Moving to electric vehicles will dull recessions currently inflated by oil

The Satellite
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Complete summary of all the Tesla robotaxi hiccups already in Austin.

Some of them are funny and scary. First a little background on
the actual rollout.

It’s a limited launch in several other ways, too – it’s geofenced to somewhere around 30 square miles in South Austin which Tesla spent additional time mapping and testing in, it’s supported by backup teleoperation, it doesn’t operate from 12am-6am or in bad weather, and every car has a “safety monitor” in the passenger seat with access to controls to stop the vehicle.

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Geo fenced? Same as Waymo. Glitches? Same as Waymo. But for some reason, the media isn’t reporting it. Wonder why? Look, it’s an invite only service right now, not open to the public, so it’s in testing phase. At least Tesla is being transparent, letting the invited testers to video their rides.

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The article above mentions the deep dive into waymo and has a link about it
too. Cruise got a lot of attention too when they ran over a person and dragged
the body several feet.

Why does Tesla get the attention ?
Easy, they are(were) the world’s EV leader; they have a CEO who craves public attention and getting involved in politics in multiple countries. Musk has a long history of making promises and being very late on delivery. Heck the CEO has been touting the robotaxi test for months; so beg for attention and you shall receive it. Lots of reasons why.

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ICE cars aren’t FSD, so I’m not really hung up on that, though I know FSD is the future for taxis, deliveries, etc. Concentrate on the cost per mile and the environmental impacts. FSD will arrive, but the concept has suffered because FSD proponents have overpromised.

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A Tesla Model Y just drove itself from the (Texas) factory assembly floor to its new owner, all on its own. What? Awesome.

Here’s the entire trip incase haters say its edited.

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Yeah, really cool!

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Lots of freeways through Houston.

Serious answer: I drive all over the Houston area (Kingwood, Webster, Katy, Sugarland, etc…). I find it a waste of my time to spend 20 minutes just getting to the freeway before I head off to my destination. I can be on a freeway in under a minute. So even though I do not live by UH, I can still get to the stadium in 20 minutes if I don’t go at rush hour. Another example, I know people that live half the distance to Sugarland than me, but since they are far from a frwy and essentially have to take city streets with stop lights the whole way, I can still get there before them.

Simple things like that make life easier.

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Really cool. Love it.

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It is quiet amazing even though I’m skeptical of its readiness today. Sadly, the true test will be how many people get killed due to it’s mistakes. Will that be lower than humans driving?

And again I ask, who gets prosecuted when their program kills someone?

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That will be the knee jerk response to FSD kills - “well human
drivers kill people too!”

I have high expectations for AI driving; it has to be way way better than
human drivers. Look forward to new statistical fights coming in that space.

Computers can’t screw up my financial stuff by one penny. FSD ignoring posted
signage and markings is not acceptable. I’m sure it can be fixed, but mildly
surprised we are in the era of live testing and these things have not been addressed.

As to the liability thing, I’m not sure the legal system has come to grips about how
to handle this yet. Maybe a repeat drunk driver that kills a family gets 20 years in
jail but the software/hardware vendor just gets $5 million fine ???

It would be cool though if FSD could take over for drunk drivers someday.

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Why I have my doubts…

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Of course you are. That’s not a surprise. We all know why. It’s not because of the tech itself. You just don’t like the CEO. So you try to discredit Tesla because of it. Should we take your views seriously, knowing that?

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GM up, Tesla down, and more importantly US EV market is down for Q2.

China and EU are leading the EV adoption and US in reverse. This is why
incentives still needed here. Look for crash in US EV sales when rebates
get terminated.

  • General Motors posted strong electric vehicle sales on Tuesday for the second quarter of 2025.
  • GM says it sold 46,280 EVs in the U.S. across its Chevrolet, Cadillac and GMC brands.
  • Its EV sales shot up over 100% year-on-year, while both Tesla and the U.S. EV market as a whole shrank.

https://insideevs.com/news/764409/general-motors-ev-sales-q2/

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On Wednesday, Tesla said it delivered 384,122 vehicles

Meanwhile, look at Teslas’ deliveries.

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Norbert,

and I say this respectfully, the reason that US EVs are not scaling quickly enough is because of Tesla.

Tesla is what’s making it difficult for other automakers to get the necessary credits to scale. Elon has (or had?) too much influence.

Tesla needs just enough credits to maintain its dominance of the US EV market. Others need far more, but as I’ve said before, if the US EV market gets more entrances from the GM/Toyota/Honda/Ford etc class…, then that threatens Tesla (and more specifically, Elon).

That’s why Elon… took the odd road to the very destination that doesn’t even like the very product Elon sells.

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That was 2024, before the wheels fell off. For 2025, it’s a different world.

Focus2move| World Car Group Ranking- Top 30 in 2025.

In this article we report on the global ranking of car manufacturers considered as a group, aggregating sales done for each brand owned by the same group.

Looking at cumulative data up to May 2025, the leader was Toyota Group with a 12.5% share (+6.1%). It gained 12% in Asia and lost 5.1% in Europe.

The 2nd was Volkswagen Group with a 9.7% share (+1.1%). It reported losses in Asia (-2.8%) but grew 4.2% in America.

In third place, Hyundai-Kia reported a 8.2% share, up 3%. It posted gains in America (+9.7%) but losses in Europe (-1.7%).

Renault Nissan Alliance ranked in 4th while losing 1.9%, mainly in Asia (-8.4%).

Stellantis ranked 5th (-1.5%). While it grew 29.5% in Asia, it lost 8.9% in Europe.

General Motors ranked 6th (+3%). Down 41.3% in Europe, it gained 6% in America.

Ford Group followed in 7th (-0.2%), gaining 1.4% in Europe but losing 9.9% in Asia.

Honda Motor ranked 8th (-3.4%), losing 16.5% in Asia , 21.4% in Europe but gaining 15.4% in America.

In 9th place, Geely Group gained 2 spots, growing 34.8% in volume and reporting one of the best performances overall. The group gained 47.3% in Asia, 15.4% in America but lost 4.1% in Europe.

Closing the top 10, Suzuki fell 1 spot in 10th (-1.4%), with losses mainly in Europe (-20.3%).

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I think EV sales rise with gas prices in the US

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How much is gas in Europe and China?

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