| ▲ | Animats 6 hours ago |
| As time goes on, Tesla's fiasco becomes more and more embarrassing. Waymos are all over the place in the cities they serve, doing pretty much what they're supposed to do. Nuro has some fully autonomous vehicles running around. Baidu's Apollo Go is deployed in 16 cities in China, although they use remote driving as a backup. Tesla, though, is still hyping a technology that seems to have maxed out years ago. |
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| ▲ | don_neufeld 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| Not sure if it’s evident in broader statistics yet, but I think that because Tesla got the early adopter market (tech savvy people), they are now losing that same market first. I had a party at my house a couple months ago, mostly SF tech people. I found the Tesla owners chatting together, and the topic was how much FSD sucks and they don’t trust it. I asked and no-one said they would buy a Tesla again. Distrust because they felt suckered by FSD was a reason, but several also just said Elon’s behavior was a big negative. |
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| ▲ | bastawhiz 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I own six EVs (three cars, one of which is a Tesla, and three motorcycles). My first EV was my Tesla. We're on the cusp of trading the Tesla in for a Rivian most likely. I should be Tesla's target customer, but instead I'm exactly who you described: - I don't like the brand. I don't like Elon. I don't like the reputation that the car attaches to me. - I don't trust the technology. I've gotten two FSD trials, both scared the shit out of me, and I'll never try it again. - I don't see any compelling developments with Tesla that make me want to buy another. Almost nothing has changed or gotten better in any way that affects me in the last four years. They should be panicking. The Cybertruck could have been cool, but they managed to turn it into an embarrassment. There are so many alternatives now that are really quite good, and Tesla has spent the last half a decade diddling around with nonsense like the robot and the semi and the Cybertruck and the vaporware roadster instead of making cars for real people that love cars. | | |
| ▲ | don_neufeld 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | The execution on the roadster baffles me. IIRC the deposit was 250K, and I know people who signed up on the first day. Can you imagine a more dedicated fan? How do you not deliver to that group? How big an own-goal is that? | | |
| ▲ | nofriend 2 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | 50k. point definitely remains | |
| ▲ | dzhiurgis 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Their ~mission was cheap cars for masses. There are plenty of high end EVs out there. It's nuts when smart people compare 7 year old 35k Tesla to a brand new 80k Polestar or 100k Lucid. |
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| ▲ | dzhiurgis 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | > instead of making cars for real people that love cars. Whoosh. They've been saying Tesla is an AI company for nearly a decade. AI has been propping up entire US economy for last few years. EV bandwagon has left long time ago. Saying all that I wouldn't mind even cheaper Tesla - small screen, 1 camera instead of 11, fully offline, fully stainless steel, fully open source - basically minimally tech and maximally maintainable and maximum longevity. | | |
| ▲ | seanmcdirmid 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > Saying all that I wouldn't mind even cheaper Tesla - small screen, 1 camera instead of 11, fully offline, fully stainless steel, fully open source - basically minimally tech and maximally maintainable and maximum longevity. What you describe would probably cost more money, not less. The market is small and analog tech is actually more expensive to produce with than digital tech. | | |
| ▲ | dzhiurgis 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | I said nothing about analog. | | |
| ▲ | seanmcdirmid a minute ago | parent [-] | | > basically minimally tech and maximally maintainable and maximum longevity. Kind of implies it. Tech is used to lower prices, not raise them, if you want minimize tech, you want to make it as maintainable as a Lada, and you want it to last as long as possible, that is going to cost a lot. |
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| ▲ | bastawhiz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | They make cars that mostly do their job. They don't make AI that does its job. They're not an AI company, they're a car company pretending they're not a car company. |
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| ▲ | georgemcbay 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > They should be panicking. I'm sure they would be if the stock price had ever showed any signs of being based in reality. But for now Elon can keep having SpaceX and xAI buy up all the unsold Teslas to make number go up. If that ever stops working, just spin up a new company with a hyper-inflated valuation and have it acquire Tesla at some made up number. Worked for him once, why not try it again. And at this point he can get even fraudier, with the worst possible realistic outcome being that he might get forced to pay a relatively small bribe and publicly humiliate himself for Trump a bit. But there's really no more consequences to any sort of business fraud (for now) as long as you can afford the tribute. #WorldLibertyFinancial |
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| ▲ | pmarreck 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | The fact that Elon has blown the San Franistan EV market should surprise absolutely no one. | |
| ▲ | redserk 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I partially agree. FSD seems fine to me but I wouldn’t buy a second Tesla. Tesla seems to have stopped caring about being a car company that caters to nerds/tech enthusiasts. Mine has been an extremely well done vehicle and I was (and kind of am) bullish on FSD as a driver assistance technology, but a car is a 6-7 year investment for me and I have big doubts about their direction. They seem to have abandoned the idea of being a car company, instead chasing this robotaxi idea. Up until 2023/2024 was fine for my 6-7 year car lifecycle. Tesla was really cool when they let you do all sorts of backwards-compatible upgrades, but they seemed to have abandoned that. I’ve found it incredibly disappointing seeing their flailing direction now. Rivian seems to still have a lot of the magic that Tesla had. They’re definitely a strong contender for my next vehicle in a year or two. | | |
| ▲ | don_neufeld 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | Rivian is definitely up and coming. The increase of them around my neighborhood has been very noticeable over the past 12 months. |
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| ▲ | torginus 4 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I just had a thought - a Waymo car costs $200k (maybe more) from a quick google search. YoY returns of $200k on S&P are about 10%, while an Uber driver takes home about $40-$50k - so in terms of cost, they are about 2x-2.5x of each other, with the Waymore likely needing expensive maintenance/support infrastructure, bringing the total much closer. Which means if Tesla can really build that Cybercab - with an underpowered motor, small battery, plastic body panels, just cameras (which I think they promised to sell under $20k) - they'll be able to hit a business expense level and profitability that Waymo will only be able, in say, 10 years. Even if you don't want to talk about non-existing hardware, a Model 3's manufacturing cost is surely much lower than a Waymo. Once (if) they make self driving work at any point in time before Waymo gets to the same level of cost - they'll be the more profitable business. Not only that, they'll be able to enter markets where the cost of Waymo and what you can charge for taxi rides is so far apart that it doesn't make sense for them - in this sense, they'll have a first mover advantage. |
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| ▲ | simondotau 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Not to mention, Waymo is moving from Jaguar to Zeekr for its next-gen fleet, meaning 100% import tariffs on those Chinese-built base vehicles before it even begins the expensive retrofit process. The core problem with Waymo’s model is its lack of (economically rational) scalability. Shipping finished vehicles to a second facility to strip and rebuild them as robotaxis is inherently inefficient, and cannot be made efficient by scaling up. To achieve meaningful volume, Waymo would need to contract an automaker to build finished robotaxis, ideally domestically or where tariffs are sufficiently low. Obviously Tesla's solution only works if their vision-only strategy bears fruit. Assuming it does (a wildly controversial assumption in this space, but let's go with it for now) the economics are utterly wild. It's difficult to imagine how any competitor could come close to competing on cost or scale. And that's assuming the Model Y, ignoring the as-yet hypothetical Cybercab. I suppose Alphabet could buy the corpse of Canoo. I suspect that if it had a plausible manufacturing ramp, they would have been snapped up quickly. Automotive-scale manufacturing is a crucible, and it destroys most who attempt it. In fact most die long before they begin frfr. | |
| ▲ | cyberax 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Waymo cars are basically priceless at this point. As in: the car cost doesn't matter. They've so far spent multiple times their fleet's costs on R&D. The fact that they're getting some pocket cash from paid fares is inconsequential for their bottom line. Any realistic mass deployment will use cheaper cars, more suitable for taxi service. | | |
| ▲ | simondotau 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | The cost isn't an issue at their current scale, perhaps not even one order of magnitude larger, because today's fleet is as much a devkit as it is a consumer product. But that strategy only takes them so far. Cost is a dangerous impediment to scale, and it will be their albatross long before their business model has a chance of becoming profitable, let alone cumulatively profitable. |
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| ▲ | culi 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Tesla's FSD has indeed made significant improvements in the past year (still way behind where it was promised to be even half a decade ago), but they are FAR from being able to operate an actual robotaxi service. Austin is an embarrassment. It seems that tesla believes they can make more money on fooling investors than they can on any core business model |
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| ▲ | vessenes 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Sorry but while I am a happy Waymo user, this is overblown and just incorrect. Waymo has datacenter oversight. (which, who cares, the product is great). Tesla FSD 12 -> 13 was a massive jump that happened earlier this year. 14 is still rolling out. Testing out 13 this weekend, it drove on country roads, noticed a road closure, rerouted, did 7 miles on non divided highways, navigated a town and chose a parking space and parked in it with zero interruptions. It even backed out of the driveway to start the trip. I didn't like the parking job and reparked; other than that, no hands, no feet, fully autonomous. Unlike 12, I had no 'comments' on the driving choices - rotaries were navigated very nicely, road hazards were approached and dealt with safely and properly. It was genuinely good. Dislike Elon all you want, but Tesla FSD is improving rapidly, and to my experienced eyes adding 9s. Probably two or three more 9s to go, but it's not a maxed out technology. |
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| ▲ | energy123 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > It was genuinely good.
You lack data to draw this conclusion. The most important factor is deaths per mile, which is sparse, so it requires aggregating data from many drivers before you have enough statistical power. | | |
| ▲ | vessenes 3 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Qualitative reactions matter. I didn't say it was genuinely safe. I can say that it was smooth, reacted better than most adult drivers to the situations I witnessed, and was significantly better at those things than the prior version. Safety is sparse, but steering, acceleration, decision making happen at like 60hz, and I would say I can make a qualitative judgment on it. | |
| ▲ | terminalshort 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Completely worthless comment. You don't need data to say something is a good product. | | |
| ▲ | energy123 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Data is needed to know if it's safe. For self-driving software, safety is the #1 criteria for whether it's a good product. | | |
| ▲ | ryandrake 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | "Trust me, bro, it really works" is these guys' slogan. It's like when you hear of a fad diet, and all the evidence for the diet's effectiveness is anecdotal "It totally worked for me!" testimony. |
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| ▲ | estearum 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Where "good" is pretty much identical to having a specific rate of accidents over a specific set of conditions, then in fact data is absolutely necessary to determine that. Lol. |
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| ▲ | brianwawok 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| And yet it drives me on 2000 mile car trips without touching anything. If you ignore the hype and look at the actual product, it’s fine. |
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| ▲ | bastawhiz 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | I can imagine it doing fine on highways for a thousand miles. FSD has literally never managed to complete a trip involving city driving for me without disengaging or me having to stop it from doing something illegal. I'm not sure how many attempts I'm supposed to give it. Hell, autopilot doesn't even manage to consistently stay safely in a lane on I-40 between Durham and Asheville. | | |
| ▲ | vessenes 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | have you tried fsd 13/14 yet? I just upgraded to 13 from 12 and it's a massssive improvement. Not sure what 14 s like. It's definitely added a 9 in the last year. | | |
| ▲ | buran77 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > have you tried I've heard this so many times it's starting to be a meme. The system was claimed to be very capable from the beginning, then every version was a massive improvement, and yet we're always still in very dangerous, and honestly underwhelming territory. Teslas keep racking up straight line highway miles where every intervention probably counts at most as 1 mile deducted from the total in the stats. Have one cross a busy city without interventions or accidents like a normal human driver is expected to. | | |
| ▲ | terminalshort 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | It was very capable, and each version has been a big improvement. The first time I rode in a Tesla with FSD back in 2017 I was shocked by how good it was. Self driving tech has advanced so fast that we forget it was considered next to impossible even 15 years ago. You are judging past tech by 2025 standards. | | |
| ▲ | buran77 5 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Novelty is enough to look like "shockingly good". You were comparing "no self driving" to "some self driving". A jump from 0 to something always seems big. Standard driver assists were also impressive when they appeared on cars. In the meantime Tesla still makes a lot of claims about safety but doesn't trust the FSD enough to publish transparent, verifiable stats. That speaks louder than any of our anecdotes. > You are judging past tech by 2025 standards. That's very presumptuous of you. Every single person I know driving a Tesla told me the FSD (not AP) is bad and they would never trust it to drive without very careful attention. I can tell Teslas on FSD in traffic by the erratic maneuvers that are corrected by the driver, and that's a bad thing. | | |
| ▲ | terminalshort 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Every single person I know driving a Tesla told me the FSD (not AP) is bad I really don't believe this because everyone I know who drives a Tesla tells me the opposite. I tend to think this is an artifact of people who just irrationally hate Tesla because IRL every negative thing I hear about Teslas comes from people who don't own the cars and hate Elon Musk. > they would never trust it to drive without very careful attention Of course, because the product is not designed to drive without human supervision. > I can tell Teslas on FSD in traffic by the erratic maneuvers that are corrected by the driver, and that's a bad thing. I don't believe you actually can because I don't notice any difference in the quality of driving between Tesla's or any other car on the road. (In fact the only difference I can notice between drivers of different cars is large trucks). So, again, I write off such statements as more of the same emotionally driven desire to see a pattern were there isn't one. | | |
| ▲ | buran77 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > I really don't believe this > I don't believe > this is an artifact of people who just irrationally hate Tesla > more of the same emotionally driven desire to see a pattern Don't you find it curious that every opinion you don't like must be from irrational people hating Tesla, but opinions you do like are all rational and objective? It's as if we didn't define the sunk cost fallacy for exactly this. You're a rational person, if Tesla was confident in the numbers wouldn't we have an avalanche of independently verifiable stats? Instead we're here playing this "nuh-uh" games with you pretending you're speaking with an authority nobody else has. Does any other company go to such lengths to bury the evidence of their success? The evidence that supports their claims? And of course I can tell FSD drivers, literally nobody else on the street will so often brake hard with absolutely no reason, or veer abruptly then correct and straighten out so hard it wobbles, both on highways and in the city. If it's not the car then it must be the drivers but they wouldn't make such irrational moves. P.S. The internet is full of video evidence of FSD making serious and unjustified mistakes. Every version brings new evidence. How do you explain those? Irrational haters inventing issues? Car misbehaving only for them? Because you see, even if you film 10 times and get the mistake only once it's still very serious. | |
| ▲ | cyberax 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > I really don't believe this because everyone I know who drives a Tesla tells me the opposite. I mean, I love my Tesla autopilot. It made my cross-country trips so much more enjoyable. I have several thousand hours on autopilot at this point. That being said, I don't use it on regular city streets. Because it's just bad, in all kinds of ways. "Full self-driving" it is not. | | |
| ▲ | terminalshort 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | Yeah, that's the type of feedback I absolutely do believe. Sounds like something someone would say about their car to me IRL. That's basically the standard I apply to internet comments. |
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| ▲ | bastawhiz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | For what it's worth, that was not my experience. 12 didn't fix all of the issues I'd heard about its predecessor. 13 didn't fix all the issues I experienced with 12. "Better" isn't enough, it needs to be so good that every issue with the previous generation is resolved. It's never been close to that. |
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| ▲ | ryandrake 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I'm also sick of hearing "have you tried?" And also "it's really improving!" Maybe the manufacturer should try the next version. And test it. And then try the next version. And test it. And then continue until they have something that actually works. |
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| ▲ | bastawhiz 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I tried 12 and 13. My car hasn't gotten 14 and I'm not interested in finding out if it'll get it, because at this point I'm simply not interested even if it's decent. And there's no guarantee it'll be meaningfully better, if I'm being honest. Why would I believe that all the issues are fixed? For me to be interested, every single problem that I'd encountered needs to be resolved. Why would I even consider accepting anything less? It's not "partial" self driving. An incremental improvement is useless. | | |
| ▲ | vessenes 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Meh. I do a lot of beta testing, and enjoy it. I think it's fun to watch the evolution of this tech over the last seven or eight years. But you don't have to feel that way. |
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| ▲ | paulryanrogers 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | Ancedotes are nice. Miles per disengagement stats would be better. | | |
| ▲ | buran77 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | That's not an anecdote, it sounds like an exaggeration bordering flat out lying. A 2000 miles trip "without touching anything" to drive the car is statistically impossible for any reasonable drive (e.g. not endless straight lines on an Australian highway), especially for a Tesla famously known for needing interventions often. Even more advanced autonomous driving systems are far too limited to take arbitrary 2000 miles trip with zero human assistance. | | |
| ▲ | madamelic 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | 13 is quite good. 14 is even better. 2,000 may be stretching it but it is possible if the driver is trusting enough. Personally many of my disengagements isn't because it is being dangerous, but just sub-optimal such as not driving as aggressive as I want to, not getting into off-ramp lane as early as I like, or just picking weird navigational choices. Trying to recall but I haven't had a safety involved disengagement in probably a few months across late 13 and 14. I am just one data point and the main criticism I've seen from 14 is: 1) getting rid of fine speed controls in favor of driving style profiles 2) its car and obstacle avoidance being overtuned so it will tap the brakes if, for instance, an upcoming perpendicular car suddenly appears and starts to roll its stop sign. Personally, I prefer it to be overly protective albeit turn it down slightly and fix issues where it hilariously thinks large clouds of leaves blowing across are obstacles to brake for. | | |
| ▲ | simondotau 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | Driver profiles seem like a terrible answer to the question of choosing a maximum speed, both for the driver of the vehicle, and for Tesla — because it shifts the understanding of the car's behaviour from the driver to Tesla. I think it's insane that Tesla would take that risk. IMHO, it's okay for the driver profiles to affect everything other than max speed, including aggressiveness of acceleration and propensity to change lanes. But since exceeding speed limits is "technically" breaking the law, the default behaviour of FSD should be to strictly obey speed limits, and drivers should be given a set of sliders to manually override speed limits. Perhaps like a graphic EQ with sliders for every 10 MPH where you can manually input decide how many MPH over that limit is acceptable. This would be an inelegant interface, and intentionally so. Drivers should be fully in control of the decision to exceed the speed limit, and by how much. FSD should drive like a hard-nosed driving instructor unless the driver gives unambiguous permission to do otherwise. [0] Note that I am describing this based on my understanding of the US environment. I am Australian, and our speed limits are strictly enforced at the posted speed, without exception. On any road, you should expect a fine if going 3—6 km/h [2—4 MPH] and caught by a fixed or mobile camera. This applies literally anywhere, including highways. By contrast in the USA, I understand that 5—10 MPH on highways has been socially normalised, and law enforcement generally disregards it.) | |
| ▲ | buran77 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > 2,000 may be stretching it but it is possible if the driver is trusting enough. Yeah, trust and a lot of creative accounting of what constitutes successfully driving by itself for that long. Would you put your child in one and let it cross a large city 100 times unattended? |
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| ▲ | PunchyHamster 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | That also doesn't matter much as highways pump those stats up. |
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| ▲ | simondotau 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
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| ▲ | malfist 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | > In your quest to be critical of anything Tesla does That's a pretty hefty extrapolation to make from a single truthful statement about "full" self drive. | |
| ▲ | pmarreck 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | > In your quest to be critical of anything Tesla does That conclusion does not logically follow, whatsoever, from the evidence presented | | |
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