Tesla Applies for California Permit to Launch Robotaxi Service

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Prolly deny it, as there will be no regulation over how safe they will be

Even if it doesnt happen yet, its just crazy how close we are to actually hitting "the future" I always imagined as a kid.

We are already in the future I imagined. I never thought I would live to see the day when I can relax while my car successfully drives me the entire way from pulling out of my parking spot to parking at the front door. Once they get the automatic parking spot selection finished, you won't need to do more than put the pin in and press 1 button.

They didn't deny Waymo's application. If Tesla can achieve an equal or greater level of safety compared to Waymo, then there's no reason to deny it. But of course the threshold should just be average human safety, because if your threshold is above that, then you're actually causing more deaths to occur since humans would be driving instead of the self-driving cars.

"The application, first reported by Bloomberg, reportedly includes details about driver’s license requirements and drug testing protocols, suggesting that Tesla will operate with human drivers before transitioning to a driverless fleet." This is what Waymo did (years ago) - start with human safety drivers that sit there and do nothing 99.99% of the time until they can demonstrate sufficient safety to actually go driverless.

Oh yeah I definitely don't see that getting boycotted and vandalized

Waymo is already here and works.

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In SF now, so many Waymo.

Holy goalposts

Did I say that? I replied to a comment about "close to hitting the future", we're not close.... were already there.

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Wrong person

In terms of personal ownership and/or ubiquitous availability, we're not there yet.

But the robotaxi doesn't even have a steering wheel and pedals right?

The threshold should be way stricter than average human safety imo. Otherwise, were just replacing trash human drivers with trash AI drivers. And there's no reason to do that as it just funnels more money into billionaires' pockets and leads to more lost jobs. Also, at least humans can face the consequences of their mistakes unlike AI where some large corporation places an arbitrary valuation on injuries and settles with insurance companies.

Fair

Isn’t it a two seater though? So one rider only?

They may not start with the Cybercab, Model Ys instead.

There is Waymo that has now been doing it for years and now doing over 200,000 fares a week. Think we hit "the future" years ago thanks to Waymo.

> If Tesla can achieve an equal or greater level of safety compared to Waymo That is what is going to be really tough. Waymo has run a really clean operation over the years in terms of safety. Going to be a tough bar.

Neither this nor the Austin thing in June are likely to be the dedicated robotaxi vehicle. It is not in production yet (and they haven't even started tooling up a line anywhere), hasn't gone through the necessary regulatory and safety process to be on the streets, and so on. This is going to be using Model 3/Y at first.

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> average human safety It is a robotaxi so the if we keep the same logic the threshold should be an "average" cab driver.

The robotaxi vehicle is not in production, and they're not even tooling up for production yet. It is not expected to be in production until next year. The robotaxi SERVICE will initially deploy with Model 3/Y.

Unless you live anywhere else. In which case it’s still very much in the far future. Hard for me to imagine seeing this in Australia, for instance, for another 20 years.

Just some dude with an Xbox controller fighting for his life with a drunk person next to him lol

Australia is pretty easy and definitely it will be no where close to 20 years. I am retired and spend half my time traveling SEA. Just arrived in Cebu this morning for example. Places like the Old Quarter in Vietnam or Bangkok are the places that will take longer but not even these places anywhere close to 20 years. Australia driving is easy in comparison and more importantly labor is expensive compared to most of SEA. I just took a taxi from the airport to my hotel in Cebu and paid less than $5 USD. That is what will make it harder in some parts of the world but NOT Australia.

Yeah way I has to extensively train their algos on specific roads is my understanding. Vision/GPS based protocol is much harder to implement but will dominate because it will naturally work anywhere

One thing FSD is missing is parking lot entrance selection. When I drop off or pick up my daughter at school dictates the entrance I have to use.

After driving in Rome once- I have no idea how they will solve for those markets. Everything operates on social protocols not traffic signs and lane lines

If works means work like shit and creates chaos in traffic and dont report interventions when they need help in many situations. In SF they probably have a couple of hundreds human interventions pilots that goes and help all time. Waymo as it sits currently is just a fancy railroad car with no big future for scaling.

I’m pretty sure teslas road map eventually is to allow owners to put their car to work when they aren’t using it. That’s isn’t Waymo’s model right?

As some who lives in sf I personally have not had to intervene but okay.

Waymo is worlds ahead of Tesla. There is no world in which Cali moving forward is friendly to Tesla anymore.

They probably wont even try in those markets. It's similar to many countries in asia where the road lines are just "suggestions" and not the rule. There would be too many variables that they will not be able to account for making the liability too much of a hassle.

Really both will work. In theory Tesla should be golden but waymo has proven it can work in high density urban areas which is a viable business model too…both can succeed

In theory yes but like hell I’m loaning out my model x to make a few bucks that’s lost immediately to depreciation snd asshole riders causing damage.

Of course it will

True. Their safety record is very impressive. But like I said, the threshold *should* be average human safety. And then it should move up from there as self-driving cars become commonplace.

It's happening!

The thing is - if Tesla can drop 25K taxis like Bird scooters @ .20 per mile, it's game-set-match.

Last I heard, Waymo can’t do freeways, which is a pretty big restriction for all but the shortest trips. And can’t even reach the SF airport, one of the more common destinations for taxis.

Not really.

Right now, no one can do L4 driving on freeways.

The Austin launch was confirmed by Franz to be cybercabs.

I recall them having the ability to only allow your friends and family to use it. Maybe not for $$, but I like that feature of it works.

Waymo exists

That seems like the “easier” problem to solve though, and just waiting on regulations?

My god y'all gonna pick apart everything you can. The fact of the matter is, Waymo can do cities, without a driver, and Tesla can't. I say this as a two Tesla FSD owner.

Nothing about what I said was to disparage Tesla.

This isn't just replacing cab drivers.

He probably just meant robotaxis and misspoke. Not necessarily referring to the specific vehicle. Just the service.

If Tesla's system works and Waymo doesn't pivot hard, Waymo is dead. Tesla destroys them on cost and scale. But that is an if.

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If history from a line of competitors is any guide this means they are ten years out

What it should be is very different than what it actually is. It is kind of like planes compared to cars in terms of safety. People are just going to have far higher expectations with computer driven cars versus human driven. But Waymo so far has it covered. They are exceeding pretty much everyones expectations in terms of safety. To have gone that many miles and the only ones and not have a single accident with injuries that was your fault is just amazing.

I live in Phoenix and everyone I know loves waymo and have had zero issues but okay

I sincerely hope inflated expectations don't get in the way of world-changing progress. But yes, Waymo has been incredible in terms of safety.

I'm a believer after driver the Juniper last week, they are ready

Who is going to clean up the throw up in the back on Friday and Saturday nights with no human driver?

June in Austin is actual Cybercabs, I live within 5-20 minutes (not being exact) from the factory, and they’re definitely starting small production soon

As far as I know they announced full scale production next year with pilot production this year, like how every other launch has went

Interesting, considering freeways generally seem to be the easier problem to solve. Many of the level 2 and 3 systems by various manufacturers work _only_ on freeways. I suppose it’s because if there’s an accident, the consequence would be far worse, due to the higher speeds

I didn’t mean to come across as bashing Waymo, and I’m definitely not saying Tesla is better. I just thought the fact that it can’t do freeways was interesting to note, for others reading. It surprised me to learn that, I thought Waymo had solved all roads in SF. Since in many ways, freeways can be the easiest roads to solve (many other level 2 and 3 systems work _only_ on freeways). I’d love to take a ride in a Waymo someday, if I’m ever visiting one of their cities!

There is no regulatory or safety process needed.

I means it’s not Rome but Waymo navigate the books and crannies of San Francisco’s hills just fine and they can be nuts.

Waymos are now on the 101 to south SF(human assisted) it won’t be long until they’re without drivers and going further. There’s very little reason to think there will be any technical hurdles here given driving around the hilly gridlocked city of SF is much harder than the freeway.

I didn't take it that way! Bartender - this one is on me....

Ultimately its the software that needs to be tested and judged, and that is obviously transferable between the models !

Rip tesla

There’s Waymo than you think. So many.

> friends so yes, no one

If you get the chance to try Waymo in a city that has it do it! I did it in SF this month and felt like a kid it was awesome. Obviously after a few time the novelty goes away but in my opinion it was the most luxury car service I’ve used. Listened to my Spotify whole thing to myself ect. But the first time or two blew my mind

can’t do freeways, for now. just be patient

I would think so. I wasn't complaining or criticizing--just letting people who didn't understand "driver in the car" for California know that they're not using the RoboCab cars, and they're not going to use them in Austin in June either (see reporting like this Car & Driver report - https://www.caranddriver.com/news/a63632919/tesla-robotaxi-paid-service-start-austin-texas/).

Look at waymo. It’s active

Yeah absolutely would never risk my car like that.

Same, but think of the same car in 10-20 years time, will we still be so precious about it? You could trade it in for $10k on your next car or send it out to robotaxi and make twice that a year, paying off your new car.

Most of those cases will be automatically fixed when the first few vehicles get their FSD overridden to go to the "right" entrance, the AI will just redirect all future FSD drives to that entrance. There will also likely be a feedback mechanism to "fix" problems like that.

The interior camera will see that there is an issue (and people will be able to flag a problem in the app, and reject that car to ride in) and that car will redirect to a cleaning station.

I will always want to ability to drive. Or ride a motorcycle.

Is this part of the federal governments $400 million Armored Tesla order? Give the president $200 million, and you get a $400 million dollar order. G_d Bless America 🇺🇸!

its so simple to build and arent being sold in mass people dont understand that its happening (idk on the software front though)

Really surprised to see SF as a market here the Waymo gets enough literal spray painting when it sits in traffic. There’s already a zoo’s market here and cruise. I think just shut down altogether but now that he is not doing anything with Uber how many apps do you possibly need to order these?

Waymo is geofenced. It’s not actual smart FSD

Okay? “Smart FSD” can’t drive without human intervention.

Waymo charges more than Uber and takes 50% more time according to studies, and they still don't make any money, so waymo is a great science experiment, but is not a scalable model when the car costs $150k to $180,000 each

What a joke. Who's going to use it? Taxi services run in cities. Cities are predominantly working class democrats with a comparative handful of conservative big spenders. Big spenders don't need taxies, and democrats aren't going to use Tesla, so he's got no market. Tesla is #$%@ed.

Freeways are a lot harder because of safety. Waymo is safety first. Why they have yet had a serious accident with injuries their fault and not had any fatalities.

Not a regulation issue. Freeways are a lot harder because of safety.

Tesla will be geofenced. No different than Waymo.

but don't be patient with Tesla yeah no bias here lol.

what are you suggesting?

Every other car manufacturer can offer this in the future too. The Tesla leading edge will not last long when all the other manufacturers enter the game

https://stocks.apple.com/ALkjFu1I9SHu22Hpqt9AfAw No it crashes into walls.

I can't see how Tesla FSD is ready.. I was in a brand new Tesla this weekend and it almost killed me on a one lane freeway.. It saw the car in front of us go around a slower car.. The lane divider line on the display turned from yellow to white.. It changed lanes and was happy to drive head on into traffic from the opposite direction..