In this article, I’ll document (mostly through pictures and video) my two test rides in the new Tesla Robotaxi in Tampa and a Waymo I ran across on the way to church this morning. Success After Failure I tried for an hour to call the Tesla Robotaxi in Tampa on Tuesday, July 21st, but I just got the message “High Service Demand” it gives when there are too many requests and too few cars. Nobody really knows if there were 10 people requesting 1 car or 100 people requesting 10 cars. But there weren’t enough cars. So I thought maybe my luck would be different about noon on Sunday. There was minimal traffic and I was right. Either there was less demand or greater supply or both! The dreaded “High Service Demand” message Success! I found a car! Very similar to Uber, Lyft and Waymo, it tells you how long until it can pick you up, when it can get you to the destination, and how much the ride is. Compare to Uber Pricing (Tesla is a bit lower) Similar to other services, once you book the ride, it matches you to a car, it shows the cars plate number and where the car is. You can follow the car as it comes to you. It arrives at Walmart. I get in New destination and new price, it is a bit further. Request for a rating and tip If you try to tip, it gives you this screen 🙂 Second ride, this one was $12.94 on UberX Overall, I was very impressed with the whole experience. The two big issues are: The zone in Tampa Bay is about 5% of where I would want to go. They would need to really expand it to be competitive. They need hundreds of cars to support the demand. Both of those will come with time. But nobody knows if that will be a few months or another year! Waymo Coming to Tampa! Screenshot As we have written about here and here, Waymo is testing the new Ojai, made by Zeekr (owned by Geely of China). This vehicle has a great look and Zeekr has a good reputation. I wasn’t able to ride in it since it is only open to Waymo employees at this time. I imagine having a vehicle made in China is going to cause issues for Waymo in the future, as both Republican and Democrats in Congress seem to vilify Chinese cars. Whether that is justified is a question to which I don’t know the answer. If you want to take advantage of my Tesla referral link to get up three months Full Self Driving, here’s the link: https://ts.la/paul92237 — but if another owner helped you more, please use their link instead of mine. Disclosure: I am a shareholder in Tesla [TSLA] and XPeng [XPEV]. But I offer no investment advice of any sort here.
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