Are robotaxis the future? Or now in the past?
Are robotaxis the future? Or now in the past?
Robotaxis are not just limited by weak technology. They unfortunately also don’t make any business sense…
Fortune reports that Elon Musk is now facing a lawsuit alleging that he misled investors with fake "epic end of year" sales info while dumping billions of dollars of stock using insider information. This is of course similar to Musk recently propping up stock price with fake robotaxi claims.
NY Times article on the difficulties Cruise is facing to restarting commercial robotaxi service. Given their many problems described in the article one has to assume that GM will dump Cruise sooner rather than later.
Fortune reports on how difficult the robotaxi business is, and how Waymo has outlasted the other companies. But somehow Fortune is impressed with Waymo serving 50,000 rides/week. At $20/ride this is only about $50 million a year, a pittance compared to the billion dollars+ that they are spending.
Opinion piece in Bloomberg on how Elon Musk's pursuit of robotaxis could be a huge setback for Tesla. Musk has placed more of Tesla’s fortunes in the hands of public officials and processes beyond the routinely accommodating environs of the boardroom and the stock market. Reality, and a lower stock price, will surely result.
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 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.
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.
