Tesla unveils supposed “robotaxi.” Or is it “cybercab?” They can’t seem to decide

Cmaier

Cmaier

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arstechnica.com

Elon Musk shows off two-seat robotaxi

Tesla regularly makes bold promises it has not kept. Last night, it made many bold promises about autonomous driving and robotics.
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This thing looks ridiculous. Terrible design for a cab. 2 seats, but looks as big as a Model Y. If you are designing a truly autonomous taxi (which this has to be - there is no steering wheel), why would you design it like this?

Of course, Musk claims 2027 for this monstrosity, but I don’t think we’ll have to worry about this thing clogging up the streets for a long time.
 
Oh - also no charge port. Uses inductive charging instead. So all that progress we made getting everyone to switch to NACS port? Yeah, never mind that.

Good luck finding a place to charge this thing. (And since Tesla fired most of the people responsible for building out charging infrastructure, I wouldn’t bet that these new chargers will sweep the nation)
 
I am not an expert on Tesla designs, nor do I think that these events have live actual demos (Most companies provide scripted demos to prevent embarrassment.)

Couple of topics I have read. The current door design just won't work for a cab company to deploy these, the doors seem to need a lot of clearance to swing (up and out). Also this had to be a canned demo, and there is evidence with the guy standing across the street when the car came up to pickup Leon. The car opened both doors (again a bad design) with no action by him, people are saying it was controlled.

Also the current "design" has very little play between the wheel and the wheel-well. So I am going to have to go ahead with the disclaimer presented before the event. Which apparently was one of the longest people have seen at one of these events. 🤷‍♂️ I have seen my fair share at tech events and all of them seem long and very legalese.

Finally, I think Leon said that they calculate it would cost .20 a mile. At $30,000 (yeah right), provided that there is no maintenance and unlimited free charging, it will drive 150,000 miles. I am not a Tesla owner, is that what you would normally expect out of a Tesla?
 
rdrr said:
I am not an expert on Tesla designs, nor do I think that these events have live actual demos (Most companies provide scripted demos to prevent embarrassment.)

Couple of topics I have read. The current door design just won't work for a cab company to deploy these, the doors seem to need a lot of clearance to swing (up and out). Also this had to be a canned demo, and there is evidence with the guy standing across the street when the car came up to pickup Leon. The car opened both doors (again a bad design) with no action by him, people are saying it was controlled.

Also the current "design" has very little play between the wheel and the wheel-well. So I am going to have to go ahead with the disclaimer presented before the event. Which apparently was one of the longest people have seen at one of these events. 🤷‍♂️ I have seen my fair share at tech events and all of them seem long and very legalese.

Finally, I think Leon said that they calculate it would cost .20 a mile. At $30,000 (yeah right), provided that there is no maintenance and unlimited free charging, it will drive 150,000 miles. I am not a Tesla owner, is that what you would normally expect out of a Tesla?
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Musk Math means the 20 cents a mile probably assume the car is operating 24 hours a day, and you are getting paid 50 cents a mile for the 90% of the miles that aren’t you driving your own car.

My rough math shows my Model S has cost around $1.10 per mile over the life of the car.
 
Cmaier said:
This thing looks ridiculous. Terrible design for a cab. 2 seats, but looks as big as a Model Y. If you are designing a truly autonomous taxi (which this has to be - there is no steering wheel), why would you design it like this?
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Why would anyone design a 2-seater cab 🤦‍♂️
 
They should either design them to look like the aging yellow cabs in NYC or the black ones that they have in London. Put a checkerboard on them so they stand out. :) Have seating for 6 and a trunk big enough to put Elon's toy into. :). (because, you know, airports?) :)
 
fischersd said:
They should either design them to look like the aging yellow cabs in NYC or the black ones that they have in London. Put a checkerboard on them so they stand out. :) Have seating for 6 and a trunk big enough to put Elon's toy into. :). (because, you know, airports?) :)
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lol. i can just imagine tesla’s shitty FSD software trying to successfully merge over to the curb in front of the terminal to let off passengers.
 
chaos.social

leyrer (@leyrer@chaos.social)

Attached: 1 image Alexander Proyas, Australian director, known for directing (amongst others) "I, Robot" (2004), over at Elons site ... #burn Source: https://x.com/alex_proyas/status/1845426067043123632
chaos.social chaos.social

1728871317073.png
 
Cmaier said:
lol. i can just imagine tesla’s shitty FSD software trying to successfully merge over to the curb in front of the terminal to let off passengers.
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It'll help phone sales though - as people punt them into the concrete when the Tesla Taxi app doesn't get the damn thing to bring your bags back and you miss your flight. :D (well, for those that don't have "accidental" damage coverage on their phones that is) :D
 
Looking at all this it becomes increasingly clear why Elon is so hard (literally) at backing Trump. His business is failing and he needs handouts from the government. I bet Trump promised him an influx of cash from federal budget.
 
A few days ago, MKBHD replied to a thread talking about the efficiency of the wireless charging announced during this event, saying:
Nope, wireless charging has a massive heat waste. A really noble goal for something like this would be maybe 75% efficiency
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To which the official Tesla account replied with:
Efficiency is well above 90%
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Now, the interesting bit is that lots (most?) people in the thread took it as a sure confirmation that MKBHD was wrong. He even got a community note! I found this quite funny, because the "confirmation" comes from a one-liner tweet from a company notorious for MASSIVELY overpromising and underdelivering.

On the technical side, I wonder who's right here. I don't know much about the kind of wireless power transfer method they're using but I'd bet that "efficiency is well above 90%" is talking about coil-to-coil power transfer under ideal conditions. It'll be interesting to know how far apart that number is from grid-to-battery power transfer on a typical setup.
 
Andropov said:
A few days ago, MKBHD replied to a thread talking about the efficiency of the wireless charging announced during this event, saying:

To which the official Tesla account replied with:

Now, the interesting bit is that lots (most?) people in the thread took it as a sure confirmation that MKBHD was wrong. He even got a community note! I found this quite funny, because the "confirmation" comes from a one-liner tweet from a company notorious for MASSIVELY overpromising and underdelivering.

On the technical side, I wonder who's right here. I don't know much about the kind of wireless power transfer method they're using but I'd bet that "efficiency is well above 90%" is talking about coil-to-coil power transfer under ideal conditions. It'll be interesting to know how far apart that number is from grid-to-battery power transfer on a typical setup.
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I’ve seen some claims from wireless charging companies that the range is 88-93%. That would be more or less equivalent to a typical level 2 wired charger. “Well above 90%” seems like a lie, but they left wiggle room as to what “well above” means, I guess. And of course it assumes perfect alignment, etc.

The reason he’s doing this, I guess, is to lower the cost of the car - get rid of the on-board chargers, etc. I assume Tesla has no plans to build out infrastructure, so the cost of the system is externalized. It’s all pretty silly.
 
Cmaier said:
The reason he’s doing this, I guess, is to lower the cost of the car - get rid of the on-board chargers, etc. I assume Tesla has no plans to build out infrastructure, so the cost of the system is externalized. It’s all pretty silly.
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I can’t imagine that this approach is that much cheaper. However, it does shrink downtime if the infrastructure exists. Less time spent plugging/unplugging.

That said, I am rolling my eyes at Tesla deciding to socialize the infrastructure cost here, when not doing that is what gave them such an early edge with EVs. To the point that the Supercharger network could be a revenue center if they wanted it to be.
 
Nycturne said:
I can’t imagine that this approach is that much cheaper. However, it does shrink downtime if the infrastructure exists. Less time spent plugging/unplugging.

That said, I am rolling my eyes at Tesla deciding to socialize the infrastructure cost here, when not doing that is what gave them such an early edge with EVs. To the point that the Supercharger network could be a revenue center if they wanted it to be.
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yep. When they fired much of the supercharger infrastructure team, that was equally baffling.

Everyone is finally switching to NACS, and Elon decides to create another new charging method.

Not to mention, the new method isn’t particularly conducive to being installed in your house. So he’s got to be relying on third-party infrastructure for this, just when everyone’s investing in the NACS conversion.

And why would anyone invest in the new thing - to support 2-seater taxis?

The whole thing is poorly thought out. He probably should have started with the dumb Robovan (which he pronounces ro-bo’-vin, because he’s a moron), install them at airports as shuttles, and test the whole thing out there, first.

I mean, this is the guy who can’t even get self-driving to work in the vegas tunnels he built, where the route has no branches, forks, stop signs, pedestrians, etc.

The more I think about this, the more I want to short sell TSLA.
 
Cmaier said:
Everyone is finally switching to NACS, and Elon decides to create another new charging method.

Not to mention, the new method isn’t particularly conducive to being installed in your house. So he’s got to be relying on third-party infrastructure for this, just when everyone’s investing in the NACS conversion.
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There are other companies pursuing wireless EV charging. So either Tesla is looking to draft off the work of WiTricity or the like, or is simply playing "me too". And most of these startups are chasing the sort of use cases this thing is supposed to go after: (autonomous) fleet cars that need to be topped up frequently. So this is in the right company in terms of what the industry thinks is going to happen here. But I agree how he's trying to deliver this makes no business sense. Who's the customer? Who will sign up to build a fleet on this? What happens when/if nobody takes the chance? Why not build your own fleet and rake in the revenue yourself during the early phase as a sales pitch, kinda like you say?

The funny thing is, engineers are doing interesting stuff in Tesla and SpaceX (mostly SpaceX now), but Musk seems incapable of thinking how to apply this to problems potential customers actually have, and instead relies on luck to see if customers are willing to meet him where his grand schemes seem to want to take him. That and he's spread too thin, and that will continue to bite him.
 
Musk used AI to generate imagery similar to Bladerunner 2049 to promote its new AI robotaxis.

arstechnica.com

Tesla, Warner Bros. sued for using AI ripoff of iconic Blade Runner imagery

“That movie sucks,” Elon Musk said in response to the lawsuit.
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Alcon is hoping a jury will find Tesla, Musk, and WBD violated laws. Producers have asked for an injunction stopping Tesla from using any Blade Runner imagery in its promotional or advertising campaigns. They also want a disclaimer slapped on the livestreamed event video on X, noting that the Blade Runner association is "false or misleading."
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For Musk, a ban on linking Blade Runnerto his car company may feel bleak. Last year, he touted the Cybertruck as an "armored personnel carrier from the future—what Bladerunner would have driven." This amused many Blade Runner fans, as Gizmodo noted, because there never was a character named "Bladerunner," but rather that was just a job title for the film's hero Deckard.
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