Waymo already beat Tesla to Full Self Driving. I use Waymo frequently in SF and it's great. It makes this Tesla robotaxi with an undefined release date not very interesting.
Based on some of the viral videos out of SF lately, I think we need Delamain from Cyberpunk 2077 more than Waymo at this point. I've been in a Waymo with other drivers trying to test its intelligence (trying to cut into the Waymo's lane with the signal on while right in the blind spot) and it's not fun.
They're currently discussing how difficult it was to design a credit card reader for the Robotaxi that would reliably fail whenever it detects cash in the passenger's wallet.
I dont know how true it is now but I can tell you once upon a time they preferred cash and yes their machine frequently seemed to be broken or had some issue. My experiences were a long time ago before the rise of Uber and Lyft
This is complete and utter bullshit. Whatever your personal experience, I have ridden taxis hundreds of times over the course of 2 decades and not once has a cab demanded I pay cash. I exclusively used credit cards and have been since roughly 2009
He talks about the tyranny of parking lots, but this is a solved problem! The whole presentation is an exercise in steadfastly not talking about public transportation.
He actually did address public transportation, saying that fully autonomous, on demand taxis will be the equivalent of individualized public transportation. He's right. Why would I want to stand outside in the elements for 20 minutes waiting for a bus when I could hail an autonomous taxi and be on my way?
"Just ride a bus" is the "640K ought to be enough for anybody" of the current cycle.
A bus can transport 100+ people while taking up about the same road space as two or maybe three of these. Those could transport 4 or maybe 6 people. I don't think more needs to be said about the chances of this replacing actual public transport.
One problem is regular trips, such as commuting and shopping, where most people need to regularly go from residential areas to office areas or to commercial areas. Here, the vast majority of people, all over the world and with few local exceptions, use public transport (trains, subways, trams, buses, etc). The fact that you have to walk a little bit to the station and from the station to your destination is not a major concern, compared to the cost and the time difference VS filled city streets. If all the people commuting, say, by subway in Tokyo were each in a robotaxi, you'd need most of the day just to finish the morning commute.
Then there are more independent trips, where your schedule is not aligned with public transport, or where there is some urgency, or where your destination is very far away from a station, or where you have very heavy bags etc. For those cases, a car is of course the ideal, so lots of people, even many of those that commute daily by public transport in cities, also own a car.
The bus can only transport 100 people because it forces everyone to take the same route, regardless of where they are actually headed. This is not merely inconvenient, but a delusional take on the future of mobility.
You cannot eat on the bus. You cannot bring your grocery bags on the bus. You cannot bring your pets on the bus.
Also, there’s the fact you have to sit with (and smell) 99 other people. Some of them you may find are mentally unstable shitbags that will possibly assault you.
Sure, there are inconveniences, but it is literally impossible to run a huge city any other way (I mean, other than fixed route large vehicle cramped public transport, be it busses, trains, trams etc). It is geometrically impossible to fit 20 million people on roads in cars during 1-3 hours when businesses start and end. Drivers make no difference, the problem is the form factor. This is not a technological problem, not even a physical problem, it's a problem of basic math.
Does he not understand the point of public transportation or is he hoping the people he says this to don't understand the point of public transportation?
After seeing the Chinese company Unitree tease this https://youtu.be/GzX1qOIO1bE, Optimus seems very unarticulated and clunky. And Unitree claim it would be a bit more than half the projected cost of the Tesla offering.
Time will tell.
My bets right now are not on Elon leading a Tesla supremacy in anything in the future—and that is unfortunate. I wish an American company could pull it off.
With autonomy you do not need a one-fit-all vehicle that support many different use cases.
Instead you have access to a fleet of specialized vehicles that are optimized for different tasks. Eg many trips might still be with only one or two passangers, and then a small two seater makes a lot of sense. If you need larger capacity you simple order a ride from a suitable vehicle class.
Overall, this demo looks a lot like the self driving vehicles at Guangzhou Bio Island. They have slow self-driving buses and taxis in a somewhat controlled environment.[1] That sort of thing has been working for about five years now.
What a bizzare world we live in. He's promising some version of the thing he did in 2016 [0], he's promising a lower than $30k price point, also the famous "unsupervised full self driving" (how many more adjectives does one need for autonomous vehicles?).
Perhaps he's made another deal with the board for a better $100B pay package so he can lie to the shareholders (who'll eat it up) and he'll dump subpar products onto these people who are heralding him as another "genius" or whatever.
He's just another run-of-the-mill, out of touch conman at this point.
He was great, but he didn't hold onto his own greatness.
It disappoints me when otherwise intelligent people take him for his word at this point. Even ignoring his descent into political madness and conspiracy, he's simply not trustworthy.
Fool me once, shame on Elon. Fool me 194 times, shame on me.