San Francisco Examiner reports on how Waymo more than double the times in 2024 where it had paid lobbyists meet with city government officials. Biggest effort is trying to get permission to serve San Francisco Airport, which would be quite lucative for Waymo.
Bloomberg publishes one of the best written articles on the hype of the robotaxi business, and its inevitable fall. It shows how all of the robotaxi companies (including Waymo, but especially Tesla) have been dependent on hype to make the false claim that robotaxis have a near-term financially robust future. Yet they are still shockingly dependent on support by a large number of actual humans. And now, not only do robotaxis appear to be post peak bubble, generative AI companies will surely be following the same trajectory.
electrek reports on how it isn't just his video game playing skills that Elon lies about. Elon has continued to mislead investors and the public on how well FSD is working. Tesla makes claims only with respect to highway driving, and won't release the data needed to fully understand the issue. Meanwhile, crowd-sourced data shows that FSD improvements have been quite small, sometimes with big regressions, and that Tesla is nowhere near being able to provide a truly autonomous driving system needed for robotaxis.
electrek reports that Tesla's issues with its self-driving computers is so big that they have had to issue a recall for 200,000 vehicles due to the vehicles not meeting NHTSA requirements.
WSJ reports on how Tesla stock capitalization has been completely disassociated from the business of selling cars. Instead, it is predicated on the myth that they are an AI, robotaxi, and robotics company given that their car sales are actually in decline. Ironically, after this article was published Tesla stock rose over 6%.
SF Chronicle does Waymo's bidding by publishing a fluff piece promoted by Waymo marketing. it is very inappropriate for Waymo to co-opt people with disabilities to try to get good publicity.
NY Times reports that Tesla sales for the year actually dipped for the first time. And the results for the quarter were worse than analysts expected. The lack of sales is precisely why Elon Musk has promoted a fake pivot to AI, autonomous vehicles, and robots - to keep the stock price high!
NY Times reports details on how Tesla sales are slumping. Meanwhile, many investors still believe the hype that Tesla will succeed as a technology company, with robotaxis and robots. Yet is very questionable whether they will succeed in those endeavors.
Teslarati reports on how a Tesla analyst doesn't believe in the hype of the Tesla robotaxi fleet since most Tesla owners would not want to share their vehicles in the first place.
Mission Local reports on how Waymo is trying to inch towards providing service at SF Airport, which would provide a huge financial bonus to the company.
TechCrunch reports that the Cruise employees didn't realize that there was no way that GM was going to continue to burn more money on the doomed project. The key thing is that Waymo employees currently believe that they will always be supported by the parent company. Well, it just doesn't work that way.
TheVerge provides the most in depth coverage of the fall of Cruise. A robotaxi business is currently too expensive and complicated to succeed with financially. The article also appropriately points out that urban transportation advocates see the only true safety solution is fewer cars, not automated ones.
Fortune reports on how GM pulling the plug on Cruise shows just how hard it is for automakers to succeed with robotaxis. Tesla stockholders should take note.
Business Insider reports on how GM is shutting down the Cruise division. But their main point is that the robotaxi business is simply a bad business financially.
elektrek announces that Tesla is losing yet another critical long-term employee. This time it is the head of Autopilot and FSD HW engineering. Why would the head of AV hardware leave Tesla when they are supposedly lsoon to make billions of dollars off of their robotaxi business???
