The question I see others asking is “does NVIDIA Alpamayo affect Tesla?” The short answer is: not really. The long answer is that it sort of gets everyone else back into the game of adding autonomy to their vehicles, but here is the problem: the game is about to... switch to robotaxis. I do not know that this really affects the robotaxi game (at least not in the short term), and that is the rub. Waymo customers keep telling me “I am never buying a car again.” I do not think it helps the traditional automaker much. People who want autonomy will want Tesla due to its fleet size. The next year will make that clear.show more

Soon it will be about the information that the fleet provides to you. If there are eight Teslas ahead of you, that will make the autonomous system much better than with other car companies that have no fleet in front of you. This will be clear by the end of the year.

Well, NVDA is certainly tougher competition than Ford.

That is true.

Waymo customers keep telling me “I am never buying a car again.” correct…i rode in a waymo for the first time then bought a tesla would have never imagined buying ev a year ago the tech is so far and beyond elite made it a very simple decision

3) in Europe, especially Germany, Switzerland, and other bigger ones: many hate Tesla. Forget it here 4) Asia: already a lot of competition and way cheaper cars I think you overestimate the Tesla advantage.

Let's be honest: the only market that really matters is China. China buys more cars than America and Europe combined.

Agree to some extent. This market and how the people assess Tesla in the end and also if they would give their car for usage to others, I cannot assess.

It will cost Tesla $20k to produce and deploy a Robotaxi at scale. There is no scenario where any non vertically integrated car manufacturer licensing AV technology will be able to compete on price per ride with Tesla

With these though, EU might be able to fasttrack autonomy regulation wise once EU brands got the software.

I was thinking the same thing. Now that the Germans have it, the regulators have to turn it on and allow the Germans to drive their own cars in Germany. If they do that, they have to allow everybody. The game is on.

2026 clarity: Tesla's scale crushes autonomy pretenders. Robotaxi era locked.

I really don't know what Waymo customers you are talking to. I'm in Scottsdale at the moment. I have used waymo a number of times, it is great, but too expensive. It is still more cost effective for me to rent a car whilst here than take a waymo.

Well, I'm talking mostly to people in San Francisco—even ones who pay a little bit more for a Waymo than an Uber. I've been interviewing a lot of customers, including a few down in Phoenix as well. Price is the big question, but let's be honest: when Tesla and a few others get in the market, there's going to be a price war. An autonomous car only costs $2 an hour to run, but if you add a human to the car, it's $20 an hour. So, the price war should be pretty brutal for humans.

They just want to make another CUDA.

I still see owning your own car as a plus. A "private jet" if you will. At least for non-city dwellers where parking isn't an issue at all.

San Francisco has $70 parking lots. If Robotaxi is cheap enough I will take it every time

Yes, it makes sense for you to pay by the ride. For us people who never encounter paid parking, we'll own our own personal chauffeurs. Optimus could be our expert medical providers, as well as Michelin star chef. ...People will be crazy to live in a city.

I would say the answer is yes, but positively for Tesla as it will draw traditional legacy drivers to AV. They will then inevitably try Tesla FSD and discover how much better it is.

“I am never buying a car again.” What they are really saying is: “I am never buying a car without self-driving tech.” They just haven’t tried Tesla FSD yet.

Tesla has a small window until this comes to market. Otherwise once it does, scale will not be a problem. Someone like Uber will be more than happy to plug them into their network, wholly or partly owned. Uphill battle for Tesla and the time is ticking.

I think it validates that Tesla was going the right way all these years and the others weren't. Now a big boy in tech/AI is following Tesla's lead.

Elon is nuts with the Cybercab: he's saying ultimately a Cybercab can be manufactured every 5 seconds. Do you know how nuts that is??? It has to be something like 10X the manufacturing capability of other plants.

CyberCab works best in Dense Urban Areas … rural communities will still likely buy cars for a long time .. therefore autonomy lifts all

The bigger question really has to do with the backend. Tesla has that much more processing power overall. They have the data. They have the know how.

It ends Tesla's ability to sell FSD to other car makers, but we knew that was already not happening.

I don't know enough about this subject to have a real opinion but I am enjoying watching it from the sidelines.

@TeslaFrenzy Tesla will win due to fleet size and economics. With their inexpensive to build two-seater , scale of production, automated operations, and vision-only sofờtare, they are years ahead and likely pulling away. They won’t stop here.

😂😂🤡🤡

We actually don't need cars anymore. That's the principle. Nvidia may not be preparing tools for autonomous vehicles but autonomous robots!

Sure? 1) how will you scale the robotaxi that fast if provided by Tesla? It takes years 2) if you think, that you just add all existing Tesla: i) really no card mapping required? ii) do you REALLY THINK THAT EXISTING Tesla users want others to give their car for a few bucks?😅

Tesla already has 10 million cars on the road. It all depends on Elon and what business model he picks for the Robotaxi network.

When I buy a car for 80k USD, do I want others wo drive my car for earning a few bucks? I don’t think so. This p2p sharing never worked!

Most people overspend on their cars, so I believe the answer is going to be yes. If they think they can recoup some of their costs, they'll be totally fine doing that. As Robert implied the automobile industry is going to be a huge question mark. This whole thing is going to drive utilization of automobiles way up, which means ownership will go way down. Which means we will need fewer automobiles. I guess we'll find out. I don't think it's going to take very long.

@Scobleizer Will be interesting to see, agree on that. We had this P2P usage here a couple of times in Switzerland and it never worked out. People leave cars dirty, with scratches etc. (And we are in CH! Clean and safe. Don’t want to know what happens in US 😅). But things can change!

Well, as soon as he gets CyberCab on the streets, he has a robot to clean it out. Plus, Sandy Munro says that they're designed to be hosed out. They're going to be clean when they arrive, and if they aren't, you're going to refuse the order, send it away, and get another one. When you send it away, it'll go for cleaning, get cleaned, and then get back in the robotaxi network. Older cars or other models like the Model Y or Cybertruck are going to need cleaning centers set up for them. It's a question of who is going to put their cars in the network, but since I have two cars and don't need the second one, I'd put the new Model Y into the network to make some money. As long as the money's there—and I believe it will be, at least in the San Francisco Bay Area—demand for autonomous vehicles is extraordinarily high. You can't even get them on some Friday nights.

@mikeboysen But to offer ALL THIS, you need a huge infrastructure in every city. This takes years. You can maybe offer this first in 1-2 big cities but also here it will take you already months to build this up. I still think you overestimate the advantage of Tesla and speed by a lot 😉

@mikeboysen It isn’t as hard as you might think.

🎯 Autonomy for traditional car makers is shooting themself in the foot... they know it and they don't want it.

Apple versus Microsoft/Google approach. Both work. Tesla will take the profits..

It kind of puts Uber back in the game, though

It affects Tesla in the sense that Tesla is the only real game in town for FSD features. Even people who don't like Elon buy Tesla's for their superior tech. Now the folks who don't like Tesla because they don't like Elon will be more willing to purchase other brands.

Almost right: The game is about to change to L4 aka Unsupervised FSD aka full autonomy. That will be in 1M+ Tesla's currently on American roads (the car can go get my teenager from the party - no need for a taxi), in robotaxis, trucks, and a thousand new use cases.

I think it’s beneficial for the whole industry. I wonder if Tesla and AVs powered by NVIDIA will be able to talk to each other (which I believe will be essential if they all are on the road). I also asked NVIDIA how their AV capabilites are compared to Tesla:

I see owning a non fsd ice vehicle as becoming like boat ownership is now. Expensive to maintain - expensive to insure, but a small percentage of people will do it.

It in fact reinforces Tesla's hypothesis of a end-end vision based system. Also the long tail of self driving is unfathomably long. Glad others are at least getting started.

What do u mean "switch to" ? Waymo is ticking up almost 2 million Level 4 miles a WEEK. Their software is headed to Toyotas and Hyundais for personal use. Tesla is stagnant with trying to get the "F" in FSD. YOU (the driver) are the backup to FSD. Everyone else uses TECHNOLOGY.🤨

NVIDIA will profit from its chips and AI solutions as a vendor at the expense of auto OEMs. Any OEM aggregating solutions externally will not thrive, even if they survive. NVIDIA's offerings might buy them some time, and they will likely leverage the stock market with news, but autonomy—especially Level 4—is a long way off, and in most cases, they will never reach it.

Unless it’s raining, or snowing, or sunrise, or sunset…then maybe you want a car with some sensors other than vision. I love how Telsa fanbois have been screaming victory for years and still not one unsupervised mile provided to a customer yet.

I agree, car ownership will fall faster than people think. A family will most likely have one owned car for long trips and other circumstances. Other than that everyone else will use a robotaxi. Younger people will more and more opt in to just ride-hailing an AV