An ungainly Tesla Robotaxi incident, the place the “security monitor” needed to exit the automobile in the course of site visitors to take the driving force’s seat, means that Elon Musk’s firm is prioritizing optics over security.
At Electrek, we’ve got warned all yr that the launch of Tesla’s ‘Robotaxi’ is extra about optics, giving the impression that Tesla is main in autonomy, quite than developments in deploying a secure autonomous ride-hailing system.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has been making predictions in regards to the automaker fixing unsupervised self-driving by the tip of yearly for the final 6 years, and it by no means occurred.
He and Tesla badly wanted a win to avoid wasting face as Waymo is now quickly increasing its personal autonomous ride-hailing service throughout half a dozen US cities.
To offer the impression that it was additionally able to deploy such a system, Tesla took an analogous strategy to promoting self-driving expertise in client automobiles – particularly, doing it earlier than it’s prepared.
Tesla started providing a ride-hailing service in Austin, using automobiles outfitted with an up to date model of its client Supervised Full Self-Driving (FSD) expertise. As an alternative of Tesla homeowners being supervisors and answerable for the vehicles like within the client model, Tesla put in workers within the entrance passenger seats with their fingers on a kill change, able to cease the automobile at any second.
Shifting the supervisor from the driving force’s seat to the entrance passenger seat is only for optics, to offer the impression of progress, but it surely really reduces security.
Within the driver’s seat, the supervisor would have extra choices to appropriate the automobile in case of an error than with a killswitch to convey the automobile to a cease.
Moreover, a brand new incident additionally exhibits how Tesla’s strategy endangers the “security monitor.”
Tesla shareholders Ark Make investments have been testing Tesla Robotaxi when the automobile wasn’t in a position to make a left flip and acquired caught in site visitors. The supervisor needed to exit the automobile in the course of site visitors to maneuver to the driving force’s seat and manually drive it to finish the experience:
As you’ll be able to see from the video, they edited it so that you simply don’t know the way lengthy it took, and also you don’t see the security monitor navigating round site visitors to maneuver to the driving force’s seat safely.
The video was produced as a part of Ark Make investments’s testing of Tesla Robotaxi.
Ark Make investments is likely one of the largest promoters of Tesla’s inventory. They’ve persistently maintained the best inventory worth goal for Tesla on Wall Road: $2600 per share, which might make Tesla essentially the most priceless firm on this planet.
It additionally occurs to be one of many worst-performing funds of all time.
Its flagship ARK Innovation ETF is down greater than 14% during the last 5 years, whereas the S&P 500 virtually doubled throughout the identical interval:
Most of their Tesla valuation can also be based mostly on Robotaxi being successful.
Electrek’s Take
There’s completely no purpose to maneuver the supervisor from the driving force’s seat to the passenger seat aside from optics.
That’s it.
It might be safer for everybody concerned if the supervisor was sitting within the entrance seat with their arms on the wheel, however just because Texas regulation permits Tesla to do it, they’re shifting it to the passenger seat with a finger on a kill change as a result of it appears higher in movies produced virtually by Tesla shareholders, that are almsot completely those with entry to the service.
In California, Tesla isn’t allowed to do this so its “Robotaxi” service within the Bay Space is actually Supervised FSD with a Tesla driver within the driver’s seat.
To be clear, the Robotaxi in Austin is just about the identical factor, however the supervisor is within the passenger seat.
It is unnecessary. Security earlier than optics.
Anyway, I don’t perceive who Tesla is attempting to persuade right here. Solely its shareholders base imagine that it’s forward of Waymo. Anybody who’s unbiased right here can see by way of Tesla’s sport of smoke and mirrors.
