76% of cars in Austin are unsupervised now.

"Tesla wait-time tracking is currently down because the provider is blocking data collection."

So we can't tell whether this is actually meeting demand or whether they're constraining the supply because they know that the cars aren't reliable enough to launch a whole service and they want just enough cars out there to convince you that there's a service when there kind of isn't, but not enough cars as would be required to provide high availability, because then there would start to be incidents.

But if things are as you believe, it will be clear that there's a service very soon. I'll wait until then.

@makoyass Could you explain the significance of the wait time? It's obvious there is demand for autonomous transfers; people use Waymo all the time. By all accounts, the Robotaxi experience is the same (if not better). So if you're suggesting Tesla is not ready for a "full service", what does full service mean to you? 100 cars? 1000?

Wait time is an easily measurable indicator of availability, ie, the extent to which a service is actually being provided, for real, rather than just being a small-scale public spectacle. Number of cars would be a valid measure, but it's harder to judge and easy to game, afaik right now it's measured by counting total unique license plates, which tells us nothing about how many cars are on the road at any given time. It could also be gamed by having the cars be on the road but unoccupied, lol.

It's still not a perfect metric though. Tesla could do their best to launch, and wait times could still remain low if demand is extremely high and if they do end up spreading the launch over many cities.

I think there might not be a perfect, ungameable metric. So I'd like if the market didn't hinge on one.

@makoyass if you are going to consider that Tesla is switching license plates to appear to have more cars than it does, why not consider that the cars don’t drive themselves but there is a hidden person in the car doing the driving? It’s equally improbable 😃

@makoyass 26 unsupervised cars in 3 cities https://robotaxitracker.com/?provider=tesla&area=austin

32 :)

Well. 35.

39

@MarkosGiannopoulos and nearly 66% of rides this week in Austin were unsupervised

@mndrix @makoyass

28 unsupervised vehicles in Austin providing 65.7% of rides per
https://robotaxitracker.com/?provider=tesla&area=austin

would meet my suggested threshold set:

"e.g. At least 20 unsupervised vehicles and
At least 60% of vehicles unsupervised in any one area."

If you don't provide some line in the sand, should we just decide that you might just keep moving the line further and further away as the system gets deployed more widely? Can't bet on a market like that!

@makoyass looks like they are rolling out unsupervised rides and already reports of unsupervised rides occurring https://robotaxitracker.com/unsupervised?provider=tesla&area=austin

I just read some comments below, looks like the current average time is 11 minutes which is under the 20 minute threshold provided by the creator for defining the service as “available”.

@Mochi a random 9% of the rides being autonomous doesn't make it an autonomous ride share service.

@makoyass
Unsupervised Robotaxi

Tesla announced it's launching robotaxis in Dallas and Houston, and users have now confirmed the service is unsupervised. This is a surprising move, as many expected Tesla to launch a supervised service in new areas before removing the safety monitors, much like they did in Austin.

https://www.notateslaapp.com/news/4004/tesla-launches-unsupervised-robotaxi-service-in-dallas-and-houston

However 1 rider vehicle and service unavailable in each of these new areas probably still means not yet ready to resolve
https://robotaxitracker.com/?provider=tesla&area=dallas
Seems like a move before earnings call in order to try to say things are advancing.

Can we have a threshold set?
e.g. At least 20 unsupervised vehicles and
At least 60% of vehicles unsupervised in any one area.
or something like that so we know what is needed?

@makoyass well, there are now 2 cars each in Dallas and Houston, all unsupervised. A total of 19 across 3 cities.

Re "Can we have a threshold set?
e.g. At least 20 unsupervised vehicles and
At least 60% of vehicles unsupervised
[both true] in any one area."

this previous comment has had 4 likes. @makoyass do you follow that the way traders want to trade might put very different prices if the threshold set was my previous suggestion as above or if it required

At least 500 unsupervised vehicles and
At least 95% of vehicles unsupervised
both needing to be true in at least 20 areas.

How do you expect people to trade your market if we haven't a clue what levels are required?

@ChristopherRandles I feel like I'm being asked to define the number of hairs a man can have on his head before he can no longer be said to be bald, but also in a world where hair probably isnt going to exist 2 months from now.

@makoyass Well if you wany people to bet on your question, then it is reasonable for bettors to want to know where the line is drawn. Your definition doesn't mean anything except for resolving this question, so I would suggest there are no wrong definitions only being wrong for not providing a definition.

It might be tricky to set an appropriate level but I still think you should attempt to do so. Sorry if that feels like I am not letting you off.

I'm going to hold off on resolving this until the number of cars in either city is larger, just in case there's an incident and they have to roll it back. It's currently a small number of cars, in most cases if you try to hail one you'll get one with a safety driver, so doesn't really meet the requirements.

And like, this tracker currently says service is currently fully unavailable https://robotaxitracker.com/wait-times?area=austin it's available again. Maybe it was just raining or something) availability has generally been more non than high since people started calling for this to resolve. It is not actually available irl.

Austin Wait Times — Tesla Robotaxi Tracker

Live Tesla Robotaxi availability and estimated wait times in Austin.

@makoyass People have been taking (supervised) rides today. The service is up. https://x.com/DavidMoss/status/2014768577593676251

@makoyass it might be helpful to clarify the resolution criteria so that we know how many driverless cars must be available and what fraction of all hailed rides must be driverless in order to resolve YES. that would help us bet accurately

@mndrix does it really matter? If it's real, they'll blow past arguably launched for a stupid definition of launched to definitely launched for all practical intents in less than 2 months.

(briefly wondered if this could actually not be the case as a result of the launch being so broadly distributed over all cities due to a concave demand curves that availability stays low everywhere for years, but they probably wont do that. They want to be the app through which the ride is hailed, but no one will check their app if availability is unreliable, so they'll want to reach critical mass in one city before moving on to the next.)

@makoyass I estimate 20% chance this stays small all year, depending on incident numbers and march of 9s progress. Driverless delivery and safety riders have both stayed at status quo for longer than many expected. Since 3-4 non-Tesla riders doesn't count for this market, I'd like to know how many does count so that I can bid accordingly.

@mndrix In that case I would say they haven't really launched a service.

Wait times are going to need to stay under 20 minutes over a practically broad area to count as available.

@makoyass iny area wait time for Uber do not always stay under 20 minutes. With your criteria Uber doesn't count as available then

@Berg If it's like, usually over 20 minutes, it's at least not very available. Sounds like they should pay their drivers more.