> The Fremont factory lines that built those cars are converting to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots: one million units per year at $20,000 each, with public sales beginning in 2027.
Sure, why not? Seems just as likely as Tesla having 1 million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2026. =)
I don't understand the emphasis on humanoid form, especially the legs.
It seems like the focus should be on making the arms extremely capable and just use a wheeled base for some substantial number of use cases.
If there are use cases where wheels are too limiting, then a four legged base like Boston Dynamics dog seems like it would be simpler and possibly adequate for most uses.
Sorry, are all of those model 3 and Y vehicles robotaxis?
Or are you saying that because they produced 1.5 million non-robotaxi cars in 2025 that the estimate of producing 1 million robotaxis in the following year is pretty reasonable, because making them autonomous taxis is a minor feature bump...?
No, I'm saying that the original content is low-effort shitposting, and that Tesla has the ability to scale industrial production to over 1mm 'things' per year, as evidenced by production last year. I did the OP the mild courtesy of asking him to open up a useful conversation. For instance, "Is there going to be demand for 1mm robots, and if so, when?" Or "How much actual retooling is necessary in Fremont for this?" Both seem like useful and interesting things to talk about.
I think teslas issue is that they need the AI5 chip for robotaxi ops, the current chip just doesn’t cut it. So if they have batches end of 2026 and start optimizing the models, by mid 2027 volume production you might have robotaxis coming online at about 100k per month. Waymo currently has less than 10k cars on the road.
Lots of ifs here. If they can enable hardware 4 for robotaxi ops then they can have 3m+ cars ready to go. But I am skeptical of it. And given that Elon’s top priority is scaling chips and AI5, I think that is proof that he thinks it is likely necessary too.
So 1m robotaxis by end of 2026 is theoretically possible but I think unlikely, and it’s more likely in the 200k-1m by end of 2027. If they pull that off, they could still be largest by then if Waymo doesn’t rapidly scale. Fun times!
My understanding is superficial, so do knock it down, not it seems to me that tesla insists on vision-only hour self driving, which vastly increases the requirement for ML. Whereas Waymo has a lower sum technology requirement by using both lidar and vision, and have moved faster. So when you say "tesla needs the AI5 chip", i hear the rider "...to avoid a public volte face".
I suppose that bulky lidar modules are undesirable in premium consumer goods, but i don't see that downside for taxis.
It might be that the Waymo sensor suite was key to launch; I don't have any actual knowledge. My impression though was that they basically wired in a large call center for years first to make decisions for the fleet, and have slowly narrowed the scope of those decisions. Elon definitely wasn't interested in staffing large call centers.
I also believe that Waymo relied on much more intensive mapping than Tesla does/did -- so you could imagine two really different graphs -- Waymo's quality and deployment starts higher, but it is perhaps capped against places they're willing to do the scanning, and by their labor Capex. They will be racing to lower the scanning requirements and lower the labor requirements. Meanwhile Tesla looks worse for a long time because they've bet on getting tech together for an 'everywhere' launch, and it's a J curve around quality -- useless at 3 9s, and very, very useful at 5 9s. If those are the actual dynamics, figuring out who will be the 'winner' needs the following strategy assessment:
1) A take on whether or not robotaxis are 'winner take all/most' (I propose they are not, switching cost for consumers is super low)
2) If you think both companies will get to 'good enough' a take on capital dynamics for at-scale launch (I think Tesla wins here, because Elon will rely on owner's capital for at-scale launch, or at least can if he wants to, while it seems very unlikely that Waymo will start selling their cars to individual operators at scale in a timely fashion)
3) An organizational assessment - if we assume that vision only ML will eventually work at all for 5 9s, can Waymo 'trim down' their data and labor stack faster than Tesla can scale up their vision-only ML?
Upshot - I wouldn't bet against Tesla being the dominant robotaxi in ten years. But I would be very surprised if it matters very much or they were the only one - eventually the stack will get commoditized. Tesla's solved almost all the hard problems of getting most of these on the road, except for that last 9 of reliability -- you'd have to really hate Elon to think they won't get there at all with the AI resources between SX/xAI and Tesla available.
Dynamics can make on the order of 25k robots a year though. Not enough to matter in a gdp sense. There is one US company that can scale this kind of manufacturing currently. So to my mind the question is : can Tesla ever get there on tech, and if so, can they be first to scale to a million units? You don’t need them to have the best robot now. Or ever really if they’re the first to scale.
And while Musk is very good in announcing stuff, delivering he is not. boring company? Robotaxis on masses?
Did you watch his keynote last week? Man he is ignorant. It would be a million times cheaper and easier to build a powerplant, fiber and energy lines in the dessert of USA and build their big data centers before building anything in space.
But no he talks about dyson sphere, space etc. like we need any of it today (perhaps in a 100 years) and it would be more cost effective than on earth.
That's exactly why we complain about the Rs in strawberry. We can get funny-stupid human interpretations all day long. What we can't get is cold facts, and isn't that what was promised by AI (at least, before ChatGPT was released in 2022)?
Unfortunately we fed this current iteration of AI with human behaviour (not only that: human behaviour on the Internet...)
> What we can't get is cold facts, and isn't that what was promised by AI (at least, before ChatGPT was released in 2022)?
Not that I know of. An entity dealing only in cold facts is not intelligent, it's a theorem prover- extremely narrow, rigid and incapable of interpretation and insight- basically of bridging the smallest gap of knowledge. That's exactly what intelligence isn't.
Thinking back to case-studies around the Therac-25 [0], I would like to pre-emptively highlight the differences between:
1. Technique X is unsafe.
2. Technique X is unsafe because too much can go wrong even with the best intentions.
3. Technique X is unsafe without strong QA and interlocking safety measures, and there's too much economic pressure for the manufacturer to cut corners.
The obvious problem with steer-by-wire is that in the traditional design, it's not uncommon to lose power assist but not the mechanical connection to the wheels, so you can still steer the car. To completely lose steering control you'd need significant mechanical damage.
If the whole thing goes through the computer then there are lots of new ways to fail. Steering wheel position sensor goes bad on the highway? Computer gets bad data. Control wires get disconnected or damaged? No data. Completely unrelated wires get shorted and fry the computer? No steering. Anything pops the wrong fuse? No power, no computer or steering motors.
Some of those can be mitigated with redundancy but you're still vulnerable to common causes. You have three position sensors and someone dumps their beverage down the steering column, are there any left and do you have any good way to determine which one(s)? The vehicle took some minor damage allowing water to get somewhere it's not intended to, any way to guarantee you're not about to lose both sides of a redundant electrical system the next time it goes through a puddle infused with conductive road salt?
Of course, a counterpoint is what's been happening in aviation. Autopilot became a thing. Autoland became a thing. And, to keep improving planes (first military planes, then commercial aircraft), it was much easier to drop the mechanical connection to the wings.
Autopilot started as a help to pilots, and evolved to something that is a necessity and pilot control inputs are "suggestions" or "goals", not inputs like turning the wheel on a bike. To be followed in what you might refer to as "the long term" from the perspective of controlling the aircraft, but in the short term, the computer is to fly the plane in a way IT thinks is reasonable. An extreme example would be to enforce the flight envelope. But today there exist autoland-only airports (as well as huge airports that go autoland-only if things are too hard for humans, like LHR)
Most of today's passenger aircraft cannot be flown if fly-by-wire is not operational. Most of today's aircraft actually used for passenger transport cannot land without fly-by-wire.
A number of military aircraft, and rocket planes and rockets, even the ones carrying humans, and more and more passenger planes cannot be flown by humans, not just because the mechanical force humans can generate cannot move the control surfaces (which "can be fixed" with hydraulics, if you don't mind serious caveats), but because the human brain is incapable of generating sufficient control inputs at a fast enough rate, or just can't keep stable flight going.
Hilariously, this also goes for hobby quadcopters. They are flown by algorithms. Humans can't do it. Not fast enough. Humans provide direction. Algorithms, even AI algorithms that aren't even guaranteed to succeed at all (in professional/military drones), actually fly the thing.
But, yes, you're entirely correct by saying "then there are lots of new ways to fail". It also works better, cheaper, faster, safer, more comfortable, ... if it doesn't fail.
And ... robotaxis are already far safer than even a good human driver. So whatever the problems ... they don't actually make things worse.
Also you should check out geohot's business. A lot of cars already are "fly-by-wire". Their solution? They now have 2 CAN buses instead of one. One for the critical stuff. Cylinder timings. Checking the oil levels. Turning the wheels. Actuating the brakes. That sort of stuff. A second CAN bus for your bluetooth music, and displays and what have you. I hear a certain new Mercedes now has like 7 buses. We are making things safer.
Planes are probably the most controled machines we have. Everything gets checked twice or more, everything gets tracked and there is a clear requirement to do it like this because, as you said, its not possible for humans to control a fighterjet or a big plane.
Cars are non of that and we have billions of them on the street.
Cars also became a lot more expensive due to their complexity which def creates problems for a lot of people who can't afford all of that. I'm really torn by this because I think its very good that my side mirror shows me if there is a car next to me but in our capitalistic economy, we are excluding a lot of people from affordable cars. Drive by wire needs to be cheaper and easier to fix/repair.
Btw. Waymos are slowly learning to drive on highways so I might agree that they drive saver than humans in certain controlled envs. For sure not in any environment.
But that is the "tradeoff" people are going for. What irritates me about Waymos is that they are not really cheaper than taxis and Uber. If we want people to become more mobile ... Waymo does not appear to be the answer.
And that was always the trade that was proposed. Sure, Waymo's (and Uber) will displace a LOT of taxi jobs, but they'll be way cheaper than taxis. Well ... they're not. And at that point, from an economic perspective, this is just taking things away for not much in return.
Once again people get a lot of possible choices and once again they choose for the more expensive one, putting more people out of business, out of a job, and as you say out of society. Now they're saying "yeah but this is good for autistic people and women, who can now travel by taxi without ever seeing anyone". How, exactly, does anyone think that's a good thing for society? Seriously?
Plus I'm a bit of the opinion, if Waymo is already breaking their own proposed social contract now ... imagine what they'll do in 10 years.
Safety is a great reason to not do something. Utility and enhanced safety are great reasons to override that reflex. A lot has happened since the Therac 25 incident in the medical world with AI, machine learning, robotic neuro surgery, all sorts of computer aided diagnostics, etc. This stuff undeniably saves lives. The incident did inspire some level of scrutiny of course. But compared to modern medical equipment, that machine is from the stone age.
Steer by wire (which the article highlights) is common on all modern airbus planes for decades. The first ones flew shortly after the Therac incident. Boeing has also started implementing that on their newer models. And of course most of the vtol planes/drones currently starting to operate and progress through certification programs also commonly use steer by wire. Several of these flew without pilots before their first manned test flights. These are computer controlled, pilot directed pretty much by default with that part being optional by design.
Beyond Tesla, there are now several other manufacturers implementing steer by wire in the car industry. Nio, Lexus, Toyota, Mercedes, and a few others each either already have cars on the road for this or are working on new ones. And while Tesla has received quite a bit of criticism on their FSD system, I don't think there have been a lot of incidents implicating the steer by wire in Cybertrucks. It seems to work and drivers seem to mostly like it once they get used to it. The car is controversial of course. But there's a lot of cool tech inside that is being copied across the industry now.
The implied warning "we should be careful with this stuff because Therac-25" is a bit of a cliche at this point. Yes, we need lots of checks and balances when using automation in safety critical systems. And that has been common for decades.
All analysis should also keep in mind the "who", no matter how logically separable it is.
I put this less strongly since boeing contracted MBA cancer and yolo'd the 737-max, but that aside, the civil aviation engineering field controls risks to a fault. Commercial pilots are selected to follow checklists without deviation. I allow them the grace to implement steer-by-wire.
Ford kept selling Pintos with exploding fuel tanks, Toyota sold priuses with runaway acceleration defects, and depending on region maybe the worst twenty per cent of drivers ought to be operating nothing more dangerous than shirt buttons. No matter how good the plan is, those people shouldn't be anywhere near it.
Moreover, Technique X does not actually provide any significant value.
The whole steer-by-wire in CT happened because Musk wanted a yoke as the control system. And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
Vehicles include low-utility features for market positioning all the time.
Do buyers need a motorised hood ornament? A tiny vase built into the dashboard? A built-in champagne chiller? Gull wing doors? A spoiler and a 300-horsepower engine?
If it boosts sales by giving the vehicle a distinctive character, though, there's a place in the market for that tiny vase.
The motorized hood ornaments on Rolls Royce vehicles were a solution to the problem of people being injured by, or stealing the (Spirit of Ecstasy) ornaments.
steer-by-wire makes safety nannies way easier, eg, the ones that jerk the wheel out of your hands when they decide you're too close to a line on the road.
> And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
But also look at Citroën's DIRAVI system, used on the CX, SM, and some XMs. There's no direct mechanical link between the steering wheel and the rack when the system is pressurised. When you turn the wheel a kind of dogbone link thing pushes a spool valve one way or the other allowing hydraulic fluid to push the rack along, which pushes the other end of the link back to shut the fluid off again.
So far, so similar to the Danfoss valve in a conventional power-assisted steering system, except that uses a rotary valve and a big torsion spring in the steering rack (that's why your steering wheel feels springy with the engine off).
But DIRAVI is fully powered with no mechanical link, so how do you get increasing resistance with increasing speed? Well, there's a governor on the gearbox that allows hydraulic fluid into a little cylinder that pushes a spring-loaded roller against a heart-shaped cam attached to the steering wheel shaft. This will try to spring back to the middle, and the faster you go the harder it springs back. At 70mph you can barely move the steering wheel, but it will flick a large heavy car from lane to lane with fingertip pressure.
You have to get used to this and for the first few miles you'll be zig-zagging down the road like you're tacking a dinghy, but after that you'll get used to just thinking about your right pinky finger being a gram heavier and going round a corner. I've driven some seriously high-end sports cars with legendary handling and performance and they feel pretty rough and tractory now ;-)
If the pressure fails of course then there's no powered steering (notice I say powered, not power-assisted), although in practice what tends to happen is that the "resistance" part goes first giving you very sensitive steering.
What happens once there's no pressure is that the steering wheel moves about 20° before you run the valve to its end and then the dogbone pushes directly on the drive gear for the rack. So the steering is very loose and wobbly but you can at least steer well enough to get it out of the parking space and into the workshop. You still have brakes for an hour or so if the pump belt breaks, and enough steering to get safely to the side of the road, or at least out of the fast lane.
In the 1960s they had a prototype Citroën DS controlled by a joystick using pretty much the same setup (hydraulic valve to push the rack around, heart-shaped cam to apply resistance). Apparently it was very comfortable and natural to drive but ultimately a bit to weird even for Citroën.
Not a scrap of electronics in it, unless you count the pressure switch and dashboard lightbulb.
This article is written with a little bit of a journalist’s misunderstanding of a topic.
They seem to have done research but have strung together unrelated subjects due to their lack of expertise in the subjects.
As a result it reads more like a summary or recap of vaguely related stories.
For example, Tesla’s pivot to robots has nothing to do with their advanced nature of their wiring harnesses, but it’s spoken in the same breath as if to imply that a Tesla Cybertruck (which is a Model Y with paneling literally glued on top) is more similar to a humanoid robot than a Mustang Mach-E.
In reality, what has happened is that the Model S and X have been discontinued and they’re the only products the Fremont, CA plant produces. Tesla has literally nothing else they can make in that plant. They either make Optimus robots or shut the plant down.
Optimus robot production is a face saving move. Tesla barely needs a fraction of that factory to build robots…it’s a much lower-volume and physically smaller product.
I should note that none of that has anything to do with Tesla being great at robotics and seeing it as a better business than automobiles. It has everything to do with competitors catching up and Tesla having insufficient development capability to iterate on those vehicles.
Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?
Who in the buyer demographic for the Model X won’t take a Kia EV9, Lucid Gravity, or Volvo EX-90?
Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.
Building robots at that scale without any indication that the market wants it is weird. I wouldn’t want to say atupid because with musk there is no rational thought. However this is not cars where the concept exists and we know people spend 100k towards a car. We don’t know if people will even spend on a robot that doesn’t do shit. Figure is looking at 100-150k robot if built at scale, so u less they revised this estimate down drastically, what does a 20k robot do?
One million robots to be manufactured in a year - one million robots which will likely be obsolete within five years (if that, I wouldn't be surprised if they're dead on arrival).
I don't know the figures for Earth's resources and their sustainability, so this may be a naive take, but I'm always left with the impression that these organisations want to speedrun the depletion of the planet.
114 comments
> The Fremont factory lines that built those cars are converting to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots: one million units per year at $20,000 each, with public sales beginning in 2027.
Sure, why not? Seems just as likely as Tesla having 1 million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2026. =)
It seems like the focus should be on making the arms extremely capable and just use a wheeled base for some substantial number of use cases.
If there are use cases where wheels are too limiting, then a four legged base like Boston Dynamics dog seems like it would be simpler and possibly adequate for most uses.
Or are you saying that because they produced 1.5 million non-robotaxi cars in 2025 that the estimate of producing 1 million robotaxis in the following year is pretty reasonable, because making them autonomous taxis is a minor feature bump...?
Lots of ifs here. If they can enable hardware 4 for robotaxi ops then they can have 3m+ cars ready to go. But I am skeptical of it. And given that Elon’s top priority is scaling chips and AI5, I think that is proof that he thinks it is likely necessary too.
So 1m robotaxis by end of 2026 is theoretically possible but I think unlikely, and it’s more likely in the 200k-1m by end of 2027. If they pull that off, they could still be largest by then if Waymo doesn’t rapidly scale. Fun times!
I suppose that bulky lidar modules are undesirable in premium consumer goods, but i don't see that downside for taxis.
What am I missing?
I also believe that Waymo relied on much more intensive mapping than Tesla does/did -- so you could imagine two really different graphs -- Waymo's quality and deployment starts higher, but it is perhaps capped against places they're willing to do the scanning, and by their labor Capex. They will be racing to lower the scanning requirements and lower the labor requirements. Meanwhile Tesla looks worse for a long time because they've bet on getting tech together for an 'everywhere' launch, and it's a J curve around quality -- useless at 3 9s, and very, very useful at 5 9s. If those are the actual dynamics, figuring out who will be the 'winner' needs the following strategy assessment:
1) A take on whether or not robotaxis are 'winner take all/most' (I propose they are not, switching cost for consumers is super low)
2) If you think both companies will get to 'good enough' a take on capital dynamics for at-scale launch (I think Tesla wins here, because Elon will rely on owner's capital for at-scale launch, or at least can if he wants to, while it seems very unlikely that Waymo will start selling their cars to individual operators at scale in a timely fashion)
3) An organizational assessment - if we assume that vision only ML will eventually work at all for 5 9s, can Waymo 'trim down' their data and labor stack faster than Tesla can scale up their vision-only ML?
Upshot - I wouldn't bet against Tesla being the dominant robotaxi in ten years. But I would be very surprised if it matters very much or they were the only one - eventually the stack will get commoditized. Tesla's solved almost all the hard problems of getting most of these on the road, except for that last 9 of reliability -- you'd have to really hate Elon to think they won't get there at all with the AI resources between SX/xAI and Tesla available.
Musks Robot overheated last year, we have not seen a single non staged real demonstration in public and he already wants to mass produce them.
This is just lying at this point and has very little to do how fast someone can scale something if its not ready to be scaled up.
And while Musk is very good in announcing stuff, delivering he is not. boring company? Robotaxis on masses?
Did you watch his keynote last week? Man he is ignorant. It would be a million times cheaper and easier to build a powerplant, fiber and energy lines in the dessert of USA and build their big data centers before building anything in space.
But no he talks about dyson sphere, space etc. like we need any of it today (perhaps in a 100 years) and it would be more cost effective than on earth.
He is a lunatec
For those who need help recovering from the crushing self induced disappointment, here’s some brainwave controlled cat ears: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqSZg0oiYuM
I saw Robot ear cats and couldn’t make sense of it. But clicking in the article and seeing the title in huge whatever sizes fonts made it click.
I think it’s the small font sizes in HN causing our brains to ‘fill in the blanks’.
Unfortunately we fed this current iteration of AI with human behaviour (not only that: human behaviour on the Internet...)
> What we can't get is cold facts, and isn't that what was promised by AI (at least, before ChatGPT was released in 2022)?
Not that I know of. An entity dealing only in cold facts is not intelligent, it's a theorem prover- extremely narrow, rigid and incapable of interpretation and insight- basically of bridging the smallest gap of knowledge. That's exactly what intelligence isn't.
> Steer-by-wire
Thinking back to case-studies around the Therac-25 [0], I would like to pre-emptively highlight the differences between:
1. Technique X is unsafe.
2. Technique X is unsafe because too much can go wrong even with the best intentions.
3. Technique X is unsafe without strong QA and interlocking safety measures, and there's too much economic pressure for the manufacturer to cut corners.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25
If the whole thing goes through the computer then there are lots of new ways to fail. Steering wheel position sensor goes bad on the highway? Computer gets bad data. Control wires get disconnected or damaged? No data. Completely unrelated wires get shorted and fry the computer? No steering. Anything pops the wrong fuse? No power, no computer or steering motors.
Some of those can be mitigated with redundancy but you're still vulnerable to common causes. You have three position sensors and someone dumps their beverage down the steering column, are there any left and do you have any good way to determine which one(s)? The vehicle took some minor damage allowing water to get somewhere it's not intended to, any way to guarantee you're not about to lose both sides of a redundant electrical system the next time it goes through a puddle infused with conductive road salt?
Autopilot started as a help to pilots, and evolved to something that is a necessity and pilot control inputs are "suggestions" or "goals", not inputs like turning the wheel on a bike. To be followed in what you might refer to as "the long term" from the perspective of controlling the aircraft, but in the short term, the computer is to fly the plane in a way IT thinks is reasonable. An extreme example would be to enforce the flight envelope. But today there exist autoland-only airports (as well as huge airports that go autoland-only if things are too hard for humans, like LHR)
Most of today's passenger aircraft cannot be flown if fly-by-wire is not operational. Most of today's aircraft actually used for passenger transport cannot land without fly-by-wire.
A number of military aircraft, and rocket planes and rockets, even the ones carrying humans, and more and more passenger planes cannot be flown by humans, not just because the mechanical force humans can generate cannot move the control surfaces (which "can be fixed" with hydraulics, if you don't mind serious caveats), but because the human brain is incapable of generating sufficient control inputs at a fast enough rate, or just can't keep stable flight going.
Hilariously, this also goes for hobby quadcopters. They are flown by algorithms. Humans can't do it. Not fast enough. Humans provide direction. Algorithms, even AI algorithms that aren't even guaranteed to succeed at all (in professional/military drones), actually fly the thing.
But, yes, you're entirely correct by saying "then there are lots of new ways to fail". It also works better, cheaper, faster, safer, more comfortable, ... if it doesn't fail.
And ... robotaxis are already far safer than even a good human driver. So whatever the problems ... they don't actually make things worse.
Also you should check out geohot's business. A lot of cars already are "fly-by-wire". Their solution? They now have 2 CAN buses instead of one. One for the critical stuff. Cylinder timings. Checking the oil levels. Turning the wheels. Actuating the brakes. That sort of stuff. A second CAN bus for your bluetooth music, and displays and what have you. I hear a certain new Mercedes now has like 7 buses. We are making things safer.
We can make this work. We will make this work.
Cars are non of that and we have billions of them on the street.
Cars also became a lot more expensive due to their complexity which def creates problems for a lot of people who can't afford all of that. I'm really torn by this because I think its very good that my side mirror shows me if there is a car next to me but in our capitalistic economy, we are excluding a lot of people from affordable cars. Drive by wire needs to be cheaper and easier to fix/repair.
Btw. Waymos are slowly learning to drive on highways so I might agree that they drive saver than humans in certain controlled envs. For sure not in any environment.
And that was always the trade that was proposed. Sure, Waymo's (and Uber) will displace a LOT of taxi jobs, but they'll be way cheaper than taxis. Well ... they're not. And at that point, from an economic perspective, this is just taking things away for not much in return.
Once again people get a lot of possible choices and once again they choose for the more expensive one, putting more people out of business, out of a job, and as you say out of society. Now they're saying "yeah but this is good for autistic people and women, who can now travel by taxi without ever seeing anyone". How, exactly, does anyone think that's a good thing for society? Seriously?
Plus I'm a bit of the opinion, if Waymo is already breaking their own proposed social contract now ... imagine what they'll do in 10 years.
Steer by wire (which the article highlights) is common on all modern airbus planes for decades. The first ones flew shortly after the Therac incident. Boeing has also started implementing that on their newer models. And of course most of the vtol planes/drones currently starting to operate and progress through certification programs also commonly use steer by wire. Several of these flew without pilots before their first manned test flights. These are computer controlled, pilot directed pretty much by default with that part being optional by design.
Beyond Tesla, there are now several other manufacturers implementing steer by wire in the car industry. Nio, Lexus, Toyota, Mercedes, and a few others each either already have cars on the road for this or are working on new ones. And while Tesla has received quite a bit of criticism on their FSD system, I don't think there have been a lot of incidents implicating the steer by wire in Cybertrucks. It seems to work and drivers seem to mostly like it once they get used to it. The car is controversial of course. But there's a lot of cool tech inside that is being copied across the industry now.
The implied warning "we should be careful with this stuff because Therac-25" is a bit of a cliche at this point. Yes, we need lots of checks and balances when using automation in safety critical systems. And that has been common for decades.
I put this less strongly since boeing contracted MBA cancer and yolo'd the 737-max, but that aside, the civil aviation engineering field controls risks to a fault. Commercial pilots are selected to follow checklists without deviation. I allow them the grace to implement steer-by-wire.
Ford kept selling Pintos with exploding fuel tanks, Toyota sold priuses with runaway acceleration defects, and depending on region maybe the worst twenty per cent of drivers ought to be operating nothing more dangerous than shirt buttons. No matter how good the plan is, those people shouldn't be anywhere near it.
The whole steer-by-wire in CT happened because Musk wanted a yoke as the control system. And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
> does not actually provide any significant value
If that were true, it would not explain why other manufacturers are headed the same direction. The CT is not the only steer-by-wire vehicle.
Do buyers need a motorised hood ornament? A tiny vase built into the dashboard? A built-in champagne chiller? Gull wing doors? A spoiler and a 300-horsepower engine?
If it boosts sales by giving the vehicle a distinctive character, though, there's a place in the market for that tiny vase.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_of_Ecstasy
> And a yoke requires progressive steering which is impractical without steer-by-wire.
But also look at Citroën's DIRAVI system, used on the CX, SM, and some XMs. There's no direct mechanical link between the steering wheel and the rack when the system is pressurised. When you turn the wheel a kind of dogbone link thing pushes a spool valve one way or the other allowing hydraulic fluid to push the rack along, which pushes the other end of the link back to shut the fluid off again.
So far, so similar to the Danfoss valve in a conventional power-assisted steering system, except that uses a rotary valve and a big torsion spring in the steering rack (that's why your steering wheel feels springy with the engine off).
But DIRAVI is fully powered with no mechanical link, so how do you get increasing resistance with increasing speed? Well, there's a governor on the gearbox that allows hydraulic fluid into a little cylinder that pushes a spring-loaded roller against a heart-shaped cam attached to the steering wheel shaft. This will try to spring back to the middle, and the faster you go the harder it springs back. At 70mph you can barely move the steering wheel, but it will flick a large heavy car from lane to lane with fingertip pressure.
You have to get used to this and for the first few miles you'll be zig-zagging down the road like you're tacking a dinghy, but after that you'll get used to just thinking about your right pinky finger being a gram heavier and going round a corner. I've driven some seriously high-end sports cars with legendary handling and performance and they feel pretty rough and tractory now ;-)
If the pressure fails of course then there's no powered steering (notice I say powered, not power-assisted), although in practice what tends to happen is that the "resistance" part goes first giving you very sensitive steering.
What happens once there's no pressure is that the steering wheel moves about 20° before you run the valve to its end and then the dogbone pushes directly on the drive gear for the rack. So the steering is very loose and wobbly but you can at least steer well enough to get it out of the parking space and into the workshop. You still have brakes for an hour or so if the pump belt breaks, and enough steering to get safely to the side of the road, or at least out of the fast lane.
In the 1960s they had a prototype Citroën DS controlled by a joystick using pretty much the same setup (hydraulic valve to push the rack around, heart-shaped cam to apply resistance). Apparently it was very comfortable and natural to drive but ultimately a bit to weird even for Citroën.
Not a scrap of electronics in it, unless you count the pressure switch and dashboard lightbulb.
They seem to have done research but have strung together unrelated subjects due to their lack of expertise in the subjects.
As a result it reads more like a summary or recap of vaguely related stories.
For example, Tesla’s pivot to robots has nothing to do with their advanced nature of their wiring harnesses, but it’s spoken in the same breath as if to imply that a Tesla Cybertruck (which is a Model Y with paneling literally glued on top) is more similar to a humanoid robot than a Mustang Mach-E.
In reality, what has happened is that the Model S and X have been discontinued and they’re the only products the Fremont, CA plant produces. Tesla has literally nothing else they can make in that plant. They either make Optimus robots or shut the plant down.
Optimus robot production is a face saving move. Tesla barely needs a fraction of that factory to build robots…it’s a much lower-volume and physically smaller product.
I should note that none of that has anything to do with Tesla being great at robotics and seeing it as a better business than automobiles. It has everything to do with competitors catching up and Tesla having insufficient development capability to iterate on those vehicles.
Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?
Who in the buyer demographic for the Model X won’t take a Kia EV9, Lucid Gravity, or Volvo EX-90?
Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.
I don't know the figures for Earth's resources and their sustainability, so this may be a naive take, but I'm always left with the impression that these organisations want to speedrun the depletion of the planet.