Will This Save Tesla?

Yeah, no, it could actually kill it.

Tesla Cybercab — Tesla

You may have noticed that Tesla is in a bit of a sticky situation at the moment. With plummeting sales, decimated profits, and a stock price headed straight for the floor, Tesla seems about ready to throw itself onto the scrap heap. But there are growing whispers that Musk could turn this nightmare around. During a recent earnings call, Musk announced that Tesla will launch its robotaxi service and enable Teslas to become fully autonomous later this year! He even hinted at these robotaxis rapidly reaching profitability, seemingly backing up Cathie Wood’s predictions that Tesla could soon be a multi-trillion-dollar company. How on Earth can Tesla do this? Have they made a gargantuan technological leap? Well, no, their self-driving technology is still about as safe as letting a myopic 12-year-old drive. Instead, thanks to Trump and DOGE, the NHTSA has significantly relaxed self-driving regulations, which has paved the way for Tesla to do whatever it likes. I see no problem here; after all, the deregulation of potentially dangerous industries has never harmed anyone! What’s that about 2008…? Either way, this is Musk’s last-ditch attempt to save Tesla. So, can he do it? Ha, not at all!

Let’s start with the obvious. Lowering regulations won’t make Tesla’s famously crap self-driving systems any safer.

Unlike virtually every other self-driving company — which uses an entire suite of sensors, from lidar to radar and ultrasonics — Tesla’s FSD system (Full Self Driving) only uses cameras. As Mark Rober proved, this means it can be easily fooled by optical illusions, such as shadows or whiteouts. It also means it has no redundancy, so if the AI computer vision misunderstands its surroundings (which it frequently does), then it can’t use a redundant sensor system to verify what is actually happening like all other self-driving cars do. As a result, Tesla’s self-driving technology is now infamous for being flat-out bad. In fact, it is so bad that the customers who have shelled out thousands of dollars to buy the supervision version of FSD only use it 15% of the time, given that many are scared it will run them off the road.

Musk has stated that FSD has improved and that the robotaxi only needs intervention once every 10,000 miles. However, just a few months ago, a third-party investigation found that FSD needed intervention every 31 miles. In other words, Musk claims that Tesla achieved a safety increase of over 76,000% in a few months. Yeah, I call bullshit.

Given that the average taxi ride in the US is around five miles, we can realistically expect Cybercabs to either require intervention or get into an accident roughly every sixth ride. Somehow, I don’t think customers will be clambering to take those odds, do you? But, who knows, maybe Musk can drum up some customers by getting Trump to label anyone who doesn’t use a Cybercab a domestic terrorist. Yeah, that will solve the problem.

Unfortunately, even if Musk found a way to achieve his blatant lies or force customers to use Cybercabs regardless, this robotaxi simply wouldn’t make them any money.

As I have covered before (read more here), Tesla’s own internal analysis found that robotaxis won’t make any significant money, mostly due to the fact that Musk’s business plan of selling them rather than operating them is moronic on its face.

However, Tesla is also really far behind in the robotaxi race. Waymo already does well over 250,000 robotaxi rides per week, and even though they are more expensive than an Uber, they still aren’t profitable. How can Musk expect to outcompete them and make a profit where Waymo can’t? Sure, the Waymo robotaxis are more expensive to build than the Cybercab, thanks to their more advanced sensor suite. But, as Waymo’s former CEO pointed out, the cost of sensors has a “trivial cost-per-mile impact over the useful life of a robotaxi”, so Tesla doesn’t really have an advantage there. Plus, Tesla needs much more advanced AI to make up for its lack of sensors, which definitely doesn’t have a trivial cost per mile impact. So even though the Cybercab will likely be cheaper to build than a Waymo, it will actually be way more expensive to operate. Therefore, Tesla competing with Waymo is a non-starter.

I can already hear the Musk fans screaming that I’m wrong and that when Musk finally unleashes full FSD to Tesla owners later this year, millions of Teslas will become privately owned robotaxis, flooding Waymo out of the market, which is just idiotic. Firstly, Musk has admitted that the current FSD computer isn’t up to scratch, and because people bought Teslas under the guise that they would one day become self-driving, Tesla might have to retrofit millions of vehicles with the new computer, which would not only take years but could also bankrupt Tesla. And even if we ignore that, flooding the market with that many robotaxis would make Tesla’s robotaxi utterly pointless.

However, Mr Ketamine won’t let something as inconsequential as reality get in his way!

Which is a shame, because the Cybercab could also open Tesla up to some company-destroying fines.

Let’s start with the fact that even if you own a Tesla Cybercab privately and it crashes, technically, Tesla is liable. There is a precedent for this now, with Tesla having paid out for the wrongful death of a man killed by his Model Y’s autopilot that drove him full speed into a pillar. The high frequency of intervention Cybercabs are sure to need, combined with the fact that the Cybercab design makes passenger intervention practically impossible, means that Tesla could be sued to high heaven for rampant property damage, personal injury, wrongful death, and even manslaughter caused by Cybercabs. And, if Musk somehow does manage to get millions of these murderous cars on the road, the sum of these fines and settlements could easily bankrupt Tesla.

Argh, but Musk has been a clever little conniving billionaire. The robotaxis being rolled out will supposedly have human remote operators who will be on call to step in if a “car gets stuck or something.” Or, you know, intervene if FSD decides to accelerate into a bridge while carrying a child. This actually happened not long ago to a Tesla using FSD. Thankfully, the child survived, but they were disembowelled… Yeah, I said FSD was dangerous.

Now, considering that Musk has a tendency to fake things, such as the “AI” robots that were actually being puppeteered by Tesla interns at the We, Robot event, many experts are sceptical of these remote human operators. After all, Tesla is only rolling out a few dozen robotaxis at a time, and their technology is demonstrably incapable of running such a service. To many, it seems awfully like Tesla is planning on creating a remote-controlled taxi service to fool investors and the public into thinking it is AI-powered.

Tesla is already under investigation by the DOJ for wire fraud due to its exaggerations of Autopilot and FSD. And because the fines for wire fraud are twice the material gain, Tesla would have to hand over $1.19 billion if it was found guilty today. Expanding this potentially fake robotaxi scheme will only balloon that figure. In fact, depending on how far Musk decides to take this, that fine could be anywhere from a few hundred billion dollars to more than a trillion!

So, if Musk goes through with the robotaxi rollout he seems to have planned, Tesla could be bankrupted and destroyed with lawsuits and fraud fines. On the plus side, with all that cash from fining Tesla and with a bankrupt Tesla no longer needing government subsidies, Musk might effectively give the US government that $2 trillion he promised!

Tesla is trapped in a catch-22 thanks to Musk. If they don’t launch a robotaxi, the company’s value will drop too much, and Musk and Tesla will go bankrupt. If they do launch it, well, everything we have just talked about could happen. Who could have foreseen that? I mean, it’s not like drug-loving fascists have ever totally failed because of their cretinous hubris before, right?

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Sources: Electrek, Wired, Futurism, Investopedia, Rolling Stone, Reuters, Electrek, Electroniq, Will Lockett, Motely Fool, MSN