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YouTuber and Elon Musk stan Ellie Sheriff had a bizarre experience during her first Tesla robotaxi ride in Austin, Texas.
As seen in a video she shared on her channel, “Ellie in Space,” over the weekend, Sheriff got a strange call from the EV maker mid-ride, asking her and her fellow passenger to literally leave the vehicle due to incoming weather.
“So we had to get out of the robotaxi, because weather is coming in,” Sheriff said in the video while standing in the middle of a windy field.
Their ride had to be fully canceled, leaving them stranded. Worse yet, the app claimed there was “high service demand.” However, moments later, they were able to hail another robotaxi to get them back to the place where they started.
“I don’t want to just be a Tesla rah-rah cheerleader,” Sheriff said. “It is very cool. However, this is a limitation currently, how it is. You shouldn’t have to terminate the service cuz it’s about to rain.”
The head-scratching incident highlights some glaring shortcomings of Tesla’s long-awaited autonomous ride-hailing service. The company’s launch of an extremely scaled-down service that features human safety drivers in the passenger’s seat has already led to plenty of chaos, including violently jerking steering wheels, unexpected braking around cop cars, and a dangerous drop-off in the middle of a four-way intersection.
It’s unclear why exactly Sheriff’s ride was cut short beyond some wind and rain. However, considering Musk’s carmaker has long ditched light detection and ranging sensors known as lidar in favor of relying exclusively on cameras for its driver assistance features, it seems probable that Tesla is nervous about having the robotaxi drive in bad conditions.
Case in point, earlier this year, YouTuber and former NASA engineer Mark Rober published a damning video, demonstrating that Tesla’s erroneously-named “Full Self-Driving” software can be easily fooled by rain, bright lights, and even a fake, Wile E. Coyote-style wall painted to look like the road behind it.
The stakes are extremely high for the EV maker as Musk has bet the company’s fate on the tech. In light of cratering car sales, the CEO has gone all in on automation. Earlier this week, the company revealed it had delivered just 384,000 vehicles between April and June, compared to 444,000 over the same period last year, the biggest drop in the company’s history.
More on Tesla robotaxis: Tesla Robotaxi Terrifyingly Jerks Wheel Back and Forth While Carrying Passenger
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