Tesla unsupervised Robotaxis are nowhere to be found | Hacker News Reader

Tesla unsupervised Robotaxis are nowhere to be found

lightbrd.com

69 pointsTheAlchemist38 comments

I don't think actual unsupervised robotaxis exist, given the reports that they're just having the supervisor follow in a chase car[1].

[1] https://futurism.com/advanced-transport/car-following-tesla-...

Thank you - that’s what I was wondering. I noticed that Elon and others who were talking about how Robotaxis have improved, were saying something like ‘there is no safety driver’. They didn’t just say flat out that it is autonomous. I wonder if all that’s happened, is that they have a remote operator. I simply can’t believe the claims that FSD is anywhere near what Waymo can do.

You can test drive it and see for yourself. No need to believe anything. But of course whatever safety threshold they have, they haven’t met it yet if they’re still supervising.

It's possible that they tried it and pulled the plug due to an unforeseen issue. In other words, it doesn't exist, but it did for a few hours, and will return. There's no way Elon would admit this publicly.

Maintaining a meme stock is hard, really hard. You do have to hand it to the bloke that he is working hard on this.

Back in the day, the term "snake oil salesman" was used and it is as fresh today as it always was.

We should update that term to "driverless car salesman"...

How about just "Elon Musk"

Back in the day, snake oil salesmen weren't seen as frauds (the actual health benefits of snake oil, or lack thereof, is another discussion). It wasn't until after 1916, when Stanley's Snake Oil was discovered to not actually contain any snake oil, that the term came to be associated with fraudulent selling.

There are only around 50[0] unique vehicles operating in Austin (not all operating at the same time) and initially only about 3 are operating "with no safety monitor in the car." Based on social media posts it seems they all have chaser vehicles.

[0] https://robotaxitracker.com

No amount of failed promises, missed deadlines or just plain lies is going to dampen the stock, it’s just the way it is with this. Staying away is the best one can do.

There’s no consequences to Musk not delivering and simply making up bullshit.

I just saw a LinkedIn post from someone totally unrelated to Musk, or Tesla fawning about how amazing the Tesla Optimus robots are, how they are going to operate in space and how he would prefer one to give him surgery over a doctor.

100s of positive interactions followed

Humans seem to need some fiction to believe to get them through their day.

So as long as people don’t demand that reality is the driver of their future they will continue to live in whatever fantasy world that makes them the main character

I'd go easy on LinkedIn. It sounds like it is getting to you.

Yeah no doubt, It’s soooo bad

I was able to stay off it for so long, but I just had to get back on since I changed roles to CTO and its a whole marketing channel I have to use. That place is trash

Hopefully I can outsource that soon

> Humans seem to need some fiction to believe to get them through their day.

I think it's more that they want their stock values to stay high (or are simply bots with the same goal).

> Humans seem to need some fiction to believe to get them through their day.

Used to be religion. Now it’s billionaire saviors.

I’ve noticed that has spread from blue collar Americans to everyone now. Like the comment sections on All In podcast’s YouTube videos. Basically worship of billionaires who are in turn MAGA sycophants worshipping Trump. Meanwhile no one cares that the trillions this administration is spending will lead to huge inflation to pay off debt. We will be made poor so billionaires can get a bigger number next to the B.

> 100s of positive interactions followed

Sounds like Optimus is already very active on X

JerryRigEverything randomly started dissing Tesla's FSD system two days before he posts a sponsored video for Ford's self-driving feature.

It's probably a good thing they are doing this ultra-conservative rollout of robotaxi.

A rate of 0 is not actually a rollout

HN is so fucked at this point. For the last year at least, anything critical of elon gets flagged.

Yep. I keep posting them though, because the idiocy of it all gets crazier and crazier every week.

I even start to wonder if tech people believe Tesla propaganda machine by now.

Funny all I see here are every single critical Elon post from Fred at Electrek.co gaining hundreds of points

Ford F-150 Lightning outsold the Cybertruck and was then canceled for poor sales https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46618901 [970 points]

Tesla’s 4680 battery supply chain collapses as partner writes down deal by 99% https://electrek.co/2025/12/29/tesla-4680-battery-supply-cha... [672 points]

Tesla influencers tried coast-to-coast self-driving, hit debris before 60 miles https://electrek.co/2025/09/21/tesla-influencers-tried-elon-... [299 points]

Tesla reports another Robotaxi crash https://electrek.co/2025/12/15/tesla-reports-another-robotax... 155 points

When Tesla's FSD works well, it gets credit. When it doesn't, you get blamed https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45869916 151 points

Just 9 to 12 months guys!

And yet TSLA sits comfortably at ~$450. If someone knowledgeable can explain this to me, I'd be very grateful.

The market is now a casino is how

bingo

Purchasing TSLA is placing a bet that Elon Musk can generate enough hype such that somebody else will purchase TSLA from you at a higher price later.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greater_fool_theory

> explain this to me

Humans are the same emotional, irrational apes as we were 100,000 years ago, and the most emotional and irrational thing any of us do, bar none, is delude ourselves by pretending that we aren't.

I'd argue we're too rational and not irrational enough. If we were sufficiently irrational, the first time Musk-rat lied, everyone woulda bailed. It takes a thoroughly motivated rationality to cling to the hopes of promises that won't ever be kept.

It's better to think of tesla as an MIC company than a typical auto manufacturer (indeed the auto industry has always held a tight, symbiotic, and often mandatory link with the military).

Tesla's domestic EV manufacturing, Starlink's satellite network, and ofc SpaceX are all critical pieces of American foreign policy. It should be obvious why Tesla is one of the most heavily subsidized companies of all time[0]

[0] https://subsidytracker.goodjobsfirst.org/parent/tesla-inc

I don't really understand why Tesla is part of the MIC. They don't do anything for the military and has no strategic value. In terms of foreign policy, considering the US has soft-power due to Tesla, the company continues to under perform year-by-year while European and Chinese companies are gaining market share.

I am not a fan of Elon Musk, I've been skeptical of his accomplishments way before his involvement in politics so I may be a little biased. But it seems to me that Tesla is a failure. The last new model launched was a flop and a subject of general ridicule, they've stopped innovating, the existing models are last in reliability scores and no promises were kept wrt to self-driving, robotaxis, hyperloop or whatever other sci-fi scam was talked about at every shareholder meeting.

I really don't understand how in other areas (such as Enterprise AI or cloud computing in the past) investors want to see actual growth and huge returns and they threaten to pull their money constantly. But when it comes to Tesla in particular, the company keeps getting years and years of leeway while it's failing and failing.

Perhaps the hope is that it will get nationalized or be in some sort of public-private partnership that would ensure perpetual bailouts and it's just a way of sucking off money from the taxpayer?

People are VERY gullible.

This should not be surprising to anyone who pays any attention to Elon Musk's ̶l̶i̶e̶s̶ , er... "predictions"

You mean pump and dump fraud

Flagged again by right wing chuds who have to defend anything Elon, Trump or White Supremacy. This site is a joke.

oh christ this guy again

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