Waymo is the first US firm to crack the robotaxi code, but the competition is heating up. On June 18 the Zoox branch of Amazon introduced its new factory in California, aiming for a launch of the service later this year in Las Vegas. That news was soon buried under the hype leading up to Tesla’s robotaxi unveiling in Austin on June 22. Despite the buildup, the error-filled Tesla event was a soft launch that barely missed faceplant territory, and CEO Elon Musk has made task of selling the service much harder since then.
Robotaxi Services And The Trust Factor
To be honest, I wasn’t particularly interested in the whole robotaxi thing until I began talking to people — particularly women — who use Waymo. It’s quiet, secure, predictable, reliable, and you don’t have to take a picture of the driver’s ID just in case.
The leading factor is trust, and in that regard you also don’t have to wonder if the CEO of Waymo has a screw loose. Waymo has declared that its mission is to be “the world’s most trusted driver,” and C-suite leadership is vital to that mission. The CEO has to be someone everyone can trust — even if nobody knows their name.
Come to think of it, can you name the CEO of Waymo off the top of your head? If you can, drop a note in the comment section and tell us who it is and why you know it.
Spoiler alert: Waymo has two co-CEO’s. One of them is the co-founder of the Google self-driving car project, which launched in 2009 and turned itself into Waymo in 2016.
The other co-CEO has a long list of tech industry accolades to her credit, including the TIME AI 100 list, the Silicon Valley Power 100 List, the US Black Chamber’s Power 50 List, Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top 100 Women of Influence, Fortune Magazine’s 50 over 50 list, Savoy Magazine’s Most Influential Black Corporate Directors, and Automotive News’ 100 Leading Women in the North American Auto Industry.
If You Need A Robotaxi, Who You Gonna Call?
Waymo is so confident in the trust factor that it launched a new teen account service in Phoenix, Arizona, for kids age 14-17. “Waymo teen accounts have protocols in place to offer peace of mind and accountability for families,” the company stated in press release, while indicating that its service is far more trustworthy than teen drivers themselves, who are notoriously accident prone.
In contrast, the idea of Tesla launching a teen account service is somewhat far fetched, to put it kindly. The trust factor has drifted away from the Tesla brand alongside Elon Musk’s transformation from a gifted hawker of expensive electric cars into a hot mess of a lightning rod for white supremacists and outright Nazi sympathizers.
Although some superfans gave the June 22 launch rave reviews, objectively the exercise was a disaster, with the Tesla vehicles failing to follow basic traffic and safety rules here and there on their brief, geo-fenced tour of Austin.
Those mishaps did not exactly restore trust in the Tesla brand, which has eroded over the years concurrent with Musk’s habit of performing unforced reputational errors. Tesla itself seemed insulated from his personal behavior until last year. Since then, sales of Tesla EVs have been cratering in the US, Europe, and other key markets even as the overall demand for EVs keeps rising.
Here Comes MechaHitler
The capstone of the Tesla brand implosion was Musk’s misbegotten, chainsaw-wielding tenure as the head of the “DOGE” office in the Trump White House, where he gleefully spearheaded the destruction of the federal workforce and many of the essential services that come with it, including timely weather forecasts.
That brings us up to July 4, when a lethal, Katrina-level flood hit Texas, the corporate home of Tesla. Musk took to social media the following day, but not to offer sympathy to the victims. Instead, he and promoted his new America Party political venture. The devastated communities didn’t get so much as a “thoughts and prayers” message, let alone any pledge of financial assistance from the richest man in the world.
As if the tone deaf non-response to a human disaster right in his own corporate backyard wasn’t icky enough, on Monday Musk’s erratic “Grok” chatbot went even more haywire than ever before. “First, it started spouting ‘radical left’ commentary about how it was good that dozens of children in Texas drowned in flash floods,” reported the well known tech journalist Taylor Lorenz on July 9.
“Grok then said that Hitler would have ‘plenty’ of solutions for America’s problems,” Taylor added, noting that the chatbot even gave itself a new name: MechaHitler.
And, Here Comes The MechaHitler GrokMobile
That was the last straw for the ever-patient Linda Yaccarino, who has helmed Twitter since June of 2023, after Musk purchased the social media site and eventually changed its name to X.
Yaccarino deflected a world war’s worth of flack from Musk and X over the ensuing two years, but the Grok thing was a bridge to far. She announced her resignation on Tuesday, July 8. Or was it just a coincidence? Maybe!
“Yaccarino’s departure comes one day after the company’s Grok chatbot began pushing antisemitic tropes in responses to users. It’s not clear that the events were connected,” CNN reported. CNN was also among those noting that Musk transferred ownership of X to his artificial intelligence venture, xAI, earlier this year.
If the marriage of X and xAI was a factor in MechaHitler’s latest rampage, it would probably be wise to take a step back and change the sheets. Nope. It’s too late now. Earlier this year, before Grok regenerated itself as MechaHitler, Musk said that Grok would be integrated with Tesla EVs. MechaHitler or not, Tesla fan sites are buzzing with rumors that the hookup will take place soon.
What About The Zoox Robotaxi?
I can’t even. Anyways, against this backdrop, additional competition in the robotaxi field is rising in the form of Amazon’s ambitious Zoox venture. In addition to its forthcoming launch in Las Vegas later this year, Zoox is already aiming to challenge the MechaHitler Grokmobil on its home turf of Austin, Texas, among other key markets.
On June 18, Zoox announced the opening of a new Bay Area facility, in Hayward. The factory will have a production capacity of 10,000 robotaxis annually when operating at full scale.
Hold on to your hats…
Photo (cropped): Amazon’s robotaxi startup Zoox is preparing for the mass production of its purpose-built vehicles at its new factory in California, with Waymo waiting in the wings while Tesla continues to stumble over brand reputation issues (courtesy of Zoox).
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