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
Agreed that is the best rendition of Hallelujah. The story of the songs popularity is fascinating and unlikely: Dylan encouraged Cohen to record it, then John Cale recorded a mostly different set of verses (Cohen wrote dozens) on a very obscure European compilation, which was the version Buckley later heard while housesitting, then he recorded it which may have stayed in obscurity but gained posthumous exposure, leading to Shrek and every 2010’s wedding with hilarious and naive sincerity.
How is Elon going to deal with the regulations that block the cybercab? Well, the Trump route is one plan certainly but the other is probably do what his companies have done so often before and just ignore the regs and dare someone to do something about it, or outlast any sort of enforcement until the regs change for him.
Who will be the first company to have more than 5,000 robotaxis in use in the United States?
Johnnycab
Earlier today I saw an article on a mainstream news site that quoted Carlos Tavares. It had a picture, but I didn’t recognize him. Weird.
So GM quality is going to get even worse cause they won’t be able to be bothered with any real testing anymore. What could possibly go wrong? ????
Robotaxis will never not be stupid. Every time a new vision for a self-driving future comes up it just ends up being a more inefficient version of public transit. I would rather take a city bus or subway train over a cybercab or waymo: cheaper, quicker, and better for the environment.
…and not a tiny enclosed space with unidentifiable stains and odours whose source we’d prefer not to think about?
Unfortunately we are *much* closer to working autonomous cars than government policies that would create good public transit & shift peoples’ desired housing to dense areas organized around public transit.
Assuming you live in a city with low cost, readily accessible public transit that actually goes where you want to go on a schedule that fits yours.
Pass the costs on to tax payers and suppliers.
Basic economics tells you costs are always passed on to customers or tax payers. Any business costs are added to the price and paid for by the customer. The only costs not passed on are costs paid for by the taxpayers. Anyone thinking a business will willingly lose money because costs go up does not understand basic economics.
To a point. Lower profit is better than getting no business at all.
Hey Carlos (pictured above) I would buy another Jeep if it wasn’t so damned expensive. And if the paint didn’t turn to shit almost immediately. Or the 4xe line wasn’t completely recalled.
Deal with it.
OK:
“I would buy another Jeep if it wasn’t so damned expensive”
*Blames greedy dealers*, next;
“And if the paint didn’t turn to shit almost immediately”
*Blames workers*, next;
” the 4xe line wasn’t completely recalled.”
Blames engineers, workers, customers, guv’mint, etc.
Delt with it.