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Tesla Robotaxi

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Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#661

Post by telcodud »

DennisL123 wrote: post #242

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…

The Tesla Robotaxi seems similar to the prototype car without steering wheel or brake pedals that Google announced (or demoed?) in 2014: https://www.nytimes.com/2014/05/28/technology/googles-next-p.... It seems likely that Waymo is 10 years ahead of Tesla in autonomous driving, and not 2 years.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#662

Post by danjl »

golol wrote: post #622
wg0 wrote: 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 has the world's best autonomous vehicle offering by some way of measuring things. There are many ways to measure things, but at least in some "category" they are indeed leading: Level 2 systems for the US which you can privately buy.

Mercedes already has a level 3 available for purchase in California: https://www.mbusa.com/en/owners/manuals/drive-pilot

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#663

Post by IshKebab »

jauntywundrkind wrote: post #496
IshKebab wrote: post #426

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No there aren't. Those use triangulation. LIDAR is time-of-flight. They also only scan a single rotating point which is only sufficient for simple robots like vacuum cleaners.

Intel's L515 lidar from 2020 was Good indoor range but not really useful outdoors at any range. Scaling to higher power is indeed a challenge, but that Intel delivered so so much in 2020 for such a small price is awesome, shows potential.

Damn that looks amazing! Such a shame they abandoned RealSense.

Still, $300 is not $100 and presumably they were selling at big loss, otherwise they wouldn't have shuttered RealSense.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#664

Post by danjl »

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...

I'm curious. Can you elaborate on what CLIP proves about what AI can and can't do?

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#665

Post by tim333 »

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.

I'm guessing mostly for show. I they had a driving system that actually worked they could fit it on a car and try it in real life like Waymo.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#666

Post by tim333 »

I must say the show seemed a bit lame and the market seems to agree - TSLA down 8% at present.

The robotaxis did 5 mph on cleared streets and so seemed much less impressive than Waymos which can deal with real pedestrians and do 30 mph+

They only had two seats which is not how you'd make a commercial robotaxi and so probably just made for show to try to impress investors.

The robots serving drinks etc seem to have been remotely controlled by humans.

It's not that impressive when Waymo are driving people around in real life and also various robotaxis in China eg. https://youtu.be/izLfWY4c0Ko

I've always defended Musk saying robotaxis will be here in a year or two over the last decade because new tech is hard but they now look a bit in danger of being left behind by the competition.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#667

Post by wilg »

danso wrote: post #648
wilg wrote: post #626

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They’re taking legal liability when you are driving a straight line on selected freeways going less than 40mph and with a car in front of you to follow during the day. This doesn’t demonstrate advanced capability, just limited scope.

Tesla’s system is purportedly far more advanced — do you believe that they could offer the same safety promises and legal protection for that limited scope if they wanted to? (leaving aside for the moment, why they wouldn’t want to)

I’m not sure, I think it’s technically feasable given the current state, I expect that scope has pretty good safety numbers on current software, since it’s such a narrow scope.

But they would probably want to do all kinds of extra training and validation and fine tuning on it first rather than just blast out the current version.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#668

Post by twobitshifter »

benterix wrote: post #485
acchow wrote: post #421

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's basically just a website at the moment with bunch of 3D renders which you too could get done from a web shop. They had 2 dozen vehicles with no steering wheels taking attendees around the venue. The bar was staffed by Optimus robots. “Basically a website”?

> 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

I saw pedestrians walking in front of the cars in the live stream. The rest is true though. It reminded me of taking the classic car ride around an amusement park where the cars all follow each other on a track.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#669

Post by stetrain »

reissbaker wrote: post #395
haspok wrote: post #387

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of the Cybertruck, it was never a question whether it is even possible to do such a thing, because they had all the technology, the only question was if they were stupid enough to build it. Just as in the case of the "Hyperloop": in theory, it is perfectly possible, but anyone who got as far to build a few meters of it (or something resembling it) quickly realized the practicality problems, and what would…

What do you mean by "stupid enough to build it?" It's the best-selling electric truck in terms of shipped units, by a large margin (approximately equal to every other EV truck manufacturer combined, including Ford's electric F-150).

We don't know how profitable it is. They're already running out of folks willing to pay $100k and have begun offering the $80k version. Will that version be profitable to build? It takes more than unit sales to make a good business decision.

Even if it is profitable, it still needs to be weighed against the opportunity costs of using those resources to pursue a different strategy. Would the same resources in terms of designer, engineers, hours, and capital outlay on factory production lines have been more profitable if they were applied to a different vehicle?

It's very possible. The Cybertruck is always going to be a limited demand vehicle. It may do well versus other EV pickups in the US market, but Tesla is a global company and the Cybertruck is not a global vehicle.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#670

Post by twobitshifter »

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]

I don’t like the guy but he’s built companies that are implanting brain chips to give people vision and parapalegics the ability to interact in the world, has blanketed the globe in true high speed internet, have built spaceships that launch more frequently than any nation has ever done their own. And then there’s the EV thing which many see as key to fighting climate change. If he wasn’t so unlikable and part of this twitter debacle, the world would be praising each of these efforts.
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