First turns in the Robotaxi

It’s all about the pick up and drop off experience. FSD works well when it’s on the road but the first and last 2% of the ride can get clunky.

All it looks like to me as a regular Tesla with FSD and the monitoring system turned off. I thought the cards would be different.

Does it link to your Tesla account and auto-enable Apple Music and stuff?

How exactly would it be different? Edit: I'm dumb and used a period instead of a question mark.

It was not supposed to have any driver controls

They could probably move the driver seat up a bit… driver seems to have plenty of leg room

Wait the robotaxi I saw was a two seater. What's this now? Ahh I see it's a Model Y the dedicated car is not ready yet.

Yes

You’re thinking about the cybercab, this model y and that car (not yet released) are both robotaxis.

Tesla just stated on X couple minutes ago ‘’All your media and streaming settings sync before the Robotaxi picks you up, thanks to Tesla Profiles stored in the cloud’’

Is it known or is the assumption that these robotaxis are operating on AI5?

Wonder if you can sit in the drivers seat seeing that there's no one there?

I thought the robotaxi didn’t have a steering wheel.

Why you want to cramp the driver?

Here’s what I’ve never understood: why not? I mean, not why not here, but why not in general? Is there something about robotaxies that require they can never be manually driven? I remember google’s first go at this years ago and I didn’t understand it then either.

Does the Robotaxi have different tech than the others models? Or are they running the same hardware 4?

The idea was to make them as cheap as possible. No driver, no need for the entire steering wheel and pedals systems

Yeah, I think that special purpose cab model is still coming. This is clearly just an unmodified Y

HW4 but the FSD version is still unknown

You’re confusing yourself with the Robotaxi and a cybercab. The cybercab is the one without steering wheel while the robotaxi is like a taxi service just like waymo

Nice!

I'm assuming they don't want randos in the driver seat while there are controls. It'll probably also add another seat to get rid of the wheel and pedals.

Don't see a reason why not

Right. Easy mistake to make.

Wouldn't the benefit of this that you can take an extra passenger? Seems like alot of wasted space.

Do they have app for this? How did you hail the ride?

I wonder if it nags when the passenger looks out the side windows?

This is the pre-robotaxi robotaxi. It's probably a Model 3 or possibly a Y. The Robotaxies coming out soon have no steering wheel.

Driver is invisible.

That’s pretty boss

I wonder if you can still assume control with the wheel or by hitting the brakes.

They are on HW4, just regular Junipers. The only difference is the software.

Too early to be concerned by such things, but it will come

They have a dedicated app. You hail like with Uber. The app is only available through TestFlight and you need to get an invite from Tesla to download it. There is an option to tip the driver. When you select the amount and try to tip, a nice picture with text "just kidding" appears, fun fact.

How many hours before someone is filming themselves blasting awful music at full volume to torture the babysitter driver

Thought they were starting with safety monitor/drivers.

Amazon solved this issue years ago with drop off points that drivers could confirm. Tesla would have to employ the same strategy, but allow the user to choose from the available points. Common pick-up points can be used to establish or reinforce drop-offs as well

The passenger is most likely very carefully picked and trained professional. I can't even imagine what he had to do to get this job. A lot of stock value and reputation currently depends on those 10 people. Don't think any nag is necessary.

You are confusing it with Cybercab. It was known from the beginning the first robotaxies will be Junipers.

Sure, there's some dollars to save there. But unless *only* self-driving cars are on the road, and in constant communication with all others, I don't see that we're close to tech so reliable we'll never need an override. Though is the plan to call in a remote driver to take over if needed?

That's John Cena

the Tesla personal sit on the passenger side during the early access stage.

Those are Cybercabs with no driver controls. This one is an ordinary Tesla car with hardware 4 . So all Roboaxti rides are using the current new Models with the Robotaxi Self Driving software.

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So why not a modded Model 3 variant instead of a new body style?

You can call support.

hence why the seat needs to be far back.

same one i made until this post… i was thinking they were rolling out the tech prior to actually having tier cabs complete.

and really if you think about it that says A LOT for the tech. the cars are out there doing their thing completely on their own… the same car you can get directly from tesla.

🤣 He's wearing a chair custome

Youre confusing the the service with the cars Robotaxi is the service It can be any autonomous car, eh vehicle Cybercab it the dedicated vehicle for Tesla Robotaxi, However all their cars can do/will do robotaxi service

Yes, they have a call center with remote operators

I'd highly doubt you could. A Waymo immediately shuts down if it senses you getting into the drivers seat.

Tesla calls tomorrow ?

Ah good then.

I literally just want unsupervised so it will stop bugging every few seconds for me to look at the road 🤣. I want to be able to look at my window a few seconds. That attention monitoring is bs

The cybercab isn't in production yet. They only have prototypes doing tests taxi rides around giga Texas.

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Resuming *"TOP 10 ANIME MOANS COMPILATION"* ON YouTube Music

The FSD model itself is different, one that consumers haven't been able to test

When did Amazon have a ride-hailing service?

The supervisor guy half the time a new profile syncs, "fuuuuuck."

Delivery stops

They already did this

Do these have any additional sensors besides cameras? Radar or Lidar? I’m pretty skeptical about the success of these given some recent testing I’ve seen.

Same hardware, different software.

I think they're only allowing 2 rear passengers for now plus luggage.

He's in the trunk with a video controller.

Ask anyone with FSD... would you trust your life to it? You'd be hard pressed to find anyone who would say yes. I'm never getting in a Robotaxi.

No same cameras that are on juniper.

Frunk. So he avoids obstacles as an incentive.

This video has someone sitting in the front, lol. Edit: I didn't realize they had human Tesla employees monitoring the experience. So not a passenger.

Who’s sitting on the front passenger seat? Tesla employee?

I loled

Maybe he’s blind. Coincidentally, this is good for those who can’t see.

Baby shark doo doo doo doo doo doo

Thanks

WW3, best we can do

I trust my life with it on a daily basis.

Oh yeah. Is a "Juniper" a 3 with Cybertruck headlights?

Bonus meat sponge in the event of a crash.

I’m pretty sure this is physically possible! This could never work without LIDAR! /s Jokes aside, there’s nothing wrong with LIDAR. Just people jumping on an engineering problem with zero understanding is funny.

Software difference is: driver_present=”no” "Alright boys, robotaxi software is done!"

Yup, that's the goal. Real customer cars that people already own will be able to do this.

That's a tesler employee. For safety.

Where is delemain

Is that your friend in the front or tesla employee? Are you not allowed to mess with the front screen?

I have FSD. Yes, I would and do entrust my life to it. It's not quite better than me, but it's better than some drivers that I've been with. The actual issue is whether you feel comfortable letting someone else make that decision, because the pedestrian who gets hit by a robotaxi didn't make any conscious choice to use it.

It's cheaper to produce a two seater than a four seater. A two seater with a driver, however, is not commercially viable for robotaxi. Hence the choice to go without a driver. That's also why they didn't just use a modded Model 3.

Throw some microvision (MVIS) LiDAR in this and it will be flawless!

Probably yeah, it's entirely standard hardware just software. I think you could do the same in a waymo.

I don’t know how you’ve seen the point articulated, but the criticism of “humans can do it with vision only” makes sense. Humans use vision and a huge context of information. FSD’s vision surpasses human vision (performance and attention) but the FSD lacks context. Logically, you should close that gap with super human perception via LiDAR, radar, etc. People also bring up scaling costs, but a 50k vs 200k BOM cost is negligible if you factor in the lifetime revenue of the vehicle. Tesla’s vision only approach has nothing to do with engineering and all to do with their business model. They can’t get investors excited about a FSD solution that doesn’t work with a majority of their core revenue products.

Agreed, I run FSD here in austin there are plenty of edge cases probably only tesla owners would know and they don't necessarily gets reported back to Tesla. The latest FSD update, the voice reporting functionality no longer works, I am not even sure if they are aware of that. There was a scenario during construction area, there was a new lane in the left most lane, FSD took it and literally no one was on that lane. A while later, tiny sign says U turn only, both me and car missed it. I didn't see it until the car about to drive off the road into grassy midland, I took over in the last second and swerved back into the proper highway lane. Another scenario, huge construction on I-35, bumper to bumper traffic. FSD is going to merge into the highway full 50-60+ miles/hr with a 18 wheeler next to me that's not moving and we are running out of room. I am not sure what the end result would be, quickly took over and slam on the brake. I am not about to play chicken with a 18 wheeler. There are many cases like that, FSD will get into accident sooner or later, it's not what if's but when. That will help improve the software but just hope no one gets hurt along the way.

My FSD Tesla made an illegal left hand turn today. So who gets that ticket when there is no one in the driver seat?

From my understanding they are operating the service with an SD (safety driver) IN. Which is unusual amongst other companies doing this. The SD is usually only there for validation/mapping out the ODD, but this is still in beta.

It's not negligible; it's 4x cheaper; that has a massive impact on rollout, maintenance, profitability, visibility, marketing. Say you have 20,000,000$ to spend, that's either 100 waymos, or 400 model Ys. Your service is now 4x more available with Tesla, and cheaper to operate. That kind of margin power is a deathknell in any other industry.

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Isn’t it remotely controlled by a human?

When they bought ZOOX.

Everything's computer

That FSD version must be amazing. Cause if I put FSD in and sit in the back. I’m for sure dead. Can’t wait until it’s released, if it’s new FSD anyway.

Omg having his voice as a navigation guide would be so perfect for these driverless cars!!

But what would be the point of a taxi with only 2 seats? I'm guessing most rides are only 1 or 2 passengers, but would the 2 seater be that much more efficient than a 3 or Y that it would make sense to not have a car that can handle a family of 4 or 2 couples going out for dinner together?

Why have the tech sit in the passenger seat? Wouldn’t you want him in the drivers seat just in case?

Human acuity is way better. HW4 uses around 1440p 5MP cameras. If you've used security cameras, 4k is way better than 2k in terms of making things out in the distance. Humans have around 500MP for comparison.

Yeah is the safety driver just there to watch it crash? Is he going to try to reach over for the wheel and steer like that?

A Juniper is the Model Y with the 2025 refreshed design.

@TheManInTheShack is created to spread misinfo. Just a heads up they don't care about the info being inaccurate.

Me or the person that I replied to?

Oh the person you replied to. Sorry that wasn't clear. Changing now to be more clear

It actually doesn’t matter that the capital expenditure is 4x less if the operating margins are negative. At least the unit economics work in Waymo’s favor because they have a path to positive lifetime margins via low self driving disengagements. Scaling units with negative operating margins just means you run out of money quicker. The reason to scale right now is to help with the engineering feedback cycle. It is much more important to increase the quality of data (unique traffic cases) instead of the quantity of data (miles driven). Waymo is 4x more expensive for BOM cost but with vastly more reliable operations and capabilities. The lifetime (8 years for a taxi) expense of a Waymo is probably the same as a Tesla if you factor in operational costs of a safety driver. Usually, you prove out a capability before you try to reduce the fixed costs (BOM cost).

No worries, I was not too sure because I post a lot of content here about Tesla and always make sure they come from reliable sources :)

They avoid difficult intersections and turns in the area they've geofenced and make the car do the turns and routes they know it can handle. FSD is still not done but if you remove the tricky parts in an area you've tested a lot it's basically done.

Waymo had a safety supervisor in the car in their first few weeks of an initial rollout

Yeah

Not the passenger, probably Tesla.

Yup, it's in no way unusual. Just a few years behind, thats all.

Really? I always assumed Zoox was its own thing. Huh, explains why it’s shit lol, Amazon likes to needlessly get into a company’s business and never for the better, like Rivian probably hasn’t been able to expand much/iterate on their designs because they’re forced to make the vans

I worked at a DSP, that system is such bullshit and the delivery zones you gotta be in a lot of times aren’t really in the right spot so you can’t complete the delivery without calling support 😭

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Whoo is the guy in front?

I would think, it being in a geofenced, pre-tested area it would already know where all the possible turns are and wouldn’t find itself in an illegal turn situation. Whereas, you could find yourself in several as FSD, in your area, hasn’t learned how to avoid illegal turns in your particular illegal turn.

Yes, haven’t had an accident while using FSD, but, have been in several accidents while not using FSD.

If you need 4 seats just call two robotaxies

It’s been roughly 5 years and it can’t figure out which lane to enter on a double lane left hand turn.

They are ready to push the open door button so the car stops if there is some very bad behaviour of the car

Sick.

How do you order one of these? Through uber or through tesla ?

"50k vs 200k BOM cost is neglible"? Lmao. If Apple announced that their profit margins dropped 75% in their next quarterly report, their stock would crash more than 50%.

That's amazing

I love tesler

Wait what? You can measure human eyes in megapixels..?

FSD and autopilot aren't good enough to drive insurance prices down

In this timeline we deleted him.

Or a model Y.

Just like [KITT](https://x.com/BryanPassifiume/status/1335636896488120321)

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Can you math? 400% capital expenditure cost does not equal 75% less lifetime margin. We’re comparing services, which have continued operating costs and revenue. Total cost is cap ex plus variable costs. Tesla might start off as a lower cap ex, but it has net negative margin for every ride (safety drivers) versus Waymo, which does not.

I'm fairly sure their business model doesn't include a safety driver... eventually.

And how do you know that Waymo has a positive margin per ride? They don't disclose their numbers, so either you have inside information or you're bullshitting. In any case, your entire argument crumbles the moment Tesla stops using safety drivers, which is likely to happen within 1-2 years.

How much does a 15 mile trip cost?

Frunk monkey.

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What if a passenger grabs the steering wheel?

No. What would be the point of that?

> given some recent testing I’ve seen I hope you are not referring to the Mark Rober video.

According to research done by companies working in the passenger transfer business (cabs), well over 90% of rides are done with one or two people.

Passenger is a very trained professional monitor

Robotaxi app

probably the owner of the car.

I'm pretty sure they dont even sell all the vans to Amazon anymore. Additionally I bet they have completely different teams and maybe even production lines than their typical consumer vehicles.

How do you know?

Like…a taxi driver.

All rides are currently $4.20. Irony much??

Disney+ is on the passenger display! I really hope this means a Disney+ app is coming to non-robotaxi Teslas in the near future.

John Cena needs lots of space

Source?

Mine hardly nags anymore (23 MYP/HW4 FSD v13.2.9)

I heard someone riding in one say $4.

It's likely also a fine tune for Austin. That's implied by media reports of humans driving Tesla test cars through the same turns over and over again prior to release.

Tesla employee in the front. Probably there for several things, but also a sense of supervision as well.

Marketing.

I’ve also had FSD do enough dumb things that I wouldn’t want to be in one without access to the brake pedal.

Well it wouldn't be a taxi if it was half self driving

nope nope nope nope

Yeah except realistically, what can this guy even do in the first place?

I feel like "closing the gap" would be much more effectively done with better prediction than better precision.

Wait, this is just Waymo, but years late

Shouldn’t you do both? Increasing sensor modalities can lead to better prediction, as evidenced by Waymo’s approach. Single modality approaches have lower improvement slopes than multi modal.

JMP research estimates Waymo has slightly positive unit economics in SF. The real bullshit is you estimating safety drivers will be gone in 1-2 years without giving a source. Not even a Tesla insider can estimate that time frame. Have you forgotten that hardware can be reduced in cost and commoditized over time? The question is will Tesla reach L4 autonomy before Waymo does an effective cost down. There are trendlines for hardware cost over time.

I haven’t actually seen evidence that Waymo’s performance hinges on those other modalities. Maybe it works okay with only cameras? We don’t know for sure.  And the improvement slope might look a certain way early on and change drastically as compute scales up. Just my 2 cents.

I had this issue with Waymo in SF. It was dropping me off at a museum and there was a bus parked at the beginning of the drop-off area. The bus wasn't blocking the vehicle from also pulling over in that area but the car was confused and "debated" what to do, inching forward, and stopping many times before it finally pulled in front of the bus and let me out.

Maybe when we merged all the divergents, it turned into Elon musk

Yes, my "bar" for when self-driving is "there" will be when it can navigate a McDonald's drive-thru.

Let's be careful here, because \*certain\* groups of people will jump on any ambiguity and try to use it as a smokescreen to confuse people. These are not "safety drivers". He is not sitting in the driver's seat. This is a "safety supervisor" or possibly a "safety operator".

Behind what, exactly? Waymo? These are two completely different ideas playing out. Waymo is still trying to work out how to scale their "map everything beforehand" system, as well as find a way to make building/outfitting their cars even remotely competitive. (They posted over $1 billion in losses in 2024 Q4 alone, and there are signs Alphabet is getting a little weary of financing all of this) Tesla is going for a general approach. These are apples and oranges.

I would love to see this more on the streets every because I'm tired of driving and auto insurance is killing people with higher rates

Yes it does. Herbert Ong mentioned many times that his music carries from his car. It's like the robotaxi was his car

Thanks for confirming that your numbers are completely fabricated. Maybe you don’t remember that Waymo initially used safety drivers. Your assumption that Tesla will have safety drivers indefinitely makes no sense.

This is still beta testing right? Or it’s only select few get to try this out. More details needed!

I have FSD and would not ride in one until they have laser like waymo.

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Heh, pretty much.

I think it'll scale pretty quickly even this way and they'll keep trying to improve those tricky situations at the same time. In the short-long term, like 5 years, I don't see how any other company can compete with a company that already has millions (and will continue to sell millions) of cars that can already do this.

apparently vision and lidar/radar conflicts. 2 sources of truth, so they turned it off

tesla employee supervising the rides

What’s TestFlight?

FSD already has ui for choosing a parking spot, they just need to employ that for the drop off and have the car render safe stopping spots

Hey there. I’m an old Dad. My kids keep talking about John Cena. I don’t understand why. Can you help me understand?

Wait… Y’all get Disney+ in that thing? How come this isn’t on the non-taxi cars yet?? 😭

Oh, never mind… The Disney+ software is still there, but it’s hidden by default if you weren’t already using it when Elon decided to hide it (Simply visit disneyplus dot com from the in-car browser and it will magically reappear! You don’t even need to log in from the browser or anything)

Having a Tesla safety person there is so fucking awkward

The crumple zone 😂

It's an app (or a channel) used by software developers to distribute builds to selected testers.

You have that many issues with FSD? I almost never have to take over and I’m in ~3 hours of traffic, highways and random backroads every day navigating through the Baltimore DC area. Maybe some cities are more compatible with FSD than others at the moment?

Are you sure?

I dont trust tech enough to self drive me in a car that has barely no sound haha. But that's pretty cool

No thanks

Tell that to Waymo had an employee in the driver's seat for their first 3 years.

3 hours of traffic? Bruh why. What could possibly be worth that. You better be an astronaut or something

You done come across fake walls that look like the road continues every day?