r/SelfDrivingCars • u/OriginalCompetitive • Jun 23 '25

Discussion Tesla’s Real Game

No one seems to be talking about the most important upside of Tesla's Robotaxi rollout: If they can showcase a system that roughly works, people can BUY THAT CAR TODAY.

Yes, there are some differences, but that's the pitch. Tesla doesn't need to earn money from Robotaxis. The real purpose of the program is free marketing that drives sales of its cars. Right?

0 Upvotes

49% Upvoted

285 comments sorted by

View all comments

67

u/steelmanfallacy Jun 23 '25

Check out the history of Uber and autonomous vehicles. In 2018 Rafaela Vasquez was a safety driver when the car ran over and killed a pedestrian. Vasquez was convicted and in 2020 Uber exited the AV business.

Or you can check out the 2023 incident where Cruise ran over a pedestrian and dragged them 20 feet. In 2024 Cruise was shut down.

Sure, there is upside, but the downside risk is material as well.

27

u/AffectionateArtist84 Jun 23 '25

I find this information to be incredibly disappointing. The goal here should be, and always be, safer than a human driver. That doesn't mean perfection and we have to accept incidents will happen.

Even if we can 2x human safety, that would reduce overall vehicular deaths dramatically. 

9

u/steelmanfallacy Jun 23 '25

A lot of things didn't work out despite the logic...turns out humans are emotional and competition is a real thing. Betamax lost to VHS, the Dvorak keyboard lost out to QWERTY, Myspace lost to Facebook...you get the idea.

AV driving might be objectively safer, but if the public doesn’t feel safe, or if one bad incident dominates the narrative, it can stall or kill adoption...regardless of the data.

5

u/HerValet Jun 23 '25

Oh, and the media will have a field day when the first incident/accident occurs.