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Weren't we supposed to have Tesla robotaxis making everyone $10k a year back in 2021? I will be shocked if there is an actual product that is actually usable wi

by frob 2y ago

Weren't we supposed to have Tesla robotaxis making everyone $10k a year back in 2021? I will be shocked if there is an actual product that is actually usable within 6 month of August 8. Never trust a charlatan.

wpietri 2y ago
Yup. One million robotaxis by the end of 2020: https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-million-tesla-robotaxis-by-the-end-of-2020-where-are-they https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil... In May 2019, Kai-Fu Lee said, "If there are a million Tesla robo-taxis functioning on the road in 2020, I will eat them.": https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-million-tesla-robotaxis-by-the-end-of-2020-where-are-they https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil... Experts at the time knew what Musk was saying was nonsense, so I think "charlatan" is exactly the right word here.
jejeyyy77 2y ago
Tesla is a software company - they'll never figure out manufacturing.
- andruby 2y ago
  Hard to know if you're being sarcastic or not. I'm not a fan of how they handle FSD marketing, but they are very good at automating car manufactory. I believe they are more or less the only company that can mass-produce EVs at that scale _for a profit_. The traditional car brands are losing money on EV's and/or can't scale the production up enough. BYD is probably the only other manufacturer that can compete with Tesla on scale and cost.
StephenSmith 2y ago
Yes, but Waymo hasn't (yet) made Google $1 of profit and FSD is almost pure margin for Tesla.
- tsimionescu 2y ago
  Yes, it's easy to make margins off of a product you're selling for thousands of dollars a decade or so in advance of actually having it work.
- dragonwriter 2y ago
  > Yes, but Waymo hasn't (yet) made Google $1 of profit And, barring a corporate reorg, it never will except by buying from Google, since Google is its corporate sibling, not parent.
bryanlarsen 2y ago
That $10K a year figure never made any sense. Let's say it was true -- you could hire out your Tesla for 10 hours per day while you weren't using it. Sure it's making you $10K/year, but you're putting 100,000 miles per year on your car and it wears out after 3 years rather than after 20 years. Having a way to monetize depreciation may be useful in some cases, but it certainly isn't making you money. I believe that million-mile electric cars are quite possible, but 2021 Tesla's certainly weren't that.
gunapologist99 2y ago
That guy who put thousands of working Internet satellites in orbit, is currently the only way for U.S. to get humans to and from ISS, essentially created a non-existent electric car market from nothing, and built the heaviest self-landing rocket in history, among so many other things. That charlatan? If that's how you define charlatan, I wish we could all accomplish that much. (what other accomplishments did I miss; tbh I don't even like electric cars from a practical or even environmental perspective, and yet even I can admit that what he did was simply incredible.)

by frob 2y ago

wpietri 2y ago

Yup. One million robotaxis by the end of 2020: https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-million-tesla-robotaxis-by-the-end-of-2020-where-are-they https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil... In May 2019, Kai-Fu Lee said, "If there are a million Tesla robo-taxis functioning on the road in 2020, I will eat them.": https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-million-tesla-robotaxis-by-the-end-of-2020-where-are-they https://www.thedrive.com/news/38129/elon-musk-promised-1-mil... Experts at the time knew what Musk was saying was nonsense, so I think "charlatan" is exactly the right word here.

jejeyyy77 2y ago

Tesla is a software company - they'll never figure out manufacturing.

andruby 2y ago
Hard to know if you're being sarcastic or not. I'm not a fan of how they handle FSD marketing, but they are very good at automating car manufactory. I believe they are more or less the only company that can mass-produce EVs at that scale _for a profit_. The traditional car brands are losing money on EV's and/or can't scale the production up enough. BYD is probably the only other manufacturer that can compete with Tesla on scale and cost.

StephenSmith 2y ago

Yes, but Waymo hasn't (yet) made Google $1 of profit and FSD is almost pure margin for Tesla.

tsimionescu 2y ago
Yes, it's easy to make margins off of a product you're selling for thousands of dollars a decade or so in advance of actually having it work.
dragonwriter 2y ago
> Yes, but Waymo hasn't (yet) made Google $1 of profit And, barring a corporate reorg, it never will except by buying from Google, since Google is its corporate sibling, not parent.

bryanlarsen 2y ago

That $10K a year figure never made any sense. Let's say it was true -- you could hire out your Tesla for 10 hours per day while you weren't using it. Sure it's making you $10K/year, but you're putting 100,000 miles per year on your car and it wears out after 3 years rather than after 20 years. Having a way to monetize depreciation may be useful in some cases, but it certainly isn't making you money. I believe that million-mile electric cars are quite possible, but 2021 Tesla's certainly weren't that.

gunapologist99 2y ago

That guy who put thousands of working Internet satellites in orbit, is currently the only way for U.S. to get humans to and from ISS, essentially created a non-existent electric car market from nothing, and built the heaviest self-landing rocket in history, among so many other things. That charlatan? If that's how you define charlatan, I wish we could all accomplish that much. (what other accomplishments did I miss; tbh I don't even like electric cars from a practical or even environmental perspective, and yet even I can admit that what he did was simply incredible.)