Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Are robotaxis the future? Or instead, the past?
Robotaxis are not just limited by weak technology. They unfortunately also don’t make any business sense…
USA Today reports on a study by AAA showing that most Americans do not want to use a self-driving car. Kind of hard to have a multi-billion business when most people are simply not interested.
Bloomberg reports that Elon Musk will not be partnering with Uber for Tesla's alleged robotaxi rollout.
Wired reports on how far Elon Musk's reputation has suffered, and how it could easily drag down the entire company with him. This is yet another nail in the coffin for Tesla's robotaxi endeavors.
electrek reports that Tesla Board members have recently sold tens of millions of dollars of TSLA stock, indicating that they don't have a huge amount of faith in the future of the company.
The Register reports on key remarks from Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi. Dara states that robotaxis are inherently expensive and there is not a path forward for successfully commercializing them.
Reuters reports that GM has finished taking full control and all stock of Cruise. As part of the process, 1,000 Cruise employees were laid off in the past.
TechCrunch reports on how CEO and Chair of GM Mary Barra made the best financial decision in shutting down Cruise. This will allow them to, unlike Tesla, maintain profitability in 2025.
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.
