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00:00Okay, so the Tesla RoboTaxi unveiling event was a couple days ago, and it might be the
00:10weirdest tech event I've ever been to.
00:15You might have seen some clips from it at this point.
00:17I was there.
00:18I rode in the self-driving RoboTaxi.
00:21I explored the insane looking RoboVan, and I talked to the Optimus robot, and then I
00:27left feeling kind of confused.
00:29It was just a weird event.
00:31So here are the three main big reasons why.
00:34So first of all, the RoboCab.
00:36This was the main thing that we knew we were going to see, this full unveiling of a fully
00:41self-driving Tesla.
00:43And we saw it, and it looked like this.
00:45Very, very much like a mini Cybertruck.
00:49Like you've got the light bar on the front, the light bar on the back, the complete lack
00:53of rear visibility.
00:55Then of course, you can see it's a two-door, two-seater passenger car.
00:59People were wondering what a full self-driving RoboCab or Cybertaxi, whatever we're calling
01:05it, would actually look like, whether it looked dramatically different from a normal car like
01:08a Model 3 or even a Waymo.
01:11And there are some things that are significantly different about this thing they rolled out.
01:14I mean, on the outside, it's light gold.
01:17Every single one is this silvery gold color, although there was never any mention of actual
01:21materials.
01:23Pretty small footprint.
01:24You can see there's no exterior door handles or mirrors or anything like that.
01:28And then, since they don't need any steering wheel or pedals, they can sort of push the
01:34seating position way back into this more like loungy seating position, kind of near the
01:38middle of the car.
01:39There's a center armrest, and there's a massive 21-inch touchscreen in the center.
01:44And yes, the doors go up.
01:46As if Tesla hasn't learned from their lessons of the Model X, they're making another crazy
01:50set of doors, which honestly is definitely a hit visually.
01:54It's a striking feature of this car alongside the wheels, which at first just look like
02:00these huge gold discs.
02:03But then when you take a closer look, they're actually just normal 21-inch low rolling resistance
02:08Continental tires, but they've painted half of the sidewall gold to match the caps in
02:14the middle.
02:15Makes it look like a super thin, low profile tire with a huge wheel, but it's not.
02:22It's just paint.
02:23But either way, no idea how much of this is going to make it to any sort of final production.
02:27But after waiting in line for a bit, I got to ride in this thing for a few minutes.
02:33So I got in, the screen told me to buckle my seatbelt, and once I did, the door automatically
02:39closed.
02:40Pretty smart.
02:41Then I just selected the destination, which was on this screen along this route, which
02:45I assume was pre-mapped, and then it just started rolling, just started going.
02:51Now I've been in a self-driving Tesla before, but this one is just a little bit more nervy
02:56since there's people everywhere and there's no steering wheel in front of me.
03:00But once you get over the eeriness of basically being trapped in this driverless car with
03:04no manual override, I started looking around and noticing a few other things.
03:09You know, you sit pretty low to the road, similar to a model three, but with more legroom
03:12since the seating position's further back.
03:15And then there's even fewer physical controls than ever before in this car.
03:20Like I basically only found that the window switches were in the middle next to the cup
03:23holders.
03:24I didn't even see any door latches.
03:27Like the doors only opened with a button on this enormous touchscreen.
03:31So again, like a Tesla, it's going to control everything in the car on the screen, including
03:37just watching movies while the car is driving, because why not?
03:41So you can watch the entire trip that I took uncut on the Autofocus channel if you want.
03:45I'll link that below.
03:46But then the thing is, that's kind of all we got.
03:51Like there were shockingly few details about the actual car actually explained at this
03:57event other than basically like the three main pillars, which are going to be in all
04:00the headlines, which are number one, that it will be fully unsupervised self-driving
04:05capable.
04:06Number two, that it will be able to be purchased for under $30,000.
04:11All right.
04:12But then number three, that it would actually also charge by inductive wireless charging.
04:16So it pulls up over this wireless charging pad on the ground and it would charge that
04:22way.
04:23Not something we've seen shipping in very many cars, especially not ones with large
04:27batteries.
04:28But that was it.
04:29No, no other numbers, no other specs.
04:31Just look at this thing.
04:33There's just concepts of a plan.
04:36I just had so many other questions from after seeing that, like what is going on here?
04:40I did at the event walk around after the announcement and bump into some Tesla engineers and people
04:45who have been working on these things.
04:47And so I just ended up kind of grilling them like I asked them a whole bunch of questions.
04:51So I'm going to tell you guys what I learned from them and I guess we can take their word
04:56for it.
04:57So first of all, there is no steering wheel or pedals as you can see.
04:59So my first question was, all right, let's say I see an accident coming or there's
05:04something happening on the road in front of me and the car isn't reacting in time.
05:06Is there a manual override?
05:09And the answer I got was, uh, sure, there will be some sort of minimal onscreen controls
05:14available, but the goal is that you never have to override, which is a noble goal for
05:20sure.
05:21I just, I mean, it's hard to imagine we live in a world where that's impossible basically
05:24right now.
05:25But, um, I mean, if you, even with the wireless charger picture, you want to like drive over
05:29the top of it and line it up perfectly because if it's, if it's off a little bit, that's
05:33just a giant waste of power.
05:36But if I can't adjust it like that would be terrible.
05:40But speaking of wireless charging, you might be wondering why they would try to do this.
05:44The main answer again is because they want it to be totally autonomous.
05:46They want people to just be able to own several, like a fleet of these things.
05:51And they all just drive around and charge themselves overnight.
05:54And the whole cable plugging in charging thing requires a human.
05:57So that's one less human required.
06:00It'll just line up on the notoriously inefficient wireless charger.
06:04But my question again was, okay, is there at least a charge port?
06:06So if I want to supercharge or charge quickly, I can do that.
06:10And the answer was no, there is no charge port on this vehicle.
06:15So it is not even capable of hitting a Tesla supercharger or doing any sort of road trips
06:19or anything like that.
06:21It's purely a taxi.
06:22I'm told there is no plans for a front trunk.
06:24There's just the rear trunk that they showed in this presentation.
06:28And there's no planned range or a stated battery size.
06:31But what they did say is they're simply aiming for this vehicle to be as efficient as possible.
06:36That's their main goal.
06:37Between the aerodynamics and the low rolling resistance tires, they think they can aim
06:41for about 5.5 miles per kilowatt hour.
06:46Some of the most efficient electric cars we see today are getting around three to four
06:50miles per kilowatt hour.
06:51So this would be like an A plus efficiency if they achieve this.
06:55And that's what will let them use a smaller overall size battery for the lighter weight
07:00of the vehicle.
07:01So it'll be nice, they're saying, to clear 200 miles of total range.
07:05And that would put this at maybe a 40 kilowatt hour battery pack instead of the typical 70
07:10to 130.
07:11So drivetrain wise, that logic does check out.
07:14If you want to make the cheapest, most efficient electric car of all time, you got to hit those
07:18things.
07:20Then again, you're also telling us this while doing a car with scissor doors and wireless
07:25charging.
07:26So you're going to have some challenges there, for sure.
07:29But really, I think the obvious red flag, the biggest red flag to me, is the timeline
07:33stuff that...
07:34I mean, this is notorious Elon stuff.
07:36He gets on stage, he says, we're going to have this vehicle out for $30,000 before 2027.
07:43No, they're not.
07:45There's just no way that they're actually going to be able to do that.
07:48I mean, if they do, let's say they do, I will shave my head on camera because I'm that confident
07:54they won't do it.
07:55I want to be optimistic, but there's just too much stacked up against it because in
07:58order to ship this at all with no steering wheel and everything, they have to get all
08:01the regulatory approval for the full self-driving and all that, and get all the prices down
08:06in spite of inflation, and ship something with scissor doors and all this stuff in the
08:11next two years.
08:12There's just no way.
08:14Tesla's been promising full unsupervised self-driving for years, over and over and
08:20over again, and consistently keeps pushing it back.
08:23But then also just price-wise, I get the goal, but Tesla promised a $35,000 Model 3, and
08:31years later, I think they briefly actually shipped that car for that price for a little
08:35bit before discontinuing it.
08:37Cybertruck, I don't know if you remember the...
08:39Do you remember the base price of what they said the Cybertruck would cost at the cheapest
08:43version when it came out?
08:46$39,000.
08:48And that was about, what, like four or five years ago?
08:50Do you know what the cheapest Cybertruck is right now?
08:52$95,000.
08:54So you can see where my skepticism is coming from.
08:57But even after all that, there's kind of a philosophical question too, which is, what
09:01is the difference between this, this robo-taxi thing, and a Model 3?
09:06Because Tesla has been promising for years that the car that people are driving and buying
09:12today is going to be capable of full, unsupervised self-driving, like the Model 3 and the Model
09:17Y.
09:18And it's actually not clear if there's that many differences.
09:22I mean, obviously, okay, one's going to have a steering wheel and four doors and four seats
09:26and the whole thing, and maybe be a bit more expensive, but like, yeah.
09:31If my car is going to be able to do all that stuff, I think I want the one that can plug
09:37into superchargers and do all sorts of carrying things.
09:40Maybe this will be an old fashioned way of thinking sometime in the future, like every
09:44car on the road is autonomous, and it's like an old school thing to want the one with the
09:47steering wheel that you can drive sometimes, maybe.
09:52I think the main advantage of the robo-taxi, if it has the exact same capabilities as a
09:56Model 3, is it'll be cheaper and smaller and easier to operate in a fleet situation.
10:03That will probably be the main difference as far as actually buying these things.
10:06Because they've been selling people the dream of the car that you buy and own today, you'll
10:12drive it to work, and then when you're at work, it'll go drive people around as an Uber
10:16for 10 hours or however long.
10:18And then you drive it home when you need it, and then when you're sleeping, it'll continue
10:22to drive and Uber people around.
10:24And so it has all these amazing capabilities, it'll do all this great stuff, but will it
10:30though?
10:31There's actually a moment, I had to rewatch the event because I was there, and people
10:33are like yelling out the whole time, like stuff at Elon on stage.
10:38And at this point in the presentation, he goes like, oh yeah, Model 3 and Model Y will
10:41also do full self-driving.
10:43And then someone goes like, what about the Cybertruck?
10:46And then he says, oh yeah, don't worry, Cybertruck 2.
10:49So and the Cybertruck 2, yes, of course, sorry, I don't want to be, yes, yes, all our cars
10:53basically.
10:54So yeah, okay, all our vehicles, great.
10:56But then it's kind of quiet, but then someone else yells out, what about Hardware 3?
11:00Which is a, basically, if you don't know, a reference to older Model 3s.
11:06And his response.
11:07So let's not get nuanced here.
11:13All right, next slide.
11:16So yeah, let's not get too nuanced, let's just get, all our cars will have it, except
11:19maybe some of the old ones.
11:21All our cars will be able to self-drive though, totally.
11:23We'll cross that bridge when we get to it, how about that?
11:25But here's a bridge that I don't think we'll ever actually get to cross, which is the second
11:29thing that was insane that was announced at this event, which is the Robovan.
11:34So somewhere about halfway through this presentation, they roll out this one-of-one super futuristic
11:40looking massive van thing, kind of looked like a, it looked like the military vehicles
11:46from iRobot, to be honest, which that's probably not a good thing, but yeah, it rolls out and
11:51they give us, again, very, very few details.
11:55This is going to be a Robovan that can hold like up to 20-ish people.
11:59And it again, will be fully electric and fully autonomous and take groups or teams of people
12:03from point A to point B, no manual override necessary, great.
12:08Have you ever been to CES?
12:10Have you ever heard of, have you ever watched videos from CES?
12:14Every year in January, there's this trade show, it's really fun in Vegas.
12:19And if you ever go, you'll notice in the South Hall, there's a section with all the cars,
12:24the mobility section, and you'll find about 50 of these every year.
12:31There's just like a van with no steering wheel and a bunch of seats that all face the middle.
12:37And it's like the future of mobility concept.
12:40There's tons of those.
12:41None of them ever ship, of course, because there are rules, but I guess there's not to
12:48me a whole lot that differentiates that brief concept we saw at the Tesla event with dozens
12:54of other vaporware versions of this that I've seen before.
12:57That's all I'm saying.
12:58I mean, the fact that this one comes from Tesla is the main differentiator.
13:01This is the company that could maybe theoretically make it happen.
13:04But like I said, there's almost no details about this thing.
13:08And I have almost no faith that that thing that they showed with its minimal clearance
13:14and it's glass everywhere and just lack of numbers or anything, I don't think that we'll
13:18ever actually see that thing.
13:20I could eat my words, but like that seems crazy.
13:23And then last but not least, Tesla decided to bring back, they decided to remind us that
13:27they're also an AI company, not just a car company, by bringing back out the Optimus
13:33humanoid robot again.
13:35So they have these things all over this event, this time dancing, doing these pre-rehearsed
13:42demos, but also they were just kind of out and about.
13:46They were serving drinks and snacks and they were walking around and interacting with and
13:51entertaining people, just like hanging out amongst everyone at this event.
13:56Now I already have my thoughts that I've talked about, you know, humanoid robots before I
13:59made a whole video about it.
14:00If you want to watch it, I'll leave a link below the like button.
14:02I've talked about Tesla's Optimus, but even just what we saw with that would have been
14:08a huge step forward from what we've ever seen.
14:11Like this would have been one of the most impressive things ever.
14:14But then they decided to take it further.
14:16We also decided to have these robots talking to people and it was just, I mean, it was
14:25way too fast to be an LLM.
14:29Like it's just, I'll have you just watch this, watch this clip.
14:31Which way are you taking Optimus?
14:34Right on, what's your name?
14:37Vanessa.
14:38Vanessa?
14:39Yes, Vanessa.
14:40Nice to meet you Vanessa.
14:41Nice to meet you too.
14:42Have a great day.
14:45Like it's just, it's just a person.
14:49It's a person talking through a speaker.
14:51It even like stutters and makes occasional like human mistakes.
14:54If you watch a bunch of videos from the event, a bunch of different robots all have slightly
14:58different voices.
14:59Yeah, it was a person for sure.
15:01And it's weird because Tesla at no point, at least as of the time of recording, has
15:06not acknowledged this at all.
15:07They haven't said that or confirmed that.
15:09But people there at the event have heard various things from various engineers.
15:12I talked to two engineers who only would tell me, yes, all of the LLMs do run totally
15:18on device.
15:20But like, yeah, I don't, that, no, I don't think so.
15:25So this kind of became like the talking point of the whole event.
15:27Like how now we don't know how much of this event was real or not so real.
15:34Like how much of what these robots are doing is human controlled or AI.
15:41You know, there were all kinds of hand-waving and gestures and movements.
15:44I played charades with one of them.
15:46You know what it reminds me of?
15:47Remember that video I did at Disney's Imagineering Labs where they had these, these bipedal robots
15:52that were controlled by a Steam Deck controller.
15:55They did all kinds of walking around and stringing animations together to entertain people at
15:58the parks.
16:00There's just a bunch of button presses and controllers to make that happen.
16:02And sure, there's some AI to blend that stuff, but you could never deny that there's basically
16:08entirely human control happening here.
16:11And that's basically what I think is happening at this Tesla event.
16:16Lots of impressive and entertaining things in the form of a super advanced articulating
16:20robot string animations together, but there's, it's just not totally ready to do this stuff
16:26on its own.
16:27We've never seen anything quite like it, even from Boston Dynamics, but we got to be real
16:32about the human assisted part.
16:33But the thing is the dream that they are selling people with this specific robot is that this
16:38thing will live with you, basically.
16:41It will be your human sized friend, actually, they said that it would be your friend.
16:47It would do chores for you.
16:49It would live around you and be able to do all these sorts of tasks on its own using
16:53the AI and the vision based system.
16:55That's I think that's a really far off dream.
16:58AI is really, really quickly improving, but I still think that's a far off dream.
17:02So you know, to their credit, this event, it was insane.
17:06Like they did a lot of things that could have gone wrong.
17:09And if you told me in 2024 that a company would do a bunch of self driving car demos
17:14around tons of people just loose in the road, and they would have bipedal humanoid robots
17:20roaming around performing tasks and entertaining people at the same event, and that they would
17:25have a drone show.
17:27Like that is just a lot of stuff in a row that is super high tech that could go wrong,
17:32but somehow didn't.
17:34And it represented, I think, a very optimistic view of the future, even though it's very
17:39much still like concepts.
17:43It's a future that is potentially way more efficient, potentially way safer and more
17:50impressive in general technologically than the world we live in today.
17:54So that by itself, I think is honorable.
17:57The things that they were hoping to be real, would be amazing and inspirational and honorable
18:03if they actually happened.
18:04But since they're also a public tech company, they, they felt the need to do demos and give
18:12all these big promises.
18:14And that's where it felt weird, because it's really hard to make promises about when we're
18:19going to deliver this future and for what price we're going to deliver this future,
18:23when it just feels very unlikely.
18:25And then doing the like robots talking, it's just like now the whole thing is in question,
18:29like how much of it is real, how much of it is fake.
18:32And now we're focusing on that instead of how cool the future could someday actually
18:37be.
18:38That's where I'm at.
18:39But hey, if there is one company that has the best chance of bringing this all to life,
18:45if there's if you made me bet money on one company that I think has the best odds to
18:50get there eventually, then it would be the one with the massive data gathering advantage
18:57with stuff out there in the real world today, it would be Tesla.
19:01So I'll believe it when I see it.
19:06Thanks for watching.
19:07Catch you guys in the next one.
19:09Peace.