GoKawiilis transportation editor with 10+ years of experience who covers EVs, public transportation, and aviation. His work has appeared in The New York Daily News and City & State.
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In an earnings call yesterday, Tesla CEO Elon Musk did his best to paint a positive portrait of the company’s robotaxi program. New cities are being added, more miles are being driven, and more people are experiencing Tesla’s unsupervised vehicles.
But Musk’s typical bullishness seemed to be absent from the call, as the occasional trillionaire sought to temper expectations about the program’s future.
“We’re going as fast as humanly possible in scaling Robotaxi,” Musk said, “while trying to ensure that we do not harm anyone at all and ideally do not even run over a pet.”
Musk’s insistence that Tesla’s robotaxi service was growing is clashing with the reality of the situation: Mileage is basically flat, the number of vehicles appears to be shrinking, and despite the Tesla executive team’s claims of “zero notable incidents,” the safety of the company’s technology appears to be an open question.
Tesla did it’s best to frame the situation as headed in the right direction. Ashok Elluswamy, the company’s head of AI, said that Tesla’s unsupervised robotaxis have driven 380,000 miles across six cities in two different states. And according to Musk, that was increasing at a rate of 10 percent a week in terms of miles driven.
Tesla did it’s best to frame the situation as headed in the right direction
Elluswamy couldn’t help but take a swipe at Tesla’s competitors who use lidar sensors, as opposed to Tesla’s camera-0nly approach. “Historically, the so-called experts have always claimed that you need lidars, radars, HD maps, and the entire kitchen sink to drive safely,” he said. “Here we show that such is not true. You can have safe, comfortable, and affordable autonomy with just cameras. This record should be a huge validation of Tesla’s entire AI approach.”
But even the numbers that Tesla reported seem to betray that message. Waymo, which uses lidar sensors and radar as redundant sensors in addition to cameras, typically drives around four million miles a week. Tesla’s total mileage, a year into its robotaxi program, is less than 10 percent of that figure. This reality is starting to spook investors, with BNP Paribas Equity Research senior analyst James Picariello calling it “an alarming decline” in a research note to clients.
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