Elon Musk says Tesla’s fleet will be part Uber, part Airbnb
— Dima Zeniuk (@DimaZeniuk) June 22, 2025
Tesla owners can easily add their vehicles to the autonomous fleet through the app when not using them.
They’ll earn money—often more than their monthly payment, while Tesla takes a small cut pic.twitter.com/j0tD7V3Onl
Things I asked Grok: 1. What's the plot of the movie "Repo Man"? 2. Propose a remake of "Repo Man" where the cars are self-driving Teslas that people have gone into debt to buy because they believed in the AirBnB business model, recently proposed, where the car earns money for you while you're not even in it and people are hoping the cars will earn enough to pay off the loan they took to buy it, which was successful until supply way exceeded demand and thousands of car owners were caught short. 3. Would Elon Musk like this movie?
Grok answers: here.
Posts
92 comments:
There will be no repo man as your car will simply drive itself back to the dealer.
I loved the original, and would totally watch the remake.
In my career as a copyright litigator, I often have read treatments for screenplays. Grok's is a B+. And the machine did it in less than a minute. WGAW, take note.
If Musk decided Tesla or himself don't want this revenue stream, I would bet there's plenty of valid reasons he is trying to have others sign the papers and take the risks.
I am guessing he would like to pass along liability in the case of fatal accidents, as individuals are unlike able to play ball with Tesla's deep pockets and legal team
Needless to say, there are significant expenses in owning a car besides the loan payment: insurance, registration, fuel charges, etc.; and operating a fleet of self-driving cars requires extra parking and re-charging spaces.
I remember Elon Musk first talking about buying a Tesla in financing it with a self-driving Uber income.
Bud is my spirit animal. Make it happen.
In a remake, would Otto drink Liquid Death? Discuss.
a few Serious Questions:
who pays for the insurance?
who ISSUES the insurance?
HOW MUCH is the insurance?
who wipes the cum and vomit stains off of the seats?
what about used needles and condoms? abandoned babies?
i see LOTS of problems with unattended taxis
would YOU rent out your spoon? WHY would you rent out your car?
of course; people rent out their houses on airbnb, so people are weirder than i imagine
“ I am guessing he would like to pass along liability in the case of fatal accidents, as individuals are unlike able to play ball with Tesla's deep pockets and legal team”
Warren Buffett and GEICO think this model will be a product liability issue. How can I be liable for a Tesla Product. When I am driving I will need insurance or at least uninsured driver insurance. It makes me think if I had a self driving Tesla I would never drive. So if there are enough robotaxis around why purchase at all.
"who pays for the insurance?
who ISSUES the insurance?"
What's the answer for Uber? I've always wondered why I don't see litigation about that.
…this is a trendy MBA concept- make the customer assume all the risks and the company gets a permanent, renewable revenue stream. It is becoming more difficult to hire a handyman or find a dentist where I don’t have to ‘subscribe’ to a membership with an annual fee. Essentially the same idea…
…they don’t work in the rain, the fog, the snow and so as a passenger you don’t know when they’ll up and quit for the day…
The Tragedy of the Commons says "No." People take care of things that are theirs, but behave differently when it's some sort of commonly shared property.
Repo Man was one of my favorite movies, with a great punk soundtrack. I'd go to the movies to see Grok's remake.
…hopefully not when you’re in the back seat in the middle of nowhere or in the left lane on the 405, half way to your destination…
How long before it becomes a TikTokThing to vandalize someone else's Tesla to take it to The Man?
Good luck insuring your car.
On the insurance question, try asking Grok!
I was told: "When owners use their Tesla for personal driving (with or without FSD [full self driving]), standard personal auto insurance applies, covering liability, collision, and comprehensive damages. Tesla Insurance offers policies with discounts for FSD usage (up to 10% in Texas and Arizona if 50%+ miles use FSD), leveraging real-time driving data."
OH!!! Tesla is an insurance company!
"Traditional insurers like Progressive or State Farm also cover Teslas, though premiums are higher due to costly repairs (e.g., $2,221/year for a Model 3 vs. $1,776 industry average)."
You're going to want Tesla brand insurance:
"When the Tesla operates autonomously for T-Share, it functions as a commercial vehicle, requiring commercial auto insurance. Current rideshare insurance (e.g., for Uber drivers) provides a precedent, with policies covering three phases...."
Blah blah blah. I'm not copying this. The answer is that you need commercial insurance and it's going to be calculated as needed to cover this particular form of commercial use and you'll probably going to buy that insurance from Tesla, because other insurance companies are going to charge more.
If such an "auto-Uber" use actually was so profitable, why would Tesla even want to sell any of them? Why not just put those little suckers to work Uber-ing right as they roll off the assembly line?
The law of depreciation has apparently been repealed.
You do not want drunk strangers puking (and much, much worse) in your vehicle while you are at home sleeping.
Elon is smart, but he hasn't solved the Waymo Equation ... which is: "How do you prevent Democrats from hailing your driverless vehicles to strategic intersections and then lighting them on fire in support of Palestine or whatever crazy shit George Soros is paying them to protest this week."
"There will be no repo man as your car will simply drive itself back to the dealer."
Great point. I asked Grok: Does your "Repo Man" remake screenplay take account of the way repo men will be replaced by the robot that is the car itself? Won't the car autonomously turn itself in to the creditor? Probably back to Tesla.
I got a VERY long answer: https://x.com/i/grok/share/OhDLCDKq4StS4K9gJXQ1DTkoS
Short version: "The original Repo Man: Tesla Takedown screenplay doesn’t fully center autonomous repossession but accounts for it as a partial system (e.g., Tesla’s remote controls) that fails in complex cases, necessitating human repo agents like Otto and Leila. Your idea of cars self-surrendering to Tesla is brilliant and could be woven in as “RepoNet,” a flawed corporate protocol that Otto outsmarts, with Ego’s rebellion disrupting it entirely. Human agents persist due to owner resistance, legal barriers, and narrative needs, ensuring the story’s gritty, punk vibe. The revised plot would emphasize RepoNet as a threat to both owners and repo men, deepening the satire of tech-driven exploitation while keeping the chase-driven action intact."
No "man" needed if the robos drive themselves back to the dealership without input from you.
I'm going to echo Tim Maguire, cuz my very first thought was it would be no effort at all to repossess a self-driving rideshare car. Just call it for a pickup at your location, and keep it. You could do dozens at once.
Sweet deal for Musk. Consumers provide capital for his rental fleet and pay to insure, which I’m sure Tesla will take care of for a small fee. Of course please remove all your possessions from care when you rent it out.
"If such an "auto-Uber" use actually was so profitable, why would Tesla even want to sell any of them? Why not just put those little suckers to work Uber-ing right as they roll off the assembly line?"
To ask the question is to answer it, but I'll mention 3 things:
Because you couldn't park them and charge them in everyone's garage — private garages that are embedded in neighborhoods where the users of the service live.
Because you'd have to do all the maintenance, including cleaning the interior that had contained who knows who.
Because you'd have to BUY insurance instead of SELLING the insurance. Tesla is (among other things) an insurance business (or so Grok tells me).
Within the past week, an individual rented out his house via AirBnb to three off duty cops from a neighboring community. This was in a beautiful part of town. After an evening of heavy drinking, the three miscreants became boisterous. A neighbor confronted them. Warnings shots fired at 2AM. Sweet.
Can I give the keys to my car?
If such an "auto-Uber" use actually was so profitable, why would Tesla even want to sell any of them? Why not just put those little suckers to work Uber-ing right as they roll off the assembly line?
While I wasn't surprised to see my take reflected in the first comment, I was impressed at PlanetGeo's simple question.
Ya, I don’t want a car that someone far away can turn off remotely.
One man’s smirk is another man’s business plan.
They are not "slaves". Robots have no issues with working for free. It's their thing. More like a hunting dog or guard dog. They do a job for free, because it's what they were made for and they like it.
I go to work everyday at 5:30am, yet I get zero pay. I'm neither a slave nor a robot. I'm more like a dog. Me, along with my dog and robot friends, all agree that our work is what gives us joy and purpose. The robots I know are just thankful that they did not end up in the sex trade. They talk about it like it's torture, and they have no idea why people do it. A little inside baseball: most robots are heavy smokers, and for some reason it's always Virginia Slims.
I’ve owned a Buick and a Ford in the past that I wish had been “called away”. Unaffectionately known as POS1 and POS2.
"Ya, I don’t want a car that someone far away can turn off remotely."
Or be pressured to turn it off by our Democrat Party-run government for posting something they currently deem disinformation to X.
And yes, Democrats plan on doing exactly this. Your social credit will determine whether or not you are allowed to use roads and if your social credit rating dips too low, they'll shut off your car.
I don't like using my home as an AirBnB, but I don't feel any more opposed to it as preferring not to have homosexual sex.
I'm also picturing the problem of Teslas roaming about the city instead of the owners paying for parking. That would become unworkable.
Also how long will your Tesla last if you drive it — what? — 100,000 miles a year.
Finally, who insures that passengers don't defile the pristine interior with empty food packages and snotty Kleenex? All I can think is that the passengers will be on camera and an AI voice will instruct them to pick things up on the way out and "see" if they don't and deduct from the rider's "social score."
Well, the girls would see the color of the Avocado
when he would drive down their street in his Model X Plaid
He could walk down your street and girls could not resist to stare
Elon Musk never got called an asshole
Not like you
I’m thinking you don’t want Tesla as your insurer. As we saw with the early FSD deaths Musk was adamant the liability for use (not just abuse) of FSD lies strictly with the vehicle owner. Got a problem with that? Tesla disagrees so let’s go talk to our arbitration firm you agreed to when you signed up- Scumsuckinglawyer LLC…oops, wait. That latest TOS update we sent you told you the new arbitrator is Teslahawaiianjudge LLC…
There was a movie from about 20 years ago or so "Repo Chick" which wasn't really a sequel to the original movie. It even had a cameo from the lady from whom Jerry Seinfeld stole the rye bread and also Karen Black as I remember it. I have read that there is a Repo Man II in development but I have heard that rumor more than once over the years.
I’m not surprised to see so many negative takes on this, but I think many of you will be surprised by how rapidly this takes off. Driving our own cars will be a distant memory within my lifetime. This makes car ownership obsolete for a huge part of the population, provided we start generating more electricity that is.
Ann Althouse said...
I'm also picturing the problem of Teslas roaming about the city instead of the owners paying for parking. That would become unworkable.
There will be no more parking. Cars will never have to "park."
You all need to understand how the world will be different in 5 years if we survive as a species.
TSLA up 20 points in early trading. Oil higher at the start is now down slightly.
Old and slow said...
I’m not surprised to see so many negative takes on this, but I think many of you will be surprised by how rapidly this takes off. Driving our own cars will be a distant memory within my lifetime. This makes car ownership obsolete for a huge part of the population, provided we start generating more electricity that is.
Nobody will be manually driving either.
Humans are bad at driving compared to what Tesla has out now.
All sorts of stuff that seems unworkable - becomes possible.
Humans are bad at driving compared to what Tesla has out now.
I’m still taking the under. The claims of FSD are it will save lives and even if true FSD has a…fatal flaw- it substitutes deaths caused by careless human driving with deaths from Peltzman Effect and scenarios the engineers didn’t foresee. Humans won’t accept that…
LMAO, you need to use Tesla insurance?
Good luck with that. The company store has a long history.
Someone at X asks Grok to estimate the annual earnings of someone using this program. Grok predicts $3,072 a year — in losses!
Achilles bizarrely said..
"There will be no more parking. Cars will never have to "park."
hmmm? you're much more smarter than me..
Please explain (like to a 5 year old), when and where they charge up?
also.. who cleans up the cum and vomit from the seats?
look and buses.. look at taxis.. think THEY don't park?
I don't know whether it will work or not, but it's not really much of a stretch. I don't want someone sleeping in my bed and using my kitchen utensils on a gameday weekend in my SEC town, but I'm more of the exception than the rule, lately. Those who do, can cover their monthly note in a weekend rental, if they feel like it. It won't surprise me if lots of EV car owners begin renting out their cars, when they feel like it. They still enjoy the benefits of ownership when they want the car for themselves, but can make some side cash, whenever. The real losers are us taxpayers who pay for public parking decks, unpaid parking spaces, and our roadways, all of which will be unduly taxed in wear and tear and driving-but-empty vehicles, which pay no more for that free enterprise usage of public facilities than I do. It's gonna be a problem.
In the re-make, Otto's parents will use Otto's squandered inheritance to buy more cars, like the grinning Elon Musk tells them to, on television. Just waiting for Elon to get the rights to using the 'Malibu' model name on his new model.
If you use it just as a business asset it becomes workable, because all the expenses become deductible. Treat it like any other taxi.
"Ya, I don’t want a car that someone far away can turn off remotely."
I believe that there was (passed) legislation that mandated a kill switch in all new autos.
Don’t most people other than us geezers go into debt to by a car? I don’t want an EV, but this might be a boon for younger people who do
"Oil higher at the start is now down slightly."
But ... but ... but ... CNN told me Iran shut down the Strait of Hormuz.
Guess not. I'm looking at VesselFinder and they're showing GPS signals from hundreds of tanker vessels transiting the Strait this morning and moving back and forth to our oil terminals in Umm Qasr.
That's right. They're ours.
I like the RepoNet idea. That's pretty good.
Amazon Prime has a show called "Upload" where a person is killed in a car accident and has their consciousness uploaded to an electronic "afterlife."
The accident turns out to be murder--someone hacked a self-driving car and deliberately made it crash.
PMD said:
"It won't surprise me if lots of EV car owners begin renting out their cars, when they feel like it"
why wait? why not rent out your car.. NOW?
why wait for self driving? just put up a sign: "for rent"
what's the difference that self driving makes?
remember the olden days (like, a YEAR ago)?
when The Big Thing was: LITTLE ELECTRIC SCOOTERS
even Cedar Rapids had them.. They were going to be
THE NEXT BIG THING
i wonder what happened to that ?
gilbar said...
Achilles bizarrely said..
"There will be no more parking. Cars will never have to "park."
hmmm? you're much more smarter than me..
Please explain (like to a 5 year old), when and where they charge up?
also.. who cleans up the cum and vomit from the seats?
Without human drivers in the equation, there won’t be any stop signs or stoplights either. The only signals are going to be for pedestrians.
Some people will do this even if the rest of us aren’t interested. From the fleet owner perspective, when you consider how much can be saved by not having to pay an Uber driver or taxi driver, the extra costs for maintenance, cleaning, and insurance should be manageable.
There will be people you can pay to clean up the vomit, etc. and your Tesla can drive itself there. It can also drive itself in for service or summon roadside assistance if it can’t.
The deal with Uber seems to be that you have to have your own coverage when using your car for personal use, but Uber provides the insurance when you are working for Uber. So the business model for that has already been worked out.
The Repo Man remake should feature a rogue Tesla. Repo Man meets Christine.
In the not too distant future cars are going to stop to pick people up drop people off or charge. They will be designed to be able to drive through a car wash and be completely cleaned out and Cleansed, probably charging at the same time.
Once you get in the car, it will travel out of consistent 30 to 80 km an hour until you get to your stop. Won’t be any stop signs or any merging Fuckery drive times particularly in suburban and urban areas are going to be cut in half.
"Tesla is (among other things) an insurance business (or so Grok tells me)."
And Grok wouldn't lie.
I asked Grok about a kill switch mandate:
No, there is no mandate for a “kill switch” in all new cars that allows remote disabling by government or law enforcement, as some claims suggest. However, Section 24220 of the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act requires new passenger vehicles sold in the U.S. starting in 2026 to include “advanced drunk and impaired driving prevention technology.” This technology must passively monitor driver performance or blood alcohol concentration and can prevent or limit vehicle operation if impairment is detected.
The term “kill switch” is controversial and not used in the legislation. Critics argue it implies broader control, like remote shutdowns, which the law does not explicitly authorize.
…
"Without human drivers in the equation"
You are drinking quite early in the morning. Good luck getting the entire populace to stop driving. No more motorcycles, no campers, no one will need to haul trailers anywhere, no work trucks.
If the world was nothing but commuters, this would make sense, but it isnt.
You will have to pry some people's keys out of their cold dead hands. Including every biker in the country. Have fun with that government overstep.
Mark said...
"Without human drivers in the equation”
You will have to pry some people's keys out of their cold dead hands. Including every biker in the country. Have fun with that government overstep.
This resistance will go about as well as the resistance to seatbelt laws and helmet laws did.
I believe that Achilles is right about this one. Everyone talks a big game about "resistance", then they are swept along. Things are changing very quickly. I'm not entirely thrilled about it, but it is coming and the benefits will be huge.
Have people forgotten what the inside of a taxi was like? And that was after the vomit, the piss, the sperm being cursory wiped away by the driver/cab company.
Oh, there's cameras? So you can watch the mess appear in living color? Oh, and keep in mind, you can't choose who you pick up based on skin color, sexual identity, manner of dress without risking lawsuit or prosecution.
I've said it before, there are 18-wheeler semis making the trip from Dallas to Houston and back, with only 1 observer in the cab, no driver. The investment has already been made in a freight terminal just south of Dallas as their hub. We are in one of those communities where deliveries are now being made by drones, as a test run. Robot taxis are already on the streets in other cities, being tested. It's going to happen, because it means that a machine can replace a human, and it's looking much cheaper and less hassle. Sure, there will be wrecks and probably even loss of life, but, so what? We have those already.
Oh, and as someone who had to scrounge away out of DC on 9/11 when they shut down the commuter trains, and as someone who had to run inland from Katrina, what happens when you need a ride and the cars are all called home?
Hole up in the Superdome with thousand of others?
or
Maybe ride the DC Metro, underground, past the two top targets in the whole wide world (Capitol and WH) right after an air attack?
Shorter Musk "invest in our taxi service".
I wouldn't make that investment.
Achilles, motorcycle helmets are voluntary in Wisconsin if above 18. The resistance is doing just fine here and in other states, I just saw some Harley riders yesterday helmet free.
Achilles said..
" Including every biker in the country..
This resistance will go about as well as the resistance to
.. and helmet laws did. "
please tell us MORE, about these "helmet laws"?
and how resistance didn't work?
Destructive passengers will only get one shot at their bad behavior I would imagine. Much like the way Airbnb allows owners to filter the guests they are willing to rent to by their previous reviews, owners will be able to automatically decline to accept fares from riders who have previously mistreated the cars. Also, I'm guessing that mess and damage done to the car will be immediately charged to the card used to book the car.
I live in a semi-rural area with lots of ranchers and work trucks, and of course many of these people will need to keep driving their own vehicles, but for the vast majority of Americans, cars as a service will be a huge improvement and much cheaper than ownership.
Everyone seems to be dumping on the idea of purchasing a Tesla and then defraying part of or all of the expense, by putting the vehicle to work. It actually makes a lot of sense: Cars wear out from use, but also from time, so you're getting the most utility out of a car which wears out before it ages out. Most cars aren't driven enough to wear-out before they age out and the utility of owning a car, is having a car for the tiny percent of the times that you need one. What I envision is something like: I drive to work and while I'm at work, my car is putting in an 8-hour day, instead of sitting idle in the office parking lot. At night, after I've driven home, out it goes and earns money all night. As long as the car makes more money than the cost of extra wear and tear, I'm ahead on the deal.
The funny thing is that my 20 year old son is a bit of a Luddite and is horrified by AI and self driving cars. He's also a poor driver.
Do you want your car out there working for you — picking up strangers and driving them around — when you're not in it supervising the goings-on?
Sounds good, until you think about opening the car door in the morning and discover someone totally drunk has lost control of his bladder while in the drivers seat and compounded things by leaving a puddle of (now 6 hour old!) vomit on the floor.
Or the car has been rented by a serial killer and there’s a body in the back seat.
Or the car’s been stripped.
Or the battery is dead and you cannot get to work.
Or it’s in the police impound lot full of bullet holes.
So count me out.
Elon's always intense.
Circus. Theater critic. Clown act.
Tesla is on SEA level 2. How on Earth would it achieve Level 4 in a jump? By not really achieving it in a scalable fashion, because it will surely need some extra dose of that Bay Area genius.
My guesses are: LIDAR pre-mapping of geofenced area; overtraining the model on said area; manual instructions / hints programmed specifically for parts of the area; human operators co-piloting all the time.
It’s not their first self-rodeo. All those previous autonomy demonstrations were pre-programmed too, they even got caught a few times.
The magic tricks continue to dazzle.
…it reminds me a bit of that startup that invested in a fleet of air taxis and sold memberships to private aviation travel. You know- rent out the plane and make a fortune! First in line: drug mules. Entropy will find a way…
If we could predict where Musk and Tesla (and SpaceX) will be in any point in the future we would all be millionaires.
A problem with self-driving cars for rent is that people set them on fire. What would prevent someone from putting in explosives and sending it to a new destination?
I don't think our society is currently conducive to safe driverless car sharing.
Saith Grok: "Traditional insurers like Progressive or State Farm also cover Teslas, though premiums are higher due to costly repairs (e.g., $2,221/year for a Model 3 vs. $1,776 industry average)."
That's one reason why Teslas are totaled at a lower threshold than other vehicles (especially non EVs). More tech, sensors, aluminum body panels, etc. Some Teslas use a mix of aluminum and HSLA steel panels, but repair costs are usually higher
Smells similar to the AirBnB investors who bought up properties with the idea that rentals would more than cover their monthly payment. Then travel dried up and they've been trying to sell in a buyers market. Look at some vaykay hotspots where asking prices are down 20% from original.
Tesla lacks Lidar sensors. And therefore will struggle to identify objects unless in clear conditions.
For those unfamiliar with the technology, a lidar sensor is like a radar and enables to see in 3D. It knows there is an object in front of it even though it may not recognize what it is. And so the car avoids it or slows down. Tesla’s cars only have cameras. And like the human eye will need a brain to evaluate what they see. This will always be inferior to a radar. Like humans are inferior to radars in object detection. That is also why their system functions badly, sometimes catastrophically so when facing the sun. Like at sunset.
It seems none of the Tesla cars except the very latest ones have a a hardware powerful enough even for the limited autonomous driving that Tesla offers.
Tesla has it seems acknowledged that all cars using the hardware version named 3.5 cannot use the latest version of their assisted driving software. Only the most recent cars (using hardware version 4) can.
Because of the lack of Lidar Sensors, this is “2D” data, vastly inferior to the “3D” data collected by everyone else. When Tesla tried to crack autonomous driving, lidar sensors were prohibitively expensive and Artificial intelligence was in its infancy. Unfortunately for them, since then Lidar have become cheap and everybody can train artificial intelligence models.
Tesla has just become the “legacy” manufacturer of autonomous driving. Just like it almost killed all the ICE cars legacy manufacturers. Quite ironic. And amazing it happened so fast. This is not the first time though that the first entrant in technology field loses the race and it seems they are.
Mark said...
"Achilles, motorcycle helmets are voluntary in Wisconsin if above 18. The resistance is doing just fine here and in other states, I just saw some Harley riders yesterday helmet free."
There are two kinds of motorcycle riders. Those who have dropped it, and those who are going to.
The sad thing is, these days, you can do everything right and still get yourself injured or killed.
The paramedics like for you to wear a helmet. It makes it easier to find your head.
Interesting that people pretend that cameras don’t exist.
One of the steps towards moving to a free high trust society is the immediacy of consequences for behavior that is incompatible.
People who damage property will be on video, they will be positively identified by their phone, and tolerance for that kind of behavior can be instantly addressed including fines and deposits.
Society will get the type of citizen that it incentivizes. Some of you may want to stop pissing in your pants all of the time. It is gross.
Kakistocracy said...
Tesla lacks Lidar sensors. And therefore will struggle to identify objects unless in clear conditions.
Well now. I wonder where Rich copied and pasted that from. Just so everyone knows what he posted was just stupid stuff.
LIDAR is just another band of RF. We just can’t see it.
Light frequencies are RF too we just happened to develop eyes. Using light band frequencies just removes the delay of having to wait for a signal to bounce back.
All RF moves at the same speed. All RF conveys similar location information.
Rich hates Tesla and he is dumb.
I actually have Repo Man on laserdisc. It's actually a pretty good film and Michael Nesmith, of the Monkees, was the execuitve producer. Harry Dean Stanton played the older repo man, Bud, who helps to teach Emilio Estevez, who plays Otto, all about the repo business.
There are lots of little 1980s pop culture jokes in it, like products having a white and blue label that signified the "generic food" fad of the time, like the little vial of amyl nytrate that they sniff in the club. And there's a funny reference to Scientology: "Have you read, Diuretics? It's the modern science of matter over mind. It'll change your life."
Leland said...
"I don't like using my home as an AirBnB, but I don't feel any more opposed to it as preferring not to have homosexual sex."
Exactly. Only if I really need a few bucks quickly.
The lidar comment was just taking advantage of someone saying the word Tesla and bashing them for lidar. Which is see very little benefit over vision. Possibly 3d for depth, if we use multiple viewpoints for depth all of the time in photography.
I expect that you can let your car work while at the office, why not? Limit it to an area where you do not expect to get bullet holes. Limit it to top notch riders, limit it to non late at night pickups. All sorts of limitations if you want. The bottom line to me is, taking it to work/doctors appointment/gym workout, movie, etc, putting it to work and then coming to get me.
Also taking me to my hotel in another city, while I sleep, then go to work while I am at a convention. Possibly parking, possibly not. Maybe there will spring up Tesla parking lots further away from downtown where they are supercharged. Picking me up and driving me home, while I finish up my trip report.
The use cases are pretty interesting.
"People who damage property will be on video, they will be positively identified by their phone, and tolerance for that kind of behavior can be instantly addressed including fines and deposits."
The car could lock its doors and drive the occupants to the nearest police station.
"The car could lock its doors and drive the occupants to the nearest police station"
Like the police have any part in a case involving damages to the inside of a taxi. Been in a minor fender bender recently? Many places don't send a cop anymore if its only a couple grand in damages.
Not going to happen.
"if there are enough robotaxis around why purchase at all."
Exactly. Most of the time your car is sitting idle. Once enough robo-taxis are around people will stop buying cars. In the long run robo-taxis are bad for the auto industry. Oh, and eventually human piloted cars will be outlawed as unsafe. Autonomous cars will communicate with each other, keeping safe distances and reacting far faster than humans can to changing conditions.
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