It’s possible that the Tesla Cybercab is exactly the right form factor and technology to skip ahead of Waymo and Cruise to overtake the robotaxi market. A bet against Elon Musk isn’t always one that pays off. If the only two certainties in life are death and taxes, a near-third is probably government regulation. How, exactly, is Musk going to clear that inevitability?
Today’s Morning Dump is all about the gap between expectation and reality. This is where Elon Musk both thrives and, sometimes, falters. The same could be said of anyone trying to do anything hard. This is especially relevant now when the world feels like it’s changing at a rate faster than anyone can track. GM’s solution to this problem? Moving more of its vehicle development to the virtual world to save time on building and testing prototypes.
Chinese automakers are threatening to compete in Europe, though they’ve got a long way to go. Just how long is it? Some of this comes down to how quickly EV sales take off in the continent. We know they’re slow here, and any Stellantis dealer who expected to get a lot of help from the parent company is just going to have to “deal with it.”
The Cybercab Conundrum
There was a lot of fanfare at the “We, Robot” event held by Tesla last week, but there wasn’t a lot of detail about how Tesla was going to start actually putting these vehicles into use.
What we do know is that Musk said the company would start producing the Cybercabs in 2026, though he himself admitted that he can be “a little optimistic” with the timeframes for his projects. He also said the cabs would cost under $30,000 and should require about $ 0.20 per mile to operate. David dug into whether it made sense for the cab to be a two-seater and, sure, that’s weird. This doesn’t bother me as much, as the platform is likely adaptable and I wouldn’t be surprised if a four-person version was eventually added.
An open question I have is: Were these just the Model 2 we ended up not getting? That’s what Tu Le from Sino Automotive Insights thinks, saying that “[t]he vehicle Elon showed off is likely the M2 that they decided not to launch. They just ripped the pedals and steering wheel out.” So the Model 2 would have been a two-seater? Like a new Smart Car? I kinda like that.
Putting all that aside, there’s one big reason why the Cybercab cannot be deployed in massive numbers and that’s simply that the federal government, via the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, won’t allow it.
As NHTSA’s own guidelines point out, there’s a limit of 2,500 cars per year, per manufacturer that qualify for an exemption and can be tested on public roads. The exemption gets cars out of the Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standards, or FMVSS, which is what you need for a car with no driver or steering wheel.
Any motor vehicle manufacturer may petition the Agency for exemption in order to facilitate the development or field evaluation of a new motor vehicle safety feature, for up to 2,500 vehicles per year. A manufacturer seeking to use this basis for exemption must provide documentation of the research performed already on the safety feature, how the safety feature is innovative, and how the safety level of the feature at least equals the safety level of the FMVSS for which exemption is sought, as discussed in Section III.C.4.c.
Of course, 2,500 would still be a decent number of Cybercabs. Currently, Waymo reportedly has about 700 driverless taxis and Cruise likely had about 1,200 at its peak. So has Tesla applied for these exemptions? According to NHTSA, via Bloomberg, they have not. Is this a big deal? According to the Bloomberg article, it seems so:
General Motors Co. in early 2022 petitioned NHTSA for an exemption to field a driverless shuttle without a steering wheel and other human-centric features through its Cruise self-driving unit. The automaker ultimately pulled the plug in July after the agency didn’t act on the request for more than two years.
Tesla hasn’t requested an exemption for the Cybercab, NHTSA said Tuesday afternoon. The agency to date has granted only one such application, in 2020, when it allowed startup Nuro to deploy low-speed, autonomous delivery vehicles designed to carry goods rather than people.
I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist here so I will merely point out that former President Trump has said he’d appoint CEO Musk as some sort of anti-government spending/regulation czar if elected, and Musk himself has said it would be bad for him personally if Trump loses. If Trump does fire most civil servants, as has threatened to do, and replaces them, with the help of Musk, is it possible that these issues go away?
GM Is Going Virtual
It’s not often that I get to quote Rubber News, which is a real publication that focuses on the rubber business. Thankfully, Rubber News has an article about General Motors trying to go virtual with its new car development. This includes both the design and the validation stages and could help the carmaker move faster.
“We have been partnering with the supply base to identify the gaps and put together the plans to achieve our 100 percent virtual plans,” Matthew Wieczorek, a GM engineering group manager, told attendees at a recent conference here hosted by Endurica LLC.
“We have to keep pace with the rest of the industry,” Wieczorek said. “Hardware tests are always kind of limited in scope. You go to prototype vehicles. You go out and you test them. One fails and the other doesn’t, what do you do? Do you react to it? Do you not react to it? What caused the one to fail and not the other?”
GM will not make hardware and vehicles available for development and testing once it moves to a full virtual process, he said.
Welcome to the future.
Chinese Automakers Aren’t Slowing Down Much On Imports
European tariffs are a real concern for Chinese automakers hoping to break into Europe even if those concerns aren’t likely to dissuade most of those companies. Chinese-owned MG, for instance, has seen its sales in Europe double every year for the last four years and even imported more cars to Europe than Tesla did last year (Tesla, of course, has local production for its most popular model, the Model Y).
Many Chinese brands were on display at this week’s Paris Motor Show, including the BYD Sealion 7 and Xpeng P7+ and G6, with Tu Le noting:
I could see the P7+ & G6 doing pretty well in the EU markets with aggressive pricing, especially since [co-founder] He Xiaopeng said he’d maintain pricing despite the tariffs – that means they’ve likely forecasted a cost down glidepath that can maintain profitability despite eating large chunks of the tariff. One way they’re doing this is by having one of the (I think he said THE largest) 16K ton gigapress stamping the chassis.
S&P Global Mobility says the tariffs should be taken seriously even if they aren’t a long-term impediment to China’s automotive expansion:
In response to the punitive tariffs, S&P Global Mobility has made an initial adjustment to its sales forecast for EU27 markets that reflect the impact that these measures will have. Despite facing challenges, the long-term outlook for Chinese brands in Europe remains optimistic. The market share of Chinese brands in the region reached 2.5% in 2023, and projections indicate that this could rise to nearly 10% by 2034, with more than 1.2 million cars sold in the European market.
This is perhaps why President Biden put a 100% tariff on Chinese EVs.
Carlos Tavares To Dealers Concerned About EV Transition: “Deal With It”
It’s not a great time to be a Stellantis dealer or customer (or supplier), and CEO Carlos Tavares, pictured above, understands this. He sympathizes. Just kidding!
Stellantis NV CEO Carlos Tavares’ message to dealers and suppliers struggling for profitability on the bumpy road to increasing adoption of electric vehicles is: “Deal with it.”
LOL.
Perhaps the full quote will be a little better:
“You insert an additional cost of 40% in a system, which is very constrained, obviously it creates a lot of tension, and obviously it creates anxiety,” he said. “We are all facing the same reality. And my people, they also have anxiety, but we are dealing with it. We are dealing with it, and everybody needs to take a fair share and deal with it.”
He called upon dealers to lobby the government to support demand through EV subsidies “so that they don’t have to push the EVs in the mouth of consumers that may not be so excited about it.”
Yes, “Deal with it” by passing as much of the costs possible onto taxpayers and suppliers.
What I’m Listening To While Writing TMD
If you’re going to make people listen to a cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” I’m going to suggest you pick the Jeff Buckley one. Shoutout to Car And Driver Senior Editor Andrew Krok for pointing out the sublime “Life at Sin-é” version.
The Big Question
Who will be the first company to have more than 5,000 robotaxis in use in the United States?
- Tesla
- Waymo
- Cruise
- Zoox
- Other?
Image credit for topshot papers: Kitta/stock.adobe.com
Who may have a fully autonomous fleet first? I’m not sure, but I can see Amazon having a fleet out there for themselves early (ferrying goods, not people).
But I feel like I trust a new entrant from China (like BYD) more than I currently trust some of the American companies at this point.
It does not matter who gets the first 5,000 AI cars. the question is when will they get their own rights, and will the Smart Car make a comeback as a result.
Johnny Cab
Does anyone else think the Robotaxi was originally meant to be a low-cost two-seater and got repurposed? It would explain the seemingly inappropriate form-factor.
It’s a common theory (mentioned above, even) that the CyberCab is based on a Model 2 design.
yes, i made many, many comments to that effect in the original post about the reveal.
I 100% think this was the low-cost car up until about 4-6 months ago. But at some point Elon realized he can’t pump the stock price and keep it as inflated as it is by showing an econo-box EV. So, he has to dress is up as much as possible and pivot to his worn-out claims of a driverless cab.
You sell the sizzle, not the steak. So, now investors can comfort themselves with the idea that in 3 years the company will finally make something that supports its absolutely bonkers market cap (and the price they paid for stock).
I am surprised the rear facing Trunk seats from the Tesla S are not a thing here. But yeah, not having a straight up box for vehicles never seeing freeway use is just dumb, and Elon is a fan of flat panels on vehicles from a buildability standard.
“Who will be the first company to have more than 5,000 robotaxis in use in the United States?”
Since no one else has answered today’s Big Question yet, I’ll take a crack at it.
I would have actually said Nuro at first, since they are the only AV company holding a legitimate NHTSA approval, but since they were solely focused on last-mile cargo, I’m not sure that counts. Though it should be mentioned they recently switched focus in the hopes of selling their technology to other OEMs, rather than making their own product.
Of the options provided, I’d have said Cruise a year ago were it not for an unfortunate incident that has seemingly set them back quite a bit. So to me it looks like Zoox is the most likely candidate since they already have cars operating in test markets. I’m not aware of the status of their NHTSA approval but given the NHTSA doesn’t seem to be in any big hurry regarding these types of things…
“I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist here”
Then don’t fucking say it then do it. That’s some Jalopnik BS there.
Who says you have to launch the robotaxis in the US?
It’s trained on US roads. I’m sure they could try and update it for other infrastructure. But these things have a hard enough time after a decade of training and learning on US streets. I’m not sure how easy it would be to stand them up in another country.
Better yet, make them listen to The Handsome Family’s cover of Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” instead.
The autonomous CyberCrab conundrum. Can Elon deploy his army of robo-crabs before the government stops him?!
My brain refuses to properly read “Cybercab” and as a result, all the news about them is much more entertaining in my mind.
“I don’t want to be a conspiracy theorist here so I will merely point out that former President Trump has said he’d appoint CEO Musk as some sort of anti-government spending/regulation czar if elected”
If it’s one thing that is clear to anyone with half a brain after Crooked Trump’s presidency… having a “businessman” that has had multiple bankruptcies, who is a repeated grifter and who is a proud Pussy Grabber is a BAD PERSON to have as President.
Now the question becomes… why do so many US voters lack even a half a brain?
I’m going to refer this to Carlos ‘pictured above ‘ Tavares so he can ask his customers.
Attacking the public schools. Denying teachers a seat at the table when deciding curriculum. Mandating high stakes testing and tying teacher compensation to test scores. Among other things.
You do understand that all politicians that have achieved the Federal level are crooks and disingenuous, right?
You do also understand that while he’s a blowhard, that woman is a complete idiot. And, If she gets elected, we are all fucked, right? Full-on fucked. Nobody is gonna take her whining and “oopsies” seriously. Not anyone that has access to our finances or safety, anyway.
You do understand this, correct?
Nah, we’ll be fine either way. At least as fine as we are now I guess.
Not to extrapolate this out too far, but saying we are fine now, is a pretty low bar. Definitely not the goal, or satisfactory.
Neither is all the doom-and-gloom, sky is always falling nonsense.
From all sides in your defense.
“You do understand that all politicians that have achieved the Federal level are crooks and disingenuous, right?”
But comparing them to Trump in most cases is a False Equivalence.
You du understand what a False Equivalence is, right?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_equivalence
Yeah -just imagine what can be if we are unburdened by what has been
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovi_raayD44
Good morning Autopians, apropos of nothing here is an amazing car I saw on my way in to work this morning: a cloth-top 80s-era Town Car with a full motorcycle riding on a hitch rack.
https://imgur.com/a/iRz69CH
This is a most excellent addition. Bravo!
Looks like Mickey Haller found a way to bypass heavy traffic on the way to court.
Johnny Cab.
Deal with it.
I need to get my $39,000,000.00 salary.
Seems Musk ‘dealt with’ it rather well pulling almost double Tavares grift. It would appear that being a grifting, lying, bankrupting, misogynistic scumbag is the new standard for executives.
New?
Don’t worry – if inflation stays high you’ll get it soon enough
GM will not make hardware and vehicles available for development and testing once it moves to a full virtual process, he said.
Buy the rumor… provided what you are actually buying are put options, because holy fuck this is a terrible idea. Like REALLY TERRIBLE. Like, “oh shit, we have to issue a Do Not Drive recall on every vehicle we produced this year”.
Many companies with a lot more computational horesepower than GM occasionally make the mistake of doing full virtual development and testing. It has never, ever, not once, worked. In some more regulated industries like aerospace, it’s actually forbidden by law- you have to test your hardware in the real world, usually extensively.
Like Dr. Professor Wuffles Cookie up there said. This is an old idea, and I guess there has been enough generational turnover for it to come around again. “We can simulate everything!” they said in 1980, and 2000, and now 2020…
You would think, with the industry dealing with a record-high level of recalls for various ‘in theory it should have worked but in practice it didn’t’ reasons, automakers would have increased respect for the ‘unknown unknowns’ that any product R&D organization has to face, but instead they’re doubling down on “we’re so smart we can just simulate everything!”
Insert “how many times do we have to teach you this lesson, old man!” meme here.
Trumps hates electric cars. Musk loves electric cars. But they’re on the same side.
Does anyone else think there is some dishonesty going on here?
I am shocked. Shocked! Well not that shocked.
Only in a world with Donald Trump would Hank Scorpio wannabe Elon be regarded with any seriousness.
Elon doesn’t give a flip about electric cars. He cares about the tech. Tesla is branded and marketed as a tech company, not an auto manufacturer.
I assert that Elon is driven more by the power and money than anything as quaint as tech.
Thank god Matt cleared up that Cybercab issue.
I was beginning to think the reason I wasn’t going to ride in one soon is because they are stupid and I don’t want to.
I’m still wondering how offended Jon Lovitz is going to be when he finds out he’s being compared to Tavares.
I think he would be flattered that his Devil character is being compared to avaricious apex capitalists. Clearly he hit the mark.
Isn’t it both the Devil character AND the lying character?
I picture both of them meeting and assuming the other is some nobody.
“It stinks”.
NHTSA Exemption or no, Musk is probably just going to use the Cybercabs in the Vegas Loop.
That make perfect sense because it is highly visible for marketing, there are no other cars to crash into, and Elon supposedly has a bunch of these vehicles now. More importantly, the Vegas Underground Loop uses pre-programmed routes so it doesn’t need “Full Self Driving” to actually work.
And now he won’t have to pay people to sit in the vehicles and “drive” them the whole time.
I figured that’s what he would use that van thing for.
He may use both, but using only the Robovan would make the whole thing look suspiciously close to a subway/metro system…
Like the freight company, I am going with Yellow.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Yellow went bankrupt and ceased operations.
Tavares is a gigantic asshole and the perfect example of MBA brainrot. If anyone ever tries to tell you there’s a meritocracy point directly to him or Elon, and then enjoy having a laugh at their expense. I legitimately think Stellantis will go under in the next 2-3 years and it won’t be the C suite who’s left with the tab.
Anyway Virtual Insanity! Hell yeah. Jamiroquai is one of those bands that I don’t necessarily seek out but am always happy to come back to. Their discography is kind of hit or miss, particularly when it comes to Kay’s wandering lyrics, but when they hit they hit hard. This is such a fantastic song and video.
I had a brief Jamiroquai phase my senior year of college/first year of grad school and I have a lot of great memories tied to their music. Anyway Jay Kay is also a serious gearhead. He’s raced before, collects hypercars, and set the best lap in the Top Gear reasonably priced car twice. Honestly he’d be a great get for an interview. Maybe have Hollywood Tracy see if he can track him down since he’s so well connected now 😉
The only people who believe in meritocracy are the ones who have authority and want to convince themselves they deserve it.
Instead if 5,000 robotaxis, can we just add 5,000 new hybrid busses to the national infrastructure and more light rail/subways?
$ of 5000 robotaxis is probably equivalent to 2000 hybrid busses or 1 mile of subway.
To be fair to Carlos Tavares, which would be a first for both Autopian and me, dealers are a serious bunch of self-centered whiny bitches.
Heartbreaking: the worst person you know has a point
You barely know me!
I am referring to enemy of the site Mr. Carlos Tavares, not you. You’re lovely as far as I can tell.
Just pulling your finger. And yes I am lovely, as far as you know.
You don’t want to pull my finger. I had a big bowl of hot sauce drenched chili for dinner last night.
And they say you can’t smell across the internet.
Where’s that virtual test when you need it.
Am I the world’s biggest Luddite? Because I do not understand how performing solely virtual testing and validation on an automobile makes sense. Any engineers that can explain it?
So now a software bug or data entry error will result in parts failure, safety lapses, and crashes. Progress!
Not an engineer, but it’s possible they have software advanced enough to simulate real world conditions and physics such that they can test a design entirely virtually. I suppose they could also do some virtual reality “Metaverse” type thing where they can interact with the design in the virtual world as if it were a real scale model.
In the Metaverse, you don’t have to worry about crush injuries to the legs.
I am an engineer and yes it is possible to use virtual modeling to simulate every part of a vehicle’s performance over a wide array of conditions. This is done in auto racing because it is the fastest way to do iterative design and actual physical testing is expensive and limited by the rules.
Formula One teams have absolutely the best technology available and they often discover the finished car does not perform as their simulations predict.
Makes sense then that automakers are also interested in it. Thank you for confirming.
I got dragged into a tiger team rescue of a telecom product that the marketroids and management bought without involving engineering in the evaluation (books and suspicious testing guesses) the shit didn’t work and had to redesigned from the ground up. Cost to us… about 30 million and 8 months. The system had been ‘Virtually designed’ in a cad environment with minimal lab testing.
Finite element analysis is a thing, but supercomputer time isn’t cheap. Testing fixtures and assemblies is one thing. Testing a *car” like that is a whole other series of ballgames, sports, and stadia to make happen, and it’ll still only mostly be rightish.
A lot of engineering is already done with virtual testing and validation. There will still always be a need for physical testing too, but this helps significantly reduce costs and time required.
Virtual testing can only predict how something should perform under actual conditions and this prediction is only as accurate as the virtual universe and material modeling designed by software engineers. Can anybody tell me what GM’s record with software is? Of course, their virtual testing models may not be developed in house. It seems to be holding up mostly well for spacecraft designers (looking at you Boeing) and I hope it works great, but what a huge downside if cars validated in virtual testing begin to fail drastically in the real world.
This kind of virtual testing works for spacecraft because 1) it has to, since once they’re launched you’ll (usually) never see them again, 2) it can, because the conditions in which they operate can be very tightly controlled (i.e. if it is a windy day, or a cloudy day, or a cold day, or a hot day, or… they call the launch off), and 3) even the spacecraft folks do as much physical validation testing as they can possibly manage. Vacuum chamber testing, shaker rig testing to simulate forces expected on the spacecraft from the launch vehicle, etc. etc.
New validation testing, powered by Cadillac’s powerful Cue software!
Does that mean we’re all behind the eight-ball?
Better Cue then Clu?
I’m an engineer, and I’d be happy to explain to you that you’re right and virtual-only testing and validation makes no sense whatever.
You’ll have to ask the fast-talking schmoozer of a corporate consultant that managed to sell this tired old idea to the latest crop of c-suite execs at GM *again* how they managed it…
CAD, FEA, and CFD are fantastic design tools and every automaker should be using the best ones available. They just don’t take the place of real world testing.
I’m not an engineer of any variety but I have worked in large corporations and I think I have the answer you’re looking for:
This is only slightly serious. This is something they will legitimately look at and test but probably never use and likely have every expectation this will fail. But this is exactly the type of announcement they can go to shareholders with to prove they’re not stuck in the past and are definitely forward-thinking. They’ll talk about how they are not afraid to fail and that they learn even from failures and the testing that comes with it.
Most likely is that they will revert to true GM form and abandon the project just as the tech proves itself capable.
Large corporations do this all. the. time. Here’s the thing though; maybe 10% (if I’m generous) of these will pay off big in some way. Then they have a leg up on their competition. So there’s a real reason to do it but making the announcement like this is all for the shareholders.
Cool, GM, so does this mean you’re still going to try to force talent to move to Detroit to get anything done or are you actually going to try to modernize your talent pool and your approach to it?
EVERYONE IN THE OFFICE………so you can hop on this Teams call.
Even better, you sit in a cubicle so you are now trying to hear the Teams call over your neighbor who is also on a Teams call.
I’ve done this before, except we didn’t have the luxury of cubicles and had a very collaboration-enhancing open office plan. The meeting spaces were constantly triple booked as people made any play they could for quiet and focus.
Even as someone who works from home, those open office plans suck. It’s hard to be on a call with someone working from one because there is so much background noise every time they unmute.