Robotaxi. No steering wheel or pedals!

[HemiEd]

We have several electric car threads, but this is bye week and the first time I have noticed no steering wheel or pedals. Just wow.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the highly anticipated robotaxi last night, a driverless, $30K vehicle called the Cybercab. Tesla says the car—which lacks pedals and steering wheels—will go into production by 2027. The company also debuted a 20-person robovan and touted its Optimus robots.



The debut is almost a decade in the making and comes amid a series of lawsuits and investigations over Tesla's supervised driving vehicles. The company's investors hope robotaxis will generate almost 90% of Tesla's value and earnings by 2029. This would involve drivers being able to rent their vehicle through an app when not in use, earning passive income in a "part Uber, part Airbnb" model. Tesla hopes electric vehicle sales will eventually account for only 9% of Tesla's value.



Tesla is not the first company to pursue this model; Google’s Waymo already services 100,000 paid rides per week, including in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. Amazon's Zoox is coming soon to San Francisco.

[Otter]

I can actually buy into that under perfect circumstances a driverless vehicle is safer for everyone but what happens when there's an emergency such as a fire, accident, car jacking, dead battery, smoke coming from the engine, robbery, or a deer runs out and you go off the road let alone the one other million things that can happen.

How do you know that soulless robot isn't going lock the doors and entrap you while you're shitting your pants waiting for the AAA guy to come a shrug his shoulders because it's a robot?

There's approximately 137,000 libraries in Python and as far as I know no one has come up with:

import WhenShitHitstheFan.

[Otter]

I can actually buy into that under perfect circumstances a driverless vehicle is safer for everyone but what happens when there's an emergency such as a fire, accident, car jacking, dead battery, smoke coming from the engine, robbery, or a deer runs out and you go off the road let alone the one other million things that can happen.

How do you know that soulless robot isn't going lock the doors and entrap you while you're shitting your pants waiting for the AAA guy to come a shrug his shoulders because it's a robot?

There's approximately 137,000 libraries in Python and as far as I know no one has come up with:

import WhenShitHitstheFan.

[Otter]

I can actually buy into that under perfect circumstances a driverless vehicle is safer for everyone but what happens when there's an emergency such as a fire, accident, car jacking, dead battery, smoke coming from the engine, robbery, or a deer runs out and you go off the road let alone the one other million things that can happen.

How do you know that soulless robot isn't going lock the doors and entrap you while you're shitting your pants waiting for the AAA guy to come a shrug his shoulders because it's a robot?

There's approximately 137,000 libraries in Python and as far as I know no one has come up with:

import WhenShitHitstheFan.

[Otter]

I can actually buy into that under perfect circumstances a driverless vehicle is safer for everyone but what happens when there's an emergency such as a fire, accident, car jacking, dead battery, smoke coming from the engine, robbery, or a deer runs out and you go off the road let alone the one other million things that can happen.

How do you know that soulless robot isn't going lock the doors and entrap you while you're shitting your pants waiting for the AAA guy to come a shrug his shoulders because it's a robot?

There's approximately 137,000 libraries in Python and as far as I know no one has come up with:

import WhenShitHitstheFan.

[Otter]

I can actually buy into that under perfect circumstances a driverless vehicle is safer for everyone but what happens when there's an emergency such as a fire, accident, car jacking, dead battery, smoke coming from the engine, robbery, or a deer runs out and you go off the road let alone the one other million things that can happen.

How do you know that soulless robot isn't going lock the doors and entrap you while you're shitting your pants waiting for the AAA guy to come a shrug his shoulders because it's a robot?

There's approximately 137,000 libraries in Python and as far as I know no one has come up with:

import WhenShitHitstheFan.

[Otter]

I can actually buy into that under perfect circumstances a driverless vehicle is safer for everyone but what happens when there's an emergency such as a fire, accident, car jacking, dead battery, smoke coming from the engine, robbery, or a deer runs out and you go off the road let alone the one other million things that can happen.

How do you know that soulless robot isn't going lock the doors and entrap you while you're shitting your pants waiting for the AAA guy to come a shrug his shoulders because it's a robot?

There's approximately 137,000 libraries in Python and as far as I know no one has come up with:

import WhenShitHitstheFan.

[Delano]

The robots are controlled to some degree by, what is essentially, drone operators. If you trust the meme economy, the cars are probably driven remotely from an Indian call center.

[Otter]

Someone is going to have a hell of a bar story sooner or later.

[POND_OF_RED]

Originally Posted by DaFace

People are shitty drivers and could kill you just as easily.

Originally Posted by HemiEd

Curious, do you trust AI more than the average human to make emergency decisions?

I want a lot of people to have an auto driving vehicle but I definitely wouldn’t want one myself. I rent a lot of cars with the lane sensing features and the annoying cruise control feature that slows you down when it senses a car in front of you. One time I was trying to pass an oversized vehicle and getting over a little extra and the car tried steering me back into the oversized vehicle. While this feature is probably very nice to inattentive drivers, I wouldn’t trust it to save my life in a situation it’s not used to seeing which is why they call them accidents. They would work if everyone had them, but the mixture of self driving and idiot driving vehicles is very dangerous in my opinion

[BlackHelicopters]

Originally Posted by HemiEd

We have several electric car threads, but this is bye week and the first time I have noticed no steering wheel or pedals. Just wow.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk unveiled the highly anticipated robotaxi last night, a driverless, $30K vehicle called the Cybercab. Tesla says the car—which lacks pedals and steering wheels—will go into production by 2027. The company also debuted a 20-person robovan and touted its Optimus robots.



The debut is almost a decade in the making and comes amid a series of lawsuits and investigations over Tesla's supervised driving vehicles. The company's investors hope robotaxis will generate almost 90% of Tesla's value and earnings by 2029. This would involve drivers being able to rent their vehicle through an app when not in use, earning passive income in a "part Uber, part Airbnb" model. Tesla hopes electric vehicle sales will eventually account for only 9% of Tesla's value.



Tesla is not the first company to pursue this model; Google’s Waymo already services 100,000 paid rides per week, including in Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Phoenix. Amazon's Zoox is coming soon to San Francisco.

No thanks.

[Pitt Gorilla]

Originally Posted by POND_OF_RED

I want a lot of people to have an auto driving vehicle but I definitely wouldn’t want one myself. I rent a lot of cars with the lane sensing features and the annoying cruise control feature that slows you down when it senses a car in front of you. One time I was trying to pass an oversized vehicle and getting over a little extra and the car tried steering me back into the oversized vehicle. While this feature is probably very nice to inattentive drivers, I wouldn’t trust it to save my life in a situation it’s not used to seeing which is why they call them accidents. They would work if everyone had them, but the mixture of self driving and idiot driving vehicles is very dangerous in my opinion

One of my primary concerns, especially without any local controls in the vehicle.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Otter

I can actually buy into that under perfect circumstances a driverless vehicle is safer for everyone but what happens when there's an emergency such as a fire, accident, car jacking, dead battery, smoke coming from the engine, robbery, or a deer runs out and you go off the road let alone the one other million things that can happen.

How do you know that soulless robot isn't going lock the doors and entrap you while you're shitting your pants waiting for the AAA guy to come a shrug his shoulders because it's a robot?

There's approximately 137,000 libraries in Python and as far as I know no one has come up with:

import WhenShitHitstheFan.

I'm fairly confident that the team of thousands of programmers created a few safeguards to prevent the evil robits from randomly locking people inside vehicles to die.

[Megatron96]

Lol, anyone that gets into a car that doesn't have some kind of basic controls for the passenger(s) deserves what happens to them.


Not too many years ago, Airbus proposed a commercial airliner in which not only would there not bey any windows for the pilots, but most of the flying, including landing procedures, would be entirely handled by the computers. never met a pilot that thought that was a good idea, for obvious reasons.

Same applies to cars.

[Frazod]

Originally Posted by Megatron96

Lol, anyone that gets into a car that doesn't have some kind of basic controls for the passenger(s) deserves what happens to them.


Not too many years ago, Airbus proposed a commercial airliner in which not only would there not bey any windows for the pilots, but most of the flying, including landing procedures, would be entirely handled by the computers. never met a pilot that thought that was a good idea, for obvious reasons.

Same applies to cars.

Amen. If I'm going to die in a fiery crash, I at least want the satisfaction of knowing that the ****er who caused it died a split second before me. I don't want it to be a soulless computer or some asshole with a controller in his hands sitting in front of a monitor.

Larry: Damn, I just crashed that passenger jet into the side of a mountain. This won't look good on my next review.

Bob: That's too bad, Larry. Let's go grab an early lunch!

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by HemiEd

Curious, do you trust AI more than the average human to make emergency decisions?

One thing I can tell you is mechanically, Auto Steer tractors kick my ass. And I can drive tractor. I'm good. They're better. By a lot.

There are a lot more variables on the road, but strictly operating the machine, computers talking to satellites are better.

Deere is chasing autonomous too. They're doing it apparently with imagery processing. I thought that was the hard way to get there, but that's apparently the way.

I still don't know how they get around liability. Not a lawyer and don't want to even pretend to be one. But in tractors we have to accept a screen that says operator is responsible for collision avoidance. I take that to mean liability. If I am not in the cab I can't be responsible for the liability associated with collision avoidance. The only entity left is mother Deere. I'm 100% sure Mother Deere isn't here for that.

Same with cars. If the manufacturer is on the hook for liability, one has to look no further than their insurance premiums over the last 5 years to see the problem there.

I think it will be better with non-human drivers, but I'm skeptical the lawyers will get out of the way.

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by Megatron96

Lol, anyone that gets into a car that doesn't have some kind of basic controls for the passenger(s) deserves what happens to them.


Not too many years ago, Airbus proposed a commercial airliner in which not only would there not bey any windows for the pilots, but most of the flying, including landing procedures, would be entirely handled by the computers. never met a pilot that thought that was a good idea, for obvious reasons.

Same applies to cars.

Bingo! Very well put and exactly how I see it.

[HemiEd]

Originally Posted by Buehler445

One thing I can tell you is mechanically, Auto Steer tractors kick my ass. And I can drive tractor. I'm good. They're better. By a lot.

There are a lot more variables on the road, but strictly operating the machine, computers talking to satellites are better.

Deere is chasing autonomous too. They're doing it apparently with imagery processing. I thought that was the hard way to get there, but that's apparently the way.

I still don't know how they get around liability. Not a lawyer and don't want to even pretend to be one. But in tractors we have to accept a screen that says operator is responsible for collision avoidance. I take that to mean liability. If I am not in the cab I can't be responsible for the liability associated with collision avoidance. The only entity left is mother Deere. I'm 100% sure Mother Deere isn't here for that.

Same with cars. If the manufacturer is on the hook for liability, one has to look no further than their insurance premiums over the last 5 years to see the problem there.

I think it will be better with non-human drivers, but I'm skeptical the lawyers will get out of the way.

Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but are you talking about the journey of getting the tractor to the field?

Is collision avoidance really that big of an issue with a tractor? I wasn't aware that was even much of a concern. Do you spend a lot of time doing that?

I am not an expert like you are on the tractor, but from my understanding the tractor is being helped to fertilize/till/spray/sew or whatever you are doing by satellite GPS for efficiency, correct? I was amazed by the demo our farmer did for us on his equipment with these capabilities.

The more I think about it, our farmer must do a lot of that as the ground they farm is spread out over at least 20 miles.

[Buehler445]

Originally Posted by HemiEd

Maybe I am misunderstanding you, but are you talking about the journey of getting the tractor to the field?

Is collision avoidance really that big of an issue with a tractor? I wasn't aware that was even much of a concern. Do you spend a lot of time doing that?

I am not an expert like you are on the tractor, but from my understanding the tractor is being helped to fertilize/till/spray/sew or whatever you are doing by satellite GPS for efficiency, correct? I was amazed by the demo our farmer did for us on his equipment with these capabilities.

The more I think about it, our farmer must do a lot of that as the ground they farm is spread out over at least 20 miles.

So what all the farmers have now is autosteer.

So it will follow a path through the field. That's how all the corn rows end up perfectly straight. Basically you turn the corner, push the button and it drives the pass. Then you turn the corner and engage it again. It keeps the guess row perfect and the rows straight. There is some other stuff out there, but everybody has autosteer.

Collision avoidance isn't a huge deal, especially out here but it's where all the liability is. Neighbors kid runs out in front of an autonomous tractor, knocks down a transmission line, smokes an oil well, all those get real expensive real quick.