Tesla RoboTaxi First Public Ride Livestream From Bearded Tesla

So there is a person in the passenger seat checking the app? Seems weird.

think of this more as a PR event than an actual product launch

https://x.com/aelluswamy/status/1936865682810946035?s=46 Seems they are having a launch party

Internal launch party, yes. For the devs it's still a launch in the sense that the product is now being used by the public. Makes perfect sense that you roll everything out slowly, this time by having bystanders in the passenger seat for the literal first rides in public with the public.

We live in a timeline where there’s such thing as a Tesla Influencer. Anyway, this shit is fucking cool. It’s finally feasible to have a robotaxi from Tesla.

What the hell is a bearded Tesla.

Makes sense for a cautious start. He can hop in the driver's seat if it gets stuck and remote operators aren't able to get it going, for example.

Waymo did this too at the start. Extra person to hit emergency stop if something goes wrong

If you’re gonna have safety drivers then have them sit in the drivers seat.

Probably just to monitor, in case anyone wants to call a Robotaxi and burn it, just like they did in LA

Why? They’re just there to verify the correct person enters the car, that’s about it. They likely also take over if something goes wrong or the teleoperator manual takeover doesn’t work.

Both of the latter would be easier if they sat in the drivers seat. It would also be safer

The whole point of Gus is that the car is being driven fully by FSD. No one would believe it (on social media, etc) if the supervisor was in the drivers seat. Waymo didn’t put their safety supervisor in the drivers seat for the first few months of testing public rollout, either.

Wrong! They had safety drivers not safety passengers with just a optical stop button.

Oh no! I slightly misremembered something from over 5 years ago 🙄

I mean they had them for a pretty significant amount of time with the Chrysler Pacifica.

Waymo had a safety driver in the driver's seat when they launched. Elon wanted to make it look more like a robotaxi so he had the safety driver in the passenger seat for optics.

Similar to a bearded dragon but with a Tesla instead of a dragon.