We, Robot: Darlene's Take
Thoughts on Elon Musk's FuturePalooza
To hear the related 5-minute audio file that I uploaded today as my Morning Journal flash briefing for Alexa devices, please click on the play button:
Will Pebbles drive us to Florida while we sleep?
For me, the biggest reveal at Elon Musk’s “We, Robot” last night was that Unsupervised Full Self Driving will be available for Tesla Model Y—we’ve named ours Pebbles—next year in Texas and California.
Really?
There is reason to doubt Elon’s prediction, given how often he exaggerates how soon cool things will happen. Wall Street was unimpressed. Tesla shares fell by 8 percent in early trading this morning.
Still, I never dreamed our car might be able to drive us from Maine to Florida entirely on its own any time soon.
Supervised Full Self Driving (FSD) is already amazing—Darlene and I use it all the time, with few interventions required—but that last bit of reliability required for unsupervised FSD seems huge. Not to mention how soon states other than Texas and California might give it green lights.
We talked about this on today’s Morning Journal. No surprise: I can imagine dozing or reading a novel while Pebbles drives herself to Sanibel, but Darlene promises to keep an eye on her no matter what.
As for the Robotaxi, which Elon said will become available by 2027 for under $30k, I can’t wait to take a ride in one.
Darlene is more interested in the Robovan, which will seat 20 people.
She also can’t wait to have an Optimus Tesla Bot around the house, cleaning and cooking meals. At “We, Robot” the bots were shown dancing and serving drinks.
Last night’s event was delayed by a medical emergency. You can watch it here, but be sure to fast forward to 53:08 in the video. CNET posted a handy eight-minute highlights reel here.
