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Less than a week ago, Tesla robotaxis began rolling out and giving rides to invited customers in Austin. As Sean O’Kane and I wrote this week, the rollout is the first big test of CEO Elon Musk’s belief that it’s possible to safely deploy fully autonomous vehicles using just cameras and end-to-end AI — an approach that differs from other players in the space, like Waymo.
By all accounts (including Tesla’s), this is a limited first run. The operating area covers South Austin, the fleet of vehicles is fewer than 20, and there is still a safety “monitor” sitting in the front passenger seat.
That doesn’t mean there was a subdued reaction. Social media provided a flurry of video and personal accounts — from riders and onlookers — of the robotaxis milling about Austin. And in numerous cases, the vehicles appeared to be violating traffic laws such as moving across double yellow lines into the oncoming traffic lane and abruptly hitting the brakes in the middle of intersections.
The videos prompted federal safety regulators to reach out to Tesla and ask for information on the deployment.
The reaction to the Tesla robotaxi rollout — and more specifically, to the videos on social — provided an informative view on just how polarizing the company is. As O’Kane quipped to me the other day, “It’s like a Rorschach test.”
Tesla’s robotaxi rides are either evidence of the company’s hubris and Musk’s broken promises on automated driving, or the beginning of the end for Waymo, Uber, and Lyft.
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Here’s what gets closer to the truth: One week in, and we have a lot of noise and very little signal.
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