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Tesla Cybercab reveal 1

Brian Malone

Brian Malone

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Jun 15, 2018
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The Cybercab reveal was quite interesting.
A few of my observations:
1. Tesla full self driving appears to be fully functional and capable - at least on clear, calm-weather night.
2. The cars are working purely on cameras and AI. No radar or Lidar. Pretty impressive.
3. The Cybercab design is sleek and futuristic but the design concessions to eliminate rear liftgate glass does not make for a totally inviting ride environment. Functional, sure. The Cybercab appears to have a reasonable cargo space.
4. Same observation on the Robovan - eliminating front, rear and a lot of side glass lightens the vehicle and reduces the manufacturing details required for windows but it makes the ride environment less than ideal.

I'd hate to ride in the Robovan and be surrounded by solid sides with no view outside.

5. Elon's projected costs seem wildly optimistic or possibly foolhardy. But - hey, you have to offer the vision!
6. Inductive charging is standard - no plug. Excellent if the charging pads/stations can be spread around to be effective.
7. Elon's futuristic view of a society using autonomous cars to replace mass transit is wildly optimistic and idealistic. The vision of eliminating parking spaces in urban areas would be great. But, can it truly be achieved? A major change in society will be required.
8. Optimus robots - very, very impressive! The robots are still slow and slightly stiff-gaited but their hand and arm dexterity is amazing. Their battery runtime was not mentioned. Maybe they charge inductively and get a constant trickle charge whenever they go near/past a charging coil? Intermingling with humans unsupervised - very impressive AI !! Tesla shows the robots being used to be a family maid/butler/friend - serving drinks/food, bringing in groceries, walking the dog, etc. - those are all nice and cute. I think Tesla is missing the real need for a home robot - caring for a physically-compromised or gravely sick human. I have cared for three family members who needed full care: feeding, cleaning, wound care, etc. - that is where a home robot will really be useful. Safely lifting, moving, dressing/undressing a physically compromised human - feeding a human - that will be the real benefit of a homebot.

Very impressive mechanical engineering, software and AI. I am not an Elon Musk fanboy - but I definitely admire the engineers he has doing the real work.
 
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Cities need mass transit that replaces individual cars, whether self-driving or not, not the other way 'round. Perhaps there's something to be said for small regional shuttle-buses with no fixed route to get people from outside the mass-transit coverage area to the nearest train or bus station, but plenty of cities today don't have the room on roadways to accommodate all the commuters and their cars PLUS the empty cars driving to their next customer.

Trains move the most amount of people in the least space. Then buses, then two-wheelers of all sorts, then cars. I'm not sure where walking fits in, but I've walked past cars stalled in congestion many times.

Many European cities already have no-private-vehicle zones. Commercial vehicles doing local pick-up and delivery are the only vehicles allowed.

I'm skeptical of anything elon musk says or does.
 
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Possibly, FSD is not as fully developed as intimated by the cyber-reveal - the Optimus robots may have had some human tinkering involved.


Longtime tech evangelist and event attendee Robert Scoble wrote on X that the robot was not fully autonomous but rather operated remotely via telepresence. Scoble said a Tesla engineer confirmed this. Tesla did not respond to a request for comment when contacted by Business Insider.
Click to expand...
 
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I doubt if their "full self driving" is any further developed than what's currently seen on their production vehicles that are so equipped, and if that's the situation, they're orders of magnitude away from getting the number of "interventions" down to where it needs to be.

This event happened in a well-curated environment in which it would have been very easy to make things look automated, even if 100% pre-planned.
 
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I think that aside from fanboys, no one really believes Musk when he promises production in the timeframe he states. Musk promised fully functional FSD over a decade ago.

Nevertheless, I had read the more fun fact is that the robots Musk showed off were all operated by human remote control, and that's another thing he's overpromised.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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Mass transit is junk because the busses have to make too many stops. A network of FSD feeders to mainline express routes is best. Alas, those coastal liberals that don't ride the bus love to torture the poor with their views of grandeur.

When was the last time anyone here depended on a bus?

How do trains take up less space? Have you seen how much space is required for a train to make a left turn?
 
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TugboatEng, clearly you haven't travelled much in cities that have good mass transit!

Trains get huge numbers of people from one place to another at once. It's absurd to think of a train "making a left turn" because they don't do that (unless the rails guide them left). Trains don't have to deal with traffic jams and congestion on city streets.

Here is Munich's S-Bahn, for example:
Here's Montreal:
Toronto's subway system is fledgling by comparison, but it's good enough that I won't drive in Toronto proper. It's faster and less stressful to take the express GoTransit train to a connecting bus or subway station within Toronto, and you don't have to deal with parking. Everywhere in Toronto proper is within reasonable walking distance of a Toronto Transit stop (be it bus, subway, or streetcar). I can see a use case for Tesla's taxis to get from more remote locations to a train station, but anyone else's taxis can do that, too.

And I've used public transit in Sydney, Melbourne, Munich, London, Lisbon, and Rome, and I took high-speed rail (300 km/h) from Malaga to Barcelona.
 
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The left turn comment was meant to emphasize the fact that trains require a feeder system.

I see that you have used public transit while on vacation. Have you ever depended on it for your livelihood?
 
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Sure. Back when I lived and worked in Toronto, I used it all the time. Loads of people of all walks of life do. And Toronto's transit system is not great by international standards.

Plenty of people in European cities don't own a car. Don't need one.
 
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No city in the US has an ideal transit system, not because the transit system suck, but because the cities are built around driving a car to do things. In places like Hong Kong, 90% of shopping can be done by walking, sometimes just to the ground or basement floors, where there's a plethora of small shops to buy everything from meats, vegetables, small hardware items, applicances, etc.

I thought SF's transit system worked tolerably well; I used to commute from Sunset to North Beach, and it took one transfer and about an hour during rush hour. It can take almost as long to drive that same distance during rush hour, and then you have to find parking at the destination, which is always non-trivial.

And no, no car; I was 14 at the time.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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One of the added benefits in some cities with good transit is there's not much of an actual rush hour traffic snarl.

Small compact cities tend to have "better" transit, but mostly because they're compact. In the Los Angeles area, getting from Pasadena to Westwood could take several hours and multiple transfers by bus. Again, that's baked into the urban layout because of the car infrastructure; once people had cars, living 20 miles from work became feasible.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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Think of the cost per person of a train. In large urban areas, you have many people to move a relatively short distance, aka a large customer base to justify the cost of putting in that train. In the US, that is only about 30% of people. 50% are in the suburbs or exurban, which we all know how sprawled out those areas are, then 21% are in rural areas. The idea of putting a train in the burbs, just no. The only way to have a station within walking distance would be to have a track with dozens of stops going many miles just through the burbs itself, just getting people onto the train. Then you'd have to have a connecting route that actually takes people to the main hubs. Which would take a very long time to actually get where you're going. You could add trains/tracks to shorten the travel time, but with your already limited customer base, there's no way that would be economically feasible.

Then the rural 21%, a train would be laughable, of course.

Point being, trains are great in very densely packed areas where they can justify the cost. But in areas that are even a little bit spread out you would have to have a train covering so many miles and to pick up the customer base required, that no one would actually want to spend that much time on the train and it wouldn't work anyway. Mass transit simply doesn't work in the US, as a generalization. The rapid westward expansion in the 1800s and the widespread adoption of cars in the early 1900s as the nation was really just starting to grow into its own, we are just too spread out. Large metro areas are different, but anyone trying to push it to everyone as a matter of policy is out of their mind. Hence, why autonomous taxis could actually work, given the time and technology advances.
 
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Mass transit simply doesn't work in the US, as a generalization.
Click to expand...

It worked, don't know how well, until the end of WWI1, I think, when travel by auto took off, and later, the aftermath of WWII, and the development of the US highway system. Prior to all of that, LA had cable cars, trains, and buses for transit.

Compact cities have little spare space for car storage, which greatly limits the ability to own a car. If you don't own a car, then traveling cross country has to be done by bus or train. In the US, trains are an afterthought, either because of the cost of driving, or inability to find parking at the destination. Most major hotel chains charge a fairly substantial parking fee, so perhaps the pendulum will start to swing back.

TTFN (ta ta for now)
I can do absolutely anything. I'm an expert! faq731-376 forum1529 Entire Forum list
 
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IRstuff said:
Prior to all of that, LA had cable cars, trains, and buses for transit.
Click to expand...

LA, one of the largest cities in the country. Yes, they had and have mass transit, because large cities can do those things. My point being that 71% of the US in nothing like LA.

IRstuff said:
Most major hotel chains charge a fairly substantial parking fee, so perhaps the pendulum will start to swing back.
Click to expand...

I'm not saying you are a liar as I have no idea where in the world you are, but where I am I have never heard of hotels charging for parking. Aside from when I spent a week on the east coast touring major cities, the only time I've been charged for parking was at a Husker game in Lincoln Ne, where the Huskers stadium itself is the 3rd largest city in the state for a few hours. Obviously that parking situation is a nightmare.
 
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lucky guesser said:
'm not saying you are a liar as I have no idea where in the world you are, but where I am I have never heard of hotels charging for parking.
Click to expand...

It is pretty common in the US for hotels in cities to charge for parking. Also, a "Resort Fee" I hate it.
 
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