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Tesla Robotaxi

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Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#511

Post by trissi1996 »

valianteffort wrote: post #505
benterix wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They had 2 dozen vehicles with no steering wheels taking attendees around the venue. 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. [0] https://x.com/realdanodowd/status/1844605093368512799

There are countless videos on youtube of people recording their experience with FSD's open beta. It is probably 90% of the way there, if not more. Anyone who thinks Tesla won't get there first is peak delusional. Hate on Elon as much as you want, but Tesla are top-tier engineering. Real funny seeing a bunch of web devs on HN talk shit about Tesla's engineers too lmao

Even if you'd be right about the 90%, I highly doubt they'll be first.

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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#512

Post by userabchn »

I'm disappointed that it wasn't a single occupant, three-wheeled, ultra-basic microcar limited to 50 km/h to gather and scatter people from public transport stops, solving the last-mile problem.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#513

Post by panick21_ »

porbelm wrote: post #472
lowkey wrote: post #458

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- 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…

[flagged]

Same old nonsense story.

> 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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#514

Post by panick21_ »

I'm not a Musk hater but this vision of the future just doesn't seem that interesting. I'm from Switzerland, I much rather have trains and well timed buses.

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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#515

Post by ben_w »

BoorishBears wrote: post #508
ben_w wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know if you've tried this recently, but take a photo of something on your phone and put it into an AI. There may even be an AI built into your photo library app.

The fact I work on self-driving cars makes me a tiny bit more of a realist than someone who thinks CLIP is proof of what AI can and can't do...

So your job is to, in your own words, be "replicating 6 million years of evolution"?

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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#516

Post by panick21_ »

nikcub wrote: post #428
modeless wrote: post #372

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It has no rear window and wacky doors and only two seats. It would not sell. It's purpose built as an autonomous taxi, where those choices make perfect sense. They are also doing a $25k car, they just aren't revealing it today.

This is why I want a pragmatic operational industry expert CEO[0] for Tesla, in the same way Shotwell is for SpaceX. 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…

People really have gone off the deep end with Shotwell, yes she is awesome. But you know what makes it a huge amount easier to be awesome, having a reusable rocket to sell in the first place.

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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#517

Post by panick21_ »

nikcub wrote: post #474
modeless wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree that Tesla's biggest mistake was doing Cybertruck before the $25k car. But if they solve autonomy and/or succeed with Optimus then everything else becomes irrelevant.

I agree, but these are moonshot announcements that should sit isolated from the core business. 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 environ…

The question is how much does a Boston Dynamics robot full of complex hydrolics cost vs a Tesla bot that full of electric actuators. Boston Dynamics robots aren't really design to be produced in numbers and are designed for a different use-case.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#518

Post by panick21_ »

wilsonnb3 wrote: post #15

Anybody know why the autonomous taxi isn't just a model 3? 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.

Many reasons. Model 3 is to big. The Model 3 is missing many features needed, like inductive charging, automatic doors. And has lots of things not needed, like a steering wheel column. Model 3 is build on a much older architecture, even the upgraded versions. Model 3 still uses traditional car wiring.

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.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#519

Post by wasteduniverse »

valianteffort wrote: post #505
benterix wrote: post #485

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They had 2 dozen vehicles with no steering wheels taking attendees around the venue. 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. [0] https://x.com/realdanodowd/status/1844605093368512799

There are countless videos on youtube of people recording their experience with FSD's open beta. It is probably 90% of the way there, if not more. Anyone who thinks Tesla won't get there first is peak delusional. Hate on Elon as much as you want, but Tesla are top-tier engineering. Real funny seeing a bunch of web devs on HN talk shit about Tesla's engineers too lmao

[dead]

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#520

Post by Iulioh »

rob74 wrote: post #351
strulovich wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Barring all the issues, if you did build a huge fleet of autonomous taxis - smaller, lighter cars with less moving pieces would save you a lot of money. 2 seater - smaller car No wheels or stuff - saves money on the build and parts.

Mark my words: the "final form" of robotaxis will seat 4 (up to 6 in a pinch) people on facing seats, will be able to drive in both directions and have all 4 wheels fully steerable for more flexibility.

The 4 fully steerable wheels on robottaxis is an interesting ones.

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

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