Are Tesla’s robot taxis a phantom fleet? What’s behind Elon Musk’s sudden wild taxi adventure?
Self-driving car entrepreneur Elon Musk is nothing, if not ambitious. Earlier this week, he promised to have a million robot taxis on the road by next year, taking dead aim at Uber and Lyft. But responses have changed in recent years from Wow! To “Oh. Really?” What’s going on?:
“I’m actually quite amazed that Elon even made the suggestion. Not only is the car not ready for autonomous driving, the company has not even started work on the ride-hailing software needed to support it. Additionally, the numbers presented at the conference show a complete lack of understanding of even the basics of what it costs just in maintenance to run a taxi service. I’m a fan of fresh, innovative ideas and sharing them with others. But the latest series of press conferences and demos that Tesla has held has shown that the company can’t distinguish between half-baked brainstorms and actual business plans.” – Jonathan Bartlett More.
Readers will know Robert J. Marks from Introduction to Evolutionary Informatics and Jonathan Bartlett from his suggested fix to teaching calculus.
Call this another of their design inferences if you like… 😉