Tesla

This website is not intended to ridicule Elon Musk, but rather highlight the harm to society caused by billionaire oligarches by showing why it is unwise to place so much power, influence, and admiration into the hands of a man who clearly appears to be a narcissist and clearly appears to have the mental abilities of an arrogant selfish bullying eight year old boy.

8 dec 2024 6:50 PM

In 2019, Elon Musk said Tesla’s autonomous taxis would be in operation in 2020, then in 2024.

Tesla has faced criticism for a number of issues, including:

—Google Search Summary, 5 Dec 2024

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Musk has faced legal battles surrounding the company that put him on the map: Tesla. One of the most notable involves a 2018 tweet in which Musk wrote that he had “funding secured” to take the company private at $420 per share. —Elon Musk’s most controversial moments, The Week, 18 Oct 2024

Shareholders sued, however, when it was discovered that Musk had not secured the necessary financial backing at the time of this post. A U.S. District Judge said “there was nothing concrete” in Musk’s tweet, per Reuters, and Musk had “[acted] recklessly” in posting about the funding. Tesla investors “lost $12 billion over 10 days as a result” of Musk’s tweet, according to witness testimony from the trial obtained by Bloomberg [behind paywall link]. —Elon Musk’s most controversial moments,<>a href="https://theweek.com/elon-musk/1022182/elon-musks-most-controversial-moments">The Week, 18 Oct 2024

Musk was eventually found not liable for any losses experienced by the shareholders. —Elon Musk’s most controversial moments, The Week, 18 Oct 2024

7 aug 2018 9:48 AM

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CEO Elon Musk also announced that fully autonomous versions of Tesla’s Model 3 and Model Y vehicles would begin driverless tests in California and Texas next year [2025]. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027SmartCityDrives, 11 Oct 2024

Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk revealed a two-seat driverless “Cybercab” and a 20-seat “Robovan” at an event last night at the Warner Bros. studio in Burbank, California, anticipating production of the robotaxiÊstarting before 2027 with a price tag for the smaller vehicle of under $30,000. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027SmartCityDrives, 11 Oct 2024

The Cybercab has no pedals or steering wheel, and Musk offered few details on the Robovan. Musk also announced that Tesla will begin driverless trials in California and Texas next year for the use of its Model 3 sedan and Model Y SUV as robotaxis, using an advanced version of its software. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027SmartCityDrives, 11 Oct 2024

However, industry experts who tested a 2024 model year Tesla Model 3 running its supervised “full self-driving” software in real-world conditions said yesterday that “it falls well short of any true autonomy in the real world.” Despite the name, the full self-driving feature requires a fully attentive driver, according to Tesla. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027SmartCityDrives, 11 Oct 2024

Tesla’s “full self-driving” system requires driver supervision at all times. Tesla vehicles operating with these Level 2 advanced driver assistance systems were involved in 273 crashes reported to NHTSA between July 20, 2021, and May 15, 2022. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027SmartCityDrives, 11 Oct 2024

AMCI Testing, an independent automotive research firm, operated the Tesla Model 3 with the latest supervised “full self-driving” software over 300 miles last week in New York City. Among the incidents that required driver intervention were abrupt braking for no reason, accelerating to 37 mph on a 25-mph zoned residential street at night, running stop signs at the end of highway entrance ramps, and making illegal right turns on red lights, it said in a press release. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027SmartCityDrives, 11 Oct 2024

Investors were not impressed by Tesla’s announcement: Its stock price dropped 8% in early morning trading Friday. Musk has a record of missed promises. In 2019, he said the company’s autonomous taxis would be in operation in 2020, then in 2024. Last night, he admitted on stage that “I tend to be a little optimistic with time frames.” —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027SmartCityDrives, 11 Oct 2024

Elon Musk first promised that a Tesla robotaxi network was coming in April 2019. Back then, the billionaire was envisaging a fleet of autonomous Tesla cars that could ferry people around town whenever they weren’t needed by their owners. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

The root of Tesla’s autonomous taxi ambitions can be traced back to Autonomy Day on April 22, 2019. Back then, Musk made a whole heap of promises he’s yet to deliver on, such as level five autonomy in a million Teslas by 2020, and he doubled down on his criticism of LiDAR in autonomous cars. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

It was during this day of presentations that Musk first promised a fleet of a million autonomous taxis that would be on our streets soon. Back then, we reported that Musk wanted to activate a million autonomous taxis via an over-the-air update that would unlock the car’s full potential. That was promised for 2020 and four years later, we’re still waiting. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

Soon after unveiling his lofty plan for autonomy at Tesla, Musk began letting more and more Tesla owners get their hands on the Autopilot systems that he promised would bring self-driving capabilities to their cars. The system didn’t deliver quite that, and instead it was, and still is, a level two driver-assist system that requires complete attention from the driver. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

Many owners didn’t get this memo, and Tesla cars equipped with Autopilot soon began crashing in strange circumstances. In December 2019, a Tesla Model 3 with Autopilot engaged crashed into a parked police car and another car while its driver took their eyes off the road to check on their dog. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

Almost a year after Musk promised that level five autonomy was coming to his cars, it still hadn’t. Instead, Tesla started taking Autopilot privileges away from some drivers. One Tesla owner who picked up his car second hand found that Tesla had disabled Autopilot on his car remotely, arguing that he hadn’t paid for the service as he’d gotten the car second hand. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

Over its years in the spotlight, Autopilot has been on the receiving end of a lot of government probes, and in 2020 there was a big one to contend with. Investigators in the U.S. argued that Tesla wasn’t doing enough to ensure that owners kept their eyes on the road while using Autopilot. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

The investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board came after three deadly crashes were linked to the use of Autopilot in Tesla cars. It followed accusations that the automaker had “no formal correspondence with NTSB officials” over the ways it planned to ensure drivers kept their eyes on the road. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

If issues with attention weren’t enough for Tesla, an investigation later in the year found that the issues Autopilot faced run much, much deeper. Hackers who gained access to the black box in a Tesla involved in a crash found that Autopilot disengaged seconds before the crash without slamming on the emergency brakes. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

Two years after Musk promised that his cars would be driving themselves, he finally began offering Tesla owners access to Full Self-Driving. However, the system couldn’t actually autonomously drive a Tesla and was, actually, just another level two system that still required the utmost attention from whoever was at the wheel. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

The $10,000 optional extra finally rolled out in 2021 to certain Tesla owners and claimed to be able to control the car through city streets. It didn’t, however, offer them the secondary stream of income that Musk promised two years previously when he said privately-owned Teslas could double as autonomous taxis. So the wait continued. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

After almost two years of claims that an autonomous taxi was coming from Tesla, actual autonomous taxi firm Waymo had enough of the EV maker’s prevarication. Waymo launched its self-driving rides in 2018, and went so far as to remove safety drivers from some rides in 2019. By 2021, it had begun offering autonomous taxi rides in San Francisco. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

2021 was also the year that its then-CEO John Krafcik threw some serious shade Tesla’s way, arguing that Autopilot would never achieve full autonomy. In an interview with a German magazine, Krafcik said he felt Tesla was “no competitor at all” for Waymo and suggested that his company’s sensor suite is “orders of magnitude better” than what Tesla offers. He may have had a point, as three years later Waymo has greatly expanded its service while Tesla is still stuck in around the same position it was back then. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

During Tesla’s 2022 earnings call, big boss Musk finally gave an update on the timeline for his robotaxi. Back then, he told investors that Tesla would now create a purpose-built robotaxi that would be unveiled in 2023 and go into production a year later. Mass production of the autonomous car was promised and, as I’m sure you’ve noticed, never arrived. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

Instead, over the course of 2022 more and more drivers got their hands on Full Self-Drive and Autopilot, with some owners that failed Tesla’s own safety checks for the software even being trusted with it in their cars. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

When 2023 rolled around, we all waited with baited breath to see what Tesla would unveil and whether it may finally be a finished robotaxi prototype. That never happened and instead the automaker gave us a refreshed look to the Model 3 electric car and finally managed to begin shipping its long awaited Cybertruck to buyers across America. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

As the Cybertruck was unveiled in 2019 with a promised release date of 2021, the two year delay it experienced was nothing compared to the slow tease of the Tesla robotaxi that continued through the year. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

A Tesla robotaxi may not have arrived in 2023, but concerns over the company’s safety were already rife across the automotive industry. Those worries reached fever pitch at the end of 2023 when a Tesla whistleblower criticized the software that would run a self-driving Tesla, explaining that they did not “think the hardware is ready and the software is ready.” —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

In an interview with the BBC, ex-Tesla employee Lukasz Krupski laid into the electric vehicle maker, accusing it of running “experiments in public roads” that endangered all of us. Data from the automaker also revealed that, on average, its cars crashed in a way that the airbag deployed roughly once every 5 million miles when Autopilot was engaged. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

Five years after the idea was first floated by Musk and around the time it was initially hoped to be on sale, Musk finally announced that this was the year a robotaxi from Tesla would be unveiled. In April, Musk claimed proudly that his new self-driving taxi would break cover on August 8, while a proposed budget-friendly Tesla was delayed indefinitely. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

The revelation that an autonomous taxi may finally be coming was met with a mixed response from investors, who had been hoping that Musk would announce a plan to dig his company out of the sales slump it was facing at the start of this year. Instead, he wheeled out more claims about autonomous cars being the future of his company, adding that the robotaxi was the “blindingly obvious move.” —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

Before we’d made it to August, however, Musk was out pushing back the launch date of his robotaxi, in a surprise to almost nobody. In July of this year, the automaker delayed the reveal of the robotaxi, claiming that it needed more time to build prototypes to show off what it was capable of. —Tesla promises driverless robotaxi by 2027Quartz, 3 Oct 2024

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