from the sub-surface pipes and tunnels to the spires on top of the buildings. Nothing evolved naturally -- someone, sometime, decided to design cars into them, and they can be designed out.
I just want to point out that this is not necessarily *my* perspective, but I know a lot of people who have already become used to classify all kinds of regulations that way. You may try telling them that it's the wrong perspective, but it won't change anything, I'm afraid.
I agree with the historical perspective you sketch (more appropriate for European cities than American ones, though), but disagree with most of your conclusions.
Is there data on that? Have they made the necessary concurrent improvements to public transport? Generally, fewer private cars allows public transport (or, at least, buses and trams) to operate way more effectively.
Like, the city I live in (Dublin) has been doing this for about a decade, and the bus system in particular has gone from ‘notoriously, comically, embarrassingly bad’ to merely quite bad. It isn’t a great example, and is very much a work in progress (the latest absurdity: a bus I use from time to time now runs way faster due to private car restriction on the quays, but they haven’t gotten around to changing the schedule yet, so it sometimes just _stops_ for 10 minutes, with a helpful robot announcement indicating that it’s to keep on schedule…), but it has, to some extent, worked; people do use public transport way more, and it’s generally easier to get around the city.
Spiting car drivers isn't the intent, it's a side effect of making cities more bearable for all other inhabitants.
Lower speed limits have benefits in their own right, they significantly reduce noise pollution which makes the outside atmosphere bearable or even pleasant, and it makes roads much safer for cyclists and pedestrians, especially children and people with disabilities.
Less parking for cars means more space for greenery, space for businesses to set up patios, space for bike lanes and wider walkways.
Do you have sources for that claim? Most cities in western Europe have been doing that, and it seems to pay off. The whole of the Netherlands or Copenhaguen are very good examples of policies like these having worked to the perfection, but it takes time for people to change their habits.
And it is certainly not a secret that inner cities in Europe - apart from maybe the big tourist magnets - have been dying for a number of years. There's already a big threat for stores in cities through internet shopping, and I've heard of concepts to counter that by designing cities in a way that shopping trips will become more wholesome "experiences". That is, if you go for a shopping day, it's not just from one store to the next, but there's an offer of exhibitions, shows, music etc. mixed with excellent dining opportunities etc., all interwoven with the commercial stores.
But, if your "experience" begins with a drive designed to make it as hard as possible to get to where you want, I'm not sure it's going to work. You can try to change people's attitudes, but all things equal, for many people I would bet the ideal shopping experience would be the comfort of their own car to get to and from the shops, together with having the chance to drop off your bags every now and then in your own trunk.
The different is that this shift is not meant to improve a shopping street, is meant to improve a residential one that would have only parking and narrow sidewalks. If you walk in Amsterdam outside of the inner canal rings, you'll see people using the streets as extensions of their living spaces, little gardens, benches for when the sun is hitting just right, talking to friends and making birthday parties. The idea is to change the streets to be pleasant to be in, not just pass through.
With remote work and online shopping cities have to change from the place where we work, buy stuff and get the hell out to places we actually want to live in.
Not every potential customer of inner city shops actually lives in the city. As a matter of fact, where I currently live, none of the smaller suburbs and town in the vicinity of my next bigger cities do not have themselves alternatives for many of the commercial offers of the city. In other words, many many (potential) customers need to first travel to the city. If you ask these people, many will tell you that there is currently no viable alternative to the car for such a trip. And almost everyone would appreciate if their trip would be less painful, not more painful.
Of course you can argue that city planners should first and foremost care for the people that live in the city, not the ones that live around it.
Though, also, even then, I’m not sure that you’re correct. The two main shopping streets in the city I live in are pedestrianised, and have been since the 1980s or so. There are a few (very expensive) multistory car parks dotted around the city, but, well, in practice you see plenty of people on trains and buses and trams with shopping bags from the shops on these streets. I think this is pretty much the case in any largeish city I’ve ever been in, actually; there’s generally not much parking on or near the major shopping streets.
But if the hope is "sure, there's going to be a transitional phase, but people will get used to PT/bikes/walking and inner city shopping will flourish again", I'm afraid that there's a very good chance that this is going to backfire big time.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/13/business/china-driverless...
I mean in London where I am we've had public transport and walkable cities for a century and things still have issues.
Not a separate car model.
Like are there people who actually believe that if they buy a Model 3 this year, that it will be able to run completely autonomously next year?
Do people really believe that Musk, who said in 2016 that Summon would work across country by 2018, is being at all on the level with any of this? If so, why?
