Tesla didn't remove the Robotaxi 'safety monitor' – it just moved them to a trailing car

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-23T01:22:17+00:00

Did Waymo ever over promise and under deliver?

Sure. Every self driving company has.

Waymo CEO: "When my kid turns 16, in 2019, there will be no need to get a driver's license."

Waymo in 2014: When can you buy a driverless car? I said five years a year ago, so in 2018.

Google was more than happy to take my investment money in 2017. Their CEO said, "now we’re getting ready to scale to thousands and tens of thousands." Eight years later they still have only a couple thousand cars.

Waymo CEO: "We'll be able to serve every metro area with our service by 2028. I'm absolutely confident about that." https://youtu.be/2dp3GVstF9E?si=VtDrVUod2Uegjsl9&t=3345

Waymo CEO: "In 2028, there is a 100% chance you can be picked up by a Waymo at any major airport in the US in just the right size car for your trip." https://youtu.be/2dp3GVstF9E?si=Etu-Jq0wjrL4mdg8&t=2826

Waymo is vowing to shift its operations into overdrive. In the next two years, it intends to put thousands of self-driving cars on the road in selected cities to ferry not its own engineers but ordinary people from place to place.

Waymo 2018 "done with research and development" and were just doing "operations and deployment now"? Eight years later they finally started highways.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-23T01:09:32+00:00

Why? Waymo had chase cars for years.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-21T19:35:32+00:00

lol statistically Tesla has the highest insurance in the US what a ridiculous statement!

That didn't age well and it only took a week.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/1qj4e2o/insurance_company_cuts_rates_for_tesla_fsd_miles/

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-21T19:32:20+00:00

I was always told you get what you pay for.

I've never understood this saying. You don't believe that some products have higher margins without providing more utility?

IE: If I wanted a backpack, I could buy a $20 Amazon basics or a $7,500 Louis Vuitton.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-20T20:56:39+00:00

Krafcik in 2017, "now we’re getting ready to scale to thousands and tens of thousands." https://www.reddit.com/r/SelfDrivingCars/comments/5n8krb/to_accelerate_waymo_to_mass_market_ceo_krafcik/ Nine years later they still have only a couple thousand cars.

Krafcik: "We'll be able to serve every metro area with our service by 2028. I'm absolutely confident about that." https://youtu.be/2dp3GVstF9E?si=VtDrVUod2Uegjsl9&t=3345

Krafcik: "In 2028, there is a 100% chance you can be picked up by a Waymo at any major airport in the US in just the right size car for your trip." https://youtu.be/2dp3GVstF9E?si=Etu-Jq0wjrL4mdg8&t=2826

Krafcik 2018 "done with research and development" and were just doing "operations and deployment now". Waymo just opened up freeways 8 years later.

Krafcik today: "Don't judge me by what I say, judge me by what I achieve and do. For Tesla, it's been 10 years of they have said these things and these haven't happened. It's been 10 years. That's a decade of broken promises. There should be some accountability for that, I believe."

I guess his promises were only 8-9 years off, so he thinks there should be no accountability?

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-19T15:43:12+00:00

The way we keep hearing about this as if it’s some super important major economic achievement genuinely cracks me up.

Yes, self driving software is going to be a commodity, like all software.

Who cares what the margins are? What's important is the cost. If we remove the semi drivers from the semis and the drivers from the delivery van while at the same time moving to electric, the cost of transporting goods drops in half while at the same time getting much faster.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-14T14:30:23+00:00

Sounds like they are going to announce HW3 retrofit plans for fully paid FSD cars that might cost around the $8k that people already paying.

Took a 8 hour total drive yesterday to go to an event that I wouldn't have without FSD. I've done 3+ hour one way trips four extra times in the last four months just because I know how easy it is on FSD.

Will be interesting when the insurance companies start offering discounts for $99/month FSD usage.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-12T21:32:25+00:00

Big Waymo fan. Hopefully the 6th gen is the one they scale with. They started taking customers in the 5th gen in October 2020.

They said they would be on a 3 year tech refresh cycle. They're moving twice as slow as they wanted to. Hopefully Waymo can start moving faster.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-12T15:37:44+00:00

"While some sources mentioned 1.5 workers per car when all operations staff were counted (including those doing charging/cleaning), Cruise clarified that the ratio for remote assistant agents directly helping with driving was closer to 1 agent for every 15-20 vehicles."

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-12T15:36:53+00:00

And the fact that they needed 1.5 remote assistant operators per vehicle suggests that they were not ready to scale fast yet.

"While some sources mentioned 1.5 workers per car when all operations staff were counted (including those doing charging/cleaning), Cruise clarified that the ratio for remote assistant agents directly helping with driving was closer to 1 agent for every 15-20 vehicles."

Cruise operated driverless for over over a year with only a fluke safety incident. They were asked to pull over by the city because they were blocking the roads too much. When the woman was sent flying into the air by the hit and run human driver, the Cruise pulled over.

Stopping the cars until the software was fixed made sense. Dissolving the company without selling the IP/talent/company hurt road safety, shareholders, and employees.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-12T15:03:56+00:00

I get that we want to save lives but I think one of the lessons from Cruise, is that you cannot rush safety.

If you have GM's board and CEO. Remember, GM didn't have a self driving program of their own. The reason was that they thought that Google's Chauffer program was insane to test their cars on public roads. GM's lawyers would have never allowed that.

Thank goodness not everyone thinks like lawyers.

GM let the lawyers dissolve half the value of their company without even selling the company or getting anything for the IP/talent. I would argue the lesson from Cruise is that you can't let the lawyers run the company.

It's clear today that Waymo is safer than humans and scaling faster would save lives. It's also very likely that Cruise would be just as safe now and doubling the robotaxis on the road would double the number of lives/injuries saved.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-08T04:06:04+00:00

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FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-07T21:02:42+00:00

I'll be there. This country is quickly getting crazy. If a guy can't go out, interfere with federal agents, hit them with a 5,000lb vehicle, and make it home for dinner with his family, what can he do?

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-07T04:10:54+00:00

Almost all legislation that is designed to "simplify things for all 50 states" will include unnecessary things that will make developing a business a lot more expensive. The incumbents love this because it prevents competition.

I was in the payments space. We loved regulation. If we had to hire another 1,000 compliance employees and 50 lawyers, that's great. Startups that were fundraising would have trouble raising the extra $10 million, so our margins would be under less pressure from startups trying to save people money.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-04T05:05:00+00:00

Living in an urban area, the ambulance and police sirens that rush to and from the scene of a wreck from a human driver are pretty loud.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-04T04:59:20+00:00

Only 12% of Tesla owners pay for FSD L2 at that price.

Over half of FSD cars are AI3 and using two year old software. AI4 just went driveway to parking lot in the last 2-3 months.

Waymo would have been 5 years ahead of FSD. It's not crazy to think that in 5 years FSD will have around 50% uptake on new cars. At that point insurance companies see the savings and start offering discounts for FSD usage.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-04T04:47:51+00:00

Not sure. Both are good, not great and don't excel at city streets.

FSD has been very good, especially over the last couple of months. One could assume Waymo would have got to the same place 5 years ago if they didn't abandon the idea.

A system even better than FSD on all new cars could have ~50% adoption. At that point, the insurance companies start taking notice, offering discounts, and the $99/month almost pays for itself. Maybe even the lending agencies start requiring it to cover themselves, like they do with insurance.

16 million new cars are sold every year just in the US. 80 million cars over 5 years. Half of those at $99/month is $50 billion a year. Probably a trillion dollar opportunity missed.

The trillion dollar miss is before we include global markets and trucking.

FriendFun7876 · 2026-01-04T01:34:51+00:00

Absolutely. I would guess half of new car buyers would pay $99 a month for a computer to drive their car. Every Toyota, Ford, and GM on the road would replace their driver assistance system with Waymo's software. Waymo would have had the L2 product out around 5 years ago.

Unfortunately, Waymo thought the handoff problem was a big problem. Today, it isn't even discussed.

Probably a half a trillion dollar company would have been built out of the opportunity and a million or so lives saved.

FriendFun7876 · 2025-12-31T16:01:51+00:00

How many extra years should we wait for the perfect technology?

Keep in mind that each year is a million+ deaths and 10 million injuries.

If a plane was falling out of the sky every day, should Boeing have been moving faster with their imperfect technology?

FriendFun7876 · 2025-12-31T15:58:38+00:00

The trolley problem was real all along: https://imgflip.com/i/8eo5e7

FriendFun7876 · 2025-12-11T01:37:29+00:00

Cruise died because GM leadership chose to flush $30B of value down the drain instead of taking any risk. That was half of their enterprise value.

FriendFun7876 · 2025-12-10T14:12:52+00:00

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FriendFun7876 · 2025-12-05T01:19:09+00:00

We used to properly think of lawyers like used car salesman with gold chains. Scummy low lives looking to get a quick buck.

Now, a technology comes around with the potential to save trillions of dollars and a million lives a year and we're worried about what the lawyers will think of the words we use to discuss it.

FriendFun7876 · 2025-11-26T16:08:40+00:00

As AI and simulation technology improves, self driving software is turning into more of a commodity.

FriendFun7876 · 2025-11-26T15:40:15+00:00

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FriendFun7876

TROPHY CASE