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As time goes on, Tesla's fiasco becomes more and more embarrassing. Waymos are all over the place in the cities they serve, doing pretty much what they're suppo

As time goes on, Tesla's fiasco becomes more and more embarrassing. Waymos are all over the place in the cities they serve, doing pretty much what they're supposed to do. Nuro has some fully autonomous vehicles running around. Baidu's Apollo Go is deployed in 16 cities in China, although they use remote driving as a backup. Tesla, though, is still hyping a technology that seems to have maxed out years ago.

brianwawok 1y ago
And yet it drives me on 2000 mile car trips without touching anything. If you ignore the hype and look at the actual product, it’s fine.
- paulryanrogers 1y ago
  Ancedotes are nice. Miles per disengagement stats would be better.
  - buran77 1y ago
    That's not an anecdote, it sounds like an exaggeration bordering flat out lying. A 2000 miles trip "without touching anything" to drive the car is statistically impossible for any reasonable drive (e.g. not endless straight lines on an Australian highway), especially for a Tesla famously known for needing interventions often. Even more advanced autonomous driving systems are far too limited to take arbitrary 2000 miles trip with zero human assistance.
    - madamelic 1y ago
      13 is quite good. 14 is even better. 2,000 may be stretching it but it is possible if the driver is trusting enough. Personally many of my disengagements isn't because it is being dangerous, but just sub-optimal such as not driving as aggressive as I want to, not getting into off-ramp lane as early as I like, or just picking weird navigational choices. Trying to recall but I haven't had a safety involved disengagement in probably a few months across late 13 and 14. I am just one data point and the main criticism I've seen from 14 is: 1) getting rid of fine speed controls in favor of driving style profiles 2) its car and obstacle avoidance being overtuned so it will tap the brakes if, for instance, an upcoming perpendicular car suddenly appears and starts to roll its stop sign. Personally, I prefer it to be overly protective albeit turn it down slightly and fix issues where it hilariously thinks large clouds of leaves blowing across are obstacles to brake for.
      - buran77 1y ago
        > 2,000 may be stretching it but it is possible if the driver is trusting enough. Yeah, trust and a lot of creative accounting of what constitutes successfully driving by itself for that long. Would you put your child in one and let it cross a large city 100 times unattended?
      - simondotau 1y ago
        Driver profiles seem like a terrible answer to the question of choosing a maximum speed, both for the driver of the vehicle, and for Tesla — because it shifts the understanding of the car's behaviour from the driver to Tesla. I think it's insane that Tesla would take that risk. IMHO, it's okay for the driver profiles to affect everything other than max speed, including aggressiveness of acceleration and propensity to change lanes. But since exceeding speed limits is "technically" breaking the law, the default behaviour of FSD should be to strictly obey speed limits, and drivers should be given a set of sliders to manually override speed limits. Perhaps like a graphic EQ with sliders for every 10 MPH where you can manually input decide how many MPH over that limit is acceptable. This would be an inelegant interface, and intentionally so. Drivers should be fully in control of the decision to exceed the speed limit, and by how much. FSD should drive like a hard-nosed driving instructor unless the driver gives unambiguous permission to do otherwise. [0] Note that I am describing this based on my understanding of the US environment. I am Australian, and our speed limits are strictly enforced at the posted speed, without exception. On any road, you should expect a fine if going 3—6 km/h [2—4 MPH] and caught by a fixed or mobile camera. This applies literally anywhere, including highways. By contrast in the USA, I understand that 5—10 MPH on highways has been socially normalised, and law enforcement generally disregards it.)
  - PunchyHamster 1y ago
    That also doesn't matter much as highways pump those stats up.
- bastawhiz 1y ago
  I can imagine it doing fine on highways for a thousand miles. FSD has literally never managed to complete a trip involving city driving for me without disengaging or me having to stop it from doing something illegal. I'm not sure how many attempts I'm supposed to give it. Hell, autopilot doesn't even manage to consistently stay safely in a lane on I-40 between Durham and Asheville.
  - vessenes 1y ago
    have you tried fsd 13/14 yet? I just upgraded to 13 from 12 and it's a massssive improvement. Not sure what 14 s like. It's definitely added a 9 in the last year.
    - buran77 1y ago
      > have you tried I've heard this so many times it's starting to be a meme. The system was claimed to be very capable from the beginning, then every version was a massive improvement, and yet we're always still in very dangerous, and honestly underwhelming territory. Teslas keep racking up straight line highway miles where every intervention probably counts at most as 1 mile deducted from the total in the stats. Have one cross a busy city without interventions or accidents like a normal human driver is expected to.
      - terminalshort 1y ago
        It was very capable, and each version has been a big improvement. The first time I rode in a Tesla with FSD back in 2017 I was shocked by how good it was. Self driving tech has advanced so fast that we forget it was considered next to impossible even 15 years ago. You are judging past tech by 2025 standards.
        buran77 1y ago
        Novelty is enough to look like "shockingly good". You were comparing "no self driving" to "some self driving". A jump from 0 to something always seems big. Standard driver assists were also impressive when they appeared on cars. In the meantime Tesla still makes a lot of claims about safety but doesn't trust the FSD enough to publish transparent, verifiable stats. That speaks louder than any of our anecdotes. > You are judging past tech by 2025 standards. That's very presumptuous of you. Every single person I know driving a Tesla told me the FSD (not AP) is bad and they would never trust it to drive without very careful attention. I can tell Teslas on FSD in traffic by the erratic maneuvers that are corrected by the driver, and that's a bad thing.
don_neufeld 1y ago
Not sure if it’s evident in broader statistics yet, but I think that because Tesla got the early adopter market (tech savvy people), they are now losing that same market first. I had a party at my house a couple months ago, mostly SF tech people. I found the Tesla owners chatting together, and the topic was how much FSD sucks and they don’t trust it. I asked and no-one said they would buy a Tesla again. Distrust because they felt suckered by FSD was a reason, but several also just said Elon’s behavior was a big negative.
- pmarreck 1y ago
  The fact that Elon has blown the San Franistan EV market should surprise absolutely no one.
- bastawhiz 1y ago
  I own six EVs (three cars, one of which is a Tesla, and three motorcycles). My first EV was my Tesla. We're on the cusp of trading the Tesla in for a Rivian most likely. I should be Tesla's target customer, but instead I'm exactly who you described: - I don't like the brand. I don't like Elon. I don't like the reputation that the car attaches to me. - I don't trust the technology. I've gotten two FSD trials, both scared the shit out of me, and I'll never try it again. - I don't see any compelling developments with Tesla that make me want to buy another. Almost nothing has changed or gotten better in any way that affects me in the last four years. They should be panicking. The Cybertruck could have been cool, but they managed to turn it into an embarrassment. There are so many alternatives now that are really quite good, and Tesla has spent the last half a decade diddling around with nonsense like the robot and the semi and the Cybertruck and the vaporware roadster instead of making cars for real people that love cars.
  - georgemcbay 1y ago
    > They should be panicking. I'm sure they would be if the stock price had ever showed any signs of being based in reality. But for now Elon can keep having SpaceX and xAI buy up all the unsold Teslas to make number go up. If that ever stops working, just spin up a new company with a hyper-inflated valuation and have it acquire Tesla at some made up number. Worked for him once, why not try it again. And at this point he can get even fraudier, with the worst possible realistic outcome being that he might get forced to pay a relatively small bribe and publicly humiliate himself for Trump a bit. But there's really no more consequences to any sort of business fraud (for now) as long as you can afford the tribute. #WorldLibertyFinancial
simondotau 1y ago
[flagged]
- malfist 1y ago
  > In your quest to be critical of anything Tesla does That's a pretty hefty extrapolation to make from a single truthful statement about "full" self drive.
- pmarreck 1y ago
  > In your quest to be critical of anything Tesla does That conclusion does not logically follow, whatsoever, from the evidence presented
  - simondotau 1y ago
    I didn't assert any conclusions.
    - pmarreck 1y ago
      you assumed he was on a "quest to be critical of anything Tesla does"; the person made only 1 criticism, which was valid, no less (having used FSD and experienced issues myself; I refuse to be gaslit)
vessenes 1y ago
Sorry but while I am a happy Waymo user, this is overblown and just incorrect. Waymo has datacenter oversight. (which, who cares, the product is great). Tesla FSD 12 -> 13 was a massive jump that happened earlier this year. 14 is still rolling out. Testing out 13 this weekend, it drove on country roads, noticed a road closure, rerouted, did 7 miles on non divided highways, navigated a town and chose a parking space and parked in it with zero interruptions. It even backed out of the driveway to start the trip. I didn't like the parking job and reparked; other than that, no hands, no feet, fully autonomous. Unlike 12, I had no 'comments' on the driving choices - rotaries were navigated very nicely, road hazards were approached and dealt with safely and properly. It was genuinely good. Dislike Elon all you want, but Tesla FSD is improving rapidly, and to my experienced eyes adding 9s. Probably two or three more 9s to go, but it's not a maxed out technology.
- energy123 1y ago
  > It was genuinely good. You lack data to draw this conclusion. The most important factor is deaths per mile, which is sparse, so it requires aggregating data from many drivers before you have enough statistical power.
  - terminalshort 1y ago
    [flagged]
    - energy123 1y ago
      Data is needed to know if it's safe. For self-driving software, safety is the #1 criteria for whether it's a good product.
      - ryandrake 1y ago
        "Trust me, bro, it really works" is these guys' slogan. It's like when you hear of a fad diet, and all the evidence for the diet's effectiveness is anecdotal "It totally worked for me!" testimony.
culi 1y ago
Tesla's FSD has indeed made significant improvements in the past year (still way behind where it was promised to be even half a decade ago), but they are FAR from being able to operate an actual robotaxi service. Austin is an embarrassment. It seems that tesla believes they can make more money on fooling investors than they can on any core business model
torginus 1y ago
I just had a thought - a Waymo car costs $200k (maybe more) from a quick google search. YoY returns of $200k on S&P are about 10%, while an Uber driver takes home about $40-$50k - so in terms of cost, they are about 2x-2.5x of each other, with the Waymore likely needing expensive maintenance/support infrastructure, bringing the total much closer. Which means if Tesla can really build that Cybercab - with an underpowered motor, small battery, plastic body panels, just cameras (which I think they promised to sell under $20k) - they'll be able to hit a business expense level and profitability that Waymo will only be able, in say, 10 years. Even if you don't want to talk about non-existing hardware, a Model 3's manufacturing cost is surely much lower than a Waymo. Once (if) they make self driving work at any point in time before Waymo gets to the same level of cost - they'll be the more profitable business. Not only that, they'll be able to enter markets where the cost of Waymo and what you can charge for taxi rides is so far apart that it doesn't make sense for them - in this sense, they'll have a first mover advantage.
- cyberax 1y ago
  Waymo cars are basically priceless at this point. As in: the car cost doesn't matter. They've so far spent multiple times their fleet's costs on R&D. The fact that they're getting some pocket cash from paid fares is inconsequential for their bottom line. Any realistic mass deployment will use cheaper cars, more suitable for taxi service.
  - simondotau 1y ago
    The cost isn't an issue at their current scale, perhaps not even one order of magnitude larger, because today's fleet is as much a devkit as it is a consumer product. But that strategy only takes them so far. Cost is a dangerous impediment to scale, and it will be their albatross long before their business model has a chance of becoming profitable, let alone cumulatively profitable.
    - cyberax 1y ago
      Other companies have this covered, I think. Zoox cars in Las Vegas are probably a good prototype for more realistic production vehicles.

brianwawok 1y ago

And yet it drives me on 2000 mile car trips without touching anything. If you ignore the hype and look at the actual product, it’s fine.

paulryanrogers 1y ago
Ancedotes are nice. Miles per disengagement stats would be better.
- buran77 1y ago
  That's not an anecdote, it sounds like an exaggeration bordering flat out lying. A 2000 miles trip "without touching anything" to drive the car is statistically impossible for any reasonable drive (e.g. not endless straight lines on an Australian highway), especially for a Tesla famously known for needing interventions often. Even more advanced autonomous driving systems are far too limited to take arbitrary 2000 miles trip with zero human assistance.
  - madamelic 1y ago
    13 is quite good. 14 is even better. 2,000 may be stretching it but it is possible if the driver is trusting enough. Personally many of my disengagements isn't because it is being dangerous, but just sub-optimal such as not driving as aggressive as I want to, not getting into off-ramp lane as early as I like, or just picking weird navigational choices. Trying to recall but I haven't had a safety involved disengagement in probably a few months across late 13 and 14. I am just one data point and the main criticism I've seen from 14 is: 1) getting rid of fine speed controls in favor of driving style profiles 2) its car and obstacle avoidance being overtuned so it will tap the brakes if, for instance, an upcoming perpendicular car suddenly appears and starts to roll its stop sign. Personally, I prefer it to be overly protective albeit turn it down slightly and fix issues where it hilariously thinks large clouds of leaves blowing across are obstacles to brake for.
    - buran77 1y ago
      > 2,000 may be stretching it but it is possible if the driver is trusting enough. Yeah, trust and a lot of creative accounting of what constitutes successfully driving by itself for that long. Would you put your child in one and let it cross a large city 100 times unattended?
    - simondotau 1y ago
      Driver profiles seem like a terrible answer to the question of choosing a maximum speed, both for the driver of the vehicle, and for Tesla — because it shifts the understanding of the car's behaviour from the driver to Tesla. I think it's insane that Tesla would take that risk. IMHO, it's okay for the driver profiles to affect everything other than max speed, including aggressiveness of acceleration and propensity to change lanes. But since exceeding speed limits is "technically" breaking the law, the default behaviour of FSD should be to strictly obey speed limits, and drivers should be given a set of sliders to manually override speed limits. Perhaps like a graphic EQ with sliders for every 10 MPH where you can manually input decide how many MPH over that limit is acceptable. This would be an inelegant interface, and intentionally so. Drivers should be fully in control of the decision to exceed the speed limit, and by how much. FSD should drive like a hard-nosed driving instructor unless the driver gives unambiguous permission to do otherwise. [0] Note that I am describing this based on my understanding of the US environment. I am Australian, and our speed limits are strictly enforced at the posted speed, without exception. On any road, you should expect a fine if going 3—6 km/h [2—4 MPH] and caught by a fixed or mobile camera. This applies literally anywhere, including highways. By contrast in the USA, I understand that 5—10 MPH on highways has been socially normalised, and law enforcement generally disregards it.)
- PunchyHamster 1y ago
  That also doesn't matter much as highways pump those stats up.
bastawhiz 1y ago
I can imagine it doing fine on highways for a thousand miles. FSD has literally never managed to complete a trip involving city driving for me without disengaging or me having to stop it from doing something illegal. I'm not sure how many attempts I'm supposed to give it. Hell, autopilot doesn't even manage to consistently stay safely in a lane on I-40 between Durham and Asheville.
- vessenes 1y ago
  have you tried fsd 13/14 yet? I just upgraded to 13 from 12 and it's a massssive improvement. Not sure what 14 s like. It's definitely added a 9 in the last year.
  - buran77 1y ago
    > have you tried I've heard this so many times it's starting to be a meme. The system was claimed to be very capable from the beginning, then every version was a massive improvement, and yet we're always still in very dangerous, and honestly underwhelming territory. Teslas keep racking up straight line highway miles where every intervention probably counts at most as 1 mile deducted from the total in the stats. Have one cross a busy city without interventions or accidents like a normal human driver is expected to.
    - terminalshort 1y ago
      It was very capable, and each version has been a big improvement. The first time I rode in a Tesla with FSD back in 2017 I was shocked by how good it was. Self driving tech has advanced so fast that we forget it was considered next to impossible even 15 years ago. You are judging past tech by 2025 standards.
      - buran77 1y ago
        Novelty is enough to look like "shockingly good". You were comparing "no self driving" to "some self driving". A jump from 0 to something always seems big. Standard driver assists were also impressive when they appeared on cars. In the meantime Tesla still makes a lot of claims about safety but doesn't trust the FSD enough to publish transparent, verifiable stats. That speaks louder than any of our anecdotes. > You are judging past tech by 2025 standards. That's very presumptuous of you. Every single person I know driving a Tesla told me the FSD (not AP) is bad and they would never trust it to drive without very careful attention. I can tell Teslas on FSD in traffic by the erratic maneuvers that are corrected by the driver, and that's a bad thing.

don_neufeld 1y ago

Not sure if it’s evident in broader statistics yet, but I think that because Tesla got the early adopter market (tech savvy people), they are now losing that same market first. I had a party at my house a couple months ago, mostly SF tech people. I found the Tesla owners chatting together, and the topic was how much FSD sucks and they don’t trust it. I asked and no-one said they would buy a Tesla again. Distrust because they felt suckered by FSD was a reason, but several also just said Elon’s behavior was a big negative.

pmarreck 1y ago
The fact that Elon has blown the San Franistan EV market should surprise absolutely no one.
bastawhiz 1y ago
I own six EVs (three cars, one of which is a Tesla, and three motorcycles). My first EV was my Tesla. We're on the cusp of trading the Tesla in for a Rivian most likely. I should be Tesla's target customer, but instead I'm exactly who you described: - I don't like the brand. I don't like Elon. I don't like the reputation that the car attaches to me. - I don't trust the technology. I've gotten two FSD trials, both scared the shit out of me, and I'll never try it again. - I don't see any compelling developments with Tesla that make me want to buy another. Almost nothing has changed or gotten better in any way that affects me in the last four years. They should be panicking. The Cybertruck could have been cool, but they managed to turn it into an embarrassment. There are so many alternatives now that are really quite good, and Tesla has spent the last half a decade diddling around with nonsense like the robot and the semi and the Cybertruck and the vaporware roadster instead of making cars for real people that love cars.
- georgemcbay 1y ago
  > They should be panicking. I'm sure they would be if the stock price had ever showed any signs of being based in reality. But for now Elon can keep having SpaceX and xAI buy up all the unsold Teslas to make number go up. If that ever stops working, just spin up a new company with a hyper-inflated valuation and have it acquire Tesla at some made up number. Worked for him once, why not try it again. And at this point he can get even fraudier, with the worst possible realistic outcome being that he might get forced to pay a relatively small bribe and publicly humiliate himself for Trump a bit. But there's really no more consequences to any sort of business fraud (for now) as long as you can afford the tribute. #WorldLibertyFinancial

simondotau 1y ago

[flagged]

malfist 1y ago
> In your quest to be critical of anything Tesla does That's a pretty hefty extrapolation to make from a single truthful statement about "full" self drive.
pmarreck 1y ago
> In your quest to be critical of anything Tesla does That conclusion does not logically follow, whatsoever, from the evidence presented
- simondotau 1y ago
  I didn't assert any conclusions.
  - pmarreck 1y ago
    you assumed he was on a "quest to be critical of anything Tesla does"; the person made only 1 criticism, which was valid, no less (having used FSD and experienced issues myself; I refuse to be gaslit)

vessenes 1y ago

Sorry but while I am a happy Waymo user, this is overblown and just incorrect. Waymo has datacenter oversight. (which, who cares, the product is great). Tesla FSD 12 -> 13 was a massive jump that happened earlier this year. 14 is still rolling out. Testing out 13 this weekend, it drove on country roads, noticed a road closure, rerouted, did 7 miles on non divided highways, navigated a town and chose a parking space and parked in it with zero interruptions. It even backed out of the driveway to start the trip. I didn't like the parking job and reparked; other than that, no hands, no feet, fully autonomous. Unlike 12, I had no 'comments' on the driving choices - rotaries were navigated very nicely, road hazards were approached and dealt with safely and properly. It was genuinely good. Dislike Elon all you want, but Tesla FSD is improving rapidly, and to my experienced eyes adding 9s. Probably two or three more 9s to go, but it's not a maxed out technology.

energy123 1y ago
> It was genuinely good. You lack data to draw this conclusion. The most important factor is deaths per mile, which is sparse, so it requires aggregating data from many drivers before you have enough statistical power.
- terminalshort 1y ago
  [flagged]
  - energy123 1y ago
    Data is needed to know if it's safe. For self-driving software, safety is the #1 criteria for whether it's a good product.
    - ryandrake 1y ago
      "Trust me, bro, it really works" is these guys' slogan. It's like when you hear of a fad diet, and all the evidence for the diet's effectiveness is anecdotal "It totally worked for me!" testimony.

culi 1y ago

Tesla's FSD has indeed made significant improvements in the past year (still way behind where it was promised to be even half a decade ago), but they are FAR from being able to operate an actual robotaxi service. Austin is an embarrassment. It seems that tesla believes they can make more money on fooling investors than they can on any core business model

torginus 1y ago

I just had a thought - a Waymo car costs $200k (maybe more) from a quick google search. YoY returns of $200k on S&P are about 10%, while an Uber driver takes home about $40-$50k - so in terms of cost, they are about 2x-2.5x of each other, with the Waymore likely needing expensive maintenance/support infrastructure, bringing the total much closer. Which means if Tesla can really build that Cybercab - with an underpowered motor, small battery, plastic body panels, just cameras (which I think they promised to sell under $20k) - they'll be able to hit a business expense level and profitability that Waymo will only be able, in say, 10 years. Even if you don't want to talk about non-existing hardware, a Model 3's manufacturing cost is surely much lower than a Waymo. Once (if) they make self driving work at any point in time before Waymo gets to the same level of cost - they'll be the more profitable business. Not only that, they'll be able to enter markets where the cost of Waymo and what you can charge for taxi rides is so far apart that it doesn't make sense for them - in this sense, they'll have a first mover advantage.

cyberax 1y ago
Waymo cars are basically priceless at this point. As in: the car cost doesn't matter. They've so far spent multiple times their fleet's costs on R&D. The fact that they're getting some pocket cash from paid fares is inconsequential for their bottom line. Any realistic mass deployment will use cheaper cars, more suitable for taxi service.
- simondotau 1y ago
  The cost isn't an issue at their current scale, perhaps not even one order of magnitude larger, because today's fleet is as much a devkit as it is a consumer product. But that strategy only takes them so far. Cost is a dangerous impediment to scale, and it will be their albatross long before their business model has a chance of becoming profitable, let alone cumulatively profitable.
  - cyberax 1y ago
    Other companies have this covered, I think. Zoox cars in Las Vegas are probably a good prototype for more realistic production vehicles.