Waymo has been offering robo-taxis in the Eastern district of Phoenix for a while now and in San Francisco is offering free rides to pre-vetted customers in level 4/5 robo-taxis.
https://waymo.com/waymo-one/?loc=sf
Baidu is offering similar L4 services in Beijing and Shanghai.
There are driverless buses operating on specific routes as far and wide as Spain, Australia and China already - the routes extensive in China. WeRide is offering Level 4 cargo deliveries in China. It also offers Robo-taxis along with several other firms:
https://www.eetasia.com/chinas-robotaxis-hit-the-road/
Whilst the media, analyst and investor hype over Tesla's self-driving possibilities continue, other companies continue to actually already deploy real robo-taxis, even in major US cities.
Tesla, under scrutiny of the NHSTA, still struggles with level 2/3 driving by its own admissions (see recent earnings), whilst it's competitors are clearly beating it in the race to offer robo-taxis, already deploying them in some major global cities.
It is no surprise the Tesla Board and now Musk are looking to sell shares, for 'tax' purposes or otherwise. Tesla is falling quickly down the EV sales rankings in Europe (only 7% of EV sales YTD) and China (only 9% of EV sales YTD) where EV sales are growing rapidly and will likely hit 20% of automotive sales this year (the US might be 3%).
The investor narrative over Tesla and the market capitalisation is now so far removed from the realities of Tesla's position in the EV market or indeed it's realistic future revenue sources.
Submitted November 09, 2021 at 07:40AM by Historical_Job_8609 https://ift.tt/3D1xu8D
