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Tesla Robotaxi

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Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#451
post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are more than enough on the road already to know exactly how safe they are. FSD has already driven a billion miles. Once it is good enough they will have the statistics to prove it.

Tesla has, as far as I can tell looking through the reports, done not a single mile or kilometer under the Californian DMV Autonomous Vehicle Tester (AVT) Program[0]. Nor have they partaken in any other program of this kind that would enforce public reporting or any measure of transparency. There is no public data to gauge safety or reliability as of yet. [0] https://www.dmv.ca.gov/portal/vehicle-industry-services/au…

You are right, there is no public data, they've kept it all private. FSD is not anywhere near good enough to be unsupervised right now so there's no real point to doing autonomous testing.

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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#452
post #347

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source are talk and wish dreams and nothing more. 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 sa…

You really don't know what you're talking about. That "visiting 4 Star General" now reports full time to Elon, as the WSJ determined via numerous sources.

And? Is he still a general while reporting full time to Elon?

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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#453
post #404
post #381

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wasn't it also released at a significantly higher price than announced? """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.

Ah right, the price should have remained the same despite the highest worldwide monetary inflation rates in the last 40 years. I can't imagine why would a company want to sell a product at a profit.

50% increase in price point, 3 years delay. Inflation is only a small part of this. The delay is more telling than the price increase.

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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#454

The most interesting thing to me by far was the lack of a steering wheel on the Robocab. 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'm guessing it will show up first on a lot of private roads. This thing would be perfect on airports, big events, etc. It will be interesting to see what kind of companies will buy this thing. I don't think they'll be selling these to consumers any time soon.

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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The idea that Tesla would win the robotaxi race by not needing LiDAR died sometime between when LiDAR cost $100k and when it cost $1k. Now it’s just Elon being intransigent.

Humans don’t use lidar, which clearly shows that a vision-only robotaxi is very much feasible.

Humans continuously move their heads in three dimensions to infer depth.

Cars can't do this.

And not surprisingly the biggest problem with FSD is the accuracy of its bounding boxes.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#456
post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you give some numbers to back it up? Considering the loss due to inflation from 2019 [1] I would have expected the truck to get to around $49,200. [1] https://www.in2013dollars.com/us/inflation/2019?amount=1

What numbers am I backing up? 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?

Whats your point here? We said they broke their promise (bait and switch, because they knew it was not assured expectation for price and delivery).

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?

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#457
post #444
post #416

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elon has almost no credibility left for what he says. 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.

Tesla at a forward P/E of 80 is massively overvalued as a car company. You can get Mercedes or BMW at a P/E of 6, with a 9% yield. Sure, the EV market is still growing, but Tesla is not the only player. All brands now have EVs, there are both cheaper and more luxurious Chinese EVs, that's some massive competition. The only reasons Tesla could be valued differently are FSD and Robotics, which Musk and Tesla-friendly a…

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Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#458
post #416

Classic bait and switch setup. Selling people the future in 2 years time with little to nothing to show for today. Timelines will slip, plans will change, software won‘t be ready, prices will change. And that doesn’t even account for where Waymo is in two years from now, or what the Chinese EV industry is able to pull off until then. Even this underwhelming event was originally announced on short notice to prop up pe…

Elon has almost no credibility left for what he says. 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.

- I believe he can launch rockets into space and land them on their own footprint.

- 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

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#459
post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> with little to nothing to show for today 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.

Maybe in the US. It still does nothing in Europe, which is disappointing because the company happily took my money in February 2019 on the promise that this feature is imminent. 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 lim…

> I paid 7,500 euros for something that still doesn’t exist in any usable form.

And I thought people preordering games for 70€ were taking unnecessary risks. You guys took it to the whole new level.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading any HN thread connected to Musk is so annoying because all the political obsessives come out and crapflood the thread with rants about "manbabies."

The fault of that lies with Musk who has been trying endlessly to turn everything into a culture war.

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