Elon Musk Promised Driverless Taxis—Instead, You Get a Guy in the Passenger Seat

Tesla's Robotaxi Program Is Failing Because Elon Musk Made a Foolish Decision Years Ago

A shortsighted design decision that Elon Musk made more than a decade ago is once again coming back to haunt Tesla. As The Guardian reports, the company's Robotaxi rollout has been a massive bust — due, in at least in part, to Musk's long-ago bet against the light detection and ranging sensors known as lidar, which are hardware that allow cars to "sense" their surroundings far more sensitively than the visual cameras that Tesla is instead using …

Elon Musk Promised Driverless Taxis—Instead, You Get a Guy in the Passenger Seat

Waymo followed a similar approach, but unlike Tesla, they didn’t claim for years that they wouldn’t need a safety monitor.

‘Lidar is lame’: why Elon Musk’s vision for a self-driving Tesla taxi faltered

After years of promising investors that millions of Tesla robotaxis would soon fill the streets, Elon Musk debuted his driverless car service in a limited public rollout in Austin, Texas. It did not go smoothly. The 22 June launch initially appeared successful enough, with a flood of videos from…