Robots Eat Cars

> The Fremont factory lines that built those cars are converting to manufacture Optimus humanoid robots: one million units per year at $20,000 each, with public sales beginning in 2027.

Sure, why not? Seems just as likely as Tesla having 1 million robotaxis on the road by the end of 2026. =)

> Steer-by-wire

Thinking back to case-studies around the Therac-25 [0], I would like to pre-emptively highlight the differences between:

1. Technique X is unsafe.

2. Technique X is unsafe because too much can go wrong even with the best intentions.

3. Technique X is unsafe without strong QA and interlocking safety measures, and there's too much economic pressure for the manufacturer to cut corners.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Therac-25

Cars that nobody buys replaced by robots that nobody buys

One million robots to be manufactured in a year - one million robots which will likely be obsolete within five years (if that, I wouldn't be surprised if they're dead on arrival).

I don't know the figures for Earth's resources and their sustainability, so this may be a naive take, but I'm always left with the impression that these organisations want to speedrun the depletion of the planet.

This article is written with a little bit of a journalist’s misunderstanding of a topic.

They seem to have done research but have strung together unrelated subjects due to their lack of expertise in the subjects.

As a result it reads more like a summary or recap of vaguely related stories.

For example, Tesla’s pivot to robots has nothing to do with their advanced nature of their wiring harnesses, but it’s spoken in the same breath as if to imply that a Tesla Cybertruck (which is a Model Y with paneling literally glued on top) is more similar to a humanoid robot than a Mustang Mach-E.

In reality, what has happened is that the Model S and X have been discontinued and they’re the only products the Fremont, CA plant produces. Tesla has literally nothing else they can make in that plant. They either make Optimus robots or shut the plant down.

Optimus robot production is a face saving move. Tesla barely needs a fraction of that factory to build robots…it’s a much lower-volume and physically smaller product.

I should note that none of that has anything to do with Tesla being great at robotics and seeing it as a better business than automobiles. It has everything to do with competitors catching up and Tesla having insufficient development capability to iterate on those vehicles.

Who in the buyer demographic for a Model S wouldn’t take a Porsche Taycan, AUD A6 Sportback, or Lucid Air over that vehicle?

Who in the buyer demographic for the Model X won’t take a Kia EV9, Lucid Gravity, or Volvo EX-90?

Maybe if you aren’t paying attention to the car industry you’ll disagree with me but the problem here is the Model S and X are positively ancient with about zero dollars spent on keeping them updated and they’ve become completely irrelevant to the market as a result.

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