this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2025
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Tesla's robotaxi debut in Austin got people excited. But can the company compete on the global stage with Chinese AV giants like Baidu and Pony.ai?

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[–] SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world 59 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Literally anyone [still] in the autonomous vehicle market is ahead of Tesla. They're a joke.

[–] BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world 20 points 2 days ago

They're the Oceangate of cars but are way better at covering up the deaths

[–] NarrativeBear@lemmy.world 29 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Anything but trains, subways, trams, or buses?

Tech won't solve traffic, proper investment into public transportation will. Investment in these startups should be funneled into self driving public transportation.

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (2 children)

China has quite a number of trains already. Arguably they overbuilt their train network as much of it is heavily underutilized.

[–] WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world 16 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Heavily underutilized for now. It's significantly cheaper and easier to build the network too early than too late, when you have to coordinate property acquisition and demolition across the full length of the network.

[–] BombOmOm@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Heavily underutilized for now.

China has a birthrate of 1.15 children per woman. When is this later time you allude to when there will be more people to utilize the heavily underutilized network?

[–] avidamoeba@lemmy.ca 7 points 1 day ago

When many who still aren't in cities move into them. Urbanization in China has yet more runway and that drives rail utilization.

[–] pycorax@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 day ago

Isn't that now for their cross country trains as opposed to their subways?

[–] Melonpoly@lemmy.world 5 points 1 day ago

They literally have the largest high speed rail network in the world

It could. Imagine 80% autonomous vehicle traffic, 30% of that is multipassenger capable taxi service. Autonomous vehicle lanes moving reliably at 75mph. With this amount of taxi service the advantages of personal vehicle ownership falls and the wait time for an available pickup diminishes rapidly.

China has many areas with pretty good public transportation. In the US, tech advances and legislation changes to enable the above model is better suited to the existing infrastructure.

[–] Wazowski@lemmy.world 11 points 2 days ago

TSLA is a fucking joke.

[–] expatriado@lemmy.world 9 points 2 days ago (1 children)

tesla second quarter earnings call is coming wednesday, i think is going to be spicy

[–] thejml@sh.itjust.works 9 points 2 days ago

I’m sure the board will soon be calling for Elon… to get more money.

[–] tortina_original@lemmy.world 7 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Lol. It didn't get anyone excited.

Auto collision lawyers were excited I'm sure.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 5 points 2 days ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Even this thing is a better self driving taxi https://youtu.be/Qa0ErxEQFD0

[–] AnarchoDakosaurus@toast.ooo 0 points 1 day ago (1 children)

Did you even open your own link that a taxi in Japan lmao.

[–] roofuskit@lemmy.world 1 points 1 day ago

Yes, I watched the video the other day.

[–] romantired@shibanu.app 1 points 1 day ago

Long live the Communist Party of China, comrades!

[–] fittedsyllabi@lemmy.world 1 points 2 days ago (3 children)

Does the US only really have Tesla?

[–] protist@mander.xyz 9 points 2 days ago

Waymo is already live in 5 US cities. Waymo has been operating in Austin for over a year city-wide while Tesla kept moving back their rollout and still only operates in a sliver of the city, and only during the day in good weather. Zoox has been heavily testing in Austin and is likely to go live at some point soon.

[–] LifeInMultipleChoice@lemmy.world 8 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Kind of. Waymo is around which is much better. Mercedes Benz is German with some manufacturing here in the states but got approval for Autonomous level 3. Ford and GM have BlueCruise and SuperCruise which they were keeping at level 2, and testing level 3 without showing much info to the public from what I have seen. They are old established companies, when they launch level 3, id expect it to work way better than Teslas current performance. I imagine they want to work out the few kinks Waymo has and ensure the don't end up with mass recalls/lawsuits. Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep has announced their level 3 but is also not sending it to market yet. Once again an established company that knows the pitfalls of almost going bankrupt if I remember. I'd say Waymo sits between level 4 & 5. It can and does drive without a driver through cities/highways all day long, but there have been incidents where they have trouble "settling down" for the night if you will. Like a portion should return to a remote parking area ideally (the lots are to close now in my opinion) when business is slower and all park in spots and just sit until demand starts to increase again, slowly feeding more vehicles to taxi the people only when needed. BUTT there have been incidents where 10 of them pull into the parking lot and they all get cautious about hitting each other when attempting to park anf they were originally designed to wait for the other vehicle to park assuming it has a person driving, yet they are all autonomous so they wait on each other and in a notable incident in the past they were all honking at each other trying to get the others to just pull in first which as you can imagine cars honking at each other in the middle of the night will piss people off. That said I'm sure theybe fixed that by now, but Id want proof it could go on ANY road and park anywhere before calling it a full level 5.

I've only been in 2 Waymos, both in Tempe, AZ last March/April and all was fine. Once because I got drunk the night before I was going to fly out, so I called one to pick me up and see what it was like, and once the next morning to go get my rental car so I could return to the airport and fly home. The ride to get the car was flawless. The ride home from the bar was near flawless. 9/10 I'd say. The only complaint I would have had is when it pulled into the hotel there were cars in the drop off covered area by the front doors and the car decided to take it carefully at about 4 mph for the last 150 feet do to foot traffic and unpredictable cars pulling out and loading baggage. So if I was driving I would have went a bit quicker, but it being extra safe around pedestrians isn't a big flaw in my book.

There’s Waymo (which by the way is owned by Alphabet aka Google) and Uber is now entering the market by partnering with Lucid. All that to say is that Teslas valuation is still nonsense even if they do manage to rollout 10 gazillion robotaxis in the next 6 months because they are not the only players in the market. Or in any market that they are in for that matter.