It’s a casino

“(Reuters) -Tesla shares jumped 10% on Monday, lifted by the long-awaited launch of the company's robotaxi service that CEO Elon Musk has for years championed as a key driver of the electric vehicle maker's lofty valuation.

“The automaker deployed a small fleet of self-driving taxis in Austin, Texas, on Sunday, marking the first time its cars have carried paying passengers without human drivers. The rides were being offered for a flat fee of $4.20 in a limited zone.”

*snip*

“Many social-media influencers also posted videos of their first rides on X, showing the cars navigating busy city streets by slowing down and making room for incoming traffic.

“Still, the tightly controlled trial - with about 10 vehicles and front-seat riders acting as "safety monitors" - is just the first step in what could be a years-long process of scaling up the service, according to some industry experts.”

Shares jumped 10% on news of a phony robotaxi launch? Seriously? That’s not investing, that’s gambling.

A Tesla company guy is in the passenger seat, not the driver's, which means they're there to hit an emergency stop button and communicate with the teleoperator. In other words, there is >1 employee per car, probably close to 2. And that for a car with a very limited range. In what sense is that an autonomous vehicle? Does Elon own a fleet of straw buyers for Tesla stock?

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/tesla-shares-soar-first-robotaxi-145744251.html

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The ruble is collapsing

In 1998, I traveled to Moscow for the first time to teach in a summer course at the Russian Academy. The week before, we were on vacation and I heard on the radio “Today, the ruble lost 100% of its value.” This news was arresting—it meant that the ruble was worthless. That seemed unlikely. Indeed, the next day, the announcer apologized and said she meant to say that the ruble lost 50% of its value.  In the event, by the time I arrived at the Hotel Sputnik in Moscow, all the cash machines in the city were shut down. Restaurant prices changed hourly during my five-day stay, and there were sidewalk signs posting exchange rates that were written in chalk so they could easily be edited. Certainly puts our recent experience with inflation in perspective.   Over at jabberwocking.com, Kevin Drum notes that the ruble is down 30% since the war started and 20% just since September.   From the comment thread: “The problem with the Russian economy at this point is that it is basically...
Read more

Black Earth

 Just finished reading “Black Earth: The Holocaust as history and warning” by Timothy Snyder. It is a detailed account of the Holocaust, as well as an effort to abstract lessons from this history for our time. Like his book “Bloodlands,” Snyder’s “Black Earth” makes for painful reading. As the grandson of a Ukrainian Jew and the son of a Jew, I would have been targeted in the Holocaust had I been in the wrong place. I had read several histories of Europe in World War II that included the Holocaust. I knew the basic story of the Holocaust and Hitler’s anti-Semitic vision. I learned a great deal by reading this book. I won’t belabor the ghoulish atrocities committed by the Nazis and their collaborators. To summarize them here would be to trivialize the enormity of the crimes and invite pointless debate about who did what and who suffered more. You’ll have to read the book to understand Snyder’s historical insights. However, I learned many things that I did not know by reading thi...
Read more

Who chooses?

Over at jabberwocking.com , Kevin Drum blames pro-choice writers for failing to make the case for reproductive choice. Well, from everything I've read, a clear majority of Americans believe that Roe should still stand. Seems like the case has been made, and if we lived in a truly representative democracy, a limited national right to abortion would be preserved. But beyond that reality, I think Drum has it exactly backwards. Why does the burden of proof fall on those advocating for personal autonomy? Seems to me the null hypothesis is that women should be allowed to make decisions about their own health, and that the justification for nanny state intrusion into such decisions rests with the minority who assert state coercion. Democrats need to hammer on the right-wing GOP to explain why the government takes temporary custody of pregnant Americans. https://jabberwocking.com/liberals-really-suck-at-defending-abortion/
Read more