Tesla's Robotaxi Event Promised Utopia. It Was Still A Letdown
The "We, Robot" event was peak 2020s Tesla: A long wait, few specifics, tons of promises for a bright future. But for whom?
The designs look great. I'll give them that. Franz von Holzhausen hasn't lost his touch.
But for anyone who was expecting Tesla to settle the countless questions about how it will safely incorporate artificial intelligence into autonomous driving, or implement a robotaxi service that seems to be on the level of Uber or Lyft, or get past the scores of regulatory hurdles that a network of robotic taxis would face, the We, Robot event came up short.
In case you didn't stay up late for this one, I'll direct you to the video broadcast of the event (do mind the 52-minute delay upfront in the form of a Windows Me screensaver backed by one of the more grating varieties of electronic music) or my colleague Mack Hogan's liveblog recap from last night.
It would be fascinating to know more about how that could work, what its charging time and speed could be, and how it could be incorporated into future Tesla models. Or what platform or platform these vehicles could use and where they'll be made. Or exactly how their self-driving systems can be "10, 20, 30 times safer than a human driver" as Musk claims, without using LIDAR or other advanced sensors like the rest of the industry.
But we didn't get into any of that.
And that wildly optimistic tone stood in stark contrast to Musk himself as of late, who's become the doomsday preacher of the digital age.