Earlier this week, Elon Musk [posted an image](https://x.com/robotaxi/status/1944717529538015677?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1944754584695578871%7Ctwgr%5Ec7963d532d5230a935951eb5a3b4e1ad6d636a0b%7Ctwcon%5Es2_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sacurrent.com%2Fnews%2Ftexas-billionaire-elon-musks-robotaxi-service-map-in-austin-now-resembles-giant-penis-37990343) of [Tesla’s robotaxi service area in Austin](https://www.theverge.com/news/690846/tesla-robotaxi-first-reaction-austin), Texas, that was in the shape of a penis. Hilarious, I know, but more importantly: it appeared that Tesla’s map was slightly larger than Waymo’s service area, which covers just 37 square miles in Austin. Today, Waymo announced its own expansion — minus the puerile humor. It’s just a bigger map with more customers for the Alphabet-owned company’s budding robotaxi business. And more pressure on Tesla to drop the dick jokes and get serious about autonomous driving. Waymo’s new map covers 90 square miles in Austin, which is an increase from the current 37-square-mile service area. Read more: [https://www.theverge.com/news/708885/waymo-austin-map-expand-tesla-robotaxi](https://www.theverge.com/news/708885/waymo-austin-map-expand-tesla-robotaxi)
I mean, waymo has years of experience and has proven it can do autonomous trips without needing a real person pretending not to drive.
Tesla has zero service area without a safety monitor who can intervene
Waymo is building a product that will last. Musk is throwing a hail mary and praying cameras + regarded AI will be enough to make FSD work at some point.
When writers overlay Tesla's map against Waymos... they may as well just remove Tesla's map since it's NOT an actual autonomous service area. Further, I doubt the dick service area is even real. Waymo is basing their service area on real consumer use cases. Tesla just threw out a childish dick shaped service area, with no actual data on use... Which isn't surprising because it's NOT a publicly available service. Tesla's service is still invite only, with only a very small number of Tesla / Musk stock traders and sycophants getting access; many of them tourists to Austin who aren't actually using the service for day to day trips. Per usual, these sycophants are paying Tesla for the opportunity to do Tesla's testing for them. Just like all FSD owners. Tesla's service area is just one more point of evidence that this trial is showing how far behind this company is in providing a truly autonomous service. Meanwhile, in just about every self driving sub, including FSD specific threads, there is video after video of the system making dangerous mistakes. Just came from an article showing a brand new Tesla on FSD driving on the highway nearly veering into another car (before the owner took over) because there were some lines of tar in the road ahead of them. Tesla's object / pothole avoidance update that was recently released, is struggling to understand what tar in the road is and what shadows are, often dangerously veering away from those dark spots in the road. In one famous case, the car swerved on a 2 lane road, and went off the road into a tree before flipping. Another FSD owner showed their car doing nearly the exact same thing, only they were able to take over as the car started to swerve across the double yellow after passing a car coming from the other direction. It's becoming more and more clear that Tesla's system doesn't really understand what it's seeing in the road or understand exactly what to do. It's largely just bumbling its way forward, using lane lines and car detection as its primary guide. It's incapable of seeing a thing in the road for the first time, determining whether it's an object to be weary of or a dark shadow/line, and make the proper decision about hat to do with it. Maybe this was workable on the highway, but in city driving, that shit ain't gonna fly. I can only imagine how many mistakes Teslas have made on highways because of this that haven't been thoroughly reported on. We've now seen Teslas failing to yield for buses with flashing lights and their stop sign out. We've seen Teslas trying to drive through train tracks with their gates down, and even driving down a train track before being hit by a train. There seem to be lawsuits starting to flow in to sue Tesla over deadly ADAS accidents. We're also learning that Tesla wasn't even tracking accidents prior to 2018... which is ironic given the whole situation at the April 2019 autonomy day. That day it was argued that autopilot never had any accidents, but then one of the engineers or managers got on stage and said he saw all the accident videos... Musk looked super happy when he said it. /s
Yeah, it would be like some half-baked fast food place with crappy food and only 2 locations calling out McDonalds and saying "Hey man, we have onion rings and you don't, you'll never keep up with us!!!" It's weird to start a beef with a competitor that's ahead of you in 999 out of 1000 metrics, over the one metric you were ahead on. (And as the article points out, ahead on until the very next day.)
Yeah, the way Tesla is doing it, they are never going to know how close they are or if they are even close. It's just them really *hoping* that it will magically work at some point.
There’s more competition coming too, I’ve seen two different companies with autonomous setups driving around LA recently along with seeing the new Waymo on a highway. Tesla is so far behind even here people I know who own fsd and use it say they wouldn’t get in a Tesla robotaxi over a Waymo. Once it hits more cities and people see it real world a lot of Tesla owners are face a harsh reality about that 10k or whatever they spent on fsd in hopes it would work one day.
Waymo is just playing the business game. I bet they’re thrilled for this failed attempt at robo taxi. The valuation for their company has been increasing like crazy due to teslas vaporware. Anytime they do something I’m sure Waymo will counter not cause they think it matters, just to again prove they are the leader.
Like a hotdog in a hallway.
WELL regarded
Hang-on, we measure robotaxi vs. human taxi with extra steps.
"This is one of the first times that Waymo is experiencing competition in one of its robotaxi cities"... It's not even on the same level, what is the author talking about??? If anything, Cruise was competition. You know, actually getting paid public rides with no safety drivers?
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Yea they better stop hoping and start testing! Tesla should test more by increasing their coverage map, not what they are doing here!
Beef with crushed balls.
Or getting it to work properly where it already was. Nah, that would be loser talk.
Haven't actually put the effort into looking this up but I assume they are using model 3s as the taxi. Any word of when the real robo taxis with no steering wheel will be released? Other than next year? If Felon wasn't drugged up on Ket during his time with Donald he surely could have made it so these ones got approval and then had them teleoperated like they were at the showcase event.
Yeah, the more Tesla expands their service, the more money they will lose, because they still have to also pay the safety driver. So currently expanding their service just puts them deeper in the hole.
No one ever told muck it's the functionality not the size
Tesla will just increase their map even more now.
The funny part is Tesla doesn't actually have a Robotaxi
They should have made it a bigger dick pic.
Bit deep in the weeds, aren’t we?
> WELL regarded What AI does Musk have that's well regarded?
Luckily he still has an army of dopes who haven’t figured out that he’s a moron and no different than Trump.
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