Tesla's Robotaxi event still not started after 40 minutes [video]
youtube.comWaymo already beat Tesla to Full Self Driving. I use Waymo frequently in SF and it's great. It makes this Tesla robotaxi with an undefined release date not very interesting.
Based on some of the viral videos out of SF lately, I think we need Delamain from Cyberpunk 2077 more than Waymo at this point. I've been in a Waymo with other drivers trying to test its intelligence (trying to cut into the Waymo's lane with the signal on while right in the blind spot) and it's not fun.
They're currently discussing how difficult it was to design a credit card reader for the Robotaxi that would reliably fail whenever it detects cash in the passenger's wallet.
Is this a joke? Do they prefer the taxis get paid in cash?
Every Taxi driver in NYC has a credit card machine that is broken unless you show them you don't have cash.
I was in NYC last month and paid fine with card, and the driver clearly saw cash in my wallet?
I dont know how true it is now but I can tell you once upon a time they preferred cash and yes their machine frequently seemed to be broken or had some issue. My experiences were a long time ago before the rise of Uber and Lyft
I take cabs in NYC often and that never happens.
This is complete and utter bullshit. Whatever your personal experience, I have ridden taxis hundreds of times over the course of 2 decades and not once has a cab demanded I pay cash. I exclusively used credit cards and have been since roughly 2009
It's a running joke but also still true in many cities in America. Cab drivers really do prefer to be paid in cash.
The event has started. They have some Teslas driving slowly around the Warner Brothers lot with no people in them. Musk is talking.
The closed captions are running ahead of the talking.
He talks about the tyranny of parking lots, but this is a solved problem! The whole presentation is an exercise in steadfastly not talking about public transportation.
He actually did address public transportation, saying that fully autonomous, on demand taxis will be the equivalent of individualized public transportation. He's right. Why would I want to stand outside in the elements for 20 minutes waiting for a bus when I could hail an autonomous taxi and be on my way?
"Just ride a bus" is the "640K ought to be enough for anybody" of the current cycle.
A bus can transport 100+ people while taking up about the same road space as two or maybe three of these. Those could transport 4 or maybe 6 people. I don't think more needs to be said about the chances of this replacing actual public transport.
True, but the big problem is that that model can only transport people from A to B, where A and B are bus stops/stations. And only at certain times.
In reality we almost always want to go from X to Y. So we end up going from X to A to B to Y.
In the end that's so inefficient that most of us buy a car. Robotaxis could change that equation drastically.
There are two different problems.
One problem is regular trips, such as commuting and shopping, where most people need to regularly go from residential areas to office areas or to commercial areas. Here, the vast majority of people, all over the world and with few local exceptions, use public transport (trains, subways, trams, buses, etc). The fact that you have to walk a little bit to the station and from the station to your destination is not a major concern, compared to the cost and the time difference VS filled city streets. If all the people commuting, say, by subway in Tokyo were each in a robotaxi, you'd need most of the day just to finish the morning commute.
Then there are more independent trips, where your schedule is not aligned with public transport, or where there is some urgency, or where your destination is very far away from a station, or where you have very heavy bags etc. For those cases, a car is of course the ideal, so lots of people, even many of those that commute daily by public transport in cities, also own a car.
The bus can only transport 100 people because it forces everyone to take the same route, regardless of where they are actually headed. This is not merely inconvenient, but a delusional take on the future of mobility.
You cannot eat on the bus. You cannot bring your grocery bags on the bus. You cannot bring your pets on the bus.
Also, there’s the fact you have to sit with (and smell) 99 other people. Some of them you may find are mentally unstable shitbags that will possibly assault you.
No thanks.
Sure, there are inconveniences, but it is literally impossible to run a huge city any other way (I mean, other than fixed route large vehicle cramped public transport, be it busses, trains, trams etc). It is geometrically impossible to fit 20 million people on roads in cars during 1-3 hours when businesses start and end. Drivers make no difference, the problem is the form factor. This is not a technological problem, not even a physical problem, it's a problem of basic math.
Thats technically where the tunnels come in. I'm not saying its a solved problem im just saying that this real problem has obviously been considered.
Yes, and the only solution has been found 200+ years ago: trains and other similar forms of public transport.
In the US and other places with low density, people just don't want public transit if they can avoid it. Its just not going to happen. Are you European? I ask because I constantly have europeans come on here and other places pushing public transit as the solution but people in the states just don't want it and they can't seem to internalize this.
New York subways are pretty full too, so this is not a European vs US thing. It's just a matter of population density.
I made this same argument at CCC last year because a presenter was arguing for mandating buses in every country instead of EVs. When I pushed back they trotted out the example of NYC: a single exception whose own subway system is slowly collapsing due to legacy and graft.
Keep talking like this and you'll leave yourself baffled as to why society ends up disagreeing with you. If you look at the voting patterns of people not only in the Americas but also increasingly in Europe, they are already pushing back.
On the contrary, cities everywhere are moving away from cars and towards more pedestrian infra and public transport. Plus, even in the USA, the biggest reason cities like LA or Houston don't have good public transport is that they are gigantic sprawls. More dense cities do have significant public transit options that people use.
You do realize that tunnels under cities are literally the most expensive type of infrastructure possible to build?
Im not advocating for or against it. Only pointing out that this is the solution they are proposing.
Even flying cars are a better (ok, less worse) solution than the stupid tunnels. But Musk is not selling those yet
You can do all those things on a bus?
Does he not understand the point of public transportation or is he hoping the people he says this to don't understand the point of public transportation?
That is not the experience in a country with a well functioning public transportation.
Come to Switzerland and let SBB blow your mind
They just announced a bus.
After seeing the Chinese company Unitree tease this https://youtu.be/GzX1qOIO1bE, Optimus seems very unarticulated and clunky. And Unitree claim it would be a bit more than half the projected cost of the Tesla offering. Time will tell. My bets right now are not on Elon leading a Tesla supremacy in anything in the future—and that is unfortunate. I wish an American company could pull it off.
That looks like CGI. Pretty good one, but CGI.
it's not cgi... you can already buy their dog ones and they bring these around to shows.
Anything is possible. But I doubt it's CGI.
I can only imagine the kind of last-minute drama the Robotaxi team is going through, behind the scenes.
Hopefully they will pull through and get started soon enough.
Will their robotaxi team even have jobs tomorrow? The demo is over, they delivered their project.
My simple mind can't understand what's the advantage of having a two seater vs four or five seater. Any insights?
They can use “we’re working on the chassis” as an excuse for why it’s not ready yet.
With autonomy you do not need a one-fit-all vehicle that support many different use cases.
Instead you have access to a fleet of specialized vehicles that are optimized for different tasks. Eg many trips might still be with only one or two passangers, and then a small two seater makes a lot of sense. If you need larger capacity you simple order a ride from a suitable vehicle class.
That vast majority of car trips is for one person. Most of the others are for two.
So building it without dead weight that will almost never be used makes sense.
If you're a bigger party, there will probably be bigger robotaxis to summon. Or take two cars.
Walking humanoid robots.
Also videos of more humanoid robots that move better than the ones shown live.
Presentation is over. They're having a party.
Overall, this demo looks a lot like the self driving vehicles at Guangzhou Bio Island. They have slow self-driving buses and taxis in a somewhat controlled environment.[1] That sort of thing has been working for about five years now.
Inductive charging. Robotaxi does not need to plug in.
Pictures of robotic car interior cleaning, but no mention of that.
It was a medical emergency. https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1844567949144883345
What a bizzare world we live in. He's promising some version of the thing he did in 2016 [0], he's promising a lower than $30k price point, also the famous "unsupervised full self driving" (how many more adjectives does one need for autonomous vehicles?).
Perhaps he's made another deal with the board for a better $100B pay package so he can lie to the shareholders (who'll eat it up) and he'll dump subpar products onto these people who are heralding him as another "genius" or whatever.
He's just another run-of-the-mill, out of touch conman at this point. He was great, but he didn't hold onto his own greatness.
edit: Something about a park ride?! ... Jesus.
[0] - https://qz.com/elon-musk-tesla-robotaxi-timeline-1851664786#....
Well he's now got his robots dancing. It's all a joke people, let's wrap it up.
It disappoints me when otherwise intelligent people take him for his word at this point. Even ignoring his descent into political madness and conspiracy, he's simply not trustworthy.
Fool me once, shame on Elon. Fool me 194 times, shame on me.
Teslas "fully autonomous in Texas and California next year" using Model 3 and Model Y.
Cybercab before 2027.
He's been promising "full self driving in a few months to a couple years" since 2015.
Reddit comment with his predictions:
https://old.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/n6nsmt/elo...
Here is an extended timeline of the lies https://motherfrunker.ca/fsd/
Jump Elon jump!!!
There's a 20 person bus version.
"We expect the cost to be below $30,000."
Lol those cyclists surely looked terrified