Analysts criticise lack of detail about the ‘robotaxi’ showcased by CEO Elon Musk
Tesla shares fell nearly 9% on Friday, wiping about $60bn (£45bn) from the company’s value, after the long-awaited unveiling of its so-called robotaxi failed to excite investors.
Shares in the electric carmaker tumbled to $217 at market close following an event in Hollywood, where the chief executive, Elon Musk, revealed a much-hyped driverless vehicle. The stock price is down roughly 12% year-to-date.
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However, analysts said the event was short on detail and also expressed disappointment over a lack of specifics about other Tesla projects. Musk has a history of making grand projections about upcoming products and failing to follow through in the timeframe he has set, or at all.
What problems do autonomous taxies solve that are worth this investment of possibly decades?
Edit: grammar
none. But they would have to be electric so that they don’t lose fuel economy as 3x the number of cars on the road will 100% create traffic jams.
And even then the amount of energy wasted on traveling empty from drop offs to pickups would probably be collossal. Not to speak of the infrastructure we don’t have to keep these charged
Really. Give me reliable public transportation instead.
the feds would have to start issueing grants for light rail like they do with roads for that to happen. Otherwise cities will always default to a free road over a paid train system
The dream of being the first to do it and corner the market for more of that sweet growth.
I just wish it went into autonomous trains like France did with Paris Line 14
They should outcompete Uber and the others. They should provide very low cost point to point transport
I was making a point that the overall goal is for people to get from point A to point B. There are known solutions for that (trains, busses), investing millions into this just to replace taxis/Uber sounds ridiculous to me. This seems to me just an investment to promote the car centric mentality for solving such problems
Yeah public transport is ideal for most transport cases and should be funded by cities to the level to allow it to provide that
But still some cases call for individual transport and my preference on that is taxis over Uber and the like as taxis have a duty to pick up anyone who can pay which the newer companies don’t
I hope that self driving taxis include accessible ones, I expect there will still need to be a class of staffed cars to help people who need assistance - eg those who can’t lift their bag into our out of the vehicle, those who need assistance to put on a seat belt
Do you find autonomous cars at a clear advantage in those cases where you think cars are still preferred?
Bro. Just one more year bro. I swear bro. Just one more year and we’ll have full self driving bro.
Don’t lose faith bro. Or I’ll sue you and call you a pedo guy.
They could easily do it in a year by purchasing Waymo.
Isn’t Waymo driverless like my RC car is driverless?
No, what makes you think that? I understand doubting Elon, but Waymo works great day in and out. The only bad incident I know of with them was when another vehicle with a person driving hit a pedestrian that threw the pedestrian under a Waymo, and they had to update the software to know what to do when a person spawns under the vehicle. Horrible, yes. But one of their cars wouldn’t have hit the pedestrian to start.
Your RC car has level 4 autonomy?
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Are you referring to the use of SAE classifications or the assertion that Waymos are level 4?
Yeah, but only if you believe the propaganda by the IEEE, the lobbying arm of the international electronics and electrical engineer cartels.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/full-autonomy-waymo-driver
um…/s just in case
In the meantime, keep buying cybertrucks.
Investors we spoke to at the event thought the event was light of real numbers and timeline
Not like Elon is famous for keeping the timeline. Man on Mars and Tesla semi any day now.
I posted this elsewhere, but I always enjoy the timeline:
Well, he did say he’d put a man on Mars in 10 years… back in 2011.
…And then in 10 years in 2014 (meaning 2024).
…And then in 6 years in 2016 (meaning 2022)
…And then in 6 years again in late 2020 (meaning 2026)
Then we finally end up on his current 2022 estimate of 2029.
Don’t worry, Trump and Elon said that if Trump wins 2024, we’ll have a man on Mars before Trump’s term is over.
So from someone who works in human spaceflight, this is ridiculously outrageous.
I’m not insinuating that anyone thought it was realistic, but just confirming your suspicions.
Don’t worry, since Trump will install himself as dictator for life, this means he has more than 4 years to get someone to Mars.
Then again, given Trump’s age and diet, maybe 4 years is generous in and of itself…
Can you think of any realistic benefit to a manned mission to Mars?
Bringing back samples would be an amazing feat, and that seems a worthwhile mission. Having a human onboard seems to complicate things far more than any data that would give us would be worth.
I’m not the person you asked and I don’t know anything about such things so this is just supposition but…
I guess it’s an important milestone on the way to colonising Mars. It would be an acknowledgement that we’ve solved (or mitigated…) all the problems in getting a human to and fro.
Now, if you’re asking whether there’s any realistic benefit to colonising Mars, the answer IMHO is “not in the next 50 years”.
Yeah, that’s about what I’m thinking. A manned mission to Mars could be an interesting project for our kids or grandkids. Anyone talking about it in our lifetimes is just a grifter.
First, it’s crewed or human mission - inclusive language is important! :)
I do think human exploration is important because humans can cover longer distances faster. So your overall options for exploration increase. I do think both human and robotic are important and serve valuable purposes.
It would be more complicated with humans, but I think that’s also a valuable learning experience that could lead to technology that would benefit Earth.
I do not think “colonization” or whatever term you want to use should be a priority. I think science and exploration are what we should stick to, and if your excuse for colonization is because something bad will happen to Earth so we have to go somewhere else…just spend that time and those resources figuring out how to not fuck up Earth just to go fuck up the next place.
Once those ring gates open, Mars will be finished.
🤞
Lots of side benefits when solving the problems faced getting there.
There are lots of useful minerals on Mars.
Backup planet if earth gets asteroided
An asteroided earth is still more habitable than Mars.
Probably. And a lunar base is likely much more achievable for the same objective.
Will this man be alive by the time he reaches mars, or returns to earth? Will the mars spacecraft have the same build quality and reliability as a Tesla Cybertruck, or will it blue screen after leaving the Earth’s orbit?
Dude, I’m positive he won’t make it 2 years and then those christofascists can start with their project with JD couchfucking Vance as the president.
Oh please let us see Elon lose all his fucking money because he’s a gigantic ass hat.
We can dream, now that he’s tied his name to Trump it’s not as unlikely as previously.
one of my old computer science professors said self driving cars “have been 5 years away for the past 20 years”. still rings true to this day
I agree with your professor. It’s one of these things that people have a hard time understanding. A lot of folks can easily imagine the end-state, but have no clue what has to be solved to arrive there. A lot of folks think that projects in electronics, software engineering, computing, etc. are just a linear march from beginning to end; failure is a human or resource problem. In reality, there are problems out there that get exponentially harder to pull off with linear inputs, which is much harder to imagine let alone a great way to scare off investors.
In this case, the framing of the problem is all wrong. We’re not trying to solve “a car that drives itself” (e.g. autopilot). Instead we are “simulating human sensory organs and cognition in order to pilot a vehicle without catastrophe or injury.” The latter is much harder to solve, but IMO, is a much more realistic portrayal of the job.
Self driving cars and net positive fusion, same same
Oh nobody’s predicting net positive fusion anytime soon. There’s huge materials hurdles in both magnetic confinement and inertial confinement while also regenerating tritium. Neutron radiation just does not play nice.
Nooo they didn’t like the self-driving robotaxi that isn’t self driving. What about the bus that can’t go over a pothole? No? How about robots that are controlled and voiced by humans? Damn. Tough crowd.
Also there’s this whole track record of Elon Musk’s demonstrations were there’s no clear independent validation that they actually work as we are being said they to or they’re merelly announcements or concepts: those things are invariably complete total bollock at best bordering on Fraud.
I reckon that finally he has entirely exhausted both the benefit of the doubt that his demonstrations are in any way honest and representative of real products present or future, and the idea that “he might be bullshitting but he’ll pull in enough suckers that early investors will win from going all in even if it’s 100% bollocks”.
The Midas Touch of Elon’s bullshit has finally ran its course and turned into a Shit Touch.
Is he going to sue the investors?
Sue the stock market for conspiring against the valuation of his companies.
Sure Mars for just being so fucking far away
Sue the BIPM for maintaining the system of time that keeps making him miss his own stated deadlines.
“I hope they stop. Don’t invest. If somebody is going to try to blackmail me with investing, blackmail me with money? go fuck yourself. Go fuck yourself. Is that clear? I hope it is.”
I just continue to be amazed that, instead of the old, tried-and-true method of giving people what they want—a solid, reliable car at a good price, and a stellar charging network in the places people want to be—a man of his means keeps trying weird gimmicks.
It’s not so surprising when you consider the fact that he’s nothing but a charlatan.
Just a colossal idiot with enough money and little enough self awareness that everyone is indulging his every whim and he never stops to consider that maybe he isn’t a visionary and a genius.
Here’s a list of every time he has promised (lied about) full self driving for literally more than a decade.
How is anyone believing this guy’s shit after all this time?
I suspect sometime ago it switched from belief in him to most market players believing that “enough people will believe this guy’s shit that the line will go up so best jump in early”, essentially a self-made prophecy as long as enough people believe that others believe.
In that sense this result of his presentation pushing the line down A LOT means that even the idea that no matter how much he’s lying he will move the market up is finished and his bullshit being a Midas Touch has now reached the natural endlife of becoming a Shit Touch.
That being so, has much more massive implications for Elon’s business success and wealth as well as that of companies links to him, than merely the market losses in this one instance, since he is very much a One Trick Pony whose “bullshitter of tech fanboys” trick has stopped working and nobody is going to be betting on Elon pushing the line up anymore, the core of his success in getting wildass ideas funded and his companies in non-Tech industries getting Tech-style market valuations.
The next couple of years for Elon are going to be really “interesting”.
Could not agree more. I’m hoping he has a Hindenburg moment… Soon
I imagine the robotaxi it gonna just be some really short person under the hood running super fast like the Flintstones with a steering wheel
I’m just getting into stocks. Would this be a good time to invest now that it’s low?
Generally yes, buy when it is low. Have a look at some graphs of recent performance to see if this is lower than typical weekly low points
Tesla does have room to expand; the biggest risk is that Musk does something stupid that damages Tesla, he has not done so yet - he seems competent at running (or has given important parts of the job to competent people) Tesla and SpaceX
Safer investment is through exchange traded funds, especially those which track major indexes (also known as index funds). You buy these the same way you buy other stocks - you’re buying shares in the fund
Investing is where you buy into market trackers and have no more than a couple of percent in any given company.
What you’re talking about is gambling.
Gotcha. Would now be a good time to gamble?
It might be a good time to invest in a high grade bond fund. Or emerging markets bonds if you want higher return.
The stock price/earnings ratio is still quite high. So based on fundamentals it’s still not a good buy. Instead, you’re gambling that in the future you’ll hear more unexpected good news from Tesla than unexpected bad news.
Personally, I wouldn’t take that bet.
depends on how much faith you have in elons ability to bullshit the masses. I wouldn’t do it, but some have gotten money off that gambit.
Possibly. If Trump wins what are the odds on him letting Elon’s crappy self driving cars be road legal as a thank you for all the election interference? But then what are the odds on Trump doing what he always does and abandoning everyone at the first sign of trouble. What if Trump loses?
It’s a lot of ifs. Don’t bet more than you can afford to lose is the only advice I can give.
Do you actually believe anything he said is true? Follow-up question, are you literate and do you have access to the internet?
Tesla is a so called “meme stock” detached from how a company is actually performing. I’d say avoid it if you’re looking for “steady” buy and hold investing instead of (high tax) daytrader style gambling.
Awe shucks. Tesla should boot out Dork MAGAT and bring back Eberhard and Tarpenning. When Leon leaves, then I will consider a Tesla.
Leon?
“Boeing had a little hard time, so they are going to save — Leon’s going to send up a rocket,” Trump said. “He looks forward to it. That’s all he thinks about is things like that.”
I guess Leon likes being treated like a little kid going to summer science camp
This company will soon have zero value under our fearless leader Elon Musk.
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Elon musk extended family will own the entire Mars facility production and open hell portal?
I think, at this point, Riker is tasting a sour trombone, but he’s too lazy to clear the mould out of the mouthpiece.
This was genuinely funny…the first 300 times or so.
You’re having a good time today lol
I always enjoy being able to Riker a post.
His lips are chapped these days.
You’re doing God’s work.
Please, it’s not me. It’s Will. He’s the trombonist.
Ah, how I love good news on a Monday…
