Just looking at one angle here, among other things, this puts other car companies on notice that if they don’t support full self driving, Tesla will supply bots that can do it. Not this year, not next year, maybe not even in five years, but eventually.
That puts the pressure on for the other auto companies to either spend R&D money to compete, or prepare a budget for licensing from someone (not necessarily Tesla) but either way it’s dragging the industry forward.
It also can be a valuable product in its own right which will only get more in demand as human drivers start to be forbidden or heavily taxed on some roads for safety reasons.
That’s not even mentioning the non driving applications. But just for driving there is a lot of legacy hardware that will still be in use for years, and a humanoid form is what they were designed for.
BTW before anyone thinks they will point out some irony, Elon has stated he’s not against the use of petroleum products in many cases. Anyway legacy vehicles are a reality. And they will need safe drivers.
I did say there are other uses. This post just focuses on one use case, I do realize.
That puts the pressure on for the other auto companies to either spend R&D money to compete, or prepare a budget for licensing from someone (not necessarily Tesla) but either way it’s dragging the industry forward.
It also can be a valuable product in its own right which will only get more in demand as human drivers start to be forbidden or heavily taxed on some roads for safety reasons.
That’s not even mentioning the non driving applications. But just for driving there is a lot of legacy hardware that will still be in use for years, and a humanoid form is what they were designed for.
BTW before anyone thinks they will point out some irony, Elon has stated he’s not against the use of petroleum products in many cases. Anyway legacy vehicles are a reality. And they will need safe drivers.
I did say there are other uses. This post just focuses on one use case, I do realize.