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Tesla Robotaxis Go To Florida (theverge.com) 53

Posted by BeauHD from the rolling-out dept.
Tesla says it is launching its Robotaxi service in Orlando and Tampa, though it has not shared fleet sizes or whether customers can immediately hail rides. The Verge notes the announcement lands on Tesla earnings day and comes as the company's robotaxi rollout remains far smaller than Elon Musk previously projected, with tracker data showing only a small number of unsupervised vehicles operating in existing cities. From the report: [B]ack in May, Tesla had five unsupervised robotaxis in Dallas, six in Houston, and 29 in Austin. As of today, there are only 17 unsupervised vehicles in Austin, four in Dallas, and zero in Houston, according to the Robotaxi Tracker. By comparison, Waymo is estimated to have over 3,500 fully driverless vehicles in operation across over 10 cities.

Like Waymo, Tesla typically introduces robotaxis to a new city with a safety driver behind the wheel. Unlike Waymo, sometimes Tesla moves that person over to the passenger seat with access to a kill switch should anything go wrong. The company has been inconsistent in how it rolls out its robotaxis to new markets. The numbers go up and down, with zero explanation from the company as to why.

[...] By adding new cities, Tesla is clearly trying to sell investors on the idea that its robotaxi project is growing. But the fluctuating fleet size, inconsistency in supervised vs unsupervised vehicles, and long wait times tell a very different story.

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Tesla Robotaxis Go To Florida

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  • Just have them autopilot it from the Philippines. Mechanical Turk and all that. I guess it doesn't really matter anymore. Fun fact if you have a 401k then you just had a billion dollars taken out of it. That's how much money you lost when you were forced to buy SpaceX because it was put in the NASDAQ 100 without meeting any of the requirements for joining the NASDAQ 100...

    When you're running a scam that big, something worth hundreds of billions if not trillions of dollars, why even bother with the self-

    • Re:Not sure why they don't do what Google does (Score:5, Interesting)

      by memory_register ( 6248354 ) on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @06:08PM (#66250376)

      I liquidated my 401k into money market accounts; crash incoming...

      • Didn't you have to pay a shitload of taxes though? There are usually penalties for extracting money out of a 401k. I didn't think there was a way to move them to something like a money market account without incurring those penalties

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward
          That's why nobody listens to your financial advice.
        • 401K may have money market as an option. My IRA and SEP both offer a "cash" option which is currently paying around 3.3% I'm probably 90% cash at the moment. I think 401K you are at the mercy of the corp administrator.
        • This is peak "I have no idea what I'm talking about" content from your firehose of BS. Why is it that you think you are personally being asked about every question here? Why do you think you need to have an opinion on all of it?

    • Having taken Waymos a couple dozen rides so far I am willing to say those things work. If Google was able to build a system to allow someone in the Phillipines to drive like they do they kudos to them for that because you can't tell, it reacts very fast.

      If anything I am always a little taken back at how defensive Waymon can act, it will assert itself in situations and driving on the I4 corridor, possibly the worst stretch of highway in America is a scenario where it will need to be on point. Those people

      • Google is spending a lot of money right now to make them work. They also have backup centers in the United States. As soon as they think they can transition it to a profitable business all of that goes out the window and we're going to have to live with these things fucking up our freeways.

        It's like boiling a frog except the frog is smart enough to jump out of the pot

        • I mean in this case the profitable business model is giving safe rides to passengers. I would hope Google can understand the very simple concept of if you can assure that you've created a money printing machine. If riders think they are unsafe it's joever for them or any self driving company. Look at how fast Uber's dreams were dashed.

        • we're going to have to live with these things fucking up our freeways.

          Given the choice between:

          1. autonomous cars with extensively-trained algorithms, a wide array of sensors, and vehicle-to-vehicle communication; and
          2. human-driven cars with all of the drivers' occasional lapses, unpredictable failings, and sometimes reckless choices;

          it seems clear to me who is more likely to be "fucking up" our freeways: the ones that have been fucking up freeways ever since we had freeways.

          • Just wait until stupid fucking useless and idiotic self driving cars clog up your freeways and you'll change your tune
            • He just has to wait as long as the next power failure, when they are all legislated to stop dead wherever they sit because they can't even move somewhere safely on their own. Autonomous indeed. They will stop on highways, on train tracks, on one way streets. Let's hope two "self driving" cars werent passing eachother on a two lane highway when the power went out.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by DrXym ( 126579 )
            It's not one or the other. A car can do mundane stuff, and provide rapid response in emergencies like collisions or skids, but having a human being who is attentive and capable of dealing with random events is also important.

            And that's because autonomous cars with their "extensively trained algorithms" demonstrate repeatedly that they can fail in very stupid and systemic ways. e.g. if the software in an autonomous car does not stop for a school bus then it is a problem affecting all vehicles.

            Waymo, whic

      • Re:Not sure why they don't do what Google does (Score:5, Interesting)

        by dgatwood ( 11270 ) on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @07:11PM (#66250460) Homepage Journal

        Having taken Waymos a couple dozen rides so far I am willing to say those things work. If Google was able to build a system to allow someone in the Phillipines to drive like they do they kudos to them for that because you can't tell, it reacts very fast.

        They didn't. The GP is very, very incorrect.

        When a remote operator takes control of the vehicle, you'll know it, because it will mean that the vehicle has already been stuck for a minute or so without being able to figure out how to proceed, and will be sitting there for additional minutes while the remote operator looks at camera/LIDAR data and draws a proposed path through the problem area on a map.

        It is not physically possible, for any amount of money, to do what the GP is claiming. Sending a signal over a cellular network from the Bay Area to the Philippines and back takes a quarter of a second on average. That's up to a 33% increase in response time compared with a driver in the vehicle. If you tried to fake self-driving with a remote operator in that way, they would crash into things constantly.

        Even if the remote operator were in the same city, the latency spikes would still likely cause the cars to crash into things constantly.

        LEO satellites also won't work, because these things mostly run in cities, where tall buildings would block the signals, so again, the cars would crash into things constantly.

        Maybe if you had a dedicated cellular network running in parallel with the public one on a private frequency band AND dedicated trunk lines to a control center, you might be able to get something that worked most of the time, but at a cost that would be mind-blowing.

        • The OP was DOUBLE incorrect. Precisely zero people in the Philippians have remote control access to Waymos. That handover is handled by two US based call centres only. The Philippians centre is exclusively used for training AI. i.e. they get information about a situation and get asked what instructions the AI should do. There is no "remote control".

          The OP has even in the past posted references that directly contradict his own take. He's nothing more than a paid shill, or maybe the dumbest moron on Slashdot.

      • driving on the I4 corridor, possibly the worst stretch of highway in America

        At least in Florida, I-95 in Jacksonville and Miami is a lotworse. Pretty much the nastiest part of I-4 is by the attractions area and it's really just your typical crawl along and don't rear-end anyone sort of traffic. It's something Tesla's consumer FSD would probably handle just fine.

        The main thing that makes that part of I-4 a bit less awful is that you're not traveling through a high density urban area, so aren't a whole lot of on ramps and exits through that area, and most people tend to just stay i

    • The technology to pilot a car from the Philippines in traffic and in urban areas among pedestrians and cyclists would be 100x harder to develop than autonomous driving.

    • Because Google doesn't do that. You know this. You've been correct on this multiple times. Yet you keep pushing your dumbarse fake take over and over again.

      At this point there's no sugar coating it anymore. You're nothing more than a dishonest cunt spreading rubbish. The sheer amount of rubbish you're spreading on this topic can only lead someone to the conclusion that you're paid to do it. No human with a functioning braincell would post what you do without being paid to.

  • Cameras and lidar both struggle in rain and snow. I don't think this technology is going to fully replace humans in transport; there are too many variable that the current tech just cannot touch.
    https://www.easyrain.it/robotaxi-weather-challenges-wet-snow/
     
    And don't get me started on AI or ML for making driving decisions...

    • Absolutely they are starting in good weather climates but they do have a warning message when there is rain or other bad weather and they won't take you anywhere until it's cleared up. The thing is these cars don't have to perform perfectly, they just need to perform better than a human would, and like a human decide not to drive when the weather is especially bad. None of those decisions are out of reach of AI systems and Tesla's specifically already perform better than the average person in almost any me
      • Where I live, businesses are still open in a snowstorm. Meaning people still need to go to work in one. There's no such thing as deciding not to go.
        • Tesla FSD does work in the snow already, they just aren't starting out with automating it in taxi's without a supervisor. There really isn't any task that humans can do that AI won't be able to replicate or improve upon in the very near term - at this point its just how much power and compute does it take. AIs meant to specialize in one specific thing, like driving, are also far more advanced than the generalist LLMs most people chat with. Their energy and power is focused on that very narrow task rather th

    • > Cameras and lidar both struggle in rain and snow

      As do human eyeballs peering through rain and snow soaked windows. But the advantage here arguably goes to the robot car with its multiple sheltered cameras, some of which, especially on Tesla Robotaxis and Cybertrucks, “self wipe”, heat, or blow air to stay clear. These cars can see in every direction at once with reliably very high detail. Tesla’s self driving demonstrate this directly via a 5X reduction in accidents, as reported by Te

      • Sure. I'll believe the "wipe and heat" works when I see it. At 30C below you can start your car for an hour blasting the heat, you are still going to have to clear the windows yourself. Ice wrecks windshield wipers. These things need to be 100% spotless to work. Furthermore, on an electric vehicle you are already looking at a reduced range just from the extra load of driving through snow and wind. Will you even get to work after applying all that heat to the cameras?

        • > Sure. I'll believe the "wipe and heat" works when I see it.

          Granted. On the other hand, there’s always something that can make a devout pessimist feel justified, like:

          > At 30C below you can start your car for an hour blasting the heat, you are still going to have to clear the windows yourself. Ice wrecks windshield wipers. These things need to be 100% spotless to work.

          The fallacy? It’s binary thinking. The “things” just need to work better than the alternative.

          > Furthermore

  • Looking forward... (Score:4, Funny)

    by niftydude ( 1745144 ) on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @06:26PM (#66250402)
    to all the incoming Florida man stories.

  • Like Waymo, Tesla typically introduces robotaxis to a new city with a safety driver behind the wheel. Unlike Waymo, sometimes Tesla moves that person over to the passenger seat with access to a kill switch should anything go wrong. The company has been inconsistent in how it rolls out its robotaxis to new markets. The numbers go up and down, with zero explanation from the company as to why.

    Sounds like Tesla is A/B testing their safety driver/person. Maybe the one on the passenger side doesn't actually have to know how to drive, or even have a license, just be able push a button. Which one sounds less expensive? Noting that simply pushing a "kill switch" won't help in an accident avoidance situation...

  • Not even a player (Score:3)

    by cusco ( 717999 ) <<brian.bixby> <at> <gmail.com>> on Tuesday July 21, 2026 @09:03PM (#66250594)

    Tesla is not even a player in the robotaxi industry, they're only mentioned because of Elon Musk. There are already several thousand robotaxis operating in China, and they expect to have half a million on the road there by 2030.

    • Had to do a little searching, but found this. https://www.thinkchina.sg/tech... [thinkchina.sg]

      Sounds like you are correct. One of the big factors seems to be China's ability to make inexpensive Lidar, 200 bucks. Contrast Google at 7500. And of course tesla with cameras. There is a graph showing just how behind tesla is with their "Number of disengagements/crashes" graph. Tesla is at 100 hours. The worst China one is 1000 hrs and waymo and the 2 best Chinese ones are at 10000 hrs. The article claims 1000 is around human p

  • ...they were trying together to Oregon...

  • It could mean "now there's robotaxi service on florida", but as it's florida it could mean "robotaxis went haywire and invaded florida and now are hybridizing with the alligators".

  • Break out the popcorn!

  • Are they THAT old already?

  • Now they can drive into a swamp, hit an alligator, and run into Florida Man (literally). It's like mad-libs but with robotaxi headlines, Florida edition.

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