Robotaxi could be a liability nightmare

Pretty solid analysis, worth watching, why robotaxis might actually never be worth the risk, even if fsd would work reliably. You will be held accountable as an owner if the car crashes due to maintenance issues or dirty cameras. Lots of questions, tesla never really wants to talk about.

Duh

I think the word they are looking for is will rather than could

I took the wording of the original clip 😅 Personal opinion is, this is for sure gonna be the craziest liability nightmare attorney's can come up with in their wildest dreams

No shit.

The lengths this country will go to avoid having reliable public transportation is mind boggling, just fucking pay for some goddamn trains and it would solve an endless amount of problems

There is no money in the taxi business, look at Uber, people will always want to pay the least, so the only way to increase market share is to be cheap, and that means tiny margins.

As soon as I heard the idiotic idea of people using their own cars as robotaxis, I immediately thought the same thing. Making a couple of dollars to transport some drunk idiot in the middle of the night was never going to be a good idea. For obvious reasons, what if they puke in your car? What if they get hurt or get in a fight? And of course, the obvious liability issues if the car crashes. All this risk for a few bucks? Lol never gonna happen! Such a stupid idea to begin with!

Tiny margins are acceptable in fully automated processes. The general problem is just that this business model has to go along with a proper insurance model. The much bigger issue for Tesla is that they completely fucked up the moment they removed Lidar. Robotaxis will never be profitable because their tech is so prone to fail that the insurance premiums compared to the competition will be so high that it will eat up the margin. Low margin businesses models always live or die with costs. This is why Amazon is so successful but at the same time fears worker rights and fair salary.

But train not car shaped, how work?

Will

The robo tech turns off just before fatal collision. Blame is on the driver being absent and recklessly letting randoms drive their car. Fun times.

I’d rather have buses etc, preferably frequent enough that checking the timetable isn’t necessary

Exactly, 1 train can replace easily 400+ cars, aren’t subject to traffic jams, super efficient etc

This is America. We are willing to kill a few people to make those JOB CREATORS happy.

I know a guy that's working on personalized mass transit l, just give him till the end of next year^tm

*IS*

Trains only work inside a tube in a vacuum.

I think you might be confusing trains with your dick bud

Whenever I'm not home I rent out my kitchen. Oh sure, I've found spaghetti sauce in the heating duct sometimes, but it's all been worth it......

Could be? No shit! I’ve said from the start. Who’s going to take liability? An owner? Fuck that! Tesla? Will potentially send them broke! Insurance? Who’d insure them?

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That's the one trillion dollar question for me. Why do still believe musk? Why the actual fuck based on his overpromising?

That's going to be less effective in a robotaxi though. How do you blame the driver when there isn't one by design?

Its not fully automated, the cars need servicing, cleaning, washing, towing if they get puncture or breakdown and re charging, there is plenty of human intervention required in this taxi business.

*Public* transportation?! If we start sharing vehicles, what's next? Sharing food... housing... medicine? You're sounding an awful lot like a communist right now, and the American public education I received (which hasn't been updated since the Cold War) assures me that makes you evil!

It’s the current genesis of the American Dream find a grift so you don’t have to actually work and contribute to society.

And they should be shaped like a car and fit a maximum of 5 people.

Blame the NIMBYs and politicians that care more about money in their pockets than proper infrastructure

Big state spanning projects would actually bring states together and encourage cooperation but fuck all that

Fake product math doesn’t math. Oh no.

It's a cylinder.

YA THINK!

Start from the biggest costs and work your way down and you can still create value. 1/3-1/2 the cost of a taxi is the driver. Next is fuel. Then insurance and vehicle costs. By the time you count the maintenance, cleaning labor, you're at a few pennies on the mile that are there regardless if it's a robot at the wheel. Robotaxis won't ever beat trains for cost per passenger/mile and I wouldn't expect the costs to reduce much beyond what Uber costs today. If you figure, the robotic driver is able to capture half the price/mile a human driver gets while reducing insurance costs and improving fuel usage (fewer deadhead miles), that could still be a company earning billions making transportation more efficient. Every $ you drive down in price on a taxi service, you create more demand as well. It may not get rid of all personal cars but if it reduces the need for a 2nd or 3rd car depending on household needs, that's still a net positive.

It's very important no harm befalls the cylinder

This model is no different than the just eat, Ubereats and Deliveroo model, and its very competitive and dealing with tiny margins.

According to Tesla, it should only fit 2. It should also be low to the ground and feature Lambo doors so that elderly and disabled people can't use it for balance while getting in or out of them.

I'm not arguing that taxis would be transformed into a high margin business. Uber's CEO still collected $40M comp last year and they burned $10B on SG&A last year. Uber is low margin because all they're doing is buying market share and they make the market. The margins suck much more for drivers/fleet owners today b/c it's capital intensive and you can't move your fleet to match/demand prices beyond a few miles. A company like Waymo if it's able to deliver driving services at a lower cost than the $15-25/hr drivers cost today (which can include other costs - payroll, insurance, etc.), scale it out to hundreds of thousands of vehicles concurrently, it's still billions of dollars/year in revenue. Nothing restricts Waymo from moving into other models like autonomous food delivery or parcel with a few other automations.

But there are other people in trains

the "public" is the problem. people wont ride with other people. robotaxi is a crazy overpriced attempt to give people private public transportation.

This problem started in the 60's when the government neglected public transportation and redirected their focus to streets and highways. Go look at europe and east asia for examples of places that did not ignore it. Some people say trains are unprofitable. If that were truly the case, the other countries wouldn't bother. We've been trying to get something here in la and orange county for...20 years? But the nimby's have been pushing back for so long, [this is all we might have to show for it](https://octa.net/programs-projects/projects/rail-projects/oc-streetcar/overview/). I use buses and an ebike that goes on the bus. Works for me.

Because we're in the midst of the biggest equity valuation bubble in the last 100 years. Tesla is, at best, a $15 stock. In a bear market, it's a $2 stock.

I absolutely agree with you that we need better public transport. But we have HUGE areas of the country that are not suited at all for it. So much suburban and rural area where it would simply not be cost effective to do that. Even busses aren't cost effective in a lot of places. We need to do a LOT better with public transport, but we need solutions for those final miles from the train station, to anywhere within 5-50 miles of that train station, depending on how sparse the area is.

I mean right now, probably already in q2 they will have negative earnings unless they cook the books. Valuing the company more than 50 billion dollars is completely nuts

I kind of see your logic, but... by that same logic, wouldn't that mean Uber shouldn't exist? How it it much different if a person is behind the wheel or not? Liability doesn't change, puking in your car doesn't change, etc...

I have said it multiple times robotaxi isn’t about the taxi part but the robo part.  There is no money in taxi’s. The margin is notoriously low. The money will be in licensing the tech to other manufacturers. The fees from this including some sort of annual fee for the life of the car, is where the money is. Every luxury car and probably most other cars will have this eventually. The robotaxi is just a proof of concept.  Tesla though has shown they are significantly behind on this, instead of ahead. Then there is Elon who has consistently overpromised and under delivered. Add the multiple of times he has manipulated test results and you have a product that no one else wants to adopt first. Waymo is much more respected and further down the road to licensing the tech to manufacturers.

There is no “robotaxi”

Oh, don’t worry about the education. That’s going away. 👍🏻

Especially if you own one and need to make payments. You’ll even run at a loss if you have too to get some cash flow. Might be a race to the bottom in some markets. Good for the consumer.

Train travel is great if you live near a train station and your destination is near a train station (with a direct service between the two). If you have to change multiple times with wait times at each change then it loses its lustre, same if you have a 5+ mile walk or 20 min bus ride at either end. Buses also suffer from similar drawbacks, although they'll have many more stops and better coverage than trains will. Still not ideal for cross city travel where you're often forced to go out your way into the city centre to change to another bus line.

D’oh! Mercedes picked up liability for their Level 3 driver assist system. Tesla has said nothing about this topic for FSD beyond Level 2.

Exactly spend some money on infrastructure. These people think just because they can they didn’t think if they should well not sure about musk. He’s in for a rude awakening

You would think it would be true. I live in New Mexico, and we are VERY spread out. They built a train that connected the two major cities, cost $400M. They did a study recently, and ridership is so low, that per mile traveled, the train is less environmentally friendly than each person driving their own car. The issue is that the train basically has four stops in each town, but to walk to the train from my house, in one of those towns, would take like a day. So, how do you fix that? Tear down all the old sprawl and build close to the trains? It seems like an insurmountable problem in many ways. Not saying this is universal across the US, but I am saying that the situation is not one that will be fixed by simply building more train tracks.

Assuming the Robotaxi actually works. It will trigger a demand from all people who paid for FSD to actually get FSD. This will require Tesla to upgrade all of the HW3 cars of FSD buyers (and possibly all HW3 cars based on Musk’s past statements.) HW4 will not fit in HW3 cars so this is no easy feat and will cost hundreds of millions of dollars. Tesla is checkmating itself.

But the growth :)

> Some people say trains are unprofitable. They are. But road construction is vastly more unprofitable.

They don't know how to build those anymore

I'm sorry are you suggesting I travel in the same area as poors?

How does a trail get me to Walmart or pick up a shopping cart of food?

Or you need to carry more than 1 bag of things. IE Groceries. Or if the weather is at all bad and you have a family? It is kind of amazing how clueless a great number of people are.

Politicians would love nothing better then people having few options but trains and you go to work and back and have difficult time being outside of your train coverage area. Most corporations would love that kind of control to where people have to base all their travels on the stop points of mass transit only. Keeps everyone in control and is one more way to be monitored exactly what you are doing.

This is true by greatly overhyped. * The population density is much lower than it was in the early 20th C when passenger rail, interurban, and street car coverage was vastly greater than it is now. Very few people live in areas with lower population density than * There are countries with lower population density than the US with excellent rail service. Norway has less than half the US population density and has >20X higher mode share for rail transport. And that's not even counting urban rapid transit systems.

You will need public roads regardless. Are you suggesting all the shipping be done on trains? How do you get a grocery store stocked? Train tracks to every business? You are putting these roads in regardless. So that is a cost you are paying regardless. Installing train tracks is a cost that form of transportation has to pay for itself as well.

How do you travel with 10 bags of groceries or go to a hardware store for some larger items?

Tesla if fighting hand over nail to hide all incidents and accidents. Musk got some of that put thru when working for Trump in now they only have to report accidents that result in death and a few other serious conditions. Waymo reports openly. And they actually do have a good record.

The thing about Tesla is that FSD could be 99.9% per mile(I think it is lower), but even if it is at 99.9% effective, for the average driver that would be two serious incidents a year depending on their mileage. For a Taxi driving 24/7 that likely would be more then 1 a month. To be safe, you need an accident rate of 99.9999% per mile. That is one accident every 1 million miles. 99.9 seems good to most people but once you do a real calculation, everyone would be not be ok with one accident or potentially serious incident per 100 miles.

One word solution: Tunnels!!!! Lots and lots of tunnels.

“Could”? This was always going to be a hurdle that robotaxis won’t be able to solve.

Ding, ding! “Could” is the magic word - read all the feedback about passengers getting stranded all over due to inclement weather or even just a threat of rain..

I think you're overemphasizing the efficiency aspect and kind of handwaving how difficult delivery would actually be in a lot of markets. Something like a robotaxi sounds good from the view point of the total number of vehicles that exist but there's also a lot of extra dead miles they're traveling from fare to fare if they ever really start displacing cars. General travel patterns tend to revolve around workday commutes and high travel holidays that demand a huge amount of capacity that's idle a lot of the rest of the time. Commuting also implies a huge delta in directional traffic flows. It's very unlikely for example that someone will get dropped off at an office building and there will be another fare leaving close by during morning rush hour. Ultimately while the number of vehicles on the road might drop the percentage of productive miles driven will too and I think that's something that gets overlooked and has a substantial impact on both the earnings power of a robotaxi and the lifespan of the vehicle. For delivery services actually getting to the front door is an expensive and challenging task. Another big factor that I think gets overlooked is theft and one of the things I think works most strongly against things like fully automated long haul trucking. We kind of saw it a bit with railroads where a reduction in security led in an increase of literal bandits just stripping thousands of dollars of stuff out of trains. Robotic delivery vehicles are going to be a loot crate on wheels to a lot of people that can be compromised with something as simple as a cheap glass breaker. If Kia Boys will steal a car for online clout they're going to have a field day with robotic delivery services. Hell lots of people regularly cheat the self checkout line in the grocery store, it's become so bad that Walmart has eliminated it as an option in some areas. It's easy to get a bit too focused on cost of driver and forget the overall value that person might be providing.

Ppl hate Deutsche Bahn so much, but in comparison it is a paradise. I can use a flat rate now $60 for all regional connections like, tram, metro, subway, I can board any bus I like. We junked one car. I know it is not perfect but the active sabotage of reliable trains is mind boggling

Same. It’s so fukn dumb. I can’t believe it’s propped up a gazzilion dollars in market cap these past few years. Emperor has no clothes.

What I'm confused by the most is what insurance company is going to underwrite the insurance? My guess is anyone owning a tesla with FSD who will be providing robotaxi services will be uninsurable. Once some accidents are reported, it will be impossible to get insurance.

aka every Adam Something video shoehorns that in somewhere (he's right though)

MASTER CYLINDUH!

Trains work best when combined with other modes of public transport, and for carrying stuff you can get those wheeled baskets etc

Wasn’t that a disaster for Musk with his Boring project?

CEO pay is not a measurement of real sustainable net revenue. VC money propped up this gig economy math. There is more labor to food delivery than just the driving. It is questionable partnership for the restaurants as is, and drivers have to make game time calls when short term parking is taken, orders are not ready in time, orders are not complete. Same thing when they get to the location. Customers will need to fill in the gaps, go out and find/meet cars in rain/ice/snow. As is I’ve been pretty disappointed with the end result with human assistance and have no doubt it will be a train wreck without human help except in ideal situations which it, and the proponents will fail to recognize the differences.

...And Trump just appointed to head the NTSA a guy who thinks FSD and Tesla Autopilot is kind of bullshit.

Its more profound than it sounds.

Liability goes after the deepest pockets. But sometimes, the deepest pockets (Tesla) will have the best, or better lawyers. So the guy with the second deepest pockets (the car’s owner) might be most likely to be sued. If a plaintiff thinks I can get less money, but a LOT easier and quicker from the owner, they will often take that path. And if you think that Tesla is the kind of company to whisper in the ear of the plaintiff “you’ll be more successful going after them…” then you could really be screwed. I see Tesla throwing everyone under the (cyber)bus the minute there is an accident.

Life ending in a Tesla in an underground transport tunnel. Hmmm….

How bad could a lithium battery fire be underground?

People live in cities without cars and manage it… there are delivery services and rental options.

In time homes are built near the stations?

Been saying this for a long time. Liability costs will be one of many inhibitors.

They'll just enhance the techno lights in the tunnel.

You're kinda assuming here that they won't need to continue developing and investing in the tech, specific to Robotaxi. That seems very unlikely given that they already aren't alone in the field. Those costs, given the high salaries and requirement for expensive tech, could very well eclipse a decent sized army of drivers.

Like how many Europeans get to the shops, by using a mixture of methods

10 bags of groceries indicate that you go to a grocery store like once per week. Typical when shopping is a distinct activity on countryside or in a sprawling areas. And in those places there is no chance building more dense grocery shop network that could offer shopping opportunities as part of daily activities.

yeah especially car owners who have never been on a train

put Walmart downtown where stores always were before Walmart came along

One reason that the Tesla Robotaxi won't be a liability nightmare is that they don't exist.

That assumes they ever exist at all.

I agree getting to the front door is an expensive and challenging task. However, it is not just 1 door it is 2: the restaurant and the residence. There are challenges at both.

Its almost like intermodal transport exists. Its also like wear and tear on roads caused by vehicles actually exists too. Both things you absolutely discounted as factors.

So subways?

In a tunnel built having learned from other tunnel disasters in the past? Absolutely fine. In Musk's sewer? Good luck.

So prices skyrocket?

That is twice a week for a family. Try having infants and do this.

They drive as well. Quite heavily but less so when their density is much higher.

Very expensive and usually they are doing jobs that are less physical. Generally working in a high density area. Can you do it. Sure. Having a family and your wife taking her infant child on a train to pick up supplies not so easy. Try taking your kids to sporting events they participate in.

Ah, the typical kids argument. Like it's impossible to have kids in cities where the necessary services are nearby and in some cities public transport even accommodates strollers and lets stroller pushing parents to ride for free.

Try pushing a stroller in the winter or rain. Ya you can get away with it say 80 percent of the time. Personally I like to walk and take my time but I have more time to do that unlike some new family starting out. When I was young and single, I could also get away with it for the most part. But even then there was times I was out of the city and looking at a career, it was to my advantage and lifetime earning to be mobile and not limited. If I just wanted a McJob or would not be ready to change to better job on short notice, public transportation was easy in that aspect. There are a lot of people in that category.

In some places many take the bus/train, in Holland a lot go by bicycle

Uber actually throws every driver under the bus - if you drive with them, it is you paying the insurance and the liability because YOU are driving. Uber’s entire stance is that they facilitated a transaction - they don’t own or “employ” the driver.

Ah, the classic weather argument that mandates car use. Let me tell you the fact that you can dress for the weather. Specifically in the case of rain, a specialized equipment called umbrella also helps. The rest of your comment is basically in line with my original analysis about the behavioral patterns of countryside or sprawling areas sprinkled with some extra scenarios that mandate car use. You can easily invent tons of such scenarios quite easily, like going to a cottage that is 500 kilometers away on many weekends of the year and such. But not everyone does such things, as not everyone goes to a store so rarely that they need to get 10 bags of groceries at once.

I guess you do not have a family or infant or tried to bring back a single 2x4 to do a simple repair to your house or building. Without a vehicle, you are not visiting anyone rural or even many places in a city without a long walk or asking people for rides.

Sure I took bike many times. But not to visit my brother 50 miles away. Not in winter. Not to pick up a 2x4.

Yeah, I’m not saying Europeans don’t drive, but a lot of journeys are made on public transport

A big issue is how expensive these projects end up being in the US. Whether it's the complicated permitting process, environmental reviews and challenges and the push back by entrenched industry, land acquisition etc., it doesn't really matter. Look at the high speed rail project in California. It's a decade past the original completion estimate and $70+ billion dollars over budget..

I guess that you cannot fathom a life outside a suburban or rural area consisting of single-family homes. Not surprising, as most US cities have zoned them into this situation. And the concept of reliable public transport is completely foreign to Americans. Yes, kids can be grown in cities without owning a car, I know many examples. In a place where I live with a reliable public transport, as asked for in the original reply. Some of my friends have even moved to the downtown from suburbia specifically for the reason of not having to own a car to raise their child, as all the necessary services and employment opportunities are close to their apartment. 2x4s and other long wooden materials are generally not needed in apartment complexes made out of brick or concrete. And if they are, you can generally rent a van or possibly even do as I have done: carry them by foot on your shoulder from a hardware store that is less than 2 km from my home. I have never been able to fit and safely attach the 2x4s or other long items, like baseboards, to my car. But I have rented vans whenever there is a need to transport these items that don't even fit in a regular car. I also rather pay 60 euros to rent a van every few years for a couple of hours when the need arises than use thousands of extra euros for an unnecessarily large vehicle every year.

Your robotaxi rams into the one ahead of it and get hit by the one behind. All three catch fire. But you don’t have to worry about not getting past either of those cars due to tight spaces because your doors won’t open. And lithium fires burn so hot there will be no evidence so you were never there because Tesla is quickly scrubbing all of its records of your actual existence in the Tesla world.