Elon Musk Still Predicts 1 Million Tesla Robotaxis By the End of the Year (electrek.co) 125
"Elon Musk says Tesla's plan for 1 million robotaxi vehicles on the road by the end of the year is still on — pending regulatory approval," writes the electric car news site Electrek:
At Tesla's 'Autonomy Day' event last year, Musk announced Tesla's plan to deploy 1 million 'Robotaxi' vehicles for a self-driving ride-sharing network by the end of 2020. It's an extension of Tesla's 'Full Self-driving Capability' plan to improve its Autopilot system in all its vehicles produced since 2016 — leading to those vehicles being capable of self-driving. Once that capability is available through an over-the-air software update, which Tesla aims to be by the end of 2020, Tesla anticipates that it will have over 1 million vehicles on the road with the hardware necessary to run the new software...
Today, Tesla's CEO says that he still believes in Tesla's ability to deliver on the functionality of the robotaxi fleet by the end of the year...
However, Tesla and Musk have been wrong about their Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability timeline before.
Electrek's skeptical writer predicts that instead Tesla won't have a robotaxi fleet until "around the end of 2021."
Saturday Musk also cited robotaxis as the reason that Tesla's Model 3 ships with a camera pointed inside offering a clear, wide-angle view of the car's interior -- to keep an eye on passengers -- though he also sees other applications, according to Engadget.
"Musk hinted it might help you record your 'caraoke' sessions, and the company recently applied for a patent on using the camera to recognize occupants and apply settings (such as seat position or climate controls) when they're inside. For now, though, the in-cabin camera is more a symbol of Tesla's lofty, as yet unfulfilled dreams of putting fully self-driving cars on the road."
Today, Tesla's CEO says that he still believes in Tesla's ability to deliver on the functionality of the robotaxi fleet by the end of the year...
However, Tesla and Musk have been wrong about their Autopilot and Full Self-Driving Capability timeline before.
Electrek's skeptical writer predicts that instead Tesla won't have a robotaxi fleet until "around the end of 2021."
Saturday Musk also cited robotaxis as the reason that Tesla's Model 3 ships with a camera pointed inside offering a clear, wide-angle view of the car's interior -- to keep an eye on passengers -- though he also sees other applications, according to Engadget.
"Musk hinted it might help you record your 'caraoke' sessions, and the company recently applied for a patent on using the camera to recognize occupants and apply settings (such as seat position or climate controls) when they're inside. For now, though, the in-cabin camera is more a symbol of Tesla's lofty, as yet unfulfilled dreams of putting fully self-driving cars on the road."
No Autonomy (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:No Autonomy (Score:5, Insightful)
He's lying. He does it all the time.
Coast to coast full self driving demo in 2017, he said. Just needs some finishing touches to the software, he said. Since then it's had a new hardware platform (that Tesla will have to retrofit to older cars) and multiple re-writes of the software.
The current state of their software is that it can't reliably detect traffic lights or cones or obstacles like trucks in its path. They recently rolled out traffic light detection but it barely works. Even the software driven automatic windscreen wipers don't work properly. And yet he still says they are going to have a fully autonomous taxi service running by the end of the year.
He's a liar. He knows he is lying. This isn't going to happen, it's just a lie to lure in suckers to buy his cars and invest in his company. By teasing owners constantly he wards of lawsuits over missing features they paid for back in 2016, but eventually it's all going to catch up with him.
Re:No Autonomy (Score:5, Funny)
"He's lying. He does it all the time."
He's Space-Jesus, our Prophet you bloody apostate!
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He is lying. The cost of a barrel of oil in some place is in the single digits and some oil has been sold at -$0.18 per barrel. Electric cars when fuel is dirt cheap will be a VERY hard sell. Using Gasoline at home to make steam for a small power plant to charge your local batteries and push back into the grid might make sense and use that stored energy to quick charge your car or slow charge it with a small steam loop.
Steam to electric at home via bio fuels might be the best bet. I would still want an
Re:No Autonomy (Score:4, Informative)
Because, as we all know, oil prices never go up, ever again.
Remember this post when gasoline is back to $3.50/gal. when demand returns and OPEC+ doesn't return production to where it was because they want the price of oil to remain high, and they are a cartel so they can do that.
Also, why the fuck would you use gasoline to make steam to make electricity, when you could just buy any of the readily available gasoline generators? Gasoline isn't suited well for thermal power plants - it's suited well to rapid combustion in order to make mechanical energy. For thermal energy you would want fuel oil that burns much slower (read: safer).
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So this is just a headwind electric cars will have to fight against.
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For thermal energy you would want fuel oil that burns much slower (read: safer).
That is nonsense.
Do you know how a coal plant fires? The coal is grinded to dust and boÂlown in a 6m - 10m long flame with compressed air into the burner.
A typical boiler has a ring of them around it.
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We're a buck fifty in flyover country.
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Re:No Autonomy (Score:5, Insightful)
If someone is buying a Tesla on the promise of full-self-drive by the end of this year, then yes, they are a sucker. And not just because of super aggressive goal making on Musk's part, but because it would also require literally hundreds of politicians to get off their ass and allow for such a thing to be on roads to begin with.
If they buy a Tesla because it also happens to be a very good electric car that might be able to drive itself in the near future, then guess what? They're still getting a really good electric car that might be able to drive itself in the future.
How is it that they are "suckers" again? It's not like they are dropping $50k and receiving nothing - they are still getting a car that is technologically ahead of everything else on the road, and access to an EV charging network that is both affordable and reliably present where you need it to be.
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"Near future"? They have been selling this since 2016. Previous launch date was 2017. Last year Musk said he thought it might be 2022.
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That's because Ellon Musk is from Alpha Centauri, where the average life expectancy is around 700 years. So for him "the near future" means roughly a decade.
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You know who the real "suckers" are? People who buy lollipops.
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If they buy a Tesla because it also happens to be a very good electric car that might be able to drive itself in the near future, then guess what? They're still getting a really good electric car that might be able to drive itself in the future.
It's difficult to judge the value of a product (how "good" it is) if the company selling the device regularly makes false statements, especially when features are promised to be added in the future... and the company has a bad reputation for over-hyping and over-promising.
When the roadster came out, I was all hyped about Tesla and what they were trying to do. I was a big fan. Today, after years of poor quality control, broken promises, blatant legal violations, and Musk's arrogance, I wouldn't touch a Tes
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FSD to us means you get in and tell the car where you are going and it goes there and finds parking. It gets no points for stopping in front of a business and saying you are here.
Right now the roads where I live are completely covered in snow. Any cameras and sensors will be quickly covered with snow and splash back and the lane markers are completely invisible. I suspect FSD working reliably under these conditions is at least 10 years out, if ever.
Re: No Autonomy (Score:2)
Cameras and sensors can probably be addressed relatively simply with redundancy self-cleaning mechanisms and/or alerts to the driver.
So far it doesn't sound like anyone is interested in solving the snow-on-the-ground problem, though.
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You might have missed that Musk made the same claim about 2016, with the 1-camera sensor system. The 2017 claim was with the newer 8-camera system, and the claim was made before Tesla even had software for the new sensors, and the Tesla then lacked adaptive cruise control, adaptive high beam, self parking, summon, and other things that the prior model did have. I'm embarrassed that I actually believed these claims.
Re: No Autonomy (Score:2)
I feel that the 8 camera setup is inadequate because they only have side facing cameras on the B-pillar rather than the front fender (the camera in the Tesla logo looks backwards, not the the side). They need to place cameras further ahead than the B pillar.
Second, the software seems to occasionally be totally blind to things in front of it or crossing it's path. Making mistakes as to where it is and what size. You can see, often it is just slow to see or plain blind to random objects such as a dog running
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By teasing owners constantly he wards of lawsuits over missing features they paid for back in 2016
A) The "reasoning" behind self-driving is requires failures of logic on multiple levels... however, the above statement is clearly just how bullshit. Your propaganda is usually better-disguised cloaked than that of the other 'Big Gov't Scumbags;' is everything okay?? A little worried about you...
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A little worried about you...
I should probably be more worried about my typos; at least they're not a lost cause. ;)
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Is he lying, or is he just REALLY REALLY bad about estimating how long it takes to complete projects?
Remember, this is the same guy that said that SpaceX would have a person on Mars by 2025:
https://techcrunch.com/2016/06... [techcrunch.com]
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His opponent take him literally, prove he has not delivered what he said he would deliver at the promised time. Then they move on to proving the next thing he promised. Go back and track the original promises. How many of them were actually delivered, at time frame it was delivered, and once you figur
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My guess is that they'll roll this out in select regions in a "Waymo"-esque style setup. Places where there are a high number of Teslas on the road and the city driving isn't insane. It meets the letter of what Musk claims he'll do but it not the expectation that most people have.
Aw crap!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Aw crap!!! (Score:5, Informative)
They don't have to be haters to see that he is obviously lying. For example he said that FSD would be feature complete by the end of the year.
https://electrek.co/2019/04/22... [electrek.co]
Not going to happen, especially as he meant end of 2019. So the FSD is already four months late and I suspect, it will be four months late for the next ten years.
Also, where is he going to get the cars from? As of December 2019, he had made under 500,000 model 3s. If he co-opted all of them, he still needs to make another 500,000 this year and he's probably not making any right now.
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Four months? He said they were going to do a coast to coast demo back in 2017, and even then they were a year behind when they originally claimed it would be available.
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...he is obviously lying.
Musk doesn't possess the track record of a liar; he possesses the track record of a moderately-over-optimistic over-achiever. He's simply too intelligent to be a totally bullish on self-driving; at the same time, he's obviously well aware that the [tech-ignorant] 'Powers That Be' are determined to push Self-Driving in all the other ways besides technologically - i.e. politically - so Tesla might as well participate.
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Yes, you are indeed quite a genius.
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waiting for the Musk haters / short sellers to weigh in with knee-jerk responses.
It's hardly knee-jerk, it is steadily moving because Musk has been publically exhibiting his narcissistic personality disorder for quite a while now. He has become tedious.
At least with a Lyft... (Score:1)
...I can ask "Are you ever lethally confused by stickers?" [extremetech.com]
I'm not investing in Tesla... (Score:5, Funny)
I'm not investing in Tesla, but I would really like to figure out a way to invest in whatever business is providing drugs to Musk. That's some awesomely good shit...
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Even with the downturn, I am up 140%.
I dont care about Elons antics. I care about the stock price. Hes doing a good job on that front.
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> Up for the moment. In another six years?
Higher than any other car company. Every week they're another week behind the curve.
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Higher than any other car company. Every week they're another week behind the curve.
Unfortunately, the past is not a guide to the future, which was my point.
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It's still a buy, now more than ever. They already have the infrastructure to sell cars without a show room. All other automotive manufacturers are putting EVs on hold because of COVID-19. Tesla is building two more factories. They are likely to come out of this ahead.
Not to mention consumers are seeing the cleaner air because of COVID-19. Oil is finite resource, electric cars are here to stay regardless if there are robo-taxis. Also note. Tesla is actually not entirely car company. They sell solar,
This is the perfect time to test self driving (Score:4, Funny)
A lockdown is the perfect time to safely test self driving cars, governments should just allow unsupervised self driving vehicles on the streets once full lockdown is in place. Of course they shouldn't have passengers either.
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A lockdown is the perfect time to safely test self driving cars
That is what test tracks are for. I understand that SD cars are not past that stage yet. Anyway, there are people out walking in the street in the UK, taking their hours worth of excercise. People are also driving or walking to shops for food.
Anyway, if SD cars are to take off, the first place to employ them, and probably the only ever place, is on motorways, not on city streets where too many bizarre and unpredictable things happen.
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Anyway, if SD cars are to take off,
You're confusing your memes. Those are flying cars. Also many years late.
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Disclosure: I am absolutely in favor of starting to open stuff up and ending this lock down nonsense. I am however cooperating in the mean time because if we are going to run this insane costly policy (in terms of real lives too these shutdowns will indirectly kill a lot of people) we should at least endeavor to get maximum gains we can from it.
The underlying reason for curve bending is to reduce stress on medical facilities. ICU beds are ICU beds quite independent of if they are occupied by a COVID patie
Boy racers (Score:2)
Yep, can we use them as bait for the boy racers, who think this is the perfect time to practice their iz GTA skillz?
More cars? (Score:5, Insightful)
A million single passenger autonomous new cars on the road to me sounds like a nightmare. One thing that has been fascinating about COVID-19 has been the reduction in traffic.
The skies are empty. The roads are empty. The air doesn't smell like exhaust every morning. The brown clouds over our highways have disappeared. The stars have been super crisp at night. There are very few contrails compared with typically hundreds that leave a film across the sky every day. The background noise is crickets, birds and children.
It is very possible that the air we are all breathing in the next week or two will be the cleanest we will breath at that location ever again. Enjoy it while you can.
--
Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. - H. Jackson Browne Jr.
Re:More cars? (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm hoping that a lot of people (and companies) might realise after this lockdown that not everyone needs to drive to work every day and don't need to make needless flights to business meetings that could quite easily be done online. Sure, it'll be business as usual for many but if only a few change their habits it could make a big difference.
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I live in a rural area of the UK and the big thing around here is pensioners driving out from the cities to coffee shops and "garden centres". The latter are up-market stores in warehouses out in the country with a large cafe inside and some flowers out the back to look at for passing the time. I was recently driving past the entrance to one, and the three cars in front of me, and the two beh
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You could regard driving to work as essential, but a very large portion of other car journeys are not essential.
Of course, but who wants to live on war time [unt.edu] rationing? Whenever some eco-loon uses this pandemic to say we can live without all this polluting travel I'm thinking what the fuck is wrong with you. It's like volunteering for supermax prison, sure people live like that but usually not by choice. Heck I'm pretty close to Comic Book Guy [quickmeme.com] and even I'm not enjoying this. For extroverts this must be living hell.
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I don't think anyone is saying stop driving altogether. But maybe just 10% less. It wouldn't hurt but it would do the enviroment a huge favour.
The business meeting flights are important (Score:2)
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fine place for who though? animals don't appreciate it any more than you or me you know.
anyway musk is just talking out of his ass. even more so than usual. everything is on fire and there's nobody who would _buy_ those 1 million robotaxis even if he could make them.
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Are you sure you're talking about Tesla vehicles here? The fact the skies are clear is ultimately one of Musk's and Tesla's central-most goals. It is one of the reasons Tesla exists at all.
If anything you're seeing a preview of the skies of the future. Ultimately a million more electric vehicles won't zero-sum and lead to the removal of a million smog-producing vehicles. Nor will electric vehicles provide a cure-all solution without consequences. Other issues exist leading to our observation of the correlat
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The fact the skies are clear is ultimately one of Musk's and Tesla's central-most goals. It is one of the reasons Tesla exists at all.
Is that a joke?
Musk's main goal is self-publicity. He is addicted to it and will do whatever it takes to get it. His main method is to issue "outrageous" or "impossible" statements and claims now and then, or do "outrageous" things like smoke pot in a TV interview. Anything to get into the headlines. "Clear skies" just happen to be a thing getting public attention lately, so he has hooked his bandwagon to it - as would anyone seeking public applause.
And BTW, you do realise he did not start the Te
Re:More cars? (Score:4, Interesting)
Model 3 owners will hate it. Their previously desirable cars will become like driving a yellow cab or a London taxi. They will get abuse from taxi drivers put out of work. The used market will be flooded with high mileage ex-fleet vehicles.
Those who do take up the offer or turning their car into a robotaxi will quickly discover that people don't treat other people's cars with much respect, especially after a night out. They will quickly come to regret paying extra for the white interior option.
"Oh but there is a camera, they won't be able to get away with trashing it!" Looking at the captures from it you can see that there are large areas of the car it can't see, and the quality is quite poor so it probably won't be able to detect things like people treking mud or worse in, or losing bladder control. Ask some taxi drivers what they have to put up with some time.
Re: More cars? (Score:2)
Perhaps because many people buy cars primarily as status symbols. A Tesla tells people that you have an above average salary and are ecologically conscious. What does it tell people after everyone is riding around in filthy self-driving Tesla-taxis?
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You know it's possible to have many of the things you are happy about without society-crippling disease, right? If you don't live in the middle of a city, or within 10 miles of a major airport you usually don't have air that smells like exhaust, brown clouds over highways, you have a beautiful starscape with clear skies, few contrails, and crickets and birds chirping.
You choose to live in a dense urban area, so live with your choice. If you find that the above things are valuable to you, get out of the ci
I don't actually choose (Score:2)
Re: More cars? (Score:2)
That's all well and good, as long as when those out-of-towners come to the city ever day for work or enjoyment, they are forced to park at the edge of the city and take public transit into the city. Otherwise, your describing a system where the country folk create most of the pollution, but they export it to the city. Just like Americans cause most pollution, but they export it to China.
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The question is: where are the passengers in the robotaxis coming from? Are the y replacing public transportation? Then traffic gets worse. Are they replacing private cars? Then traffic remains the same but parking gets easiler. Are they replacing human driven taxis?
Replacing private cars or taxis might plausibly reduce congestion, since the vehicles will be better-behaved. For example they can be programmed not to enter an intersection they cannot exist before the light changes, which is what every dr
Re: More cars? (Score:2)
"Then traffic remains the same but parking gets easiler"
Actually, studies seem to suggest that when parking becomes easier, traffic gets worse. At least in the context of ride share services.
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A million single passenger autonomous new cars on the road to me sounds like a nightmare. One thing that has been fascinating about COVID-19 has been the reduction in traffic. The skies are empty. The roads are empty. The air doesn't smell like exhaust every morning. The brown clouds over our highways have disappeared. The stars have been super crisp at night. There are very few contrails compared with typically hundreds that leave a film across the sky every day. The background noise is crickets, birds and children. It is very possible that the air we are all breathing in the next week or two will be the cleanest we will breath at that location ever again. Enjoy it while you can.
My air never smelled like exhaust. There were no brown clouds over my highways.
The worst air, traffic, and the worst of the pandemic now are in the dense cities that urban planners and the terminally hip/woke both love.
A lot safer having your own vehicle now, too, than sitting next to others on mass transit. Much easier to "socially distance" in this "suburban sprawl" than downtown in some happening city.
Re: More cars? (Score:2)
Maybe city folk should take all our human waste and dump it on your porch, since you like to come to our neighborhoods and poison the air we breathe.
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My car's paintwork is usually covered in crud every week despite regular washing. It is over three weeks since lock-down and the last time it was washed. The paintwork is still as smooth as babies arse.
RoboTaxi...practical problems (Score:2)
Sadly, this will never work: The crappy 1% of the population will ruin it for everyone else. Unattended vehicles will be left full of trash, they will be vandalized, people will smoke and do drugs in them. Homeless will break in and treat them as their personal tents. Etc.
Tell me why my view of humanity is too negative.
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Anyway a more fundamental problem for autonomous vehicles is that autonomy thing. Navigating when everything is fine is the easy bit. Navigating when things aren't is the intractibly hard part. Something as simple as a faulty traffic light or a cop direct
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Because when a human driver does it happens once, but when a software bug does it it may happen to a million vehicles at the same time, or be something that anybody can make happen at will (maybe still to a million vehicles at once).
As soon as there are enough of these things on the road to choke traffic when they fail, there is going to be a massive common-mode failure somewhere that shuts down an entire city.
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Because when a human driver does it happens once
Who says it's once? Distracted Driving? Poor Weather conditions? These are common situations that affect multiple drivers, multiple times.
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Tell me why my view of humanity is too negative. ... try to travel a bit to see how "normal" most of he world is.
Because you live in a fucked up country
Respect / admire Elon but... (Score:2)
...I'm just not too sure about autonomous driving. That said I've been surprised by SpaceX' limited reuse, Teslas are just out of this world (literally) and improving rapidly, the solar roof is cool but is complex to install... I do hope I'm wrong... my wife has epilepsy and can't drive and I'd be happy to throw her under^H^H^H^H^H in a robotaxi...
Sure (Score:2)
I'm glad to hear that.. (Score:2)
I was wondering about Mr. Musk. It's been more than 1 week since someone, somewhere has written a story about him and Tesla.
So, now we all know he's healthy and able to sustain weekly media attention even while "sheltered in-place".
Digging a hole for himself (Score:2)
Re: Digging a hole for himself (Score:2)
Not that Teslas are ready for the roads either, but it should be noted that many humans find parking lots to be more difficult to navigate than roads. Accidents are lower impact, but likely much more common in parking lots.
How? (Score:2)
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Well, there's two factories now, where the output of each is far greater than what a single factory was able to do in 2018. And the total would also potentially include those 500k already-existing model 3's because private owners can opt-in.
That's how the math goes. It's dependent on getting the FSD out, and hedged by "well the lawmakers won't let us, but we're super ready to go!"
I agree there is no fucking way this happens before the ball drops on the 31st of December, but I can at least parse the concep
The Tesla Fanbois are drooling (Score:1)
with anticipation. Then they can go on their commute and sleep, eat, fart and ....
All while the rest of us plebs have to drive our cars.
With the current situation, 'end of the year' seems rather foolhardy but when has that ever stopped Elon eh?
I nearly bought a Model 3 but decided that the quality was just not there. Built down to a price was pretty obvious. This won't matter if you operate it as a 'taxi'. Anyone who thinks that they can make $100K a year from their car is living in cloud cuckoo land.
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The Model 3 of today is very different from a build quality perspective than the first ones that were hammered together in order to meet a deadline. The Model Y has vast improvements over the 3 in this regard as well - the ongoing teardown from Munro and Associates is actually quite fascinating.
I do wish the interior used some nicer materials, had an optional projected HUD, and had a few more luxury options (wtf no heated steering wheel) and I really don't know why they removed the HomeLink garage door thi
Comment removed (Score:3)
Re: What's a Robot-Axis? (Score:2)
Now I'm curious about the alliances in WWIII.
Empty streets (Score:2)
Well, with the streets empty for much of the year it might possible to run a few semi-autonomous vehicles around. Not sure who is going to Clorox-wipe them between trips though.
Robotaxis? (Score:2)
Robot Axis? Musk is planning to field Robot Axis 1000000 by the end of the year?
Not completely technical (Score:2)
Needs Robert Picardo voice (Score:1)
He did it! (Score:2)
Deathtrap (Score:2)
Musk Time (Score:2)
no JohnnyCab references? (Score:2)
This reminded me of the movie, and don't leave with an insulting remark or the robotaxi will run you down.
Getting back on topic, I wonder how it will change the demographics in ways we don't expect? As an old guy I remember growing up and really getting excited about getting a car and go cruising. Went to DMV for my license on my 18th birthday (well maybe a few days after). These days it seems young people not all that excited about getting a car, for some either not practical (all you will do is sit in tr
Sanitize? (Score:2)
How many sick people a day are going to use my car while I'm at work?