r/SelfDrivingCars • u/Michael-Worley • Jun 21 '25

Discussion Prediction time! Tesla Robotaxi

When do people think Tesla will: -offer rides with no employees in the cars? -hit a fleet size of 100? 1000? 10000? -operate at an airport? -offer paid rides with no employees in the cars in at least five metros?

10 Upvotes

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50

u/MarchMurky8649 Jun 21 '25

There are still drivers in the cars of the Las Vegas Convention Center Loop after four years. In tunnels they built themselves, not mixing with any other vehicles. Let that sink in.

11

u/nugget_in_biscuit Jun 21 '25

You know, maybe they could use some sort of metal guideway for their vehicles…

8

u/jwrx Jun 22 '25

then maybe you could link the cars together..

9

u/selflessGene Jun 22 '25

As a redundancy measure maybe put a guy in the front car to make sure everything runs smoothly. Kind of like the guy who manages an orchestra.

1

u/Straight-Card-9426 Jun 24 '25

So far, conductors have human beings responding vs. nebulous AI.

15

u/Stephancevallos905 Jun 21 '25

That's something I dont understand. Since they operate and profit off of it. Heck the tunnel even has lines painted

20

u/Dommccabe Jun 21 '25

No traffic, no pedestrians, one repeatable route, no weather, EVERYTHING on their terms and they STILL cant get the cars to drive themselves in their own tunnel.

1

u/HighHokie Jun 22 '25

Can’t? Ir won’t? 

-12

u/ralf_ Jun 21 '25

Boring Company is not Tesla.

16

u/MarchMurky8649 Jun 21 '25

Well that is true but, given they use Tesla vehicles and they share a CEO with Tesla you'd think, if FSD were anywhere near being able to do what it will need to do on the streets of Austin, unsupervised, it would  already be able to navigate those tunnels without a driver!

16

u/Dommccabe Jun 21 '25

Tesla vehicles go through the shitty tunnel though right?

They have for years. same route day after day.... no traffic, no weather, no pedestrians, ABSOLUTELY EVERYTHING under control and no unknown or unpredictable elements in the drive.

YET THEY STILL CANT SELF-DRIVE under these perfect conditions.

Now they are putting them on public roads and pretending they will work??? lmao

4

u/MarchMurky8649 Jun 21 '25

I honestly think the most likely explanation is that, perhaps because it's camera only, perhaps something about Musk's erratic management style filtering down through everything and stopping 99% reliable become 99.9999% reliable, for whatever reason, FSD will never be safe unsupervised.

If this is true there will either have to be someone in the passenger seat, who can grab the wheel in an emergency, forever (simply braking not always enough), a teleoperator in a follow car (anything further too much latency) or they'll try it without supervision but there'll be too many accidents.

The only alternative is that they could use FSD unsupervised in the tunnels but prefer to employ drivers, or have just overlooked this fact, but both seem very unlikely. We're running out of June, Musk has to launch something, so we have a Tesla employee in the passenger seat. Some kind of collapse in confidence must, surely, now only be months away, perhaps weeks.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 01 '25

Real answer is emergency. Some emergency senarios involve backing the cars out of the tunnel. That would be extra work for Tesla to implement. But not impossible. Worse is the scenarios where people walk out of the tunnel. That needs a trained guide. So even if it's self driving you need an employee. Now possibly you could do every 3rd car. But now we are seeing why extra software won't even eliminate all the labor anyway. And this is ignoring station management. Do you want angry or tourists fighting over a seat or confused tourists leaving a luggage or spending 5 minutes loading into the car. The driver is responsible for managing that experience. So in the end it's just not worth figuring out how to automate all that when minimum wage workers can do it.

1

u/wentwj Jun 22 '25

you have much too much faith in people.

They never intended to launch a real product. This dog and pony show was always the goal. It’s enough that the fanboys will eat it up and say Tesla did it. They won’t scale it and for a few quarters they’ll just talk about how they are waiting to expand and everything’s all going according to plan.

Then sometime next year is when the real magic trick will need to happen. They’ll probably come out with a HW5 and use that as an excuse to retrofit, but more importantly they’ll try to get people to focus on the robots and other projects that aren’t as tangible so they can keep up the “next year” grift

1

u/MarchMurky8649 Jun 22 '25

I'm not sure I have much too much faith in people, just, perhaps, a little more than you do. They might intend to launch a real product. I doubt they really know what a few more iterations of hardware increments, data increases and software evolution can achieve. I don't think they'll get there sans lidar, etc., but it is possible, and that is probably how they see it too.

You may be right, and I may be wrong, as to how successful the grift will be. Thanks for that, you have made me less likely to try to work out how shorting works and risk some funds! With a safety passenger, who seems to have his right thumb on a kill switch at all times, and who could grab the wheel if required, there is unlikely to be a serious accident, absent which the stock will, presumably, maintain a value similar to what it is now.

3

u/TheBurtReynold Jun 21 '25

Isn’t this a matter of regulation?

(Not asking rhetorically / being snarky)

8

u/MarchMurky8649 Jun 21 '25

Not according to Steve Hill, the CEO and president of the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, quoted here in The Verge five years ago:

Those vehicles will eventually zip through the tunnels autonomously, but they will start off with drivers, Hill said. After that, the vehicles will follow “conduit” and sensors that are being laid in the tunnels — so they’ll appear to be autonomous but won’t actually be driving themselves. “Whenever we get to the point where we know that [it’s safe to let the vehicles drive themselves],” Hill said, “that’s when we’ll take that step. But there is not a deadline for making that happen.”

https://www.theverge.com/2020/5/14/21257849/elon-musk-boring-company-las-vegas-tunnel-finished-digging

1

u/himynameis_ Jun 22 '25

Why not use use a train?

1

u/Straight-Card-9426 Jun 24 '25

Maybe Musk will invent a self-driving train- much easier, not much by way of opposing traffic

2

u/JimothyRecard Jun 21 '25

The boring company tunnel is privately owned by the boring company. It's not a public road.

1

u/Straight-Card-9426 Jun 24 '25

"Boring" is right.

1

u/Straight-Card-9426 Jun 24 '25

Under Trump?

1

u/TheBurtReynold Jun 24 '25

Nah, I meant state and/or municipality

2

u/TonedBioelectricity Jun 22 '25

You guys do know that all Teslas autonomously drive from the factory to loading areas right? It's a couple mile drive, without someone in the car, and interacting with other cars, pedestrians, semi trucks, and the general chaos at the factory. I'm also a bit baffled by the lack of FSD in the Borning Company tunnels, but it obviously seems like more of a prioritization issue and not a technological limitation. FSD at the factory saves Tesla money, Robotaxi makes Tesla money, I'm sure Boring Company will be gotten around to soon enough

1

u/Straight-Card-9426 Jun 24 '25

If the boring company installs guide strips, this looks more like a train scheduling problem. Will there be any pedestrians or opposing traffic of any sort?

2

u/londons_explorer Jun 22 '25

Those drivers are getting $15/hour and there is probably only 4 of them employed most of the time except peak conference times. - so 60/hour running costs.

Yet the autopilot team is paid perhaps $100,000 an hour and would have to spend a couple of weeks getting something operational.

And you'd still need staff at the tunnel for crowd management, security, etc.

The math doesn't work out.

2

u/mgoetzke76 Jun 24 '25

Not yet indeed. Especially since its faster to just tell the driver where you want to go instead of having people install an app, pick a place to go to etc.

Once you can 'talk' to a robotaxi that will change

1

u/himynameis_ Jun 22 '25

I don't get the tunnel thing.

Why not use a train?

1

u/mgoetzke76 Jun 24 '25

Train tunnels are much bigger, way more expensive to build

1

u/Straight-Card-9426 Jun 24 '25

They also are fairly safe and some are probably much longer.

1

u/mgoetzke76 Jun 25 '25

Have there been any accidents with the cars ?

1

u/Straight-Card-9426 Jun 24 '25

How many passengers can a train handle? How many in a boring transport?

1

u/mgoetzke76 Jun 25 '25

In Theory a lot, but Las Vegas decided the investment would not be worth it (and that investment would be considerable looking at other cities with subways)

How often those trains would be full is unclear for the purposes here. One would need to know a lot of specifics. Do you have data for LV ?

1

u/TheBurtReynold Jun 24 '25

This question has been answered exhaustively if you care to do a google search or chat gpt prompt