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Anybody know why the autonomous taxi isn't just a model 3? I don't see the point in a purpose built two seater with no steering wheel or pedals and I don't kno
by wilsonnb3 2y ago
Anybody know why the autonomous taxi isn't just a model 3?
I don't see the point in a purpose built two seater with no steering wheel or pedals and I don't know why regulators would approve an autonomous car with no way to manually override it.
- strulovich 2y agoBarring all the issues, if you did build a huge fleet of autonomous taxis - smaller, lighter cars with less moving pieces would save you a lot of money. 2 seater - smaller car No wheels or stuff - saves money on the build and parts.
- dmix 2y agoThey are probably planning to reuse lots of parts from model 3 to save money And people are creatures of habit and highly social so version 1 of robotaxis will 100% look like normal cars. Regardless of whatever benefits you can come up with on paper. Once it's normalized then you experiment.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- saturn8601 2y agoThis is the company that released the CyberTruck. V1 will probably look mostly like what was presented. Every single prototype they have ever unveiled eventually ended up looking very similar to the production model.
- justahuman74 2y agoYikes, I had assumed it was the usual concept car BS until you mentioned the cybertruck
- ulfw 2y agoOr god forbid you'd build a proper electric public transport network that can transport dozens, sometimes hundreds of people way more efficiently.
- rob74 2y agoYou can see Musk's vision of that in Las Vegas: in tunnels (so it doesn't disturb "regular" motorists), but still using cars (what else?).
- ulfw 2y agoCars driven by a human driver. He can't even to FSD in a 2.4 mile TUNNEL after years
- matthewfelgate 2y agoI don't understand how they can't get autonomous working in a tunnel. It sounds like the perfect controlled environment.
- grecy 2y agoA driver in the Vegas tunnel told me they self drive perfectly fine, it’s a regulation thing holding them back. It seems certain they’ll correct that with their massive expansion coming
- rob74 2y agoMark my words: the "final form" of robotaxis will seat 4 (up to 6 in a pinch) people on facing seats, will be able to drive in both directions and have all 4 wheels fully steerable for more flexibility.
- Iulioh 2y agoThe 4 fully steerable wheels on robottaxis is an interesting ones. For human drivers were a little overkill with no real advange besides parking in small spaces) but they would be probably more usefull. But the fact that they are a little too complex remains, maybe making them semi standardized and modular would help
- dv_dt 2y agoEspecially because every autonomous taxi fleet to date seems to have runs where they end up blocking roads and emergency vehicles.
- kshacker 2y agoImagine if you could have one human operator able to go anywhere in the city for every 50 active cars ! Of course you can scale the number up and down based on actual needs. Kinda like Tesla AAA. Overhead will be less than having a driver per car and could be reasonable.
- echoangle 2y agoHow long would it take for the single operator to reach a stuck car, worst case and average? I don’t know how it’s in the US but I’m pretty sure you could never get this certified in the EU, you can’t have your cars stuck and blocking traffic for 20 minutes before someone comes to get it unstuck. I think remote control would be much better for this.
- zizee 2y ago"You're trip is important to us, please hold and the next available operator will assist you as soon as possible."
- dv_dt 2y agoImagine a hurricane knocks out mobile internet and every car in the fleet is offline, x% of all cars on road stop operating, or maybe they have some independence, but if they get stuck, are stuck immobile until comms are restored. I guess at least if they're small other vehicles can shove them out of the way.
- whamlastxmas 2y agoI assume robo taxi will be significantly cheaper to manufacture. You can get away with much less range and creature comforts being quite a bit less. People care much less about comfortable for something they sit in for twenty minutes versus buy for $50k
- wilsonnb3 2y agoYeah I would be interested in seeing how the costs shake out. There is logic in this design being cheaper to manufacture but I would think that it would be a long while before you "broke even", so to speak, compared to using a design that you already know exactly how to make.
- jjulius 2y agoCreature comforts, fine, they can go, but a shorter range? I thought the idea was for me to be able to have my car galavanting around the city all day being a taxi for people to help me make money. Forgive my ignorance, but how is a shorter range going to help with that?
- dmix 2y agoI guess it depends on the initial regulatory environment. But most likely it's not any cheaper. He said in the video it's cheaper through the economics of reuse, not through it being cheap itself
- whamlastxmas 2y agoYou don’t need 350 mile range for city errands and if for some reason you did, they can just coordinate vehicle swap that takes 30 seconds
- avalys 2y agoHuh? You will spend exactly as much time in the Robotaxi as you do in a vehicle you buy for yourself. If people are willing to pay extra for comfort and style already, why would they stop? I feel like so much of this discourse is dominated by people who hate cars. Most people like their cars! That's why they bought them.
- cryptoegorophy 2y agoFirst reason - doors won’t close themselves.
- wilsonnb3 2y agoThat is true, although they could add that to a model 3. I wonder how Waymo deals with it.
- bagels 2y agoYou close the door yourself, and open it yourself. I was horrified to discover this.
- cryptoegorophy 2y agoWhat?? What if you don’t close it and just leave? I mean this will happen.
- bagels 2y agoIn San Francisco? You're probably liable for all the property damage that happens next. I wasn't brave enough to find out.
- agildehaus 2y agoTheir cars currently produce an audible request to close the doors. In practice it doesn't happen often, I've never seen it happen in person. They also have support just minutes away usually. The Zeekr vehicle they're testing now, and presumably the Hyundai they're starting to develop, will have self-closing doors.
- echoangle 2y agoWell they know who booked the ride, so they will probably charge you for it or block you from riding again.
- 2y ago
- TrainedMonkey 2y agoI have no first hand knowledge here, but thinking from first principles. From Robotaxi fleet perspective you want autonomous maintenance, cleaning, charging, and lowest cost. From Robotaxi user perspective you want climate / music / entertaiment / safety. So the idea for robot taxi is that it should be better than model 3 in some or all of those dimensions. Now speculating for the moment, from Elon perspective you probably want things to be more cyberpunky as that is how future looked in his childhood and he is trying to build it. Also, engineers / designers were likely mandated to handle all of the maintenance and possibly production by Tesla Bots.
- j7ake 2y agoAutonomous cleaning? Good luck vacuuming all the nooks and crannies in a car.
- BluSyn 2y agoThey literally showed a clip of a robot cleaning the car in the announcement. Also perfect task for Optimus.
- kombookcha 2y agoI straight up do not believe that Optimus is capable of vacuuming a car unassisted without damaging itself, the car or the hoover.
- m463 2y agowhat if the robot can exchange it's arm for a vacuum? sort of Kentucky Fried Movie style :)
- kombookcha 2y agoChainsaw arm ala Evil Dead and I'm back on board. Groovy ;)
- 2y ago
- mplewis 2y agoBecause all the work of allegedly building a new vehicle platform is a better excuse for making no profit on the robotaxi initiative for the next ten years.
- sandspar 2y agoWhat's the deal with cynical, low effort comments like this that add nothing to the discussion? There's obviously more to the story than what you're saying. HackerNews is supposed to be for discussion, not Reddit-tier snark. Comments like yours are just visual pollution.
- stackghost 2y ago>What's the deal with cynical, low effort comments like this that add nothing to the discussion? People are starting to wake up to the (shitty) new reality that Big Tech created for us. The cynical nature is just the natural reaction to a serial grifter becoming the world's richest man. I don't think anyone but the most naive actually believes anything in this PR piece will come to market.
- mavhc 2y agoOh yeah, look at all the terrible things Tesla has done, sell more EVs than everyone else, and make them for less cost, and include a good infotainment system in a car, what a terrible reality
- steveoscaro 2y agoYeah this place feels like Reddit right now. Hivemind takes left and right.
- vessenes 2y agoYes. Sadly, it's always been this way. Look up the response posts to Dropbox, Ethereum, .. Every few years I'm like "I think it's gotten worse" and then I'm like "I'm going to spin up some sentiment analysis to prove it's gotten worse" and then I read some old posts and I'm like "I miss jacquesm, but nah it's pretty much the same." And then I think "this is still the best forum on the internet."
- _9omd 2y agoThey're going for lowest cost per mile. Most rides have 2 or less people, this will address that huge market in a very efficient way.
- nateglims 2y agoWhy is that market not served by a 4 person self driving car?
- dev_tty01 2y agoOr by a Waymo you can already use in a visit to SF?
- buzzerbetrayed 2y agoBecause roads exist outside of SF and Waymo should have competition.
- Unroasted6154 2y agoThe mentionned the show that they will have autonomous versions of 3 and Y first.
- jaarse 2y agoBecause that isn’t different or new enough to get investors excited. The point of this presentation was not to spell out technically how they are going to accomplish this. Agreed, a fleet of model 3s would work great. The point of this presentation was to look like a cool visionary tech company that is going to change the world, to justify that your Market cap is now larger than EVERY OTHER MAJOR AUTOMAKER COMBINED! Same reason the prototypes need to look like they were lifted from Blade Runner.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- dplgk 2y agoSo a pump and dump?
- Unroasted6154 2y agoThey said in the event that they will first deliver 3s and Ys. They just add a 2 seater and 20 seater van later to fill other use cases.
- bdjsiqoocwk 2y ago> Anybody know why the autonomous taxi isn't just a model 3? It's so Enron Musk can say it's still 2 years away.
- gniv 2y agoBTW, Google tried this too (building a small 2-seater w/o controls). What happened to that project? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCezICQNgJU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCezICQNgJU
- xnx 2y agoRetired. Explained here: https://medium.com/waymo/from-post-it-note-to-prototype-the-journey-of-our-firefly-30569ac8fd5e https://medium.com/waymo/from-post-it-note-to-prototype-the-...
- panick21_ 2y agoMany reasons. Model 3 is to big. The Model 3 is missing many features needed, like inductive charging, automatic doors. And has lots of things not needed, like a steering wheel column. Model 3 is build on a much older architecture, even the upgraded versions. Model 3 still uses traditional car wiring. With all the changes you would have to do to M3, its basically a new car. This Robotaxi will have all the drive-by-wire architecture of the Cybertruck. The new electronics architecture and Ethernet bus. And things like wireless charging.
- SmartJerry 2y agoBecause most Uber rides are 1-2 person and a car designed to be smaller is cheaper.
- tim333 2y agoI'm guessing mostly for show. I they had a driving system that actually worked they could fit it on a car and try it in real life like Waymo.