Robotaxi Falls Into Construction Pit, Tesla Dojo Done

Last Updated on: 10th August 2025, 12:58 am

We’ve got a couple of stories this week regarding robotaxis that might indicate a little bit of a pumping of the brakes on the robot revolution. Perhaps they are no big deal in the long run, but they are not exactly positive surprises.

Robotaxi Falls Into Construction Pit

Social media was apparently ablaze this week in China after a robotaxi ended up in a construction pit. It was a Baidu Apollo Go robotaxi, and it was indeed transporting a paying passenger. It’s not clear how the robotaxi ended up at the bottom of this construction pit, but there were reportedly barriers and warning signs around the pit.

Luckily, the passenger was not injured, but local residents reportedly had to use a ladder to help her out of the robotaxi.

Naturally, this incident has sparked a lot of concern and discussion around whether robotaxis are actually ready for mass deployment. Yes, they can mostly do what they’re supposed to do on their own, but the fact that one ended up at the bottom of a construction pit with the passenger needing rescued has spooked people for some reason.

Even if the stats overall look very good for robotaxis, a blatantly bad and scary incident like this could drive many people away from the technology. (No pun intended.)

Tesla Dojo Done

One of the things Tesla fans have been most excited about in recent years has been Tesla’s “Dojo.” This was supposed to be the supercomputer that would be critical to Tesla perfecting Tesla Full Self Driving (FSD). In fact, Elon Musk proposed and speculated that they could make money on this Dojo training behemoth by selling services to other companies. Though, that’s not happening, because Tesla has dropped its group of engineers working on Dojo and is changing course.

“Tesla Dojo no more: The carmaker is disbanding its Dojo supercomputer team, upending the company’s effort to develop in-house AI chips for autonomous driving. The move means Tesla will increase its reliance on partners including Nvidia, AMD and Samsung,” Bloomberg writes.

As Reuters highlights, “Morgan Stanley analysts led by Adam Jonas valued the Dojo supercomputer at $500 billion in 2023, saying it opened a new market for the automaker beyond cars sales, similar to how Amazon’s cloud unit boosts profit for the ecommerce firm.” A $500 billion value. “Dojo is the key accelerant at the intersection of hardware and software,” Morgan Stanley wrote on August 4. Whoops.

Is Tesla stock going to crash through the floor on the news of Tesla dissolving its Dojo team? Almost definitely not. Meme stocks just have to keep meming.

That said, overall, it seems Tesla’s robotaxi arm has been costing the company a lot of money. The compute costs keep going up and up and up. Nonetheless, this is the future Elon Musk is betting the company on. So, it just has to work, right? Right?

Robotaxis Going Forward Too Fast?

Are we running into some speed bumps on robotaxis with these stories? Do we need to pump the brakes? Or are these things just minor matters that will hardly be noticeable in the bigger scheme of things and not slow anything down?