Pylimitics

Apparently Tesla, headed up as we all know by a certain Mr. Musk, has started trying to drum up interest in companies buying fleets of self-driving cars so they can enter the robot-taxi business.

These are the killer robot cars that just claimed another victim, and of course the company, the cars, and the man in charge always get away with it.

This is the guy that claimed in 2016 that all Teslas had everything they needed to drive themselves. It’s still not true.

Now they’re looking for companies to buy a bunch of their cars to supposedly build a business trundling paying passengers where they want to go. This was, if you remember, once a little fantasy story that went like this: you’ll buy one of our electric wonder mobiles, and when you’re done using it for the day you’ll just tell it to turn itself into a taxicab. Then you’ll have a nice dinner, a good night’s sleep, and so on. In the meantime the car will find fares, take them to their destinations, charge itself when needed, and send you the money. That Mr. Musk loved reading science fiction in the old days, yes he did.

There are a couple of catches in the latest scam, though. How are your shiny new robotaxis going to find riders? Through the network that Tesla owns.

And if you “buy” one of their wonder mobiles, you’ll instantly discover that you don’t really own all of it; you need to keep paying Tesla a subscription fee for many of the features. Including the self-driving system.

So let me pose an innocent question: if a fleet of Tesla robotaxis is really a profitable idea, why is the world’s most successful grifter offering it to you?

For the followup question, see title.