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[–] 34 points 10 months ago (10 children)

If driverless taxis ever go mainstream (and that's a big if), it will be from companies like Waymo, not Tesla. Tesla shouldn't be seen as a serious company. I mean, they do sell legitimate products, but their $1.6 trillion market cap isn't based on what they sell today, but what their cult member investors think they're going to bring to market in the future. You know, all the stuff that will usher in the post-human, techno utopia. It's all nonsense, and someday it will all come crashing down, though that could take a while. People can stay delusional for a long time.

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  • [–] 17 points 10 months ago (2 children)

    Elon's stupid ass dedication to using cameras and image processing for self driving will ultimately be what leaves Tesla in the dust. A combination of LIDAR, cameras, and other detection tools are way safer than just cameras alone. I'm not a huge Mark Rober fan but he did show that you can beat Tesla's self driving with Looney Tunes techniques

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  • [–] 7 points 10 months ago (4 children)

    And yet WAYMO taxis have been driving through bus stops like it's going out of style. They aren't necessarily better.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago (1 child)

    Yeah, but I trust Waymo will get their shit together long before that psycho will, if ever.

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  • [–] 4 points 10 months ago

    I think this is a case of the lesser of two evils here. Not being Elon Musk is such a low bar to clear.

    Their statements each time something bad happens with their products don't bear out that things will change in a meaningful way any time soon. There are a lot of reasons I'd never ride in one of these but even putting that to the side, objectively they each seem to have significant problems with implementation that are receiving lip service instead of actual fixes.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago (1 child)

    Waymos were violating a Texas state law that requires cars to stop when a school bus stops, even in 2+ lane roads separated by a paved median, even for traffic going in the opposite direction:

    https://liggettlawgroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/School-bus-laws-img-1024x657.png

    The requirements for opposite side traffic in multi-lane roads is pretty rare and might be unique to Texas. And yes, human drivers fuck this up all the time, too, leading to a lot of PSAs in Texas, especially for new residents.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

    A couple of weeks ago a WAYMO Taxi drove through an active crime scene.

    A bit ago they had to patch their taxis firmware to prevent them running down children (something you'd think they already would be programmed to do).

    Passengers have reported being held hostage by their taxi when it stopped suddenly and refused to move.

    There's a laundry list of things that have been wrong with them. Some have had reasonable fixes (and some of those fixes should have been implemented before they were allowed on the road).

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  • [–] 5 points 10 months ago

    Tesla is already broke, the magic bubble has popped, and they are on a steady slide to bankruptcy. They will NEVER recover their mojo. The institutional investors will keep them alive for a while, but they are already Wile E. Coyote, hanging in mid-air, and hasn't realized there's nothing under their feet yet.

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