We’re getting the first videos of “select guests” getting access to Tesla’s Robotaxi service in Austin, and the level of polish leaves something to be desired.
For instance, one gaggle of Tesla influencers was dropped off directly in an intersection, leading to these wooly screenshots.
influencer
Whenever you see this word replace it with “sales people”.
They’re enthusiasts, and so the initial wave of press from the Robotaxi release will be gushingly positive as Tesla sales people enthusiastically record the experience
can’t disagree with any of that
The Tesla safety operators appear to always have their thumb on the “Open Door” button of their door, which is sort of weird to see. It’s like every safety operator is getting ready to say the Irish goodbye to their passengers at any given moment.
Turns out, Full Self Driving disengages if you open the door. So that is probably being used as a janky, factory-standard kill switch for the autonomous driving system that causes the vehicle to come to controlled stop.
Wow thats.
oh right, THAT.
I hope you like wherever it stops you, because, like, there’s nobody in the driver’s seat to fix it if the software fucks it up and parks you in the center of a highspeed road or on train tracks or whatever.
Tesler delivering poor performance on an extremely delayed rollout: 📉
Tesler’s clearly manipulated stock price: 📈
Not so. The Tesla safety operators appear to always have their thumb on the “Open Door” button of their door, which is sort of weird to see. It’s like every safety operator is getting ready to say the Irish goodbye to their passengers at any given moment.
Turns out, Full Self Driving disengages if you open the door. So that is probably being used as a janky, factory-standard kill switch for the autonomous driving system that causes the vehicle to come to controlled stop.
There is absolutely nothing stopping the human employee from sitting behind the wheel except optics…
Like, if there’s three passengers, does the employee keep shotgun?
Does a passenger get the driver’s seat? Or do they all have to sit in the backseat so people can see it’s driving itself?
Is the plan for highspeed situations really just opening a fucking door at speed?
The level of stupidity is, as always, fascinating…
A passenger in the drivers seat could easily kill everyone by bumping the steer wheel (and reverting control back to… themself!) or by resting their foot inadvertently on the pedals.
You’re right, it’s purely optics, a stock pump play. The system would be safer with the Tesla employee behind the wheel, but these techbro influencer videos would be less impressive that way.
Nothing instills investors with confidence more than a nervous employee with a death grip on the door
handlebutton.
These guys should try the existing Waymo service in Austin to get an idea of what an actually good ‘robotaxi’ is before tying this junk.
Tesla’s Full Self Driving feature is definitely not “Full Self Driving”. At best, it is useful for freeing up a driver’s attention for other things. At worst, it tricks people into thinking that the car is driving by itself when it cannot.
Similar to how if you use cruise control, you don’t have to pay as much attention to speed, and you can use that attention to look at the road and other cars. Staying in a lane and following cars and even turning a corner are all things that free up the driver’s attention so that the driver can pay more attention to the road and other drivers.
So, it’s a useful tool for experienced and attentive drivers, but it is not “Full Self Driving”, and it obviously lacks polish.
Plus, a lot of the completely necessary features for a robot taxi are completely missing, like keeping passengers from accidentally disengaging FSD. Taxis are used to transport drunk people. Drunk people will press all sorts of buttons and do things like touch a steering wheel that is moving by itself.
Musk is completely shameless. Always doing these cash grabs by promising things that are impossible, and then doing an alternative half-assed version. It’s really weird. You’d think at some point that a grifter that managed to become the richest person in the world would stop doing the most obvious grifts ever.
So far the grift has always worked though…so why would he stop?
It’s not his fault if some people are just falling for that BS time and time again. Unless consumers and stock holders stop him, he’s gonna do the thing he does best (drugs and being a shit human being not withstanding) - grifting.
And there it is, the correct term for what this is…
Performance
leading to these wooly screenshots
screenshots
Have we come full circle?
:
So nobody died yet? Okay, cool.
