Analysts criticise lack of detail about the ‘robotaxi’ showcased by CEO Elon Musk
Tesla shares fell nearly 9% on Friday, wiping about $60bn (£45bn) from the company’s value, after the long-awaited unveiling of its so-called robotaxi failed to excite investors.
Shares in the electric carmaker tumbled to $217 at market close following an event in Hollywood, where the chief executive, Elon Musk, revealed a much-hyped driverless vehicle. The stock price is down roughly 12% year-to-date.
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However, analysts said the event was short on detail and also expressed disappointment over a lack of specifics about other Tesla projects. Musk has a history of making grand projections about upcoming products and failing to follow through in the timeframe he has set, or at all.
Here’s a list of every time he has promised (lied about) full self driving for literally more than a decade.
How is anyone believing this guy’s shit after all this time?
I suspect sometime ago it switched from belief in him to most market players believing that “enough people will believe this guy’s shit that the line will go up so best jump in early”, essentially a self-made prophecy as long as enough people believe that others believe.
In that sense this result of his presentation pushing the line down A LOT means that even the idea that no matter how much he’s lying he will move the market up is finished and his bullshit being a Midas Touch has now reached the natural endlife of becoming a Shit Touch.
That being so, has much more massive implications for Elon’s business success and wealth as well as that of companies links to him, than merely the market losses in this one instance, since he is very much a One Trick Pony whose “bullshitter of tech fanboys” trick has stopped working and nobody is going to be betting on Elon pushing the line up anymore, the core of his success in getting wildass ideas funded and his companies in non-Tech industries getting Tech-style market valuations.
The next couple of years for Elon are going to be really “interesting”.
Could not agree more. I’m hoping he has a Hindenburg moment… Soon
I imagine the robotaxi it gonna just be some really short person under the hood running super fast like the Flintstones with a steering wheel
Musk: “I have concepts of a car.”
Even at face value, that’s still a massive red flag coming Musk. He gave us a concept of the cybertruck that actually looked pretty badass; then delivered a vehicle straight out the Playstation 1. Any concept he pitches can be assumed to be complete bullshit.
That thing looks AI generated. Better than what we got but still ridiculous. I mean, it’s huge but still somehow doesn’t really seem to have much space for passengers or cargo at the same time
Also, why is the cabin aerodynamic while the hood is not? The whole thing is nonsensical
it’s huge but still somehow doesn’t really seem to have much space for passengers or cargo at the same time
So like all modern pickup trucks?
No, a lot worse
the thing we got is unique, that thing looks generic and car shaped as opposed to boxy and finger crushing
Lol this thing with a heavy battery would flip over at the mere sight of a bump, and everyone would die inside
The center of mass is lower due to the battery, so I’d say the opposite is true.
I was going to make a smart ass comment about how bad the Cyber truck is at off-road stuff but it turns out it’s actually hard to tip over even with the chassis above the centreline of the wheels
It might not be a particularly new insight, but I find it worth repeating anyway: Musk truly is the new Ford. Runs his own company in the ground and has a hard-on for fascists.
With a bit of Edison thrown in for good measure. He’s constantly claiming to have invented things or founded companies that he had nothing to do with.
Analysts: “Is this ‘car’ in the room with us right now?”
You’ll also notice it’s gold colored. Direct homage to trumps tastes.
Bro. Just one more year bro. I swear bro. Just one more year and we’ll have full self driving bro.
Don’t lose faith bro. Or I’ll sue you and call you a pedo guy.
They could easily do it in a year by purchasing Waymo.
Isn’t Waymo driverless like my RC car is driverless?
No, what makes you think that? I understand doubting Elon, but Waymo works great day in and out. The only bad incident I know of with them was when another vehicle with a person driving hit a pedestrian that threw the pedestrian under a Waymo, and they had to update the software to know what to do when a person spawns under the vehicle. Horrible, yes. But one of their cars wouldn’t have hit the pedestrian to start.
Your RC car has level 4 autonomy?
Imagine drinking this much Kool-Aid.
Are you referring to the use of SAE classifications or the assertion that Waymos are level 4?
Yeah, but only if you believe the propaganda by the IEEE, the lobbying arm of the international electronics and electrical engineer cartels.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/full-autonomy-waymo-driver
um…/s just in case
In the meantime, keep buying cybertrucks.
one of my old computer science professors said self driving cars “have been 5 years away for the past 20 years”. still rings true to this day
Self driving cars and net positive fusion, same same
Oh nobody’s predicting net positive fusion anytime soon. There’s huge materials hurdles in both magnetic confinement and inertial confinement while also regenerating tritium. Neutron radiation just does not play nice.
I agree with your professor. It’s one of these things that people have a hard time understanding. A lot of folks can easily imagine the end-state, but have no clue what has to be solved to arrive there. A lot of folks think that projects in electronics, software engineering, computing, etc. are just a linear march from beginning to end; failure is a human or resource problem. In reality, there are problems out there that get exponentially harder to pull off with linear inputs, which is much harder to imagine let alone a great way to scare off investors.
In this case, the framing of the problem is all wrong. We’re not trying to solve “a car that drives itself” (e.g. autopilot). Instead we are “simulating human sensory organs and cognition in order to pilot a vehicle without catastrophe or injury.” The latter is much harder to solve, but IMO, is a much more realistic portrayal of the job.
Oh please let us see Elon lose all his fucking money because he’s a gigantic ass hat.
We can dream, now that he’s tied his name to Trump it’s not as unlikely as previously.
Tesla: “hay guys we invented the bus, but cyber”
that’s really Something isn’t it
It won’t be $30k, it won’t be full self driving, it won’t be ready for production by by 2027, it won’t replace all cars on the road by 2075.
It’s shocking that people aren’t calling him out on the fact that he also promised every Tesla on the road today would be capable of becoming a robotaxi, which was just an outrageous lie at the time and evidently they are no longer working towards making that plan a reality anymore if they’re designing dedicated autonomous vehicles. Letting him pitch a new robotaxi idea feels like letting him get away not having to face any consequences for his blatant bullshit.
No Tesla will, correct.
These cars will be available, just not where governments stand on the scale for industries that refuse to modernize or make vehicles that a lot of people actually want instead of another oversized SUV or truck with a grill taller than a tank.
Dude invented the city bus.
I just don’t get why they still have him as CEO.
The man spends his time mostly on Twitter, driving it into the ground to simp for Trump. He’s taken obscene amounts of money from it, while failing to offer the simplest of products from its roadmap a decade ago - an affordable electric car.
If they don’t pivot in the next few years, they’ll run the risk of Tesla being leapfrogged to market more than it already has, with an inferior product to practically everyone that enters the EV market.
I still fully maintain that Musk will push Tesla towards making a petrol-powered car within the next few years, so IMO the board needs to get rid before that becomes a thing.
What problems do autonomous taxies solve that are worth this investment of possibly decades?
Edit: grammar
They should outcompete Uber and the others. They should provide very low cost point to point transport
I was making a point that the overall goal is for people to get from point A to point B. There are known solutions for that (trains, busses), investing millions into this just to replace taxis/Uber sounds ridiculous to me. This seems to me just an investment to promote the car centric mentality for solving such problems
Yeah public transport is ideal for most transport cases and should be funded by cities to the level to allow it to provide that
But still some cases call for individual transport and my preference on that is taxis over Uber and the like as taxis have a duty to pick up anyone who can pay which the newer companies don’t
I hope that self driving taxis include accessible ones, I expect there will still need to be a class of staffed cars to help people who need assistance - eg those who can’t lift their bag into our out of the vehicle, those who need assistance to put on a seat belt
Do you find autonomous cars at a clear advantage in those cases where you think cars are still preferred?
Really. Give me reliable public transportation instead.
the feds would have to start issueing grants for light rail like they do with roads for that to happen. Otherwise cities will always default to a free road over a paid train system
The dream of being the first to do it and corner the market for more of that sweet growth.
I just wish it went into autonomous trains like France did with Paris Line 14
none. But they would have to be electric so that they don’t lose fuel economy as 3x the number of cars on the road will 100% create traffic jams.
And even then the amount of energy wasted on traveling empty from drop offs to pickups would probably be collossal. Not to speak of the infrastructure we don’t have to keep these charged
Nooo they didn’t like the self-driving robotaxi that isn’t self driving. What about the bus that can’t go over a pothole? No? How about robots that are controlled and voiced by humans? Damn. Tough crowd.
Also there’s this whole track record of Elon Musk’s demonstrations were there’s no clear independent validation that they actually work as we are being said they to or they’re merelly announcements or concepts: those things are invariably complete total bollock at best bordering on Fraud.
I reckon that finally he has entirely exhausted both the benefit of the doubt that his demonstrations are in any way honest and representative of real products present or future, and the idea that “he might be bullshitting but he’ll pull in enough suckers that early investors will win from going all in even if it’s 100% bollocks”.
The Midas Touch of Elon’s bullshit has finally ran its course and turned into a Shit Touch.
Awe shucks. Tesla should boot out Dork MAGAT and bring back Eberhard and Tarpenning. When Leon leaves, then I will consider a Tesla.
Leon?
“Boeing had a little hard time, so they are going to save — Leon’s going to send up a rocket,” Trump said. “He looks forward to it. That’s all he thinks about is things like that.”
I guess Leon likes being treated like a little kid going to summer science camp
Investors we spoke to at the event thought the event was light of real numbers and timeline
Not like Elon is famous for keeping the timeline. Man on Mars and Tesla semi any day now.
I posted this elsewhere, but I always enjoy the timeline:
Well, he did say he’d put a man on Mars in 10 years… back in 2011.
…And then in 10 years in 2014 (meaning 2024).
…And then in 6 years in 2016 (meaning 2022)
…And then in 6 years again in late 2020 (meaning 2026)
Then we finally end up on his current 2022 estimate of 2029.
Don’t worry, Trump and Elon said that if Trump wins 2024, we’ll have a man on Mars before Trump’s term is over.
So from someone who works in human spaceflight, this is ridiculously outrageous.
I’m not insinuating that anyone thought it was realistic, but just confirming your suspicions.
Don’t worry, since Trump will install himself as dictator for life, this means he has more than 4 years to get someone to Mars.
Then again, given Trump’s age and diet, maybe 4 years is generous in and of itself…
Can you think of any realistic benefit to a manned mission to Mars?
Bringing back samples would be an amazing feat, and that seems a worthwhile mission. Having a human onboard seems to complicate things far more than any data that would give us would be worth.
First, it’s crewed or human mission - inclusive language is important! :)
I do think human exploration is important because humans can cover longer distances faster. So your overall options for exploration increase. I do think both human and robotic are important and serve valuable purposes.
It would be more complicated with humans, but I think that’s also a valuable learning experience that could lead to technology that would benefit Earth.
I do not think “colonization” or whatever term you want to use should be a priority. I think science and exploration are what we should stick to, and if your excuse for colonization is because something bad will happen to Earth so we have to go somewhere else…just spend that time and those resources figuring out how to not fuck up Earth just to go fuck up the next place.
You’re having a good time today lol
I always enjoy being able to Riker a post.
His lips are chapped these days.
You’re doing God’s work.
Please, it’s not me. It’s Will. He’s the trombonist.
This was genuinely funny…the first 300 times or so.
Musk said the company would start building the fully autonomous “Cybercab” by 2026 at a price of less than $30,000, and showed off a van he claimed was capable of transporting 20 people around town autonomously – which he said would reshape cities by turning car parks into parks.
$30,000 for a fully autonomous bus?
I think he made it reasonably clear that $30k was for the small self driving taxi, and the mini-bus would also become available
He’s learned that if you put an ® next to your name there are literally zero consequences for blatantly lying.
The price is for yearly subscription
Why is he even bothering when we already have Waymo? It already has full-self driving, and it works wonderfully. I use it to get rides to work when I’m too tired to drive. Just hop in, take a nap, and wake up at your destination. I trust it way more than any Uber/Lyft driver.
30k is for the robotaxi, 2 seater.
