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With a Starlink connection fully integrated. Why does a fully autonomous vehicle need satellite internet?

Maybe this is the answer:

https://www.motor1.com/news/744421/tesla-cybercab-driven-rem...



Media playback? It has a 21" screen in the middle.

Also as a redundant connection so they don't have a meltdown like Waymo did when they lost cell signal.

> “In limited instances on Saturday night, the [robotaxi] Driver sought additional context,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. (The company refers to its cars’ autonomous driving systems as “Drivers.”) “However, the unprecedented scale of the power outage and its impact on local connectivity resulted in some delays to those confirmations.”

https://sfstandard.com/2025/12/23/wtf-happened-waymo-blackou...


controlling a car remotely via a satellite network for safety, what could go wrong?


Remote control is such a bad idea Waymos are never remote driven. Sometimes a human has to pick from a set of choices, but the Waymo driver hardware executes the selected choice.

Starlink latency, while better than most satellite data latency, is still far too long to be usable for remote control of a vehicle.




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