First Tesla Robotaxi Spotted Driving Around Austin | Hacker News Reader

First Tesla Robotaxi Spotted Driving Around Austin

insideevs.com

11 pointsandsoitis9 comments

Tesla's been pretty clever about this whole autonomous vehicle thing. While other companies are burning through investor cash, Tesla basically got their customers to fund the entire operation. Tesla owners paid for the cars, paid extra for the self-driving features (which funded the R&D), and then their cars collected all the data needed to train the AI.

I've been seeing a bunch of consumer research about Waymo users lately, and what people are telling researchers is fascinating. Almost everyone says the same three things: they're done with car ownership, they never want to drive again, and they're over dealing with regular rideshare apps.

Consumer research about Waymo users reports almost everyone says the same three things: they're done with car ownership, they never want to drive again, and they're over dealing with regular rideshare apps.

Tesla's going to be able to offer rides cheaper than Waymo while giving people a better experience. And since Elon already got us to pay for everything upfront, Tesla's robotaxi network is basically going to print money from day one.

Tesla's 'cleverness' will come to an end when they're the only driverless taxis doing stupid maneuvers like avoiding shadows in the street since they use webcams for self driving without *dar

I, too, drive just with vision as sensory input.

Got 'em.

It's not like humans ever make catastrophic errors when driving.

Oh yeah? You don’t use your sense of hearing and your internal sense of direction, vertical elevation, etc.?

Yes, I believe I've encountered you as you cross into my lane of traffic without noticing my existence.

Tesla has spent over a decade trying to get to the same point where others reached years ago, and over the past year has had to reinvent all the same wheels they claimed others were using to "cheat" like geofencing, mapping, and testing fleets. Getting to this kind of public demo is only the first of many hurdles to having a viable robotaxi fleet though, and not even the hardest.

I don't think it's clear that Tesla's network is going to print money from day 1 or even be scalable from any initial successes. We're just going to have to wait and see.

Yay just in time for country wide protests! Its kind of funny how the protestors burned those waymos immediately, i guess just general robo hate is seething to come out too?

That isn't the 'Robotaxi' that they showed off, that's just a run of the mill Tesla SUV they can't find a buyer for

... and some brave (?) passengers.

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