Tesla has made rapid progress with the full self driving system after they completed version 12 of the AI. They have replaced the coded rules for a complete system of neural networks to control perception, navigation and planning.
Tesla has announced that they will unveil the robotaxi on August 8, 2024. However, it is now known if this means they will show a vehicle or how fast anything will happen.
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
We are here discussing robotaxis while Tesla recalls thousands of cybertrucks because their accelerator pedal can get stuck in the engaged position.
The frikkin accelerator perdal,.. something that every car manufacturer has been building correctly for the last 100 years.
True self driving would have massive benefits for the economy and progress. We are still far away from it IMO. I think that vision based approach can be used for Robots so it will benefit them in that area if not for cars. Elon went almost full in AI race, that is the big battle right now. Who gets to AI first and how will he use it? For good and benefit of humanity or not?
MS has the lead and with Meta they bought the most GPUs,… I dont trust Meta at all. MS is a bit better, then Google. Elon is probably the most pro humanity here, the least possible to abuse AI for selfish goals.
The transition to Robotaxi may be helped by Tesla releasing the full stack Tesla Network software well in advance.
This should allow a smartphone app to summon an available Robotaxi, know the passengers details, the FSD/TN should talk to the passenger, handle the entire ride end to end, collect payment without any need for a driver.
The only difference during transition would be there is a human driver in place to intervene if needed. That would make it legal and let it collect training data in widespread full operation. Tesla would assume full responsibility for insurance and liability. This would mark the real line between driver assist and Robotaxi autonomy – even without regulatory approval.
Presumably the TN app would have associations with X/Twiiter and X.AI Grok.
The grim reality about Elon Musk is getting revealed. He’s not a businessman making proper business decisions. Betting Tesla on autonomous driving is the biggest mistake that the company could make. The technology is not ready for full autonomous driving and very likely never will with the current approach. The right business decision of course would be to focus on making compact cars, but there is no I told you I’m going to jump humanity to a whole new future showmanship ego boosting moments there. The blind followers still holding Tesla stocks are going to follow the mad man to the abyss.
https://electrek.co/2024/04/16/elon-musk-tesla-all-in-self-driving-robotaxi/
We’ll see before the end of this summer. Musk and Tesla’s expectation seems to be that this is already effectively over and FSD will not only be fully autonomous by the end of the year but there will be no meaningful competition.
If they are right, in a couple years Tesla will have a market cap several times what it now, if wrong Tesla will have a market cap a fraction of what it is now. The hardware products they manufacture to sell won’t matter much either way on this timescale.
The electrek article and even more so the comments is absolutely damning. I read the first 100 comments or so and they are all negative, and detailed about it too, often based on personal experiences with FSD.
If TSLA wasn’t <2% of my portfolio I'd sell it now, even at a loss. It's down about 50% from its high less than a year ago and dropping faster than ever, along with most AI stocks. Just like the internet bubble of the 1990s, the AI bubble has popped as its being revealed that there are way too many companies giving away way too much AI for free, with no clear way to make the kind of revenue implied by their PE ratios.
FSD will not be safe enough for Tesla to assume insurance liability for it, for years, and regulators probably wouldn't even allow that anyway. They MIGHT allow a pooled no-fault insurance business that could mitigate the risk with multi-billion dollar investors. But I'd like to see what kind of risk profile is assigned to Tesla by such a company AND the regulators (who got it wrong in California) – there really isn't any other manufacturer that's even close enough to FSD to be worth estimating over.
As the article & comments point out, Tesla is betting the company on FSD and Musk is being petulant & may refuse to promote AI at Tesla if he doesn't get back to 25% ownership that he gave away to buy Twitter, which the Board probably won't allow, even if they are famously sycophants for Musk.
Whatever happened to the Delaware decision that Musk was over-payed and must return billions to the company? https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/tesla-asks-shareholders-vote-musks-56-billion-payout-rcna148178. Oh, they just asked for a vote to reauthorize the $56 BILLION pay package the DE judge ruled was invalid, on April 17th, but I can't find the results of that vote and I didn't get asked to vote, so it may not have been executed yet. Yet the stock has been plunging since 4/17. Maybe buyers are anticipating Musk getting back to 25% and thinking he's not worth it anymore. Maybe they think he will quit or throttle back the AI if he doesn't get what he wants if he's denied about 6% more of the company.
Musk is an irritable man-child. In some ways Thunderfoot and his worst critics are right about his hype-over-reality persona. SpaceX is even more in fantasy land (or space) where it can't even get Starship to orbit without blowing up, let alone the complicated refueling needed to get to the Moon, let alone Mars (impossible).
I'll hang onto Tesla in hopes is succeeds on its other lines of business despite Musk's distractions and poor business emphasis. The energy segment is growing and may be bigger than the car business someday. Tesla semi may have a future in increasingly carbon-neutral urban areas, maybe on long hauls if there are enough superfast charging centers. The Cybertruck has a niche following but as commenters have pointed out, it's basically illegal due to its sharp edges outside America.
If it’s supervised, it’s not a robotaxi.
The real line is not whether it’s supervised, which is a regulatory technicality, but who has liability. If Tesla assumes liability for the FSD driven vehicle, it’s a Robotaxi whether somebody is sitting in the drivers seat to satisfy regulations or not.