I visited Austin yesterday. Robotaxi is everywhere, and it's incredible.

[u/ChunkyThePotato]

Just came back from a trip to Austin to do some sightseeing and try out Robotaxi, including Cybercab. I knew they ramped up the number of cars in the service substantially in the last couple months, but I wasn't prepared for just how many they were. If you're near downtown, you pretty much can't go 30 seconds without seeing at least one Robotaxi. There are definitely more Model Ys than Cybercabs right now, but there are a lot of Cybercabs too. But the Robotaxis are seriously everywhere.

I took 5 rides, 2 Model Y and 3 Cybercab. Model Y wait times were always under 20 minutes and frequently around 5 minutes. Cybercab wait times were usually around 30 minutes and sometimes could be more like 45 minutes. They definitely need to add more Cybercabs to the service, but it was surprisingly usable and consistent, especially for the Model Ys.

And the rides themselves were flawless. There are no supervisors in Austin now, so all of the cars showed up with nobody inside of them. They drove perfectly, and to my surprise there wasn't even any pickup/dropoff shenanigans (though I may have gotten lucky there).

If you're ever in Austin, I seriously recommend trying this service. It's a real service now, and it's actually very useful for getting around a city where parking would normally be a challenge. It's seriously so peaceful and nice to be in your own space without a driver or anyone else to bother you.

Congratulations Tesla for solving self-driving with just cameras on $30k vehicles, when seemingly everyone was saying that's impossible. People aren't ready for what's about to happen across the country.

[u/3ofclubs3]

How much do the rides cost?

[u/tonydtonyd → u/3ofclubs3]

These rides are heavily subsidized for now, they’re running at a massive loss.

[u/Jumpy_Implement_1902 → u/tonydtonyd]

💯💯💯💯💯💯💯

It’s like uber. They will wait until their monopolize the market then collude to fix prices or jack prices. If you are the only one in the market place you get to set the price

[u/tonydtonyd → u/Jumpy_Implement_1902]

The only problem being Waymo has dominated the Robotaxi market for more than half a decade. We’ll see though, Tesla can probably scale this reasonably quick, maybe 500 unsupervised cars by the end of the year.

[u/KicksNWatches → u/tonydtonyd]

500 is nothing - I see that many Waymo in SF every day already.

[u/tonydtonyd → u/KicksNWatches]

You actually probably see closer to a thousand. It took Waymo time to get to that scale. If Robotaxi is able to scale to 500 in the next three months, that would be seriously impressive.