Questions.

Both, and that's not a dodge. The car does the steering, braking, accelerating and lane changes. A licensed person sits in the driver's seat with both hands on the wheel and can take over instantly — and legally, that person is the driver at all times. The technology is impressive and the responsibility hasn't moved.

Correct. A robotaxi has nobody in the driver's seat. Tesla runs one in six cities; Waymo runs one in several more. Neither is here, and we're not one. When the software is certified for it and we can get insurance for it, that changes — and we'll rewrite this answer rather than quietly deleting it.

Same price, a Tesla every time instead of a lottery, a quoted fare with no surge, and a screen in the back showing you what the car sees. If none of that appeals, take the Uber — genuinely, we're not for everyone and pretending otherwise wastes your time.

We don't know, and neither does anybody else, and anyone giving you a confident number is selling you one. What we will be able to tell you is how often our cars needed a human, on which roads, in what weather, and whether it's improving. The format is already on the telemetry page, waiting for its first week. Make your own call from it.

Say so and it goes off. Same fare, no argument, no sighing. It is written into the operator handbook rather than left to whoever is driving.

Yes, and we expect the screen to be the reason most people want to. The only thing we ask is that you don't reach for anything on the operator's side while the system is engaged.

It shouldn't be. We intend to price against UberX, and booking direct skips a platform's cut, so we expect a lot of routes to come out slightly cheaper. Nothing is on sale yet, so treat that as the plan rather than a promise — the fare estimator shows the rates we mean to open with.

Never. Surge exists to pull more drivers onto the road at busy times. We will run a fixed fleet on booked shifts, so there is nothing to bid for and no reason to charge you more for wanting a ride when everyone else does.

Up to you entirely. Operators will be paid a real share of the fare either way, so a tip is a bonus rather than the thing that makes the job viable.

There is nothing to cancel yet. The intended policy is free up to five minutes before the pickup time; after that, or if the car has already arrived and waited ten minutes, $8. Reserved trips booked more than a day ahead would be free to cancel up to two hours before.

We haven't bought a car yet, so there is no fleet version to quote. The rule is that new versions go on two cars for 72 hours before anything else gets them, and the comparison is published either way. Whatever we are running will always be shown on the telemetry page.

Light rain, yes. Heavy rain, standing water, snow over the markings or any ice — the system comes off and the operator drives. That's a written rule, not a judgement call. We expect it to make our winter numbers worse than our summer ones, and we have committed to publishing them season by season rather than hiding the difference in an annual average.

Overwhelmingly it slows down or stops. That's the failure mode by design and it's an annoying one rather than a dangerous one. The operator takes over, the trip continues manually, and the event gets logged and published with its cause.

Because we can buy a Tesla. Waymo doesn't sell its cars to anyone — it operates its own fleet, in cities it chooses. Tesla is the only company selling a car a small operator can actually put into service with this capability.

Because Teslas don't. Tesla's position is cameras are enough; Waymo's is that they aren't. That argument isn't settled and we're not the people to settle it. There's a longer, more honest version on the tech page, including where cameras genuinely struggle.

No — the plan is that most operators drive ours. If you do own a Tesla there's a separate arrangement where your car joins the fleet and you never have to meet a passenger — details on the drive page. Neither is open yet.

Nothing yet — we are not hiring. The intended terms are 72% of every fare, weekly, with no car payment, insurance, fuel or maintenance coming out of it, which on our projections would be around $22/hour of driven time against roughly $7 for the same hours in your own car on UberX. That is a projection, not a wage anyone has been paid. Full breakdown with the costs left in is on the drive page.

Yes, probably, in two to four years, and anyone who joins will be told that before they sign anything. When it happens the role becomes remote support and fleet operations, at a desk, for fewer people — and the longest-serving operators will get first refusal. We'd rather lose a candidate to that answer than have someone find out from a press release.

Yes, and that's the hard part of the job rather than a complaint about it. Staying genuinely alert while a car drives well for six hours is more tiring than driving it yourself. It's why shifts are capped at six hours with a mandatory break, and why 20 of the 40 training hours are failure drills.

Hiding an intervention. First offence, no discussion. Everything else is a conversation; that one isn't, because the published data is the only real asset this company has.

An Uber driver using FSD quietly and hoping nobody notices is one thing. Announcing it, training forty hours for it, capping shifts, publishing every takeover and putting the safety policy online is a different thing. It's the same car and a genuinely different operation — and you're right that from the back seat, on a good day, it looks similar.

Then the Tri-Cities gets driverless cars, which is good for everyone here, and we compete on being the operator with a public five-year record on these exact roads. We'd rather have that hand than no hand. If they arrive and we can't compete, we'll have run a good business for several years and learned an enormous amount.

We believe so, and we are having it checked properly before we carry anyone rather than taking our own word for it. Using driver-assistance while driving for hire is not, as far as we can establish, prohibited in Tennessee or federally. What matters is that the driver is genuinely driving — both hands on the wheel, attention on the road, responsible for the car — which is also what rideshare platforms generally require of a driver using any such system. Our operator rules are deliberately stricter. None of that is legal advice, and a Tennessee attorney reviews the whole operation before the first fare.

It's the old gag where you make a circle with your fingers, hold it up to your eye and dare someone to look. On a car that's driving itself, a hand doing anything other than gripping the wheel is the joke. It's also the entire advertising budget — about $60 a car. There's a whole page on how it works and the rules it has to follow.

Not at all. We buy the cars and pay for the software like anyone else. Tesla has never heard of us.