Autonomous driving: VW steals the show from Tesla

"Musk, as always, is thinking big. In an interview with CBS in May, he announced that within a few months, around 1,000 Tesla robotaxis will be on the road, and hundreds of thousands by the end of next year." Yeah, ok, lol

They have a partnership with Rivian, I'm not sure how much of this is driven by software from this partnership

Vw makes a much higher quality EV than Tesla. I have no doubt they'll crush Tesla in the race to fill the Robotaxi niche but the media and financial analysts will just change the narrative to focus on the next Tesla vaporware.

None. This one is made partnering with Mobileye and APEX.AI.

I do wonder why journalists keeps quoting Musk when Tesla literally argued in court that nothing that Musk says publicly can be taken at face value and should be expected to be lies, or “corporate puffery” in their words. On top of that, the track record of Musk predictions is notoriously bad. It just hurts their credibility when they keep treating statements from a well known liar as truths. They either have the memory of a goldfish or they intentionally pretend false statements are newsworthy. In either case, I do treat the stories they produce as utter garbage and I take nothing of what they write as face value. I understand they have deadlines to meet and column inches to fill, but they’re hurting their own brand on the dateline and the news org they are working for.

I’m not sure that VW is really doing anything here so much as integrating Mobileye. Any manufacturer can do this…

It's made by ADA, automated driving alliance by CARIAD and Bosch.

It makes more sense that a specialist in bespoke software and hardware solutions for self driving is more efficient than building it in house. Especially if cars start communicating with each other. Tesla FSD is still a lot closer to their autopilot tham what Musk described years ago. And in another couple years even the basest new car will have lane control, adaptive cruise and low speed follow.

This makes me wonder how auto makers would fair in developing rockets. Tesla has blow something like a 7 year lead in this space and is losing now. Great work, Elon.

Later in the article it is stated that he made claims like that back in 2017.

The same people who quote Musk without skepticism also follow Fox News even though Fox admitted under oath in the Dominion lawsuit they are an entertainment venue only, not a news organization, and that "no reasonable person would believe" their stolen election spin.

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Honda just landed a rocket they developed https://global.honda/en/topics/2025/c_2025-06-17ceng.html

Yeah, they used to be a great company. Now they can’t even launch a rocket 😂

SpaceX didn’t even invent landing rockets

Way better journalism than here in the US: > In addition, Musk announced in May that autonomous driving for private Tesla owners should be enabled in several US cities by the end of the year. Not a new promise. Already in 2017 he had promised to unlock this function within the next two years.

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Bc it gets clicks and views

VW: sensor fusion of 13 cameras, 9 lidars, and 5 radars will allow safe, self-directed driving of speeds up to 120km/h Elmo: lol, eight cameras is fine. Humans don't have lidar, and we do fine. *In the background, a Model Y in drives into a brick wall upon which a tunnel has been painted*

Everyman’s nightmare. PE and ED 😂

Hey cmon his prediction is only a little off, according to Musk Tesla is going to deliver completely safe self driving cars by the end of ~~2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024~~ 2025

Everything Tesla can do, someone else can do better.

Sure, but isn't the Buzz basically the perfect vehicle for this?

Try the ID.7. And while I agree with the critic of the ID.4 the newer ID.7 fixed more or less all the issues of the older car.

Is it? I’m pretty sure a 5 passenger SUV would be better and easier from an autonomy perspective since it would be more maneuverable in dense traffic.

Id.4 is a much nicer more comfortable ev with comparable range and a slightly lower cost.

Musk cuts down to the bone on everything. He did skate for a while when the propaganda was that Tesla was the only EV maker. It (unfortunately) still is like band aid or kool aid where the brand is the name of the product. It was a very well made car at one point but better EV makers are out there. I think Rivian is a beautiful car inside and out. Kia makes a very affordable EV And uh oh! Volkswagen is getting deep in the game with German engineering. They have the clout and money for a PR blitz to crush Tesla esp in the euro markets. Tesla is on life support. It’s gets a boost now and then esp that in Americans minds they are the only EV maker. That could change very fast the Elon is going with things.

I love hearing the cameras = human eyes argument.

From a marketing standpoint, though ... the Buzz is cute and people want to ride in it. I don't know how much more maneuverable an suv would be, or how much it even matters.

The id.4 is a much better  car than the model Y

Cameras = human eyes Said no engineer with even a fundamental understanding of machine vision.

> It was a very well made car at one point disagree

Because they learn from business insider and Bill Ackman wife. You write bad about billionaires, your magazine owner will can you.

Or human vision .

APEX.AI, CARIAD, Bosch Tons of different folks jumping in on this stuff with mobileye

They put out 10 in a very small area only for available for Tesla employees. 10.

and hopefully VWs won't spontaneously combust and burn the driver inside due to no door handles

Or better yet, a robotaxi runs over a mannequin of a kid and doesn't even stop just keeps going

Personally I do not think as well. And I do not like Musk. But you only have to look at Boeing to see how difficult it is for companies like that to really allow innovation. They would not even consider something as complex as Starship. Even if that program fails. And while the Starship program actually may fail, SpaceX/Musk falcon reusable rocket system is indicating to be an economic viable and successful program. And that has a lot to do with SpaceX allowing for failure.

You have to mention Ford and GM as well. You possibly can argue their drive train is not as elegant, but you can not argue that the build quality is bad. They been doing that for close to 100 years.

I will look into it :3 I didn't know this

journalists also just parroted what Elizabeth Holmes was saying

VW ID Buzz has a turning circle of 36 foot. A tesla model Y is 40 foot.

Well to be fair, he will eventually get the right year, eventually.

Reminds me of the song…

They have and also Tesla plans to "launch" a limited robotaxi service with about 10-20 vehicles in Austin, Texas, starting tentatively on June 22nd. The initial rollout will be a pilot program with a small number of vehicles operating in a geofenced area under *remote human supervision*. So still prototyping so to speak.

Too many people forget the tiny little detail about that small computer human eyes directly connect to.

The most obvious thing here that I keep mentioning... these other robotaxi services have lots of goofy looking sensors on them to make them much more accurate for the service. I believe tesla is still just relying on their cameras which is a major fuckup on their end.

lmao Human eyes generally suck it has to be said.

Yeah, I worked in Bay Area tech mid-2010s and onward and remember getting in friends’ Teslas. My mom drove Mercedes my whole life and I was like… this is bad. How do not realize this is bad?

but have a great computer processing the data

I am pretty sure these vans are not larger (as in longer and wider) than many SUV

Name one computer that is better at understanding context and meaning.

There are 20 by the time you include the follow cars.

They were also years ahead in terms of humanoid robots but gave up.

Because he is a spiteful, self-obsessed man and any interviewer doing his job would only get to do it once. Just look at what he's doing to his poor pet AI project as soon as it starts quoting facts.

They also haven’t had a Nazi in charge for over 80 years now.

Wasnt the ID7 cancelled?

No ? Global sales 40k in 2024, and afaik best selling EV in Germany. And generally good reviews.

I think it was cancelled for US sales. Sorry for any confusion. https://insideevs.com/news/748876/vw-id7-canceled-north-america/

In reality, only 10 were launch in a certain part of Austin.

Okay everyone take a bow you got better auto pilot but no one had the foresight or courage to jump all in on EVs. I credit Musk for breaching the consciousness event horizon and kicking open the doors to possibilities. Too bad about the Whiteman swollen head syndrome. It's become all the rage and fashion these days. The one thing I learned about racism is you've got to confront it early in the brains development or it gets too deeply reinforced in the neural network to weed out properly. But hey we all need therapy and healing. Can I get a witness?

U should try their mouths, bruh.