<story><title>Cruise slashes 24% of self-driving car workforce in sweeping layoffs</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/14/cruise-slashes-24-of-self-driving-car-workforce-in-sweeping-layoffs/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dmix</author><text>Why is everyone so overly dramatic about this stuff. I remember when FSD was announced on HN everyone knew it&amp;#x27;d be way longer and he was just pumping it up cuz that&amp;#x27;s how he is. It wasn&amp;#x27;t some big surprise.&lt;p&gt;Now everyone is acting like it&amp;#x27;s do or die, as if everyone bought Tesla&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;just&lt;/i&gt; so they won&amp;#x27;t have to ever touch a steering wheel at some point in the future. Only 19% opted for it and plenty of those are probably wealthy people who can afford novelties and all that matters at the end of the day is if you&amp;#x27;re competitive with the alternative options on the market (holistically not just feature to feature). Ultimately it&amp;#x27;s still just a car people bought instead of a BMW or whatever. They&amp;#x27;re not making car purchasing decisions comparing it to some beta project only running via taxis in silicon valley and some random small cities.</text></item><item><author>hef19898</author><text>Tesla cannot abandon FSD, if they did Musk, and by extension (and due to all kinds of financial connetctions and dependencies) all his other companies would be in very serious trouble.</text></item><item><author>ra7</author><text>Tesla has been kept alive only because they are scared to even let drivers take their hands off the wheel. They have very low confidence in the system to allow for driver inattention, let alone completely remove the driver. Numerous software “rewrites” over the years with many buzzwords attached, and they still haven’t clocked a single driverless mile.&lt;p&gt;They also have a huge fan base (investors) who are happy to babysit FSD in order to provide more “training data” and they’ve rationalized themselves whatever little benefit it offers is worthy of the product name.</text></item><item><author>hiddencost</author><text>This whole saga has been really vindicating for Waymo&amp;#x27;s theory of slow-and-steady.&lt;p&gt;Uber and Cruise both tried to cut corners and mistakes caused their operations massive set backs.&lt;p&gt;Tesla&amp;#x27;s efforts have killed the most people, but seem relatively resilient.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>hef19898</author><text>Because Teslas market gap is based on the assumption that it is a tech company. This assumption is, basically, only FSD and Musks image as a tech genious. And a lot relies on Teslas valuation, including for a time SpaceX funding.&lt;p&gt;Officially announcing that FSD is a dead end takes allnof that away, and Tesla might very well be valuated as car company (which it is). And that share price adjustment could, or will, be a very serious problem Musk and his enterprises.</text></comment>
<story><title>Cruise slashes 24% of self-driving car workforce in sweeping layoffs</title><url>https://techcrunch.com/2023/12/14/cruise-slashes-24-of-self-driving-car-workforce-in-sweeping-layoffs/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dmix</author><text>Why is everyone so overly dramatic about this stuff. I remember when FSD was announced on HN everyone knew it&amp;#x27;d be way longer and he was just pumping it up cuz that&amp;#x27;s how he is. It wasn&amp;#x27;t some big surprise.&lt;p&gt;Now everyone is acting like it&amp;#x27;s do or die, as if everyone bought Tesla&amp;#x27;s &lt;i&gt;just&lt;/i&gt; so they won&amp;#x27;t have to ever touch a steering wheel at some point in the future. Only 19% opted for it and plenty of those are probably wealthy people who can afford novelties and all that matters at the end of the day is if you&amp;#x27;re competitive with the alternative options on the market (holistically not just feature to feature). Ultimately it&amp;#x27;s still just a car people bought instead of a BMW or whatever. They&amp;#x27;re not making car purchasing decisions comparing it to some beta project only running via taxis in silicon valley and some random small cities.</text></item><item><author>hef19898</author><text>Tesla cannot abandon FSD, if they did Musk, and by extension (and due to all kinds of financial connetctions and dependencies) all his other companies would be in very serious trouble.</text></item><item><author>ra7</author><text>Tesla has been kept alive only because they are scared to even let drivers take their hands off the wheel. They have very low confidence in the system to allow for driver inattention, let alone completely remove the driver. Numerous software “rewrites” over the years with many buzzwords attached, and they still haven’t clocked a single driverless mile.&lt;p&gt;They also have a huge fan base (investors) who are happy to babysit FSD in order to provide more “training data” and they’ve rationalized themselves whatever little benefit it offers is worthy of the product name.</text></item><item><author>hiddencost</author><text>This whole saga has been really vindicating for Waymo&amp;#x27;s theory of slow-and-steady.&lt;p&gt;Uber and Cruise both tried to cut corners and mistakes caused their operations massive set backs.&lt;p&gt;Tesla&amp;#x27;s efforts have killed the most people, but seem relatively resilient.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>fossuser</author><text>HN is just generally awful on this topic and not worth commenting in imo.&lt;p&gt;Tesla is very well positioned even if they did zero on FSD (which they won&amp;#x27;t). The Model Y was the best selling car on earth across all categories (including ICE and EVs!) - not sure what more you could want for car company success.</text></comment>