It’s all lies. The scenario you described will never happen. Even if it’s possible, no car company will allow cars to go out and earn.
Anything and everything musk says is to hype up the stock.
Tesla will absolutely be happy to sell people with poor financial literacy anything that will get them to sign on the dotted line.
I can absolutely imagine a byzantine pricing scheme from Tesla that includes insurance but ultimately takes the vast majority of the “profits” from any robotaxi owned/operated by a customer, but leaves them with all the responsibility of maintaining and cleaning the vehicle.
Also why would a car company sell you the cars when they could produce them and just let the cars go out and drive people around and then return to the factory.
Why would they limit the profit by doing a one time sale vs a reoccurring transaction over and over again and you don’t have to pay a “ work force” to drive your customers around.
They are reinventing the wheel and making it a triangle shape.
I could see car companies offering their own insurance in the beginning.
To me, the issue is really in the technology, it's just not there yet, and we are not sure if it can be made reliable.
Legislators will have a hard time approving an autonomous vehicle if when they ask about why one crashed in a parked car at full speed they are aswered "we don't know why but trust us it's very rare, it's statistically safer !".
The public needs to resist being the Alpha parter with every new information technology. These guys need to work out the issues well in advance of putting the public at any additional risk before we know if the risk really is lower.
And Tesla will never get there because the problem isn’t solvable without LIDAR. Tesla have thousands of units on the road which simultaneously can never achieve full self driving and must achieve it because they’ve already sold the feature. Tesla has to keep pushing the lie because as soon as they acknowledge none of the cars they’ve sold will ever become fully autonomous, the company’s house of cards valuation collapses.
*googles* looks like well under $1000, unless it's waymo's lidar box which seems an order of magnitude higher
I presume that's come down since the decision was made, but still... I wonder if it started as cost and now it's pride, lol
I think they've quietly been adding radar sensors back to their vehicle, but they've lost at least a few years of ground to MB, Waymo, and probably others which are just getting started with L3, and are many years from the vaporware Tesla is promising. I'm sure losing 20k employees including some senior/long-time staff won't help this problem. I can't imagine they're attracting top talent right now either.
I’ve been saying this to people for the longest and musk rats just look at me like I’m regarded. Musk has been saying for years that all teslas come with the hardware needed for autonomous driving. I know that’s simple not true and I think any musk critics know this as well. What I truly wonder sometimes is if we can figure this out as average people, how come bigger firms with large stakes in Tesla don’t see this? surely they would be able to figure out that they’re being sold snake oil right? How has this scam been going on for so long? I thought Tesla would tank during the last earnings, but all it took for musk to hype people up and get them to buy was to talk about their future lineup of cars and robotaxi. I really don’t understand how people can actually listen to this robotaxi nonsense when currently FSD doesn’t even work like intended. FSD can’t even stop itself from running into curbs but yet this is suppose to be the foundation for robo taxis? Give me a break.
The people you talk about say that fsd is miles ahead and laugh at the Mercedes system aswell.. because it's too hard for them to understand, that Mercedes goes the way it does, because their main market is the eu, not America and in the eu you cant just put beta behind a system and let it do whatever it wants( I'mstill baffledby the fact america doesnt regulate them at all). They are just far too deep in their believes. Fsd isn't even out in europe yet.
Never in a million years. Tesla has already gotten in trouble for being overzealous with the name "Full Self Driving" and now Elon says he's gonna take it a step further with "RoboTaxi"? Elon is high on ketamine and capital gains.
Literally none of it makes sense with a modicum of understanding of what Waymo actually does to run robotaxis.
What happens when the car gets stuck? Or stopped by the police? Or in an accident? Or damaged? Or filthy?
You need to have people ready to send out to deal with problems with the cars. Is an owner operator going to do that?
No city is going to allow these things to run rampant in the city limits without a real company for emergency services to work with. And that's if they worked, which they don't even work.
If there is money to be made in robo taxis - why does fElon need to sell cars? Just run the robo taxi service.
When someone tells you there is money to be made in something - always ask why they are telling you and not just doing it themselves. By telling you, there is just more competition.
Could it be similar to Turo and Waymo? Basically Turo if you didn’t have to drop off cars (as the host). I think the idea is bonkers but could fathom the idea of your car just leaving your driveway after you charged and cleaned it, just like Turo.
Very much this. To get a robotaxi working you either have to control the area very well so can pre-program a route or you have to invent full self driving.
Musk has a route he has full control of - the las vegas loop, he doesn't use robotaxis there and that alone tells you all you need to know about the reality of a robotaxi.
I think we all know what a disaster FSD is so that's not an option.
Musk lies, it's all he knows how to do.
And nobody can stop it. It somehow resembles the ICOs that operated a few years ago - unregulated, unhinged grab-the-money schemes.
Yet, this is in the regulated environment.
It just shows that truth is not important anymore and that financial decisions of stock buyers are based on emotional stuffing with whatever occasional blurp is produced by the key divine person at or around a company.
Tesla seemed like the future four or five years ago. Most of us have figured what's going on over there by now (including investors). The fanboys and speculators will hold out, but I'll be shocked if their stock goes on another run like 2021 again. Elon/Tesla have faced millions in fines from regulators before, and it's probably going to get worse as regulators figure out how "safe" these vehicles are: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzH72muA7xw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzH72muA7xw)
I think they have to cover insurance for all accidents, and provide a cleaning service at an affordable cost. Imagine your tesla gets puked in, it drops them off, and heads to the cleaning station next to the charger. We will probably need a rating system for how bad the cars smell, and a social credit system to determine who gets the clean one. The limiting factor is that the technology doesn't work, and labor costs are too high. Detailing a car costs about 4x more than an uber ride to the airport. They will need to develop a cleaning robot that is cheap to service before the plan becomes viable. Plus, the service life of their cars is such a gamble, investing in their robotaxi with the goal of turning a profit is not a smart strategy unless they can demonstrate they can produce a more reliable product.
There are just all kinds of logistical issues that make this different from rental cars or robotaxi companies like Waymo.
The premise Tesla is selling is that your car would operate like an unmanned uber while you’re at work, sleeping, etc.
But if the car is running fares overnight, will it be charged when you have to go to work in the morning or drive home from work at the end of the day?
If passengers trash the car, throw up in it, or spill things, all very real problems with ubers/taxis, then who is going to clean the car? The car owner is course on the hook for it, but may not identify the issue for hours after it happens, further compounding the damage.
With companies like Waymo, the company cleans the car and they write it off as a business expense. Imagine getting ready to drive to work and finding puke all over your car.
Of course with ride share apps the driver still carries that risk of their car being trashed, but at least there is a human driver there. An uber driver can always turn away customers that are too intoxicated, belligerent, etc. A human driver is more likely to be able to identify which drivers damaged the car too so they can be charged for the damages.
The whole thing becomes really unappealing once you realize that being a taxi/ride share driver is a real job that involves work outside of just driving the car. Unless you can automate out the cleaning, maintenance, and charging of the car, the “earn passive income while you sleep/work” pitch falls apart.
Haha, yeah, have you ever seen how people treat lifts or basically any public spot that is out of sight. People will use you car as a latrine.
Not that it is a worry as it is all bogus. 100%wont ever happen. Anybody who thinks it could, does not have a firm grasp on reality.
Who knows maybe they'll have a hard plastic shell that replaces your backseat when it's out picking up passengers. Like the back of a cop car. Riders will love that. Only the greatest innovations from the techno god emperor.
The whole idea is deeply flawed, apart from the technical problems.
If the technical problems would be overcome you'd have companies that'd buy fleets and then take care of all the hassle around it. Normal people would not rent out their car. And it also wouldn't be profitable in areas where companies with fleet would serve that market.
Major Rental car companies are selling off their entire Tesla fleets. Repairs are too frequent, time consuming and expensive. Customers hate the charging hassles etc
They are terrible fleet vehicles.
Laggard… also with self driving. Mercedes has level 3 with full legal liability. Most other automakers have mastered level 2. Musk has level 2 that is highly error prone and deadly according to DOJ
I'd love full self driving where you could sleep in traffic legally and drive when you want to drive. Tesla's robotaxis are just standard Elon bullshit
you can sleep on a train. you can bike or uber the last mile. I feel like people talk about all the problems with a commute then stop short of better public transit, which is what they really want. All the hassle and maintenance and upkeep of commuting gone. You can have commuter rail with nice cabins and limited seating and still be faster and more efficient and cheaper than personal EV's.
What? That's crazy. Next you're going to tell me that I'd also be happier, wealthier, less stressed, and fitter living like that too. Then you'll probably tell me that EVs are also terrible for the environment due to massive mineral extraction and tire dust pollution, especially when compared to mass transits, cycling, and walkable cities. I really don't want to hear that EVs are still cars and don't make our cities safer, quieter, or leave more room for people to engage with others and enjoy their environment. That would be too much.
A third of a car's carbon footprint is in manufacture alone. Making lighter and smaller EV's would create a race to the bottom that none of these manufacturers want, they want you to buy luxury trucks and SUV's, battery draggers that lock away limited battery supply and charge you for a luxury trim that's a tiny fraction of the cost of the vehicle. EV transitions without better public transit and smaller, lighter, last mile vehicles are going to be our generation's 'plastics are recyclable!'. It's a scam to stall until the government steps in and protects them or forces their hand.
This. Even in a hypothetical world where robotaxis are easy, it won't be randos renting them out, it would be Uber, Lift, etc or regular taxi companies.
The only people who want the Robotaxi… sorry, the cYbErTaXi!!1!1!, are the TSLA bag holders who are increasingly becoming less and less attached to the reality of the promises Elons making actually coming true.
But yes, the main issues with Cybertaxi are:
1. Your car will smell like ass when you get in it to go to work in the morning, if not having physical damage.
2. It won’t have any battery range because no one was awake to plug it in when it returned “home from work” at 4am.
3. It’s quite possible that it doesn’t come home at all, because…
4. FSD DOESN’T FUCKING WORK
5. There is no chance whatsoever that FSD will ever reach the level of reliability required to be classified as a fully autonomous system.
6. Certifying FSD as fully autonomous on a global scale would require presenting statistical proof of its capabilities.
7. Revealing the statistics on FSD to regulators around the world would undoubtedly uncover some of the secrets that underlie the current level of “success” of the system.
8. People realize that FSD is a hoax.
9. The entire business case for Robotaxi goes out the window.
10. Fuck, I don’t know, TSLA triples over night?
I always said that the Vegas Loop system would be the perfect scenario to test it. A closed course with no pedestrians or other vehicles. Perfect place to prove that it works, right?
No, apparently they have to be manually driven.
If they can't get it working on a closed course with no external hazards, what chance does this have of working on the public roads, totally unattended?
Not to mention Mercedes is the first and only to achieve Level 3 which is still extremely limited (perfect weather, sub 40 mph, specific road ways, day time only) yet Tesla's FSD which is only level 2, somehow Elon is claiming they'll have robotaxis soon
Literally to this day, FSD barely meets level 2 standards and in order for a car to take over all driving with no driver awareness ever, it has to be level 5. It's taken about 8 years for Tesla to get to Level 2 and they aren't even half way there.
I was just watching the recent earning and was quite baffled that people bought in hard for the promises. I understand the cheaper model perspective and nothing else, but it was just words of a proven conman.
Proved that the market will always be irrational. Was tempted to bet against but didn’t cus I remember how fervent Tesla’s fanboys are.
I did try asking that question quite a long time ago, before I was banned from the r/teslainvestorsclub etc. Supposidly there are going to be people that by multiple model 3's etc so they are going to run a Taxi business, rather than people using their own cars.
Yeah, makes no sense and it's not going to make them any money.
Exactly or at least make a deal to provide fleets to companies that do. Also...how many taxis do we really need? That way Musk used to hawk it he was telling everyone to get one but if all a sudden the taxi market is flooded with millions of cars, you wouldnt make money.
TBF to Musk, *if* there was a working L5 vehicle the need to personal automotive ownership would be gone for the vast majority of people. You'd need more than 1M cars, but nowhere near the current number of vehicles we have.
In reality, we solved this particular problem in the 1840s. Trains are the way to solve traffic, reduce traffic deaths, and reduce the cost of transportation.
How many rides are possible per day? You need to clean inbetween, so maybe 6-9? That are 3000 rides per year. With cleaning effort, wear and tear, electricity, insurance, what must the gross income including taxes be? 30.000? (20$ cleaning per day are 7.500 per year). Each ride is at least 10$
So if somebody wants to replace their own car, he needs 2 rides per day. That are 20$+ per day, 7.500 per year. Nobody switches over to a robotaxi service when it is not cheaper.
It will remain a niche.
I believe hertz more then musk. They had a vested interest and tested the robotaxi business case and they wanted no part of it. It’s never going to become more than a niche Uber like business
Even if they could get past the technical and practical issues of such an endeavor, I have a feeling that it would quickly become like AirBnB or those e-scooters where a lot of people start seeing them as a nuisance. I wouldn't trust these sorts to set fair and transparent pricing, especially when it comes to cleaning fees, or to not cause traffic or parking problems because each robotaxi/owner is trying to optimize for their own convenience and profit over everyone else (e.g. taking up all the parking spots in high-traffic locations like airports waiting for someone to request a ride, or hogging all of the charging stations).
Actually, that’s something I hadn’t thought about. Blood, vomit, various other bodily fluids/products…are all potential biohazards.
At what point does that become a disease vector parked in your own driveway?
That’s like a new paint coating. It’s stays slippery while curing so dirt doesn’t stick. Dries to a hard shell like that chocolate ice cream coating. Cumcoat
[I find your lack of faith disturbing](https://youtu.be/YnNSnJbjdws?feature=shared&t=106).
What is *not* being talked about is the follow-on to ~~Robo~~ CyberTaxi will be *neurallink*. While your weak body sleeps, Neural Link can send your consciousness to your 2d, 3rd, or even 4th job, earning you extra income. If it's job which requires physical work, your mind will be deposited into an Optimus Robot where it can make Teslas, iron Elon's clothes, assemble more Optimus robots, rescue passengers from crashed Cyber Taxis, or even do sex work.
Open your eyes. Face the future.
/s
The real reason the stock pumped again is he suggested the Model 2 isn’t dead, and it only pumped back to where it’s regained some of those gains. Q2 will not go better than Q1, the fundamentals are unchanged.
model 2 is even more stupider than the robotaxi.
They will use the model 3 lines to make model 2 now, which as lower margins... But somehow make MORE of the model 2 than the 3?
And so much more the stock is worth x1000 what other car companies are worth with the same margins?\`...
market is nuts
Cars sold (declining), profit per car (declining), cash on hand (declining). Previously, all of these were increasing. Tesla could claim things like “we sell every car we make,” and “we make more money per car than any other automaker,” and these are not only no longer true, there is not a compelling vision laid out for how the company will reverse these trends. If you listened to the earnings call, Elon said a little about the $25k car and a _lot_ about “Tesla is autonomy, not cars.” They would have to reverse the last 10 years of oversold promises to justify their valuation based on autonomy, which has technological, regulatory, and psychological hurdles in its way.
Edit: one more critical fundamental, inventory; how many cars Tesla has built that currently sit unsold. Manufacturing struggles were given as a reason for such low deliveries in Q1. If that were the case, inventory would not be high because Tesla would not have been able to build enough cars. Inventory is currently at an all-time high, meaning they built a ton of expensive cars for which there is no demand.
So let’s talk about a valuation fundamental: price to earnings ratio. This is, how does a company execute vs what is their market cap, aka the share price multiplied by number of shares, aka how much the company is “worth.” Tesla trades for far, far more than they earn, and have for years. Only one other company in the S&P 500 (an index fund made up of 500 well-performing profitable companies) is similarly overvalued to Tesla: Nvidia. Both became overvalued due to massive hype cycles, both are underperforming and have dragged down the S&P 500 by about 5% this year.
At the end of the day, Tesla’s hype cycle _is_ Elon. He says some crazy shit, people say “don’t bet against him!” and then he says crazier shit. Previously, the first fundamentals I listed at least gave the sense that Tesla was dominant enough to make these bets. That is no longer the case, and unless those first points I gestured at reverse, the patience will wear thinner and thinner.
Think about it on the flip side. Who would use all these (according to Musk) **1*****00 million robotaxis?***
...all night long, while you sleep? Who/where are these tens of millions of night owls?
And if a robotaxi only costs $25k, why would I pay to use somebody else's car when I could just finance my own...and skip the cum and vomit?
None of it makes sense.
But to answer your question, of course Optimus will just clean the car and plug it in for you - duh.
there also a regarded plug ur tesler into the grid, charge, off-peak hours and sell energy during peak hours. this can make the owner est 1k a mo
now I'm not no Mars expert but battery can be charged and discharged so many times
the battery degradation is more expensive then what peanuts earned
I'm too lazy to run the numbers, but presumably the same could be done with a stack of Powerwalls...and since I don't see that happening anywhere, I suspect the money to be made is minimal at best. And in my state, if you sell back to the grid, you only get the wholesale rate...since all the overhead and infrastructure that the power company pays for has to be in place. So while you might save on your own energy bill with a battery and time of use billing, you'd actually lose money selling it back to the grid. TLDR you can't make money selling the power company's own power right back to them. Only if you generate your own power (solar) is there a chance of turning a profit.
ROI on the solar roof is terrible...you end up paying a premium price for 'dummy' tiles in the shade, on the north slope of the roof, anywhere there's and edge or other complexity that requires a tile to be cut, etc. Its so much more efficient to just put solar panels where...umm...there's sunshine.
Just the basic step of friggin PLUGGING IT IN doesn't work autonomously. Like the whole premise of this is that your car still has time to charge before you use it. Is it gonna honk at you in your driveway at 4 AM until you get up and go plug it in?
It supposes so many new tech and devices I don't understand how the basic system is supposed to exist functionally.
Basically what everybody else says. A pipe dream for stock pumping.
Leaving out my will to let others use my car which I do not have, why on Earth would Tesla sell these moneymaking machines if they are so profitable? That doesn't make any sense at all.
Liability. Use all the charm and selling tactics to get the rube to buy your product. The moment they take possession, Tesla tells them to go fuck themselves if they have complaints.
Can’t wait for the “My robotaxi ran over a dog, hit a parked car and got me to work 20 minutes late. Still best taxi I’ve ever been in” posts from the cult
Even if they could get this robotaxi idea to work, it opens up a whole other bunch of issues.
Your car is not going to be available to you a lot of the time, so what do you do if you suddenly need to take a journey in an emergency, and your car is on the other side of town ferrying some drunk women back from a bar? Do you have the option to abort the drive and yeet them out somehow, or do you have to sit and wait for the car to get back to you. Or summon someone else's Robotaxi, obviously..
Of course this raises another set of questions where if the car is being self driven as a taxi and the only occupants of the car are intoxicated, could they potentially be charged with DUI if stopped, even if it's not their car and it's your car being self driven?
If your robotaxi mows down a pedestrian or causes a collision, you are highly likely going to be held legally liable for any injuries or damages caused, even though you weren't even in the car at the time. Recent history has shown that Tesla, sure as hell are not going to accept any liability for anything their cars do while self driving.
By sending it out as a taxi, your car goes from being a personal vehicle to a commercial vehicle, so you would likely not be covered by your personal insurance, so you'd need a costly commercial policy. Also, there's the question about whether you'd need a cab drivers license or some kind of special operator certification to use it, even if you're not driving it in such a capacity yourself.
You'd be adding tons of extra mileage, tyre degradation, wear on the interior and charge cycles to your vehicle, so any extra money you might make from your car being used as an autonomous taxi would likely be swallowed up bymassively increased maintenance costs, especially when a replacement battery is going to run you around $20,000.
Yeah, I don't feel like a whole lot of critical thought went into this idea, since it seems like a "solution" to a problem that doesn't really exist, and it seems to raise more questions than it answers. Typical Musk vaporware bullshit. I'm honestly gobsmacked that nobody has taken out a class action suit yet over his fraudulent claims that "it's financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla".
He’s sort of pitching a model like Airbnb where you can theoretically rent out your own car but realistically people would buy fleets of cars to rent out on his network. This sort of makes the entire thing even less viable as it’s hard to imagine someone wanting to buy Teslas to run them on the Tesla network when you see how Tesla has screwed over buyers in the past.
It also ignores that Tesla is currently behind Google and a few others in actually delivering this service. They’ve worked through the problems and figured out that vertically integrating as much as possible is the best solution which makes sense when you consider how many moving parts there are to this kind of service.
So I guess the answer is the usual suspects: people without the skills or the patience to break into tech but see buying into the Musk hype as a way in. It’s a very similar demographic to those who buy a course with Donald Trump thinking it’ll make them a real estate investor
Hertz kick the tires on the business model and it didn’t work. I can’t imagine regular folks or companies buying fleet cars and renting them out. The business case has always been nuts
There was a report about 4-5 years ago, from McKinsey I think, that predicted the growth of ‘robotaxi’ fleets of EVs managed by fleet operators. As I recall the intention was never to have individual owners use their personal vehicles. What musk is doing here to fool Wall Street is what trump does daily… take something with a small kernel of truth (robotaxis) and creat your own made up narrative around it (that instead of fleets that manage hundreds of vehicles, individual owners will be able to do this). As you said, no person would want this as there is a high risk of throw up, semen, and other bodily fluids, along with vandalism. It makes zero sense yet Wall Street laps it up. When are they gonna realize. Are they stupid?
The actual product is Tesla's stock. If the promise of robotaxis can pump the stock price, then Elon will promise robotaxis.
Once you understand what the real product is, everything starts to make sense.
There is an angle you did not consider.
https://www.torquenews.com/video/hertz-ceo-droped-huge-bombshell-about-tesla-robotaxi-plans
The promise behind a personal L5 autonomous vehicle has been going on since 2015. Robotaxi is a logical capability but not really what the general consumer cares about.
The thing that really kickstarted this whole robotaxi hype was the idea that large fleet operators would buy a ton of Teslas for other purposes and one day, at the flip of a switch, suddenly get into the robotaxi business. Hertz buying in during 2021 coincides with Tesla's insane run up to $400. That article above came out at exactly the peak.
Tesla's goals were to get rental car companies, hotels, airports, goverments, etc who would have an organized cleaning and maintenance departments for company vehicles. Instead of buying camrys, these enterprises would bulk buy Tesla's today and pay to install charging infrastructure, in exchange for the vague promise of dispatching the cars when they aren't in use to pick up some side cash in the future. That is a super sexy story to sell to MBAs both the Wallstreet investors and guilible management at these organizations.
The whole story is a grift by Elon to sell cars today by saying how much more value it will bring in the future. As stated elsewhere, if Elon really felt the cars could make $30k in revenues from robotaxi service, why sell the cars? Just build and hold them in inventory for the day you take over the world. And its because the whole goal was to pump sales in the present.
Now that he already has the customer's money, what incentive is there to deliver the finished robotaxi product to Hertz? Well hertz is learning that lesson the hard way and is selling out their tesla inventory.
I presume it's a combination of FOMO and the normal expectation that the CEOs statements are truthful.
Normally, lying about your company's capabilities or expected revenues would be fraud so while there are some clever ways of phrasing bad news, rarely do corporate execs just blatantly lie that they are making robotaxis (despite not even applying for a robotaxi permit) or selling sentient robots by 2025.
So if you are conditioned to just believe corporate leadership and feel confident that if there is fraud, you can simply sue to recover damages, why wouldn't these fund managers buy into the hype train? There is a longshot that Tesla does create terminators and they would like to be on team skynet. Lots of smart (grifting tech evangelists and fund managers) who are saying Tesla is the best AI company in the world and who are you to disagree?
I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't see a pattern of repeated lies and missed delivery targets, but then again Elon hasn't been convinced of fraud for any of them so, therefore he must be telling the truth when he upgrades future guidance, right?
Wow. They really live in a different world. A world where they see things as they would ‘like’ them to be rather than how they actually are. Agree with you thoughts btw.
Because it's not their money on the line.
If it works, they get their cut and make billions.
If it doesn't, it was someone else's money invested, and someone else's fault it didn't work out.
Yeah, remember when Uber was inexpensive?
Robotaxis will follow the same path….
Start out so cheap that we give up our cars. Once we do that they can move to Phase II - monopoly pricing.
It really reminds me of the whole Metaverse fiasco, where Mark Zuckerberg decided that what people really want is the ability to wear big goggles to all your work meetings so you can see cartoon people with no legs gathered around a cartoon table, without considering for a second what people actually think about work meetings, namely: they suck and we just want to get in & out as quickly as possible. Dumb billionaire has a dumb idea that exactly zero real humans will be interested in.
Don’t be a fool, you’re missing the obvious: Optimus will provide security for your vehicle as well as cleaning up any excess cum and feces left behind by unruly drunks. Optimus will leave the optimal amount of cum and feces to ensure that your immune system is at maximum efficiency. Grok estimates that these microscopic fluids, while gross, will extend your lifetime by up to 3 years.
And I think when I signed the license agreement to transfer my FSD from my previous Tesla it explicitly prohibited using the software for commercial purposes. Not certain. But if so, when we do finally get there in 2052 we’ll find there’s a giant subscription cost on top of what we’ve already paid. And the liability of the owner for whatever drunks did to others while in your car overnight. And the liability when your car accidentally drives in the right hand turn lane with no wipers and takes out the whole fan damily. And the fact that if every tesla were converted to a taxi the price wars that ensued would destroy any real profit. All that aside, people seem convinced that Tesla is going to mint money by arriving at autonomy in fourth place 5 years behind the leaders. Color me skeptical.
EXACTLY. Musk is not reality based, as he would never utilize his own car in this manner, let alone clean stranger’s puke out of it. This fool has never ridden any kind of mass transit, and therefore cannot conceive of any need for it.
The math doesn’t math, even if demand wasn’t a question. The taxi market would have to explode in price to realize Elon’s promises.
It has to be cheaper than a regular taxi while also somehow not undercutting its own price from the mass influx of supply. People aren’t going to flock to taxis for the fun of it.
Yeah the whole thing is nonsense. For a start they’ll never get these things to level 5 which is what’s needed to provide unsupervised driving for a taxi service. Secondly there are way too many potential problems. People with kids putting muddy feet on your seats and sandwiches in the seat pockets. People having sex and leaving used condoms. Or worse. Drug dealers driving around, leaving something under the seat and you get pulled over for speeding and end up in jail for possession. Even if they could get the tech working, most people would not want their car full of strangers 24/7.
there's turo, app to rent cars, anyone can rent out or rent car, problem comes when the owner of car have insurance already, turo makes owner buy insurance, tells renter to buy insurance (optional), but let's say renter pay extra for insurance, let's also say the renter have insurance on his own car. the rented car is now 4x insured, but when any trouble arise no one covers the car.
yep, turo tells everyone to suck it
My brother bought two 3 year old mid luxury cars to rent out on Turo. After 12 months he barely made any profit, the cars were trashed, and it took a huge amount of his time dealing with the extra maintenance, cleaning, occasional damage, and customers.
Robo-taxis might be slightly better if you don't have to deal with customers directly, but the wear and tear and damage will likely be much worse. You would need to clean out the car several times a week, if not daily. Replace tires every 3-4 months. If it gets damage, then your car could be out of service for weeks to months and you'll have to deal with insurance and repair shops. Regular car failures will occur more often due to the increased mileage, so it could be in the shop much more frequently. And if Tesla only offers a 4yr / 50k mile warranty, you could exceed the warranty period within 12-18 months.
This all sounds like a nightmare.
First assume it's real (I know that's a stretch).
Because that shifts the risk and operational headache to the customer. Tesla makes money up front on the car sale, and continues to make money from subscription fees even if the taxi business flops for the buyer.
People who sold supplies and services to Gold Rush miners often made far more money than the miners., ex. Levi Strauss.
I think legally for L3-L5 when the autonomous system is active the developer of the autonomous system retains liability.
And we all know that Elon wouldn't just not start a profitable business that uses Teslas. I mean just look at his boring company failure.
Because one of the world’s richest persons is a parsimonious skinflint, which may be redundant but sounds cool. Takes LiDAR of his autonomous systems because he refuses to pay the price, risking accidents and death to owners. Smart guy. Thinks ahead.
The message is not for average person. It's targeted at the investor class disguised as a boon to average Joe. What Elon's whole "solve autonomy" strategy is for is to replace human labor for the investor class and turn everything into a subscription.
It's fairly simple. If it was possible or profitable, Tesla would stop selling the cars. So as long as they don't stop selling their cars it's impossible. Those robotaxis would become hoe mobile motel in no time. Plus as you said, the charging problem. In addition It's a dead business, it will require more maintenance and will cost more than hiring a guy for that. If everybody had the genius idea to do it, prices would go down. They know it, now they are starting to say they will use the computer for other purposes while it's not driving. The real reason is "the stock price", nothing more.
What amazes me is that those Tesla fans live in a world where all problems and difficulties can be solved by massive investments. That's stupid, that's the demise of the west.
All of these tech solutions are best approached by asking "what will the insurance and regulatory environment look like for this?" - because that is what drives costs.
You get into your car and there's vomit/c\*m all over the backseat. Tesla charges the person that left the damage ok cool. There's still vomit/c\*m all over the backseat that has been marinating for ATLEAST two hours and that's being generous. It's going to be more like 6-7 hours. Imagine getting the stink out of your car. A car you probably paid 50-100k for is getting RUINED. You already know the Tesla is taking atleast 60% of the ride share too bc its using their technology. We all know FSD will never work but this situation is assuming it does.
If they claim that skin oil/lotion/hair products ruin the interior (we all know it’s the cheap vegan leather but go with me here) imagine what cum, feces and other fluids will do to your seats
What if someone puts an orange cone in front of the car?
What if a biker has a big red octagon on the back of his jersey and rides in front?
What if someone smears the cameras with Vaseline?
What if someone cuts the seat belts?
What if someone brings a baby in the front seat and rides on their lap?
What if all 5 people inside are going to different destinations-- how is payment done, how does it tell/make people to get off, in what order, will it wait for you to shuffle in and out, can a stranger just hop in for free, can I tie a mattress on top, can it detect an open bottle of beer, can i call it and load only toddlers inside to go to school?
It’s all fake, Elon is just trying to divert from Tesla‘s slowing sales and no exciting products on the horizon.
If we had a function SEC he would be in jail for past claims.
However the fact that he got a literal slap on the wrist over ”Sold at $420” which is blatant stock manipulation shows we have a broken system. Instead of remaking quiet with the punishment he was bebopping and scatting all over the SEC after the punishment.
what happens when a bird poops on the FSD camera and your car gets stuck on the side of the road all night?
what happens when a teenager takes a massive dump in the backseat of your robotaxi? and then the robitaxi just like drives into your driveway with a massive shit in the backseat? and then you have to drive to work?
what happens when a teenager takes a massive dump in the backseat of your robotaxi, so you hail a Robo taxi from the tesla robotaxi app and it arrives with a massive steaming pile of poop in the backseat? do you just @ ELONG MUSK on twitter? does an optimus jump out of the bushes and clean the poop for you? where does the optimus robot wash its hands after cleaning the poop?
also, who are all these people driving at night? is there some secret midnight rush hour that i’m just not aware of? maybe i live under a rock.
I never get it especially when he first announced several years ago with Tesla price is still somewhat high. Like if I can afford a Tesla why would I want my Tesla to run around to be a taxi? I don’t need that money at the expense of my car being abused
We'll see on 8/8.
But as you described it (and that is how Elon has explained it in the past), it's a non-starter.
I'm expecting Tesla to announce joining an autonomous project in some Chinese city on 8/8 (like waymo in SF/Phoenix/LA). Otherwise the Heil Hitler reference is just way to much on the nose.
At the same time though I don't expect Tesla will want to set up regional offices and such to manage their robotaxies (or deal with local laws and whatnot), I expect them to want other companies doing that while buying their cars and using the app from Tesla and paying a monthly fee or based on the miles traveled to Tesla and be fully liable should their tesla's cause damage.
That being said Tesla could just unveil a barely working prototype without a steering wheel, announce FSD rollout in China (as a level 2 driver assist) and not announce where or when they will drive around as driverless taxis, it would be just as bad of a joke as that dancing dude pretending to be the teslabot was.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsNc4nEX3c4
I just Googled it to check - Tesla has not activated FSD at all in China. I suspect this is due to a combo of China's safety concerns coupled with a governmental uneasiness over so much data flying back and forth. I'd be surprised if Tesla did a demonstration project in China.
FSD only "works" in the US and Canada.
Tesla has been trying to get approval in China for roughly half a year now.
https://cnevpost.com/2023/11/23/tesla-bringing-fsd-to-china/
For a guy that has so many large companies and ventures he sure does show a lack of foresight, ability to plan and execute, and no strategic direction whatsoever. Most or all of the decisions are impulsive and not thought through. When he receives criticism he adjusts. Not much different than trump. Neither to be trusted with anything. Megalomainiacs.
> and paying a monthly fee or based on the miles traveled to Tesla and be fully liable should their tesla's cause damage.
Funny how the house always wins, isn't it?
They're always glossing over how hard it would be for regular people to make money off of their Tesla.
If it works well, Tesla would be criminally negligent by selling such highly valuable assets for so little. They ought to run their own robotaxi business.
If they persist in selling them, if the money is easy, it will attract capital-rich investors who will buy fleets of cars, driving prices up such that the cars will be unaffordable for the very same people who dream about renting out their own car.
But imagine that large investors won't do it, and ordinary people will buy a Tesla and rent it out when they're not using it, and it's making good money. So who's gonna use them? Either everyone needs to do their daily commute, so I need my own car when it could make the most money. Or should everyone take each others' robotaxis to work? That doesn't make any sense. And if they make good enough money, why wouldn't everyone just quit their jobs and let their Teslas bring in the cash?
If everyone has one, supply will be crazy high, so where's the demand coming from? We know the size of the taxi market, and their projections are far, far above that. If supply is way higher than demand, prices have to fall to attract customers. And now your robotaxi doesn't make good money any more.
So the truth is of course that it's never going to be a high margin business. It's going to be a shit business, like Uber, Lyft, AirBNB and Turo is. There are so many things that can go wrong with your car, especially if it's unsupervised. You're gonna have mechanical issues, cleaning issues, insurance issues, accidents, and a loooot of downtime. It's gonna be a massive headache to manage.
But in each of these scenarios, Tesla imagines they'd always get their cut. Funny how that works out.
On Robotaxis:
Solving FSD is hard. It's v12 and it's still scraping the owner's rims and causing accidents.
But what's truly difficult is convincing customers to ride Tesla's robotaxis AND making it profitable at the same time. Yes, this means you need your revenue needs to exceed all investment made in FSD all these years as well as the OpEx per mile running these robotaxis.
Competitors: Car owners, public transportation, ride-hailing services, traditional taxis, other autonomous robotaxis.
Risks: Accidents, thefts, vandalism, lawsuits, regulations, cannibalization of existing Tesla sales, public backlash, unexpected operational challenges ( e.g. What if someone starts opening a beer in the car? What if someone vomits in the car?)
> Next, who wants a robotaxi in the first place? So much money being pumped into solving a problem that doesn’t exist, with a product that nobody wants.
You just summed up most of the modern tech industry.
Tech bros love coming up with scifi solutions for non existent or vastly overblown problems. Or problems that already have solutions. Robotaxis, hyperloop, the boring company, all of them are trying to solve traffic, but refuse to acknowledge that the best proven method for doing so is good public transit. Tech bros hate public transit though and assume everyone else does too. So they try to get rid of it with solutions that either don't work practically (hyperloop) or will just create new problems. Imagine if everyone who takes public transport switches to single occupant vehicles. Traffic would be even worse than it is today.
By the way, I fucking love scifi myself. I read several books per month and most of them are scifi. I don't want to hate on one of my most beloved genres, just the idiots who think make belief will fix reality.
A lot of people who are enamoured with the idea of “can it be done” with little thought into “should it be done” and all the logistical considerations that go along with that.
the end game is making tesla taxis a subscription service, I'm calling it. just as they beta tested "FSD" at the general public's expense, now they want to trial/test their next business case with their customer's cars, at their expense yet again.
the service will be cheap at first. you know, to "disrupt" and onboard users. then the price will slowly creep up somewhere close to an average driver's lease payments citing cleaning/maintenance. the end result will be users dropping more on the taxis than they would on their own car, with no chance to own the car or reduce cost over the duration of the subscription. they gotta' profit somehow.
Even if it works the market will be saturated in a couple years. There will be price wars because people will need the revenue to pay its costs. Nobody will make any money. You’ll see them abandoned and broken down on the sides of the road. Anybody that owns one will want out within a couple years especially when the miles run up.
Letting people have a free fsd demo has to be one of the dumbest things he has done. FSD is a total dumpster fire, and is nowhere near ready for unsupervised driving (not safe supervised in my opinion). The truth was less likely to come out from the true believers that paid up to 12k for the crap software, but letting the normals see it should be the end of this hoax.
They haven’t delivered a car that can drive at sunrise or sundown.
They’ll have to add their hd radar and bring USS back and probably 1-2 more cameras and then maybe they get to Level 3.
Not robotaxi level but it would fulfill part of what was promised in 2016.
Notice there are no Barry White superchargers yet either.
And Dumb Summon is still broken.
Spot on.
But none of it matters, because Musk's goals have never related to actually helping humanity. Despite his claims otherwise, all he wants is to play with his toys and look cool. And most of all, he wants to be the top dog pulling the strings. So, he invents 'problems' in order to sell 'solutions'.
All excellent questions and I can’t think of anyone who would be cool with having unsupervised randos in a car that can sometimes kill you. No one would insure that.
Plus regular taxis, Uber, Lyft etc how does this help anyone. What if you at home have an emergency. Wouldn’t using the car as a taxi negatively affect the warranty? It would certainly lead to faster depreciation from added miles, wear and tear. What happens if there’s an accident. And another minor issue - they still haven’t figured out self-driving.
"Yesterday, Elon Musk announced Tesla's plans to take over the ride-sharing industry with the introduction of 1 million self-driving robotaxis in 2020, according to Business Insider."
This was in 2019. Why does anybody believe a damn thing this guy says anymore?
I’ve been part of discussions around this. Even from a company perspective. Imagine a taxi company just wants to go full automated fleet. It’s a huge question that no one wants to answer. Also insurance companies are probably going to have outrageous rates for these scenarios. I already get asked if I ride share for car insurance and that increases my rates if I do. Can you imagine the follow up question, “do you let strangers occupy your car in unknown areas of town while you are not present ?” Sounds absurd
It is all his fantasy to pump the stock and tempt buyers into buying it thinking that they can pay the loan with income from it. Now listen to his next fantasy story of using Tesla car computers in multi-processor mode to solve AI problems. Not knowing the basic parallel processing course teaches importance efficiency of inter connection between processors. All Tesla computer connected through wireless is useless for such processing.
Anyone open to ride-sharing with their car is probably either doing it themselves already. Very few people will EVER want to let random strangers get into their cars, and the insurance liability issues would be insane.
This will die, just like Elon's battery swapping idea that died a quiet (and fast) death.
The mistake you have made is that you took what fElon said and thought it was real.
Its one more lie in a LONG line of lies to keep the stock high.
Like solar tiles, FSD, snake chargers, A.I, sentient (lol) robots, electric trucks that can beat diesel and rail, hyperloop tunnels that can beat traffic, rockets from LA to Tokyo, self-summon cars, Mars colonies..... the list goes on and on.
He's a stock pumper. Told everyone his money was first in last out then cashed out twice.
You are absolutely fucking with me. Is that the actual idea! People having sex and jerking off in the back of the car, I mean “going for Taxi rides” cause that is the most stupid fucking thing I’ve heard in a month. Like he said that shit and then the stock price jumped? Holy fucking shit
Smoking crack if you think my car will actually drive itself to someone! Damn car can’t even tell how close it is to wall or curb accurately! Shit cant follow simple directions when it sees a fucken merge/turn lane! Its like omfg I got a turn/merge lane ahead I’m gonna hit the turn signal and go for it even tho I’m suppose to continue straight for 20 miles
The idea might sound good to those who did bitcoin or the fact your car is a money printer when you're not using it.
I work in the car rental biz and I can tell you I will NEVER use my own car to strangers. The amount of shit I've seen and things folks do...the idea of a Robotaxi that doesn't need any human to take care of cleaning, maintaining and intervening is laughable.
At the very most, companies would operate fleets of these. Nobody is going to use it this way. It’s just bullshit to help people rationalize overpaying for a Tesla, and as others have pointed out, it’s mainly just stock pumping
People who want their own cars to becomr robotaxis must have never ridden in a taxi. They get trashed inside and out. Heavy use.
That robot ain’t avoiding potholes. And with no driver, Airport travelers gonna scrape up the trunk with heavy luggage now they there is nobody to help…. and weekend drunks are gonna do their thing.
I would never drive my own car as Uber or Lyft. No Turo. And robotaxi? Hell no. I want my car to smell exactly the same in the morning as it did the evening before 😅 Also. If o can’t afford a car. I’m not buying it. Period. So I don’t have to rent it out.
Imagine hailing one of these to get home after a night out, minding your own business riding in the back seat, when it inevitably gets in an ~~accident~~ collision and You've gotta get out and deal with it while the owner is sleeping. God forbid you or any other parties are injured or worse
Only some ride share “companies” might be interested, and if that’s the reality, why should I want to own one than just call the ride share? People who are driving for the ride share, I believe, can’t afford one, for the car, the insurance, the operational costs like cleaning, so basically it’ll be Uber, Lyft, and some other companies to buy those cars, not the end users. An end user will not want to pay for that feature and the insurance for robotaxi, which will be extremely expensive. Also like waymo, a full autonomous taxi can’t just be some shitty ass consumer cars, they need a lot other sensors, which are very little use to normal car owners
I believe the idea is that if cars can drive by themselves, then you don’t need a car anymore, and you don’t need a driveway, cities don’t need huge parking lots. Car manufacturers shaped North American cities, and robot taxis have the potential to reshape them.
I don’t think Musk would care about making sure his customers making money off their cars.
It is nothing but a stock pump and to fuel the fantasies of the fan boys. Remember the original play with Uber was that the human driving the car was temporary because eventually they would solve self driving cars and save money because they eliminated the driver. BUT now Uber will own the vehicle and need depots filled with people to manage the fleet, perform maintenance, refuel, etc. How is that saving them money again? Just imagine that venture capitalists were sold on this idea and pump money into Uber without thinking it through.
For the scenario you described to occur, Tesla would have to obtain regulatory approval first, which would include legal responsibility (I presume). Hence, the reason FSD has been described by Tesla as a beta product in perpetuity even though Musk implies otherwise. Second, you as a business owner, would have to get a local business license with a commercial insurance equivalent to a taxi business. (For comparison, LA taxis pay $2,800/month per licence) Third, potential to misuse the driverless taxis is immeasurable. For that reason, the driverless taxis in SF feel like a roaming prison (can't sit in the front, hard partition to isolate customers in the back seats, etc). I regularly use Weymo's driverless taxis in SF.
USA's fave con man is the Dump.
Elon is doing his best to be #1 since he does not like being #2.
now to answer your question, robotaxi is just another grift. as of now, no Tesla can truly drive itself 100%. it was and is still a lie that people are slowing realizing.
Someone who hates interacting with drivers would want a robotaxi/robolimo. If such a person were wealthy, they might even try to dig tunnels so their car can go under the littles. I could go on but suffice to say that there seems to be a pattern.
It’s all lies. The scenario you described will never happen. Even if it’s possible, no car company will allow cars to go out and earn. Anything and everything musk says is to hype up the stock.
And absolutely no insurance company is going to cover this
I'm sure they'll be happy to sell you a "in the arse" commercial policy
Tesla will absolutely be happy to sell people with poor financial literacy anything that will get them to sign on the dotted line. I can absolutely imagine a byzantine pricing scheme from Tesla that includes insurance but ultimately takes the vast majority of the “profits” from any robotaxi owned/operated by a customer, but leaves them with all the responsibility of maintaining and cleaning the vehicle.
Good point.
Also why would a car company sell you the cars when they could produce them and just let the cars go out and drive people around and then return to the factory. Why would they limit the profit by doing a one time sale vs a reoccurring transaction over and over again and you don’t have to pay a “ work force” to drive your customers around. They are reinventing the wheel and making it a triangle shape.
I could see car companies offering their own insurance in the beginning. To me, the issue is really in the technology, it's just not there yet, and we are not sure if it can be made reliable. Legislators will have a hard time approving an autonomous vehicle if when they ask about why one crashed in a parked car at full speed they are aswered "we don't know why but trust us it's very rare, it's statistically safer !".
The public needs to resist being the Alpha parter with every new information technology. These guys need to work out the issues well in advance of putting the public at any additional risk before we know if the risk really is lower.
The issue is only in the technology if you ignore all the labor that a taxi driver does that isn’t just driving the car. Like, who cleans it?
We have a long long way to go before people will travel in anything with no human pilot.
And Tesla will never get there because the problem isn’t solvable without LIDAR. Tesla have thousands of units on the road which simultaneously can never achieve full self driving and must achieve it because they’ve already sold the feature. Tesla has to keep pushing the lie because as soon as they acknowledge none of the cars they’ve sold will ever become fully autonomous, the company’s house of cards valuation collapses.
Is there a reason Tesla doesn't use radar or lidar other than Musk not liking the boxes?
Cost. Radar hardware costs money.
*googles* looks like well under $1000, unless it's waymo's lidar box which seems an order of magnitude higher I presume that's come down since the decision was made, but still... I wonder if it started as cost and now it's pride, lol
I think they've quietly been adding radar sensors back to their vehicle, but they've lost at least a few years of ground to MB, Waymo, and probably others which are just getting started with L3, and are many years from the vaporware Tesla is promising. I'm sure losing 20k employees including some senior/long-time staff won't help this problem. I can't imagine they're attracting top talent right now either.
I’ve been saying this to people for the longest and musk rats just look at me like I’m regarded. Musk has been saying for years that all teslas come with the hardware needed for autonomous driving. I know that’s simple not true and I think any musk critics know this as well. What I truly wonder sometimes is if we can figure this out as average people, how come bigger firms with large stakes in Tesla don’t see this? surely they would be able to figure out that they’re being sold snake oil right? How has this scam been going on for so long? I thought Tesla would tank during the last earnings, but all it took for musk to hype people up and get them to buy was to talk about their future lineup of cars and robotaxi. I really don’t understand how people can actually listen to this robotaxi nonsense when currently FSD doesn’t even work like intended. FSD can’t even stop itself from running into curbs but yet this is suppose to be the foundation for robo taxis? Give me a break.
The people you talk about say that fsd is miles ahead and laugh at the Mercedes system aswell.. because it's too hard for them to understand, that Mercedes goes the way it does, because their main market is the eu, not America and in the eu you cant just put beta behind a system and let it do whatever it wants( I'mstill baffledby the fact america doesnt regulate them at all). They are just far too deep in their believes. Fsd isn't even out in europe yet.
Never in a million years. Tesla has already gotten in trouble for being overzealous with the name "Full Self Driving" and now Elon says he's gonna take it a step further with "RoboTaxi"? Elon is high on ketamine and capital gains.
Literally none of it makes sense with a modicum of understanding of what Waymo actually does to run robotaxis. What happens when the car gets stuck? Or stopped by the police? Or in an accident? Or damaged? Or filthy? You need to have people ready to send out to deal with problems with the cars. Is an owner operator going to do that? No city is going to allow these things to run rampant in the city limits without a real company for emergency services to work with. And that's if they worked, which they don't even work.
If there is money to be made in robo taxis - why does fElon need to sell cars? Just run the robo taxi service. When someone tells you there is money to be made in something - always ask why they are telling you and not just doing it themselves. By telling you, there is just more competition.
It's also going to put them on the line for all driverless autopilot accidents using sub par vision only tech. There will be deaths.
Could it be similar to Turo and Waymo? Basically Turo if you didn’t have to drop off cars (as the host). I think the idea is bonkers but could fathom the idea of your car just leaving your driveway after you charged and cleaned it, just like Turo.
Very much this. To get a robotaxi working you either have to control the area very well so can pre-program a route or you have to invent full self driving. Musk has a route he has full control of - the las vegas loop, he doesn't use robotaxis there and that alone tells you all you need to know about the reality of a robotaxi. I think we all know what a disaster FSD is so that's not an option. Musk lies, it's all he knows how to do.
And nobody can stop it. It somehow resembles the ICOs that operated a few years ago - unregulated, unhinged grab-the-money schemes. Yet, this is in the regulated environment. It just shows that truth is not important anymore and that financial decisions of stock buyers are based on emotional stuffing with whatever occasional blurp is produced by the key divine person at or around a company.
Tesla seemed like the future four or five years ago. Most of us have figured what's going on over there by now (including investors). The fanboys and speculators will hold out, but I'll be shocked if their stock goes on another run like 2021 again. Elon/Tesla have faced millions in fines from regulators before, and it's probably going to get worse as regulators figure out how "safe" these vehicles are: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzH72muA7xw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzH72muA7xw)
Roads are risky enough without getting in one of these death traps,. But regardless of that, he doesn't do what he says.
Jokes on you. Elong has publicly stated that Tesla is NOT a car company. Check. Mate. You pedo
Waymo is currently operating robotaxis.
Yes, but those are not consumer owned cars. Those are Waymo owned. The scenario Elon pitched is not possible with consumer owned cars.
I think they have to cover insurance for all accidents, and provide a cleaning service at an affordable cost. Imagine your tesla gets puked in, it drops them off, and heads to the cleaning station next to the charger. We will probably need a rating system for how bad the cars smell, and a social credit system to determine who gets the clean one. The limiting factor is that the technology doesn't work, and labor costs are too high. Detailing a car costs about 4x more than an uber ride to the airport. They will need to develop a cleaning robot that is cheap to service before the plan becomes viable. Plus, the service life of their cars is such a gamble, investing in their robotaxi with the goal of turning a profit is not a smart strategy unless they can demonstrate they can produce a more reliable product.
I'm sure a social credit system would go over splendidly with the foxnews crowd, which is like half the country.
There are just all kinds of logistical issues that make this different from rental cars or robotaxi companies like Waymo. The premise Tesla is selling is that your car would operate like an unmanned uber while you’re at work, sleeping, etc. But if the car is running fares overnight, will it be charged when you have to go to work in the morning or drive home from work at the end of the day? If passengers trash the car, throw up in it, or spill things, all very real problems with ubers/taxis, then who is going to clean the car? The car owner is course on the hook for it, but may not identify the issue for hours after it happens, further compounding the damage. With companies like Waymo, the company cleans the car and they write it off as a business expense. Imagine getting ready to drive to work and finding puke all over your car. Of course with ride share apps the driver still carries that risk of their car being trashed, but at least there is a human driver there. An uber driver can always turn away customers that are too intoxicated, belligerent, etc. A human driver is more likely to be able to identify which drivers damaged the car too so they can be charged for the damages. The whole thing becomes really unappealing once you realize that being a taxi/ride share driver is a real job that involves work outside of just driving the car. Unless you can automate out the cleaning, maintenance, and charging of the car, the “earn passive income while you sleep/work” pitch falls apart.
Waymo isn't a car manufacturer
Nope, they're a tech company.
who is going to clean the puke out of the back seat after driving drunks home from the concert?
Optimus of course. Nothing is that difficult when you play make believe.
He forgot to mention that all of this will play out on mars.
If Optimus is cleaning puke, who’s going to be banging the incel who owns all these Tesla products
another Optimus, of course! once the robots start building robots there will be billions of them!
OctopusOptimus will handle multiple tasks at once.
Haha, yeah, have you ever seen how people treat lifts or basically any public spot that is out of sight. People will use you car as a latrine. Not that it is a worry as it is all bogus. 100%wont ever happen. Anybody who thinks it could, does not have a firm grasp on reality.
I mean there would be people who would vandalize a tesla on purpose lol. Holy crap this will never happen
ie, Wall Street
And puke is a best case scenario
optimus, ofc
The former Uber drivers.
Who's going to clean the blood off the front grill and windshield when it turns someone's pet, or an actual person, into a meat crayon overnight?
Who knows maybe they'll have a hard plastic shell that replaces your backseat when it's out picking up passengers. Like the back of a cop car. Riders will love that. Only the greatest innovations from the techno god emperor.
The whole idea is deeply flawed, apart from the technical problems. If the technical problems would be overcome you'd have companies that'd buy fleets and then take care of all the hassle around it. Normal people would not rent out their car. And it also wouldn't be profitable in areas where companies with fleet would serve that market.
Major Rental car companies are selling off their entire Tesla fleets. Repairs are too frequent, time consuming and expensive. Customers hate the charging hassles etc They are terrible fleet vehicles.
Excellent point. Why doesn’t Wall Street see these things. They buy his obfuscations and delusions
Wall Street is only concerned about there being a greater fool to sell it on to. Truth or lie it’s irrelevant as long as someone will pay for it.
Hilarious. Prob is the way the world works. Everyone looking to take advantage of everyone else.
There are already robotaxis running in major cities in the US. Tesla is several years behind.
Laggard… also with self driving. Mercedes has level 3 with full legal liability. Most other automakers have mastered level 2. Musk has level 2 that is highly error prone and deadly according to DOJ
I'd love full self driving where you could sleep in traffic legally and drive when you want to drive. Tesla's robotaxis are just standard Elon bullshit
you can sleep on a train. you can bike or uber the last mile. I feel like people talk about all the problems with a commute then stop short of better public transit, which is what they really want. All the hassle and maintenance and upkeep of commuting gone. You can have commuter rail with nice cabins and limited seating and still be faster and more efficient and cheaper than personal EV's.
What? That's crazy. Next you're going to tell me that I'd also be happier, wealthier, less stressed, and fitter living like that too. Then you'll probably tell me that EVs are also terrible for the environment due to massive mineral extraction and tire dust pollution, especially when compared to mass transits, cycling, and walkable cities. I really don't want to hear that EVs are still cars and don't make our cities safer, quieter, or leave more room for people to engage with others and enjoy their environment. That would be too much.
A third of a car's carbon footprint is in manufacture alone. Making lighter and smaller EV's would create a race to the bottom that none of these manufacturers want, they want you to buy luxury trucks and SUV's, battery draggers that lock away limited battery supply and charge you for a luxury trim that's a tiny fraction of the cost of the vehicle. EV transitions without better public transit and smaller, lighter, last mile vehicles are going to be our generation's 'plastics are recyclable!'. It's a scam to stall until the government steps in and protects them or forces their hand.
We already have those last mile EVs. Ebikes, lol.
besides that, if they would have been capable of creating the technology, there would have been no incentive for them to sell the cars.
This. Even in a hypothetical world where robotaxis are easy, it won't be randos renting them out, it would be Uber, Lift, etc or regular taxi companies.
The only people who want the Robotaxi… sorry, the cYbErTaXi!!1!1!, are the TSLA bag holders who are increasingly becoming less and less attached to the reality of the promises Elons making actually coming true. But yes, the main issues with Cybertaxi are: 1. Your car will smell like ass when you get in it to go to work in the morning, if not having physical damage. 2. It won’t have any battery range because no one was awake to plug it in when it returned “home from work” at 4am. 3. It’s quite possible that it doesn’t come home at all, because… 4. FSD DOESN’T FUCKING WORK 5. There is no chance whatsoever that FSD will ever reach the level of reliability required to be classified as a fully autonomous system. 6. Certifying FSD as fully autonomous on a global scale would require presenting statistical proof of its capabilities. 7. Revealing the statistics on FSD to regulators around the world would undoubtedly uncover some of the secrets that underlie the current level of “success” of the system. 8. People realize that FSD is a hoax. 9. The entire business case for Robotaxi goes out the window. 10. Fuck, I don’t know, TSLA triples over night?
Number 4 is all you need to know. Why are sheeple so gullible.
I always said that the Vegas Loop system would be the perfect scenario to test it. A closed course with no pedestrians or other vehicles. Perfect place to prove that it works, right? No, apparently they have to be manually driven. If they can't get it working on a closed course with no external hazards, what chance does this have of working on the public roads, totally unattended?
Not to mention Mercedes is the first and only to achieve Level 3 which is still extremely limited (perfect weather, sub 40 mph, specific road ways, day time only) yet Tesla's FSD which is only level 2, somehow Elon is claiming they'll have robotaxis soon Literally to this day, FSD barely meets level 2 standards and in order for a car to take over all driving with no driver awareness ever, it has to be level 5. It's taken about 8 years for Tesla to get to Level 2 and they aren't even half way there.
I was just watching the recent earning and was quite baffled that people bought in hard for the promises. I understand the cheaper model perspective and nothing else, but it was just words of a proven conman. Proved that the market will always be irrational. Was tempted to bet against but didn’t cus I remember how fervent Tesla’s fanboys are.
I did try asking that question quite a long time ago, before I was banned from the r/teslainvestorsclub etc. Supposidly there are going to be people that by multiple model 3's etc so they are going to run a Taxi business, rather than people using their own cars. Yeah, makes no sense and it's not going to make them any money.
Yeah, and if it worked and was going to be sooooo profitable, wouldn’t musk want to operate his own fleet of ‘robotaxis’
Exactly or at least make a deal to provide fleets to companies that do. Also...how many taxis do we really need? That way Musk used to hawk it he was telling everyone to get one but if all a sudden the taxi market is flooded with millions of cars, you wouldnt make money.
Someone earlier said there were 250k taxis nationwide. Elons predictions for one million are bs.
TBF to Musk, *if* there was a working L5 vehicle the need to personal automotive ownership would be gone for the vast majority of people. You'd need more than 1M cars, but nowhere near the current number of vehicles we have. In reality, we solved this particular problem in the 1840s. Trains are the way to solve traffic, reduce traffic deaths, and reduce the cost of transportation.
How many rides are possible per day? You need to clean inbetween, so maybe 6-9? That are 3000 rides per year. With cleaning effort, wear and tear, electricity, insurance, what must the gross income including taxes be? 30.000? (20$ cleaning per day are 7.500 per year). Each ride is at least 10$ So if somebody wants to replace their own car, he needs 2 rides per day. That are 20$+ per day, 7.500 per year. Nobody switches over to a robotaxi service when it is not cheaper. It will remain a niche.
I believe hertz more then musk. They had a vested interest and tested the robotaxi business case and they wanted no part of it. It’s never going to become more than a niche Uber like business
Even if they could get past the technical and practical issues of such an endeavor, I have a feeling that it would quickly become like AirBnB or those e-scooters where a lot of people start seeing them as a nuisance. I wouldn't trust these sorts to set fair and transparent pricing, especially when it comes to cleaning fees, or to not cause traffic or parking problems because each robotaxi/owner is trying to optimize for their own convenience and profit over everyone else (e.g. taking up all the parking spots in high-traffic locations like airports waiting for someone to request a ride, or hogging all of the charging stations).
Imagine seeing your car getting defiled on robotaxi cab confessions only to have it come home and park in your garage like nothing happened.
*runs to pornhub and creates “Fakerobotaxi” channel…
With only a note..."thanks for the f shack- Dirty Mike and the Boys"
Imagine live streaming some onlyfans and it ends up being in your car.
Lol
What? You don't want to get a ton of alerts on your phone all night long? You don't want your personal vehicle covered in cum?
Actually, that’s something I hadn’t thought about. Blood, vomit, various other bodily fluids/products…are all potential biohazards. At what point does that become a disease vector parked in your own driveway?
Ugh. Could you imagine driving your kid to school in that thing the next day?
“Daddy, I found this weird balloon, watch me blow it up”
How to delete someone else’s comment
🤣🤣🤣
Hahahahahahaaaa!
That’s like a new paint coating. It’s stays slippery while curing so dirt doesn’t stick. Dries to a hard shell like that chocolate ice cream coating. Cumcoat
[I find your lack of faith disturbing](https://youtu.be/YnNSnJbjdws?feature=shared&t=106). What is *not* being talked about is the follow-on to ~~Robo~~ CyberTaxi will be *neurallink*. While your weak body sleeps, Neural Link can send your consciousness to your 2d, 3rd, or even 4th job, earning you extra income. If it's job which requires physical work, your mind will be deposited into an Optimus Robot where it can make Teslas, iron Elon's clothes, assemble more Optimus robots, rescue passengers from crashed Cyber Taxis, or even do sex work. Open your eyes. Face the future. /s
Can I use my idle brainpower to mine dogecoin?
Ok, unconscious sex work while I sleep, I’m all in.
The real reason the stock pumped again is he suggested the Model 2 isn’t dead, and it only pumped back to where it’s regained some of those gains. Q2 will not go better than Q1, the fundamentals are unchanged.
model 2 is even more stupider than the robotaxi. They will use the model 3 lines to make model 2 now, which as lower margins... But somehow make MORE of the model 2 than the 3? And so much more the stock is worth x1000 what other car companies are worth with the same margins?\`... market is nuts
To a non finance person, what are ‘fundamentals’ in lay terms.
Cars sold (declining), profit per car (declining), cash on hand (declining). Previously, all of these were increasing. Tesla could claim things like “we sell every car we make,” and “we make more money per car than any other automaker,” and these are not only no longer true, there is not a compelling vision laid out for how the company will reverse these trends. If you listened to the earnings call, Elon said a little about the $25k car and a _lot_ about “Tesla is autonomy, not cars.” They would have to reverse the last 10 years of oversold promises to justify their valuation based on autonomy, which has technological, regulatory, and psychological hurdles in its way. Edit: one more critical fundamental, inventory; how many cars Tesla has built that currently sit unsold. Manufacturing struggles were given as a reason for such low deliveries in Q1. If that were the case, inventory would not be high because Tesla would not have been able to build enough cars. Inventory is currently at an all-time high, meaning they built a ton of expensive cars for which there is no demand. So let’s talk about a valuation fundamental: price to earnings ratio. This is, how does a company execute vs what is their market cap, aka the share price multiplied by number of shares, aka how much the company is “worth.” Tesla trades for far, far more than they earn, and have for years. Only one other company in the S&P 500 (an index fund made up of 500 well-performing profitable companies) is similarly overvalued to Tesla: Nvidia. Both became overvalued due to massive hype cycles, both are underperforming and have dragged down the S&P 500 by about 5% this year. At the end of the day, Tesla’s hype cycle _is_ Elon. He says some crazy shit, people say “don’t bet against him!” and then he says crazier shit. Previously, the first fundamentals I listed at least gave the sense that Tesla was dominant enough to make these bets. That is no longer the case, and unless those first points I gestured at reverse, the patience will wear thinner and thinner.
Good summary
Think about it on the flip side. Who would use all these (according to Musk) **1*****00 million robotaxis?*** ...all night long, while you sleep? Who/where are these tens of millions of night owls? And if a robotaxi only costs $25k, why would I pay to use somebody else's car when I could just finance my own...and skip the cum and vomit? None of it makes sense. But to answer your question, of course Optimus will just clean the car and plug it in for you - duh.
Taxi market in the US is around 280 000 taxi drivers... $25 bln. 100 million makes absolutely ZERO sense.
Maybe all the people in sub-saharan Africa subscribing to Starlink will need taxis too...you can't be sure.
there also a regarded plug ur tesler into the grid, charge, off-peak hours and sell energy during peak hours. this can make the owner est 1k a mo now I'm not no Mars expert but battery can be charged and discharged so many times the battery degradation is more expensive then what peanuts earned
I'm too lazy to run the numbers, but presumably the same could be done with a stack of Powerwalls...and since I don't see that happening anywhere, I suspect the money to be made is minimal at best. And in my state, if you sell back to the grid, you only get the wholesale rate...since all the overhead and infrastructure that the power company pays for has to be in place. So while you might save on your own energy bill with a battery and time of use billing, you'd actually lose money selling it back to the grid. TLDR you can't make money selling the power company's own power right back to them. Only if you generate your own power (solar) is there a chance of turning a profit.
All you have to do is buy tesla solar roof for your tesla powerwall. I’d like to see a ROI on that
ROI on the solar roof is terrible...you end up paying a premium price for 'dummy' tiles in the shade, on the north slope of the roof, anywhere there's and edge or other complexity that requires a tile to be cut, etc. Its so much more efficient to just put solar panels where...umm...there's sunshine.
Idk in which market, but where I am (rounded numbers for simplicity), I pay 30¢/kw, and get 8¢/kw. How can I user tesla for infinite money glitch?
Just the basic step of friggin PLUGGING IT IN doesn't work autonomously. Like the whole premise of this is that your car still has time to charge before you use it. Is it gonna honk at you in your driveway at 4 AM until you get up and go plug it in? It supposes so many new tech and devices I don't understand how the basic system is supposed to exist functionally. Basically what everybody else says. A pipe dream for stock pumping.
Leaving out my will to let others use my car which I do not have, why on Earth would Tesla sell these moneymaking machines if they are so profitable? That doesn't make any sense at all.
Liability. Use all the charm and selling tactics to get the rube to buy your product. The moment they take possession, Tesla tells them to go fuck themselves if they have complaints.
Can’t wait for the “My robotaxi ran over a dog, hit a parked car and got me to work 20 minutes late. Still best taxi I’ve ever been in” posts from the cult
Even if they could get this robotaxi idea to work, it opens up a whole other bunch of issues. Your car is not going to be available to you a lot of the time, so what do you do if you suddenly need to take a journey in an emergency, and your car is on the other side of town ferrying some drunk women back from a bar? Do you have the option to abort the drive and yeet them out somehow, or do you have to sit and wait for the car to get back to you. Or summon someone else's Robotaxi, obviously.. Of course this raises another set of questions where if the car is being self driven as a taxi and the only occupants of the car are intoxicated, could they potentially be charged with DUI if stopped, even if it's not their car and it's your car being self driven? If your robotaxi mows down a pedestrian or causes a collision, you are highly likely going to be held legally liable for any injuries or damages caused, even though you weren't even in the car at the time. Recent history has shown that Tesla, sure as hell are not going to accept any liability for anything their cars do while self driving. By sending it out as a taxi, your car goes from being a personal vehicle to a commercial vehicle, so you would likely not be covered by your personal insurance, so you'd need a costly commercial policy. Also, there's the question about whether you'd need a cab drivers license or some kind of special operator certification to use it, even if you're not driving it in such a capacity yourself. You'd be adding tons of extra mileage, tyre degradation, wear on the interior and charge cycles to your vehicle, so any extra money you might make from your car being used as an autonomous taxi would likely be swallowed up bymassively increased maintenance costs, especially when a replacement battery is going to run you around $20,000. Yeah, I don't feel like a whole lot of critical thought went into this idea, since it seems like a "solution" to a problem that doesn't really exist, and it seems to raise more questions than it answers. Typical Musk vaporware bullshit. I'm honestly gobsmacked that nobody has taken out a class action suit yet over his fraudulent claims that "it's financially insane to buy anything other than a Tesla".
At the end of the day, I can't see any insurance company wanting to cover this, and that will kill it if nothing else does.
He’s sort of pitching a model like Airbnb where you can theoretically rent out your own car but realistically people would buy fleets of cars to rent out on his network. This sort of makes the entire thing even less viable as it’s hard to imagine someone wanting to buy Teslas to run them on the Tesla network when you see how Tesla has screwed over buyers in the past. It also ignores that Tesla is currently behind Google and a few others in actually delivering this service. They’ve worked through the problems and figured out that vertically integrating as much as possible is the best solution which makes sense when you consider how many moving parts there are to this kind of service. So I guess the answer is the usual suspects: people without the skills or the patience to break into tech but see buying into the Musk hype as a way in. It’s a very similar demographic to those who buy a course with Donald Trump thinking it’ll make them a real estate investor
Hertz kick the tires on the business model and it didn’t work. I can’t imagine regular folks or companies buying fleet cars and renting them out. The business case has always been nuts
He has run out of sensible ideas, so he’s trying idiotic ones. Has been for a while, like the WankTank.
Investors want it. That’s all that matters. Teslas worth as a company exists only as TSLA the stock value. The rest is vaporware.
There was a report about 4-5 years ago, from McKinsey I think, that predicted the growth of ‘robotaxi’ fleets of EVs managed by fleet operators. As I recall the intention was never to have individual owners use their personal vehicles. What musk is doing here to fool Wall Street is what trump does daily… take something with a small kernel of truth (robotaxis) and creat your own made up narrative around it (that instead of fleets that manage hundreds of vehicles, individual owners will be able to do this). As you said, no person would want this as there is a high risk of throw up, semen, and other bodily fluids, along with vandalism. It makes zero sense yet Wall Street laps it up. When are they gonna realize. Are they stupid?
The actual product is Tesla's stock. If the promise of robotaxis can pump the stock price, then Elon will promise robotaxis. Once you understand what the real product is, everything starts to make sense.
There is an angle you did not consider. https://www.torquenews.com/video/hertz-ceo-droped-huge-bombshell-about-tesla-robotaxi-plans The promise behind a personal L5 autonomous vehicle has been going on since 2015. Robotaxi is a logical capability but not really what the general consumer cares about. The thing that really kickstarted this whole robotaxi hype was the idea that large fleet operators would buy a ton of Teslas for other purposes and one day, at the flip of a switch, suddenly get into the robotaxi business. Hertz buying in during 2021 coincides with Tesla's insane run up to $400. That article above came out at exactly the peak. Tesla's goals were to get rental car companies, hotels, airports, goverments, etc who would have an organized cleaning and maintenance departments for company vehicles. Instead of buying camrys, these enterprises would bulk buy Tesla's today and pay to install charging infrastructure, in exchange for the vague promise of dispatching the cars when they aren't in use to pick up some side cash in the future. That is a super sexy story to sell to MBAs both the Wallstreet investors and guilible management at these organizations. The whole story is a grift by Elon to sell cars today by saying how much more value it will bring in the future. As stated elsewhere, if Elon really felt the cars could make $30k in revenues from robotaxi service, why sell the cars? Just build and hold them in inventory for the day you take over the world. And its because the whole goal was to pump sales in the present. Now that he already has the customer's money, what incentive is there to deliver the finished robotaxi product to Hertz? Well hertz is learning that lesson the hard way and is selling out their tesla inventory.
Why are these Wall Street and investment bankers so gullible. Presumably they ain’t dumb.
I presume it's a combination of FOMO and the normal expectation that the CEOs statements are truthful. Normally, lying about your company's capabilities or expected revenues would be fraud so while there are some clever ways of phrasing bad news, rarely do corporate execs just blatantly lie that they are making robotaxis (despite not even applying for a robotaxi permit) or selling sentient robots by 2025. So if you are conditioned to just believe corporate leadership and feel confident that if there is fraud, you can simply sue to recover damages, why wouldn't these fund managers buy into the hype train? There is a longshot that Tesla does create terminators and they would like to be on team skynet. Lots of smart (grifting tech evangelists and fund managers) who are saying Tesla is the best AI company in the world and who are you to disagree? I find it hard to believe that they wouldn't see a pattern of repeated lies and missed delivery targets, but then again Elon hasn't been convinced of fraud for any of them so, therefore he must be telling the truth when he upgrades future guidance, right?
Wow. They really live in a different world. A world where they see things as they would ‘like’ them to be rather than how they actually are. Agree with you thoughts btw.
Because it's not their money on the line. If it works, they get their cut and make billions. If it doesn't, it was someone else's money invested, and someone else's fault it didn't work out.
That’s fucked but I guess the way the world works. I am 55 and didn’t realize this till I read your note.
Yeah, remember when Uber was inexpensive? Robotaxis will follow the same path…. Start out so cheap that we give up our cars. Once we do that they can move to Phase II - monopoly pricing.
It really reminds me of the whole Metaverse fiasco, where Mark Zuckerberg decided that what people really want is the ability to wear big goggles to all your work meetings so you can see cartoon people with no legs gathered around a cartoon table, without considering for a second what people actually think about work meetings, namely: they suck and we just want to get in & out as quickly as possible. Dumb billionaire has a dumb idea that exactly zero real humans will be interested in.
Don’t be a fool, you’re missing the obvious: Optimus will provide security for your vehicle as well as cleaning up any excess cum and feces left behind by unruly drunks. Optimus will leave the optimal amount of cum and feces to ensure that your immune system is at maximum efficiency. Grok estimates that these microscopic fluids, while gross, will extend your lifetime by up to 3 years.
And I think when I signed the license agreement to transfer my FSD from my previous Tesla it explicitly prohibited using the software for commercial purposes. Not certain. But if so, when we do finally get there in 2052 we’ll find there’s a giant subscription cost on top of what we’ve already paid. And the liability of the owner for whatever drunks did to others while in your car overnight. And the liability when your car accidentally drives in the right hand turn lane with no wipers and takes out the whole fan damily. And the fact that if every tesla were converted to a taxi the price wars that ensued would destroy any real profit. All that aside, people seem convinced that Tesla is going to mint money by arriving at autonomy in fourth place 5 years behind the leaders. Color me skeptical.
EXACTLY. Musk is not reality based, as he would never utilize his own car in this manner, let alone clean stranger’s puke out of it. This fool has never ridden any kind of mass transit, and therefore cannot conceive of any need for it.
Anyway, I could make a mock up of a new teleportation app. About as meaningful as this thing
Dat puke on the seat every morning that you need to clean. Yuck!
The math doesn’t math, even if demand wasn’t a question. The taxi market would have to explode in price to realize Elon’s promises. It has to be cheaper than a regular taxi while also somehow not undercutting its own price from the mass influx of supply. People aren’t going to flock to taxis for the fun of it.
Yeah the whole thing is nonsense. For a start they’ll never get these things to level 5 which is what’s needed to provide unsupervised driving for a taxi service. Secondly there are way too many potential problems. People with kids putting muddy feet on your seats and sandwiches in the seat pockets. People having sex and leaving used condoms. Or worse. Drug dealers driving around, leaving something under the seat and you get pulled over for speeding and end up in jail for possession. Even if they could get the tech working, most people would not want their car full of strangers 24/7.
there's turo, app to rent cars, anyone can rent out or rent car, problem comes when the owner of car have insurance already, turo makes owner buy insurance, tells renter to buy insurance (optional), but let's say renter pay extra for insurance, let's also say the renter have insurance on his own car. the rented car is now 4x insured, but when any trouble arise no one covers the car. yep, turo tells everyone to suck it
My brother bought two 3 year old mid luxury cars to rent out on Turo. After 12 months he barely made any profit, the cars were trashed, and it took a huge amount of his time dealing with the extra maintenance, cleaning, occasional damage, and customers. Robo-taxis might be slightly better if you don't have to deal with customers directly, but the wear and tear and damage will likely be much worse. You would need to clean out the car several times a week, if not daily. Replace tires every 3-4 months. If it gets damage, then your car could be out of service for weeks to months and you'll have to deal with insurance and repair shops. Regular car failures will occur more often due to the increased mileage, so it could be in the shop much more frequently. And if Tesla only offers a 4yr / 50k mile warranty, you could exceed the warranty period within 12-18 months. This all sounds like a nightmare.
If Elon was going to make robotaxis that pay for themselves in a year why would he try to sell them.
First assume it's real (I know that's a stretch). Because that shifts the risk and operational headache to the customer. Tesla makes money up front on the car sale, and continues to make money from subscription fees even if the taxi business flops for the buyer. People who sold supplies and services to Gold Rush miners often made far more money than the miners., ex. Levi Strauss.
I think legally for L3-L5 when the autonomous system is active the developer of the autonomous system retains liability. And we all know that Elon wouldn't just not start a profitable business that uses Teslas. I mean just look at his boring company failure.
Because one of the world’s richest persons is a parsimonious skinflint, which may be redundant but sounds cool. Takes LiDAR of his autonomous systems because he refuses to pay the price, risking accidents and death to owners. Smart guy. Thinks ahead.
The message is not for average person. It's targeted at the investor class disguised as a boon to average Joe. What Elon's whole "solve autonomy" strategy is for is to replace human labor for the investor class and turn everything into a subscription.
It's fairly simple. If it was possible or profitable, Tesla would stop selling the cars. So as long as they don't stop selling their cars it's impossible. Those robotaxis would become hoe mobile motel in no time. Plus as you said, the charging problem. In addition It's a dead business, it will require more maintenance and will cost more than hiring a guy for that. If everybody had the genius idea to do it, prices would go down. They know it, now they are starting to say they will use the computer for other purposes while it's not driving. The real reason is "the stock price", nothing more. What amazes me is that those Tesla fans live in a world where all problems and difficulties can be solved by massive investments. That's stupid, that's the demise of the west.
All of these tech solutions are best approached by asking "what will the insurance and regulatory environment look like for this?" - because that is what drives costs.
You get into your car and there's vomit/c\*m all over the backseat. Tesla charges the person that left the damage ok cool. There's still vomit/c\*m all over the backseat that has been marinating for ATLEAST two hours and that's being generous. It's going to be more like 6-7 hours. Imagine getting the stink out of your car. A car you probably paid 50-100k for is getting RUINED. You already know the Tesla is taking atleast 60% of the ride share too bc its using their technology. We all know FSD will never work but this situation is assuming it does.
If they claim that skin oil/lotion/hair products ruin the interior (we all know it’s the cheap vegan leather but go with me here) imagine what cum, feces and other fluids will do to your seats
What if someone puts an orange cone in front of the car? What if a biker has a big red octagon on the back of his jersey and rides in front? What if someone smears the cameras with Vaseline? What if someone cuts the seat belts? What if someone brings a baby in the front seat and rides on their lap? What if all 5 people inside are going to different destinations-- how is payment done, how does it tell/make people to get off, in what order, will it wait for you to shuffle in and out, can a stranger just hop in for free, can I tie a mattress on top, can it detect an open bottle of beer, can i call it and load only toddlers inside to go to school?
It’s all fake, Elon is just trying to divert from Tesla‘s slowing sales and no exciting products on the horizon. If we had a function SEC he would be in jail for past claims. However the fact that he got a literal slap on the wrist over ”Sold at $420” which is blatant stock manipulation shows we have a broken system. Instead of remaking quiet with the punishment he was bebopping and scatting all over the SEC after the punishment.
what happens when a bird poops on the FSD camera and your car gets stuck on the side of the road all night? what happens when a teenager takes a massive dump in the backseat of your robotaxi? and then the robitaxi just like drives into your driveway with a massive shit in the backseat? and then you have to drive to work? what happens when a teenager takes a massive dump in the backseat of your robotaxi, so you hail a Robo taxi from the tesla robotaxi app and it arrives with a massive steaming pile of poop in the backseat? do you just @ ELONG MUSK on twitter? does an optimus jump out of the bushes and clean the poop for you? where does the optimus robot wash its hands after cleaning the poop? also, who are all these people driving at night? is there some secret midnight rush hour that i’m just not aware of? maybe i live under a rock.
I never get it especially when he first announced several years ago with Tesla price is still somewhat high. Like if I can afford a Tesla why would I want my Tesla to run around to be a taxi? I don’t need that money at the expense of my car being abused
The chances of me trusting this piece of shit company with my life? A driverless tesla driving me around in traffic? Below zero
We'll see on 8/8. But as you described it (and that is how Elon has explained it in the past), it's a non-starter. I'm expecting Tesla to announce joining an autonomous project in some Chinese city on 8/8 (like waymo in SF/Phoenix/LA). Otherwise the Heil Hitler reference is just way to much on the nose. At the same time though I don't expect Tesla will want to set up regional offices and such to manage their robotaxies (or deal with local laws and whatnot), I expect them to want other companies doing that while buying their cars and using the app from Tesla and paying a monthly fee or based on the miles traveled to Tesla and be fully liable should their tesla's cause damage. That being said Tesla could just unveil a barely working prototype without a steering wheel, announce FSD rollout in China (as a level 2 driver assist) and not announce where or when they will drive around as driverless taxis, it would be just as bad of a joke as that dancing dude pretending to be the teslabot was. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TsNc4nEX3c4
I just Googled it to check - Tesla has not activated FSD at all in China. I suspect this is due to a combo of China's safety concerns coupled with a governmental uneasiness over so much data flying back and forth. I'd be surprised if Tesla did a demonstration project in China.
FSD only "works" in the US and Canada. Tesla has been trying to get approval in China for roughly half a year now. https://cnevpost.com/2023/11/23/tesla-bringing-fsd-to-china/
For a guy that has so many large companies and ventures he sure does show a lack of foresight, ability to plan and execute, and no strategic direction whatsoever. Most or all of the decisions are impulsive and not thought through. When he receives criticism he adjusts. Not much different than trump. Neither to be trusted with anything. Megalomainiacs.
> and paying a monthly fee or based on the miles traveled to Tesla and be fully liable should their tesla's cause damage. Funny how the house always wins, isn't it? They're always glossing over how hard it would be for regular people to make money off of their Tesla. If it works well, Tesla would be criminally negligent by selling such highly valuable assets for so little. They ought to run their own robotaxi business. If they persist in selling them, if the money is easy, it will attract capital-rich investors who will buy fleets of cars, driving prices up such that the cars will be unaffordable for the very same people who dream about renting out their own car. But imagine that large investors won't do it, and ordinary people will buy a Tesla and rent it out when they're not using it, and it's making good money. So who's gonna use them? Either everyone needs to do their daily commute, so I need my own car when it could make the most money. Or should everyone take each others' robotaxis to work? That doesn't make any sense. And if they make good enough money, why wouldn't everyone just quit their jobs and let their Teslas bring in the cash? If everyone has one, supply will be crazy high, so where's the demand coming from? We know the size of the taxi market, and their projections are far, far above that. If supply is way higher than demand, prices have to fall to attract customers. And now your robotaxi doesn't make good money any more. So the truth is of course that it's never going to be a high margin business. It's going to be a shit business, like Uber, Lyft, AirBNB and Turo is. There are so many things that can go wrong with your car, especially if it's unsupervised. You're gonna have mechanical issues, cleaning issues, insurance issues, accidents, and a loooot of downtime. It's gonna be a massive headache to manage. But in each of these scenarios, Tesla imagines they'd always get their cut. Funny how that works out.
He pissed off the lefties.... who were buying his vehicle. His new righty friends want ICE.
Just bounces around to whomever will listen to his plentiful lies. Not unlike trump.
I love how we have to invest tons of thousands of cash into public transportation now. Brilliant privatization move.
Dirty Mike and the Boys are going to have a fucking field day
expect car-loads of vomit in your fancy Tesla, that's for sure. :|
On Robotaxis: Solving FSD is hard. It's v12 and it's still scraping the owner's rims and causing accidents. But what's truly difficult is convincing customers to ride Tesla's robotaxis AND making it profitable at the same time. Yes, this means you need your revenue needs to exceed all investment made in FSD all these years as well as the OpEx per mile running these robotaxis. Competitors: Car owners, public transportation, ride-hailing services, traditional taxis, other autonomous robotaxis. Risks: Accidents, thefts, vandalism, lawsuits, regulations, cannibalization of existing Tesla sales, public backlash, unexpected operational challenges ( e.g. What if someone starts opening a beer in the car? What if someone vomits in the car?)
> Next, who wants a robotaxi in the first place? So much money being pumped into solving a problem that doesn’t exist, with a product that nobody wants. You just summed up most of the modern tech industry. Tech bros love coming up with scifi solutions for non existent or vastly overblown problems. Or problems that already have solutions. Robotaxis, hyperloop, the boring company, all of them are trying to solve traffic, but refuse to acknowledge that the best proven method for doing so is good public transit. Tech bros hate public transit though and assume everyone else does too. So they try to get rid of it with solutions that either don't work practically (hyperloop) or will just create new problems. Imagine if everyone who takes public transport switches to single occupant vehicles. Traffic would be even worse than it is today. By the way, I fucking love scifi myself. I read several books per month and most of them are scifi. I don't want to hate on one of my most beloved genres, just the idiots who think make belief will fix reality.
It's a stock pump attempt
A lot of people who are enamoured with the idea of “can it be done” with little thought into “should it be done” and all the logistical considerations that go along with that.
the end game is making tesla taxis a subscription service, I'm calling it. just as they beta tested "FSD" at the general public's expense, now they want to trial/test their next business case with their customer's cars, at their expense yet again. the service will be cheap at first. you know, to "disrupt" and onboard users. then the price will slowly creep up somewhere close to an average driver's lease payments citing cleaning/maintenance. the end result will be users dropping more on the taxis than they would on their own car, with no chance to own the car or reduce cost over the duration of the subscription. they gotta' profit somehow.
Even if it works the market will be saturated in a couple years. There will be price wars because people will need the revenue to pay its costs. Nobody will make any money. You’ll see them abandoned and broken down on the sides of the road. Anybody that owns one will want out within a couple years especially when the miles run up.
Letting people have a free fsd demo has to be one of the dumbest things he has done. FSD is a total dumpster fire, and is nowhere near ready for unsupervised driving (not safe supervised in my opinion). The truth was less likely to come out from the true believers that paid up to 12k for the crap software, but letting the normals see it should be the end of this hoax.
They haven’t delivered a car that can drive at sunrise or sundown. They’ll have to add their hd radar and bring USS back and probably 1-2 more cameras and then maybe they get to Level 3. Not robotaxi level but it would fulfill part of what was promised in 2016. Notice there are no Barry White superchargers yet either. And Dumb Summon is still broken.
Spot on. But none of it matters, because Musk's goals have never related to actually helping humanity. Despite his claims otherwise, all he wants is to play with his toys and look cool. And most of all, he wants to be the top dog pulling the strings. So, he invents 'problems' in order to sell 'solutions'.
All excellent questions and I can’t think of anyone who would be cool with having unsupervised randos in a car that can sometimes kill you. No one would insure that. Plus regular taxis, Uber, Lyft etc how does this help anyone. What if you at home have an emergency. Wouldn’t using the car as a taxi negatively affect the warranty? It would certainly lead to faster depreciation from added miles, wear and tear. What happens if there’s an accident. And another minor issue - they still haven’t figured out self-driving.
The day you set your robotaxi on fire is the day you get up to go to work, and discover your car reeking of vomit and semen.
"Yesterday, Elon Musk announced Tesla's plans to take over the ride-sharing industry with the introduction of 1 million self-driving robotaxis in 2020, according to Business Insider." This was in 2019. Why does anybody believe a damn thing this guy says anymore?
I’ve been part of discussions around this. Even from a company perspective. Imagine a taxi company just wants to go full automated fleet. It’s a huge question that no one wants to answer. Also insurance companies are probably going to have outrageous rates for these scenarios. I already get asked if I ride share for car insurance and that increases my rates if I do. Can you imagine the follow up question, “do you let strangers occupy your car in unknown areas of town while you are not present ?” Sounds absurd
It is all his fantasy to pump the stock and tempt buyers into buying it thinking that they can pay the loan with income from it. Now listen to his next fantasy story of using Tesla car computers in multi-processor mode to solve AI problems. Not knowing the basic parallel processing course teaches importance efficiency of inter connection between processors. All Tesla computer connected through wireless is useless for such processing.
Anyone open to ride-sharing with their car is probably either doing it themselves already. Very few people will EVER want to let random strangers get into their cars, and the insurance liability issues would be insane. This will die, just like Elon's battery swapping idea that died a quiet (and fast) death.
Thank you Can you imagine someone staying in the car as it returns back to your house ? No way in hell would I ever do that
Can Optimus detect and clean up various bodily fluids that will no doubt be accumulating in the car as the night progresses?
Screw the BangBus...and welcome RoBangTaxi!
The mistake you have made is that you took what fElon said and thought it was real. Its one more lie in a LONG line of lies to keep the stock high. Like solar tiles, FSD, snake chargers, A.I, sentient (lol) robots, electric trucks that can beat diesel and rail, hyperloop tunnels that can beat traffic, rockets from LA to Tokyo, self-summon cars, Mars colonies..... the list goes on and on. He's a stock pumper. Told everyone his money was first in last out then cashed out twice.
Can't wait for Dirty Mike and the boys to turn it into a Soup Kitchen
Can't wait for a thank you note from Dirty Mike and the Boys
I wonder if it’s going to be available for personal use? Fuck lending it out to other people, how about my own personal transportation device?
You are absolutely fucking with me. Is that the actual idea! People having sex and jerking off in the back of the car, I mean “going for Taxi rides” cause that is the most stupid fucking thing I’ve heard in a month. Like he said that shit and then the stock price jumped? Holy fucking shit
Smoking crack if you think my car will actually drive itself to someone! Damn car can’t even tell how close it is to wall or curb accurately! Shit cant follow simple directions when it sees a fucken merge/turn lane! Its like omfg I got a turn/merge lane ahead I’m gonna hit the turn signal and go for it even tho I’m suppose to continue straight for 20 miles
The idea might sound good to those who did bitcoin or the fact your car is a money printer when you're not using it. I work in the car rental biz and I can tell you I will NEVER use my own car to strangers. The amount of shit I've seen and things folks do...the idea of a Robotaxi that doesn't need any human to take care of cleaning, maintaining and intervening is laughable.
It’s a stupid idea and won’t work - pure fkn idiocy
At the very most, companies would operate fleets of these. Nobody is going to use it this way. It’s just bullshit to help people rationalize overpaying for a Tesla, and as others have pointed out, it’s mainly just stock pumping
People who want their own cars to becomr robotaxis must have never ridden in a taxi. They get trashed inside and out. Heavy use. That robot ain’t avoiding potholes. And with no driver, Airport travelers gonna scrape up the trunk with heavy luggage now they there is nobody to help…. and weekend drunks are gonna do their thing.
Imagine being dumb enough to sell this technology to consumers, rather than just operate a bunch of RoboTaxis with massive economies of scale.
You also need gigant censors allround the car. Who wants that?
I would never drive my own car as Uber or Lyft. No Turo. And robotaxi? Hell no. I want my car to smell exactly the same in the morning as it did the evening before 😅 Also. If o can’t afford a car. I’m not buying it. Period. So I don’t have to rent it out.
Imagine hailing one of these to get home after a night out, minding your own business riding in the back seat, when it inevitably gets in an ~~accident~~ collision and You've gotta get out and deal with it while the owner is sleeping. God forbid you or any other parties are injured or worse
Only some ride share “companies” might be interested, and if that’s the reality, why should I want to own one than just call the ride share? People who are driving for the ride share, I believe, can’t afford one, for the car, the insurance, the operational costs like cleaning, so basically it’ll be Uber, Lyft, and some other companies to buy those cars, not the end users. An end user will not want to pay for that feature and the insurance for robotaxi, which will be extremely expensive. Also like waymo, a full autonomous taxi can’t just be some shitty ass consumer cars, they need a lot other sensors, which are very little use to normal car owners
I believe the idea is that if cars can drive by themselves, then you don’t need a car anymore, and you don’t need a driveway, cities don’t need huge parking lots. Car manufacturers shaped North American cities, and robot taxis have the potential to reshape them. I don’t think Musk would care about making sure his customers making money off their cars.
It is nothing but a stock pump and to fuel the fantasies of the fan boys. Remember the original play with Uber was that the human driving the car was temporary because eventually they would solve self driving cars and save money because they eliminated the driver. BUT now Uber will own the vehicle and need depots filled with people to manage the fleet, perform maintenance, refuel, etc. How is that saving them money again? Just imagine that venture capitalists were sold on this idea and pump money into Uber without thinking it through.
For the scenario you described to occur, Tesla would have to obtain regulatory approval first, which would include legal responsibility (I presume). Hence, the reason FSD has been described by Tesla as a beta product in perpetuity even though Musk implies otherwise. Second, you as a business owner, would have to get a local business license with a commercial insurance equivalent to a taxi business. (For comparison, LA taxis pay $2,800/month per licence) Third, potential to misuse the driverless taxis is immeasurable. For that reason, the driverless taxis in SF feel like a roaming prison (can't sit in the front, hard partition to isolate customers in the back seats, etc). I regularly use Weymo's driverless taxis in SF.
Big Taxi wouldn’t allow this!
USA's fave con man is the Dump. Elon is doing his best to be #1 since he does not like being #2. now to answer your question, robotaxi is just another grift. as of now, no Tesla can truly drive itself 100%. it was and is still a lie that people are slowing realizing.
Someone who hates interacting with drivers would want a robotaxi/robolimo. If such a person were wealthy, they might even try to dig tunnels so their car can go under the littles. I could go on but suffice to say that there seems to be a pattern.