Tesla Robotaxi to Launch in San Francisco: Reports

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I find this interesting. The specifics are that it's planned for maybe today, Friday. Uh on the earnings call earlier in the week, which you participated in, Ashokwami, who's the robo taxi chief, said that they were doing this anyway, but there are some bits that we don't know. What was in the business insider report uh and what do you make of it? So, the Business Insider report is based on a memo, an internal memo, uh, you know, within Tesla promising a uh a sort of robo taxi service, albeit one with a driver in the driver's seat. So, so I I don't I'm not sure if you can really call it a robo taxi if there is a uh if it's a driverless car that does have a driver, but but you know that what they're saying is that they're testing this. The other thing I'll say is California has a pretty robust permitting system for driverless cars. In fact, you know, this has been around since like 2018. I believe the first company that had this permit was Zuks. Uh, but Whimo, Cruz, lots and lots of companies for years have been have been operating these services with permits. As anyone who lives in the Bay Area knows, Tesla does not have any of these permits yet. What what they have is something called a TCP permit. This is basically a permit to operate a charter service with human drivers. So, so effectively like a black car service, a chauffeur service, whatever. Uh, and so, so my guess is that is how they're they're going to justify this, which is to say, you know, it's not really an autonomous car as far as the law is concerned. Of course, Tesla has blurred the lines between like what constitutes an autonomous uh car for for years and years. We were just seeing the Tesla VP of AI software what he said about the roll out of robo taxi more broadly on the earnings call and I'm really interested ultimately here Max as to how you get to this vision that by I think it's second half of the year half of Americans are meant to be able to access a robo taxi but at the moment there are about a handful in Austin and maybe a few with a driver at the well at least a person at the driver's seat starting to do San Francisco. I mean, look, Tesla doesn't really have a robo taxing service today. Like, what it has is, you know, 11 or so cars in Austin that have a safety observer. And and of course, we know that there, as I said before, there are other companies that are operating actual robo taxi service. Whimo has something like 1,500 vehicles in five cities uh with without drivers. I I I think if you it just all depends on how you define it. My guess is what they're going to say is they have these testing vehicles. They have relatively wide ranges. May maybe you do some some math and and it and and and in theoretically you can justify having saying that half the population is covered but but I think by by any normal person's definition um that that that just isn't going to be true just because technically we are not that close to that being possible. >> The other big story out today is about Optimus in March. This is how Elon Musk outlined the plan for Optimus in 2025. Listen to this, Max. This year we we hopefully will be able to make about um 5,000 Optimus robots. Uh we're technically uh we're aiming for enough parts to make 10,000 maybe 12,000. Um but since it's a totally new product with totally new, you know, like everything is totally new. Um I I'll say like we're succeeding if we get to half of the 10, you know, half of the 10,000 now. But but even 5,000 robots, that that's that's the size of a Roman legion. FI, which is like a little scary thought, like a whole legion of robots. I'd be like, whoa. Okay. Um, but I think we I think we'll literally build a legion, at least one legion of robots uh this year, >> there's a report from the information out today that disputes what Elon Musk outlined that they are actually nowhere near to 5,000. What do we know, Max? Yeah, th this information report um it's pretty uh it pours some cold water on the statements that that Musk has made. Um it talks about, you know, real difficulty manufacturing parts of these robots, particularly the hands. I mean, one thing in that clip that's worth noting, Elon Musk is right when he says this is new and this is hard. And so so you know in a weird way you know where whereas with robo taxis there are lots of other companies that have been doing what Tesla is doing for for quite some time with Optimus if they were actually able to make this work or really get close to making it work that would be amazing that would be really impressive but but from this information story you know it seems like they're just not progressing where they are must talked about what was it a legion I think where what the information said is they have something like 50 optimist optimi uh you know kind of walking around and and picking stuff up and putting it down in the factory. Not not doesn't sound like doing actual work yet. I don't know how many 50 is but definitely less than a legion. Um my you know what Musk is somebody who is totally focused and and and his his sort of expertise is getting investors to look at the future to not to look at the near here and now but to look ahead. And so I think if you look at the timing of this robo taxi launch one possible reason would be you have this information uh report coming out that that makes this other futuristic thing look like it's it's much further out. So hey let's let's let's speed up the robo taxis. Let's get investors excited about