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US safety regulators contact Tesla over erratic robotaxis

73 points by ZeljkoS 1y ago

gerad 1y ago
Will robotaxis be a commodity by the time Tesla ships a viable product?
- lupusreal 1y ago
  Even if Tesla gets it working, it will never be popular enough to justify their valuation. It's a niche product that will only compete with traditional taxis/ubers in urban areas, it has no chance of competing with car ownership at large, which is what Tesla's investors think it will do.
  - Spivak 1y ago
    I'm not sure why anyone thinks it will compete with car ownership. You know what's better than an autonomous taxi, a private autonomous taxi that's just for you.
    - ben_w 1y ago
      Kinda, but do also consider that most people can only afford (and have space for) one car, perhaps two if they're upper-middle class or have really old second hand ones, which means what they do buy has to cover most or all needs over the year. On the other hand, if there were a way to rent any vehicle for about the same price as ownership (not that I think Musk will deliver this, but in principle someone else might), you can rent the one with the big boot once a week for shopping, the truck once every two months for a trip to the hardware store, and the tiny cheap city car for your commute.
      - floxy 1y ago
        >also consider that most people can only afford (and have space for) one car, perhaps two if they're upper-middle class or have really old second hand ones In the U.S., something like 59% of households own two or more cars. 22% have three or more. https://shunauto.com/article/how-many-people-have-a-car-in-america https://shunauto.com/article/how-many-people-have-a-car-in-a...
        ben_w 1y ago
        Ok, but (1) worldwide (see e.g. my own profile); (2) I said people, not households.
      - lupusreal 1y ago
        Working class American households have one car per adult and often a third beater for their teenager. In America, factory workers drive pickup trucks instead of more affordable cars, not because they need to haul things, but simply because they prefer the aesthetic. This notion of Americans not being able to into car ownership is divorced from reality.
    - pebble 1y ago
      With all the maintenance and other hassles? No thanks.
      - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
        EVs are virtually maintenance free. Versus the chances of getting into a car that was mistreated by some other POS? Yes please.
    - derektank 1y ago
      The opportunity cost of having a vehicle sit unused in a parking lot 90+% of the time is really high. We've only tolerated it for so long because human labor is and has been more expensive than the vehicle's depreciation. Autonomous taxis potentially flip the script on that assumption. Sure, rich people will always have enough money to afford luxuries like privacy and comfort, but most people are price sensitive and will opt for the cheapest transportation solution that delivers them where they need to go in the fastest amount of time. I would wager this will be a Waymo type autonomous taxi service but time will tell.
      - Spivak 1y ago
        We're talking about personal vehicle ownership, there's no opportunity cost because you weren't going to make money on it anyway. My car sitting in my garage isn't costing me money nor is it losing value to me as a means of taking me and my stuff places. If you're one of the people that cares about the deprecation of your car's resale value then you're already doing the math on this and living a depressing life. But if you're like most normal car owners you bought a car to drive it and will replace it once you get your 200k miles out of it when its value is less than the $2000 minimum trade-in the dealership gives you. The other problem is that I can't haul shit in a robo-taxi. Or drive long distances. People use their vehicles for more than just transporting bodies to and from work. And if I kill my neighbor I probably can't take his body in the trunk either. I would love to know what kind of life you and the other sibling commenters are living where a taxi service encompasses the totality of your transportation needs.
        ryoshoe 1y ago
        Assuming that you're keeping the registration up to date, your car does cost some money to sit in your garage even it if you'd consider it a negligible amount
    - xnx 1y ago
      > I'm not sure why anyone thinks it will compete with car ownership. Maybe not 100% of cars, but a very good chance that it will eat into owning a 3rd or 2nd car in a household.
    - olyjohn 1y ago
      Not sure why this is downvoted. The whole premise of this robotaxi shit was started on the fact that your own, personal car, could be used as a taxi when you're not using it. And also, the same reason people don't use taxis exclusively today is because you have to plan ahead or sit around and wait for a vehicle to come get you. Who is going to want to do that, when your empty driveway could house a car that pays for itself, makes you money, and is available whenever you need it? I also don't think that taxis will be cheaper just because there is no driver. The savings is never passed down to the customer, never has been, and never will. People who don't have cars today already manage to get around just fine, mostly due to where they live. This won't really change anything for them.
    - lupusreal 1y ago
      > I'm not sure why anyone thinks it will compete with car ownership As you can see in your replies, there are a lot of techies who think it will. And furthermore, Tesla's valuation can only be made sense of if Tesla investors believe Tesla robotaxis will eat whole car industry, not just the whole taxi industry.
  - the8472 1y ago
    The majority of people lives in urban areas, especially in high income countries.
    - lupusreal 1y ago
      And the market for taxis is much smaller than the market for selling cars to urban people. Robotaxis aren't going to replace car ownership, but that's the delusion propping up Tesla's stock.
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
      - the8472 1y ago
        Well, public transportation is a thing in a lot of cities. Autonomous vehicles can fulfill the role of buses/shuttles/people movers with more flexible routes and without having to cost of a driver. Maybe allow a bit more cargo for people who want to get their groceries home. But yeah, taxis don't seem like the optimal shape here.
        lupusreal 1y ago
        45% of households nominally in New York City have a car and that is by far the lowest of any American city. In the ideal American city for not owning a car, almost half of the households own one anyway! This is about the same in Europe too. Pick a major European city and you'll probably find that between a third to a half of the households in that city own a vehicle, despite the famous European public transit and habit for walking and cycling that online anticar activists love to brag about. In every other American city besides NYC, most households have a vehicle. And besides virtually every American city save one being built for cars, you also have to keep in mind that the "most people live in urban areas" statistic counts all the people living in the suburbs around cities, e.g. people who have chosen a lifestyle literally built around car ownership.
        the8472 1y ago
  - oceanplexian 1y ago
    If Tesla only did trucking, that alone is a $1T industry. Now imagine they take a bite out of that, a bite out of Uber and Lyft, food delivery, transportation for an increasingly aging population, continue to make large investments in energy, robotics, etc. It's not that crazy of a valuation.
    - andrewblossom 1y ago
      A valuation based on imagination?
    - diamond559 1y ago
      Ah yes, the Tesla moon math. Just pull TAMs out your behind and give Tesla a % of it, that is how a true stonk "investor" does it sir! Did you come here straight from Wallstreetbets?
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
    - gamblor956 1y ago
      I wasn't aware that a car could fit in an elevator and deliver to your door... People pay for Uber and Lyft because they're too lazy to leave their apartment. Tesla would have to be significantly cheaper than its competitors in order to justify the front-door-tax.
      - justinrubek 1y ago
        Uber and Lyft necessitate leaving the apartment. How else are you going to take the rid somewhere? I assume you mean food delivery, though. In my experience, it isn't about being lazy to leave the apartment. It's that the infrastructure where I live is so spread out that it'll be at least 30 minutes total of driving to get that meal, and that isn't accounting for cooking time. A 5 minute walk would be much more tolerable.
        gamblor956 1y ago
erikerikson 1y ago
> relying on in-car cameras rather than the radar and sensors ... It is betting that its approach will be cheaper Is this due to reduced processing requirements, reduced sensor costs, or what?
- nemomarx 1y ago
  both? they did try and get to market faster than cars with full lidar rigs etc
  - taormina 1y ago
    The didn’t actually get to market before Waymo in the robotaxi market
- jameskilton 1y ago
  This decision was made at the height of the pandemic supply chain shortages, but then was never reversed when they could get sensors again. FSD will never work with pure vision and it's folly that Tesla / Musk insists that it will.
  - mycodendral 1y ago
    Can you cite some practical failure scenarios besides a wile e coyote billboard where camera inherently won't be able to accomplish what lidar/radar do?
    - precommunicator 1y ago
      I was driving in convoy over closed (to non-convoy driving) mountain pass in Norway, in winter. Everything was white, you could barely see the road. Snow was so heavy that visibility stretched as far as the car before me, you couldn't see further than that. At some point a snow plug passed on the other side of the road and completely covered my windshield with snow, to the point that for a few second I had no visibility whatsoever. Good luck to cameras then.
tempodox 1y ago
Is this happening now because Trump doesn't like Elon any more?
- wnevets 1y ago
  Do you think the trump admin is faking the footage of the tesla taxis breaking the law?
  - delfinom 1y ago
    No, but I do expect Elon to make some nice tweets about Trump and the next thing you know, murder by robotaxis will be legal and any states attempting to regulate them will be prosecuted.
  - exe34 1y ago
    i think it just means he can't just doge the regulators out of existence this time.
    - wnevets 1y ago
      > i think it just means he can't just doge the regulators out of existence this time. I don't believe this "contact" by regulators has shown that to be the case. However ultimately my point is that this "contact" happened because Tesla's taxis are failing at obeying the law and believing the regulators are out to "get" Tesla (or any company for that matter) is partly why America is facing its current challenges.
  - classified 1y ago
    Maybe not, but if Trump were still a fan of Elon's, that footage would never have surfaced.
ArtTimeInvestor 1y ago
I expect that Tesla's FSD progress will accelerate now. They are now operating a service where Tesla themselves is responsible for every mistake the cars make. Operating in public. Having the media and the authorities breathing down their neck. Plus they have a clear benchmark: Growing faster than Waymo. This should motivate everybody at Tesla to work their asses off. Including Musk.
- yladiz 1y ago
  You're assuming they weren't already operating in public before, and were just sitting on their laurels, rather than self driving being a really hard problem regardless of how hard you work on it. From what has been seen it's the latter, so I don't expect this to cause any meaningful change to Tesla's FSD progress.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago
  "bad news is good news, actually"
- lm28469 1y ago
  > I expect that Tesla's FSD progress will accelerate now. Just two more weeks guys, two more weeks! By 2014 all teslas will ship without a steering wheel, and by 2022 we'll be on Mars!
bundie 1y ago
Related: Elon Musk doesn't want you to know Tesla's response to the NHTSA's Robotaxi questions | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44366731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44366731
ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago
Regulators about to be fired and decimated by DOGE
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
dmix 1y ago
2024: Waymo and Zoox are under federal investigation as self-driving cars allegedly behave erratically https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/business/self-driving-cars-waymo-zoox-regulators-investigating https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/business/self-driving-cars-wa...
baron816 1y ago
One thing Waymo did really well was roll out their service extremely slowly. They knew they needed to build a whole lot of trust to get people to accept them. Can Tesla do the same thing? Can they accumulate a track record of being nearly perfect for several years before trying to scale up?
- prossercj 1y ago
  Short answer: no
drivingmenuts 1y ago
How long before the NHTSA gets defunded?

73 points by ZeljkoS 1y ago

gerad 1y ago

Will robotaxis be a commodity by the time Tesla ships a viable product?

lupusreal 1y ago
Even if Tesla gets it working, it will never be popular enough to justify their valuation. It's a niche product that will only compete with traditional taxis/ubers in urban areas, it has no chance of competing with car ownership at large, which is what Tesla's investors think it will do.
- Spivak 1y ago
  I'm not sure why anyone thinks it will compete with car ownership. You know what's better than an autonomous taxi, a private autonomous taxi that's just for you.
  - ben_w 1y ago
    Kinda, but do also consider that most people can only afford (and have space for) one car, perhaps two if they're upper-middle class or have really old second hand ones, which means what they do buy has to cover most or all needs over the year. On the other hand, if there were a way to rent any vehicle for about the same price as ownership (not that I think Musk will deliver this, but in principle someone else might), you can rent the one with the big boot once a week for shopping, the truck once every two months for a trip to the hardware store, and the tiny cheap city car for your commute.
    - floxy 1y ago
      >also consider that most people can only afford (and have space for) one car, perhaps two if they're upper-middle class or have really old second hand ones In the U.S., something like 59% of households own two or more cars. 22% have three or more. https://shunauto.com/article/how-many-people-have-a-car-in-america https://shunauto.com/article/how-many-people-have-a-car-in-a...
      - ben_w 1y ago
        Ok, but (1) worldwide (see e.g. my own profile); (2) I said people, not households.
    - lupusreal 1y ago
      Working class American households have one car per adult and often a third beater for their teenager. In America, factory workers drive pickup trucks instead of more affordable cars, not because they need to haul things, but simply because they prefer the aesthetic. This notion of Americans not being able to into car ownership is divorced from reality.
  - pebble 1y ago
    With all the maintenance and other hassles? No thanks.
    - sorcerer-mar 1y ago
      EVs are virtually maintenance free. Versus the chances of getting into a car that was mistreated by some other POS? Yes please.
  - derektank 1y ago
    The opportunity cost of having a vehicle sit unused in a parking lot 90+% of the time is really high. We've only tolerated it for so long because human labor is and has been more expensive than the vehicle's depreciation. Autonomous taxis potentially flip the script on that assumption. Sure, rich people will always have enough money to afford luxuries like privacy and comfort, but most people are price sensitive and will opt for the cheapest transportation solution that delivers them where they need to go in the fastest amount of time. I would wager this will be a Waymo type autonomous taxi service but time will tell.
    - Spivak 1y ago
      We're talking about personal vehicle ownership, there's no opportunity cost because you weren't going to make money on it anyway. My car sitting in my garage isn't costing me money nor is it losing value to me as a means of taking me and my stuff places. If you're one of the people that cares about the deprecation of your car's resale value then you're already doing the math on this and living a depressing life. But if you're like most normal car owners you bought a car to drive it and will replace it once you get your 200k miles out of it when its value is less than the $2000 minimum trade-in the dealership gives you. The other problem is that I can't haul shit in a robo-taxi. Or drive long distances. People use their vehicles for more than just transporting bodies to and from work. And if I kill my neighbor I probably can't take his body in the trunk either. I would love to know what kind of life you and the other sibling commenters are living where a taxi service encompasses the totality of your transportation needs.
      - ryoshoe 1y ago
        Assuming that you're keeping the registration up to date, your car does cost some money to sit in your garage even it if you'd consider it a negligible amount
  - xnx 1y ago
    > I'm not sure why anyone thinks it will compete with car ownership. Maybe not 100% of cars, but a very good chance that it will eat into owning a 3rd or 2nd car in a household.
  - olyjohn 1y ago
    Not sure why this is downvoted. The whole premise of this robotaxi shit was started on the fact that your own, personal car, could be used as a taxi when you're not using it. And also, the same reason people don't use taxis exclusively today is because you have to plan ahead or sit around and wait for a vehicle to come get you. Who is going to want to do that, when your empty driveway could house a car that pays for itself, makes you money, and is available whenever you need it? I also don't think that taxis will be cheaper just because there is no driver. The savings is never passed down to the customer, never has been, and never will. People who don't have cars today already manage to get around just fine, mostly due to where they live. This won't really change anything for them.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    > I'm not sure why anyone thinks it will compete with car ownership As you can see in your replies, there are a lot of techies who think it will. And furthermore, Tesla's valuation can only be made sense of if Tesla investors believe Tesla robotaxis will eat whole car industry, not just the whole taxi industry.
- the8472 1y ago
  The majority of people lives in urban areas, especially in high income countries.
  - lupusreal 1y ago
    And the market for taxis is much smaller than the market for selling cars to urban people. Robotaxis aren't going to replace car ownership, but that's the delusion propping up Tesla's stock.
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
    - the8472 1y ago
      Well, public transportation is a thing in a lot of cities. Autonomous vehicles can fulfill the role of buses/shuttles/people movers with more flexible routes and without having to cost of a driver. Maybe allow a bit more cargo for people who want to get their groceries home. But yeah, taxis don't seem like the optimal shape here.
      - lupusreal 1y ago
        45% of households nominally in New York City have a car and that is by far the lowest of any American city. In the ideal American city for not owning a car, almost half of the households own one anyway! This is about the same in Europe too. Pick a major European city and you'll probably find that between a third to a half of the households in that city own a vehicle, despite the famous European public transit and habit for walking and cycling that online anticar activists love to brag about. In every other American city besides NYC, most households have a vehicle. And besides virtually every American city save one being built for cars, you also have to keep in mind that the "most people live in urban areas" statistic counts all the people living in the suburbs around cities, e.g. people who have chosen a lifestyle literally built around car ownership.
        the8472 1y ago
- oceanplexian 1y ago
  If Tesla only did trucking, that alone is a $1T industry. Now imagine they take a bite out of that, a bite out of Uber and Lyft, food delivery, transportation for an increasingly aging population, continue to make large investments in energy, robotics, etc. It's not that crazy of a valuation.
  - andrewblossom 1y ago
    A valuation based on imagination?
  - diamond559 1y ago
    Ah yes, the Tesla moon math. Just pull TAMs out your behind and give Tesla a % of it, that is how a true stonk "investor" does it sir! Did you come here straight from Wallstreetbets?
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
  - gamblor956 1y ago
    I wasn't aware that a car could fit in an elevator and deliver to your door... People pay for Uber and Lyft because they're too lazy to leave their apartment. Tesla would have to be significantly cheaper than its competitors in order to justify the front-door-tax.
    - justinrubek 1y ago
      Uber and Lyft necessitate leaving the apartment. How else are you going to take the rid somewhere? I assume you mean food delivery, though. In my experience, it isn't about being lazy to leave the apartment. It's that the infrastructure where I live is so spread out that it'll be at least 30 minutes total of driving to get that meal, and that isn't accounting for cooking time. A 5 minute walk would be much more tolerable.
      - gamblor956 1y ago

erikerikson 1y ago

> relying on in-car cameras rather than the radar and sensors ... It is betting that its approach will be cheaper Is this due to reduced processing requirements, reduced sensor costs, or what?

nemomarx 1y ago
both? they did try and get to market faster than cars with full lidar rigs etc
- taormina 1y ago
  The didn’t actually get to market before Waymo in the robotaxi market
jameskilton 1y ago
This decision was made at the height of the pandemic supply chain shortages, but then was never reversed when they could get sensors again. FSD will never work with pure vision and it's folly that Tesla / Musk insists that it will.
- mycodendral 1y ago
  Can you cite some practical failure scenarios besides a wile e coyote billboard where camera inherently won't be able to accomplish what lidar/radar do?
  - precommunicator 1y ago
    I was driving in convoy over closed (to non-convoy driving) mountain pass in Norway, in winter. Everything was white, you could barely see the road. Snow was so heavy that visibility stretched as far as the car before me, you couldn't see further than that. At some point a snow plug passed on the other side of the road and completely covered my windshield with snow, to the point that for a few second I had no visibility whatsoever. Good luck to cameras then.

tempodox 1y ago

Is this happening now because Trump doesn't like Elon any more?

wnevets 1y ago
Do you think the trump admin is faking the footage of the tesla taxis breaking the law?
- delfinom 1y ago
  No, but I do expect Elon to make some nice tweets about Trump and the next thing you know, murder by robotaxis will be legal and any states attempting to regulate them will be prosecuted.
- exe34 1y ago
  i think it just means he can't just doge the regulators out of existence this time.
  - wnevets 1y ago
    > i think it just means he can't just doge the regulators out of existence this time. I don't believe this "contact" by regulators has shown that to be the case. However ultimately my point is that this "contact" happened because Tesla's taxis are failing at obeying the law and believing the regulators are out to "get" Tesla (or any company for that matter) is partly why America is facing its current challenges.
- classified 1y ago
  Maybe not, but if Trump were still a fan of Elon's, that footage would never have surfaced.

ArtTimeInvestor 1y ago

I expect that Tesla's FSD progress will accelerate now. They are now operating a service where Tesla themselves is responsible for every mistake the cars make. Operating in public. Having the media and the authorities breathing down their neck. Plus they have a clear benchmark: Growing faster than Waymo. This should motivate everybody at Tesla to work their asses off. Including Musk.

yladiz 1y ago
You're assuming they weren't already operating in public before, and were just sitting on their laurels, rather than self driving being a really hard problem regardless of how hard you work on it. From what has been seen it's the latter, so I don't expect this to cause any meaningful change to Tesla's FSD progress.
sorcerer-mar 1y ago
"bad news is good news, actually"
lm28469 1y ago
> I expect that Tesla's FSD progress will accelerate now. Just two more weeks guys, two more weeks! By 2014 all teslas will ship without a steering wheel, and by 2022 we'll be on Mars!

bundie 1y ago

Related: Elon Musk doesn't want you to know Tesla's response to the NHTSA's Robotaxi questions | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44366731 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44366731

ujkhsjkdhf234 1y ago

Regulators about to be fired and decimated by DOGE

deleted 1y ago

[deleted]

dmix 1y ago

2024: Waymo and Zoox are under federal investigation as self-driving cars allegedly behave erratically https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/business/self-driving-cars-waymo-zoox-regulators-investigating https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/14/business/self-driving-cars-wa...

baron816 1y ago

One thing Waymo did really well was roll out their service extremely slowly. They knew they needed to build a whole lot of trust to get people to accept them. Can Tesla do the same thing? Can they accumulate a track record of being nearly perfect for several years before trying to scale up?

prossercj 1y ago
Short answer: no

drivingmenuts 1y ago

How long before the NHTSA gets defunded?