I don’t buy the Tesla Robotaxi -Hype – here is why it is still miles behind it
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- Tesla unveiled its “public” robotaxi service this weekend
- The service is currently an only invitation
- Reports suggest that it is still behind Waymo and other rivals
In a surprising turn of events, Tesla has held on to his recent timelines and actually Kick started a “public” autonomous Ride-Hailing service In Austin, Texas this weekend.
Although the Texas Musk legislators ask to postpone the procedure until it had completed and introduced the new laws around fully autonomous taxis, the controversial CEO has nevertheless plowed ahead.
As a result, Reports are on various social media networks They show the first few VIP invited people who enjoy their debut Robotaxi experience.
However, this is far removed from the futuristic Cybercab Scenario That Tesla showed during his Hollywood-Spec ‘We, Robot’ event in October last year, where tailor-made cybercabs told people around a film set and the Optimus Humanoid robots of the company, served drinks to partygoers, only for the world to discover that they were actually television.
It is a similar story with Tesla’s recent robotaxi striving, because the “fleet” of 10-20 model Y vehicles (with a number of robotaxi branding) is strictly limited to a small and relatively uncomplicated area of Austin, Texas.
They also only work between 6 a.m. and 12 a.m. and have an external operator in the passenger seat to manually verify and control the ID of the drivers if a problem arises.
The edge reported That some vehicles without a driver without Tesla are also followed by ‘chase’ vehicles, probably full of engineers who are ready to jump in when there is a problem that both the car and the external operators cannot handle it.
So far, only a select number of invitations to predominantly “pro-tesla” have been influenced, according to The edgeWith the first invitation list of test pilots who read as a WHOs-WHO of the Muskycophant Contingent-renowned Tesla Stock Hype-Man Sawyer Merritt are among those names.
Just like the ‘We, Robot’ event, this first launch phase feels very much as a huge PR stunt, in which the company essentially invites the ‘general public’ (read Tesla Content Creators) for a ride during the very early test phase, rather than during the widespread implementation of a legitimate, paid service.
Why Waymo is far ahead
It is impossible to talk about Tesla’s robotaxi service without calling the closest competitor Waymo, especially when Musk reportedly said after this successful first launch phase that there was to a thousand robotaxis on the road within a few months.
As a memory, Waymo currently has a fully operational fleet of 1500 vehicles on the road in four major cities in the US, with the areas in which it constantly expands in those cities. Everyone can call a cabin without a driver with a simple app interface and they see no one in the vehicle.
By the end of 2026 it hopes to have added another 2,000 vehicles according to one Blog post By the alphabet company that was released in May of this year, because it continues to prepare a fleet of Jaguar I-Pace cars for autonomous driving.
Waymo has also announced that it will be the first major customer of Hyundai’s mass-produced Ioniq 5-Robotaxi, which will help scale it even faster.
To think that Musk can achieve this phase for a few months after what is in fact a first test phase, Pure Fantasia is mainly because it is insisting to use a fully self -driving system with camera that the radars, Lidar and countless other sensors that the rivals say is mandatory for a reliable and safe service.
Scaling up is the real test
A number of videos have already surfaced Reddit That seem to show that Tesla Robotaxis behaves irregularly, waves at busy intersections and refers to the brakes for parked police cars that are not even put on the road.
Admitted, it is impossible to verify the authenticity of a Reddit video, but there is one growing list Of very public cases in which the full self -driving system of Tesla has been active during an accident.
The first few reviews of the experience seem largely positive, with most riders describing the drive as “flexible” or “human -like”, but these are still very early days.
First Tesla Robotaxi Ride [Full Drive] – YouTube
![First Tesla Robotaxi Ride [Full Drive] - YouTube](https://img.youtube.com/vi/_s-h0YXtF0c/maxresdefault.jpg)
Things become much more complicated like and when Tesla legitimate has thousands of vehicles on the road, it removes the operator on the passenger seat and builds it up his app so that the general public can really use it. I predict that that is away for at least two years.
In addition to Waymo, there are companies in China that also race ahead with active completely autonomous Ride-Hailing services. Baidu, Weride and Pony.ai have been gathering hundreds and thousands of kilometers.
Last year Baidu reportedly led fear of taxi drivers, car berves and the working public after it had launched a service without a driver in Wuhan who offered rides of around six miles (much further than the reported four or so kilometers of Tesla, can currently travel) for around 50 cents.
It undermines travel with a human driver at the wheel by about two dollars and of course turned out to be very popular, According to CNNWhich leads to panic that many jobs can run quickly.
As soon as the legal framework is present for the widespread rollout of autonomous vehicles, it would not be too much to think that the Chinese can penetrate and dominate the market … just like them have done with EVs.
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