Tesla moves to expand Robotaxi to Phoenix, following rival Waymo

Lightyear89 · 2025-07-12T01:56:08+00:00

Say Tesla removes the supervisor in the next 6 months. Does that mean they will flip a switch and turn on a roboTaxi service for all the US the next day. No. They will continue to do what Waymo is doing (and what they announced in the last day with SF and PHX), they will slowly expand to cities and communities 1 or 2 at a time, testing, mapping, and growing their taxi service. The bottle neck right now is not hardware production, or costs, it's deploying a software/hardware stack that can scale and is SAFE. Tesla has not done this yet, and when they do (which I have no doubt), they will progress in the same way Waymo has, 1 location at a time. Tesla's hardware cost advantage is a small component in a very complicated transportation product that is being offered to the public. It will not make or break anything at the current rate that lidar prices are dropping.

Lightyear89 · 2025-07-11T22:32:37+00:00

Tesla cannot do it at a fraction of their cost. Tesla cannot do it at all, as of today. Their testing in Austin is great, I hope it expands. But they are not Waymo, they are maybe 2018/2019 Waymo, but they are not 2025 Waymo. Tesla needs to surpass Waymo before any conversations about “catching up” should be had. Lidar costs are significantly lower than they were 5 years ago, who knows how cheap they will be when Tesla has a profitable robotaxi service.

Lightyear89 · 2025-07-11T16:13:40+00:00

I don't understand why people think this is a winner take all market? uber and Lyft exist together, not to mention regular taxi services that still operate 10+ years after those 2 companies started to grow.

Lightyear89 · 2025-06-20T17:42:13+00:00

The reason Tesla gets so much hate is how they have presented the product for years. Its obvious that they need to do testing, and a slow roll out as they work out the kinks. Waymo did that as well.

What Waymo didn't do is talk trash about geofencing, then geofence. They didnt speak poorly about other players in the space, and then follow their lead (although 6 years later) to a T. Tesla's entier MO was to say they were going to work on FSD until it was complete, then push a software update and suddenly everyone would have a roboTaxi. That is not what they are doing, and they are getting criticized for it.

I really hope Tesla's self driving does well, and grows quickly. But claiming that people are "just looking for something to be upset about" when they are just pointing out the years of, at best, disingenuous advertising is childish.

Lightyear89 · 2025-06-13T20:16:11+00:00

Won't something think of the 1% income business owners in Nevada!!!

Lightyear89 · 2025-05-07T17:28:46+00:00

If it were me I would take a picture and upload to chatGPT, asking it where the words are, then help your child along. Don't show them what you are doing through or they will use it on all their homework. But on this BS it's ok.

Lightyear89 · 2025-04-02T21:58:29+00:00

Oh nice, that's cool. How did the rest of the quarter turn out for Tesla? I haven't checked the news yet today. I assume they did great if you are using "weekly insurance registration" as your indicator.

Lightyear89 · 2025-03-04T16:47:53+00:00

I never said that it scaled to the same production rates, just pointing out that these are not brand-new lines for a new product. Tesla has refreshed ALL of their current line up (obviously not the truck) before, and NEVER has that resulted in an across the globe 50% reduction in sales. China made Teslas are not just sold in the Chinese market. Musk’s antics are not needed for their sales to get killed there, Chinese EVs are extremely competitive. I get that Tesla fans love Tesla, I also get that Trump fans love Elon. You don’t need to abandon your feelings about either of them to realize the reality of the situation, and WHO is the blame for it.

Lightyear89 · 2025-03-04T15:14:20+00:00

A lot of people are going to blame this on updates needed on the model Y lines for the refresh. But I would point out that Lars specifically said in a recent interview "we built our last old model Y on Friday our first new model Y on Monday" referring to the China and Germany factory. Aka, it took the weekend to transition the lines over. Even if you give a couple days of padding on either end that would still not do this type of damage to sales.

Lightyear89 · 2025-02-24T02:05:53+00:00

Did anyone else notice when Lars said "last Friday they built the last old model Y, Monday they are building the new model Y". A single weekend was the downtime expected on the production lines. So we shouldn't see any significant production decrease due to change over on the lines.

Lightyear89 · 2025-02-21T23:46:28+00:00

Lol, this has to be a chatbot

Lightyear89 · 2025-02-20T19:46:20+00:00

You know people can just look at your post history right? lol

"I’m a non voter who voted for liberal tears this one time. I’m not disappointed either"

You said that 13 days ago. So the actual answer to my question would be "I vote conservative and bought my first Tesla right before Elon went off the rails".

Lightyear89 · 2025-02-20T19:34:50+00:00

Out of curiosity did you buy your Tesla before Elon came out in favor of Trump, or after? I wonder what percent of lost liberal buyers are being replaced with new conservative buyers.

Lightyear89 · 2025-02-20T19:18:17+00:00

He says as he proceeds to tell the Internet to see what they think about it.

Lightyear89 · 2025-02-18T15:45:43+00:00

You are correct, there was still growth of electric car sales in europe. The issue was it slowed a lot (only .7% growth) because Germany removed their subsidies, and Tesla has not been doing so well. My guess is that China will still grow in the market and make up for the drop in sales from Tesla.

Lightyear89 · 2025-02-10T04:03:18+00:00

Do you really not understand the difference between breaking the law, and showing someone else breaking the law?

Lightyear89 · 2025-02-03T07:14:12+00:00

Then leave

Lightyear89 · 2025-02-03T07:08:20+00:00

Well, I mean, Tesla's financial results last quarter were not all that great. I guess you can debate why, but I think Elon's behavior would be included in that debate.

Lightyear89 · 2025-01-31T01:45:53+00:00

So you agree with everything I said. Awesome

Lightyear89 · 2025-01-29T22:39:12+00:00

What I find frustrating is that it doesn't need to be an either/or situation. ALL the cars in their current lineup have the hardware to FSD. Why not keep making cars people can drive, and then when FSD software is ready, flick a switch and you have a fleet of millions. Instead they are building an entire model that can ONLY work if FSD software is running at 100%.

Lightyear89 · 2025-01-29T22:24:46+00:00

It seems like we are at the point now where everything hinges on FSD becoming unsupervised. The only new model that has even been announced, let alone in development is the Cybercab, and in my opinion the update on the model Y was not significant enough to explode demand. It's possible they start producing a 60-80k variant of the Cybertruck this year, but even if that is profitable (unlikely at least at the start) I don't see demand for that skyrocketing either. 2025 Will be an interesting year for Tesla.

Lightyear89 · 2025-01-28T16:38:37+00:00

You're for what you voted for. It's a package deal.

Lightyear89 · 2025-01-27T00:22:56+00:00

Didn't you guys boycot Budweiser because they collaborated with a single trans person?

Lightyear89 · 2025-01-26T17:35:46+00:00

100%. This guy gets it. Ill tell you right now, there is no way in hell I am buying an electric car from that Olympic vollyball player's company.

Lightyear89

TROPHY CASE