Cars that nobody buys replaced by robots that nobody buys
Who is this "nobody" that bought more than half a million Teslas last year?
Who bought half a million Model S and Model X?
Robots eat cars
11–20 of 125 posts
Re: Robots eat cars
#12Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moreover, Technique X does not actually provide any significant value. The whole steer-by-wire in CT happened because Musk wanted a yoke as the control system. And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
> does not actually provide any significant value If that were true, it would not explain why other manufacturers are headed the same direction. The CT is not the only steer-by-wire vehicle.
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Re: Robots eat cars
#13One million robots to be manufactured in a year - one million robots which will likely be obsolete within five years (if that, I wouldn't be surprised if they're dead on arrival). I don't know the figures for Earth's resources and their sustainability, so this may be a naive take, but I'm always left with the impression that these organisations want to speedrun the depletion of the planet.
More customers for the related Space exploration company.
Re: Robots eat cars
#14This article is written with a little bit of a journalist’s misunderstanding of a topic.
They seem to have done research but have strung together unrelated subjects due to their lack of expertise in the subjects.
As a result it reads more like a summary or recap of vaguely related stories.
For example, Tesla’s pivot to robots has nothing to do with their advanced nature of their wiring harnesses, but it’s spoken in the same breath as if to imply that a Tesla Cybertruck (which is a Model Y with paneling literally glued on top) is more similar to a humanoid robot than a Mustang Mach-E.
In reality, what has happened is that the Model S and X have been discontinued and they’re the only products the Fremont, CA plant produces. Tesla has literally nothing else they can make in that plant. They either make Optimus robots or shut the plant down.
Optimus robot production is a face saving move. Tesla barely needs a fraction of that factory to build robots…it’s a much lower-volume and physically smaller product.
I should note that none of that has anything to do with Tesla being great at robotics and seeing it as a better business than automobiles. It has everything to do with competitors catching up and Tesla having insufficient development capability to iterate on those vehicles.
Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?
Who in the buyer demographic for the Model X won’t take a Kia EV9, Lucid Gravity, or Volvo EX-90?
Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.
Re: Robots eat cars
#15One million robots to be manufactured in a year - one million robots which will likely be obsolete within five years (if that, I wouldn't be surprised if they're dead on arrival). I don't know the figures for Earth's resources and their sustainability, so this may be a naive take, but I'm always left with the impression that these organisations want to speedrun the depletion of the planet.
More customers for the related Space exploration company.
Assuming they don't starve to death before insert-space-company can get them to the next Goldilocks planet.
Re: Robots eat cars
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Moreover, Technique X does not actually provide any significant value. The whole steer-by-wire in CT happened because Musk wanted a yoke as the control system. And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
> does not actually provide any significant value If that were true, it would not explain why other manufacturers are headed the same direction. The CT is not the only steer-by-wire vehicle.
Vehicles include low-utility features for market positioning all the time.
Do buyers need a motorised hood ornament? A tiny vase built into the dashboard? A built-in champagne chiller? Gull wing doors? A spoiler and a 300-horsepower engine?
If it boosts sales by giving the vehicle a distinctive character, though, there's a place in the market for that tiny vase.
Re: Robots eat cars
#17> Steer-by-wire Thinking back to case-studies around the Therac-25 [0], I would like to pre-emptively highlight the differences between: 1. Technique X is unsafe. 2. Technique X is unsafe because too much can go wrong even with the best intentions. 3. Technique X is unsafe without strong QA and interlocking safety measures, and there's too much economic pressure for the manufacturer to cut corners. [0] https://en.wik…
Moreover, Technique X does not actually provide any significant value. The whole steer-by-wire in CT happened because Musk wanted a yoke as the control system. And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
steer-by-wire makes safety nannies way easier, eg, the ones that jerk the wheel out of your hands when they decide you're too close to a line on the road.
Re: Robots eat cars
#18Cars that nobody buys replaced by robots that nobody buys
The best selling car in the world in 2025 was the Tesla Model Y, with a little over 1 million sold. ~350k total vehicles have been sold in 2026 as of April.
https://www.focus2move.com/world-car-market/, https://ir.tesla.com/press-release/tesla-first-quarter-2026-...
Re: Robots eat cars
#19> Steer-by-wire Thinking back to case-studies around the Therac-25 [0], I would like to pre-emptively highlight the differences between: 1. Technique X is unsafe. 2. Technique X is unsafe because too much can go wrong even with the best intentions. 3. Technique X is unsafe without strong QA and interlocking safety measures, and there's too much economic pressure for the manufacturer to cut corners. [0] https://en.wik…
Moreover, Technique X does not actually provide any significant value. The whole steer-by-wire in CT happened because Musk wanted a yoke as the control system. And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
Other models got the yoke but not the steer by wire.
Re: Robots eat cars
#20Earlier quoted context omitted.
More customers for the related Space exploration company.
Assuming they don't starve to death before insert-space-company can get them to the next Goldilocks planet.
The next step is just selling tickets to that flight in advance as a preorder. One could call it roadster preorders because of the difficult road ahead