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With safety drivers.

Taxi with safety driver is just Taxi.

They are not any closer to self driving than they were year ago. It's just investor string along: "Tesla had not yet applied for permits needed to pick up and charge passengers for rides in fully autonomous vehicles."

The value of Tesla car business is roughly 10% of it's current price. Tesla is not valued as energy company anymore because Chinese are so far ahead. Now it's just the promise of robotaxis, humanoid robot, etc.

Not a fan of Tesla or Musk. I have not heard anything from the Austin trials beyond the initial flurry of "breaking the law" (that should be looked into and dealt with by Tesla and law enforcement). Everything from Tesla is late and less than promised.

But, Starting out with safety drivers is not a bad thing for robot taxis.

In 2013 "We should be able to do 90 percent of miles driven autonomously within three years." That's now 12 years of insisting no lidar, only cameras, and working towards full autonomy.
It is a regression from Austin, where they had "safety monitors" in the passenger seat. The media should be ashamed to use the term "Robotaxi" if there is no automation involved.
Copy from Reddit. (So take with a hefty pinch of salt) Tesla can not legally launch a service in California. They do not have the permits.

“”” CPUC requires either an AV Drivered Pilot permit, or AV Driverless Pilot permit. (or Drivered or Driverless Phase 1 Deployment permit, but that would typically come after the pilot permit). [Source: CPUC permit guidance PDF] Tesla is not currently listed on the CPUC's Autonomous Vehicle Program Permits Issued page as having been granted any Pilot or Phase 1 permit.

Tesla has a CPUC permit to operate a limo service with human drivers. (Which does not cover ride share services)

If they maintained that the humans are actually driving and otherwise charged for rides the way they do in Austin, the current app model would make them a TNC. TNCs also require a permit to operate in California, which Tesla does not have. “””

https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/-/media/cpuc-website/divisions/consu...

https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/regulatory-services/licensing/transp...

https://www.cpuc.ca.gov/regulatory-services/licensing/transp...

The San Francisco marathon is this weekend and I think it’s going to break the city for this Robotaxi launch.

There's major road closures for key arteries like Market st, Embarcadero, fisherman’s wharf, and the Presidio. Traffic always crawls and downtown will become a maze. Even 'human' drivers struggle because you can't cross large boundaries of the city.

Waymo launched in the city about a month before last year’s race. I took one to the starting line, but it couldn’t reach the actual drop-off. It stalled about 0.3 miles away and I had to run the rest. The issue wasn’t the route, but the chaos. Dense foot traffic, impromptu street closure re-routes, and unpredictable crowd behavior were hard to autonomously solve.

Tesla's robotaxi launch will have to overcome the same challenging mix of realtime conditions: limited access to closure data, learning of impromptu re-routing logic, unpredictable human crowds.

Definitely it’s a bold move to launch this weekend. If it works, great PR.

Tesla did not apply for the driverless permit, despite a well-established process for obtaining a driverless service permit in CA, and everyone knows it.

The only explanation is that they intentionally choose not to do so so that their unrealistic launch could be blocked by the regulator, and they could blame the regulator instead.

I was in a motorcycle accident recently where a Tesla hit me and totaled my bike. Fortunately, I only suffered a back injury. I’ve chosen not to get another motorcycle, especially with the upcoming release of Tesla’s robotaxi, since I feel the risk of another accident could be higher.
Considering my model y can’t stay in the same left motorway lane without panicking about a slip road off I don’t hold out much hope for Tesla self driving.

But it’s still a really good car, and I do not like the thought of going back to other manufacturers with their utter, utter shit software.

If Tesla just did a Rivian-like truck and an ID-Buzz-like van with model Y range they’d do so much better.

I remembered other Robotaxis operated one year ago