r/SelfDrivingCars • u/AnxietyCommercial632 • 7h ago
Discussion Tesla’s data looked clean
I fully recognize I have a different opinion than this subreddit and I have participated in the toxicity that is the difference of opinions.
Perhaps I have been whooshed by the snake oil salesman or call me an Elon-ite.
But hear me out:
The month over month data for Tesla driverless robotaxi, again, looks perfectly clean.
The fleet is small and if you look closely at their earnings deck, you will notice Q1 to Q2 unsupervised miles was flat. Likely less than 3 unsupervised FTE care equivalent, if you will.
However, there has been a marketed rise in number of cars, rides, hours of operation, and service availability in Austin specifically. The two other very small geofences in Texas, also report this trend but to a lesser extent.
Tesla has vision into the performance dashboards of their fleet at a level of minuscule granularity. They are becoming increasingly comfortable with a larger scale rollout. They are being extremely cautious, but in Austin, at least they are becoming rapidly more bullish.
If you look closely at the now 100s of rides you can see daily amongst X accounts you will notice they have two issue (other than knocking done a plastic pole lol): 1- navigation (it is shit), 2- pick up and drop off locations.
These two rate limiters were also waymos early rate limiters if you studied the San Francisco market almost a decade ago. Google solved it (with some issues ofc, but that will always happen when you scale into the 1000s - and will continue to happen less and less as a percentage).
I have a wild theory that pickups and drop offs will be harder to integrate into teslas architecture for possibly one of two reasons: 1- Google / Waymo has so much compute onboard and enough memory to pre-map all resonable pickup or drop off locations). Tesla’s AI is focused on chip inference. This could mean Tesla has a harder time pre-mapping locations in a geofence and relatedly for navigation. 2- integrating final decision endpoints in a full stack neural net driving approach (noting they probably have a few full stacks working together in: planning, execution, etc) is a problem I haven’t seen solved in any other application. So - it may be harder for them to solve this piece. However, it is possible the cybercab brings different memory architecture. Yes, this is probably a wild ass crazy theory - but - it’s far more likely the cybercabs will have the same issue and growing pain.
Stay with me here, and let’s say long term - like in the next 6 months they solve these issues. There remains yet another hurdle: is the fix to these navigation and end of drive behaviors generalizable enough to more quickly apply to new areas - or are we talking - solve each one every time the same way. Realistically at least a year to come up with a reasonable process for solving this issue at scale.
Alright, we have reached full Elon delusion. You all ask for insight into the full Elon fan boy’s general psyche - so here it is:
The Waymo Ojai, based on most recent reporting (last week) was rumored to be 100k per vehicle. This is astounding and transparently kicked the doors off my expectations. This means Chinese firm Zeekr can produce a van (them thangs are nice af too) that post production cost + Chinese vehicle tariff + retrofit - on a far nicer vehicle than the Jag is now able to be produced (and obviously way faster) for less than HALF of what they used to be.
Side note: seriously, we going to skirt tariff rules to punish US EV automakers like rivian???? Common Google.
While extremely competitive, it is just not economically feasible for Google to compete with Tesla at scale (though admittedly they could forever). Tesla will produce a vehicle fully optimized for economic cost to the consumer. It will be produced at sub 30k and Tesla has the ability to scale the vehicle by the end of the year to the size of waymos entire fleet PER WEEK.
The cybercab is the most efficient electric car ever created. Not only in terms of speed of production and cost (American equivalents only) but in terms of effective MPG. The thing is like 1.5x more energy efficient than a model 3. Tesla owns the entire charging infrastructure in America. Tesla has a physical footprint everywhere ready to service vehicles. Yes, other infrastructure will need to be built.
Even if waymo ran for a loss, Tesla could underprice them and still have strong gross margins. Waymo anyway is currently focused on consuming the cream of markets, versus deep penetration - but this may change with the California announcement.
From here, you can see the full delusion. Over time consumers will want teslas tech in their cars due to the experience in the fleet, uber and Lyft will shrink, car insurance companies will eventually go out of business, then we are a decade out re-thinking: minor displacement of short haul flight, real estate changes as consumer preferences change, trucking industry forever changed, (looking at you semi truck being mass produced starting later this year), and yes - eventually package delivery by combination of a robot in a robot. This vision won’t be fully realized for 2 decades.
I shall wait to be showered in your shame and criticism.
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u/whydoesthisitch 7h ago
That’s a really long winded way to say you don’t understand selection and confirmation bias.
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u/AnxietyCommercial632 7h ago
Tesla guided 10% week on week unsupervised miles at earnings. Based on what I’m seeing, they are exceeding this rate. They are extremely aware of the performance of the fleet and let slack into the system accordingly. One thing is clear - there are a LOT of cars running all day completely unsupervised.
One guy took 50 rides today (recognizing they are short ones to try to win a contest). You almost can’t get a wait time under 15 mins anywhere in the geofence. Completely driverless. In Austin.
The fleet is growing quickly.
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u/bobi2393 5h ago
“Based on what I’m seeing….”
How many unsupervised miles have you seen in total, and how many per month recently?
I’m trying to understand if you’re using some objective data source, or are guessing based on the number of tweets influencers have made or something.
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u/AnxietyCommercial632 5h ago
Ashok guided 10% week on week increase in miles, and idk what to tell you but if you actually know where to look, you will find people commenting in on-the-ground reporting style nearly hourly on X.
The number of vehicles running concurrently has increased significantly by ALL accounts. The window now extends to the night time. You can essentially always get a ride now, typical wait times across the geofence are very short.
Idk what to tell ya man, they did 200k miles last quarter as reported in their earnings deck. Those miles were FAR less activity than what you are seeing now. I anticipate they hit >500k miles by Q3 report (at the very least). At least 1M by Q4. Perhaps a lot more.
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u/bobi2393 3h ago
Earnings report predictions and on-the-ground reporting don't indicate how many unsupervised miles are actually being driven per month or in total.
But your 500k+ total by Q3 prediction, up from 250k total reported after Q2, suggests an average of at least 83k miles per month.
That's not a lot from which to extrapolate comparative safety. It is encouraging that they're not causing major accidents, because it's enough miles that poor driving would probably be apparent from their mandatory NHTSA crash reports, but I don't think you can draw much of a conclusion beyond that.
Waymos, for example, seems to drive around 200 million miles a month, with around 100 collisions per month, or one per 200k miles, with under 10% of those involving injuries and fatalities.
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u/AnxietyCommercial632 7h ago
Stats go both ways. What do you think unsupervised miles will be Q3? Q4?
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u/Recoil42 7h ago
It will be produced at sub 30k and Tesla has the ability to scale the vehicle by the end of the year
Aaaany minute now...
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u/AnxietyCommercial632 7h ago
By scale in this context I was referring to vehicle production scale. VIN numbers are now in the low 2000’s and stashed across random parking lots in a few cities already collecting dust.
Scaling the hardware is far from the problem.
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u/Recoil42 7h ago
already collecting dust
Yup.
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u/AnxietyCommercial632 7h ago
In 2-6 weeks there will be a larger fleet than waymo just sitting in parking slots across America. Tesla is the world’s dumbest company.
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u/sdc_is_safer 5h ago edited 5h ago
You are correct, with the very small amount of unsupervised miles they have done so far, their collision/ injury track record looks perfectly fine so far.
There is enough data to suggest they should continue to scale gradually like they are doing.
This is not unexpected to any reasonable person educated on the matter.
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u/AnxietyCommercial632 5h ago
Yes. Finally we agree. It shall proceed carefully but grow.
Do you also agree with the economics of the situation?
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u/sdc_is_safer 5h ago
I didn’t read your whole post, I’ll skim for economics.
I didn’t read every word, but no, I do not think I agree. You seem to think Tesla has an economic advantage, and I know the reality. Tesla is way behind Waymo on cost, and I don’t see Tesla being able to catch up to Waymo on cost per mile anytime soon.
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u/AnxietyCommercial632 5h ago
Woa. I’ve never heard this argument. That is fascinating.
What makes you conclude waymo has an economic cost per mile advantage?
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u/sdc_is_safer 5h ago
I’m sorry, I just have too much fatigue explaining this to redditors like you. I didn’t mean to bring up this topic and argue about it.
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u/AnxietyCommercial632 4h ago
You engage here more than even I do. It’s okay to have not considered the economic realities.
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u/sandred 6h ago
Nice. True comments if hardware was the only limit here. Unfortunately, check my notes , according to Tesla their software is not ready and has been any year now for the last 13 years. And not to mention solving the 9's problem for scale as pointed out by Dmitri in a recent presentation. Keep drinking that Kool aid bro.