Meanwhile Waymo has actually cracked self driving, and is operating a fleet of taxis. Tesla said they were going to do this at least as far back as like 2018, and still aren’t.
Seems I was wrong. However, the Robotaxi fleet is still tiny compared to Waymo's. Jalopnik said the fleet was only 34 cars as of EOY 2025[0]. Waymo had over 2,000 as of September 2025[1].
Elsewhere in this discussion someone pointed out that each Tesla robotaxi in Austin is being directly followed by a supervisor in another car. That resource constraint could explain the low number.
FSD is good in video, given. But its not full self driving as it still requires you to keep an eye on it.
Real FSD for me at least, means I can sit in a 'car' open a laptop and work. But honestly working with a laptop in a car makes it dangerous when driving fast.
For my work commute, I don't need a FSD. For my holiday also not.
What I want is real and save FSD something which has proofen on the road that it is really really good.
We are far away from this. 5 years minimum if not 10. And while Tesla is playing around with FSD and putting it now behind a subscription and fooled everyone with the promise of FSD with HW3 and below, it will not suddenly make Tesla the single leader in FSD at all.
Waymo is working on it, Xpeng can do it, BMW, Mercedes and Nvidia.
For Cybertaxies alone you need a lot of infrastructure (parking spots), cleaning crew, management software etc. you need the legal framework to be allowed to drive them (not going to happen anytime soon in europe) and then you only compete with normal taxis and uber.
> Real FSD for me at least, means I can sit in a 'car' open a laptop and work.
Sure. Meanwhile, I'm literally using FSD 90% of the miles driven in my Y (the last update added a counter). I can appreciate a non-existant better product as much as the next guy, but as it is my daily commute is vastly improved.
FSD isn't perfect (probably about 90%!), but it's everyday amazing and useful.
I'm still convinced we are going to need dedicated roads - or lanes at the very least - and dedicated parking/waiting areas for this to be feasible on a truly large scale.
However, it may be easier than we think-- they've already done something like this for rideshare drivers in many places, and it wouldn't necessarily need to be much more complicated than that.
Just build trains at that point, I use my laptop for work all the time when riding for a few hours. It has its dedicated lane, can travel at 220km/h, and it's a much smoother ride than any pothole'd American road.
what does it matter? Who is going to drive a nazi cab when you can take a Waymo?
Beyond that the fact that both Google and Rivian are so sure LIDAR is critical it suggests that the LIDAR-less solution is unsafe and kept afloat by musk hype and neutered USA regulators.
Isn't that an issue as well? It's always a bet on the next promised land which never arrives, the goalposts change but the stock never takes a hit from undelivered promises, it's bonkers.
