https://electrek.co/2025/06/20/tesla-releases-details-robotaxi-launch-safety-monitor-front-seat/
Meaning, a monitor in the front passenger seat.
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Someone got a picture from inside a robotaxi:
There’s nothing very surprising about that. It was announced well in advance that they would start cautiously. A good sign is that the schedule seems to be holding. My next target is by the end of the year, when there should be over a thousand cars in several cities, without staff inside. If that’s achieved, it’s a pretty good situation. After that, things will get interesting again when Cybercab production begins and AI5 vehicles are introduced.
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Long-time Tesla analyst Dan Ives is very optimistic about the robotaxi. Considering such a valuation, the sales of traditional electric cars to consumers themselves and their numerical development are currently a completely secondary matter.
We believe Tesla is the most undervalued AI play in the market and now @elonmusk kicks off the golden autonomous chapter in Austin Sunday. We believe this is a $1 trillion autonomous valuation for @tesla alone and speaks to our $2 trillion valuation @CNBCOvertime 🔥🏆🍿🐂🎯👇 https://t.co/XGHRjecpKX pic.twitter.com/TQgFOPvfSR
— Dan Ives (@DivesTech) June 20, 2025
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Sounds like quite utopian visions at this stage. Apparently, it’s perfectly fine to throw around these visions. Everything is, of course, possible in the future, but with what probabilities, that’s a different matter.
Self-driving cars will be mainstream in the future, and probably no one disputes that. However, it’s difficult to imagine one company dominating the market alone. Furthermore, it’s also difficult to believe in an enormous growth in demand for car sales or taxi services. I believe that development will move us towards self-driving cars at an accelerating pace, but not quite as quickly as the most optimistic predict.
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Eli vain fanipojat pääsee matkustamaan ja henkilökuntaa mukana.
“Tesla’s much-anticipated June 22 “no one in the vehicle” Robotaxi launch in Austin is not ready. Instead, Tesla has announced to its invite-only passengers that it will operate a limited service with Tesla employees on board the vehicle to maintain safety.”
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Launch delayed due to rain. The 14 influencers invited to Austin are spending time in cafes and wondering how many Waymos there are in the city.
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Robotaxis are now driving paying customers on public roads there, without a driver. This has been awaited. Great Tesla, here we go.
The driving area is less than half of Waymo’s area. It will surely expand from there.
In the command center, there’s anticipation:
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You can start from the 7-minute mark if you want to understand why this isn’t quite ready yet.
I personally believe that FSD will eventually work at a Level 4 standard, but there’s still some work to be done. And the belief that Tesla will somehow manage to be the sole autonomous provider has certainly vanished a long time ago. To me, it’s quite a similar situation to discussing electric cars 6 years ago. Tesla was supposed to be almost a monopoly because the software, technology, and production advantages were so significant. In practice, the outcome is that Tesla is just one BEV manufacturer among others. I believe the situation with autonomy will be similar five years from now.
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However, Norwegians see something different in this Tesla. Model Y is already up +57% in Q2, and the quarter isn’t even over yet.
The Model Y won the Norwegian Automobile Federation’s range test and Bjørn’s 1000km (in rain) test against SUVs like the Audi Q6 and Porsche Macan, which were over 50% more expensive and supposed to represent the pinnacle of charging technology with large batteries. Big manufacturers have had at least 6 years to catch up to Tesla – Taycan 2019 and e-Tron 2019. The drawback is that Tesla hasn’t brought its cheaper models to those who can pay less than 40k for a new car.
I think the situation will be the same regarding autonomous driving. Five years from now, Tesla will clearly be ahead of others with cheaper technology.
Also, hasn’t “Critical Disengagement” been documented on a robotaxi video yet – probably driven over 500 miles in total? Only a lane change blunder, and not even a CDE in that?
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Edit: I looked at the data incorrectly. My apologies for my mistake @skuuppia!
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Numbers/charts etc. have already been discussed here, but I’m still putting this here because it’s quite illustrative 
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I don’t know where those figures come from. Looking at Norway’s daily figures, Q2/24 had a market share of 16.1%, and currently, Q2/25 has a market share of 18.4%. No decrease in market share is visible in these Norwegian figures. Let’s see the situation at the end of the quarter.
Norway probably has the best selection of electric cars in Europe, so it also shows the way forward for the rest of Europe.
But Tesla also has new openings in interesting markets like India.
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car image from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ayx2g934NO0
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To me, the picture above really tells more than a thousand words. First of all, those radar contraptions in Waymo’s cars already look absolutely terrible, not to mention all the manufacturing costs. I think it’s quite impressive from Tesla that the car looks “normal” and can still drive without a driver. Even if it might take a while for this to expand on a larger scale.
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The picture just doesn’t show that with Tesla, there has to be a supervisor sitting in the passenger seat… So, in that sense, we are comparing (at least for now) apples and pears.
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This is how Waymo also started the pilot and later removed the supervisor - lidars, cameras, and even radars have been removed from the car, so the car probably already costs less than 200k. Let’s just compare, the cars have the same function, and a robotaxi competition was already held in Austin. Waymo now only has 13 cameras, 6 radars, and 4 lidars.
What has that supervisor done in Tesla’s robotaxi cars during these three days? I have seen one intervention, when a UPS truck was stopped in the lane and the supervisor stopped the Tesla in the lane. This intervention is quite good so that Musk and the AI team are not too overconfident about the future. This acts as guerrilla marketing for FSD sales and autonomy in general. Regulation moves forward when Waymo also gets a boost from proper competition. By the way, Waymo won at least the first test runs, so at least the supervisor didn’t press for more speed in the Tesla or navigate better.
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Is anyone else wondering where on earth YLE got these Model Y specs for today’s article? On Tesla’s website, for example, the starting price model is 47k€, from which at least some of those specs were picked. Was there an intentional desire to make the car appear more expensive and worse?
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Apparently, the figures have already been corrected in the article, which is good.
The mass exodus of Tesla executives continues; now Omead Afshar, Tesla’s director for the United States and Europe, who was also a trusted man of Musk, has left. Afshar follows in the footsteps of other departures: Milan Kovacs, Jenna Ferrua, Vineet Mehta, Drew Baglino, Rebecca Tinucci, Rohan Patek…
It is said that power is consolidating on Tom Zhu, Tesla’s Vice President of Automotive. Tom Zhu, born in China, is the head of Tesla’s Shanghai factory and one of the company’s three vice presidents.
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The first Tesla self-delivered from the factory to a customer. No one was in the car, it was not teleoperated, and it drove on the highway during the trip.
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