icowden
Legendary Member
Any Robotaxi will need Lidar thus raising more questions about fatalistic FSD marketing.
Why?
Any Robotaxi will need Lidar thus raising more questions about fatalistic FSD marketing.
A low cost EV (around $25k - Tesla 2) has been discussed for a long time by Tesla. At the beginning of April, there were reports it had been scrapped but Musk said that Tesla were planning launch of a low cost vehicle by beginning of 2025 during the shareholder call. The plan was to move down the car cost families with the previous (more expensive) family funding the next development. A good plan as more expensive cars in the luxury market tend to give more profit per unit than the cheaper families which rely upon volume and production efficiency to be profitable.
The Cybertruck seems to be a diversion from this solid plan, it adds nothing to the EV market aside from a flawed, huge pickup which won't be able to be sold in key markets.
The new Polestar 2 LR has a better WLTP than the Tesla 3 LR, this is the recent upgrade car rather the original one. I agree about the rear seats, it felt more like a BMW 3 series type space rather than some similar sized EVs where rear space has been maximised. The Tesla supercharger infrastructure is a great reason to choose Tesla, other networks are rolling out fast, but still not as developed as superchargers.
Polestar ADAS is much simpler but has no pretensions to be anything else other than a driver aid. It doesn't add too much to what I have on my aging BMW with front radar and adaptive cruise control.
My fundamental problem with the Tesla approach to marketing FSD is that it deliberately muddies the water between true autonomy and driver aids. FSD is a driver aid and should be considered as such. I mentioned at the beginning of this thread that the automatics on commercial aircraft has been shown to cause human issues (either through complexity, user complacency or unusual automatic reactions) and these are highly trained pilots. Car manufacturers need to take human factors much more seriously in car design and automation. Single large IPAD type screens outside the driver eyeline with no HUD is not great IMO. Automatics need to be designed and marketed in an honest way with care taken around driver involvement - it is no good to have automatics installed which require driver oversight and then not have any consideration to the human interaction component.
Musk and Tesla are in a bit of a bind with autonomy. The Tesla share price (and P/E) are priced as you might expect a high growth tech company rather than an automotive company. P/E on Tesla is an order of magnitude larger than most large auto makers. If Tesla are making cars with autonomy that is only likely to reach level 2 in the medium term, then investors might start to wonder why it is valued so differently to other companies doing similar things. So Musk needs to keep the show on the road, announcing Robotaxi and the low cost car in the last investor call. Do I think Robotaxi will be making their way onto our streets anytime soon? Absolutely not - it is another shiny thing waved at investors to keep them thinking about Tesla as a technology company rather than a car company.
This is what Teslas trumped up Robotaxi has to compete with.
https://fortune.com/2024/05/29/waymo-self-driving-robo-taxi-uber-tesla-alphabet/
Obviously its 'deemed unsafe' autopilot thingy will need lots of new hardware, though at least he has his manufacturing arm for actual cars, unlike Google who buy and adapt.
I sense Google has still been very lucky, even if caution has helped. All but Tesla have no driver to blame when disasters strike.
Well there were reports that the M2 had been scrapped, but they seem to be nonsense. The cybertruck probably won't sell outside the US, but the market for ridulous trucks in the US is huge, and very profitable for the likes of Ford and GM.
here is some interesting technology in it too, 48v electrical system and a networking system which are a step ahead of their competitors.
IMO they are way ahead on autonomy - some of their competition has basically thrown in the towel, and Waymo won't be able to compete. If their machine-learning approach works they have a massive advantage over the competition, with a vast dataset collected from tesla vehicles worldwide - nobody else has anything like that. The machine learning means they can train their system without having to program every detail of behaviour, and they can produce a system that works anywhere in the world - even if Waymo can get their system to work in San Francisco, it's going to be hard to scale it to the rest of the world. Tesla may be valued like a tech company, but that's what they are - a data/AI/robotics/computing company who happen to make cars. Perhaps in the future they won't manufacture cars at all?
Actually most of the time a human driver starts driving the car remotely. It's not as robot controlled as it pretends. If the computer is unsure, someone in a call centre takes control of the car and pilots it remotely, or tells the robot what decision to make.Currently, Tesla manage corner cases by having the driver as authority. Waymo manage it by having the vehicle stop and someone run out to fix it.
That's nonsense again. Just because one company chooses to use LIdar it doesn't follow that it's the best route. Musk and Tesla are going a different route. Their argument is that if a human driver can use vision, then a robot driver should be able to do the same.A quick search on that biggest market, China shows those top 5 autonomous taxi companies all use Lidar meaning Musk will be forced to use Lidar. FSD, as is, will almost certainly be deemed far too unsafe.
That's nonsense again. Just because one company chooses to use LIdar it doesn't follow that it's the best route. Musk and Tesla are going a different route. Their argument is that if a human driver can use vision, then a robot driver should be able to do the same.
That's nonsense again. Just because one company chooses to use LIdar it doesn't follow that it's the best route. Musk and Tesla are going a different route. Their argument is that if a human driver can use vision, then a robot driver should be able to do the same.