June 24, 2025 • 10 mins
ABC's Mike Dobuski reports on these new automated taxis and what it's like to ride in one
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Anything.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
We can get the cops who were already understaffed, undermanned, uh,
get them more assets to fight crime.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I'm good with that.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
These these new helicopters can fly higher, they can see more,
and they can get to crime scenes faster. In fact,
about half the time helicopters are the first to arrive
at a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
They can get there before police on the ground can.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
They can get the pilot in the helicopter up and
over the area much faster. And now with these new helicopters,
I wonder if they have the new helicopter smell. That's
gotta be kind of funny. You're a you're a you're
a helicopter pilot. You get into these one of these
brand new.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
New helicopters smell, I had no point. Did I ever
think about that.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Crack the doors, like, oh, I love the interior, look
at those pedals.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
If they have to have a new helicopter smell, right,
it's brand new, I guess I never really thought about it. Yeah,
I bet it smells good.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
It's not like anybody is a little for breeze air
fresher right there in the helicopter.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
A little pine tree dangling from the rear view of
helicopter mirror.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Right, Elvis's head marble head going right. But you know,
they could fly higher.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
One of the upsides, as they're saying, you know, because
they can fly higher because they're newer. It is less
noise pollution on the ground, which I appreciate. I'd never
like to hear the crime copter over my neighborhood, but
I would rather be inconvenienced with a little helicopter noise
for a few minutes than some bad guy running around
(01:31):
the neighborhood. So plus, it lets me know that there's
something going on. Maybe you go inside beyond alert, but
that doesn't seem like that much of an inconvenience.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
People complain about the.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Crime copter is going up and it's loud, and it
scares everybody, and I'd rather know, and I'd rather have
them there and deal with a little noise than not.
So either way, I think good news six million Bucks
City Council has approved two new police Hellica in Columbus.
At about seven thirty eight, it is Tech Tuesday, ABC
(02:04):
News tech reporter Mike Debuski joining us on the Legacy
Retirement Group dot com phone line. Michael, good Morning over
the weekend, Tesla officially launched its long awaited robotaxi service.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
What's going on, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So this is something that the CEO Elon Musk, has
been promising for several years now, that Tesla is going
to be a robotaxi company in the future, less so
a traditional automaker, more like an uber, but of course
operating you know, completely autonomous fleet of cabs. And the
first of those cabs rolled out in Austin, Texas over
(02:38):
the weekend. It was an extremely limited rollout, only about
ten to twelve cars. We think Tesla model wise as well,
not the much vaunted cyber cab that the company showed
off last year. These are more traditional vehicles, something that
is very familiar on the roads. They're sort of mid
sized crossover, but specially modified to drive itself, at least
(02:58):
under certain conditions. There was a limited sort of window
of Austin that these cabs could operate in. They can't
go on highways, they can't go to the airport. There
is a safety person in the car for all of
these rides. They sit in the passenger seat, and it
looks like from what we've been able to glean, they
have their sort of finger on like a kill switch
(03:19):
in case the car gets itself into some real trouble.
Though for what it's worth, from what we've been able
to see so far, it doesn't seem like that was
always necessary. The caveat here, of course, being that this
is an invite only program. For now, it seems like
Tesla has only invited you know, influencers and fans quite
frankly so grain of salt for all of this. Though
(03:40):
that being said, there have been some you know mistakes,
as we've seen happen with you know, Tesla's existing autopilot
features on their current cars. You know, there was an
instance where one of these vehicles appeared to drive into
an oncoming lane. There was nobody else in that oncoming lane,
but even still little eyebrow raising there. And right now,
all of these rides are again invite only, but also
(04:03):
a flat fee of four dollars and twenty cents. That's
a marijuana joke that has gotten on muskin trouble in
the past before, So that's kind of where they stand
right now. But it's also worth mentioning that Tesla is
a little behind the game here because EWEIMO is operating
in a number of cities across the country. They are,
of course a subsidiary of Alphabet related to Google. That's
(04:25):
their self driving car operation. They don't have anyone in
the car and they are operating you know what feels
like Uber without drivers in San Francisco and in parts
of Austin. They're trying to get approval to operate vehicles
here in New York City as well. Zooks, which is
a subsidiary of Amazon, is much on the same track.
It seems like, you know, Tesla's playing a little bit
(04:46):
of catch up here. And that's before we even get
into the fact that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
is investigating Tesla's self driving car technology and how it
reacts to inclement weather, how it may have been related
to crashes that have had happened in their cars, including
one fatality. So a bit of an uphill battle here
for Tesla to climate seems so right.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Now, Tesla does have somebody in the car just in case,
and you're saying that the Weimo robo taxi operations have
nobody in the car to kind of grab the wheel
if it goes awry.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And that's sort of unusual. Normally we
see you know, with these with how WEIMO operated. You know,
there's a safety driver behind the wheel for early beta
testing and then you know, they get permission from the
city or from the state to remove that driver and
then they're you know, through another testing period to prove
that it can be done, and then they kind of
(05:40):
make it available to the general public. Tesla is operating
something of a business here right four to twenty is
not gonna like make you know, a ton of money
for them at this stage, but like this is the
first time we're really seeing them, you know, make some
money monetize these rides while having a safety driver behind
the wheel. Those safety drivers apparently don't talk very much.
(06:01):
The people who have live streamed these rides can't seem
to get a lot of lot out of these people
to understand how the vehicle works. But even still, you
know that that is kind of notable that right now
there is a person there to take over in case
something goes wrong.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
And so how would it worked is there's an app
where I would just plug in the address that I'm
my destination address, and it knows the car knows where
to go.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yep, yep. Within reason.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So again, there's a sort of geo fenced area right
now only in Austin, Texas where you can hail a
ride and it's very similar to Uber. From what we
are able to understand, it kind of looks like Uber.
If you have a Tesla account, which generally speaking of
Tesla owners do, you can import all the settings that
you have in your car into the ride share which
is kind of interesting. So you get you know, YouTube,
(06:45):
and you get Netflix, and you get Spotify and that
can like play through the car via a little screen
in the back of the vehicle where you're sitting, so
that's kind of interesting. But yeah, it operates very similarly
to Uber. It's all app based, but of course, you know,
you can't use it for what you would normally use
app Uber for, which is to take you to the airport,
which is kind of like.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
The key Uber thing.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
But like even still, like they say, they do plan
to roll this out and expand it as time goes on,
this is just a very limited rollout right now. They're
trying to be safe and that's maybe, you know, kind
of what they should be doing given the investigations and
some of the lawsuits that they're facing. Around their self
driving vehicle technology.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
ABC's Mike Debuski, would you get into a driverless robotaxi?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I have gotten into a driverless vehicle. It wasn't a robotaxi. Again,
here in New York, you're not allowed, like the law
prohibits there being sort of driverless vehicles with no person
behind the wheel. So it's been a little difficult for
me to kind of get around that. Alex Stone, my
colleague here at ABC, did ride in a Waimo for
one of our shows last year, and he said it
(07:47):
was a very interesting experience, right, like, it's it's strange
how quickly This is kind of the big takeaway that
he had. It's strange how quickly you become acclimated to it,
because at the end of the day, you know, an
uber ride is kind of boring, right, You're just sitting
in the back of a car, and especially when you
have nobody to talk to, it's like, okay, well now
I can look out the window, or I can play
some music. But like, yeah, he was he was surprised
(08:07):
by how how quickly he got used to it. Part
of that might come from the fact that it's pretty
low speed driving. I think you know, it's all city
based at this point. They can't go on the highway,
so you know that's maybe part of it as well.
I did get a chance to ride in what was effectively,
you know, autonomous golf cart a few years ago here.
It was in a very limited part of it's called
(08:28):
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It's kind of like a business
park here in New York City, and you know it's
this walled off area, not public roads, and you know,
they added this very early version of what was called
an Optimus ride, which could take you back and forth
from the ferry port that is there to some of
the various businesses that are around that. So yeah, it's
an interesting experience. But again still person behind the wheel.
(08:49):
You know, it's very on rails, but yeah, it's it's
kind of interesting to.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Get a look at how all that works, the level
of trust involved. It would take me a little bit
to get over that hump to get it the backseat
of a car with nobody else in there. And again
to your point of it's maybe going twenty twenty five
miles an hour tops through a city, but then just
just in the back of my head and I appreciate
it alex is great saying you get over it really quickly.
(09:15):
I don't know if I would be able to relinquish
that control this that just yet. I'm not quite ready
to go there yet.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's interesting from like Testless perspective
or from Waymo's perspective. Right, they have the technical hurdle
to get over, which is still very much in progress. Right,
they have not deployed these vehicles in like inclement weather
or in weird traffic situations they still struggle with. But
there's also the social hurdle to get over. Right, there
were protests around these cabs on Sunday when they launched.
(09:43):
You know that they don't the people of Austin. Some
of them don't want robotaxis rolling around their city for
safety concerns, or maybe they just don't like Elon Musk. Right, Like,
there's there's a lot of stuff that these companies need
to contend with. And again that's an especial threat to
test as opposed to like Google, because Tesla says this
is going to be the next big thing. Right, this
(10:04):
is where all our valuation comes from. This is why
we're valued like a tech company, not like a car company.
You know, if those hurdles prove to be steeper or
or more difficult to get over than some of the
other companies that are maybe not staking the future of
the company on this technology, well then that represents a
really existential threat to Elon Musk's business
Anything.
Speaker 2 (00:00):
We can get the cops who were already understaffed, undermanned, uh,
get them more assets to fight crime.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
I'm good with that.
Speaker 2 (00:09):
These these new helicopters can fly higher, they can see more,
and they can get to crime scenes faster. In fact,
about half the time helicopters are the first to arrive
at a crime scene.
Speaker 1 (00:21):
They can get there before police on the ground can.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
They can get the pilot in the helicopter up and
over the area much faster. And now with these new helicopters,
I wonder if they have the new helicopter smell. That's
gotta be kind of funny. You're a you're a you're
a helicopter pilot. You get into these one of these
brand new.
Speaker 1 (00:39):
New helicopters smell, I had no point. Did I ever
think about that.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
Crack the doors, like, oh, I love the interior, look
at those pedals.
Speaker 1 (00:49):
If they have to have a new helicopter smell, right,
it's brand new, I guess I never really thought about it. Yeah,
I bet it smells good.
Speaker 3 (00:56):
It's not like anybody is a little for breeze air
fresher right there in the helicopter.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
A little pine tree dangling from the rear view of
helicopter mirror.
Speaker 1 (01:03):
Right, Elvis's head marble head going right. But you know,
they could fly higher.
Speaker 2 (01:08):
One of the upsides, as they're saying, you know, because
they can fly higher because they're newer. It is less
noise pollution on the ground, which I appreciate. I'd never
like to hear the crime copter over my neighborhood, but
I would rather be inconvenienced with a little helicopter noise
for a few minutes than some bad guy running around
(01:31):
the neighborhood. So plus, it lets me know that there's
something going on. Maybe you go inside beyond alert, but
that doesn't seem like that much of an inconvenience.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
People complain about the.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Crime copter is going up and it's loud, and it
scares everybody, and I'd rather know, and I'd rather have
them there and deal with a little noise than not.
So either way, I think good news six million Bucks
City Council has approved two new police Hellica in Columbus.
At about seven thirty eight, it is Tech Tuesday, ABC
(02:04):
News tech reporter Mike Debuski joining us on the Legacy
Retirement Group dot com phone line. Michael, good Morning over
the weekend, Tesla officially launched its long awaited robotaxi service.
Speaker 1 (02:15):
What's going on, Yeah, that's right.
Speaker 3 (02:17):
So this is something that the CEO Elon Musk, has
been promising for several years now, that Tesla is going
to be a robotaxi company in the future, less so
a traditional automaker, more like an uber, but of course
operating you know, completely autonomous fleet of cabs. And the
first of those cabs rolled out in Austin, Texas over
(02:38):
the weekend. It was an extremely limited rollout, only about
ten to twelve cars. We think Tesla model wise as well,
not the much vaunted cyber cab that the company showed
off last year. These are more traditional vehicles, something that
is very familiar on the roads. They're sort of mid
sized crossover, but specially modified to drive itself, at least
(02:58):
under certain conditions. There was a limited sort of window
of Austin that these cabs could operate in. They can't
go on highways, they can't go to the airport. There
is a safety person in the car for all of
these rides. They sit in the passenger seat, and it
looks like from what we've been able to glean, they
have their sort of finger on like a kill switch
(03:19):
in case the car gets itself into some real trouble.
Though for what it's worth, from what we've been able
to see so far, it doesn't seem like that was
always necessary. The caveat here, of course, being that this
is an invite only program. For now, it seems like
Tesla has only invited you know, influencers and fans quite
frankly so grain of salt for all of this. Though
(03:40):
that being said, there have been some you know mistakes,
as we've seen happen with you know, Tesla's existing autopilot
features on their current cars. You know, there was an
instance where one of these vehicles appeared to drive into
an oncoming lane. There was nobody else in that oncoming lane,
but even still little eyebrow raising there. And right now,
all of these rides are again invite only, but also
(04:03):
a flat fee of four dollars and twenty cents. That's
a marijuana joke that has gotten on muskin trouble in
the past before, So that's kind of where they stand
right now. But it's also worth mentioning that Tesla is
a little behind the game here because EWEIMO is operating
in a number of cities across the country. They are,
of course a subsidiary of Alphabet related to Google. That's
(04:25):
their self driving car operation. They don't have anyone in
the car and they are operating you know what feels
like Uber without drivers in San Francisco and in parts
of Austin. They're trying to get approval to operate vehicles
here in New York City as well. Zooks, which is
a subsidiary of Amazon, is much on the same track.
It seems like, you know, Tesla's playing a little bit
(04:46):
of catch up here. And that's before we even get
into the fact that the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
is investigating Tesla's self driving car technology and how it
reacts to inclement weather, how it may have been related
to crashes that have had happened in their cars, including
one fatality. So a bit of an uphill battle here
for Tesla to climate seems so right.
Speaker 2 (05:07):
Now, Tesla does have somebody in the car just in case,
and you're saying that the Weimo robo taxi operations have
nobody in the car to kind of grab the wheel
if it goes awry.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, And that's sort of unusual. Normally we
see you know, with these with how WEIMO operated. You know,
there's a safety driver behind the wheel for early beta
testing and then you know, they get permission from the
city or from the state to remove that driver and
then they're you know, through another testing period to prove
that it can be done, and then they kind of
(05:40):
make it available to the general public. Tesla is operating
something of a business here right four to twenty is
not gonna like make you know, a ton of money
for them at this stage, but like this is the
first time we're really seeing them, you know, make some
money monetize these rides while having a safety driver behind
the wheel. Those safety drivers apparently don't talk very much.
(06:01):
The people who have live streamed these rides can't seem
to get a lot of lot out of these people
to understand how the vehicle works. But even still, you
know that that is kind of notable that right now
there is a person there to take over in case
something goes wrong.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
And so how would it worked is there's an app
where I would just plug in the address that I'm
my destination address, and it knows the car knows where
to go.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
Yep, yep. Within reason.
Speaker 3 (06:24):
So again, there's a sort of geo fenced area right
now only in Austin, Texas where you can hail a
ride and it's very similar to Uber. From what we
are able to understand, it kind of looks like Uber.
If you have a Tesla account, which generally speaking of
Tesla owners do, you can import all the settings that
you have in your car into the ride share which
is kind of interesting. So you get you know, YouTube,
(06:45):
and you get Netflix, and you get Spotify and that
can like play through the car via a little screen
in the back of the vehicle where you're sitting, so
that's kind of interesting. But yeah, it operates very similarly
to Uber. It's all app based, but of course, you know,
you can't use it for what you would normally use
app Uber for, which is to take you to the airport,
which is kind of like.
Speaker 1 (07:03):
The key Uber thing.
Speaker 3 (07:05):
But like even still, like they say, they do plan
to roll this out and expand it as time goes on,
this is just a very limited rollout right now. They're
trying to be safe and that's maybe, you know, kind
of what they should be doing given the investigations and
some of the lawsuits that they're facing. Around their self
driving vehicle technology.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
ABC's Mike Debuski, would you get into a driverless robotaxi?
Speaker 3 (07:26):
I have gotten into a driverless vehicle. It wasn't a robotaxi. Again,
here in New York, you're not allowed, like the law
prohibits there being sort of driverless vehicles with no person
behind the wheel. So it's been a little difficult for
me to kind of get around that. Alex Stone, my
colleague here at ABC, did ride in a Waimo for
one of our shows last year, and he said it
(07:47):
was a very interesting experience, right, like, it's it's strange
how quickly This is kind of the big takeaway that
he had. It's strange how quickly you become acclimated to it,
because at the end of the day, you know, an
uber ride is kind of boring, right, You're just sitting
in the back of a car, and especially when you
have nobody to talk to, it's like, okay, well now
I can look out the window, or I can play
some music. But like, yeah, he was he was surprised
(08:07):
by how how quickly he got used to it. Part
of that might come from the fact that it's pretty
low speed driving. I think you know, it's all city
based at this point. They can't go on the highway,
so you know that's maybe part of it as well.
I did get a chance to ride in what was effectively,
you know, autonomous golf cart a few years ago here.
It was in a very limited part of it's called
(08:28):
the Brooklyn Navy Yard. It's kind of like a business
park here in New York City, and you know it's
this walled off area, not public roads, and you know,
they added this very early version of what was called
an Optimus ride, which could take you back and forth
from the ferry port that is there to some of
the various businesses that are around that. So yeah, it's
an interesting experience. But again still person behind the wheel.
(08:49):
You know, it's very on rails, but yeah, it's it's
kind of interesting to.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
Get a look at how all that works, the level
of trust involved. It would take me a little bit
to get over that hump to get it the backseat
of a car with nobody else in there. And again
to your point of it's maybe going twenty twenty five
miles an hour tops through a city, but then just
just in the back of my head and I appreciate
it alex is great saying you get over it really quickly.
(09:15):
I don't know if I would be able to relinquish
that control this that just yet. I'm not quite ready
to go there yet.
Speaker 3 (09:21):
Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's interesting from like Testless perspective
or from Waymo's perspective. Right, they have the technical hurdle
to get over, which is still very much in progress. Right,
they have not deployed these vehicles in like inclement weather
or in weird traffic situations they still struggle with. But
there's also the social hurdle to get over. Right, there
were protests around these cabs on Sunday when they launched.
(09:43):
You know that they don't the people of Austin. Some
of them don't want robotaxis rolling around their city for
safety concerns, or maybe they just don't like Elon Musk. Right, Like,
there's there's a lot of stuff that these companies need
to contend with. And again that's an especial threat to
test as opposed to like Google, because Tesla says this
is going to be the next big thing. Right, this
(10:04):
is where all our valuation comes from. This is why
we're valued like a tech company, not like a car company.
You know, if those hurdles prove to be steeper or
or more difficult to get over than some of the
other companies that are maybe not staking the future of
the company on this technology, well then that represents a
really existential threat to Elon Musk's business
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