Tesla’s reveal of a robotaxi designed as a low-slung, two-seater, sporty coupe - quite the opposite of a typical taxi with room for several passengers and luggage - flummoxed investors and analysts.
But in true Musk style, he skipped over expectations of how a two-seater robotaxi would serve the needs of families headed to a restaurant or to the airport, or if he expected these to appeal only to a niche clientele.
Investors jeered the design and the lack of financial detail, with Tesla stocks tumbling 9% on Wall Street on Friday.
“When you think of a cab, you think of something that’s going to carry more than two people,” said Jonathan Elfalan, vehicle testing director for the automotive website Edmunds.com. “Making this a two-seat-only car is very perplexing.”
Didn’t his mom say Leon was developmentally challenged in a twit post?
So darkly dark… Like mother like son
I’ll take the bus, thanks. At least I will arrive alive at my destination.
But think of the opportunity cost here, you’d be wasting a chance to run over a child or a poor person!
I’m only taking this chance if I know elon will be in the road on my route at some point. Someone’s gonna get the X!
To me it makes sense because without the driver, there’s less need to maximize passengers per vehicle. Plus the added weight for the extra, often unused seats is a bigger problem for EVs because of the need to minimize weight (which then requires more heavy batteries). Generally the vast majority of taxi trips are one or two people, so you don’t wanna make them any bigger than necessary. And if there’s 4 people, they can just take 2.
The problem isn’t the number of seats, it’s that there’s no plan for them to become actually self-driving.
EVs really don’t have to minimize weight nearly as much as ICE cars. Regen is really powerful with a large battery and aerodynamics and rolling resistance is king at speed. And larger and heavier batteries are cheaper too.
It looks like they were working on the new roadster and Elmo told them they were switching to a driverless cab.
If it were a sports car it would probably sell really well because it’s got the doors that open like this
Im gonna start calling him Elmo from now on haha.
Clown man
In all fairness the critics simply have to get high on drugs to see the car as it was meant to be viewed.
It seems selfish they are not
How often do you think Elon drives while blasted out of his mind on ketamine? Because I bet it’s a nonzero number.
Seems like the minivan is really the right thing. Can share with multiple folks or have a significant amount of luggage for the airport or such. Easier to serve the handicapped.
Well they had to save room for all the safety features that are required for them to be remotely driven from North Korea.
two-seater, sporty coupe - quite the opposite of a typical taxi with room for several passengers and luggage - flummoxed investors and analysts.
The majority of rides are 1 or 2 people.
For when there’s more than 1 or 2 people… they have the model 3, and Y.
It’s not rocket science people.
But his other company did just catch a rocket between two giant chopsticks.
On a related note…
Full Self Driving coming next year? Or the year after that? Or after that?
In two years presumably. It’s been two years away since 2015.
We’ll have FSD as soon as we get those flying cars with AGI I’ve been told are a few years away my entire life.
Space colonies too.
There are self driving waymo taxis in San Francisco, it is only a fiction for Musk
Along with what @Bassman1805 says, San Francisco has a small footprint and most of it is laid out in grids, making navigation easier.
Plus, it’s not a problem-free implementation by any means.
On top of that, it’s way too easy to make them stop working. Not too easy for passengers, too easy for everyone else.
https://www.npr.org/2023/08/26/1195695051/driverless-cars-san-francisco-waymo-cruise
Unlike the other things you mentioned, full self driving taxis do exist, they are being rolled out in actual markets with customers, and despite the problems you mentioned they are safer than human drivers and overall have improved my life as a pedestrian (sorry, anecdote). It may not be the perfect generalized scifi version you have in your head that makes you compare it with flying cars or AGI, but it is here.
And, what - Musk’s version won’t have to overcome those problems?
He’s years behind the competition in his own timeline, and as all the other commenters have pointed out he never even delivers according to that timeline.
Meanwhile he’s announced a version of something that that already exists and is telling his customers and shareholders that in his best case scenario, he will be 3 years late to market - and it is a fast moving market, he falls further behind with every month that passes.
Is the “safer the human drivers” part also an anecdote? I’d like to see the evidence. As far as I know, that’s not actually public information. I’d like to know if it includes things like impeding emergency vehicles, or the situation in one of the articles above where the taxi kept going toward the fire hoses while the fire department was trying to put out a fire.
It’s part anecdote, in that I personally feel safer when I see a waymo coming than a human driver; but they also are required to report to government organizations as part of their operating agreement with the county/state. From my understanding, waymo’s collisions-per-mile are a fraction of human drivers. Here’s some random article I found if it helps https://www.forbes.com/sites/bradtempleton/2024/09/05/waymos-new-safety-data-is-impressive-and-teaches-a-lesson/. But I’m really just reporting my experience here from the ground.
As a counterexample, Cruise was recently suspended by SF and fined by NHTSA for trying to avoid reporting their traffic incidents.
As for the rest, you’ve got a handful of isolated incidents you’re just-asking-questions about when there are incidents every single day of human drivers doing worse, with provable loss of life.
If you don’t think the tech is up to snuff, take it up with NHTSA who clearly disagrees.
But all of this is a tangent - none of this negates the fact that self driving exists and I can hop in one just as quick as I can get an uber.
We’ll have to keep waiting for the space colonies I guess.
Those also use a combination of many different sensors to see the road around them, while Tesla stubbornly refuses to use anything except vision because that’s how humans do it. Nevermind that even with our best AI models, we’ve never even approximated how the human brain works.
Yes, good reasons why his version will never come to market - which he is already late to. His lunch has been eaten, so to speak.
What was his first prediction on that like 2015?
Yes. But also: No. Mostly no.
Always.
Musk and “FSD is coming next year” is like Trump and “I only want to be dictator for a day”.
There are concepts of FSD.
More like his healthcare plan. Or his infrastructure plan
Details will be shared in two weeks!
That’s because Musk is a dunce.
I’m sure he’s imagining commuter clients using it to go to work every day on a subscription.
Or dragging a pedestrian?
I feel like you’re refrenceing some thing I don’t know.
I also don’t see how it could pertain to a self driving cab business model.
Could you elaborate?
A Cruise self-driving vehicle dragged a pedestrian. They were later fined 1.5M for it by NHTSA, and paid the victim something like 8M
https://www.theverge.com/2024/9/30/24258445/cruise-nhtsa-fine-robotaxi-pedestrian-drag
I remember that now. Thank you.
And surprisingly, it has even less to do with Tesla’s robot taxi business model than I imagined.
I agree, unfortunately it seems common around for people to conflate all self-driving together
What a fucking moron. Dude is so goddamn stupid that every decision he makes is the wrong one. And yet people keep defending him…
Investors jeered the design and the lack of financial detail, with Tesla stocks tumbling 9% on Wall Street on Friday.
I didn’t realize this stupid vehicle was a two-seater. What a dumbass move.
When investors attempted to hail the cab it ignored them according to another post I saw yesterday.
The real problem that he failed to show any progress on self-driving. Self-driving has been 2 years away for the past 6 years and that’s the only real thing that will pull Tesla out of a downward spiral. Tesla stock is stupidly overpriced and competitors are catching up.
With nothing but empty promises, people are starting to realize that the emperor has no clothes. And really, who wants to see Musk naked? …that’s a bag nobody wants to be left holding.
It’s been 1 year away every year, not 2
Waymo did it well when I was in Tempe, so it already exists. Tesla just wasn’t putting quality hardware into it. The Jaguars were nice
I can’t wait for one of these to pull up with a puddle of vomit on the seat
