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Tesla Robotaxi

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Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#281

Post by throwaway48476 »

mavhc wrote: post #267
mplewis wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He just bought a massive data center with thousands of Nvidia boards. Why would the car be an efficient place to do the same work?

Because getting GWs of power into one building and the cooling it is expensive. Why not let other people buy the computer, provide the power, and it won't need expensive cooling. Question is: are there enough high latency distributed workloads to sell?

High latency distributed with low security requirements. Until homomophic encryption works.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#282

Post by bkfh »

zizee wrote: post #276

Who is the customer for this? Sub $30k appeals to regular people. But why would regular people want to own a robotaxi? I want robotaxis to exist so I don't have to own a car. I want someone else to own it, and I pay to use it once in a while. If this works, wouldn't just Tesla operate as a taxi company?

I don‘t want a car, I want mobility

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#283

Post by throwaway48476 »

porphyra wrote: post #157
mplewis wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, great! They put motors and wheels on a chassis with a screen and hardcoded them to drive in a loop. So impressive.

The demo is open to the eventgoers and lets you choose your destination. It's quite polished and a lot more advanced than "hardcoding to drive in a loop".

Why not demo it for the livestream then?

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#284

Post by Animats »

milleramp wrote: post #253
Animats wrote: post #188

It's amusing that this was at the Warner back lot, which is out in Burbank. Not Paramount or Universal, which are both in Hollywood. It would have been embarrassing to do this at Paramount or Universal, because those are in Waymo's service area. People would have arrived at the event in real self driving taxis.

All of Warner is "out in Burbank" as is most of what is normally considered Hollywood.

Yes, Disney is also in Burbank.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#285

Post by 14 »

modeless wrote: post #192
marsten wrote: post #172

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.

It's not going to be in mass production until 2027 at the earliest, realistically. Will they have unsupervised FSD "next year" as claimed? I doubt it. But by 2027? I think there's a strong possibility. I've been testing FSD since it was released and lately the pace of improvement has gotten a lot faster. And the Cybercab is going to have a much faster onboard computer, and probably more/better cameras.

It is interesting that you are confident in that matter. But you have been playing with it for a long time. Someone like myself with zero experience with it am very skeptical about how much I can trust it. We have seen several accidents over the years in the news. How do we convince the masses that this car is safe and this car will not suddenly drive off the road? I do think self driving cars are as a whole a lot safer but I also consider myself a good driver so it would be hard to give up that control. When I would be sold on the tech is when it is so good I am legally allowed to sit back and sleep between destinations. Wake up in a new city each day.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#286

Post by moralestapia »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #217
thefourthchime wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're ignoring the fact that Chinese manufacturers are heavily tariffed in the west

Not at all. Global light vehicle sales are ~90M units/year. US ~17M/year. EU ~13M/year. China remains a factory to the world (and itself is the leading market). BYD can build in Mexico (NAFTA) and the EU to avoid tariffs, if desired. Tariffs aren’t going to keep the EV printer at bay. They only delay the inevitable. https://electrek.co/2024/10/09/byd-to-sell-100000-evs-north-... https://electrek.co/2024/08/16/byd-plo…

>BYD can build in Mexico (NAFTA) and the EU to avoid tariffs, if desired.

Not if Trump wins and I mean that without cynicism.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#287

Post by Kiro »

kombookcha wrote: post #195
sandspar wrote: post #126

Why are the comments on this topic so consistently low quality? It's not even cynicism. It's just snark. It seems like most commenters aren't addressing the topic but rather are venting about their feelings.

This dude has lied about robotaxis for a full 11 years. Think about where you were in life 11 years ago. Each time he's done this, it's been brought up in here with steadily decreasing enthusiasm. What reason would anybody have to engage seriously with this until an actual product has shipped?

And that warrants low-effort snark and jokes polluting these threads? There are still good discussions here, but they get muddled by all this nonsense.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#288

Post by steveoscaro »

mavhc wrote: post #262
stackghost wrote: post #189

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What's the deal with cynical, low effort comments like this that add nothing to the discussion? People are starting to wake up to the (shitty) new reality that Big Tech created for us. The cynical nature is just the natural reaction to a serial grifter becoming the world's richest man. I don't think anyone but the most naive actually believes anything in this PR piece will come to market.

Oh yeah, look at all the terrible things Tesla has done, sell more EVs than everyone else, and make them for less cost, and include a good infotainment system in a car, what a terrible reality

Yeah this place feels like Reddit right now. Hivemind takes left and right.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#289

Post by imtringued »

rapsey wrote: post #225
Animats wrote: post #188

It's amusing that this was at the Warner back lot, which is out in Burbank. Not Paramount or Universal, which are both in Hollywood. It would have been embarrassing to do this at Paramount or Universal, because those are in Waymo's service area. People would have arrived at the event in real self driving taxis.

Waymos however need thousands of dollars of hardware to achieve this and only work in limited areas. Tesla's bet is a lot more risky but also with a lot more potential.

How does it have more potential? I don't know how much taxi drivers earn in the US but let's pick a random number like 50k USD per year. If Waymo hardware costs $10k but Tesla costs $2k, then the savings are $40k for Waymo in the first year and $48k for Tesla. That is a 20% increase in the worst case for Waymo and the longer the vehicle lasts or the higher the taxi driver salary, the worse it gets for Tesla. Their potential is heavily bounded and gets worse over time.

Re: Tesla Robotaxi

#290

Post by conradev »

saturn8601 wrote: post #259
conradev wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hyundai #2 to Tesla: https://www.businesskorea.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=... Waymo optimizing for cost: https://waymo.com/blog/2024/08/meet-the-6th-generation-waymo...

You ignored the rest of my response which is again driving the point: What does Hyundai really get out of this? Circling back to my point, this does not really explain why they are partnering with Waymo. Waymo is a rounding error in sales for Hyundai. If Waymo was solely focused on cost, then they should have stuck with the pacifica which is cheaper or gotten something even cheaper like a Toyota. It makes no sense to…

Waymo has touted that their entire fleet is now electric: https://waymo.com/blog/2023/03/paving-way-toward-fully-elect...

It sure seems like their self-imposed constraint is EVs. Their goal beyond that is cost reduction. It seems like the actual key right now might be volume:

“The team at our new manufacturing facility is ready to allocate a significant number of vehicles for the Waymo One fleet as it continues to expand. Importantly, this is the first step in the partnership between the two companies and we are actively exploring additional opportunities for collaboration.”

https://waymo.com/blog/2024/10/waymo-and-hyundai-enter-partn...

but to your point, Hyundai may see this as an opportunity for “future collaboration” to get autonomous driving tech into their vehicles. But selling a “significant number of vehicles” is also very much in Hyundai’s interest.

If Hyundai was making the Niro or Kona EV in the US, then they may have been an option, but they’re not. They are not eligible for the tax credit. Toyota won’t make EVs here until 2025 or 2026.

The ID.4 would meet that criteria, though, and I wonder if Waymo considered going with Volkswagen.

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