New job posting, suggests safety observers will be removed from robotaxi soon!

Good.

Shit, that sounds like a fun gig honestly.

Not sure if related, but a bunch of influencers were in Austin at the factory today and they’re all very tight-lipped about why. Probably the cheaper Model Y, but maybe safety-driverless Robotaxi?

Can my Tesla just drive me to work and drive back home until I'm ready to be picked up? That's the real utility. Have no parking where I work. Or really just drive me anywhere with no parking. Music venues, restaurants, events, etc

omg that would make traffic so much worse. Instead of few parking spot, we would have to enlarge literally every single road if everybody used that

Anything besides trains.

Pretty sure it’s the cheaper MY

Trains can’t solve all traffic, because you can’t take a train to every destination. It does reduce congestion to an extent. Europe still has plenty despite its multitude of trains. Our cities themselves need to be redesigned around public transit and being walkable. That problem goes way beyond autonomy, which we still need imo unless cars go extinct.

If you're in transit 20 minutes of time, you're not taking transit the rest of the evening. It's not like you're using the road for 5 hours.

In the late 1990s, a science and tech TV channel mentioned the future would have single-occupancy 'pods' that self-drive and do what Robotaxi claims to aim for. And I haven't seen those pods yet. For intra-city driving, they'd probably be great, not take much space and not be able to go to high speeds (40 km/h is plenty intracity). A significant portion of people could consider them as 2nd vehicles, or to commute to work. But the tech isn't there I guess.

Our predictions for the future are always off it seems. We still don’t have flying cars yet. Car dependency really has to go, I don’t think we have to can them altogether but you shouldn’t need to drive if you don’t want to.

Was Dirty Tesla there?

Why would they be at the factory for a change in how the vehicles are operated?

Tesla Cowboy

No, he wasn’t. Seems to have been a pretty small group.

Possibly FSD v14 also

Spoken like someone who lives in a major city and doesn't understand that rural areas exist.

Reducing car dependency is a good thing whether or not someone lives in a city.

It's not possible to reduce car dependency where I live, so keep dreaming.

Personal Rapid Transit. Engineering wise, it's solvable, and can replace buses and light rail in a city layout. The problem is nobody has tried it yet in a city wide system. Every time people will not understand the benefits and come up with why it won't work. It will need revisions to regulations, any place that has stringent railway rules won't allow it to function. Without a different attitude to the rules you get Morgantown University elevated railways, which works, kind of, but nowhere near as good as it could have been because they applied railway rules. Perversely, what we need is someone like Elon Musk, who has the money and drive to push through a new system. It could be like Elon wants to do with the Vegas loop, but on elevated tracks not tunnels. Politically, it will be a hard sell. In UAE (I think) they were going to build a new city around the concept but didn't go through with it.

Was Joe Tegtmeyer one of them? On his first video about the delivery even he hinted about some news coming soon. I took it to be about new models, which could be the new cheaper model Y. From what I've been hearing, Robocab production is expected by mid 2026, but it could be sooner, and include other models. They've had Robocabs running around Giga Austin on and off for a while, they already have new Model Ys driving from the factory to the EOL facility. Also in Berlin and Fremont. Haven't heard about Shanghai?

Yes, he posted a similar photo to Sawyer in front of the Giga Texas sign and Optimus and also kind of ignored commenting on some covered cars during the flyover the other day, so it does seem very likely to be the cheaper Model Y.

Would it really? Whether it’s you or the car driving, the car is still occupying the same space.

You driving - trip to work and trip back, two trips. OP suggestion - trip to work, you leave the car, car goes back home. Then at the end of work it goes to pick you up and take you home. 4 trips (two to work and two back) Double the traffic

True, I see what you’re saying.

Yeah, too bad full self driving is probably five or more years out. I don't believe that full self driving is fully operational until it can pick me up at the airport when I land from coming back from a trip. And that's going to be a long ways off.

Trains only work in cities smart enough to build at a density that trains work. That level of density is illegal in most of the United States.