Oh? Elon got from the edgy to the fancy phase?
Still looks right out of Omikron: The Nomad Soul. Down to the gold color in the desert zone. Sliders are literally self driving taxis you can call.
This man has no original ideas. We knew that already though.
Such a great classic. Loved those Bowie concerts
they look like they are perfect for stickers
😂 would be hilarious if people start putting swastika stickers on these, perhaps on the bonnet/hood … like mercedes has the star, would make a true tesla logo
Swastickers?
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is updating vehicle standards to make it easier and faster for driverless cars to deploy on public roads. It’s currently tweaking eight rules, including those requiring car parts that driverless cars don’t really need: brake pedals, windshield wipers, and rearview mirrors. But for now, years-old standards remain in place.
Beyond private companies using tax dollars to manage their special regulatory environment, privatize and monetize public roads, and test their unfinished and unregulated products on citizens, I expect these to be fully-equipped roving surveillance and oppression machines:
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Each car can be covertly equipped with a suite of LPR or facial recognition cameras, sensors, and signals intelligence equipment.
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Autonomous cars can patrol and surveil large areas to gather intelligence while acting as innocuous taxis.
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Journalists, brown people, or pregnant woman making the mistake of entering one of these could simply be recognized and driven to a “detention” center for arrest.
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Vehicles can autonomously work in tandem to hunt down and assault other vehicles, or serve as transport for domestic military operations, or blockade roads.
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Service can be selectively denied to certain areas or social groups to curtail and manage movement during protests or events.
I mean, just use your imagination as to how an authoritarian federal government could collude with a Fascist tech CEO to leverage a large autonomous robo-taxi fleet set upon the population:
This has always been my problem with the future of self-driving cars too, and of course several people have argued with me that I’m stupid.
I don’t trust any corporations now and I don’t trust that the government will always be benevolent - if you’re in the US, it already isn’t, at least mine is still fairly sensible, but that could change easily too.
One of the biggest problems is that self-driving cars either are, or one day will be safer than human drivers. Which of course is a great thing! But then there will be a push to ban manual driving. First we’ll get I, robot, where manual driving is frowned upon. It’ll happen step by step.
Also: a fast means of transport for me and my family that doesn’t stop working when comms go down and isn’t restricted to a specific route, is what keeps me feeling much safer living <200 km from the Russian border. Buses or trains need to wait till they get enough people on to fill them, otherwise it’s inefficient. Self-driving cars likely won’t go anywhere. Bicycles and feet are great for day to day life in a livable city, but they don’t let me cross 4 national borders in 16 hours.
I expect these to be fully-equipped roving surveillance and oppression machines:
- Each car can be covertly equipped with a suite of LPR or facial recognition cameras, sensors, and signals intelligence equipment.
- Autonomous cars can patrol and surveil large areas to gather intelligence while acting as innocuous taxis.
- Journalists, brown people, or pregnant woman making the mistake of entering one of these could simply be recognized and driven to a “detention” center for arrest.
- Vehicles can autonomously work in tandem to hunt down and assault other vehicles, or serve as transport for domestic military operations, or blockade roads.
- Service can be selectively denied to certain areas or social groups to curtail and manage movement during protests or events.
I mean, just use your imagination as to how an authoritarian federal government could collude with a Fascist tech CEO to leverage a large autonomous robo-taxi fleet set upon the population
Whoa, that’s scary, but you probably right
It feels like we’re heading for the bad part of Manna faster and faster. If you haven’t read Manna, do yourself that service and spend 45 minutes read it. It used to be free on the authors website, but, the website was removed, when the author died, but it’s easy to find
I love and hate your comment.
Thanks for pointing out couple more nightmares to come and stay! :)
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Shouldn’t they have investigated that before it was allowed to operate?
Normally, it makes sense to allow companies to certify their compliance with these types of regulations. It would be a waste of resources to have the government inspect every new model ahead of time to make sure they have things like mirrors and steering wheels. It’s not like they can lie on the forms and no one will notice. Nor would a normal car company have any reason to, since they’d just be setting themselves up for lawsuits, fines and costly recalls.
The difference here is that Tesla decided they could issue themselves an exemption from regulations, which is not the same thing. They want to declare the car street legal without including basic items mandated by law. Other companies making self-driving cars that wanted approval for models that lacked required equipment got exemptions before they launched their models. Tesla just said “it’s fine, we gave ourselves an permission” without even consulting NHTSA.
But that’s pretty much the way Tesla operates. They have a long history of ignoring laws, lying to regulators, withholding evidence, and generally acting like they can do whatever the hell they want. It’s been backfiring on them a little in more recent years, but not nearly as much as it should.
US allows carmakers to self certify first
That’s what I’m complaining about
The US loves self regulation. It’s a crapshoot. The DOT allows self certification for motorcycle helmets as well. Their admittedly low sample count of random helmet testing still fails at a rate of ~40%.
What the fuck?
You just know imma be pulling up in front of these things and slowing waaay down.
As if I needed another reason to not not drive to/in Texas
Oh awesome. They don’t have steering or pedals so when the cloud service fails in 5 years, the entire car will be complete e-waste.
Okay, look. I’m picking on this comment because it appeals to the lowest common denominator.
Before I pick on it, please know:
- I am a progressive and have been for more than three decades.
- I despise fascism
- I hate Musk, the nazi
- While I’m a technology enthusiast, this autonomous bullshit is not ready for prime time, I don’t think.
So with that in mind:
Oh awesome. They don’t have steering or pedals so when the cloud service fails in 5 years, the entire car will be complete e-waste.
First of all, these cars would not depend on “the cloud”. “The cloud” refers (or at least originally referred) to a method of storing data on servers where you don’t really care about how many servers it takes or where they are or managing them, you just get a blog of space to shove data.
Even if you extend the definition of “the cloud” to include controlling these cars… that’s… really a huge stretch. And if you DO extend the definition, what you are saying at that point is “if the internet stops working” which is not going to happen. I don’t care what anyone thinks about the state of usability of social media or whatever, the internet itself is not just going to disappear.
The vehicles will not magically go bad. Maybe the business might choose to destroy them if they stop the service or something like that, but that would be a stupid business-type decision, not a technical one.
I just get tired of people saying things out of emotion that are just completely off-base. So I’m picking on this one as an example of what I see all day on Lemmy.
And I’m sure I say shit that qualifies as such. I do try to keep an open mind. I have been persueded on subjects before - by facts from sources and such. Or just good ways of thinking about things that I didn’t know before.
There’s plenty to rail against, but when we use boneheadedly wrong information to do so, it’s really much less effective.
And again, I’m just using this comment as one example of things I see day in and day out. And once again I emphasize that I know I’m probably guilty of it myself - and I get called out and sometimes I agree and sometimes I don’t (sometimes someone calling me out is wrong, too - like… MSG, for a completely different topic. It’s been studied. It’s a safe ingredient. Maybe there’s EXTREMELY rare problems, but 99.999% of people who say they’re allergic definitely aren’t. It’s bullshit, and the myth was built on racism.)
Anyway.
As someone else pointed out, “Cloud” is a buzz word that also means rented compute. Pull the plug, cars die. IDK how exactly. They could get confused and attempt to ALL drive back to their parking lots I guess. Although it sounds like they will be wasted to me, still.
“The cloud” refers (or at least originally referred) to a method of storing data on servers
The cloud is more than storage. It’s also compute. It’s Web apps. It’s virtual machines. It’s all kinds of things.
what you are saying at that point is “if the internet stops working”
No one is saying that. Tesla is selling these cars so people can earn money selling taxa services. What happens if Tesla decides this wasn’t profitable anyway? They shut down the service that enables people to book the car. Can you still hail the cap? Can you make it drive if it’s not connected?
that would be a stupid business-type decision, not a technical one.
Like when Sonos decided they didn’t need to support 1st devices because they now needed to do more than they were capable of, so they just wanted to brick them (but ultimately didn’t because of massive backlash)? How long will it be in Teslas best interest to support this particular platform? What if they include a new sensor in a later model and decide that the old model isn’t relevant any longer? Will we see 1st gen cybercabs in 30 years, like we do other cars?
All it takes is a software update for these to be bricks. If (and when) Tesla goes under, I doubt they will allow driverless cars that are no longer owned by a company. They will inevitably lock their firmware down as much as possible. It will, for all intents and purposes, just stop working the day the company stops existing.
Or the new model will come out and they’ll just stop supporting them. Or any number of other cynical tactics that Tesla and companies like it have shown time and again that they are totally open to doing.
How are these going to be any different than the e-waste scooters and bikes that have to be Frankensteined (Berm Peak YT link) to barely get working? And these can’t even be used as traditional cars as a fallback. They are made only to be driven by wire.
Now any minor stoppage is a journey ender. Need to go around an accident and an officer is directing but your car is confused? Can’t. Need to interrupt it as it starts approaching an animal or child it doesn’t see? Can’t. Need to pursue in rough weather because someone is injured in the passenger seat? Can’t.
Sure, you might say, “But you wouldn’t hire one of these vehicles in those scenarios.” But now that vehicle is destined for a short life as an upscale taxi that will never be used for anything practical. No second chance to do literally anything practical or useful.
These are all things every single car up to this point has been expected to be able to do. It’s a machine at the end of the day. The new standard is to start taking those things away and finding a ways to make us pay a premium to get them back. Trust me when I say the end goal in these people’s minds is that we all sit in cars that we pay for but never get to drive.
So yes, I am cynical because every one of these companies has given me nothing but reason to be cynical.
Wait wait wait… THATS WHAT THESE ARE??? I’ve seen these on the roads for maybe 4+ months now and always wondered what these ugly fucking Mac Mouse as looking cars are as there’s no branding on them, and it turns out their Teslas??? Fucking of course.
The fuck… It’s for two people?
I mean, there’s no problem here. In fact, I think it’s super sensible to make this a 2 seater.
Clearly their plan is ultimately for this robotaxi service to be something you can run on any Tesla car. Meaning that the majority of cars on the service will be 5 seaters.
On the other hand, I’d bet anything that the vast majority of rides requested are for a single rider. So if you’re going to make a vehicle specifically to be the optimal car for this purpose, it should definitely be a 2 seater. Smaller, lighter, better mileage, cheaper. If you need to order a ride for more people, a different car can do that and there are more of those available anyway.
The only gripe i have, is that this really could have been a 3 seater. Generally cars have adjustable front seats because the driver needs to be able to reach the pedals comfortably. But since that isn’t an issue here, it would have made a lot of sense to make it a bench seat just like most cars have in the back. Then again, the car does look quite small, so perhaps making it a 2 seater helped them constrain the size a little bit more.
God forbid you have two kids but apparently this targets 80+ of all rides and makes things cheaper
Hey I just saw one of those this morning and didn’t know what it was. Also looked like it was crab walking down the highway.
Fugly pieces of shit, like everything connected to Nazi cunts. It would be a real shame if all those coal rolling fuckheads were to target these things and run them off the road. A real shame.
