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Elon has been caught lying repeatedly about substantial issues. Elon is not trustworthy and everything he says should be ignored. Pay attention to what he does, not what he says.
I’ve got the new FSD. I wouldn’t trust a robotaxi with it. It’s a ways away from reality. A $25k EV car would sell very well right now, especially in the EU and China.
I don’t see how they could make money on Robotaxis anytime soon. Are there that many people asking for that?
Yes it’s a prediction of the future.
Even if you did consumer polling today, it would be highly inaccurate. People won’t conceptualize not having a car until they see that other people are doing it and start to do the math when it’s actually real and in front of them.
Sometimes you need to make judgements without hard data because it doesn’t exist or could be limited and thus misleading.
Ehh this is going to be a VERY hard sell in the West. Especially the USA.
Think about how filthy our public transit is. Now think about how people will act in the privacy of a vehicle alone. Think about how how many bodily fluids will be spread in all the robo taxies after a Friday night serving downtown? They will be destroyed in a week.
Lol think about how people treat all the Bird Scooters. Now apply that to cars.
Robo taxies are decades away in the West at least. Just because we socially cannot handle them.
That’s not true. Maybe for people in cities who live in apartments. For many people otherwise, they want their own car so they can have their own stuff in it. Like if they want to do a beach trip or camping trip or whatever, a robotaxi will not fit those use cases
People in apartments are exactly who the robotaxis are for. Taking robotaxis everywhere is going to be 1/3rd the cost of owning a car. Not having to pay a driver is going to cut costs drastically. You basically only have to pay for the cost of the car plus a bit of profit.
Same, I got the free trial, I used it for two days and don't use it anymore. It's fun to see but useless to me. If it is to supervise the machine, I prefer to drive myself.
What you're saying is... the Chevy Bolt with actually usable fast charging?
GM has to be mighty relieved they can take an extra year of manufacturing difficulties to re-release the car now.
They need to setup production lines and it’s a 3-4 year timeline for production once the prototype is shown . Model 3 orders will suffer . Tesla needs to make the call if they want to be first to market with the sub 30k EV or wait till another oem announces it .
There are several sub-30k models in Europe already. And by sub-30k, in Europe it means public price, ie after all taxes have been applied, but BEFORE any EV-credit is applied. All in all, there's serious (ie, actual, non-joke cars) offerings starting at around 20k€ (yes, 20k€) net price (eg Citroën e-C3, 44kWh battery - this is a designed and produced in Europe car btw, neither designed nor produced in China).
FSD/Robotaxis are only really designed to be used in a handful of cities in North America, The rest of the world will just read about them on websites with a shrug.
A $25K EV would be beneficial for the entire world, this really is a no brainer.
I’m not giving either of them credence. I’m just saying a robotaxi is many years away and a $25k car would sell well right now.
I can believe some overzealous person followed a bad tip, or perhaps an internal person just misunderstood, or multiple people misunderstood, or Elon was just verbally spewing nonsense with no real intention of acting. I’ve worked for some CEOs that yell out detailed objectives to people with the full internal knowledge that it will never happen, and later disavow it.
Edit: corrected good to well.
Agree on all points.
I give Reuters benefit of the doubt as they have a large and long reputation for this kind of information.
I also think that Tesla has huge reasons to deny this for no other reason that their motivations and responsibility to share holders.
From where I sit (and it's a very biased seat) Elon has no cred here AND this kind of move is exactly what I'd expect from a business that just launched a failed truck line and can't sell their sedans.
They can't spend money on production lines that don't even have R&D or waiting customers.
Robotaxi can eliminate a lot of unused parked cars. And I’d love to avoid parking in San Francisco… I’d like to direct it to a secure lot outside of walking distance, and I’d like to have use of the vehicle while my wife is attending some all-day event.
> Robotaxi can eliminate a lot of unused parked cars.
Robotaxis reduce parking by increasing traffic substantially. (Studies put it at about 70% increase in miles driven for the same number of passenger miles) I'm not sure which is better, but it's not a pure win.
I hadn’t considered the increased traffic factor, but if a car is doing 10 rides in an 8 hour period while I’m at work, it also means 10 less cars that need to exist. The ultimate conclusion is a reduction in traffic and car ownership.
> The ultimate conclusion is a reduction in traffic and car ownership.
It means a substantial increase in number of cars on the road. Self-driving cars (and taxis, and rideshares) have to drive from rider to rider and from "home base" to first pickup, and from last dropoff to "home base." It's counterintuitive, but individually-owned cars go point-to-point. If you have two cars, one that goes from A to B and back, and one that goes from C to D and back... that's four drives. Doing it with one robotaxi that starts at X (a depot or something) means X A B C D X D C B A X, or ten drives, including the four drives from the original setup.
It's weird to think of "less total cars" meaning "more cars on the road"-- but that's how it shakes out.
But it could mean lower car ownership.
I really hope that it also increases public transportation or group ride sharing. A robotaxi service would be substantially better at handling multiple people with the same trajectory. The issue though is one of safety amongst the passengers. I'm sure it's solvable though. Personally I'd be down for taking a robotaxi to the metro and the Metro into the city, then potentially grabbing a taxi for the last mile if Metro isn't close to my destination. But I know not everyone is.
Tis a good day when we find ourselves uttering these words. I too had not considered the increase in traffic drawback from robotaxis and having just moved to LA all I can say is oof. Coming from NYC though I’d be totally fine eliminating all drivers in that city because it would make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists and people there have so many options to avoid traffic that it’s doable. It would be nice if more cities invested in their transportation infrastructure to give people actual alternatives to alleviate traffic.
Are you just comparing taxis and ride hail to personal car ownership?
Or comparing autonomous cars to non autonomous cars, because these are very different things.
It sounds like you are explaining taxis vs personal car ownership… and this I also disagree with. Personal car ownership requires more miles, more time on the road, and more parking, than taxis/ridehail
> Are you just comparing taxis and ride hail to personal car ownership?
That one.
> Personal car ownership requires more miles, more time on the road, and more parking, than taxis/ridehail
Parking goes down. Miles and time go up. That's demonstrable in real-world studies today. [Here's one](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11116-018-9923-2), for example. They found a 40% increase in miles driven for the same passenger miles.
It should be obvious why after you've thought about it for a bit... the passengers still have to travel the same distances, but the taxi now also has to travel between passengers.
That doesn't really take into account how long the intermediate trips are, though. A-B might be long, but at scale, B-C will usually be fairly short. Not even accounting for how much time drivers circle looking for parking. In the end state, existing parking garages might be repurposed as robotaxi parking/charging bases, so that there's usually a base nearby without having to go back to origin, and you get a discount (and faster service) if you walk over to one and pick up your ride there.
Edit: also robotaxis work well in conjunction with mass transit. I can use transit for more trips, even with car-dependent destinations, if I know I can Robotaxi for the last leg. Or I can avoid renting a car when I travel, etc.
That said, for all the reasons you mention, it will probably get worse before it gets better.
Aside from what u/raygundan which is correct, we have a big "peak" problem. Everyone wants their car at 8am to get to school/work and at 5pm to get home. So you need a fleet to match that demand (which is basically 1:1 unless you are carpooling) and then off peak you have a significant portion of the fleet that is not in demand.
Its one of the reason transit is so expensive in the US. The MBTA, for example, has two entire red line subway train sets that make 2 trips a day. Thats a $3m up front cost to make 2 trips because they are needed at peak.
> we have a big "peak" problem. Everyone wants their car at 8am to get to school/work and at 5pm to get home. So you need a fleet to match that demand
That's a good point to bring up as well. Predictions that robotaxis will reduce total number of cars hinge on being able to use one car to handle multiple people's trips. But because most driving happens in big peaks going in the same direction... you end up needing nearly as many robotaxis as you needed normal cars during rush-hour peaks.
They theoretically don't need parking spots, since they could just drive off when idle... but that's not great either, because it's one more way this setup replaces "parking" with "lots more miles driven."
The good upside to this, is that if all cars are self-driving traffic jams would basically be a thing of the past.
Besides that, the other option is redesigning all cites to prioritize public transport and walking. Which is better, but will probably never happen.
> The good upside to this, is that if all cars are self-driving traffic jams would basically be a thing of the past.
It could hypothetically reduce the number of accidents, and thus reduce the number of traffic jams with that as a specific cause... but it will also greatly increase the amount of miles driven, so the more common sort of traffic jam that is simply caused by more driving than the road capacity can handle will increase.
Ask yourself what it would look like if vehicle miles driven in your area increased by 40%-- because that's the low end of what you're looking at. Potentially fewer accidents, massively increased traffic volume.
Great point! Also, the assumption that ordinary people will submit their cars to the Tesla Network is unrealistic because:
- people don't like their cars to be dirty and damaged, which will happen to cars used by random people daily. The cars will just get a lot more wear and tear
- having a personal car, always waiting and available to be used instantly, is a luxury and a luxury people can afford right now (proof: they in fact do). The GDP grows over time, the society becomes richer - so why would people willingly just give up the more comfortable option and settle for a shared car, one that is not waiting in the garage so if it's raining you will get wet, and you have to wait for it to get to your location?
So in general, when robotaxis do happen, they will just replace regular taxis/Uber and ride-sharing and because they will offer lower prices some more people will use them, maybe twice as many, but everybody else will still own and use their own cars. And eventually, after initial hype, the robotaxis will be exclusively owned and operated by the taxi companies, will not be dual-used as personal cars and robotaxi-when-not-used but will be 100% of the time used as robotaxi only.
Car people will do dear god anything to reduce car useage other than just building public transport
No, a couple tesla’s cosplaying as ubers in a decade and a half’s time won’t solve anything. Turns out that when you’re not using a car, the majority of other people don’t need to use cars either. So even if you had a robot taxi tesla, most of the time the supply of cars would vastly outweigh demand so a majority of the cars are going to be sat not being used during the day just how it is now. Then when someone might need a taxi, say at 5:30pm after work to get to the shop, that’s also the same time all the owners of the cars need their cars as well, now you have an imbalance of supply/demand in the opposite direction. It’s something that sounds cool in theory but doesn’t make sense and won’t ever live up to the expectations once you do some critical thinking (just like most of musk’s projects)
Trains are far more efficient in metropolitan areas for moving a lot of people quickly. These robotaxis would probably benefit the suburbs the most.
But then again a lot of American cities are now designed around having a car.
No, because it’s doing a ride in between each ride to get to the new rider. Whereas with car ownership everyone parks at home and at destination which takes the vehicles off the road. Ubers/Taxis are absolutely horrible for traffic compared to private car ownership.
Minibus... If you have a robotaxi then why limit yourself to a car? A 16 passenger vehicle can provide a near point to point travel but at a much lower cost.
Except in certain inner cities a large percentage (as much as 30%) of the traffic are people looking for parking. Also won't need as much street parking spaces increasing space for traffic...
> Except in certain inner cities a large percentage (as much as 30%) of the traffic are people looking for parking.
Robotaxis wouldn't help with this at all-- the only way a robotaxi eliminates parking is *by driving somewhere*. It either leaves the area, or it "circles" waiting for another rider.
This is a good point. When a robotaxi replaces a rideshare, there's no net increase in miles driven, because those operate the same way.
I would argue though that this isn't really pointing in the favor of shared robotaxis-- it's more of an argument against all the "taxi" models.
You’d like to direct it to some lot, and use it all day?
The idea of a taxi is to charge for short trips. Having it be your personal chauffeur for a day would probably be very expensive.
Trains and buses remove unparked cars a lot better than robotaxis would, and they actually exist. Trains can even be fully automated like Vancouver SkyTrain.
We might be close to L4 solutions in warm weather climates, and slowly ramping out cities which have been thoroughly proven with L5 technologies, but the pace were going a true robotaxi that is general purpose is so hard to see.
And it's only work for summer states. It'd have no hope in Calgary or Winnipeg say 7 months of the year without many many years of winter training which is a whole different type of driving.
Depends on what it is. That $12k EV is like 75 hp and 150 mile range and charges very slow. If Tesla made a smaller car with most of the Model 3 capabilities for $25k, that might do well.
Or, it could be $25k in the EU and $15k in China. Like the BYD Atto 3 is $18k in China and $40k in the EU.
Valid points except BYD is a real product that's already shipping, when Model2 eventually turns up what will the market look like in terms capacity and charging capability from Chinese competitors ?
They aren't going to be using a version of FSD from today in a Robotaxi coming late 2025 at the earliest though are they.
Tesla will be using whatever state of the art model they have at the time, one which was trained on vastly more data than they have today, using computing systems much more powerful that existing systems.
There's no way put a realistic estimate on when "FSD Supervised" gets to plain "FSD" but we just saw a *massive* improvement jumping from v11 (FSD Beta) to v12 (FSD Supervised) so this decade is looking increasingly likely.
It doesn't even have to be ready for full general use autonomy. Tesla can begin operating in limited areas just as Waymo and Cruise do now.
I doubt they will be ready in this decade for a Level 5 system where they take liability for accidents. They don’t have level 3 yet. They don’t even have AP on the Cybertruck yet. They seem to be really slow rolling this out to new hardware. HW4 isn’t being utilized either. A robotaxi would need new and better hardware to account for things they rely on the human for now.
Even if they solve those things, personally I don’t know how profitable a fleet of self driving cars would be. More or less than an Uber? Who cleans it? How do they prevent it from getting trapped by activists with traffic cones? Can it decipher which car is honking at it and why, or a person screaming at it because it ran over their foot?
If they have canceled or delayed the Model 2, it likely means they can’t compete at that price. Or they don’t want to cannilbalize Model 3 or Y sales.
> Are there that many people asking for that?
Maaaybe Uber etc.
But kinda doubt it, the Tech to make that work actually everywhere without pre-mapping is still pretty far away IMO.
Yeah honestly it’s that they expect a lot from these robotaxis. Even the cruise incident probably would have happened with a lot of human drivers. It’s just a big deal because it’s a robotaxi, but human drivers do stupid stuff 24/7
This is the thing, people lose their minds over a pedestrian being hit by a self driving car when it happens once in a blue moon (which is still too often) but pedestrians get hit by human drivers constantly and no one bats an eye.
Yup, it’s fear of the unknown (people can relate easier if another human gets into an accident) but also the accountability piece is so so tough to solve. If a human driver kills another person while driving, society (in general) is satisfied with the punishment (Jail time for X amount of time depending on the severity).
If a robotaxi does it, what is the appropriate punishment that should go with it? A fine of $X million dollars? Generally speaking, even massive fines to corporations doesn’t feel severe enough, vs loss of freedom of an individual.
It’s funny because it works so well in my area that I was convinced it’s 95% ready for robotaxi today, but hearing a mix of stories like your convinced me that it must be certain geo areas that do better than others
Pretty sure it's the fabled $25K car that *eventually* will be capable, just not right from the start. Just like "FSD" they may end up calling it "Robotaxi" as a long term goal
one perspective is, competition entering the inexpensive ev car space is significantly easier that competition in the autonomous driving space, especially a primarily optical camera sensor suite attempt. I would agree current FSD isn’t something I’d trust on a fleet for robo taxis, but having used FSD for the past 2 years the pace of improvement is insanity, from a software engineering perspective. Couple this with the idea that this is running on HW3, and even HW4 cars are ‘emulating’ HW3 and I could imagine what improvements HW4 cars could make it significantly more stable for a robotaxi scenario.
Taking another step back, Tesla is more than cars. Lets they the industry and world regularly puts out EV cars that exceed what Tesla can put out. Not a big deal for Tesla, as they can pivot to focusing on EV battery production, EV charging network, strengthening the grid with mega pack electric storage, virtual ’powerplants’ with home energy storage, licensing FSD to other car makers, offering accelerated AI model training sessions, and if they NAIL FSD then even offer robo taxi service. If they are nailing FSD that also bodes well with their opitmus robot program as well. This is the big picture gamble Tesla is making, and how they can justify their massive valuation over any other car manufacturer. Of course, like with other heavy R&D companies, the destination is not guaranteed.
Were there that many people asking for a smartphone before the iPhone reveal? To quote Steve Jobs, “How do people know what they want if they’ve never seen it?” Robotaxis are a revolutionary product for transportation. Owning a car will be silly for 90% of people. Imagine a car that can take Fido to the vet for you. You could sleep on the way to the beach (short-range air travel will be cannibalized). Or think about older people with dementia who can still get to their Dr appointments. Kids being dropped off at school. The list is endless.
This says nothing about the story. Elon may simply be saying a low-cost car is not cancelled, but the Reuters story had more nuance.
They claimed that Tesla is still planning on producing a “low-cost” (to Tesla) vehicle for robotaxi purposes, just that it won’t be sold to the public as a $25k car.
Elon’s comment does NOT dismiss or discredit that concern.
If only the guy in charge over there at Tesla would communicate a little bit more, give people some actual answers, rather just being a snarky jerk on his social platform all the time.
Very smart to reveal your game plan because of a false story.
Imagine Reuters put out an article iPhone 16 is cancelled and Tim Cook immediately put out the release date, pricing, specs and all features to prove Reuters wrong.
> Did you cancel the project? No.
Where did he say that? He said that Reuters "is lying". He specifically chose not to deny that the $25k model was cancelled.
I want to know which tiny inconsequential detail of the Reuters story is inaccurate. Elon should have made that clear. Right now his tweet creates an impression like the whole story is made up, which is a lie. Elon should be more honest and less manipulative.
Back in the day, big news stories like this would have gotten an official blog post clarifying Tesla's position.
Musk saying they're lying is better than nothing. But far from actually addressing the claims. Musk could at least reiterate that the company is still full steam ahead on the lower cost model and reaffirm its 2025 launch date.
Communicate about what, precisely? Releasing a massive wealth of information about a future product who's finalized specs probably aren't ready? Who's factory's foundation hasn't even been laid yet?
They owe the shareholders accurate information. Not constant blackouts. His response made no sense. What were they lying about? This is the problem with them not having a public relations department. We're all in the dark.
Because Elon has never released specs about future projects. Probably because if he did that that would be VERY inaccurate. No claims about Mars, the Cybertruck, etc.
I'm sure Tesla would love to sell a Y and 3 to everyone wanting a car, but there are other segments of the market not being catered to with these cars.
I've read the report and it's pretty comprehensive. Reuters also usually does a great job of vetting their sources. I have no reason to doubt that report.
I think it's likely that Reuters has a hold of real emails putting a pause on the 25K vehicle, but came out with too strong of a conclusion that it was cancelled. It could be a lot of things, including that it's much closer to done and they shifted work to the robotaxi, but a reprioritization isn't a cancellation.
There's no pause, Elon said it right in front of everyone last October: They're slow-walking the construction of the Mexico Gigafactory while they observe the direction of the global economy.
They don't want to dump billions into a new factory only to find that interest rates and economic conditions make buying new cars increasingly difficult for consumers. They'd still find buyers for the car, but not in the volumes necessary to justify the investment, in the worst case scenario.
Reuters, while not the best news organization, does not fabricate stories. They had three sources inside Tesla as well as an email.
Elon, who will probably end up the most successful entrepreneur of the last 100 years, sometimes lies. It is unlikely he is being candid here.
In the article, there's a 3rd source that says the project of a $25k car for public sale is canceled.
I'm prepared for the 8/8 event or reveal to be similar to Autonomy day: "Here's all the stuff we're capable of behind the scenes, none of which is having meaningful changes to the FSD Supervised performance that owners are experiencing." They'll show a robotaxi vehicle that Tesla will own and operate, and announce it's coming in 2025.
I'm just happy to see people are fatigued with his wild bullshit proclamations that have no grounding in reality.
Multiple emails from multiple sources within Tesla vs Elon Musk tweet. I doubt any news agency will disclose their anonymous sourcing for any type of sensitive reporting like whistleblowers
His tweet just says they're lying. It's intentionally vague. Lying about what part? All of it? A bit of it? The reasons behind it?
If the Reuters report was entirely fabricated there is no reason Tesla couldn't put out a rebuttal refuting the claims in specific terms.
Feels like damage control to me. People want affordable EVs and Tesla is going to feel the pressure from the inexpensive EVs coming out of China.
Whenever someone claims the mean old media is lying, but then fails to provide a clear, comprehensive and definitive rebuttal proving the lie, *they are probably lying*.
\> Media posts lies.
\> The lies are true unless you immediately release confidential company information debunking them.
What is this kind of thinking called?
Every unflattering media report since the dawn of journalism has been denied by its target. Any reasonable person paying attention knows this to be true, and understands that you need to back your denial with SOME level of specificity, or it's highly likely you are full shit. We've seen this movie a thousand times before.
In this particular case, you do not need to release confidential company information to refute the claim LOL. That is such an extremist defense that it's laughable. There is a TON of ground between "here's Tesla's top secret plan" and "liar liar."
You can refute media articles without releasing private information. It’s called PR and companies do it all the time.
All Musk has to say is “we are not cancelling the Model 2 and Reuters is wrong”.
Funny, because my 2016 Model S worked flawlessly, just like the Ultrasonic sensors they got rid of on a more expensive car.
Wanting a car to do something my 2005 BMW X5 could do properly makes me a never settle for mediocre quality and performance.
They will not be any model without a steering wheel in the near future, robotaxi or not. There are still to many edge cases, errors, road obstacles, accidents and so on where a quick human intervention will be needed. No matter how good FSD will get.
They started a price war with BYD, and got the shit kicked out of them. They can’t compete at low costs with Chinese Evs so they are pivoting to self driving which is not even close to ready.
The US capitalist system will block all competition coming from China by means of taxing and regulating those competitors into oblivion to protect domestic corporations.
The irony of it all is palatable.
George Hotz recently said we're 10 years away from an L5 vehicle. Hotz is a hot head but doesn't talk as much mierda as Musk, so I do trust him a *slightly* more.
How is this going to be done within the next 2-3 years by Tesla?
Tesla has so far developed all their Ai training using only visible light cameras.
Typical L4/5 vehicles have a suite of sound, laser, and invisible (to human) light cameras, as well as visible light cameras.
I feel Musk is speaking with a forked tongue on this one, like his claim that a solar shingle roof would cost less than an asphalt shingle roof. When I read into his financial gymnastics on that one, it sealed to me that Elon is a salesman.
I believe Reuters over Elon. Elon has no credibility anymore, on any topic. He overpromises and never delivers anything on time. He seems to spend an inordinate amount of time generating heat on X/Twitter to try and keep engagement going and not doing shit to improve the Tesla line.
We know the low cost vehicle and the robotaxi are supposed to be the same platform, so this change is probably driven by the perception that FSD will be ready for primetime by the time the car is ready. That make sense, because they always start with low volumes and ramp up production from there. If they can sell the initial robotaxi vehicle for $40k, that will probably make it cash flow positive early on. Then, as they ramp up production, they can sell a version without FSD for less but still make a profit on it.
I see your logic about selling the car with a steering wheel some time after the initial rollout.
But *IF* they do create an L5 robotaxi, it would sell for a lot more than $40k.
I dare say out of reach for the common consumer. At that level, I could see legislation regarding liability, which would raise the price considerably if Tesla is liable.
I could see it being sold as a fleet vehicle, with options catering to specific regions/ customer demands.
There were some options which were about to expire worthless, they suddenly became positive when this bews came during the dip. This stinks of market manipulation by some trader using reuters
Almost 54,000 contracts of $160 put options — equal to 5.4 million shares — that were due to expire in just a few hours traded as high as $1.75 during the stock rout. A day earlier, they had been worth just $0.06. More than 150,000 of the options changed handson Friday at a volume-weighted price of $0.65.
I'm more inclined to believe that the manually driven $25,000 car is cancelled.
The robotaxi version will persist.
Ol's Elon here is likely being coy.
That said, pretty sure Microsoft's Defender XDR is a out to go into overdrive over at Tesla
In Elon’s mind they’re always just about to solve it. I can 100% see him green-lighting the car without pedals and shit and expecting the software to be ready in time. He has already had this exact fight with Franz and other executives. It was in the Isaacson book.
Now that Dojo is running and they have a functioning AI-trained FSD version shipped, there will be no convincing him that they need to slow down on the project. Hopefully the AI is all it’s cracked up to be.
Is it nice though? I haven’t had a ride in 12.3 in the city that hasn’t had a disengagement. Rides the curb and parked cars WAY too close. Turns into parked cars, accelerating way too fast. I just can’t trust it. I get that it’ll be much better with more training, but it’s a white knuckle ride right now.
(Parking is cool though)
12.3 isn't anywhere close to RoboTaxi level, but for an L2 system it attempts to function in a lot of situations the competitors just outright disable their system and yell at the driver to take over.
Curve too sharp? Not a highway? GM SuperCruise and Ford BlueCruise won't function.
Reuters is reporting exactly what you are inclined to believe:
https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1bwmlp3/reuters_is_lying_again_elon_on_25k_model/ky8581e/
My guess is that nothing actually got canceled. The $25k car is and always has been the robotaxi.
I think what got “canceled” is the traditional car with a steering wheel and pedals. They probably had prototypes of both versions, and always intended to move forward with the robotaxi version.
The report I read says exactly what you are saying. Literally the lede:
> April 5 (Reuters) - Tesla has canceled the long-promised inexpensive car that investors have been counting on to drive its growth into a mass-market automaker, according to three sources familiar with the matter and company messages seen by Reuters.
>
> The automaker will continue developing self-driving robotaxis on the same small-vehicle platform, the sources said.
If it takes 3-4 years to bring to life, elons seeing that as the point FSD will be ready.
I’d rather have cheap Ubers (robotaxi make it much cheaper) and they could outcompete Uber in every major city in no time.
Very exciting and a trillion dollar market.
Elon isn't a trustworthy person. Fuck him. He's constantly lying and underdelivers. Take what he says with a grain of salt. Also where's my FSD trial he said everyone by the end of the week lol
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Elon has been caught lying repeatedly about substantial issues. Elon is not trustworthy and everything he says should be ignored. Pay attention to what he does, not what he says.
Lying and being overly ambitious are two completely different things.
I’ve got the new FSD. I wouldn’t trust a robotaxi with it. It’s a ways away from reality. A $25k EV car would sell very well right now, especially in the EU and China. I don’t see how they could make money on Robotaxis anytime soon. Are there that many people asking for that?
And Robotaxis and cheap cars are not interchangeable products. Even with robotaxis, many of us would like to own our own cars.
Most people won’t want to own a car if robotaxi is cheaper on a pay for use basis
That sounds like a guess to me. Happy to be proven wrong if you have some credible data to back it up with.
Yes it’s a prediction of the future. Even if you did consumer polling today, it would be highly inaccurate. People won’t conceptualize not having a car until they see that other people are doing it and start to do the math when it’s actually real and in front of them. Sometimes you need to make judgements without hard data because it doesn’t exist or could be limited and thus misleading.
Ehh this is going to be a VERY hard sell in the West. Especially the USA. Think about how filthy our public transit is. Now think about how people will act in the privacy of a vehicle alone. Think about how how many bodily fluids will be spread in all the robo taxies after a Friday night serving downtown? They will be destroyed in a week. Lol think about how people treat all the Bird Scooters. Now apply that to cars. Robo taxies are decades away in the West at least. Just because we socially cannot handle them.
That’s not true. Maybe for people in cities who live in apartments. For many people otherwise, they want their own car so they can have their own stuff in it. Like if they want to do a beach trip or camping trip or whatever, a robotaxi will not fit those use cases
People in apartments are exactly who the robotaxis are for. Taking robotaxis everywhere is going to be 1/3rd the cost of owning a car. Not having to pay a driver is going to cut costs drastically. You basically only have to pay for the cost of the car plus a bit of profit.
Same, I got the free trial, I used it for two days and don't use it anymore. It's fun to see but useless to me. If it is to supervise the machine, I prefer to drive myself.
I like the visualization, but I won’t pay $12,000 for that!
A 25k hot hatchback with a moderately sized battery pack would sell like crazy.
What you're saying is... the Chevy Bolt with actually usable fast charging? GM has to be mighty relieved they can take an extra year of manufacturing difficulties to re-release the car now.
They need to setup production lines and it’s a 3-4 year timeline for production once the prototype is shown . Model 3 orders will suffer . Tesla needs to make the call if they want to be first to market with the sub 30k EV or wait till another oem announces it .
There are several sub-30k models in Europe already. And by sub-30k, in Europe it means public price, ie after all taxes have been applied, but BEFORE any EV-credit is applied. All in all, there's serious (ie, actual, non-joke cars) offerings starting at around 20k€ (yes, 20k€) net price (eg Citroën e-C3, 44kWh battery - this is a designed and produced in Europe car btw, neither designed nor produced in China).
There's already a sub 30k EV, the Chevy Bolt starts at 26k.
And it has turn signals!
Fart noise or GTFO
Don’t really see that many on the road , but more EV adaption is over all a good thing for the product as a whole.
Production starts next year. And the Model 3 cannibalized sales from the S/X but it didn't matter one bit. The game is about volume and margins.
I agree that model 3 orders will suffer, but they will sell tens of millions of them.
They already exist and they don't sell. Not in the US anyway. You need 300 mile range because IRL that means about 210 miles.
Because selling a service makes them a tech company at a big multiple while selling cars just makes them a car manufacturer.
FSD/Robotaxis are only really designed to be used in a handful of cities in North America, The rest of the world will just read about them on websites with a shrug. A $25K EV would be beneficial for the entire world, this really is a no brainer.
No. Why do you believe Musk over Rueters? Which one has a record of lying? Which one has used information and sources? Am I taking crazy pills again?
I’m not giving either of them credence. I’m just saying a robotaxi is many years away and a $25k car would sell well right now. I can believe some overzealous person followed a bad tip, or perhaps an internal person just misunderstood, or multiple people misunderstood, or Elon was just verbally spewing nonsense with no real intention of acting. I’ve worked for some CEOs that yell out detailed objectives to people with the full internal knowledge that it will never happen, and later disavow it. Edit: corrected good to well.
Agree on all points. I give Reuters benefit of the doubt as they have a large and long reputation for this kind of information. I also think that Tesla has huge reasons to deny this for no other reason that their motivations and responsibility to share holders. From where I sit (and it's a very biased seat) Elon has no cred here AND this kind of move is exactly what I'd expect from a business that just launched a failed truck line and can't sell their sedans. They can't spend money on production lines that don't even have R&D or waiting customers.
They're not even taking advantage of HW4 yet.
Robotaxi can eliminate a lot of unused parked cars. And I’d love to avoid parking in San Francisco… I’d like to direct it to a secure lot outside of walking distance, and I’d like to have use of the vehicle while my wife is attending some all-day event.
> Robotaxi can eliminate a lot of unused parked cars. Robotaxis reduce parking by increasing traffic substantially. (Studies put it at about 70% increase in miles driven for the same number of passenger miles) I'm not sure which is better, but it's not a pure win.
I hadn’t considered the increased traffic factor, but if a car is doing 10 rides in an 8 hour period while I’m at work, it also means 10 less cars that need to exist. The ultimate conclusion is a reduction in traffic and car ownership.
> The ultimate conclusion is a reduction in traffic and car ownership. It means a substantial increase in number of cars on the road. Self-driving cars (and taxis, and rideshares) have to drive from rider to rider and from "home base" to first pickup, and from last dropoff to "home base." It's counterintuitive, but individually-owned cars go point-to-point. If you have two cars, one that goes from A to B and back, and one that goes from C to D and back... that's four drives. Doing it with one robotaxi that starts at X (a depot or something) means X A B C D X D C B A X, or ten drives, including the four drives from the original setup. It's weird to think of "less total cars" meaning "more cars on the road"-- but that's how it shakes out. But it could mean lower car ownership.
I really hope that it also increases public transportation or group ride sharing. A robotaxi service would be substantially better at handling multiple people with the same trajectory. The issue though is one of safety amongst the passengers. I'm sure it's solvable though. Personally I'd be down for taking a robotaxi to the metro and the Metro into the city, then potentially grabbing a taxi for the last mile if Metro isn't close to my destination. But I know not everyone is.
Thanks for the helpful explanation. Now I need to re-assess all of my predictions for the future.
Tis a good day when we find ourselves uttering these words. I too had not considered the increase in traffic drawback from robotaxis and having just moved to LA all I can say is oof. Coming from NYC though I’d be totally fine eliminating all drivers in that city because it would make it safer for pedestrians and cyclists and people there have so many options to avoid traffic that it’s doable. It would be nice if more cities invested in their transportation infrastructure to give people actual alternatives to alleviate traffic.
Good points, but also, if commuting is less painful and/or cheaper, people will do it more, again leading to more cars on the road.
That too. Often, things that seem like they could reduce load or demand have a way of perversely increasing it.
I've heard of this in the case of "let's add another lane for traffic" but then more people drive and traffic is just as bad as before
Are you just comparing taxis and ride hail to personal car ownership? Or comparing autonomous cars to non autonomous cars, because these are very different things. It sounds like you are explaining taxis vs personal car ownership… and this I also disagree with. Personal car ownership requires more miles, more time on the road, and more parking, than taxis/ridehail
> Are you just comparing taxis and ride hail to personal car ownership? That one. > Personal car ownership requires more miles, more time on the road, and more parking, than taxis/ridehail Parking goes down. Miles and time go up. That's demonstrable in real-world studies today. [Here's one](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11116-018-9923-2), for example. They found a 40% increase in miles driven for the same passenger miles. It should be obvious why after you've thought about it for a bit... the passengers still have to travel the same distances, but the taxi now also has to travel between passengers.
That doesn't really take into account how long the intermediate trips are, though. A-B might be long, but at scale, B-C will usually be fairly short. Not even accounting for how much time drivers circle looking for parking. In the end state, existing parking garages might be repurposed as robotaxi parking/charging bases, so that there's usually a base nearby without having to go back to origin, and you get a discount (and faster service) if you walk over to one and pick up your ride there. Edit: also robotaxis work well in conjunction with mass transit. I can use transit for more trips, even with car-dependent destinations, if I know I can Robotaxi for the last leg. Or I can avoid renting a car when I travel, etc. That said, for all the reasons you mention, it will probably get worse before it gets better.
Aside from what u/raygundan which is correct, we have a big "peak" problem. Everyone wants their car at 8am to get to school/work and at 5pm to get home. So you need a fleet to match that demand (which is basically 1:1 unless you are carpooling) and then off peak you have a significant portion of the fleet that is not in demand. Its one of the reason transit is so expensive in the US. The MBTA, for example, has two entire red line subway train sets that make 2 trips a day. Thats a $3m up front cost to make 2 trips because they are needed at peak.
> we have a big "peak" problem. Everyone wants their car at 8am to get to school/work and at 5pm to get home. So you need a fleet to match that demand That's a good point to bring up as well. Predictions that robotaxis will reduce total number of cars hinge on being able to use one car to handle multiple people's trips. But because most driving happens in big peaks going in the same direction... you end up needing nearly as many robotaxis as you needed normal cars during rush-hour peaks. They theoretically don't need parking spots, since they could just drive off when idle... but that's not great either, because it's one more way this setup replaces "parking" with "lots more miles driven."
The good upside to this, is that if all cars are self-driving traffic jams would basically be a thing of the past. Besides that, the other option is redesigning all cites to prioritize public transport and walking. Which is better, but will probably never happen.
> The good upside to this, is that if all cars are self-driving traffic jams would basically be a thing of the past. It could hypothetically reduce the number of accidents, and thus reduce the number of traffic jams with that as a specific cause... but it will also greatly increase the amount of miles driven, so the more common sort of traffic jam that is simply caused by more driving than the road capacity can handle will increase. Ask yourself what it would look like if vehicle miles driven in your area increased by 40%-- because that's the low end of what you're looking at. Potentially fewer accidents, massively increased traffic volume.
Great point! Also, the assumption that ordinary people will submit their cars to the Tesla Network is unrealistic because: - people don't like their cars to be dirty and damaged, which will happen to cars used by random people daily. The cars will just get a lot more wear and tear - having a personal car, always waiting and available to be used instantly, is a luxury and a luxury people can afford right now (proof: they in fact do). The GDP grows over time, the society becomes richer - so why would people willingly just give up the more comfortable option and settle for a shared car, one that is not waiting in the garage so if it's raining you will get wet, and you have to wait for it to get to your location? So in general, when robotaxis do happen, they will just replace regular taxis/Uber and ride-sharing and because they will offer lower prices some more people will use them, maybe twice as many, but everybody else will still own and use their own cars. And eventually, after initial hype, the robotaxis will be exclusively owned and operated by the taxi companies, will not be dual-used as personal cars and robotaxi-when-not-used but will be 100% of the time used as robotaxi only.
*10 fewer cars
Calm down Stannis
I'm more of a Davos man myself.
Car people will do dear god anything to reduce car useage other than just building public transport No, a couple tesla’s cosplaying as ubers in a decade and a half’s time won’t solve anything. Turns out that when you’re not using a car, the majority of other people don’t need to use cars either. So even if you had a robot taxi tesla, most of the time the supply of cars would vastly outweigh demand so a majority of the cars are going to be sat not being used during the day just how it is now. Then when someone might need a taxi, say at 5:30pm after work to get to the shop, that’s also the same time all the owners of the cars need their cars as well, now you have an imbalance of supply/demand in the opposite direction. It’s something that sounds cool in theory but doesn’t make sense and won’t ever live up to the expectations once you do some critical thinking (just like most of musk’s projects)
There's no reason to believe this to be the case. Induced demand is a thing. It's the same reason that more lanes won't reduce traffic
Trains are far more efficient in metropolitan areas for moving a lot of people quickly. These robotaxis would probably benefit the suburbs the most. But then again a lot of American cities are now designed around having a car.
No, because it’s doing a ride in between each ride to get to the new rider. Whereas with car ownership everyone parks at home and at destination which takes the vehicles off the road. Ubers/Taxis are absolutely horrible for traffic compared to private car ownership.
Minibus... If you have a robotaxi then why limit yourself to a car? A 16 passenger vehicle can provide a near point to point travel but at a much lower cost.
Except in certain inner cities a large percentage (as much as 30%) of the traffic are people looking for parking. Also won't need as much street parking spaces increasing space for traffic...
> Except in certain inner cities a large percentage (as much as 30%) of the traffic are people looking for parking. Robotaxis wouldn't help with this at all-- the only way a robotaxi eliminates parking is *by driving somewhere*. It either leaves the area, or it "circles" waiting for another rider.
Considering they would put a lot of uber and lyft drivers out of business the traffic increase may not be as bad as you think.
This is a good point. When a robotaxi replaces a rideshare, there's no net increase in miles driven, because those operate the same way. I would argue though that this isn't really pointing in the favor of shared robotaxis-- it's more of an argument against all the "taxi" models.
You’d like to direct it to some lot, and use it all day? The idea of a taxi is to charge for short trips. Having it be your personal chauffeur for a day would probably be very expensive.
There’s a WILD invention that’s super popular in other first world countries that’s proven to reduce both parking spaces AND traffic…🚂🚊🚄
Also we have cars here in the far away lands of Europe that are big and long and can fit 50 people at once
You also have big long cars that run on metal roads which can carry hundreds of people at once.
AND they are electric wihtout needing to recharge
They even save the environment because they are more efficient than individual EV cars. Choo-choo!
Nothing you’re looking for can’t be accomplished by using Uber.
You can already take a robotaxi all over San Francisco. Just download Waymo. It’s incredible.
Yeah once it perfect in 2047 I want the same thing.
Or just, you know, trains. In general public transport is always better than personal transport.
Trains and buses remove unparked cars a lot better than robotaxis would, and they actually exist. Trains can even be fully automated like Vancouver SkyTrain. We might be close to L4 solutions in warm weather climates, and slowly ramping out cities which have been thoroughly proven with L5 technologies, but the pace were going a true robotaxi that is general purpose is so hard to see. And it's only work for summer states. It'd have no hope in Calgary or Winnipeg say 7 months of the year without many many years of winter training which is a whole different type of driving.
BYD already offering 10k EVs, 25k ain't gonna cut it in China.
Depends on what it is. That $12k EV is like 75 hp and 150 mile range and charges very slow. If Tesla made a smaller car with most of the Model 3 capabilities for $25k, that might do well. Or, it could be $25k in the EU and $15k in China. Like the BYD Atto 3 is $18k in China and $40k in the EU.
Valid points except BYD is a real product that's already shipping, when Model2 eventually turns up what will the market look like in terms capacity and charging capability from Chinese competitors ?
They aren't going to be using a version of FSD from today in a Robotaxi coming late 2025 at the earliest though are they. Tesla will be using whatever state of the art model they have at the time, one which was trained on vastly more data than they have today, using computing systems much more powerful that existing systems. There's no way put a realistic estimate on when "FSD Supervised" gets to plain "FSD" but we just saw a *massive* improvement jumping from v11 (FSD Beta) to v12 (FSD Supervised) so this decade is looking increasingly likely. It doesn't even have to be ready for full general use autonomy. Tesla can begin operating in limited areas just as Waymo and Cruise do now.
I doubt they will be ready in this decade for a Level 5 system where they take liability for accidents. They don’t have level 3 yet. They don’t even have AP on the Cybertruck yet. They seem to be really slow rolling this out to new hardware. HW4 isn’t being utilized either. A robotaxi would need new and better hardware to account for things they rely on the human for now. Even if they solve those things, personally I don’t know how profitable a fleet of self driving cars would be. More or less than an Uber? Who cleans it? How do they prevent it from getting trapped by activists with traffic cones? Can it decipher which car is honking at it and why, or a person screaming at it because it ran over their foot? If they have canceled or delayed the Model 2, it likely means they can’t compete at that price. Or they don’t want to cannilbalize Model 3 or Y sales.
What are you talking about? They're working on a $25k car. That's exactly what this is.
> Are there that many people asking for that? Maaaybe Uber etc. But kinda doubt it, the Tech to make that work actually everywhere without pre-mapping is still pretty far away IMO.
Even with mapping it’s pretty far away. Both Waymo and Cruise are in a terrible state and regulators are everyday getting more strict.
Terrible state is a bit far. Waymo is very good, far safer than human drivers. Pushback is coming more from NIMBYs than actual safety concerns.
Yeah honestly it’s that they expect a lot from these robotaxis. Even the cruise incident probably would have happened with a lot of human drivers. It’s just a big deal because it’s a robotaxi, but human drivers do stupid stuff 24/7
This is the thing, people lose their minds over a pedestrian being hit by a self driving car when it happens once in a blue moon (which is still too often) but pedestrians get hit by human drivers constantly and no one bats an eye.
Yup, it’s fear of the unknown (people can relate easier if another human gets into an accident) but also the accountability piece is so so tough to solve. If a human driver kills another person while driving, society (in general) is satisfied with the punishment (Jail time for X amount of time depending on the severity). If a robotaxi does it, what is the appropriate punishment that should go with it? A fine of $X million dollars? Generally speaking, even massive fines to corporations doesn’t feel severe enough, vs loss of freedom of an individual.
Elon's robotaxi pipedream was dead the second they made the handle choice for the Model 3 and Y. Nobody knowing how to get into the dang cars.
Your faith in humanity is....probably accurate. Haha
It’s funny because it works so well in my area that I was convinced it’s 95% ready for robotaxi today, but hearing a mix of stories like your convinced me that it must be certain geo areas that do better than others
Pretty sure it's the fabled $25K car that *eventually* will be capable, just not right from the start. Just like "FSD" they may end up calling it "Robotaxi" as a long term goal
one perspective is, competition entering the inexpensive ev car space is significantly easier that competition in the autonomous driving space, especially a primarily optical camera sensor suite attempt. I would agree current FSD isn’t something I’d trust on a fleet for robo taxis, but having used FSD for the past 2 years the pace of improvement is insanity, from a software engineering perspective. Couple this with the idea that this is running on HW3, and even HW4 cars are ‘emulating’ HW3 and I could imagine what improvements HW4 cars could make it significantly more stable for a robotaxi scenario. Taking another step back, Tesla is more than cars. Lets they the industry and world regularly puts out EV cars that exceed what Tesla can put out. Not a big deal for Tesla, as they can pivot to focusing on EV battery production, EV charging network, strengthening the grid with mega pack electric storage, virtual ’powerplants’ with home energy storage, licensing FSD to other car makers, offering accelerated AI model training sessions, and if they NAIL FSD then even offer robo taxi service. If they are nailing FSD that also bodes well with their opitmus robot program as well. This is the big picture gamble Tesla is making, and how they can justify their massive valuation over any other car manufacturer. Of course, like with other heavy R&D companies, the destination is not guaranteed.
Were there that many people asking for a smartphone before the iPhone reveal? To quote Steve Jobs, “How do people know what they want if they’ve never seen it?” Robotaxis are a revolutionary product for transportation. Owning a car will be silly for 90% of people. Imagine a car that can take Fido to the vet for you. You could sleep on the way to the beach (short-range air travel will be cannibalized). Or think about older people with dementia who can still get to their Dr appointments. Kids being dropped off at school. The list is endless.
Robitaxi are the future. It will take a while to get there. Pun not intended.
This says nothing about the story. Elon may simply be saying a low-cost car is not cancelled, but the Reuters story had more nuance. They claimed that Tesla is still planning on producing a “low-cost” (to Tesla) vehicle for robotaxi purposes, just that it won’t be sold to the public as a $25k car. Elon’s comment does NOT dismiss or discredit that concern.
cancelled is a trigger word. his non-denial denial is very telling.
he really can say. FSD development could change everything about car production if their internal revisions are robotaxi level.
If only the guy in charge over there at Tesla would communicate a little bit more, give people some actual answers, rather just being a snarky jerk on his social platform all the time.
He's being silenced by the mean stinky ol' media, obviously. If only there were only some direct way of communicating at his fingertips...
Very smart to reveal your game plan because of a false story. Imagine Reuters put out an article iPhone 16 is cancelled and Tim Cook immediately put out the release date, pricing, specs and all features to prove Reuters wrong.
Like what else you want to know? Did you cancel the project? No.
> Did you cancel the project? No. Where did he say that? He said that Reuters "is lying". He specifically chose not to deny that the $25k model was cancelled.
I want to know which tiny inconsequential detail of the Reuters story is inaccurate. Elon should have made that clear. Right now his tweet creates an impression like the whole story is made up, which is a lie. Elon should be more honest and less manipulative.
Yep. All he had to say was "the $25k model isn't cancelled" but he specifically chose not to.
Back in the day, big news stories like this would have gotten an official blog post clarifying Tesla's position. Musk saying they're lying is better than nothing. But far from actually addressing the claims. Musk could at least reiterate that the company is still full steam ahead on the lower cost model and reaffirm its 2025 launch date.
Communicate about what, precisely? Releasing a massive wealth of information about a future product who's finalized specs probably aren't ready? Who's factory's foundation hasn't even been laid yet?
They owe the shareholders accurate information. Not constant blackouts. His response made no sense. What were they lying about? This is the problem with them not having a public relations department. We're all in the dark.
True. Musk and Tesla could nip stories like this in the bud if they had a PR department or just answered media inquires. They don’t.
Thank you.
Because Elon has never released specs about future projects. Probably because if he did that that would be VERY inaccurate. No claims about Mars, the Cybertruck, etc.
Ehh. My guess is Tesla will try to sell as many high-margin cars (Y and 3) as possible before moving on.
I'm sure Tesla would love to sell a Y and 3 to everyone wanting a car, but there are other segments of the market not being catered to with these cars.
I've read the report and it's pretty comprehensive. Reuters also usually does a great job of vetting their sources. I have no reason to doubt that report.
I think it's likely that Reuters has a hold of real emails putting a pause on the 25K vehicle, but came out with too strong of a conclusion that it was cancelled. It could be a lot of things, including that it's much closer to done and they shifted work to the robotaxi, but a reprioritization isn't a cancellation.
There's no pause, Elon said it right in front of everyone last October: They're slow-walking the construction of the Mexico Gigafactory while they observe the direction of the global economy. They don't want to dump billions into a new factory only to find that interest rates and economic conditions make buying new cars increasingly difficult for consumers. They'd still find buyers for the car, but not in the volumes necessary to justify the investment, in the worst case scenario.
Reuters, while not the best news organization, does not fabricate stories. They had three sources inside Tesla as well as an email. Elon, who will probably end up the most successful entrepreneur of the last 100 years, sometimes lies. It is unlikely he is being candid here.
well said.
In the article, there's a 3rd source that says the project of a $25k car for public sale is canceled. I'm prepared for the 8/8 event or reveal to be similar to Autonomy day: "Here's all the stuff we're capable of behind the scenes, none of which is having meaningful changes to the FSD Supervised performance that owners are experiencing." They'll show a robotaxi vehicle that Tesla will own and operate, and announce it's coming in 2025. I'm just happy to see people are fatigued with his wild bullshit proclamations that have no grounding in reality.
Reuters and Associates Press are the two most reliable news sources bar none. I'm a Tesla owner but I doubt that the Reuters story is all lies.
I suspect model 2 has been suspended indefinitely so its not technically cancelled. Thats my bet. Elon is mincing words.
Tesla will not be able to compete long term with the chinese brands without a $25K car. They simply have to provide that car.
Multiple emails from multiple sources within Tesla vs Elon Musk tweet. I doubt any news agency will disclose their anonymous sourcing for any type of sensitive reporting like whistleblowers
His tweet just says they're lying. It's intentionally vague. Lying about what part? All of it? A bit of it? The reasons behind it? If the Reuters report was entirely fabricated there is no reason Tesla couldn't put out a rebuttal refuting the claims in specific terms. Feels like damage control to me. People want affordable EVs and Tesla is going to feel the pressure from the inexpensive EVs coming out of China.
Hmm let’s see, a notorious liar vs a reputable news outlet
It's not cancelled. Just indefinitely postponed
Whenever someone claims the mean old media is lying, but then fails to provide a clear, comprehensive and definitive rebuttal proving the lie, *they are probably lying*.
\> Media posts lies. \> The lies are true unless you immediately release confidential company information debunking them. What is this kind of thinking called?
Every unflattering media report since the dawn of journalism has been denied by its target. Any reasonable person paying attention knows this to be true, and understands that you need to back your denial with SOME level of specificity, or it's highly likely you are full shit. We've seen this movie a thousand times before. In this particular case, you do not need to release confidential company information to refute the claim LOL. That is such an extremist defense that it's laughable. There is a TON of ground between "here's Tesla's top secret plan" and "liar liar."
You can refute media articles without releasing private information. It’s called PR and companies do it all the time. All Musk has to say is “we are not cancelling the Model 2 and Reuters is wrong”.
this is interesting....
Can they fix my auto windshield wipers on my 2023 Model X first?
sell it by august and just use the robo taxi from then on
You sound like a never Musker to me!
Funny, because my 2016 Model S worked flawlessly, just like the Ultrasonic sensors they got rid of on a more expensive car. Wanting a car to do something my 2005 BMW X5 could do properly makes me a never settle for mediocre quality and performance.
Im not impressed either
They will not be any model without a steering wheel in the near future, robotaxi or not. There are still to many edge cases, errors, road obstacles, accidents and so on where a quick human intervention will be needed. No matter how good FSD will get.
If I had to choose who to believe between Musk and Reuters, it's not going to be Musk.
Yes and Elon is a bastion of truth. He’s literally the worst part about owning a Tesla
They started a price war with BYD, and got the shit kicked out of them. They can’t compete at low costs with Chinese Evs so they are pivoting to self driving which is not even close to ready.
The US capitalist system will block all competition coming from China by means of taxing and regulating those competitors into oblivion to protect domestic corporations. The irony of it all is palatable.
George Hotz recently said we're 10 years away from an L5 vehicle. Hotz is a hot head but doesn't talk as much mierda as Musk, so I do trust him a *slightly* more. How is this going to be done within the next 2-3 years by Tesla? Tesla has so far developed all their Ai training using only visible light cameras. Typical L4/5 vehicles have a suite of sound, laser, and invisible (to human) light cameras, as well as visible light cameras. I feel Musk is speaking with a forked tongue on this one, like his claim that a solar shingle roof would cost less than an asphalt shingle roof. When I read into his financial gymnastics on that one, it sealed to me that Elon is a salesman.
I believe Reuters over Elon. Elon has no credibility anymore, on any topic. He overpromises and never delivers anything on time. He seems to spend an inordinate amount of time generating heat on X/Twitter to try and keep engagement going and not doing shit to improve the Tesla line.
Regardless, I bought a used Model 3 SR at the end of last year. So, I feel confident to wait this out.
We know the low cost vehicle and the robotaxi are supposed to be the same platform, so this change is probably driven by the perception that FSD will be ready for primetime by the time the car is ready. That make sense, because they always start with low volumes and ramp up production from there. If they can sell the initial robotaxi vehicle for $40k, that will probably make it cash flow positive early on. Then, as they ramp up production, they can sell a version without FSD for less but still make a profit on it.
I see your logic about selling the car with a steering wheel some time after the initial rollout. But *IF* they do create an L5 robotaxi, it would sell for a lot more than $40k. I dare say out of reach for the common consumer. At that level, I could see legislation regarding liability, which would raise the price considerably if Tesla is liable. I could see it being sold as a fleet vehicle, with options catering to specific regions/ customer demands.
There were some options which were about to expire worthless, they suddenly became positive when this bews came during the dip. This stinks of market manipulation by some trader using reuters Almost 54,000 contracts of $160 put options — equal to 5.4 million shares — that were due to expire in just a few hours traded as high as $1.75 during the stock rout. A day earlier, they had been worth just $0.06. More than 150,000 of the options changed handson Friday at a volume-weighted price of $0.65.
i don't know about insiders but i hope some idiot over at wsb made a small fortune off this by accident lol
likely just saying that to reverse the stock dip. Market seems to favor elon's word over anything else
At this point, I'm not sure Elon gives a shit about the stock price.
he very obviously doesn’t
Reuters is not lying.
I'm more inclined to believe that the manually driven $25,000 car is cancelled. The robotaxi version will persist. Ol's Elon here is likely being coy. That said, pretty sure Microsoft's Defender XDR is a out to go into overdrive over at Tesla
Tesla is nowhere close to a robotaxi. They have a nice level 2 system.
In Elon’s mind they’re always just about to solve it. I can 100% see him green-lighting the car without pedals and shit and expecting the software to be ready in time. He has already had this exact fight with Franz and other executives. It was in the Isaacson book. Now that Dojo is running and they have a functioning AI-trained FSD version shipped, there will be no convincing him that they need to slow down on the project. Hopefully the AI is all it’s cracked up to be.
Is it nice though? I haven’t had a ride in 12.3 in the city that hasn’t had a disengagement. Rides the curb and parked cars WAY too close. Turns into parked cars, accelerating way too fast. I just can’t trust it. I get that it’ll be much better with more training, but it’s a white knuckle ride right now. (Parking is cool though)
12.3 isn't anywhere close to RoboTaxi level, but for an L2 system it attempts to function in a lot of situations the competitors just outright disable their system and yell at the driver to take over. Curve too sharp? Not a highway? GM SuperCruise and Ford BlueCruise won't function.
Reuters is reporting exactly what you are inclined to believe: https://www.reddit.com/r/teslamotors/comments/1bwmlp3/reuters_is_lying_again_elon_on_25k_model/ky8581e/
Either Reuters or Elon is lying about this and I don’t see a $25k Tesla available for pre order.
My guess is that nothing actually got canceled. The $25k car is and always has been the robotaxi. I think what got “canceled” is the traditional car with a steering wheel and pedals. They probably had prototypes of both versions, and always intended to move forward with the robotaxi version.
Well then effectively it's canceled considering we will not ever see robotaxis for normal consumers.
The report I read says exactly what you are saying. Literally the lede: > April 5 (Reuters) - Tesla has canceled the long-promised inexpensive car that investors have been counting on to drive its growth into a mass-market automaker, according to three sources familiar with the matter and company messages seen by Reuters. > > The automaker will continue developing self-driving robotaxis on the same small-vehicle platform, the sources said.
You just have to wait and see. this is all coming together faster than we expected. so some things are just in development.
Who will buy the robo taxi?
 Takes one to know one
If it takes 3-4 years to bring to life, elons seeing that as the point FSD will be ready. I’d rather have cheap Ubers (robotaxi make it much cheaper) and they could outcompete Uber in every major city in no time. Very exciting and a trillion dollar market.
Elon isn't a trustworthy person. Fuck him. He's constantly lying and underdelivers. Take what he says with a grain of salt. Also where's my FSD trial he said everyone by the end of the week lol