Latest news with #DirtyTesla
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Tesla Robotaxi riders raise red flags after experiencing concerning safety issues: 'The car didn't behave correctly'
Tesla launched its much-anticipated Robotaxi in Austin, Texas, last month, but early footage of the autonomous vehicle suggests it has a long way to go to catch up to a competitor, Waymo. Videos revealing operational glitches are also putting some residents on edge, prompting a new investigation from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. What's happening? Two days after Tesla's Robotaxi began offering rides on a limited basis in Austin, The Register was quick to compile and publish footage shared by influencers invited to try the service. While enthusiasm for the Robotaxi has been high among consumers and investors, it was dampened by a series of mishaps. YouTuber Dirty Tesla (@DirtyTesla) saw his ride pull over in the middle of the street with its hazard lights on — not exactly a safe location for a drop-off. "Should I actually get out?" Dirty Tesla asks the safety monitor in the front passenger seat. Traffic continues to flow while the Robotaxi is at a standstill, before a remote operator intervenes to resume the ride (the incident begins at around the 9:30 mark). YouTuber Farzad (@FarzadMediaINC) also had his Robotaxi stop at an unfortunate spot: the tail end of an intersection and partially in a crosswalk (roughly the 38-minute mark). The footage prompted a flurry of criticism from worried viewers, to which Farzad responded: "Fully agree with everyone that the car didn't behave correctly." Rob Mauer, who hosts the "Tesla Podcast," witnessed his Robotaxi abort a left turn and drive on the wrong side of the street for several moments before getting back on course. He posted footage of his journey (around the 7:20 mark) on the social platform X. Why is this important? Tesla experienced a record decline in global sales over the first two quarters of 2025, per CNN, while its stocks have been on a roller coaster. A successful Robotaxi launch was supposed to help turn the tide. Consumers across political lines report viewing the brand through a less favorable lens, per an Electric Vehicle Intelligence Report poll, with CEO Elon Musk's political activities and public feuds negatively impacting public perception and worrying investors. While this may sound dire for consumers interested in EVs, given that Tesla is one of the most recognizable EV brands worldwide, it isn't all bad news. That's because increased market competition is one of the factors impacting Tesla's EV delivery numbers. Would you trust a self-driving car on a busy city street? Definitely No way Depends on the brand Depends on the situation Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. With consumers having more options to choose from, the upfront cost of EVs has dropped, making the vehicles — coveted for their lower maintenance and energy costs, along with their contribution to healthier air quality with zero tailpipe pollution — accessible to more people. What is being done about robotaxi mistakes? Safety data from Waymo reveals that autonomous EV services can boost public safety, with the Tesla competitor revealing a 93% crash reduction involving pedestrians compared to the average human driver, as aligned with NHTSA's Standing General Order reporting timelines. While Waymo isn't immune to complaints from riders and isn't perfect, as The Register noted, it has seen an 88% reduction in crashes with serious injuries or worse (compared to human drivers). Previously, Musk delayed the Robotaxi launch, stating on X that Tesla was "being super paranoid about safety." The early Robotaxi returns suggest the company has more to do to live up to those promises. Meanwhile, the NHTSA is investigating Tesla's Robotaxi after opening a separate inquiry into its Smart Summon software. "Following an assessment of those reports and other relevant information, NHTSA will take any necessary actions to protect road safety," the organization said in a statement to The Register. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Engadget
08-07-2025
- Automotive
- Engadget
The Morning After: The best deals from Prime Day 2025
Amazon's mountain of Prime Day deals and discounts is finally live, and we're already on it . As is tradition, if you've got gadgets on your wishlist, Engadget has you covered. The team is surfacing the best Prime Day deals on gadgets and gear we can find across the entire shopping event. There are the usual suspects of wireless earbuds, trackers and all things Kindle, but we're digging deeper, finding strong discounts on our past recommendations, like Dyson vacuums, Mesh Wi-Fi systems and more. I'm intrigued by this $25 handheld electric fan , which we've recommended several times. Especially now, as I sit here in the middle of a heatwave with no air conditioning, I'm an interested shopper. Also: Sony's latest and greatest over-ear headphones are $115 off , which is a substantial discount. The deals run from today through July 11, after which we put our deals team in the deep freeze, so they can recover in time for Black Friday. — Mat Smith Get Engadget's newsletter delivered direct to your inbox. Subscribe right here! Apple is appealing a trade ban that led to the removal of the blood oxygen sensor from its smartwatches. In 2024, the International Trade Commission (ITC) prohibited the sale of Apple Watches, citing patent infringement by Masimo, a health technology company. Ironically, Masimo's smartwatches also infringed Apple's patents. The US appeals court heard new arguments from both companies regarding the ITC ban on Monday. Continue reading. One of Tesla's fully autonomous robotaxis grazed a parked car after completing a ride recently in Austin, Texas. In a video recorded by YouTuber DirtyTesla, a self-driving Model Y turns and accelerates into a Toyota, making light contact with its tire. The Model Y had already dropped off its passenger but struggled to navigate out of the dark alleyway afterward. There was no serious damage to the cars and the robotaxi's safety monitor eventually swapped to the driver's seat and drove off. Continue reading. Jack Dorsey is working on a decentralized, peer-to-peer messaging app that functions entirely over Bluetooth. It's called Bitchat ( Bitchat! ) and doesn't require an internet connection to work. The Twitter co-founder calls it an experiment in 'Bluetooth mesh networks, relays and store and forward models, message encryption models and a few other things.' It's encrypted communication between nearby gadgets, where each device widens the network a little further. That's Bitchat. Not bitchchat. Continue reading. If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission.
Engadget
05-07-2025
- Automotive
- Engadget
A Tesla robotaxi inexplicably drove into a parked car
One of Tesla's fully autonomous robotaxis grazed a parked car after completing a ride recently in Austin, Texas. In a video recorded by YouTuber DirtyTesla, a self-driving Model Y is seen turning and accelerating into a Toyota, making light contact with its tire. As seen in the video, the Model Y already dropped off its passenger, but had trouble navigating out of the dark alleyway afterwards. Tesla's robotaxi service launched in Austin just two weeks ago with a small fleet. According to DirtyTesla, there were no serious injuries or damages and the robotaxi's safety monitor eventually swapped to the driver's seat and drove off. Although the sideswipe was minor, it's unclear what caused the Tesla to drive into the parked car instead of driving off normally after completing the ride. Outside this incident involving another car, other invited guests have shared their unexpected experiences with Tesla's robotaxi service. So far, we've seen the robotaxi service abruptly stop for emergency lights that aren't on the road and briefly drive on the wrong side of a double yellow line. It's important to note that Tesla's self-driving software relies mostly on cameras and artificial intelligence. That's unlike some of its competition, like Waymo, which uses a combination of cameras, lidar and radar for its robotaxi service. However, Waymo isn't without its own incidents, one of which led to a voluntary recall of its fleet in Phoenix, Arizona, following a collision with a telephone pole last year. More recently, Waymo issued another recall for its robotaxis, which were reportedly prone to hit roadway barriers that are harder to see.
Yahoo
01-07-2025
- Automotive
- Yahoo
Tesla Robotaxi Safety Monitor Forced to Clamber Into Driver's Seat and Take Over, Passenger Says
Earlier this year, Elon Musk promised that Tesla's robotaxis would launch offering fully "unsupervised" rides with "no one in the car." That turned out to be a lie. And less than a week into the robotaxi service's debut, which is currently limited to a tiny geofenced area in Austin, Texas, it's already become apparent that the self-driving cars are very much reliant on the human supervisors — or "safety monitors" — that Musk was adamant he wouldn't need. In an incident shared on Wednesday, a popular Tesla content creator who goes by the handle "Dirty Tesla" said that after his robotaxi ride dropped him off, the vehicle struggled to exit the tight parking lot and appeared to back up into a parked car. After that car left, according to Dirty Tesla, the safety monitor got out of the front passenger seat, climbed into the driver's seat to take over, and then drove away. Footage uploaded to X shows the robotaxi abruptly stopping while trying to squeeze its way out and flashing its hazard lights — a sign that the safety monitor manually intervened. The video doesn't show the human supervisor taking over the vehicle. But if Dirty Tesla's account is true, it sounds like labelling them as merely safety "monitors" may be a little misleading, if they're having to actually drive the cars. "I wouldn't even call this unsupervised," Dirty Tesla wrote in a reply to his video. "It's clearly supervised." Prior to the launch, Tesla kept many details of its robotaxi service under wraps, and avoided even offering a hard launch date. The inclusion of the safety monitors, who sit in the front passenger seat instead of the driver's, wasn't revealed until the automaker started sending invites to testers just days ahead of the debut. The news immediately raised eyebrows. Beyond contradicting Musk's earlier promise, it's unusual for a robotaxi service to still require human employees in the vehicles during the commercial phase of operations, TechCrunch noted, which Tesla — charging an eye-rolling $4.20 per ride — immediately jumped into. Meanwhile, the automaker has remained suspiciously opaque about the extent that its robotaxis would rely on "teleoperators," or human employees located offsite but ready to remotely pilot the vehicles. It's not clear why the safety monitor elected to take over the robotaxi that dropped off Dirty Tesla, instead of allowing a teleoperator to take charge. It's telling that mere days into the robotaxi launch, this isn't the only instance where a human employee was forced to intervene. A video taken by Tesla influencer and investor Dave Lee showed his robotaxi ride nearly rear-end a UPS truck that it failed to recognize was backing up into the same spot that the Tesla was turning into to drop off its passenger. The crash was avoided when the safety monitor quickly read the situation and tapped the "Stop in Lane" button on the touchscreen, bringing the self-driving car to a halt. The incidents where the safety monitor didn't intervene aren't any less concerning. A growing Reddit list of these incidents — highlighted by the Verge — includes cases where a robotaxi dropped off a passenger in the middle of an intersection, drove over a curb, unexpectedly slammed the brakes so hard that the person recording the video dropped her phone, and came to a complete stop in the middle of the road seemingly because it mistook a tree shadow for an object. (Critics who argue that Tesla made a huge mistake by relying only on cameras to see instead of augmenting its cars with lidar systems will have a field day with that one.) Some also show the Tesla vehicles violating traffic laws, including clearly driving over the speed limit, and crossing a road's solid double yellow lines to make it into a left turn lane. This has earned Tesla the attention of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which confirmed on Monday that it had contacted Musk's company to gather more information, though it hasn't launched an official investigation. It's worth keeping in mind that this already concerning number of incidents is coming from a fleet of just ten to 20 cars, which are operating in an extremely limited part of the city that engineers have manually mapped out. Prior to the rollout, Musk promised that over 1,000 Tesla robotaxis would be deployed in Austin "within a few months" of launching, and that one million of these cars would be on American roads by the end of 2026. What we've seen so far suggests that the autonomous cab service is far from being safe enough to scale up to such a ludicrous degree. More on robotaxis: Tesla Stock in Tailspin After Error-Plagued Robotaxi Debut
