Are robotaxis the future? Or now in the past?
Are robotaxis the future? Or now in the past?
The news media has expended considerable effort researching and publishing information about the robotaxi business. This channel highlights some of the important articles.
Article by Electrek on Elon Musk's latest extortion attempt. Given that Tesla is not an AI nor a robotics company, that Elon Musk knows nothing about either of those technologies, and that working on them would only distract Tesla from selling more cars, this is a prime opportunity for the Tesla Board to exercise their fiduciary responsibility and simply state "no thanks".
A Bloomberg journalist tries out Fake Self Driving for a month. Hilarity ensues. The author is not impressed.
A detailed article by Fortune on what has happened to Cruise since their October 2nd crash. Though it appears that Fortune still believes that GM will do what is needed to make Cruise successful, when it is actually quite clear that Cruise is doomed.
Bloomberg article on how while Tesla is trying to get out of the lawsuit that it misled consumers on Tesla's self-driving capabilities, a California judge has ruled that some of the negligence and fraud claims can proceed.
Washington Post reports that Cruise settled with the severely injured person who was dragged by their robotaxi October 2nd, 2023. The settlement amount was between $8 million and $12 million, indicating severe and permanently disabling injuries inflicted due to their weak technology.
The Las Vegas Review-Journal reports that Motional has completely halted their Las Vegas commercial self-driving operations and laid off many employees. This is all part of Motional downsizing a total of 550 people. Surely they will soon no longer exist.
Hoodline SF reports that even though most attention is towards Waymo and Cruise, Zoox has had their share of mishaps and are now being investigated by the NGTSA.
arsTechnica provides further information on the NHTSA investigation into "unexpected behavior" by Waymo's robotaxis. 22 reports of the cars malfunctioning!
Electrek reports that very few trial users are purchasing Full Self Driving after their free trial use. Elon Musk has been propping up Tesla share prices by claiming the real money will be made via autonomous vehicle software and a robotaxi fleet. But it turns out customers are not really interested in paying for Tesla's weak technology.
Markets Insider reports that some investors are seeing through the false claims that Elon Musk has been putting out about their robotaxi and AI initiatives. More will follow.
Reuters reports that Tesla's statements on their autonomous vehicles is now being investigated as possible securities or wire fraud by misleading investors and consumers about its vehicles' self-driving capabilities. This will not end well.
TechCrunch reports that SoftBank was the lead in Wayve's recent $1B funding round for developing an autonomous vehicle system. Impressive that SoftBank still has money to burn.
The Fortune article is important because it reports that he wasn't just dismissing Rebecca Tinucci, who was the executive in charge of Supercharger operations and also Tesla's highest ranking woman executive at Tesla. The entire Supercharger team of 500 employees is getting the boot! And the Supercharger operation is highly successful and critical to Tesla sales. This is yet another highly counterproductive move by Musk.
Three key execs jumped ship in the last few weeks, 14,000+ employees laid off, plus the CFO left in August. And today it is announced that two additional key execs are pushed out along with hundreds of subordinates. Rebecca Tinucci was the senior director of Tesla’s Supercharger division and the highest ranking woman executive at Tesla. The Supercharger has been Tesla's greatest success and other EV manufactures have had to adapt to its standard. It has also been key in Tesla sales because having many chargers alleviates range anxiety. Daniel Ho was the head of the new vehicles program and was with Tesla for almost 11 years after being at Ford for over 12 years. If Tesla was going to bring out a new lower cost Tesla then Ho would have been the one doing it.
The recent torching of a Waymo robotaxi shows that there simply is no smooth sailing for the company. Sure, they might drive somewhat better than Cruise vehicles. But they still have serious flaws that show that long term viability is doubtful. Plus they do stupid things, and when they do they are quite vulnerable. Therefore they have now become the target of robotaxi ire.
