I’ll keep this one short and sweet.
Tesla was contacted by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration on Monday after videos posted on social media showed the company’s robotaxis driving in a chaotic manner on public roads in Austin, Texas.
Elon Musk’s electric vehicle maker debuted autonomous trips in Austin on Sunday, opening the service to a limited number of riders by invitation only.
In the videos shared widely online, one Tesla robotaxi was spotted traveling the wrong way down a road, and another was shown braking hard in the middle of traffic, responding to “stationary police vehicles outside its driving path,” among several other examples.
Elon Musk is not that smart. He chose to use cameras only, and not Lidar, against the advice of his own engineers.
China has robotaxis already. They work fine. They have Lidar.
Tesla is doomed. Their cars are worse than those of their competitors and more expensive. Robotaxis aren’t going to work. The only thing saving Tesla right now is 100% tariffs on Chinese autos, but even non Chinese electric cars are better and often cheaper.
Meanwhile Musk is in a feud with Trump, Trump has threatened to remove subsidies for Musk enterprises and Musk (again, an idiot) has said Trump should go ahead. And yes, he does need those subsidies.
The majority of Musk’s wealth is tied up in Tesla, and it’s days are numbered. Meanwhile Starship keeps exploding, the last time during fueling, not even after launch. There are a lot of competitors to SpaceX, and w/o NASA contracts SpaceX doesn’t look so hot either. Right now NASA is stuck with Musk, but that’s not going to last.
Musk isn’t going to be the world’s richest man much longer.
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