Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
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Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
#2Thinking of re-upping my put options on $TSLA. This launch is destined to be a fiasco. It's unbelievable to me that they doubled down on vision-only at the expense of lidar. Google/Waymo is going to eat their lunch on the self-driving side, and the Tesla brand is dying with consumers. This company is cooked.
Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
#3Thinking of re-upping my put options on $TSLA. This launch is destined to be a fiasco. It's unbelievable to me that they doubled down on vision-only at the expense of lidar. Google/Waymo is going to eat their lunch on the self-driving side, and the Tesla brand is dying with consumers. This company is cooked.
So - the cooked-ness of Tesla may depend on what you think Musk's goal was with Tesla.
If you believe he was out to change the world - maybe he'll let Tesla die. It's unlikely they are going to accomplish much else at this point, better, smarter more experienced competitors are sweeping the board.
If you believe he's out to make as much money as he can, he'll probably course correct at some point. Lidar it is clear will be the future of self-driving, and with all the adopters the economies of scale will kick in at some point.
Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
#4I have over $100k in Tesla puts.
There is no way Tesla survives this. They have plummeting sales every quarter, and Elon is pushing out a product that is going to get into an accident within the first week.
Robotaxis are glorified Ubers and will never level up to Waymos. FSD is useless if you have to keep your eye on the wheel and road.
I have a Tesla Model Y. It's my favorite car I've ever driven. I subscribed to FSD as recently as last month for one month to try it out. It doesn't work as well as a Waymo, not even close. It still feels like a really good high school demo but not close to being in the same ballpark as Waymo.
But Elon has killed his brand with his politics, and the robotaxi initiative is a desperate attempt to gain ground. But it's going to kill someone and it will be 100% on him because he's the one pushing this when there's no way it will ever be ready for real world situations the way Waymo is.
Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
#5We are potentially about to see a worse incident than Uber in Phoenix or Cruise in SF. 444 miles per Critical Disengagement is terrible. In 2023, Waymo reported 17,000 miles between Critical Disengagements and have made significant (as seen by a functioning robotaxi service) leaps since.
Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
#6Tesla had more chance to succeed than Waymo. It's impossible for Waymo to match Tesla in real world training and testing data. Somehow Waymo is winning.
Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
#7I have over $100k in Tesla puts. There is no way Tesla survives this. They have plummeting sales every quarter, and Elon is pushing out a product that is going to get into an accident within the first week. Robotaxis are glorified Ubers and will never level up to Waymos. FSD is useless if you have to keep your eye on the wheel and road. I have a Tesla Model Y. It's my favorite car I've ever driven. I subscribed to FS…
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.
Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
#8I personally think it'll be fine. FSD is perfect for all my driving. It's been 3000-4000 miles since my last takeover. I know an uber driver who's driven his 16k miles without a safety intervention. And this is without them superfinetuning and doing custom navigation/mapping on a specific town.
Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
#9Tesla had more chance to succeed than Waymo. It's impossible for Waymo to match Tesla in real world training and testing data. Somehow Waymo is winning.
Waymo has ~40 million miles of test data. Tesla has ~4B miles. But for training both quantity and quality are important. Tesla only uploads excerpts and metadata for its 4B miles, and it's video only. Waymo can fully analyze all 40M miles, and it's much richer, with LIDAR and other sensors.
My feeling is that Waymo has the data advantage.
Re: Tesla Robotaxi launch is a dangerous game of smoke and mirrors
#10Tesla had more chance to succeed than Waymo. It's impossible for Waymo to match Tesla in real world training and testing data. Somehow Waymo is winning.
Waymo chose an approach that seems geared towards actually doing the task.
Tesla tried for the moonshot - They wanted a consumer car with cheap sensor hardware to perform the job. Trusting that computing "smarts" could solve the rest of the problem.
I'm in Atlanta where Waymos have started popping up left and right - the sensor bank on these things is HUGE. You can spot 'em from way far off... Giant sensors on top. Big sensors on the front wheel wells back wheel wells, big sensors on both front and back. Big sensors basically all over them.
I'm of the opinion now that Tesla was just way, WAY off base about what sort of requirements exist for sensing, and that they don't, in fact, have much more real world training data because their data is just garbage from the cameras.
Waymo is winning because Waymo accepted the actual requirements early. Tesla is off in lala land with a dead end solution. Lots of great marketing from tesla... but very little progress now in years. They really seem stuck in a local optimum with the camera-only approach, and it's not close to delivering the promised experience.