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by jamessinghal 360 days ago
The beta today was without a driver behind the wheel. Granted, the geofence is much smaller than Waymo's in Austin.
1 comments

If you can eventually guarantee you’ll get a robotaxi instead of a car with a driver when you call one (unlike Waymo in Austin, now, thanks to their dumb partnership with Uber), they’ll likely do ok in the longer term.
I'm rooting for Tesla being able to provide some driverless taxi competition to Waymo. Hopefully both can increase supply enough to allow for a guaranteed robotaxi booking, although anecdotally I haven't found it that hard to get a Waymo through the Uber app depending on the time.
I’ve only tried twice (after using it ~30 times during the preview directly through the Waymo app) - neither time resulted in a robotaxi though, and one resulted in a driver that smelled so bad I’ve sworn off ride sharing until the end of summer.

Hopefully the Tesla app forces Waymo to reconsider their deal with Uber altogether and just run it themselves like they do in San Francisco.