Prediction: Austin tests will fail.

Will selfdrive fail, yes. Will tesla fail no to many clowns are committed to pumping it up

Of course they will. I assume Elon chose Austin because he has to operate within the safe confines of TX where the legislature will protect him, but he knows failure is inevitable and he wants to be able to blame liberals so he can maintain plausible deniability for the right-wing rubes he's grifting now.

Your predicitions only matter if you have skin in the game.

As it should.

Yup. I give it a couple weeks til they have enough close calls or actual accidents…it will be “paused” but they will hail it as a wildly successful trial, the influencer morons will post about how revolutionary it is and the TesBros who invest in the company will once again pump the stock price up to ridiculous levels.

It will work, in geofenced areas, under ideal weather conditions, with remote drivers. Never true level 4 with just cameras.

They might even k*ll a couple of them during testing. Fanboys will still fanboy.

there will definitely be a fatality.

Ok how about first fatal accident 100 days after 100 cars on the road? I’ll wager real money. Also, I was thinking of revising my prediction down to first fatal accident within 100 days, any number of cars, seeing how badly things are going.

I don't even consider it a launch...who is using the service after the fanboys fly home? They need to focus on getting the driver out the front seat, besides expanding elsewhere.. Learn to walk before you can run

I dont think it will. Mostly because Elon controls the narrative and can push it as a win regardless of the test results.

If it won’t stop for fsd reasons, it will because of no demand. Area is too small, fanboys will dry out.

If you drive in Austin, you’ve got skin in the game.

I think you’re right on. I’m trying to avoid making too many predictions based on what I know of full self driving because I haven’t used it in a couple of months… But man it was nowhere near unsupervised when I was using it in my trip to California.

Even if self driving goes well and is as successful as Waymo in the long term Tesla stock is still overvalued. Google trades at a P/E ratio of less than 18 while Tesla's P/E Ratio is ten times that.

The robocab test seems less than impressive at the moment.  How many years behind WAYMO is Tesla?  Will Tesla eventually need to give up on "camera only" self driving in favor of lidar/ radar? Musk's visual only navigation might eventually be great for slow moving humanoid robots, but it seems excessively dangerous at 50+ mph in some circumstances.  The Robotaxi test launch is avoiding  dangerous intersections, certain geographic areas, inclement weather today, but you can't do this for very long and still consider it useful.

He died doing what he loved, simping for Musk.

First part yes. Second part no, people aren't going to reject a $4.20 taxi ride just to make a political statement. People care too much about pricing.

I think it will be rejected purely on safety grounds and when the body count starts to get headlines it's done, then Tesla will then go in search of another victim city population.

Even worse if you’re a pedestrian in Austin.

Even if they manage not to cause a spectacular crash, it will fail in the long run. The cab market is saturated. There’s a reason General Motors canceled their attempt at this. People at Tesla have tried to talk Elon out of this. I’m sure 99% of Elon’s attention on this project has gone to arguing with engineers who say that the signature cybercab hubcaps are impossible.

Self driving is going nowhere, it's not practical, and I'll continue to die on that hill. It's pure futurism novelty. It's fluff. It offers no answers to the increasing problem of traffic, the tech is not even close, and even if it were, why not use rail?

Tesla market cap up 125 BILLION just this morning. That’s more than robotaxis would generate profits in a decade! Short it

why is Elon starting the trials in the MOST WOKE city in Texas?

It doesn’t matter if they fail. It’s Tesla, nothing negative affects this stock. Bullish, lol.

That price is probably not sustainable.

It doesn’t matter … Elon will lie, strut around like a chicken and declare victory.

They can’t maintain that price. They are losing money on every trip.

Well, current hype is primarily due to the fact that it's invite-only, so Tesla made sure it goes to right people.

This little pilot is the fulfillment of a decade of promises by Elon. It's the only thing that even remotely makes the 1T value of the company make sense.  My expectation: It will make some money but people will see it as unremarkable. They won't be able to expand as fast as they claim they can, wrecks and close calls will make people reluctant to ride, and it will limp along while more competitors emerge.

I vacationed in California and was impressed by the quality of their roads. Everything was first class. If Tesla can't handle the amazing roads in CA, I don't see how their self-driving will every handle the asphalt pig-trails that cover the rural areas I grew up in.

Except they fucked him by demandning L4 only for autonomous rides and the use of LIDAR and RADAR starting on 9/1/25 The law was passed and signed by the Gov. of Texas

Since the Texas legislature is in Austin maybe we will get an ironic moment where a Robotaxi crashes into some representative's car.

In one single day with only 10 vehicles there was already a scary move.

And the fanboi cheerleaders will scream that it’s an A+ success when in fact it’s a marginal D- passing and actual failure in terms of true fully autonomous driving. 😂🤣🤷‍♂️

In testing, Teslers failed to detect a 'Wile E. Coyote' painted landscape obstacle and dummies in the road during rain/fog conditions with its cameras

The boundaries between L2, L3, & L4 are nebulous at best and he can declare L4 as done without much effort or oversite for accuracy.

In dense urban areas it makes sense. For everywhere else.....we are fat lazy americans who don't want to walk from a rail station to work/home/grocery store. We want to park 50 feet from the door of our location.

Self driving itself is a total scam, whether or not Waymo or others can manage a few trips without killing someone. I drove a Tesla for 3.5 years. The company constantly hounded drivers to “buy” FSD for a measly $12K. I assume some idiots did so. I had advanced autopilot and the phantom braking and unreliability of it was shocking. In my view, mass transit would be a far better method of getting folks around than thousands of driverless cars struggling to stay between the lines. Not only does FSD not work, it’s also an idiotic concept.

Your words in God's ear. I pray for it. Although I am agnostic 😂

Quite a pump today, but robotaxi will eventually fail

Did you see the video where the car stopped in the middle of the road to let the passengers out and then stayed for a good minute blocking traffic?

This fucking exactly. But numbers don't count anymore. They started a trial with ten fucking cars in perfect conditions and already had some weird behavior of the cars. Stock goes up more than what BMW and Mercedes is worth combined...

Yeah Austin is a college town. Texas yes, but Blue Texas. Puzzling decision imo as well.

Bold of you to assume they will generate profit in a decade.

10 vehicles? *snort*

lol they are up 10% on this news.  I kind of expected some sort of stock drop. They started late after two changes in time. This was the second time it was scheduled to happen this month and it required the safety rider.  Yes nothing crashed and Musk didn’t go into a paranoia drug infused rant but this wasn’t exactly a success either.  I have no idea how this was a positive showing.

It clearly works well enough to pump the stock prior to a poor earnings report, which is what it’s needed for. If it fails aa a real business model, that’s just like hyperloop, Tesla Semi, and all the other junk hardware they push out. In other words, it doesn’t matter what happens to the service in 6 months unless it kills so many people that there’s public outrage. Killing less than 5 people won’t be a big enough deal, unfortunately.

Holy crap! PE is **194.40** right now (stock is way up for some weird reason). That is shockingly high. I am actually blown away from that, and anyone buying this stock is a fool (and buying a very over priced product).

What a bold prediction 😂

In one day I’ve seen two videos now one where it drove on wrong side of rode and now one where it drops off passengers in the middle of the intersection. This is off what a few hundred miles? And the stock is up big today with this ridiculous rollout?!

I predict he's going to kill a pedestrian.

TSLA to the moon on this news

purpose of robotaxi is to keep the stock price and valuation high, not to actually make money. in that regard, the Austin launched is successful

Can I just complain about the 80s rockstar album font they chose for Robotaxi? definitive proof that we are on the dumbest timeline

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I saw that FAIL and it was ludicrously over the top funny. All this time the Waymo’s are going ”meep meep!”.

Nope - do you have a link?

Are you not aware of how cheap it is to operate an electric vehicle? I highly doubt it will stay $4.20; that’s clearly just a joke for the initial testing launch. But I can’t see it becoming much more than that for a trip. I’d guess around $10. At that price, a few hours of driving would pay for the vehicles full range multiple times over. Waymo costs an average of $20 with Lyft and Uber around $16. They don’t have to offset the cost of the machinery required for a Waymo (while also not paying for the expensive af car needed) and don’t have to pay for a driver. Combine both those factors together and I’d bet almost 100% it’ll cost much lower than either of them even at launch. And naturally, people will choose the cheapest option (especially with how ridiculous tipping has become) so they’ll have customers as long as the product is available.

PE is 210 now! Biggest balloon on Wall Street and the popping is soon!

Market cap up 125 billion today. More than any profits this farce could ever realize!

Higher than Ford and GM together! Short this scam!

Well they have a safety driver. The minimum wage is $7.25, but in Austin people probably make more. Because they have 10 cars they probably have high demand per car, but if they scale at all cars will sit a lot on weekdays during work hours. I doubt they break even just on the driver let alone all the other costs like cleaning, charging, wear and tear etc.

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Does it actually mandate Lidar and/or radar? It's extremely unusual to specify a type of technology down to the component level. It's almost always an operating standard, feature or function to work within specified limits. E.g. an automatic speed limiter can be required by law, and its operation tested to a defined standard. But it won't specify ***how*** the speed limiter has to work.

They have a safety driver *right now* for monitoring safety. They said eventually once they’ve determined a safety monitor is no longer required, they won’t be in the car anymore. This is the same thing Waymo did during their initial launch tests before going full loose. As long as they hit those marks, your point won’t matter anymore (not to say it isn’t true for now, but that won’t be the case when they’re done testing if things go well). It has always been the plan to not have anyone in the car, same as any other company offering these services.

Love or hate the company, software has always been Teslas strong point. I personally feel like that will be a nonissue as long as they have the proper infrastructure for the vehicles to rotate to. But I could be wrong, sure. Can’t deny alternate possibilities. But the history points towards that direction for me.

You're forgetting the car's depreciation. People are acting as if taxis was this insanely huge untapped market but it's not. It's hard business with huge upfront capital expenditures. Huge risk and very slow return on the investment.

Could you do me a favor and explain why you think the cars depreciation will be a large factor here? Let’s take a look at Waymo for a sec. They have to outright buy a vehicle (a Jaguar no less, NOT a cheap vehicle) and then add their hardware (tens of thousands of dollars in addition). They are currently operating at a level where they can sustain all these costs even with how expensive their cars and hardware is. Now consider Tesla. They straight up produce their cars themselves. This means no markups and their cars are far cheaper than the Jaguars Waymo buys. Plus, the hardware is so simple it costs next to nothing. I’d imagine the yearly depreciation of the car at that point affects it far less. Additionally, they’re already some of the cheapest cars to own so depreciation based on servicing the cars should be lower. Who in this situation needs to care more about the vehicles depreciation? There’s a clear winner here. Plus, because this software will be (presumably) released to cars millions of people already own, there’s a chance people can sign their own cars up as robotaxis with the requirement that a portion of the cost is paid to Tesla. Now they’re making money (even if it is a bit per ride) from vehicles that they don’t even deal with themselves. I’m just saying there’s a lot more scalability involved with the way Tesla *could* take the service. But will they hit the marks? Literally no one knows. I hope they do because I just think it’s cool as fuck, but if it were to crash and burn before it ever hits full release I wouldn’t be surprised since anything can happen. I’m just saying they have a massive opportunity and advantage if things work out

I have an equally as bold prediction: The sun will rise in the east and set in the west

Well I would say it’s the stated plan to not have anyone in the car. They got their 10% stock bump from this. I think realistically musk is willing to lose money on this indefinitely since it boosts stock prices.

I can't see them "failing" unless there's actually a Cruise like serious accident that forces a shut down. The worst, and frankly likely case for Tesla is they keep the safety drivers indefinitely. But they may need to move them to the driver's seat if they haven't built full controls into the passenger seat already.

Middle of an INTERSECTION.

I honestly think they are unlikely to ever be able to get rid of the safety passenger in the car. Too much latency otherwise. In any case with 1+ Tesla staff per vehicle it'll never be profitable so therefore impossible to scale.

https://www.reddit.com/r/RealTesla/s/NY490KV7yE Around 38:00 is where the ride happens. Can’t remember time stamp of stopping in the intersection.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C_pSZv6THfA&t=2284s

Tesla would be selling cars at a loss if not for EV credits. So there is not a lot of margin to save. I just don't think it's a good buisenss for Tesla or Waymo. I think deprecation is a huge deal. Instead of selling a car you need to make the money back by using it as a taxi. Then you have a run down car that you can't sell for much. > released to cars millions of people already own, there’s a chance people can sign their own cars up as robotaxis with the requirement that a portion of the cost is paid to Tesla. Now they’re making money (even if it is a bit per ride) from vehicles that they don’t even deal with themselves. This will destroy margins. There is no scenario where every tesla owner makes considerable amounts of money. It's supply and demand. Basic law of economics. To be clear I'm not saying there is no money to be made. I just think it's not that much money.

Reading r/TeslaFSD and watching videos from yesterday causes me to think it is most unlikely it will be possible to get rid of the safety passenger in the foreseeable future. If anything I'd say the service is becoming more erratic.

Maybe hot wheels will be have his service upgraded to “from the neck down.” Couldn’t happen to more deserving person honestly.

Waymo is safe. The Tesla Taxis (TT) will be a complete shitshow that tech bros praise. I’m already dreading driving downtown and down S Lamar. The first self driving rideshare was so terrible that I wiped the name of the company from my brain. I saw multiple instances where these cars were dangerous. Why would TT be any different?

My experience was different. I used the Tesla FSD when it was free. It was pretty awesome. It works fine except for a very few corner cases. Mass transit works in dense areas - when there is enough 'mass' that can 'transit'.

Even if they didn't have a demand problem for rides, the number of available cars and profits (if any) per ride is so far from the stock price expectations that it can't be anything more than fraud and manipulation at this point.

They might pull off a limited conservative service, within the geomapped boundaries where they have done intensive mapping to discover intersections and situations they can't handle, so they geofence those off as well. But no more than that. The fact that they still have a safety driver in the right seat with a stop button, kind of tells you everything you need to know about how much they trust their own system.

I don’t think they have to bother with conservatives. Elon went off the rails, the liberals are still buying Tesla left and right

The whole driverless taxi is a novelty at best IMHO. I can see no added benefit for the consumer whether the taxi service they choose has a driver or not, apart from getting to say "future is cool". It reeks of silicon valley start-up BS, where the only money to be made is hyping the future to pump the stock.

Maybe they could focus on a niche market, like event transportation… Charlottesville, J6, etc. they can put tiki torch holders on the sides of the cars.

I sold most of my stock. I'll sell the rest soon I think. That PE is outrageous.

Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent

I hope it’s a fanboy and not some innocent person in another car.

....and what has Texas done about guns after numerous school shootings? As long as Musk stays in the right's good graces, you'll see the typical mental gymnasts on Fox saying how people die all the time and it's not a big deal.

At this point it is just tragic. I‘m lacking a better adjective…but it’s definitely beyond funny.

Makes sense

Once there is no safety driver, people will shit, piss and graffiti in those cars.

Not sure trying an established Waymo city is the best idea.

Agree with you 100%.

It was a five lane intersection! Big Silverado has patience of a saint waiting for it to move. Passenger had to release it. Moron in passenger seat was a sitting duck. FFS 🤦‍♀️

Indeed. Driving *to* the feedbag is peak American.

But Tesla generates profit right now

Only cause they sell carbon credits to other companies. That goes away, their profit is fucked

They are not nebulous, they are very well defined.

Tell me you know nothing about self driving, without saying you know nothing about self driving

FSD (Double Secret Probation)

Be interesting to see what happens when people who want to vandalize Teslas have the opportunity to request a company owned one to come to them.

His sales figure do not support that liberals are buying. EV sales are up *except* for Tesla.

They tested for weeks in that area before that "invite only" event on top of having one "safety" driver and one "safety" monitor. Yet it can't handle a basic left turn without driving into oncoming traffic. Not surprising since it won't stop for a bus school with its stop sign out & lights on. The "safety" drivers should've taken over but oh well. I guess behind in front of the wheel isn't useful. Marketing is more important!

This is a bet for an entire industry (default licensed self driving hardware/software). He'll run it at below the demand point where the Liberals won't be able to help it. It's also a springboard, most of these run at a loss in tradtional companies let alone the richest company with Leon and his Eye of Saucepan looking right at it.

Yep. I would've shorted it in 2019.

In Tesler's defense, a software update fixed *that* issue But in the end, the best glasses in the world (cameras) can't replace being deaf (no LiDAR)

It already failed as a service but widely succeeded as a stock pump.

Indeed

There is no way they gonna stop it no matter what. It’s all about optics. They would geofence it down to a single street if they had to and still claim it’s a huge success. They put the driver on the passenger seat purely for optics. Makes no sense except for claiming that “nobody is on the driver’s seat”

Please do not try and educate people on the levels again. Genuinely this is really well defined and generally respected by the industry.

Dont forget it going into a left turn lane, suddenly swapping to the middle lane left turn signal still on (in a very jerky fashion) then driving into oncoming to get into the next actual left turn lane.... Yeah this definitely isnt going to hurt anyone.

Sell it all imo, id look to use profit on puts but many men have gone broke shorting Tesla so do that with caution

Here we are in america faffing around with fsd, in a country where people who can afford them have an unusual love for owning and driving their own cars and people who can't afford them also can't afford taxis, and in China they just keep building enormous amounts of high-speed railway that actually works. We are getting farther and farther behind with every passing day. Someday when all the money and smart people and exciting new things are in China I wonder if we'll will blame the people who wasted our time and resources on pointless bs, stupid wars and dumb ideas? Probably not.

Put your money where your mouth is!

There hasn't been any period pretty much since its inception where tesla didn't deserve to be shorted. The stock is a loser all around, and yet has consistently won as investors seem perpetually willing to offer the company an endless runway on the next futuristic promise.

When they crash (hopefully no injuries) it'll be declared a success no different from when his rockets blow up

Shorting it now reaps a 7. 72% dividend! Incredible. TSLQ. I Just loaded up.  TSLQ is down -4.20% to $15.22. Check it out on Yahoo Finance: https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/TSLQ

Jesus, the fan boys are coping so hard they blame themselves for where the car parked.

Take all those $4.20 rides as far distance as you need tell Uber and Lyft people to do them also. Make Elon lose money and save yourself some. He has humans safety drivers and a follow up car so he's losing a lot of money, and all for nothing.

The problem is that Tesla might have stacked the odds so far in their favor, that they can likely make an utterly failed rollout look like a modest success. * I doubt Tesla will release data on how often remote/safety drivers intervene. * The safety driver in the passenger seat can grab the wheel to minimize the impact of many common problems, and not all of these will get caught on camera or reported on social media. * There are rumors that the on-board safety drivers will have brake switches as well, and a passenger won't be able to tell if they are braking or the FSD system. * If ridership remains invite-only, there could be lots of Tesla employees or fanboys. The embarrassing mistakes are (reportedly) starting to stack up, however. The same thing happened to Waymo and Cruise early on, of course, but Teslas repeating similar mistakes 3-4 years later isn't a good look.

I mean the taxi sector of the business.

I've ridden in Waymos and experienced "full self driving". There is no comparison - Waymo's feel WAY safer than human taxi drivers which is why people will pay premium while FSD is your drunkish uncle. The tesla fanboys currently taking robotaxi are all Tesla owners with FSD used to the drunk uncle, but hard to see normies who have tried Waymo willing to continue to risk their lives in the robotaxi just to save 10 bucks once they give it a try.

Need to also add that they were supervised robo taxis too.

Of course tesla builds vapor ware

"my only regret.... Is i could not fan boi hard enough!.... <Death rattle>"

Lol this is the most detailed analysis I've ever seen

1. Disagree 2. Almost no one is real life cares that much about Elon to care.

His declining car sales say differently. People are certainly making purchasing choices based on his political activities.

You don’t live in Texas. The lege can write one law specifying the pencil thickness and another waving giant hand circles. Written by the same person.

You are correct, they just say that it has to have multiple types of sensors for redundancy. They don’t specify which types exactly. Video + radar could count as multiple types under the law as I understand it.

No. You wait for bad news and the stock to go up. THEN you short it. Never short Tesla anticipating bad news - it doesn't work.