The company’s rollout of its new driverless cars has gotten off to a wobbly start – and rival Waymo remains well ahead

After years of promising investors that millions of Tesla robotaxis would soon fill the streets, Elon Musk debuted his driverless car service in a limited public rollout in Austin, Texas. It did not go smoothly.

The 22 June launch initially appeared successful enough, with a flood of videos from pro-Tesla social media influencers praising the service and sharing footage of their rides. Musk celebrated it as a triumph, and the following day, Tesla’s stock rose nearly 10%.

What quickly became apparent, however, was that the same influencer videos Musk promoted also depicted the self-driving cars appearing to break traffic laws or struggle to properly function. By Tuesday, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) had opened an investigation into the service and requested information from Tesla on the incidents.

  • DominusOfMegadeus
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    1229 days ago

    Musk maintains that camera-only technology is the most “human” way to approach self-driving, since people use their eyes to navigate the road.

    Newsflash for you, Elon. Most people are terrible drivers. We should be striving to do better as a society, not imitate something that already sucks.

    • @Aganim@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      Musk maintains that camera-only technology is the most “human” way to approach self-driving, since people use their eyes to navigate the road.

      A few years ago I was driving on the motorway, came up on a bend in the road and was greeted by a dense freak fog bank out of nowhere. I immediately let go of the accelerator to reduce speed, at the same time my dashboard lit up like a Christmas tree and a collision alert started blaring. That gave me enough time to apply the brakes and prevent a collision with the first and only traffic jam I’ve ever seen there.

      I see no reason to not augment our own capabilities with radar and lidar, to see what we as humans can’t.

    • @tankplanker@lemmy.world
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      208 days ago

      This was him justifying what was a cost saving decision that became a face saving battle for him personally as everyone told him he was wrong.

      If there is one thing Elon cannot stand above all others is admitting he was wrong, especially when he has spent years promising this and now he would have to retrofit at his cost Lidar to all those cars he sold as self driving ready with an expensive optional extra.

      He might be able to avoid any sort of punishment from the US government as long as he stays in Trumps good books, but he will not be able to do so in Europe or similar.

    • @Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      48 days ago

      waymo is already superior to tesla in self driving,waymo has been around for a few years already. teslas already too late into the game.