In this article, I’m going to describe how the Tesla community is focusing on the latest beta software yet totally missing the biggest threat to Tesla’s goal of enabling a fleet of robotaxis.
In a previous article, I laid out some basic safety rules and some more advanced concepts for safely testing the Full Self-Driving (FSD) beta.
In Tampa, Florida, one of the expressway bridges was temporarily shut down recently to film part of a documentary. The expressway was shut down to film a fleet of autonomously driven Tesla Model 3s. One of the volunteers of the project, Model 3 owner Blaine Johnston, posted the story on Reddit and provided us with some extra stunning pictures of the event (photo gallery below).
Twitter user Spender Uttley was driving down Highway 101 in California when he spotted a rare Tesla sighting: the Tesla Semi!
Tesla broke the news on its blog today that it would be using lease returns from its new Tesla Model 3 lease program in “the Tesla ride-hailing network.” The blog post is the second confirmation that Tesla will actually own and operate its own fleet of fully autonomous ride-hailing vehicles, with the first note along these lines coming years ago.
Starting October 19, every Tesla that comes off the assembly line at the Fremont, California, factory will be equipped with what the company calls its second-generation hardware package. The cars all have 8 cameras, 12 enhanced ultrasonic sensors, and a forward-looking radar. Tesla …
One year ago, when Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Jonas initially needled and nudged Elon Musk to talk about a potential Uber-like service from Tesla, Elon basically admitted that something was in the oven, but also that the details weren’t yet clear. As it turns out, one of the dramatic differences between what Tesla is going to offer and what Uber is offering is where the money goes.
Kyle published our initial article about Tesla’s new self-driving hardware, and I just followed up with a poll about when we will have Tesla robotaxis. Apparently, there’s already more to share. Tesla has now released a video showing a Tesla using the self-driving hardware and published extra info on the tesla.com/autopilot page. … [continued]
Tesla’s “Master Plan, Part Deux” spends a large portion of its content on heavier transportation, especially cargo and buses. Tesla is an intelligently incrementalist company which is very data driven, so how is this likely to play out? The first cut that’s necessary is about pickups in North America vs everything else that Tesla … [continued]
Recently, I wrote a piece for CleanTechnica on the economics of autonomy, seeking to explain the vast implications of negative depreciation. (The ability to buy a car that is worth much more to the customer over time than its sticker price and its total cost of ownership.) While I thought it was possibly too much too … [continued]
